Revisit: His Girl Friday

A Columbia Pictures release 1940
Directed by Howard Hawks
Writing credits
Ben Hecht (play The Front Page)
Charles MacArthur (play The Front Page)
Charles Lederer (screenplay)

A newspaper editor (Cary Grant) uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife (Rosalind Russel) from remarrying.



Hawks takes the pacing and pratfalls of the screwball comedy and plants them in a new narrative context with his film His Girl Friday. A classic in every sense of the word, the film is a great example of Hawk's use of quick edits and overlapping dialogue to create comedic gold. Cary Grant is enigmatic as always; one of the best parts about this film is that he plays a nasty, no good newspaper man who still gets the girl. To the untrained eye it might seem like a typical hackneyed Hollywood ending, but it works in context. I guess the moral here is 'be true to yourself'. The film went on to inspire the Cohen Brother's Hudsucker Proxy.

Quick Analysis: A History of Violence

A History of Violence was my favorite film of 2005. The following is a quick analysis of some of the film's essential characteristics.




A History of Violence may be the greatest American movie ever made by a Canadian. Its director, David Cronenberg, is a native of Toronto, and much of the film was shot in our great neighbor to the north. However, with its small-town setting and everyman hero, the film exudes Americana like a Norman Rockwell painting. It explores America’s fascination with violence and reinvention of the self with more depth and clarity than any film released in the past five years.

Released in September of 2005 and starring Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, A History of Violence tells the story of Tom Stall, family man and owner of a diner in the fictional town of Millbrook, Indiana. Essentially, Tom has achieved the American dream: a beautiful wife and two children, a large farmhouse complete with white picket fence, and a successful business. When two thugs threaten his life, Tom unleashes a fury of violence that renders him a national hero. However, when more thugs show up claiming to be Tom’s former associates, trust disintegrates into violence as it becomes less and less clear who Tom actually is. The film centers on the Stall family’s reaction to the violence and new questions of their father’s identity.

In any other hands, this film might have been cheap stock for shock value and gore effects. However, Cronenberg’s master touch allows the film to rise beyond its violent face value. It becomes a brooding expose on the American concept of self-made identity, as well as our country’s obsession with violence. The films country setting and average man set up root the film in the tradition of the American dream. The unraveling of the lead’s identity and punctuated portrayals of violence act to dismantle that dream, examining it from the very core. The end result is not only unsettling, but also uproarious – we are given the full range view of Americana, from its beauty to its blemishes.



The film plays heavily on the idea of deception and identity. Shot almost exclusively in 27mm (wide angle lens), Cronenberg uses wide compositions to visualize the idea of deception and fragmented viewpoints. In many shots, we are given a wide viewpoint of a door, a hallway, or scene, yet something within that space remains hidden. It might be physical, a character cropped by the lens, or metaphorical, the connecting bond between family members. For example, in the final scene in which the Stalls reunite for dinner, Cronenberg’s camera shifts along a jagged edge, showing each family members reaction, but rarely allowing any two to cross, let alone the family be shown united as a whole. Plot wise, the film explores the idea of the self-made man; namely, that a man can escape his past and become someone new in America. The idea of self-development is crucial to the American dream, and though the film doesn’t quite debunk it, it certainly raises questions as to whether a man can effectively escape his former past, especially one stooped in violence.

Violence is the key word in this film. It is what jump starts the chain of events and is effectively what the main protagonist is trying to escape. However, Cronenberg’s reading of violence within the film is multilayered, and functions as a mirror to our own culture’s understanding and acceptance of violence. Acts of violence are scattered throughout the film, punctuated to a distinct rhythm. They come and go as scenes of violence often do in real life, occurring quickly and without warning, then dissipating with only the bloody aftermath remaining. Violence functions as a comedic element (the scene in which Tom kills his brother), as action-entertainment (the scene in the diner), and as horror (the scene in front of the Stall home). Violence is lauded and praised, such as Tom’s ‘heroic’ actions in the diner, and well as condemned and rejected, such as Tom’s ‘negative’ actions in front of the Stall home. Most importantly, violence is passed from generation to generation, with Tom’s eldest son continuing the tradition by using a shotgun to save his father. Later, when Tom throw’s his gun into a lake to wash himself clean, it’s hard not picture that lake as a cesspool teeming with life, and that gun simply laying there, waiting for some other life-form to pick it up and continue where it left off.



What Cronenberg is doing in this film is exploring violence from multiple angles the same way our society accepts violence in multiple ways. He allows room for each and every possible reaction to the violence; perhaps most effectively when the grotesque leads to humor, which feels most unsettling. More interestingly, he never allows his audience a full view of the violent act, choosing to cut away, or rely on close ups or distance shots to portray the action. Rather, he lingers on the consequences of the violence, in both metaphysical (the dissolution of the family) and physical (extreme after-the-fact gore shots, dead bodies pulsating, oozing blood) terms. The film passes no judgment on America’s fascination with violence and ultimately leaves it’s question – can the American dream remain, despite the horrors of bloodshed? – unanswered. However, Cronenberg calls for a better understanding of the effects of violence and the way our society reacts to violence. The final product is so unabashedly American, it’s hard to believe a Canadian was involved at all.

Review: Brothers of the Head

An IFC Films/Film Four release 2006

Directed by:
Keith Fulton
Louis Pepe

Writing credits:
Brian Aldiss (novel)
Tony Grisoni (screenplay)

In the 1970s a music promoter plucks Siamese twins from obscurity and grooms them into a freakish rock'n'roll act. A dark tale of sex, strangeness and rock music.



Some movies are made simply to look cool; I think Brothers of the Head is one of those films. Set up as a sort of emphatic mockumentary about a band fronted by Siamese twins, the film has a rich visual aesthetic, full of warped colors, gothic imagery, and slick editing. It's a well assembled piece of cinema, but it lacks one thing - purpose. At the end of the day, the Howe brothers story isn't one that is particularly too enlightening or original; the film follows the typical rocker rise and fall story we've seen and heard a hundred times before, sex/drugs included. Of course the narrative is complicated by the fact that we're watching conjoined twins, but it doesn't really explore that idea in a way that couldn't have been done with a single character. For example, one brother is presented as the quiet, artistic type while the other is aggressive, and in your face. If the brothers are supposed to represent a personality split in two, why not keep them a single character? In the end, their condition comes off more as a strange quirk than story tool, and the film suffers for it. The real question here is how much of the source text is accurately represented; I've never read Brian Aldiss's novel, so I can't really make a comparison.

Directors Fulton & Pepe's previous feature was Lost in La Mancha, an actual documentary following the trials and tribulations surrounding Terry Gilliam's failed production of Don Quixote. Likewise, screenwriter Grisoni drafted Gilliam's version of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Gilliam's quirky influence and interest in the bizarre seems to have rubbed off on these filmmakers, but it takes more than strange imagery and sadistic humor to make a great movie. I have faith that they will one day make a great picture - they certainly have the visual editing chops - but Brothers of the Head is too innocuous to be the one.

The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography.

New Blog, New Posts, etc.

January 28, 2007 -- ONE of the biggest disappointments in director Steven Spielberg's life was Alfred Hitchcock's repeated refusal to meet him - but it turns out the Master of Suspense had a bizarre excuse. In his memoir, "Things I've Said, But Probably Shouldn't Have," due in May from Wiley, actor Bruce Dern writes that he tried and tried to convince the director of "Psycho" and "The Birds" to say hello to Spielberg, who had just triumphed with "Jaws." "I said, 'You're his idol. He just to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you' . . . He said, 'Isn't that the boy who made the fish movie? . . . I could never sit down and talk to him . . . because I look at him and feel like such a whore,' " Dern relates. Completely puzzled, Dern, who appeared in two Hitchcock flicks, finally pinned the director down: "I said, 'Why do you feel Spielberg makes you a whore?' Hitch said, 'Because I'm the voice of the 'Jaws' ride [at Universal Studios]. They paid me a mil lion dollars. And I took it and I did it. I'm such a whore. I can't sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie . . . I couldn't even touch his hand."

Why Hitch Shunned Speilberg

Lord knows this isn't real news (I mean, it's Page Six for crying out loud), but I think it's pretty funny. Little did Hitch know that the guy who made the fish movie would become one of the biggest Hollywood whores of all time! Well, at least Hitch had the ability to conceed he was a whore - Speilberg keeps trying to pass the same political thriller he unloads every other year or so off as 'art'. Munich my ass. Expect an academic post crossing the politics behind two generations of Speilberg movies, War of the Worlds and the one about the fish, pretty soon. Also, some more reviews and revisits, as well as a couple of interviews/Q&A's I've done with some filmmakers - all coming soon!

For now, I'm going to take this opportunity to plug my new blog Cartoonering. Think of it as a companion piece to Cinematikal, a sister blog focusing on that other passion of mine, cartoons! It's still under construction, of course, but check it out - there should be some good posts up there within the next twenty-four hours. Expect plenty of videos (including a couple by the Quay Brothers that are up there now), animation news, and academic commentary. I'm gonna try to show some of my own comics, as well as chronicle the progress of the cartoon I'm making on there as well. So check it out - tou'll be glad you did! (If you like cartoons, at least)

Tish-Tash: The Forgotten King of Comedy pt.5

Difficulties with Tashlin as the Auteur

The past few readings of Frank Tashlin’s body of work act merely as a template to determine the consistency of technique and theme throughout the director’s career. While they establish that Tashlin had a well-developed technical style and undercurrent of thematic motifs, there are still several issues that need to be addressed to solidify Tashlin’s status as auteur.



One would be Tashlin’s relationship with Jerry Lewis. The pair worked together on a total of eight films and though it seems clear that the Tashlin/Lewis films are more gag oriented than those directed by Lewis himself, a close comparison and separation of their individual careers is needed.5 Likewise, a thorough appendix on the history of slapstick would be useful in placing Tashlin’s style of topical humor into context.

Much of the readings also centered around connections drawn between Tashlin’s animation work and his feature films. While it is of this author’s opinion that animation is equally as valid as live action in terms of historical significance, the lack of critical attention to animation is quite pressing. Do Tashlin’s animations hold equal weight to his feature films? Can the auteur theory be applied to animated works? These are questions cinema scholars should address.

For those of you interested in reading more about Tashlin's work and his career, I suggest you check out Roger Garcia's anthology of Tashlin essays, simply titled Tashlin. There are a lot of great essays in there, many of which were quoted in these posts, that further expand on Tashlin's style and make a great case for his auteurship (without directly saying so).

And if you don't like to read, just check out his movies! Most are on DVD and readily available on netflix or at the local videostore.

Check out the Tashlin article from the beginning here!

Revisit: Rio Bravo

A Warner Brothers release 1959
Directed by Howard Hawks
Writing Credits:
B.H. McCampbell (short story)
Jules Furthman (screenplay)
Leigh Brackett (screenplay)

The sheriff (John Wayne) of a small town in southwest Texas must keep custody of a murderer whose brother, a powerful rancher, is trying to help him escape. After a friend is killed trying to muster support for him, he and his deputies - a disgraced drunk (Dean Martin) and a cantankerous old cripple (Walter Brennan) - must find a way to hold out against the rancher's hired guns until the marshal arrives. In the meantime, matters are complicated by the presence of a young gunslinger (Ricky Nelson) - and a mysterious beauty (Angie Dickinson) who just came in on the last stagecoach.



One of the quintessential westerns, Rio Bravo is a textbook example of Hawks versatility as a director. His eye for storytelling and technical mastery is evident in most every genre he tackles, westerns included. He works through the western without missing a beat, providing a full show, while adding his own distinct, right-wing politics. The characters in the film are rich and fully-rounded, their behavior and psychology focused. John Wayne plays the curt, upstanding sheriff with usual excellence. Personally, I think Walter Brennan's Stumpy steals the show. Must see for fans of the genre.

Revisit: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

A Universal Pictures release 1923
Directed by Wallace Worsley
Writing credits:
Victor Hugo (novel)
Edward T. Lowe Jr.
Perley Poore Sheehan

Gypsy dancer Esmerelda (Patsy Ruth Miller) is the object of offection for both Phoebus (Norman Kerry), the loyal Captain of the Guards, and Jehan (Brandon Hurst), the evil brother of the archdeacon. When Jehan stabs Phoebus in the back, Esmerelda is blamed, but the hunchback Quasimoto (Lon Chaney) comes to her rescue, as she was the only person ever to treat the deformed man kindly.



Chaney’s performance, paired with a striking and innovative use of make-up, evoked both terror and pity in its original release, and it remains the best reason to see this film. He really gets into it, and it's a pretty stunning transformation, considering the period. In fact, a lot about this movie is pretty stunning for the time; while the camera movement is flat, the images contained are striking, with a beautiful, realistic looking medieval set and many large crane shots that cram hundreds of people onto the screen at once. From what I gather, it is the more accurate version of Hugo's story, as well. People often have trouble watching silent films today, but this was one that definitely kept me engaged on a basic story level. I'm interested to see how it compares to the 1939 Charles Laughton version.

Tish-Tash: The Forgotten King of Comedy pt.4

The Inner Circle: Interior Meaning

Andrew Sarris defines interior meaning as being “extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material…It is not quite the vision of the world a director projects nor his attitude toward life. It is ambiguous, in any literary sense, because part of it is imbedded in the stuff of the cinema and cannot be rendered in non-cinematic terms” (562). Based on this description, interior meaning can be interpreted as latent themes presented over a period of time or body of work. While many critics lamented the triviality of post-war comedies, Tashlin’s films often dealt with motifs of sexual fear and offered scorching critiques of consumer society.

The typical Tashlin hero is generally a male protagonist caught in a situation of sexual castration. They often find themselves refusing the ardent passes of strong-willed females. In many cases, these females are often wealthier and more powerful than the males they are chasing; Dick Powell refuses to marry for money in Susan Slept Here and although Jill St. John keeps her riches a secret in Who’s Minding the Store?, Jerry Lewis still rejects her sexual advances because he’s waiting to earn enough money to get married on his own. Similarly, The First Time stands as a critique of the economic struggles inherent in the institution of marriage.



We can see these themes in Tashlin’s cartoon work as well. After initially being pushed around by Petunia Pig in Porky’s Romance (1937), Porky rejects Petunia’s bid for marriage because he fears she’s going to turn into a fat, controlling slob. In Plane Daffy (1944), a femme fatale Nazi spy hen named Hatta Mari4 seduces American fighter pigeons for information, but can’t seem to get a grip on Daffy Duck, who manages to escape her electric kisses. In The Stupid Cupid (1944), Daffy resolutely fights against the Cupid’s attempts to make him lovesick . “Oh no you don’t buster,” Daffy says, whipping out his wallet to show the Cupid a picture of his large family. “You hit me last year and look what happened – tied down, no more fun! Now look at me, a has been!” The Cupid eventually succeeds and sends Daffy into a feverish ménage-a-trois with a married chicken couple; a commentary on the dangers of sexual attraction.



These ideas culminate in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, as Tony Randall resists the attractions of Mansfield’s rich and beautiful Rita Marlowe because he is engaged, choosing a simpler life with a simpler wife over the ‘success’ Rita has to offer. Bill Krohn writes “Clearly, the Tashlin hero’s refusal to be seduced is a moral choice, because he is not without desire – he is just free of certain socially conditioned forms of desire… the hero’s refusal is the central symbol of a general critique of the desire for money, youth, fame, and the catch-all concept of success” (35).

The idea of success in a consumer media-driven society plays a big role in Rock Hunter, as it does in many of Tashlin’s films. In some cases, it takes the obvious form of satire: the validity of comic books in Artists and Models, the failed product pitches in Rock Hunter, the glorified ideal of Hollywood in Hollywood or Bust. But Tashlin often ends his films ambiguously. In The Girl Can’t Help It, Tom Ewell plays Tom Miller, a down-and-out alcoholic press agent forced by gangster ‘Fats’ Murdock (Edmond O’Brien) to boost the singing career of Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield), Murdock’s lover. Miller had seen success before – he propelled singer Julie London to stardom despite her desire to settle down with Miller and live a normal life. Throughout the film, Miller is haunted by the loss of London as a lover, and Jordan acts as his chance to rectify the past through the present. In the end, Murdock appeals to Jordan’s desire to settle with Miller and leave stardom behind, despite the fact that he forced her to cut a hit record. Despite the seemingly happy ending, its sardonic tone and valorization of average-ness and the ordinary leaves a mixed message. Are the characters truly happy, or are they simply substituting one image of success for another? Tashlin’s ambiguity acts as discourse on the American dream and the definition of success in a media-driven society. As Bernard Eisenschitz writes, “Tashlin not only identified and denounced the contradiction of American cinema, but also embodied it, since the ambivalence of his films makes it impossible to say which side he is taking, or to be sure that he is not exploiting the very same thing he is denouncing.” (105)




Some videos from Tashlin's films have been added to parts 2 & 3 - check 'em out! Part 5: The Conclusion coming soon...

Check out Part 3!
Check out Part 2!
Check out Part 1!

More NC-17 Movies!

MPAA Chief Wants More NC-17 Films
MPAA chief Dan Glickman is encouraging independent filmmakers to make more films that would earn them an NC-17 rating. According to Daily Variety, Glickman acknowledged that producers often face a stone wall erected by exhibitors to keep out NC-17 films. He said he plans to meet with theater owners to persuade them to drop the barrier. "It's one of our ratings, and I'd like to see it used more," he said.

from IMDB

An NC-17 rating has long been considered the death of a film, killing it's business by limiting the audience market. But I agree with Glickman - if the rating exists, why not use it? If more studios and theater chains promoted films carrying the rating - and the films were good - I'm sure the business end would work out. This news comes days after Glickman announced that the MPAA was going to re-evaluate and re-adjust the current ratings system (though he claims the doc This Film is Not Yet Rated had nothing to do with it), which is also good news. The ratings system does need a serious revamping; here's to hoping Glickman can handle it better than Valenti.

Lars Von Trier and the Lookey

Von Trier unveils 'Lookey'


Back in December, Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier announced that he had created a cinematic game involving 'visual disturbances' called Lookeys that be featured in his next film, The Boss of it All. The intention is to create a more active role for the audience; the first moviegoer to find all the Lookeys in the pic will win $5,360 and the opportunity to be an extra in his next film, an English-language horror pic called Anti-Christ.


I love the idea of audience participation in the cinema; it's too often that film is a passive medium. While I can't think of anything off the top of my head that has such a direct connection with the audience (3D? Smell-O-Vision?), I'm not sure that this is the best way to go about it. It sounds kind of kitchy, and once the secret is unveiled, it's all over. I hear the challenge is quite complicated, which might not motivate audiences in a theatrical release. Plus I hear you have to be able to understand Danish.

I think this is something that filmmakers should explore more in DVD. There's a series of childrens cartoons coming out based on the old Choose Your Own Adventure novels by allowing kids to decide what happens using their remote - I would love to see a filmmaker produce a DVD-only release that experiments with that idea. But what other ways can we make the cinema more active?

This is also a prime example of why I love Von Trier. Even when his experiments feel covoluted or under-developed, he's at least thinking about new ways to approach the cinema beyond a technical level.

Oscar Noms and Predictions

Well the Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and while none of them were particularly too surprising, there are definitely some interesting choices in there. Here's a rundown with some predicitions:

Best Supporting Actress
Adriana Barraza for Babel (2006)
Cate Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Abigail Breslin for Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls (2006)
Rinko Kikuchi for Babel (2006)

Who Should Win: Jennifer Hudson
Who Will Win: Jennifer Hudson

This newcomer gave a career-making performance in Dreamgirls and by all means deserves this award. Not only is she a fan favorite, but her win at the Golden Globes basically secured her win here. Kudos to Barraza and Breslin for scoring nods.

Best Supporting Actor
Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Jackie Earle Haley for Little Children (2006)
Djimon Hounsou for Blood Diamond (2006)
Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls (2006)
Mark Wahlberg for The Departed (2006)

Who Should Win: Eddie Murphy
Who Will Win: Eddie Murphy

The only other good thing about Dreamgirls, aside from Hudson, was Murphy's performance as James "Thunder" Early. The two of them made that watered-down ball of cliches watchable, and will be rewarded for it. It's interesting to see Whalberg up there, though...

Best Acress
Penélope Cruz for Volver (2006/I)
Judi Dench for Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Helen Mirren for The Queen (2006)
Meryl Streep for The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Kate Winslet for Little Children (2006)

Who Should Win: Penelope Cruz
Who Will Win: Helen Mirren

Mirren's performance in The Queen is all the rage lately and her double win at the Golden Globes is a good indication that she's gonna score gold come Oscar time. Unfortunately I haven't seen the flick yet. But I have seen Volver - which was one of the best films of the year, hands down - and Cruz was a revelation in that film. While I'd love to see the gold go to her, it will probably go to Mirren.

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond (2006)
Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson (2006)
Peter O'Toole for Venus (2006/I)
Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Who Should Win: Ryan Gosling
Who Will Win: Forest Whitaker

I've got one question - where's Borat? While I haven't seen any of the films in this category, Whitaker's role in Scotland has Oscar written all over it, so I'd expect this to be a good year for African American performers. From what I've heard, though, Gosling gives one heck of a performance in Half Nelson. It's nominated for a Spirit, so I'll let you know what I think soon...

Best Director
Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Stephen Frears for The Queen (2006)
Paul Greengrass for United 93 (2006)
Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel (2006)
Martin Scorsese for The Departed (2006)

Who Should Win: Iñárritu
Who Will Win: Scorsese

This is the most disappointing category of the year. I've only seen three of these films (Iwo Jima, Departed, Babel) and all three were mild achievements for their helmers; lukewarm films that showcase steady, if only competent direction. Departed was such an exercise in genre it looked like a walk in the park for Scorsese, and the only thing that was good about Babel were those moments in the script that allowed Iñárritu to stretch out a little bit, but these two are poised at the top of this list. I'd prefer it go to Iñárritu; I like to be able to make jokes about the Academy always stiffs the Scor-miester. But if Eastwood wins again this year, I swear I'll fucking shoot somebody. He's a good director, but christ - stop giving him awards for such bland cinema!

Best Picture
Babel (2006): Alejandro González Iñárritu, Steve Golin, Jon Kilik
The Departed (2006): Nominees to be determined
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006): Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
Little Miss Sunshine (2006): Nominees to be determined
The Queen (2006): Andy Harries, Christine Langan, Tracey Seaward

Who Should Win: Pan's Labarynth
Who Will Win: Babel

Socio-political concious coincidence based films are all the rage - anybody remember Crash? naw, me neither - so expect Babel to take the top prize. Which is disappointing, considering it was nowhere near as good as Iñárritu's Amores Perros and was basically a convoluted, trite piece of crap. Pan's Lab was way better than all of these films combined, but it's lumped into the Foriegn Language category. Oh well..




Well, those are my predictions for this year. Some interesting nominees - particularly in the acting categories - but overall I think we all saw this coming. The Oscars are mostly about politics, so keep that in mind when making your own predictions, people. Last years winners are the best example of that - I mean, c'mon, Crash over Brokeback? Really?

Oscars make me sick.

Has Cinema Lost Its Soul?

How Cinema Lost Its Soul

It should be remembered that the birth and growth of cinema was almost immediately parallel to the birth and growth of modernism in the other arts. Film is generally at its best when it recognises its roots in modernism, ie when it rejects conventional notions of realism, disengages from bourgeois values, and questions the primacy of narration.

From the beginning of cinema, film artists working in the new medium understood that its strength was not in straight narrative, something literature or the theatre could do better. While commercial cinema, especially Hollywood, continued with the conventions of 19th-century literature and theatre by producing illustrated novels and "opened out" plays, modernists looked towards non-narrative film form, or considered narrative as secondary to style. They disturbed the accepted continuity of chronological development and attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts, replaced logical exposition with collages of fragmentary images, complex allusions and multiple points of view. They resisted the commercial film in favour of "art cinema", to equal the other arts in seriousness and depth.

This article from the Independent is an interesting read. It outlines the rise of avant-garde/experimental cinema (if we can call it that - I think 'non-linear' or 'non-hollywood' cinema would be more accurate in terms of what the author is discussing) and characterizes the synthesis between formal artists (ie. painters, poets, sculpurists, etc.) and filmmakers. The article describes a fertile collaborative ground in which art blended with cinema - a state which, the author claims, is retroverting, as we more often see the avant-garde heading to galleries and theaters being filled by standard Hollywood schlock.

What remains of experimentation in film today?... Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are increasingly seeing the avant-garde abandon the cinema for the gallery - a shift made possible by the digital revolution. It is becoming necessary to redefine film without reference to its previous conditions of existence, by reference, not to the narrow context of the history of cinema, but to the wider field of art history.

Film is going under a huge change these days. With new forms of distrubtion and the DIY aesthetic of YouTube, it is going to be crucial that we redefine the cinema and its functions. The article doesn't mention the internet and it's capabilities as a distribution medium, perhaps because it is too early to gauge where the whole YouTube phenomenom is going. However, it's undeniable that film is changing, fast. I do like the idea of encompassing cinema under an art history context. Film is too often sectioned off from the rest of arts - perhaps because of the scope of its business - with video art and experimental cinema in their own little bubble. The academic interest in film often discusses intertexts and source texts, but I haven't had an experience where an art movement and a film movement were presented side by side, in depth. While I don't think that will fix the "avant-garde abandonment", it will certainly help us find a more accurate definition for modern cinema and pint us closer towards the direction in which the Internet phenom will eventually take us.

Tish-Tash: The Forgotten King of Comedy pt.3

The Middle Circle: Personal Style

One of Tashlin’s most renowned trademarks was his use of reflexive intertextual references – a self-conscious referral to outside texts in order to derive meaning or develop humor. Tashlin used topical references in almost all of his films: Artists and Models features James Stewart in a cameo appearance on a balcony with telescopic camera, as well as a comic book character strikingly similar to Batman; Son of Paleface features Roy Rogers in a role lampooning his own screen image.



However this practice culminates most notably in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, where much of the film’s humor is derived from intertextual references. Take, for example, the films Brechtian introduction, in which Tony Randall mistakenly presents the movie’s title as The Girl Can’t Help It. That particular film, also directed by Tashlin, is mentioned repeatedly throughout Rock Hunter; along with Kiss Them For Me and The Wayward Bus, it is established as one of mega-star Rita Marlowe’s former screen credits – another intertext, as these three titles are all real films in which Jayne Mansfield, the actress who plays Marlowe, formerly performed.



Mansfield herself acts as an intertext throughout the entirety of the film. Her bleached-blond buxom looks and incessant squeals emulate another blond bombshell, Marilyn Monroe. When Marlowe mentions that “the studio is worried about my acting in my upcoming drama”, one can’t help but think of fervor surrounding Monroe’s first dramatic role in 1956’s Bus Stop. Even the name Rita Marlowe is a send up of famous female film stars; a combination of Rita Hayworth, Jean Harlow, and Marilyn Monroe.

Tashlin’s use of intertextuality finds it root in his early work in animation. The majority of his Warner Brothers cartoons are riddled with popular references, both timely and timeless. Of course, this is not specific to Tashlin but to the Warner Brothers animation style as a whole. Take, for example, Bob Clampett’s 1939 short The Film Fan, in which Clark Gable and the Lone Ranger make an appearance, or I.Freleng’s 1936 short The CooCoo Nut Groove, which stars cartoon counterparts of Ben Bernie, Groucho Marx, W.C. Fields, Fred Astaire, John Barrymore, Mae West, and Laurel and Hardy, among others. In general, these references aimed to spoof or lampoon well-established stars for humorous purposes.



However, Tashlin’s use of star references often-extended beyond simple mockery. The 1944 short Swooner Crooner is a great example of this: a group of hens laying eggs for the war effort get distracted by a rooster who looks and sings like Frank Sinatra, bringing egg production to a halt. Porky Pig, acting as supervisor, rushes to investigate and soon finds himself auditioning for a new crooner. Caricatures of Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante and Cab Calloway are presented, but Porky settles on a Bing Crosby clone that introduces himself as "The Old Groaner". A battle of the crooners ensues, and between the two of them, egg production soon becomes more than Porky can handle. This film is an obvious nudge at working women in the war effort – multiple visual references, including a hen assembly line and a gag where bomb bay doors open to release the eggs make this clear. The caricatures serve not only as a source of humor, but act to motivate the plot of the film; their singing battle ultimately resolves the narrative conflict of how to turn the workers’ inactivity into wartime production. Likewise, the contrast presented between Sinatra’s sultry voice and Crosby’s soothingly smooth singing makes a point about the military risks of excessive phallic power. The film is a warning for female workers against erotic distraction and reinforces the idea of domestic duty. In turn, the caricatures become essential to the plot, rather than just throw away gags. Tashlin understood the power of celebrity and used it to critique society – something he would do again later in his career with both The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.

Of course not all of Tashlin’s cartoons were as insightful as Swooner Crooner. As Greg Ford points out, Tashlin’s 1937 short Speaking of the Weather “was, in many senses, a typical Warners “Merrie Melody” (80), and Tashlin had many other shorts of the same vein, including 1937’s The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos and 1938’s You’re An Education. These ‘Merrie Melodies’ often featured inanimate objects anthropomorphized to the tune of a licensed Warner Brothers radio single. They too often featured topical subjects – current magazines, radio stars – although they lack the critical punch of some his narrative shorts. While seemingly innocuous, the ‘Merrie Melodies’ provided a good framework for the rock’n’roll intertext of Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It, as then-rock sensations such as Little Richard, The Platters, and Fats Domino help the film movie along in musical interludes that mirror the ‘Merry Melodies’ style.



Due to Tashlin’s frenetic pacing, much of the topical humor in his films is easy to miss. However, he undoubtedly reviled in the use of intertext as both a source of humor and satire throughout his career, making it a mainstay of his style.

Check out Tish-Tash pt.1!
Check out Tish-Tash pt.2!

Part 4: The Inner Circle coming soon!

Razzie Nominees 2007

Razzies Get Back to Basics with 2006 Nominees

In this wonderful season of self-congratulatory awards hype, the crew behind the Razzies have one of the hardest jobs in Hollywood - narrowing down the year's worst releases and choosing the most heinous of the bunch. Past Razzie winners include Jenny Mcarthy's hilariously unfunny Dirty Love, Tom Green's surreal Freddy Got Fingered, and the misunderstood J-Lo/Affleck disaster remake Gigli. This year the Wayan's Brothers Little Man and the totally unnecessary Basic Instinct sequel are leading the pack with 7 nominatious each, including one for "Sharon Stone's lopsided boobs" in the Worst Screen Couple category.

These are probably the only awards worth following, as they are incredibly tongue-in-cheek and have been getting more attention from the industry in the following years (Halle Berry actually picked up her award in person for worst actress for last years Catwoman). Check out the press release and full list of nominees here.

Aqua Teen Movie Set for March

Aqua Teen Movie Set for March


Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters is an action-adventure epic that reveals the mysterious origins of Meatwad, Frylock and Master Shake. When an immortal piece of exercise equipment threatens the balance of galactic peace, it is up to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force to run away from it. Peril escalates when the Plutonians team up with the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past to strive for ultimate control of the sinister deadly device.


Well I guess the rumors were true. Aqua Teen will be hitting about 800 screens on March 23rd. This crap is ridiculous - I don't know how they could strech this show out into 86 minutes, but apparently they found a way. The early teasers were pretty ugly looking, just about what you would expect from the Aqua Teen crew. Here's hoping that it will at least be mildly amusing...

Review: Tales of the Brothers Quay

Playing at the Film Forum
FRIDAY, JANUARY 19 - THURSDAY, JANUARY 25

The program includes the following films:
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984)
The Epic of Gilgamesh (1985)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1986)
Dramolet (Stille Nacht I) (1988)
The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1991)
Anamorphosis (or De Artificiali Perspectiva) (1991)
Are We Still Married? (Stille Nacht II) (1991)
Tales from the Vienna Woods (Stille Nacht III) (1992)
Can’t Go Wrong Without You (Stille Nacht IV) (1993)
In Absentia (2000)



Masters of stop-motion, The Quay Brothers are known for their Freudian-influenced state of conciousness style imagery similar to that of Jan Švankmajer. Most of their films feature dolls, often disassembled, in a dream world of machine parts, meat, wood puzzles and other found objects. Their attention to detail is striking - you can see the layers of dirt, filth and ware on their materials, and their set designs are amazingly constructed. Their camera work is also well definied, utlilizing intense closeups, rack focuses, vertical and horizontal pans, and repetition to built a distinct rhythmic aesthetic. Their best known work is the haunting Street of Crocodiles, based on the short story of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This retrospective, playing this week only at Manhattan's Film Forum, is a must see for any animation fan.

Senses of Cinema interview: Quay Brothers

2006 Suicide Girls interview: Quay Brothers

Tish-Tash: The Forgotten King of Comedy pt.2

The Outer Circle: Technique



As an animator, Tashlin was widely recognized for bringing a live action visual vocabulary to his cartoons. Animation historian Greg Ford writes “Tashlin’s taste for the language of feature films was evident from the very beginning in his first stint as an animation director at Warners in 1936…Sometimes Tashlin’s love of live action films took the form of straightforward visual quotation” (79-80). Ford refers to the high and low angle shots used in Porky’s Poultry Plant (1936), tracking shots used in Wholly Smoke (1938), and the opening montage of Brother Brat (1944), which more than borrows techniques from war documentaries of the era. There are other examples of this as well: the use of pans in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) and Now That Summer Is Gone (1938); the use of canted angles in Porky’s Road Race (1937); the frequent use of the dissolve as a transition. For the time, these techniques were new to animation, and widened the visual language of cartoons for future animators.

What is particularly effective in Tashlin’s animation work is his use of space. In Porky’s Railroad (1937), there is a scene shot from a low angle perspective to make it appear as if a train were coming at the spectator. In The Case of the Stuttering Pig (1937), Tashlin uses a wide-angle shot to allow room for six different characters to appear on screen in a row.





Porky Pig’s Feat (1943), one of Tashlin’s most innovative cartoons, uses a variety of different angle shots to portray depth. The short follows Daffy and Porky as they attempt skip out on the bill for their stay at The Broken Arms Hotel. In one scene, they knock the brutish hotel owner down flight of stairs; a side view shot slowly turns into a bird’s eye view, creating a spiraling sense of depth that makes the gag work. One low angle shot shows Daffy and Porky running towards an elevator at the far end of the hall. Because the shot is at such a low angle, the elevator seems far away, but a quick zoom brings the camera to the front of the action. A similar shot allows for a gag in which the hotel owner chases the protagonists in and out of different rooms in the hallway. In one of the more daring shots, a low angle view gives Porky Pig’s perspective as he looks up at the hotel. These attempts at providing depth and perspective were uncommon in such early cartoons and certainly paved the way for Chuck Jones' Coyote and Roadrunner chase-toons of the fifties.



Considering Tashlin’s use of space and depth in animation, it comes to no surprise that his feature film work utilized Cinemascope to its fullest advantage. Tom Ewell, traditionally framed, introduces The Girl Can’t Help It by pointing out that it was “photographed in the grandeur of Cinemascope”. Ewell then opens his arms, and the frame widens to the full Cinemascope width, drawing the spectator’s attention to the additional amount of picture the format provides. Tashlin often used the wide screen of Cinemascope as a source for visual gags in this sense, but he also exhibited a technical mastery of the format. In Bachelor Flat, Tashlin’s use of Cinemascope allows for a dream sequence in which the spectator can see both the dreamer and the dream simultaneously, something traditional framing couldn’t do. Likewise, the ending of Artists and Models involves a Busby Berkeley style musical number that includes a cacophony of dancers and set pieces along with the stars of the film. The format also proves quite useful in the club scenes of The Girl Can’t Help It, when the focus switches to the rock’n’roll bands, many of which have upwards eight members, and their dance happy fans.

Another of Tashlin’s notable techniques was his use of color. Although many of Tashlin’s cartoons were in black and white, the few that were colored exhibit a genuine palate. These cartoons were often made using watercolor, giving them a smoother appearance than the strongly painted Looney Tunes of the fifties. Primary colors were bold and usually found in the animated characters, while the backgrounds were often a wash of bright yellows, pinks, greens, and purplish-reds. A great example of Tashlin’s use of color can be found in the short Little Pancho Vanilla (1938); Pancho’s mother’s bright sky-blue dress provides a strong contrast to the light yellow rocks tinged with purple and green in the background. Tashlin’s feature films also applied this style of color. Bright and distinct primary colors act to draw the spectator’s eyes to specific characters – Jayne Mansfield’s lips, for example. Like his cartoons, the backgrounds often feature a mix of yellow and purple; the club scenes in The Girl Can’t Help It exhibit this quite well.


Many of Tashlin's cartoons can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection vol. 4 DVD

Check out Tish-Tash Pt. 1!

Part 3: The Middle Circle coming soon!

Revisit: That Touch of Mink

A Universal Pictures release 1962
Directed by Delbert Mann
Writing credits:
Stanley Shapiro
Nate Monaster

A rich businessman (Cary Grant) and a young woman (Doris Day) are attracted to each other, but he only wants an affair while she wants to save her virginity for marriage.



Cary Grant is in so many movies. In this one, he plays a crusty millionaire whose lofty bribes can't seem to get him access to Doris Day's pants. Director Mann has taken a couple of cues from Tashlin here: a palate of bright solid colors, with strong purple and yellow backgrounds, slapstick-style gags, the use of double entendre. The film also has a uniquely American aesthetic. Cathy's desire for the stability of marriage and her fear of sex are a reflection of rural christian attitudes. It's interesting to see how sex is visualized in this film - they never outright say the word, but use double entendres and visual metaphors (the bed, for example) to represent it. Far different from today's physically oriented depictions. Cary Grant in the 60's is so much funnier than Grant in the 30's - he's got that whole likeable prickness thing going, it's great. Check Father Goose for a better example. As a romantic comedy, it's highly watchable and entertaining.

Revisit: High Plains Drifter

A Universal Pictures release 1973
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Ernest Tidyman

A stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides out of the hot desert into the small western town of Lago. The towns people are scared of him, and 3 gunmen try unsuccessfully to kill him. He takes a room and decides to stay. Meanwhile, a group of outlaws are about to return to town and take their revenge. Can the town convince the mysterious man to help?



I miss the old days of Clint's westerns. The colors were already washed out - none of that digital tinting bullshit.
This is your pretty standard post-goldern western, lots of gunplay and bloody as hell. While Fistfull of Dollars may remain the offical Yojimbo adaptation, Eastwood seems to have piggy-backed a lot of the samurai saga's basic structure, while reverting the conflict from an inner struggle to an outside figure (the two gangs in Yojimbo vs. the roaming bandits in Drifter). Though it may not be the most original of westerns, it's a pretty fun movie.

Review: Bubble

An HDNet Films release 2006
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Coleman Hough

Set against the backdrop of a decaying Midwestern town, a murder becomes the focal point of three people who work in a doll factory.



Soderbergh found his roots in independent cinema, producing a decade's worth of low-budget, high-concept films before settling into the studio system with star-riddled affairs like Erin Brokovitch, Traffic, and Ocean's Eleven. Bubble, billed as the latest "Soderbergh experience", is a bi-product of his studio works; a pet project that was funded by his big budget efforts. It is of some note because it was the first film to employ the simultaneous multiple distribution platform, a unique way of mass-releasing a film through theatrical, DVD, and cable on-demand all on the same date. Whether that business tactic has paid off is yet to be seen; only a handful of other films (including Caveh Zahedi's autobiographical I Am A Sex Addict and Winterbottom's docu-drama The Road to Guantanamo) have followed suit, and frankly I don't know too many people who have seen (or heard of) any of them. However, as a film, Bubble is an experiment that falls short of the mark in many ways.

Set in a decrepit West Virginia town, the film follows three dirt poor employees of a doll factory who become involved in a murder. The story is simple, and handled in a simple way - shot on DV, the film has this average, everyday life aesthetic. Following with that aesthetic, Soderbergh decided to cast non-actors in the roles, adding a (somewhat) refreshing sense of realism. The actors are fine, and actually give pretty solid performances, however one can't but feel that Soderbergh spent a lot of his time worrying about their chops than about his camera. For DV, the film looks great, but the camera work is insipid and uninspired. There are many flat, stoic shots, and some minor attempts at Godardian style pans that don't really work.

The title, Bubble, has many implications that go unrecognized throughout the film. A bubble, of course, is an enclosure, and the story presents multiple layers of contextualized 'bubbles', from the settings to the characters states of being. Soderbergh recognizes the themes, but refuses to work with them, focusing rather on the simplicity of the story and it's averageness. This is fine, but it makes for a very average movie. The main point of conflict doesn't come until near the end, and it's hard to take it seriously because the characters are presently so flatly.

Soderbergh is nominated for a Spirit Award in the category of Best Director for this film. Frankly, I think Soderbergh is the reason this film doesn't work. I have to commend him for his inspiring business tactics and indie aesthetic, but over-simplification can be a bad thing. Ultimately, the film has some fleeting moments of greatness (when Martha is inside the large home, for example) but over all it is a dulled down affair.

Tish-Tash: The Forgotten King of Comedy pt.1

With a career spanning over three decades and four different mediums, Frank Tashlin’s influence on modern comedy is almost immeasurable. Getting his start in animation at
Warner Brothers Studios in 1932, he was one of the few animators in history to make the transition to live action feature filmmaking, where he worked with some of the most widely recognized comedic talent of the post-war era. He wrote sketches for Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and Red Skelton, directed some of Jerry Lewis’ funniest films, and helped shape the original Looney Tunes into the iconic characters we know today. As a feature filmmaker, Tashlin hit a stride of commercial successes beginning with the 1956 film The Girl Can't Help It, followed by the Martin and Lewis film Hollywood Or Bust that same year, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957, and four of Jerry Lewis' early solo films (Rock-A-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, and It'$ Only Money.) New Wave filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut praised these films, and cited Tashlin as a source of inspiration. As Peter Bogdanovich once wrote, Tashlin was “a tremendously able craftsman and one of the most inventive visual gag constructionists of the talkies” (12).

And yet, to this day, Frank Tashlin remains misunderstood – one of the forgotten greats of American comedy. In his essay Taking Tashlin Seriously, Robert Sklar surmises three reasons as to why Tashlin has been ignored by the American film community: “the reputation of comedy as a genre in the period after WWII; critical attitudes toward mass culture in context with the reflexivity in Tashlin’s films; and the aesthetics of the cartoon in relation to concepts of the “real” in the United States during the 1950’s and 60’s” (98). Sklar argues that Tashlin’s work remains pigeonholed as slapstick, and that, due to cultural shifts in the 1960’s towards favoring political comedy and the over-all dismissal of the 50’s as an era marked by triviality, the socio-political themes in his work went unrecognized. Most importantly, Sklar responds to accusations of “tastelessness” and “vulgarity” in Tashlin’s work, calling them “a revenge of discourse, to withdraw from Tashlin what was stereotyped and incomplete to begin with…Saying that he had failed the past was a way of avoiding a recognition of how he had confronted the present.” (101).



If sensitivity towards 50’s American culture, or lack thereof, is the primary reason for the dismissal of Tashlin as a filmmaker, perhaps now is as good a time as any to revisit his body of work. As it stands, Roger Garcia’s anthology of critical essays entitled Tashlin, published in 1994, remains the sole text on the subject. In it, Garcia writes: “[Tashlin is] a filmmaker who had largely vanished off the cinematic map, despite even his more obvious claims to auteurship – the extended gag, a pop art sensibility, the sardonic eye” (15). More recently, Manhattan’s Film Forum launched a two-week long retrospective of Tashlin’s work, prompting New York Times critic David Kehr to write “More than most of his contemporaries, Tashlin was attuned to the ways in which our own desire betrays us and how easily it can be manipulated to sell things…Frank Tashlin died in 1972, but the world he satirized 50 years ago is still with us, in some ways more than ever”.

These are fairly strong words for a filmmaker who has been dismissed for decades as being ‘vulgar’ and ‘tasteless’. In what ways can we reassess Tashlin’s work between these two polemics? Over the next few days, a selection of posts will attempt to re-evaluate Frank Tashlin under the title Garcia grants him – auteur.



The Auteur Theory & Tashlinesque

The auteur theory was originally coined in France in the late fifties, after the Liberation, when the ban on American cinema was lifted making it possible for foreign critics to absorb American cinema at great lengths with no preformed bias. Consequentially, it was established that the auteur need not be a member of the Hollywood elite, but often was an author whose work had previously been dismissed or devalued. Likewise, because the theory had never been laid down in concrete terms, it was commonly interpreted loosely to focus either on stylistic or thematic motifs (566).

In terms of the American understanding of the auteur theory, there is perhaps no more comprehensible framework than that presented by Andrew Sarris in his 1962 essay Notes on the Auteur Theory. In it, he defines the auteur as a director who can consistently exhibit recurrent characteristics of style and theme over a group of films. Sarris writes: “the three premises of the auteur theory may be visualized as three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning” (563). Sarris argues that it is possible for a director to pass through all three of these circles at any given point in their career. Therefore it becomes important to note that this understanding of the theory “emphasizes the body of a director’s work rather than isolated masterpieces” (563).



In relation to the works of Frank Tashlin, the foundations for the claim of auteurship have already been laid down. As previously stated, Roger Garcia used the term in reference to Tashlin’s visual eye for comedy and satire. However, Jonathan Rosenbaum has laid the most extensive groundwork in his essay titled Tashlinesque. Rosenbaum sought to define Tashlin’s style in relation to other filmmakers, which he felt was represented by “a deliberately dehumanized form of expressionism in the cartoon-like demeanor of the major characters that had a bitter satirical overtone, loud primary colors that also suggested cartoons and comic books, and a spirited vulgarity that comprised a kind of bittersweet response to infantile American energies run amok” (25). Rosenbaum concludes his essay with five distinctly defined terms, which he claims as being “Tashlinesque”:

A) Graphic expression in shapes, colors, costumes, settings, and facial expressions derived from both animated and still cartoons and comic books
B) Sexual hysteria – usually (if not invariably) grounded in the combination of male adolescent lust and 1950’s notions of feminine voluptuousness
C) Vulgar modernism – ‘popular, ironic, somewhat dehumanized mode reflexivity concerned with the specific properties of its medium or conditions of its making’
D) Intertextual film references
E) Contemporary social satire: products, gadgets, fads, trends (26-7)

These five terms, it would appear, make a template for claiming Tashlin as an auteur in relation to Andrew Sarris’ Venn-diagram approach. Term A would represent the outer circle, or technique; Terms C and D the middle circle, or personal style; and Terms B and E as the inner circle, or interior meaning. However Rosenbaum ends his essay without elaborating upon these terms, leaving them simply as a framework definition of Tashlin’s style. It becomes necessary, then, to look deeper into these terms, to surmise their origins and determine their consistency throughout Tashlin’s work in order to verify Tashlin’s status as an auteur...


TO BE CONTINUED...

Revisit: The Racket

An ROK Radio Pictures release 1951
Directed by Jim Cromwell
Writing credits:
Bartlett Cormack (play)
William Wister Haines (screenplay)
W.R. Burnett (screenplay)

The big national crime syndicate has moved into town, partnering up with local crime boss Nick Scanlon (Robert Ryan). There are only two problems: First, Nick is the violent type, preferring to do things the old-fashioned way instead of using the syndicate's more genteel methods. The second problem is McQuigg (Robert Mitchum), the only honest police captain on the force, and his loyal patrolman, Johnson. Together, they take on the violent Nick and try to foil the syndicate's plans to elect a crooked prosecutor running for a crooked judgeship.




Is it just me, or does Robert Mitchum have a lazy eye? His right one, there. It always seems like he's staring off at someone else; am i right or am I just crazy? Well, if it is, it's fitting. Mitchum sleepwalks through his whole laid back tough guy schtick in this flick, a basic crime drama that is for some reason considered noir even though it doesn't really show any real properties of the genre. Even when he isn't trying, Mitchum manages to make the most convoluted and cliche pieces of cinema seem to work. Robert Ryan gives a good performance here as the manic crime boss. Nowhere near a must see, but not a complete waste of time either.

Zoo: The Horse Fucker Movie

Enumclaw-area animal-sex case investigated

By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times
Friday, July 15, 2005

King County sheriff's detectives are investigating the owners of an Enumclaw-area farm after a Seattle man died from injuries sustained while having sex with a horse boarded on the property.

Investigators first learned of the farm after the man died at Enumclaw Community Hospital July 2. The county Medical Examiner's Office ruled that the death was accidental and the result of having sex with a horse.

A surveillance camera picked up the license plate of the car that dropped the man off at the hospital, which led detectives to the farm and other people involved, said sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.

Deputies don't believe a crime occurred because bestiality is not illegal in Washington state and the horse was uninjured, said Urquhart.

But because investigators found chickens, goats and sheep on the property, they are looking into whether animal cruelty — which is a crime — was committed by having sex with these smaller, weaker animals, he said.

The farm was talked about in Internet chat rooms as a destination for people looking to have sex with livestock, he said.

"A significant number of people, we believe, have likely visited this farm," said Urquhart.

The Humane Society of the United States intends to use the case during the next state legislative session as an example of why sex with animals should be outlawed in Washington, said Bob Reder, a Humane Society regional director in Seattle.

"This and a few other cases that we have will allow us a platform to talk about sex abuse of animals," Reder said.

Thirty-three states ban sex with animals, he said.





...and a little over a year later, we get the movie version premiering at Sundance. Amazing.

Letters From Iwo Jima

Clint Eastwood's new film: Toilet Paper from Sulfur Island

Actually, it's fitting. Was I the only one who thought this film wasn't that great?

Revisit: Office Space & Idiocracy

A 20th Century Fox Production 1999
Written and Directed by Mike Judge

Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), thanks to a hypnotic suggestion, decides not to go to work at the same time his company is laying people off. When layoffs affect his two best friends (David Herman, Ajay Naidu), they conspire to plant a virus that will embezzle money from the company into their account.



A 20th Century Fox Production 2006
Writing Credits: Mike Judge & Etan Cohen
Directed by Mike Judge

Private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) and Rita (Maya Rudolph), a prostitute, the definition of "average Americans", are selected by the Pentagon to be guinea pigs for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, they awakes 500 years in the future, where they discover a society so incredibly dumbed-down that they are easily the most intelligent people alive.



Office Space was virtually ignored when it was first dumped into theaters by 20th Century fox in 1999, but has since become a cult favorite on DVD. And by 'cult' I mean one of those movies that pretty much everyone everywhere has seen a hundred times. It's basically a comedy classic for the slacker generation, a sincere satire of the drudgeries of modern labor. It's even got that sweet Geto Boys in there.

Since then, Judge has released a new film, the little seen sci-fi based Idiocrachasy, which Fox dumped in a couple of cities back in September. Many theories about why that happened, from rumors about Mike Judge ripping the plot of a short story titled "The Marching Morons" by Cyril M. Kornbluth, copywright 1951, to Fox feeling threatened by Judge's clear satire of their key demographic. Whatever the case, the film is pretty entertaining and furthers many of Judge's familiar motif's in a new and interesting way.

The films have distinct narrative similarities, with blue collar male protagonists who prefer to "sit on their ass" rather than work and then find their way to jail, only to be rewarded for their averageness. But as a sci-fi film, Idiocracy has the added bonus of creating a new version of earth. Idiocracy takes place 500 years into the future, when the human race has gotten so dumb it forgot plants needed water to grow. Judge creates a race of people consumed by violence and perversion, bad advertising and sugar; they speak a mix of ebonics, southern twang and valley girl. While the satire is perhaps not as biting as in Office Space, it's quite funny and has some interesting visuals.



What impressed me most about this film was the art direction. That pic is a bad example, and I don't imagine it had a very large budget, but Judge effectively creates some stellar backgrounds. In one scene, miles of fallen highway sit in a huge desert; mountains of trash in another.

Revisit: The Naked Kiss

An Allied Artists Picture 1964
Written & Directed By Samuel Fuller

Kelly (Constance Towers), a prostitute, shows up in the town of Grantville, where she engages in a tryst with sheriff Griff (Anthony Eisley), who then tells her to get out of town. Instead, she decides to give up her illicit lifestyle, and becomes involved in working with handicapped children. She falls in love with Grant (Michael Dante), scion of the town's founding family and Griff's best friend. Just as Griff begins to believe that Kelly may be on the level, a murder and perversion scandal threaten to destroy Kelly's new life.


Samuel Fuller is one of the best crime/noir directers in film history, most well known for 1953's excellent film-noir Pickup on South Street. This film, about a prostitute trying to turn-over a new leaf, is a clunky mess. Made well after Fuller was released from his contract with Fox pictures in the late fifties, it deals with the exploitation of women and small town hypocrasy. However, the film's B-movie feel and heavy-handed, pro-feminist trappings do more damage than good. The result is a forced film with a mixed message. Pick up South Street instead; this one's for Fuller enthusiasts only.

Revisit: Masculine Feminine

A Franco-Swedish Production 1966
Written & Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and dishillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend Madeline (Chantal Goya) builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola') and their social and emotional politics.

A great introduction to the Brechtian workings of Godard, Masculine Feminine contains many of the formal and thematic motifs concurrent throughout Godard's career. The film is divided into '15 precise facts' or acts - a device stemming from Brect's idea of the "separation of the elements/a theater of interruptions" - that act like a staged newspaper. Given the date of December 1965, the film has a specific timliness to it, with Godard acting as a sort of sociologist, tapping into the attitudes of young French men and women; Paul, the passionate male lead, takes a job as a surveyor, but is rather Godard and his audience who are surveying him. Interruptions can be found throughout the film; each couple presented are interrupted by a third party, and there is a distinct lack of privacy that reflects the Parisian way of life. Themes of high and low culture, forms of prostitution, and indiffrence towards violence are prevelant as well.



Like many of Godard's films, Masculine Feminine is anti-realist (the film contains virtually no eyeline matches between characters, jump cuts that tinker with time and space, text intertitles that separate chapters), yet it remains rooted in the rhythm of everyday life. It's a reminder that reflexivity and realism are not mutually exclusive - an autuerist stamp of Godard. The use of sound is of note here, as each noise presented is equal; the sound of a car horn rivals that of the dialogue.

Godard is a figure who often questions the way we view films; with no distinct linear plotline or Hollywood style arch, Masculine Feminine is the kind of film that's meant to be discussed. A great example of Godard's style for those who know little about the director.

MoMA Becomes a Drive-In

from supertouchblog.com...





Last nite marked the debut of the public showing of artist/director Doug Aitken’s new film, “Sleepwalkers”. What made this screening unique is that it was projected after-hours on the exterior walls of MoMA for all the public to see (as it will be every evening from 5 to 10 p.m. for 28 consecutive days), turning 53rd & 54th streets into a sort of drive-in theater for a city on foot (thanks to Creativetime, the public art think tank which curated and secured funding for the film).





In “Sleepwalkers,” five short interconnected films tell the story of one night in the lives of five New Yorkers, played by Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, Cat Power, Seu Jorge, and newcomer Ryan Donowho, that Aitken met in the subway. The director has called this project a “silent film for the 21st century.” MoMA’s director estimates that it will be the most-seen show in the museum’s history.





A 38-year-old wunderkind, Aiken is no art world newbie. His credits include winning the International Prize at the Venice Biennale, and has shown at the Whitney and the Pompidou in Paris, along with more mainstream projects like directing music videos for Interpol and Fatboy Slim. A proponent of non-liner art and narratives, “Sleepwalkers,” like his many other works, was not constructed to specifically “tell” the viewer anything. “I don’t want to tell you a story and give you a conclusion,” he explains. “I want an open exchange and a reflection of your own way of living.” For those resilient enough to brave the cold of a New York City nite, that pleasure can be had for free…







This thing sounds pretty cool. I'm going to have to check it out next time I'm uptown, which'll be Thursday I guess. Look for more comments then!

2007 Indepedent Spirit Awards

As a volunteer at IFP (Indepedent Feature Project, a non-profit org that helps struggling filmmakers), I get the privilege of voting for this years Independent Spirit Awards. For those of you have never heard of the Spirit Awards, it was the first awards event to exclusively honor independent film. Trophies are presented for the years' best achievements in independent film, with statues awarded for Best Feature, Best First Feature, Best Feature Made for Under $500,000 (the John Cassavetes Award), and many more. It's a celebration of the spirited pioneers who bring a unique vision to filmmaking - says the Film Independent website.

I think I've already made my stance on award season pretty clear - it's bullshit - and the Spirit Awards aren't much different. However, they do feature films that often fall under the radar of major audiences or simply don't get proper release, and, as a supporter of indie filmmaking, this is something that I approve.

This is my first year as a voter, and it's come with a lot of benefits, including free netflix and free screenings of all the nominated films, many with Q&A's. I'm going to try to chronicle the experience here as much as I can, but for those of you in New York who are interested in catching some free flicks, the screenings dates are posted below. They haven't been checking for membership cards, so basically anyone can just walk in and enjoy the films. I'm trying to attend as many as I can (I've been to about 5 or 6 so far), so if anyone would like to join me, feel free!


Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street @ Laight Street
New York, NY 10013

Tuesday, January 16
7:00 pm, Steel City, running time: 1 hr 35 m
9:00 pm, Thank You For Smoking, running time: 1 hr 32 m

Thursday, January 18
7:00 pm, Stephanie Daley, running time: 1 hr 31 m
9:00 pm, Day Night Day Night, running time: 1 hr 34 m

Friday, January 26
7:00 pm, Sweet Land, running time: 1 hr 50 m; Q&A to follow with director Ali Selim
9:30 pm, Pan's Labyrinth, running time: 1 hr 52 m

Saturday, January 27
4:00 pm, A Lion in the House (with intermission), running time: 3 hr 50 m
8:30 pm, Chalk, running time: 1 hr 24 m

Monday, January 29
7:00 pm, The Painted Veil, running time: 2 hr 5 m
9:30 pm, Half Nelson, running time: 1 hr 47 m

Tuesday, January 30
6:30 pm, The Illusionist, running time: 1 hr 48 m
9:00 pm, Brothers of the Head, running time: 1 hr 30 m

Wednesday, January 31
7:00 pm, Wristcutters: A Love Story, running time: 1 hr 31 m
9:00 pm, Chronicle of an Escape, running time: 1 hr 46 m

Thursday, February 1
6:30 pm, The Lives of Others, running time: 2 hr 17 m
9:15 pm, Quinceañera, running time: 1 hr 30 m

Friday, February 2
7:00 pm, The Dead Girl, running time: 1 hr 33 m
9:00 pm, Infamous, running time: 1 hr 58 m

Saturday, February 3
2:00 pm, Man Push Cart, running time: 1 hr 27 m; Q&A to follow with director Ramin Bahrani
4:00 pm, Friends With Money, running time: 1 hr 28 m
6:00 pm, American Gun, running time: 1 hr 35 m

Monday, February 5
7:00 pm, Twelve and Holding, running time: 1 hr 30 m
9:00 pm, For Your Consideration, running time: 1 hr 26 m

Tuesday, February 6
7:00 pm, The Motel, running time: 1 hr 16 m; Q&A to follow with producer Karin Chien
8:45 pm, A Prairie Home Companion, running time: 1 hr 45 m

Wednesday, February 7
6:30 pm, Days of Glory, running time: 1 hr 59 m
9:00 pm, Conversations With Other Women, running time: 1 hr 24 m

Friday, February 9
7:00 pm, Sorry, Haters, running time: 1 hr 23 m; Q&A with cinematographer Mauricio Rubenstein
and producer Karen Jaroneski to follow
9:00 pm, Little Miss Sunshine, running time: 1 hr 42 m

Pan's Labarynth Sketches

Speaking of Pan's Labarynth, here's a look into Del Toro's sketchbook which contains many drawings that inspired the images in the movie. Cool stuff!

(and if that hyperlink doesn't work, try putting http://www.premiere.com/features/3364/del-toros-pans-labyrinth-sketches.html into your web browser)

Golden Globe Comments, etc.

The Golden Globes have been, in more recent years, a pretty good gauge in terms of how the Oscars will play out - seven of the ten past Globe winners for best picture have taken home the Oscar. This year's ceremony offered some surprises, but was pretty flaccid over all. Dreamgirls won for Best Comedy/Musical, which is lame, but who cares, really. Babel was the Globe winner for Best Drama, and if it takes home the Oscar, I'll be pissed. Not only was it far from being this year's best drama, it wasn't even collaborators Alejandro González Iñárritu (dir) and Guillermo Arriaga's (writer) best film. In fact, it was their worst - a poorly written, unbelievably sordid mess that takes coincidence way too seriously. I have to give Iñárritu some credit: his camera use was occasionally inventive and he managed to make lingering moments between dialogue haunting and emotional, but the film was an over-wrought piece of crap. Please don't make the same mistake you did with Crash, dear Academy.

Most of the other categories were predictable. Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson took home prizes for Dreamgirls (they were the only decent part of that movie so I won't argue it), Borat won for Borat, Meryl Streep was handed another shiny trophy for her mantle piece. The big race here was for best actor/actress in a drama, with Helen Mirren and Forest Witaker winning those, respectively. I haven't seen either The Queen or Last King of Scotland, nor do I think anyone else in America has, so once again I am at a loss for giving a shit. Marty won best director for The Departed, but then again he also won for Gangs of New York and we all know how that turned out come Oscar time. I hope they stiff him again this year too so I can keep making jokes about how Three Six Mafia has an Oscar and he doesn't. Also, I'm bitter than Pan's Labarynth (and Volver, even) lost out to Letters From Iwo Jima for best foriegn language film. Iwo Jima was good and all, but once you get past the whole OMFG THE JAPS ARE THE GOOD GUYS!!!!1! thing it's pretty much your basic war film. Both Pan's Lab and Volver were infinitely more imaginative and entertaining films.

Overall, it's important to remember that these awards are simply a set-up for famous people to give other famous people shiny pieces of shit that grant them status to quit caring about their work and simply make films for the money. (The Oscar curse is REAL people!). Like the obligitory annual critics top ten lists, awards season is more politics than it is progress towards advancing the cinema. It's fodder for gossip, and for making fun of Scorsese for sucking so much. The Academy is pretty predictable in terms of how they make their decision (take Crash, for example - sure it was an upset, but why would they give the big award to a film solely about gay people when they could give it to one that generalized racism all across the board?). It's crucial to remember that the Academy is a specific group of people with specific politics, and that their views don't accurately represent the cinema as a whole but rather the politics of that specific group. So, in conclusion, FUCK AWARDS SEASON and just go see movies on your own. Make your own decisions on the best movie of the year - don't let awards season dictate what you should watch.

Here are links to some of the better/more humorous reviews of this year's Globes:

NY Times

Defamer

Variety


Also, a note about the blog:

Sorry about the slow posts, but my computer is broke and so am I, so I've had to resort to posting at work/school and from the wii (which is a bitch). I should have it all sorted out later this week, so look forward to a more regular posting schedule. I've seen a good 10-15 movies in the past few days and have a lot to talk about, so it should be good.