Every once in a while, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone Infield Fly Rule makes a quiz. It’s one with no good or bad answers, but while I love reading the answers, those quizzes always make me feel a bit guilty. Or maybe ashamed is a better word for it. There are just so many gaps in my cinematic education. I could list ‘em, but that would just make me feel worse. I usually manage to turn it around, see it as having many great things left to discover, but I’d better get on with the discovering if I want to live up to the name ” cinephile”.

I wasn’t very eager to discover Preston Surges. I saw the first half-hour or so of Hail, the conquering Hero once, under admitttedly bad circumstances, and it didn’t do much for me. So while his movies were on my mental “to-watch” list, I wasn’t in a big hurry.

How wrong I was.

I discovered that, first, when I was in Oslo, and bought (and watched) The Lady Eve. I wasn’t surprised by how great Barbara Stanwyck was - I’d read enough exalted descriptions of her performance, and that she managed to live up to all the hyperbolic adjectives thrown at her is impressive enough. But what I loved was how delightfully cynical it was. And sharp: the dialogue in which Jean provides a voice-over as Charles Pike walks into the dining room on the cruise ship is perfectly written, and perfectly delivered, and that’s just one example.

Still, I wasn’t quite convinced. Not enough, in any case, to make me watch Sullivan’s Travels in a hurry. But I finally got around to it tonight, and you can consider me converted. I had a blast with this movie. The irony, of course, is that Surges manages to have his cake and eat it too: Sullivan wants to make a socially conscious movie, but discovers that comedies are what people need in times of trouble. Surges, of course, manages to do both in a single film.

What surprised me most is that the humor was so physical as well as verbal. Sturges was one of the first true writer/directors, and is - deservedly - renowned for his witty dialogues, but there are several sequences (one over 5 minutes long) that could come straight out of a silent film. And not just a silent comedy, either: it’s especially when the movie gets truly grim for the first time, and we see the poor, face by devastated face, that Sturges understands we don’t need words.

These “quick thoughts” are running kind of long, but before I forget: is Veronica Lake the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen or what? I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else, and I didn’t know much of her except for the famous peek-a-boo hair, but it’s disguised as a boy, that hair all out of the way, that she’s absolutely irresistible.

Let me end wit a question to my readers, who are in these matters much more knowledgeable than myself: which Surges film do you recommend I see next? Or, alternately, which Veronica Lake film? I’ve wanted to see This Gun for Hire for a while now (I read the book, This Gun for Sale), but are there others to check out?

And then maybe, a few years from now, I’ll have enough background to dare participate in one of Dennis’ quizzes.

My mother joined us here yesterday, and since I’ve been introducing her to Tarantino (she’s going to teach a course on art history in September, and also has to teach a little about modern film), Death Proof, a movie I love and my dad really likes as well, was on the menu. We watched it in two segments: the Texas part yesterday, and the Tennessee part tonight.

The verdict? She pretty much hated it.

And don’t just chalk that up to her being a mom - she’d dislike that excuse as much as Abernathy. I watched scenes from True Romance (the opening and the infamous Walken/Hopper scene) and Reservoir Dogs (the opening diner scene and the scene in the car) with her, and Pulp Fiction in its entirety, and she really liked all of that.

But cars getting banged up? Such a waste, and what for. Such bad manners, to demolish a car that isn’t even yours (I’m exaggerating for comic effect, but that’s the gist). The car chase will probably figure in her dreams. And all in all, she thought the story was too thin, and she just “couldn’t do anything with it”. It didn’t speak to her, and she found it unpleasant to watch.

I kind of understand it. While Pulp Fiction is chock-full of references, it has a very clear, complex and very ingeniously structured story of its own. I personally find Death Proof fascinating on its own, and I think it has a rich text as well as a rich subtext, but it’s a much more elementary tale. Much sloppier, too: my dad had added, in memory, a scene in which they return the car and retrieve Lee, but in truth the film ends abruptly at the cathartic high point, leaving a few threads totally unresolved.

I’ve been thinking about why I like Death Proof a lot these past few days, because of how flat Vanishing Point fell. Kaj left an elaborate defense on my previous post, and he makes some valid points. Vanishing Point does, indeed, have an interesting existentialist subtext, but what I stand by is that the text is very dated, unsatisfying, and yes, boring.

The DJ, for example, is yet another annoying instance of the “magical black guy”-cliche. The driving was nicely grounded, true, but it got VERY monotonous and repetitive, and car noise Kaj loved so much grated on both my dad’s ears and mine. And on one point I will strongly, unrelentedly disagree with Kaj: he says “the dialogue, well, compared to Death Proof, it’s not that bad.”

Excuse me? I know Tarantino has been accused of diminishing returns, and I know many critics found the girltalk annoying and mindless in the extreme. But while the dialogue in Vanishing Point is excruciatingly on-the-nose and corny (want to show someone loved the main character? Have her say “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over again), there’s a rhythm to the girltalk in Death Proof, an ebb and flow and a melody that’s just amazing to listen to. And the actresses, especially Sydney Tamiia Poitier (who is totally believable as a radio DJ) and Tracie Toms, make it sing.

Is the subject matter bland? Yes, absolutely, and most probably on purpose. Is it naturalistic? Not even remotely, nor is it meant to be. But through the meaningless, sometimes maddeningly inane dialogue, we get to know not only these characters (who are all, except maybe for Zoë Bell, archetypes) but this world and its rules. Rules deliberately tweaked, slightly, from the standard slasher-movie tropes: girls who withhold sex aren’t automatically immune (but mommies, even unmarried, are, in an interesting contradiction), and we have here not just a reversal from victim to aggressor, but one almost explicitly from sexual victim to sexual predator (”Oh, you know I can’t let you go without tapping that ass… one…more….TIME!”).

I tend to go on about this movie, don’t I? Enough for tonight, in any case: I have a glass of rosé waiting for me, and I want to enjoy my last evening here in la Douce France.

Ah, where would we be without bad films? Take, for instance, The Incredible Hulk, which invited many critics to play with its title (A.O. Scott, I believe, talked about “the merely adequate hulk”), or its tagline (”You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Boring“). Meanwhile, it’s lead to a re-appreciating of its forebear, Ang Lee’s modestly titled Hulk (see here and here, for instance).

But there isn’t just mediocre. There’s also amazingly, unbelievably bad, as apparently Shamaladingdong (copyright CJKennedy) made with The Happening. Even the notorious contrarians over at Bright Lights Film Journal don’t defend this movie, just make excuses for its maker.

Speaking of Mr. Kennedy, he’s been reporting from the LA film festival (LAFF), and his dispatches are a lot of fun to read, and very well written, especially considering how fast these pieces are usually written (I know, I’ve been there.) So go check’em out!

I know that in the film blogging community, it’s almost a cliché to link to Girish. But how can I not link to this post on “received ideas in cinema”? We’re so used to certain givens, that sometimes it’s a shock to see things we accept as truths refuted. Imagine my shock, for example, when I saw in my RSS-feeder this post, about the third Godfather movie being the best of the three. Then, of course, I realized there was a Bizarro blog-a-thon going on.

FAs it turns out, Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver, among other things), is a pretty good film critic. Check out, for instance, his review of Belle De Jour, written all the way back in 1969. And speaking of the beautiful Catherine Deneuve, the Moving Image Source is full of great articles, including this one on the grande dame.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel, Nick and Goatdog are discussing all Oscar winners… from both ends. That is, each time they go forward one year and back one year. This first installment? No Country for Old Men and Wings (which I really want to see now. I’ve seen and loved Sunrise, which won the other BP award that first year, but not that one). The second? Broadway Melody (which doesn’t sound like a must-see) and The Depahted.

Then: some random links. Want a Barbie doll, for example? Why not this one? And if you think you’re an awful geek for obsessing over aspect ratios or stupid anti-piracy ads that you only have to watch when you’re playing a LEGALLY BOUGHT DVD, you can always tell yourself that at least, you’re not obsessing over semi-colons.

Finally, for your viewing tip of the week, the Onion AV club put together a lovely primer on Pixar because Wall-E is coming out (July 30th here), and it reminded me of this hilarious short. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to call it Chaplinesque.

And for the bonus viewing tip, a friend of mine is dabbling in stop-motion, and while he admits the trailer for the film he’s making is about as long as the film itself, that doesn’t mean it isn’t mouth-watering.

]]> http://sarcastig.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/sunday-reading-5-a-mixed-bag/feed/ sarcastig http://sarcastig.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/watching-movies-with-my-dad-pt-4/ http://sarcastig.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/watching-movies-with-my-dad-pt-4/#comments Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:40:19 +0000 sarcastig http://sarcastig.wordpress.com/?p=317

The movie: Vanishing Point (Richard C. Serafian, 1971) (UK version)

The pitchable element: my dad liked Death Proof quite a bit. Death Proof references this movie twice.

The length: 105 minutes (though it felt like more)

The verdict: well, they can’t all be winners, can they? Granted, it got slightly more interesting after we looked at each other one hour in and said “this is bad, huh?”, but not by that much. I knew this movie was about one guy driving a long way in a white Dodge Challenger. What I didn’t know was that there would be so little else, and that any possible subtext you might be able to find is voiced aloud, in the most corny way possible, several times.

I mean, the dialogue is just bad. Bad bad. And the acting? Charlotte Rampling shows up for about five minutes, and I know she can act, but she’s saddled with such terrible dialogue that you can hardly blame her for not sounding convinced, herself. The other actors don’t even seem to try. And the movie commits the worst sin a bad movie can commit: it’s boring. And just in case that doesn’t make an impression: know that I’m not easily bored. I was fascinated, mesmerized by Gerry, in which far less happened. But the movie’s too scattershot to be hypnotic, and rarely bad in an entertaining way.

Was there nothing at all I liked? Well… some of the chase scenes were, admittedly, pretty cool, and felt marvelously grounded and real compared to today’s CGI-riddled action. Though he’s kind of a poor man’s Elliott Gould, Barry Newman’s face is all kinds of fascinating. And while it’s incredibly dated by now, there’s no doubt that Vanishing Point influenced quite a few (better) movies: Death Proof is the obvious example, but the DJ-conceit from Reservoir Dogs seems cribbed from the diegetic use of radio here as well, and Thelma and Louise has clear echoes of it.

Luckily, my mom’s coming over tomorrow, and because I’ve been introducing her to Tarantino, Death Proof is on the menu. The chase involving that particular Dodge Challenger is one I could watch over and over again.

The movie: Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

The pitchable element: no need for one. My dad saw this in the cinema when it came out, loved it, and hadn’t seen it since.

The length: 93 minutes including credits

The verdict: comedies should not be watched alone. As to any rule, there are of course exceptions, but my -purely anecdotal- evidence is this: I liked Annie Hall the first time I watched it, by myself. I liked it a lot, in fact, enough to buy it, and I thought it was very, very funny. But I don’t remember laughing out loud.

With my dad, however, I laughed out loud several times, even at the most predictable jokes (like Alvy sneezing the coke away, for instance). Somehow, by myself, I could appreciate the humor but I wasn’t really able to ENJOY it. But now, watching it again, this time in good company, I enjoyed it immensely. The one-liners are funny, the tricks that break the fourth wall work, and Diane Keaton is glorious (why is she stuck in all these crappy rom-coms nowadays?)

That, and of course the following quote is probably one of the truest things anyone has ever said about relationships:

I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs. Alvy Singer

This installment: The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

The pitchable element: my dad loves The Maltese Falcon. This also has Bogie as a P.I.

The length: 110 minutes (aka: almost 40 minutes shorter than Duck, You Sucker!

The verdict: I love this film. More so, even, than the first time. It’s not that surprising: like the Coen classic loosely based on it, it’s better appreciated once you stop trying to follow the plot. I still think The Maltese Falcon is a better, more focused film, and ultimately, it has more quotable one-liners, but the banter between Bogie and Bacall is simply staggering. The speed, how they play off each other, the palpable sexual tension… One scene, where Bacall calls the cops and Bogie stops her, wouldn’t be out of place in a screwball comedy, and a good one at that (I’ve embedded the scene after the jump, unfortunately, it’s colored in and with Dutch subtitles, so you’re better off just buying the DVD for 10 euri).

My crush on Bogie is no secret by now, of course. But this one’s truly among his best, and while his pulling on his earlobe incessantly gets a bit old after a while, you never doubt for a second that all these pretty girls would, in fact, come onto him.

I’m still not quite sure about the intricate details of the plot (reportedly, Chandler wasn’t either), but I do know this: it’s fun every step of the way.

As you might know, I’m currently on something of a break in the south of France with my father. And well, the thing with my dad is: he likes movies, but he never feels like watching them. He’s rarely sorry when he does, but he often just doesn’t have the motivation. Especially not if their over an hour and a half. So for this trip, I assembled some movies that a) had a clear, pitchable element and b) weren’t too long. So far? 2 down. 5 to go.

First up: The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)

The pitchable element: a lesbian sex scene featuring one of his favorite actresses, Catherine Deneuve.

The length: 93 minutes

The verdict: What a strange film this is! It’s a horror film of sorts, but without, really, any horrific moments. It’s a vampire film, but the word “vampire” is never uttered, and almost none of the clichés are used: there are no fangs, no crufixes, they can be seen in mirrors and on photographs, and the sun is not a danger.

Somehow, directors love to defile Deneuve’s impeccable, almost untouchable beauty. Here, too: her impossible, perfect coif comes undone, her face is stained with blood, and in the end… In the end, the movie just rehashes a trope old as the greeks: eternal life is nothing without eternal youth, and not being able to die is probably more horrific a thought than having, irrevocably, to do so.

Tony Scott’s clearly chosen style over substance from the beginning, but is that really such a bad thing? I wasn’t quite captivated by the story, but I was arrested by so many shots. It’s too bad David Bowie is hidden in aging make-up for most of his (already limited) screen time. My father was less enthusiastic than me (although he had to grant the lesbian scene was good), but I’m glad I finally saw this cult classic.

Then: A Fistful of Dynamite aka. Duck, you Sucker (Sergio Leone, 1971)

The pitchable element: it’s a Leone Spaghetti Western

The length: 157 minutes, quite a bit above the cut-off, but I proposed cutting it in two if we felt like it, and we ended up watching the whole thing.

The verdict: This is clearly a messier film than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, and unlike those two it could easily -and without loss - have been shorter. It’s also the most unever in tone: at some points it’s almost a slapstick comedy, but the revolution stuff in it is quite grim. James Coburn, whose Irish accent kind of comes and goes, turns out to have the perfect Leone face: deep crevices and grime can’t quite disguise his charisma, and his eyes look good in close-up. Rod Steiger is ‘the Ugly’ to this hero: a thief and a murderer, but not one without a heart, or without insight: his speech on revolutions is great.

There are no real iconic scenes or shots here, nothing coming close to the level of the two films I mentioned, but for what it is - a B-movie with some political intent - it’s actually pretty good. It drags in spots, but there are enough scenes (the first twenty minutes, the bridge ambush, etc) to make it worthwhile.

The rest of my selection? Tune in later to find out.

(Note: I tried to make this Courier, as it should be. WordPress didn’t agree)

EXT: Day

A house. Light-colored, slightly yellowish, with a slanted roof. It stands alone, and it’s quiet. It’s a sunny day, clearly the afternoon. The air is hazy.

A car. It’s first heard, then seen coming up the driveway. Out of it step a middle-aged MAN (dark hair, avergage heigh and build, jeans) and a twenty-something GIRL (blonde, also in jeans, sunglasses). The girl streches, lets her arms fall back. She points up with one finger.

GIRL: hear that?
MAN: what?

The girl smiles

GIRL: the sound of my holiday feeling kicking in.

INT: Day

The inside of the house. It’s dark. A key in the lock, and the door opens, letting a bright triangle of light in. The two step inside. The girl tries the switch, but nothing happens.

MAN: Wait, I need to get the main switch first. You open the shutters for some light. Well, just a little. Let’s try to keep the heat out.

The man walks away to another room, the girl opens a few shutters, letting in narrow bundles of sunlight, revealing the interior. They’re in the kitchen slash livingroom. It’s simple, with clean lines and bright colors. The light flickers to life, and the man comes back.

MAN: There.

The girl wanders around. Runs her finger along the countertop.

GIRL: I can’t believe this house. It’s been, what, eight, nine months since we’ve been here? It’s not even a little dusty!
MAN (distractedly): Uh-huh.

The girl walks around some more. In the background we hear a click, then dialing. The girl opens a door, takes a step inside. She’s now in a dimly lit storage space, with some brooms, a boiler, some cabinets.

MAN (off-screen): Hey!
MAN (off-screen): Yeah, we’re here.

The girl flicks a dead fly off a countertop. Then she sees, a bit further, three more dead flies.

The girl frowns

MAN (off-screen): No, no, everything went fine. Some rain on the way, but it’s great here. Sweltering.

The girl looks down.

GIRL (soft, but sharp): Je-sus.

Her POV: the floor is littered with a hundred or so black spots. Corpses. Fly corpses. She turns around, and sees that she’s been standing in the middle of a big pile.

GIRL (louder): JEsus.

Shyamaladingdong*’s next project? I dunno, but eerie to experience it was. All the flies are safe inside the belly of the vacuum cleaner now, luckily. Now if only we could find the origin of the strange creaking and scratching in the attic….

Next week there will be a normal Sunday reading. I only had a few links now, and I decided to save them up, instead. In the meantime: greetings from the sunny south of France, and I hope you’ll like this deviation from the routine!

(*copyright CJKennedy)

Experimental movies usually don’t have a lot of action in them, and action movies tend to be fairly sitraghtforward enterprises. Strange, since both Point Blank and The Limey demonstrate that the standard revenge plot is fertile ground for filmic experimentation.

How did I go this far without ever having seen Point Blank? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m very grateful for Alexander’s recent piece on it: it prompted me to finally sit down to watch it, and I absolutely loved it. It helps that I was prepared: I can imagine that people looking for something like Payback (based on the same story) will be put off by the shifty visuals, the juxtaposition of images from different periods in time, and the fact that the sound doesn’t always synch with what we see.

I was fascinated every step of the way. Lee Marvin gives a great central performance, almost emotionless, absent in his own story. Who knew Nouvelle Vague would fit so well with a simple, almost un-ironic gangster story? The story is only the bare skeleton, and the style adds layer upon layer of mood, melancholy, and metaphors.

Who is Walker? What motivates him? These questions aren’t really ever answered. Maybe he is, as Alexander suggests, just a ghost, an eidolon. Someone who was killed and is just staying around in order to settle debts.

The motivation of the protagonist of the Limey, Wilson, has a somewhat better defined motivation. His daughter was killed, and he wants to kill the man he thinks is responsible. Still, he wasn’t exactly close to his daughter, and hadn’t spoken to her in 5 years. He wants revenge as almost an abstract thing. Walker in Point Blank says “someone’s gotta pay”, and while he’s talking about money ($93.000 to be precise), the same sentence could be used to describe Wilson’s attitude.

In The Limey also, images are juxtaposed with no regard for chronology, the sound is often disconnected from the visuals, and there are many recurring stylistic motifs that are impossible to miss. The movie does forward, but not in a straight line: instead, it loops around, doubles back, and some images which we at first think are from the beginning of the film’s chronology are revealed at the end of the film to be situated at the end of the story.

It’s a great film, and while it definitely owes a debt to Point Blank, it is more emotional, simpler, and in the end slightly more satisfying film. I love the inclusion of scenes from an old Terence Stamp movie that fill in his character’s past, and Peter Fonda is a great fit as his opponent, Terry Valentine.

And as a final, totally unrelated remark: why has nobody but Soderbergh figured out what to do with Nicky Katt? He has some great, clearly improvised, lines (what’s the smartest thing that ever came out of a woman’s mouth?), and he’s the most alive thing in the movie. Why does he keep getting stuck as a third banana or a boring teacher? I say: give Nicky a leading role in a big comedy, and I’m sure he’ll make a splash.

The FWB (I’ll let you figure out what that stands for) and I are taking the night off, and instead of dedicating my free time to some lofty goal, like my thesis or my continuing cinematic education, I’m walking around restlessly, cursing how many clothes I have (the hanging part of my closet collapsed and I had to find new spots for each and every one of my two dozen vests), and watching In Plain Sight, which really isn’t one of the strongest things TV has to offer nowadays.

Call it procrastination, something I’m so good at that continuing my studies with a PhD probably wouldn’t be the brightest idea. But I’ve decided to at least turn it into slightly useful procrastination, and seeing how I finished season two of Dexter, I present: the review. After all, I also wrote one for Season One.

I’m drifting. I finally get a chance to kill and I can’t do it. I get a second chance and he gets away. And now all my secrets are floating to the surface. Where is the orderly controlled effective Dexter? Where did I lose him? How do I find him again? I’m drifting. But not to sleep. Dexter

Dexter is adrift, indeed. In the season opener, the ending of Season One turns out to have made him impotent (in several senses of the word), and his secrets are drifting to the surface - literally.

Season one was about Dexter discovering his origins, being pursued by them, even. This second season is about him discovering himself. Everything he believes in is called into question, from his urges to his (professed lack of) feelings and even his father’s code. Everything he thought he could trust - his colleague’s obliviousness, Rita’s devotion - is called into question, and he’s quickly backed into a corner.

As so many people do in that situation, Dexter goes a little nuts. He starts doing some very uncharacteristic things, and it takes you -the viewer- out of the comfort zone. It makes you realize, as if anew, that this is a serial killer you’re rooting for, someone not just dark but truly evil, who might think his acts are justified, but whose acts are gruesome nonetheless. There’s a great moment in episode 10 when we almost pull away entirely… but then of course, there’s Michael C. Hall’s charisma and the wonderful one-liners (”I will not kill my sister. I will not kill my sister. I will not kill my sister.”) to pull you back in.

Season two is not as even and focused as season one, but it’s just as fascinating, and more tense as the noose starts tightening around Dexter’s neck. And getting tighter and tighter, leading to Dexter making mistake after egregious mistake until you start wondering how the hell he’ll ever get out of this mess.

It’s too bad the writers resort to some clumsy and sometimes played-out plot devices (the overheard answering machine message, the forgotten GPS), but really, who would mind when the rest of the show is so well written? The most admirable thing is that - unlike with some other shows - there is a true sense of continuity. Nothing that happened in season one is forgotten or easily glossed over, the characters still carry their history with them, and rather than considering Dexter’s past a given now, they flesh it out even further, adding details and making it seem like a revelation all over again. That’s without even mentioning some revelations that put Harry and his code in a whole different light.

And then there’s the whole addiction metaphor. When it first surfaced, I thought it was a rather lame joke and a rip-off of Fight Club, but it turns out to work wonderfully well, and adds some real depth to Dexter’s character and motivations, changing him, even, making me curious as to what kind of killer he will be in season three.

September 28th. I can hardly wait.