Dracula; Matrix #78

Guy Maddin has to be one of the most original and just plain strange directors around. I find his work hilarious, surreal and compelling to watch. He's been called the David Lynch of Canada but I think that does Maddin a disservice. Eraserhead has similarities to Maddin's work but that's where the comparison ends. We watched Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, which is an adaptation of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's stage production, and I think it's perhaps the best Dracula I've seen to date (not counting Bela Lugosi's, a class by itself). And speaking of Maddin, the newest issue of Matrix is back from the printers, featuring an excerpt from his "autobiographical" film, Brand Upon the Brain!. It's the Narrative "I" issue, film and autobiography all mixed together by yours truly, plus it includes a DVD of short vids and animations by such artists as Elisabeth Belliveau, Victoria Stanton, Yvette Poorter... Tell me what you think of it!

Fun; Zodiac

A pair of movies about killers, neither of them great, but Fun (1994) was downright awful. Neither Joe nor I remember (or would admit to) putting this film on the list, and so we're both baffled at why either of us would have done such a thing. I started with extremely low expectations, and so, I was actually pleasantly surprised, at first. It's nicely shot, in what looks like 16 mm black and white for the scenes set in the present, colour for the past. The first third of the film roped me in with what started as some fairly interesting characters, two teenaged girls who murder an old woman. The dialogue was stagey, as often are films adapted from stageplays (of which this is one), but sometimes it didn't matter. A couple of monologues felt like it was trying to ape David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago (which became About Last Night, a 1980s film starring Demi Moore). But Fun never breaks out of its theatricality, which becomes a burden that eventually sinks the whole film. The acting became stale and overdramatic without any insight, so I stopped believing, and after that, it was just a chore to sit through, especially when the horrible techno music came on and wouldn't stop. It became a fast-forward.

Zodiac, on the other hand, was a film that Joe had been looking forward eagerly, Fight Club and Seven being among his favourites. But Fincher, he said, you let me down! We weren't as enthralled by his newest work as we wanted to be, though that is a tall order. A detective film about the Zodiac killer who was never caught, it wasn't great, but it was, on the whole, quite watchable - except for the few scenes of murder and killing during which I simply left the room, not willing to endure explicit violence these days. Being a mother has made me super-sensitive, which I personally think is a good thing. I don't know why I don't mind Seven so much, maybe because the actual killings don't take place before your eyes, and the bodies are treated as incredible pieces of set decoration.

Kramer vs. Kramer; Coal Miner's Daughter

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) belongs to the spate of Oscar-winning emotional family dramas of the late 70s/early 80s, such as Ordinary People (1980), On Golden Pond (1981), and Terms of Endearment (1983). I'd never seen any of these in their entirety, so I was interested when this film about a divorce and child custody battle showed up in the mail. And sure, it was really well-acted and well-written, a little overdone in the way of Oscar-winning Hollywood films, all orchestral music soundtrack and traumatic events. I always feel a little manipulated, even as I'm enjoying it. And I did enjoy it, though I sympathized for Meryl Streep's character, who is portrayed as a real selfish witch. I guess that's a testament to her acting, since the film's POV seems to side with the father. I wonder if the feminist overtones to the mother's story (which only comes out in the end courtroom scene) are actually there, or something I'm reading into it? And the ending, I found pretty unbelievable, like something tacked on because they wanted (SPOILER! MOVE TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW) a "Happy Ending." What? A Happy Ending? Quelle surprise.

Joe has always said that Kramer vs. Kramer had one of his favourite scenes, where Dustin Hoffman is sprinting down the street to music on the soundtrack, when suddenly he runs past a band playing that music, effectively turning it from non-diagetic to diagetic. When Joe saw the actual scene again after so many years, he said the details of the scene were completely different than how he had remembered and described it. "Maybe the scene I remember comes later on," he said. But it didn't.

And then, from the same time period (1980) and also graced with an Oscar for Sissy Spacek's performance, was Coal Miner's Daughter. Surprisingly, I enjoyed this film pretty much without reservation! Most of the credit goes to lovely Miss Sissy as Loretta Lynn, whose performance truly is amazing (she sings her own songs live for the camera, no lipsyncing here), though Tommy Lee Jones as her husband is also pretty darned good. Loretta Lynn's life makes quite a story, and I was in the mood for a good old-fashioned story. What fun, when done right! Right on!

Highball

Highball is another Noah Baumbach film, except that it is credited to Ernie Fusco. I found this out only after we watched it and were searching the credits for Baumbach's name. Who the heck is Ernie Fusco? I said. Joe looked it up on the internet, which is substituting for his and everyone else's memory these days, and it confirmed that Ernie Fusco was Baumbach. He had shot Highball on a shoestring with his famous friends improvising, in only six days. And in spite of the fact that the film looks and feels like it was shot in six days, it was a lot funnier than Mr. Jealousy. Baumbach's usual stylistic tics are here, like the use of quick jumpcuts that look like stutters, which seem like a mistake everytime it happens, except that it happens so often. It's dialogue heavy and seems like a stageplay, especially since the camera often frames two-shots from the knees up, for whole scenes, without any close-ups, shot/reverse shots, or any other edits. But there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud scenes which occur when the cast lets loose into serious wackiness, like a great gag with two giant lizard suits, or a falsetto karaoke rendition of Beautiful Dreamer.

Jennifer Eight; 25th Hour

We rented Jennifer Eight (1992) because it was written and directed by Bruce Robinson, writer and director of the very very excellent "How to Get Ahead in Advertising" and "Withnail and I." It's said that this movie was his attempt to do a mainstream, formula film so he could get leverage to make other projects, but it was box office failure. And frankly, it feels like his heart wasn't really into it. Beautifully gloomy photography can't cover up the gigantic plot holes that destroy this film. I mean, a blind woman (or anybody, really) wouldn't notice that someone is in your bathroom with you, taking pictures of you in the tub? Come on! In fact, the sound design really sucked throughout. People are always walking noisily around Uma Thurman, the blind woman who can't hear the most obvious sounds. Halfway through the movie, Joe, who had put it on the to-rent list in the first place, suddenly said "I thought this was another movie! I remembered John Goodman being in it!" And he's not. The last comment on this really not good film is that it was brought to you by Diet Coke, which is drunk very conspicuously at least twice.

Next, we watched Spike Lee's 25th Hour, which we were both looking forward to. Frankly, I'm not a Spike Lee fan, since I've only ever liked Do the Right Thing and She's Gotta Have It. The rest of his oeuvre I've found either "meh..." or just not very good, though I admit I haven't seen Malcolm X, which Joe likes a lot. But 25th Hour had gotten excellent reviews, and we were psyched! But expectation has a lot of influence in how one receives a film, and if we hadn't been so psyched, maybe we would have liked it better. I thought it had a few good scenes, but I didn't like the spoken word pieces that popped up. Maybe as short films in themselves or in another film, but not as part of this one. It felt too completely disparate with the rest of the movie. The soundtrack was the most obtrusive thing I'd ever heard, trying to give drama to everything, even banal things like walking the dog (which, I know, is perhaps the point, but I found it simply distracting). It's one thing to build drama with music, but when it's on all the time, it becomes flat, like it's not even there because you learn to ignore it. Joe was less forgiving of the film. He said: "It's a muddled pile of poop!" This film seemed sponsored by Guinness, as it was drunk conspicuously a few times.

Le Neg'

The DVD interface amazed Joe and I immediately, consisting of a stop-motion animation clip from the movie that was one of the most original ideas I'd seen in quite some time. It looked like plastic toy figurines moving around a toy farm set. But then, their eyes moved, making us realize with a shock that they were humans in costume and make-up. Wow!

If you're not familiar with the work of Robert Morin, all I can say is, you should be! His classic film Yes Sir! Madame... is a classic of faux-mockumentary fiction, exploring the bi-personality of growing up Franglais in Montreal. He often uses video to heighten the soap-operatic dramas that build to violence, and fractured storylines and POVs. Le Neg' is an intense, Rashomon-like story of one night of violence, reconstructed through the POVs of each of the participants, whose stories, of course, contradict each other while giving more and more details as to the climactic scene of horror. The story follows a police investigation into the assault on and torture of a young black kid after he defaces a lawnboy, which ultimately leads to the shooting of the elderly woman who owned it. One of these POVs is from that of an autistic boy who has his walkman on all the time, listening to a beautiful song "Donnez-moi des roses" by Fernand Gignac. The racism is intense, at times verging on too much, and hard to take, but at the same time, not too explicit. The characters are, to their credit, full of surprises, becoming less and less stereotypical and flat as the film progresses, though more and more cruel. A harrowing, but powerful Quebecois film.

Mr. Jealousy; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Joe and I rented Mr. Jealousy (1997) because it was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who also wrote and directed the very funny Kicking and Screaming, the squirmingly well-observed the Squid and the Whale, and penned the charming The Life Aquatic by Wes Anderson. Mr. Jealousy seemed like it was his first film, and I was surprised to find that it actually came after Kicking and Screaming. It had all the trademarks of his other films, with some excellent dialogue at times, interesting characters in strange situations. But it felt like a first film because it seemed way too in love with itself, trying to be showy and clever with fancy camerawork that is always panning and zooming, iris in and out, jumpcuts and freeze frames galore. The narration felt overwritten and completely unnecessary, and the main characters were prone to literary monologuing, as though they were in a stageplay. Eric Stoltz and Annabella Sciorra are pretty good as a new couple whose relationship is threatened by the guy's excessive jealousy, but the supporting cast overact as though they are projecting to the back of the theatre, probably because the script is so theatrical. And, wow, a lot of sensitive rock guitar. Baumbach is certainly talented and it comes through despite all the excess, but he is so much better when he doesn't try so darned hard.

Then we watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Steve Martin and Michael Caine who play two conmen out to gold-dig. What a delightful confection! What a comic treat! Great acting, great script that twists and kicks all the way to the ending. What a pleasure!

The 4th Man; Twin Peaks, Season Two; The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

I would never have rented The 4th Man (1983) by Paul Verhoeven, director of such Hollywood schlock as Showgirls, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers, though I admit, Robocop was a fun treat. But Joe said our friend Johannes in Rotterdam had recommended it, and we're glad he did! Filmed in his native Holland before Verhoeven hit Hollywood, The 4th Man is a taut psycho-thriller with shades of the surreal (the main man has crazy visions) and lots of male full-frontal. Great editing and special effects that teeter on the line between incredible and cheesy. Thanks Johannes!

Speaking of surreal, incredible, and cheesy, we finally got the 2nd season of Twin Peaks (disc 1) on DVD! It hasn't been available until just recently, and believe or not, I hadn't seen any of it back in the day when it was on TV. I didn't have cable back then, and I was making an effort not to buy into the hype (and frankly, I hadn't liked any Lynch film since Eraserhead). Silly me! Years later, when Joe and I watched Season One on DVD, well, we couldn't get enough. Season Two starts out weirder than ever, in fact, seemingly weird for the sake of weird, but by the third episode, we were once again sucked in. More, more!

Finally, we just finished Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), the sequel to his earlier Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and his last film. Fritzy, old boy, you've done it again! A brilliantly orchestrated, twisty thriller. And interestingly, a lot of silence in this film, something you rarely find nowadays. So much of film music soundtracks are manipulative and unnecessary, so it was pleasing to hear the action unfolding without benefit of the orchestra. Thanks, Fritz.

Crush; Cure

It's not the 1993 thriller called The Crush with Alicia Silverstone, or the 2001 comedy called Crush, which you've probably never heard of, with Andie MacDowell. It's the 1993 Crush, which you've also probably never heard of, with Marcia Gay Harden. We rented it because it was directed by Alison Maclean, who later did Jesus' Son, which is, btw, pretty good. The other thing that links these three films with similar names is that they all are overly-contrived in both plot and characterization, manipulative, and boring. Joe and I fast-forwarded through much of this movie, and we noticed that we still more or less knew what was going on anyways. The surprise ending was no surprise.

Then we watched Cure, not the Robert Smith band of the 80s, but the Japanese psych-horror-thriller made in 1997, just before Ringu (1998) pretty much blew open the popularity of that genre, worldwide. For one thing, it was a relief not to have to brace myself though scenes of torturously extreme violence. Some creepy imagery, sparingly used, is plenty. It’s a police thiller about murder, hynosis, memory and identity, where seemingly well-adjusted people commit bizarre murders using the same technique of slashing the throat with a giant X. The main characters are, for the most part, really well-drawn, rounded, intriguing, and though the pace is slow, it’s tense enough to have kept me interested. I like a story that takes its time to build into a deep, menacing drone. Joe, however, thought the film was “just okay” since he kept falling asleep through it.

The Matador; Someone to Watch Over Me

Sometimes movies show up in the mail and we're not sure why. Sometimes Joe gets carried away with his browsing and sometimes I read about some film that seemed interesting at the time. Maybe the director did something else that we liked. Now, The Matador (2005) was one of those films that might have sounded good on paper: an oddball comedy thriller that turns into a buddy pic, with Pierce Brosnan as a hitman who befriends Greg Kinnear as a suburban businessman. Only, as Joe says, the screenplay seemed as though it was written from a book about how to write screenplays. The camerawork and editing felt as though the director came straight from doing music vids and commercials, all showy tracking and zooming and panning. "Is it really homoerotic, or is it just me?" asked Joe. Indeed, Brosnan smokes a lot of fat cigars around Kinnear and seems intent on seducing him, though under the aegis of friendship. In the end, The Matador wants to be a slick, quirky British comedy/gangster thriller like Guy Ritchie's Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but ends up feeling empty and soulless, just trying too darned hard. "No," said Joe, "it was just a stupid stupid film!"

Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) was next, another Ridley Scott film, coming just after Alien, Bladerunner and Legend. Right off the bat, we had Sting warbling the theme song, and later, that 80s saxophone music. So many movies don't age well because of the music! A working class cop falls in love with the socialite he has been assigned to guard after she witnesses a murder. "Competently done is all you can say about it," said Joe. By the book and bland. Next!

The Duellists (1977); Lady Vengeance (2005)

Every time I see Keith Carradine in a movie, I always, without fail, ask Joe, "who's that actor? He looks familiar." Each and every single time, Joe replies, “It’s Keith Carradine.” I asked this question through all the Alan Rudolph films we watched, as well as Nashville. Why can’t I remember who he is? So, again, when we were watching Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (his first feature). The film follows Carradine and Keitel throughout the years as they challenge each other to duel after duel. “Who is that guy?” I said to Joe. This time, he just laughed. In any case, the film is beautifully, stunningly shot, and even though at first I made fun of Carradine and Harvey Keitel’s costumes (the sidebraids and foppish hats made them hard to take seriously at first), I eventually ended up enjoying it. The ending made revenge a very dignified, gentlemanly affair.

For Park Chanwook, however, revenge is a dish served best to your nemesis-turned-victim while he is still conscious, so that you can both fully savour the torture. Lady Vengeance is the third in his revenge trilogy, of which Oldboy is probably his best work. We loved Oldboy, but none of his other films have come close, save J.S.A.:Joint Security Area (not part of the revenge trilogy, but a tense political thriller set on the border of North and South Korea). Lady Vengeance has been at the top of our to-rent list for a long time, and it finally arrived to much anticipation. Hooray! The same kind of lush stylistics, over-the-top camera work and intense violence. I was into it, savouring the twists of plot, the crazy digital edits, the cartoon-like action scenes.

But then, in the flow of the gorgeous credit graphics, remarkably inventive camerawork and editing, and twisty, harrowing plot turns, came one scene that just made Joe and I turn the movie off. It was too much! The scene shows children in what are practically snuff films (a child murderer films his victims crying to their parents for help), which is worse than gratuitous, it’s seriously cretinous. Even if it’s not real. Granted, Joe and I might be particularly sensitive because we’re parents, but come on! One kid was in a noose, crying that he couldn’t breathe. “Think about those child actors!” Joe said. “Imagine having to be in a scene like that? They’re not old enough to not be affected! How could any cretin let their kid do that? WHAT’S WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY?!”

The next evening, we fast-forwarded through the objectionable parts, as well as much of the rest of the film. We watched the ending, just to see what would happen. Lots of blood and some slapstick, none of the choreographed grace that marked Old Boy’s hammer scene. In the end, it might have been not a bad film, but it was just ruined by intolerable excess. I don’t like kids in my violence, nor do I like too realistic violence, and that brings me to a whole other can of worms: what is the point of realistic violence? Why do people get off or otherwise feel they should endure depictions of other people’s pain? Is it cathartic, or masochistic, or an attempt to look at the world’s horrors in the face? Why does it need to be so unrelenting? But that’s a tangent that is too off-course to get into here. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I’ll pursue it elsewhere else.

The Black Castle; Permanent Midnight; The Poseidon Adventure

It’s well into July and I haven’t yet posted! I have much to catch up on. Briefly, then, let me enumerate our recent films. Most recently, Joe and I watched Boris Karloff in The Black Castle (1952) with our friend Day, but I remember only that Lon Chaney Jr. stole the show as the monstrous, gigantic and massively scarred henchman. “His name is Gargon!” Day exclaimed. Of course, what else could it be? And before that, we watched Permanent Midnight, a dark comedy/schlockfest starring a very sinewy Ben Stiller as Jerry Stahl (based on Stahl's autobiographical book about being a television writer hooked on junk). The first half was the dark comedy, which was actually not bad, featuring the memorably shocking line uttered by Ben Stiller’s blond mistress when they first screw: “Ohmygawd, I’m f**king a Jew!” The second half descended into schlockfest with every cliché in the book, so to speak, and it might have been funny had it been done ironically. Alas! It didn’t seem ironic in the least. It felt instead like a studio ending cooked up by executives welding focus group tests. “They really messed that one up,” Joe said.

And before that… The Poseidon Adventure! The 1972 version,and don’t even talk to me about the remake. Along with The Towering inferno (which I saw as a kid and it scared the shit out of me), this is Seventies Disaster Movie at its best! It’s got religion in the form of Gene Hackman as an arrogant and buff preacherman battling to lead his flock of survivors up to the hull of a cruise ship after it gets hit by a tidal wave and turns over. Lots and lots of bodies. Big cheesy fun acting. Big cheesy but pretty good effects. The new version only had lots and lots of bodies and cheesy but too CGI-ey effects, no character whatsoever. However! We do have an odd story associated with the remake. While in New York last year, when Poseidon was in theatres, Joe and I saw a giant billboard advertising the movie, just across from the cruise ship that we were about to board. Was it a joke, we wondered?

Soldiers Pay; Black Christmas

Soldiers Pay is a hodgepodge documentary short, directed by David O. Russell among others, consisting mostly of interviews with dozens of soldiers about the 2004 Iraq war. There's enough enraging and fascinating material here to choke a Halliburton horse, but not really enough to make it a full-blown documentary. It's more like DVD extras material for Russell's excellent film Three Kings, which it was actually supposed to be. Russell was hoping to use this as ammunition against Bush during the elections, but the studios found out and nixed it; however, Russell managed to release it to the public at a later date, well after the elections. Damn! I still can't believe that $#%&*#@ was re-elected, or that we're in the mess we're in. What to do? Throw up our hands in despair and disgust, and watch another movie.

And the next movie? Black Christmas (1974) by Bob Clark, who is perhaps most famous for directing Porky's. Laugh if you want! Black Christmas practically invented the slasher genre, inspiring such films as When a Stranger Calls. With no outright blood or gore, it's pretty low-key in comparison to modern slasher flicks, but even today, some of the shocks are truly horrific, the obscene phone calls truly obscene.

Cléo de 5 à 7 by Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda's The Gleaners and I is one of my favourite documentaries, passionate and thoughtful and personal, about people who glean, who comb through trash and recycling, who live off of what is leftover. I was eager to see her earlier work, as part of the French New Wave. Varda started out as a still photographer, and her films are evidence of her careful attention to framing, to detail and photographic stunts like images reflecting off mirrors and windowpanes. Cléo from 5 to 7 is full of such details and other New Wave signatures like jumpcuts, long tracking shots, and stylish, showy editing. The story follows a young singer, Cléo, who is waiting results from a medical test. At 5 P.M. her fortune teller turns up the Death card for her and refuses to read her palm. In the following two hours, she wanders the streets of Paris, seeing omens of Death everywhere, until finally she meets a young soldier who gives her some hope and comfort as he offers to accompany her to the hospital to get the results. What a great concept! The movie doesn't quite live up to its potential, but it's absorbing and entertaining to watch anyways. Varda's later films show much more depth, and we've put 3 more of her films on our to-rent list.

Spanking the Monkey; Curse of the Golden Flower

Curiously, our two most recent films both feature incest between a mother and her son. Coincidence? I don't know. Sometimes the universe thinks it's pretty funny. Nonetheless, I really got into both these films, though they both had their weaknesses.

I first heard of Spanking the Monkey years ago only because there was a poster at the old Cinema de Paris on St-Catherine St. in Montreal. I didn't see it back then, and knew next to nothing about it. Only years later, after seeing David O. Russell's excellent Three Kings, did I realize that Spanking the Monkey was by the same director, and so I put it on our to-see list. Finally, it arrived. And wow, is it ever uncomfortable to sit through! The film handles the build-up to the incest with subtlety and tension. Very believable, solid and well-rounded characters. And truly, truly, squeamishly, painful to watch. In a good way!

We've had Curse of the Golden Flower kicking around for a while now, but Joe was reluctant to see it, for no reason he could really name. I knew what he meant. Zhang Yimou films are grand, epic, relentless, and very long. Sometimes too long and relentless. His early works like Raise the Red Lantern were smaller in scope but epic in human drama, but some of his later works, like Hero, while gorgeous to look at, were cold in characterization. But finally, we watched his latest film, and we were surprised at how quickly we were sucked in to the escalating drama. Curse of the Golden Flower is Shakespearean in scope, the story of an empress who is sleeping with her stepson, the emporer who is trying to poison her into insanity, an attempted coup, revenge, tragedy, betrayal. It was fantastic, and incredibley art-directed as usual, though really, we had to laugh sometimes at how over-the-top it got. And then near the end, the climactic battle scene started to resemble The Lord of the Rings! Thousands of CGI soldiers storming the walls, the bows and arrows, the armour, it was all there, only with Chinese soldiers instead of Orcs and Elves. Normally, Zhang Yimou makes realistic, effortless use of computer graphics, but here, the sheer size of the armies, while fairly well done, still foregrounded their unreality. Joe said it reminded him of insects, crowds of insects. This may be intentional, as part of movie's theme was about the absolute power of the Emporer over his minions. But at the same time, the humanity within the tragedy, so evident in his earlier works, was lost.

Shampoo by Hal Ashby; An Inconvenient Truth

Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude was such an odd and beautiful gem, that when Shampoo came in the mail, Joe and I were looking forward to seeing it. Joe says he remembers the furor the film made in 1975, as it was considered rather racy back then. But unfortunately, Shampoo turned out to be more oddly confusing than oddly entertaining. Warren Beatty produces, co-writes with Robert Towne, and stars in this odd film as a hairdresser who sleeps with many of his clients, but who seems more interested in doing their hair. It's a comedy but not very funny. Joe and I had an ungoing debate about whether Warren Beatty's character was supposed to be ridiculous or genuinely sexy. It's set in 1968 and his hair is an incredible pouf. Julie Christie plays the woman that Beatty falls in love with, though there is no palpable chemistry between them here, unlike in Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Towards the end of the film, Beatty does her hair so that she ends up looking like a drag queen. Again, Joe thought she was supposed to be sexy after the style of the times, though failing, but I thought she was supposed to be ridiculous. I mean, it's a comedy! Clearly, Goldie Hawn and a very very young Carrie Fisher are both way sexier but Beatty goes for the drag queen! Is that where the comedy is? I dunno. Very hard to figure out. "Shampoop" says Joe.

The next film we saw was An Inconvenient Truth, which we'd been meaning to see for a long time, but never really felt like it since, after all, global warming is a bit of a downer. But it turned out to be solidly entertaining as well as a highly convincing, frightening, effective, really well-made film. Al Gore is a charming and even funny lecturer. It's heartbreaking to think where we might be now if things had turned out differently and he'd been made President. And it ends with hope. There's still hope! We must all take action now! Joe said the only thing about the ending was that it should have been thoughtful and meditative, instead of trying to rock out with Melissa Etheridge.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, by Alan Rudolph

The last film in our Alan Rudolph festival had been sitting on my desk for almost a month. After the last four films we watched of his, three of which were fast-forwarded (see "Alan Rudolph festival" entry), we weren't looking forward to Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a film that I remember watching in the theatres when it came out (1994). Back then, I thought it wasn't bad. Watching it this time, well, we didn't fast-forward, but we were glad when it was over. It started out well enough with interesting Altmanesque dialogue (as he is Altman's protegé) mishmashed over Jennifer Jason Leigh's acerbic portrayal of the bitter and wisecracking writer Dorothy Parker. She recites Parker's poems in little black and white asides throughout, sometimes sounding like Joe when he is doing his rendition of a Shakespearean actor (Oh brave new world, that hath such creatures in't!). But as she became more and more dreary, bitter, and depressed, we couldn't help wishing that the film would end. It was the same way with Sylvia (the Sylvia Plath biopic with Gwyneth Paltrow): I kept thinking, when is she gonna stick her head in the oven? Joe says, what a monster you are! Maybe I am, but really, we all know what's coming. We shouldn't want the end to come faster!

Film Noir Classics: Quicksand (1950) and Suddenly (1954)

Quicksand and Suddenly were the other two movies on the 3-film DVD we got in the mail, ostensibly titled "Film Noir Classics" (see previous post on "Scarlet Street" for the first). None of these was what one associates with film noir, especially since they are over-exposed white from poor quality transfers, faint and burnt out in the middle.

Quicksand's most notable feature was Mickey Rooney as Dan Brady, a none-too-bright mechanic who borrows $20 from the till at work, only to find himself spiralling down deeper and deeper into crime. The story spins out as a morality tale, except that Dan's every decision seems so not-bright that you almost think he deserves what happens to him. Mix that with wild chance misfortunes that keep happening, and Danny is in trouble indeed. It was a bit much. Peter Lorre makes a small but welcome appearance as a sleazy game arcade owner.

Suddenly's raison-être is Frank Sinatra in a really nasty and amazing role as a former soldier and current soldier of fortune who has been hired to assassinate the President. He's mean, cold, and charismatic, in contrast with the hostages that he takes, including a smart-alecky kid who doesn't know when to shut up, an annoying pro-arms sheriff, a sickeningly right-wing patriotic grandfather, and, just for contrast, a pacifist mother. Eerie foreshadowings of Kennedy and the current state of American politics, as well as capturing the McCarthy paranoia of the time. But without Sinatra, this film would have sucked. Sinatra makes it suspenseful, and gives it dimension.

Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street (1945); Everything is Illuminated

A couple of nights ago, we finished Scarlet Street, one of three films on a film noir DVD collection that came in the mail. This Fritz Lang film stars Edward G. Robinson, who usually plays a snarling thug (perhaps the quintessential thug, see...), but here, he is Chris Cross, a sadsack bank cashier with big, puppy-dog eyes. He falls in love with Kitty, who is, unbeknownst to him, a prostitute. Johnny, her pimp boyfriend, is one of the most unlikable characters I've seen in some time. Kitty and Johnny manipulate Chris into giving them money, which he obtains by embezzling from his company and stealing from his horrible shrew of a wife. Things get worse and worse, culminating in a truly horrible scene with an icepick. Fun!

Last night, it was Everything is Illuminated, by Liev Schreiber. I haven't read the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, but that is probably the best way to see a movie adaptation of a book. I've only seen three movies that even come close to their literary roots: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, A Room with a View, and Hardcore Logo (which in fact, may surpass the slight book of poetry on which it is based). But even without the spectre of its literary origins looming over me, Everything is Illuminated still felt like the book would have been better. We found it entertaining (perhaps an unseemly adjective when applied to a movie about the Holocaust) and quirky at times, beautifully shot. But the movie was in love with its own sentiment, never a good thing. Joe pointed out a scene where a character takes off his jacket, a large yellow Star-of-David sewn on to it, and leaves it on the heap of bodies out of which he has just crawled. He does this slowly, ponderously, full of emotion. "That's just the wrong way to do it," Joe said. "He should have just torn that jacket off and gotten the hell out of there!" Yes, indeed.

Alan Rudolph festival; The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky

As I say, I used to be a purist. I would watch an entire movie from start to finish, in one sitting, even if I hated the movie. I have only walked out of a theatre once, and that was from a combination of hunger, boredom. and the fact that I'd just seen 27 films that week (film festival). Now, faced with a glut of movies we want to watch and with limited time, we fast-forward through the ones we don't like.

We have an internet movie rental system, you know, the kind where you make a list of movies you want to see and they randomly send them to you. The last bunch of movies that came in the mail were all Alan Rudolph films. All except one we fast-forwarded. The only one that we actually watched was his latest, The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002). I wasn't expecting that much, I guess, but halfway into it, I was surprised by the Denis Leary character, in a good way. The rest of them – Trixie, The Moderns, Choose Me – Joe had seen before and remembered them as being good. Watching them this time, he was appalled. "These are crap!" he said. They were completely artificial, as in theatre. Sets, costumes, lighting, acting. All overdone. We have Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle to watch still, and both of us remember liking it when it came out. But now we're not looking forward to it. We decided to watch The Fountain instead.

Unfortunately, The Fountain was also a fast-forward. I was astounded by Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, and liked Pi though it was student film-y. But Batman Begins was a disappointment, failing to translate the spirit of the Dark Knight. The Fountain felt like it was made by a 12 year old kid with lots of money.

Movie Mythos - Matrix Magazine #77 (theme: Science and Poetry)

Here is the Movie Mythos column from the upcoming issue of Matrix:

Lately, Joe and I have been watching a lot of old horror classics with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. These old movies, when they’re bad, they’re really bad, with cheesy acting, unbelievably fake special effects, plodding plots. But when they’re good, they take overblown to a whole new level. The jagged, shadowy sets of German expressionism, mixed in with suspicious scientific experiments, the corrupted powers of the scientist who has gone mad, mad, mad! What poetry it is! In thinking about the theme of this issue of Matrix, what could be better? Sure, science in the movies has a humongous range, from documentaries such as Errol Morris’ A Brief History of Time, based on the book by Stephen Hawking, to the entire genre of science-fiction, from Isaac Asimov adaptations to the truly groundbreaking but ever-geeky Star Trek. But for me, these old mad-scientist movies really capture the fear and the horror of scientific possibility, and the concerns of scientific responsibility:

The Matrix Top Ten Mad Science Movies!

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – Perhaps the first true horror film ever made, ushering in an era of German Expressionism which, need I say, remains influential to this day!
Metropolis (1927) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) – Fritz Lang masterpieces.
Frankenstein – the famous 1931 version that introduced Boris Karloff to the screen and spawned a legion of sequels and imitations, from the campy and comedic (Andy Warhol’s, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman) to the over-serious (Kenneth Branagh’s melodramatic embarrassment). Though none of these have ever come close to truly adapting the book, Karloff’s is the most iconic.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – 1920 silent version with John Barrymore in the lead role,
1931 by director Rouben Mamoulian, & 1941’s big Hollywood production by Victor Flemming, starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner!
The Body Snatcher (1945) – Based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson, this film explores the practice of using real cadavers in medical science, and how those cadavers were sometimes procured. Features one of Karloff’s greatest and truly chilling performances as a cabman turned graverobber and murderer.
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935) – This trio of films, “inspired” by Edgar Allen Poe in taking the titles but little else, all star Bela Legosi as, respectively, a mad scientist, a good doctor (battling Karloff as a Satanist), and a mad doctor.
The Fly – The original 1958 version with Vincent Price features the famous ending of a tiny fly/scientist caught in a spider’s web (Help me! Heeeeelllllp me!). And David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake is memorable too, especially for its vivid fly-goop special effects.

And speaking of science… I’m currently writing a story about my father, the scientist-turned-philosopher, and his new book on Chinese and Western cultures (not to be mistaken with country-and-western culture). At the same time, I’m making a short film about my mother. All this to say, well, autobiography figures largely for me. I’m digressing from the theme here in order to introduce another theme, that is, the theme of the next issue, which will be edited by me, called The Narrative “I”: Autobiography in Film and Fiction. Whew!

I’ve been trying to think about how to frame this theme for a while now. How film and fiction intersects my daily life, not just as a filmmaker but as audience, how we watch so many movies, how I think cinematically or try to. How does film and fiction fit into your life? From lurid confessionals, diary entries, screenplays and first-person accounts of historical moments (real and unreal), from the poetic to the absurd, any genre, any medium from page to screen. Besides the usual fiction, poetry, comics, essays, drawings, and other stuff to go on the page, I’ll be looking for short films, videos, and animations (under 10 minutes) or what have you that could go on a DVD, which will be included in the next issue. Send to:

Matrix Magazine
The Narrative “I” Issue
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, LB 658,
Montreal, QC
H3G 1M8

Deadline for submissions will be August 1st, 2007.
Questions? Contact me for more info!
moviemythos@soyfishmedia.com

Here We Go

Joe and I love watching movies. We watch a lot of them, though we would make a purist shudder. I would know – I used to be a purist who wouldn’t watch a movie unless I could watch all of it at once. Widescreen, if possible (otherwise, you lose 1/3rd of the picture, I would whine), subtitled, not dubbed. Of course, after baby Sam appeared in the picture, well, things have changed. We watch 1/3 of a movie each night, every night, on whatever format we find it in. We do draw the line at bad quality pirates since Joe can't handle my incessant complaining about the sound, the contrast, etc.

I had been wanting to keep a journal of all the movies I watch with Joe, since we watch (part of) one every single night. So, here we go!