Flickers and Feathers

Did you know there are owls in Jersey City? Even in the daytime? I didn't, but now I do, thanks to an excellent short film I saw today, Winter Bird Watching in Jersey City -- part of the Golden Door International Film Festival. This is a film that should be shown to millions on PBS. There's something about seeing these wild birds in a wintry urban setting -- perching, flapping, and flying around the untamed edges of the city with the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center in the background -- that makes you think about the city, or cities, in a very different way. Director and cinematographer John Dunstan narrates in a soothing New Zealand accent, explaining what kinds of birds these are: hawks, ravens, geese, and of course the eerily sagacious owls. The images, editing, and music all work together beautifully enough to make one wish this film could be experienced in IMAX format. But the historic, large-screen venue where it was screened -- the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre -- definitely did it justice.

Much Ado about NOTHING

Zero Dark Oz

The only movies I've seen lately are Oz the Great and Powerful (in 3D) and Zero Dark Thirty. Quite a combination! One is Disney's overproduced, cash-in prequel to a classic film, and the other is a gritty, often horrific docudrama about the hunt for a terrorist, complete with grisly torture scenes. Simply as a mental exercise, I've been trying to think if these movies, which seem so utterly different on the surface, have anything in common. And guess what, they do!

1. Female characters (witches, a CIA agent) obsessed with an elusive and confounding male figure (a "wizard", Osama bin Laden).
2. Unusual settings: Islamabad and Oz, both of which seem like bad dreams -- for very different reasons.
3. People flying -- in bubbles and helicopters.
4. Explosions; they figure prominently in both stories.
5. Scenes with monkeys!

Yes, these films are actually quite similar when you think about it. It's as if the directors got together and compared notes. Even the titles mirror each other, if you use a cracked mirror: Oz, ZerO.

I'll wager I'm the only genius on the entire Internet to point out these curious similarities.

'Room' for Improvement

Parody and camp can fail, but they lack the air of innocent tragedy that makes truly vile films so compelling. Case in point: The Room. My article about this unintentionally hilarious cult-film stinker is up now on ViewsHound.com.

A few memorable dialog quotations from The Room:

Lisa: She's a stupid bitch. She wants to control my life. I'm not going to put up with that. I'm going to do what I want to do, and that's it. What do you think I should do?

Mike: Chocolate is a symbol of love.

Mark: You don't understand anything, man. Leave your stupid comments in your pocket!

Johnny: I'm tired, I'm wasted, I love you darling.

Steven: I feel like I'm sitting on an atomic bomb waiting for it to go off.
Michelle: ...Me too.

Peter: People are people. Sometimes they just can't see their own faults.

more here

Head Rattle

I.
John Carpenter's classic sci-fi/horror ick-fest The Thing (1983) was showing at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre last night. I attended that screening, with quite a large, predictably geeky crowd, but not the 1950s version the Theatre showed earlier in the day, which I saw on TV a long time ago. (Yes, it was one Thing after another, haha.) It isn't the gooey, pre-CGI aliens that are scary in this movie, it seems to me, as well done as those were, but the notion of one's identity being hijacked or suddenly not knowing who the people standing next to you really are. That had obvious political resonance during the Red-scare 1950s, but it's still a creepy thought. "What are they really thinking?" I ask myself that several times a day.

II.
I watched some of the post-event footage of "THE wedding" and was amused by the bizarre female headgear and male comic-opera "military" get-ups on display. Even HM the Queen wore a surreal chapeau, though a sedate one compared to the antlers and flying saucers sported by other guests. The whole thing was indeed affecting. For about five minutes, I wanted to be British in reality, not just ancestry. Cable TV news coverage of it here in the ex-colonies was schizophrenic, alternating between the royalties and the horrendous and tragic tornado damage in the U.S. South. Happy, sad, strange world.



~~~

Meanwhile....

I can't decide if these are beautiful or hideous, but they're certainly impressive. If I didn't know better, I might think they were Photoshopped.

(Thanks, Ray)

Head Rattle

Dwelling on guns and insanity lately....

I.
As far as I'm concerned, civilians should only have three types of concealable "firearms": (1.) Squirt Guns. Imagine if the current mad shooter had used H2O instead of bullets. Whatever delusional anti-government declaration he was trying to convey (if that was part of it; seems likely) would have been made with no casualties. He probably would have been arrested for disturbing the peace and might be in a psych ward now instead of facing a probable death sentence. (2.) Cap Gun. I had fun with these as a kid. I was more interested in the noise it made and the gunpowder odor the exploding caps emitted than in the gun itself. In fact, I would often remove the caps and hit them with rocks instead of firing the toy pistol. None of this made me want a Glock as an adult. (3.) Glue Gun. My wyfe is actually "armed" with one of these, which she uses to bond various unlikely objects together into artworks. This sort of gun could be injurious at close range, but mostly to the fingers of the "shooter".

II.
Confidential to E.H.P.: I'm an extremely patient human. Whenever the situation changes (physically or mentally), let's go fishing again.

III.
I watched It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in uninterrupted HDTV last night. I haven't seen this quintessentially American slapstick comedy about insane greed in ages. It actually made me chortle out loud, which is not easy to do these days. The print was pristine -- it looked like it could have been shot yesterday, except for some bouffants, the early 60s auto styling (much more imaginative than today's) and the relatively youthful visages of just about every comedian and comic actor you could name from that era. The film, which features some incredible pre-digital stunts and gorgeous cinematography of the California desert, was released in early November 1963. If it had been released about two weeks later, they might well have added another Mad to that title.

I also watched In the Loop -- a very different kind of madness, and a very different kind of funny.

"Writing a book, hippie?"

"Why don't you go listen to some folk music and give me a break!"

As every dramaturg and thespian knows, composing dialog is an art, one that requires a balance between the vernacular and the dramatically expressive, while simultaneously avoiding prosaicism. Can there be a better example of this in the comic realm than in John Waters' masterful Female Trouble? Well, yes, but it's quite the gigglefest anyway, to wit:

"I worry that you'll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life."

"I've DONE everything a mother can do: I've locked her in her room, I've beat her with the car aerial. Nothing changes her. It's HARD being a loving mother!"

"And remember my offer still stands. If you get tired of being a Hare Krishna, you come live with me and be a lesbian!"

"I couldn't possibly eat spaghetti, do I look Italian?"

And so on, and so on.

Train of Thought

Some of my male clanpersons were in a cinematic mood, so a trip to the multiplex was...Unstoppable.

A runaway train has to be the simplest idea for an action movie imaginable -- aren't all "thrill ride" movies, in a sense, about a runaway train? One could extend the allegory: aren't we all either on a recalcitrant train or in the path of one? It's almost impossible not to identify with an engineer struggling to gain control of an uncontrollable surge of pure momentum.

And indeed, like the equally metaphorical castaway theme or alien invader theme, the leitmotif of this film has been taken up many times before, and not uncreditably. Except for some very brief, obligatory soap-opera elements, this latest version dispenses with almost everything other than the careening iron -- including CGI. Quick cuts, super-zooming, and a thousand camera angles provide the locomotion here. It's corny but thirst-quenching.

Yeah, all aboard.

I had model trains as a squirt, and derailed them at times. Mostly, I kept them on the track, though. Metaphors....

Weekend Movie Report

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Netflix
Not a Western, really, more of a psychodrama. Acting: A+ (especially Casey Affleck); Cinematography: A+; Story: would be B- if this was fiction, but it's history (somewhat fictionalized), so it's pass/fail: pass.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre, silent with live organ accompaniment
Happy Halloween.... A German Expressionist take on Dracula. I can't evaluate, aesthetically, such a primitive film. It was well done for the time, I assume. Eighty-eight years later, it's not scary, but it's interesting, and I enjoyed seeing it. With a film like this, you're visiting a museum, not reading a great book, listening to a symphony (despite the title and the organ), or going to an amusement park. And a lot of people appreciate that. The theater, which seats 1,500, was packed.

"Now it's dark"

Remembering Dennis Hopper and Blue Velvet

"None of them, even Easy Rider, can top his performance in Blue Velvet. It was the right role for the right actor at the right time. Only David Lynch has been able to really tap into what Hopper was capable of, the level of twisted cruelty and sexuality of Frank Booth. And probably no other actor could have gone there. There still hasn’t been a more memorable character in a Lynch film, and that's saying a lot."

Shanghaied

David Lynch's new long-form commercial (it hardly seems like one) for Dior, "Lady Blue Shanghai", is here. It stars Marion Cotillard as yet another "woman in trouble" and features a number of Lynchian tropes, including red curtains, a scratchy phonograph, and...something inside a Dior purse. I won't spoil the surprise. Is Lynch running out of ideas, holding back his new ones for his next feature, or merely winking at his fans? Whatever, as an atmospheric short film, I think this works -- though I'm not sure it would make anyone want to buy a purse.

Weekend Bad Movie Report: 'The Room'

Room for Improvement

Some people like to slow down on the highway to get an eyeful of grisly car accidents. Lots of us will stare transfixed at photos of spectacular train wrecks. The peculiar fascination of these real-life disasters is only rarely approached by anything on the movie screen, but when it is, a transcendent moment of terrible beauty is born. I like to call it vile cinema.

It's not enough for a film to be incompetent, tedious, or painful to watch; to be truly vile, it must conjure the devil himself -- it must cast an unholy spell that makes it impossible to pull your retinas away. It must bring a contradictory phrase to mind: "so bad it's good."

To make a vile film, a filmmaker has to be sincere. Parody and camp can fail, but they lack the air of innocent tragedy that make vile films so compelling.

Case in point: a few weeks ago, I attended a screening of The Room (2003), part of the Movies Under the Drop Ceiling Series sponsored by Jersey City's Art House Productions. This film is often called "the worst film ever made" and "the Citizen Kane of bad movies."

It is indeed a bad film in every respect -- amateurish acting and dialog, continuity flubs, ham-handed editing, poor dubbing, pointless stock footage, etc. The story revolves around the relationship between Johnny (Tommy Wisseau), a long-haired "banker" with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, and Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a bleached-blonde "sociopath" who looks like a cross between Courtney Love and Britney Spears. The two are engaged, but Lisa is "bored" with Johnny and initiates an affair with Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), who looks like a male model. The sex scenes, which are long and embarrassing, are accompanied on the soundtrack by cheesy R&B songs.

There are many tangents involving minor characters (they all seem to live in the same San Francisco apartment building), but these subplots are quickly introduced and then abandoned. Lisa's mother, for example, very casually drops the news that she has breast cancer, but this is never mentioned again. A young friend of Johnny's is revealed to be involved in drug deals, but after a single dramatic scene, this detail is ignored. Several times, the story comes to a standstill as the male characters go outside to play catch with a football. People behave and speak in idiotic ways, and the plot moves in circles until the "tragic" ending.

Most of the film takes place in a single set: Johnny and Lisa's living room, which has framed photos of spoons on the walls and a TV set placed behind a sofa. Perhaps as an homage to Seinfeld, the characters come and go as they please, walking in through the front door without knocking.

Tommy Wisseau served as lead actor, director, producer and executive producer for the film, which he (no surprise) self-financed. In interviews that can be found on the Web and in the extras section of the DVD, he seems to think he's made a good, even important film; he comes across a sincere, innocent--and vile. He has been quoted as saying the film explains "what not to do." He's commenting on the way the characters treat each other, but he might as well be referring to the entire production.

The saving grace of the film is that it is, as you may have gathered, not only vile but unintentionally hilarious, which is why Art House Productions showed it. The audience threw popcorn at the screen and talked to the characters throughout -- which, with a film of this quality, is entertaining rather than annoying.

Perhaps not surprisingly, The Room has developed a cult following similar to that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's been a midnight movie in many major cities, including New York. At these events, Wisseau often sells T-shirts, DVDs, and soundtracks to fans -- proving that the spectacular failure of the vile can sometimes be as profitable as success.

Blank Screen

I need to repopulate my Netflix queue. Beach Blanket Bingo is going back immediately, having served its purpose as party ambiance/background. (I was surprised, BTW, that some of it is about skydiving -- and that Buster Keaton is in it.) Now there's nothing in there. I'm going to add Inglourious Basterds, but beyond that...well, I have to think.

I'm open to suggestions.

Do we ALL live in one?

Hmmm. Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis is making a "3D Disney remake" of Yellow Submarine. This is the kind of project that seems like it will either be magical or an ugly mega-catastrophe. The original was magical; I have a hard time believing that the souffle can be reheated. But maybe it's a positive sign that Peter Serafinowicz has been cast as Paul McCartney.

More here.

I love this comment by "The Hamster King": "It's just not going to be the same without the Beatles' voices!"

Quote of the Day

"David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' has been named the best film of the decade in a Film Comment survey of nearly 200 critics, filmmakers and other cinema insiders from around the world." More here.

No hay banda!

Citizen Betacam

Is there no end to quirky stories about Orson Welles? A guy at work sent this one via Facebook. (Thanks, Mauro.) It involves the famous filmmaker's attempted embrace of video...and what happened to his ashes. The man was truly cursed with being ahead of his time.

Sexy Sadie, What Have You Done?

Right now, David Lynch is in India, filming "kind of" a documentary about guess who? How interesting this will be depends on those two little words "kind of", I think.

Weekend Loew's Report: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

All of Them Witches....

Rosemary's Baby was playing at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre on Saturday night, and I didn't let monsoon-like weather conditions stop me from seeing this iconic 1960s film on the big screen. The audience was large and enthusiastic, the print was pristine, and the popcorn was cheap and passable. (There was a sonorous theater-organ concert before the show, too.)

This film, Roman Polanski's American debut feature, still seems fresh, making any remake unnecessary -- I'm glad that idea was nixed. The directing, acting, and art direction are all superb. Watching it for the first time in years, and for the first time in a theater, it occurred to me that it's as much a satire as a "horror"/suspense film. The satirical targets include meddling mother-figures (Ruth Gordon, in an Oscar-winning performance), the generation gap (a HUGE concern in the 1960s), New York apartment life (including having to listen to your neighbors' chanting through the walls), and the career desperation of aspiring actors (would you sell your first born for a part in movie?).

It's also an ironic film, now, since it's climax is a rape scene -- Mia Farrow being impregnated by Old Nick. I wonder what Polanski was thinking while that was being filmed, and what he thinks of the scene today, while facing his own decades-old rape charge.

One aspect of the film I had forgotten about was that it contains some extremely well-done dream sequences that, while brief, actually have the texture of dreams. The silent shots of Mia in bed while floating on a lake and some odd, fuzzy, non sequitur scenes on a boat reminded me of my own nighttime reveries.

One problem: the movie (and probably the Ira Levin novel it's based on, which I haven't read) thoroughly confuses witchcraft with Satanism. They aren't the same thing at all -- ask any pagan -- although I suppose it's possible that they could be combined in some fashion by unscrupulous cultists. In any case, the film performs the neat trick of making the coven next door seem believable, at least while you're sitting in the dark.

Weekend Netflix Report: Surveillance (2008)

Poor Jennifer Lynch. The first film she directed, Boxing Helena (1993), was torn apart by the critics, though it wasn't nearly as bad as they said. (Nor was it a bloody film, despite what you might gather from a plot summary, but that's another story.) Being the daughter of David Lynch, critics were not going to cut her any slack, but a lot of them have had to with her new (and second) film, Surveillance. It's a very well made thriller, though an extremely violent and cold one. There's no one to really root for among the characters, except maybe for a nine-year-old girl, but even she seems to be 90-percent ice water.

The plot borrows some devices from Lynch's father, especially his Twin Peaks cult TV series and his Fire Walk With Me feature film. Two FBI agents visit a small-town police station to investigate some horrific serial killings -- but there's something a bit "off" about these agents. Now there's nothing unusual about FBI agents acting strange in a Lynch-family project, but what's odd about these J. Edgars turns out to be the key to the whole mystery.

Lynch uses some intriguing Rashomon flashback techniques to tell her story, including different film stocks as she shows what various witnesses to the crime saw, or say they saw, or think they saw, as the FBI agents videotape their testimony. A drug addict's tale, for example, is shown over-exposed, while the only fully reliable witness report (the little girl's) is shown with aching clarity.

This is an admirable but depressing film. Despite some similarities to Lynch's father's work, I don't think it's a film he would have made. (He reportedly called the script "sick," which is saying something, coming from him.) There's no surrealism or humor in it, nor is the ending uplifting. Even a more hopeful alternate ending included on the DVD isn't all that hopeful. This isn't the type of film you watch for pure entertainment; it's the type you watch if you find the darker aspects of human nature interesting and admire artful movie-making.

Reel Talk

"It's a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton. Get those chainsaws out."

Check out a collection of cult movie quotations at Alternative Reel.

"I'll send you a love letter! Straight from my heart, fucker! You know what a love letter is? It's a bullet from a fucking gun, fucker! You receive a love letter from me, you're fucked forever! You understand, fuck? I'll send you straight to hell, fucker!"

Eloquent....

Weekend Loew's / Netflix Report

Two movies last weekend: I saw a somewhat scratchy print of The Untouchables (1987) at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre and a DVD of Atonement (2007) in my own non-landmarked living room.

Two very different films, but there are similarities. Both are period pieces about the 1930s, and both concern crime (or a crime). Beyond that, the differences are more notable. The Untouchables is a glossy Hollywood production, expertly fashioned, with not all that much on its mind beyond good guys (cops and a federal agent) versus bad guys (Al Capone and his cohorts). Atonement is a far more nuanced British production that revolves around the uncomfortable truth that minor events and misinterpretations, even by a child, can have enormous, even tragic, consequences.

I enjoyed both, and both showcase some terrific acting and dialogue, but frankly one was entertainment and the other was also art. I've always found Brian DePalma, who directed The Untouchables, too stylish for his own good -- all those arbitrary overhead and crane shots -- and a copycat. The many visual homages to Hitchcock, Eisenstein, etc. get a little annoying after a while.

Atonement was directed by Joe Wright, a director I'm not otherwise familiar with, but, based on this film, he's equally talented at intimate drama (tense relationships in and around an English country house) and large-scale crowd scenes (Dunkirk during World War II).

I'll be thinking about Atonement for a while; The Untouchables only touched me for an evening.