Haiti Pictures

As most of you already know, I was in Haiti this past week.  These are my favorite photos from the week:

Pictures

The full moon last night; a few pictures from Annapolis, MD

Schizopolis

SCHIZOPOLIS
D: Steven Soderbergh

Wow, I'm honestly at a loss as to how to do this.  For a decade now, this has been one of my very favorite movies.  The reasons I first embraced it are typical, in some ways: it's well shot, the plot is idiosyncratic, the narrative devices are clever, the soundtrack and score are great, and it's funny as hell.  However, the reason the movie has remained so firmly stuck in my brain--and that really is the way to describe what this movie does to you: it sticks in your brain--has taken much longer to discern.

...but I think I'm getting closer.

There are two key scenes in the film.  The first is a brief scene late in the third act, when Attractive Woman #2--betrayed, frustrated, and lost in her own life--seizes an opportunity to perform the same "body swap" Soderbergh's Munson takes part in earlier in the film.  Like Munson, Attractive Woman #2 stumbles on a lookalike (played, of course, by the same actress) whose life--at first glance--seems infinitely more appealing.  In this case, her double is sitting across from her in a coffee shop reading a magazine.  Her demeanor and body language are relaxed, and she seems pleasantly distracted by her reading.  She is also wearing something new: whereas Attractive Woman #2 (AW2 from now on) and her lookalike, Munson's wife, have spent the entire movie in a plain cotton dress pulled over a t-shirt, this woman is dressed in a way that is both casual and mature.  Read: she does not have a husband or children.  Seeing her opportunity, AW2 closes here eyes and, through the magic of editing and shifting sound cues, she opens them as her alternate self: holding the same cup of coffee in her hand and glancing over the same magazine.  Instantly, she is at peace: her husband is gone, her parental responsibilities are relieved, and she is free.  She breathes a sigh of relief--and as she exhales, Soderbergh takes the seat across from her.  Although much better dressed, she has done it for the third time: she has ended up in a romantic relationship with a man who we immediately know will be self-involved, panicky, easily threatened and numb.  Her eyes widen slightly and the weight of her situation settles softly in them.  Soderbergh's unnamed third character begins to speak: his voice is dubbed in French.  We see AW2 (or is it AW3?) look him over and say quietly, "I want to get out of here."  Like Pavlov's dog, we have been trained how to read this line, and Soderbergh's off-camera tone of voice suggests he is reading her the same way.  But then she responds: "No--back to your room."  The scene cuts and we open in, presumably, his hotel room.  She is lying on the couch with her head in his lap as he strokes her hair.  She speaks: "I could just lie here forever and do nothing but this."  This, we must be clear, is not starting over.  But it is moving on.  In this way, Attractive Woman #2--whose very name attempts to marginalize and mute her--gets the last laugh: in a movie which cycles three times back through its own beginning, she has found independent--if tragic--agency.

The second key scene comes near the very end of the film, when the exterminator (and lady's man) Elmo Oxygen is being interrogated by two detectives.  The detectives are questioning him about his attempt to assassinate the film's keynote speaker, T. Azimuth Schwitters.  Their questions are obvious and--if they think they are talking to a madman--useless: why did you do it?  Were you angry with Mr. Schwitters?  Had Mr. Schwitters wronged you in some way?  Where did you get the gun?  Oxygen replies in his own language (and, incidentally, the only  successful language in the film): he calls them houseplants.  Oxygen goes on to ramble only semi-coherently about his role as the film's resident prophet, and, as we should expect, the detectives stare at him confused and befuddled.  His speech concludes in two parts.  The first is linguistic: he tells the detectives he can "make sense out of yesterday--can you understand how important that is?"  The second is both verbal and physical: he stands (his head above the frame) and begins to unzip the crotch of his jumpsuit.  We hear him say, "You will learn something from me," and then the camera jumps back to the full bodies of the detectives, both of whom are covering their eyes now and screaming hysterically as Elmo stands with his back to the camera, holding his jumpsuit open.  Now, obviously the scene is absurd: it plays for laughs, and (at least from me) it always gets them.  But I think the point here is necessarily aggressive--even more aggressive than Oxygen's "revelation": Elmo's phallus is the only thing these two "dicks" can understand.  Now, I apologize for that crudeness, but I think this pun is essential to the language games the movie plays: if what distinguishes Elmo from every other man in the film is his ability to communicate with women (an ability verbalized in an apparently non-sensical code of "aardvarks," "nose-armies," and "zygotes" which only he and the film's various housewives understand), it makes to sense to position him as Soderbergh's cypher.  Therefore, in his exposure, we see another anti-linguistic move which solicits a clear response: when he unzips his jumpsuit, the detectives see in him exactly the horror they went into the room expecting to find.

Schizopolis is littered with language games: dubbing, subtitles, half-heard conversations, doublespeak, psychobabble, and criticism.  Most of these deserve close scrutiny and analysis, and I have to admit my own sense of inadequacy in dealing with this movie, if only because I don't know that I can do even one part of it any justice.   But before I close, I feel obligated to a take a stab at that title.  Schizopolis is a compound word, built from the Greek "schizo," meaning "to split" and "polis," meaning "city."  Of course, it also carries psychological overtones connected to the disorder, "schizophrenia," which is commonly misunderstood as "split-personality disorder," although a clinical definition would more accurately characterize it as a disorder in which the brain struggles to accurately distinguish fantasy and reality.  In the case of this film, all three definitions are applicable and, to varying degrees, intended: the title references a "split city" that is itself inhabited by people of two (or three) minds, each wandering among the others, oblivious of (or skeptical towards) the possibility of connection.  The vision is cynical, and this cynicism is manifested in Soderbergh's use of a pants-less man to bring in title cards for the film which have been conveniently printed on his shirt(s).

However, there is more to the notion that these characters are of "two minds."  Pioneering linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure theorized that all language systems are built on a fundamental instability between a "signifier"--the sound-image used to refer to a thing or idea--and the "signified"--the thing or idea itself.  According to Saussure, all our communicative acts rely on the impossible notion that we can ever "name" a "thing" in a way which makes it possible to truly and completely communicate that thing to someone else.  However, the presence of language suggests this action is, in fact, possible.  To give an example: when I write the word "tree," I am thinking of a particular kind of tree--specifically, the tree at the end of my parents' driveway.  However, there is nothing I can do short of taking you to my parents' house to ensure that you truly "see" the tree I "mean;" instead, you are going to picture your own tree, forever changing the linguistic action ("signification") taking place between us and eliminating my tree from the equation altogether.  Obviously, the more words we introduce into our interaction, the more impossible the process ought to become.  But what Saussure found was that language is strangely tenacious, and that tenaciousness is rooted not in its codes but in its flexibility--it succeeds because we want it to, trading not on words and images, but on "Signs," or the combined forms of "signifiers" and "signifieds."  Now, I know that's a bit tortuous, but stick with me:

In Schizopolis, Soderbergh converts his characters--and us--into embodied "Signs."  We each contain two distinct parts of ourselves: the selves others see and the selves we believe ourselves to be.  The issue here is not that we don't listen to each other, but that we don't speak for ourselves.  That's what these (male) characters have lost: Munson, the speech writer; Kolchak, the platitudinous dentist; Schwitters, the arrogant mouthpiece of a pseudophilosophical cult.  But the movie isn't a motivational poster--the point here isn't to match our public personae to our personal goals; rather, the point is that our public personae are and have always been the only "real" selves we have: just as "my" tree became yours when I spoke it, we become ourselves when someone hears us.  We don't have a right to a private self...because we don't even speak our own language.  As the film's anonymous "host" (and secret speechwriter) tells us near the movie's end,

"We are who we pretend to be...because we pretend to be who we--really--are."

This is the theoretical move which grounds the paranoia these characters verbalize over and over again, and in this sense, Nameless Numberhead Man is right when he whines about feeling that he is at the mercy of forces beyond his control.  We don't determine ourselves--we are made in the Schizopolis.

All-Covers Disc

Here's the tracklisting.  Click for videos, when available:

1.  Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan cover) -- BECK
2.  I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground cover) -- DAVID BOWIE
3.  Glue (Gerbils cover) -- NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
4.  The Sign (Ace of Bass cover) -- THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
5.  Sweet Child o' Mine (Guns N' Roses cover) -- TAKEN BY TREES
6.  Kid A (Radiohead cover) -- JOHN MAYER
7.  Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (Leadbelly cover) -- NIRVANA
8.  Heartbeats (Knife cover) -- JOSE GONZALEZ
9.  Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (traditional) -- SUFJAN STEVENS
10. No Depression (Carter Family cover) -- UNCLE TUPELO
11. I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor cover) -- CAKE
12. Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What A Wonderful World (2x cover) -- ISRAEL KAMAMAWIWO'OLE
13. Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover) -- THE HOLD STEADY
14. I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Burt Bacharach cover) -- THE WHITE STRIPES
15. Hung My Head (Sting cover) -- JOHNNY CASH
16. After the Gold Rush (Neil Young cover) -- THOM YORKE
17. Political Science (Randy Newman cover) -- PEDRO THE LION
18. Wonderwall (Oasis cover) -- RYAN ADAMS
19. Ocean Breathes Salty (Modest Mouse cover) -- SUN KIL MOON

* I did not include Buckley's "Hallelujah" because...well, obviously.
* I also didn't include Cash's cover of "Hurt."  Same reason.

Thoughts from the deliberate masses?

The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line (1997)

Recently, I watched Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line for only the second time since its release almost 15 years ago.  Again, I was surprised by how badly I misremembered a film.  At the time of its release, it seemed impossible to consider The Thin Red Line separately from Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, which was released a few months earlier and which seemed to me when I first saw it to be a far superior film.  Spielberg's war epic had everything Malick's movie seemed to be missing: a strong central character, a driving narrative, a sense of heroism rising from a visceral depiction of the chaos and horror of war.  By contrast, Malick's movie was overlong, spacey, and disjointed, meditating when it ought to teach and hesitating when it ought to use its special context to propel its plot forward.  Even after a few years' perspective (and exposure to Malick's other films) broadened my view of what genre-based films 'ought' to do, I still thought of The Thin Red Line as a misfire of sorts, lacking in focus and confused in plot.  It was an indulgent film, and it was obviously marred by a general sense of rustiness on Malick's part after more than two decades away from moviemaking.  However, after finishing my rewatching of The Thin Red Line last week, I realized my initial response was not only ungenerous, it was immature in a way that reflected my own biases as a moviegoer and, perhaps, as a person.

One of the scenes I remembered most clearly from my first viewing was the opening sequence of the film.  In this sequence, Witt (Jim Caviezel), who has gone AWOL in the South Pacific, swims in a blue crystal lagoon surrounded by hyper-romanticized native islanders.  As he swims, he meditates on his circumstances via voice over narration, pondering how and why the world of the West has fallen so far from its edenic beginnings.  The connection is clear: these people have it right--no war, no fighting, but most importantly, no distrust of one another.  For Witt, this is the West's great sin: we don't have any faith in one another, and as a result, we elevate ourselves and our own desires over the desires--and the rights to being--of others.  Witt's raison-d'etre for the rest of the film becomes living out the trust he longs to see in the world.  After being brought back to his unit, he accepts a disciplinary reassignment to a stretcher bearer unit, where he works with compassion and drive until he is called back up to his squad.  Once with his squad, he is an avid volunteer: he scouts, he leads, and in the end, he willingly sacrifices himself for his peers.  On my first viewing, the message seemed clear, and it seemed to be understood and enacted by the Christ-like Witt, whose sacrifice (we hope) opens the eyes of his comrades-in-arms.  Although interesting, one supposes, this argument seemed flimsy to me in 1997 and it continues to seem flimsy now.  Does the movie really expect us to believe that all we need, really, is a little more love?

But there was another scene I had forgotten since that first viewing, and for me, it changes everything.  Approximately two-thirds of the way through the film, Witt has another encounter with natives--this time, the natives of Guadalcanal.  Wandering the countryside during a five-day stint away from the front, Witt makes his way into a native village.  Once there, he clearly prepares himself for another return to paradise, removing his shirt and gun, smiling, waving, and making a quick offer of food to the first village child he sees.  However, this visit is met with hostility on the part of the natives: they glare at him, fearing his ability to act with violence free from accountability, but distrustful of his skin and face.  Witt is startled by this, and if The Thin Red Line had been directed by an inferior director, this moment may have been a sufficient rebuttal (or, at least, a challenge) to Witt's earlier fantasy.  But Malick directs the scene with tremendous care, and his decisions here shape and interpret many of the questions from the rest of the film.  Here's my memory of the shot sequence following Witt's rejection in the eyes of the natives:

Witt looks at a female villager, who refuses to meet him in the eyes.  Witt sees an older male, who glares at him while nonetheless backing away and lifting his hand up to protect children standing near him.  Witt sees a child, also refusing to see his face.  He looks past one child at another, this one starving and with dozens of bite marks from flies and other insects scarring its back.  Voices arguing quietly can be heard off camera.  Witt sees another fearful and hateful male villager, this one in his mid-20s--around Witt's age.  Voices continue.  He sees the dilapidated conditions of the huts.  Voices continue.  He sees the water, just through the trees; we see his eyes, remembering his first experience AWOL.  He finally sees the sources of the voices: two older village men, arguing with one another.  We realize that, were it not for his presence, they would be fighting physically and openly.

For me, this scene offers the skepticism I thought the film lacked 14 years ago, and it does so in a way that is both sincere and tragic: Witt's utopia is impossible in all places but the minds of men.  The "thin red line," it turns out, is not the line separating us from civility and barbarity, it is the line we are walking: narrow, bloody, and one from which it is impossible to deviate.  The sadness of the film--and the unity of the film--come from Witt's slow realization that his decision to look around himself and see his world does nothing to help him access it.  It's this underpinning which supports the natural beauty of Malick's movie, which I will refrain from going on and on and on about.  It also justifies (and makes useful) the visions we so frequently get of the natural world's role, proximity, and relation to the soldiers involved in this conflict: these aren't men hiding behind concrete barricades--these are boys crouched in tall grass, encroaching on a world that cares not a bit whether they are there or not.

One closing thought which, thankfully, remained consistent from 1997 until now: The Thin Red Line, like all of Malick's movies, is truly beautiful.  If you haven't seen it, it is streaming on Netflix in HD, and you honestly owe it to yourself to give it a look.  Even if Malick's vision isn't for you, there is an undeniable craftsmanship at work here that you ought to experience.  This is the kind of movie that confronts you--aggressively--with the magnitude of what movies are capable of.  Don't miss it.

Southland Tales

*An indictment of Richard Kelly*

Exhibit A:  "Man, American guys sure do (did) equate big cars with sexual prowess (in the 1950s)!  So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit B:  "Man, we've got Justin Timberlake in this movie, and he's a great singer and a great dancer!  So, I've got an idea..."

Exhibit C:  "Man, Quentin Tarantino sure does write awesome dialogue about pop culture!  So, I've got an idea..."




Exhibit D:  "Man, Cheri Oteri...wasn't she great on Saturday Night Live??  So, I've got an idea..."




Exhibit E:  "Man, isn't it funny when Asian people get hurt by stuff??  So, I've got an idea..."



The prosecution rests, your honor.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid


This movie is far, far stranger than I remembered.  Before rewatching it a few weeks ago, I would have summarized my thoughts on this movie as follows:

        - Paul Newman and Robert Redford are bona fide movie stars whose charisma is unparalleled
        - That "Raindrops Are Falling on My Head" scene is crazily out of place

But after watching it again, I have to revise both of those statements.  Per the first:  yes, Paul Newman is at his personable, witty best.  His Butch Cassidy is funny, charming, and instantly memorable.  However, Robert Redford's Sundance is decisively uncharismatic.  He's quiet and morose.  He drinks too much.  He fights when he shouldn't and pushes those weaker than him simply to stroke his own ego.  He's not just a jerk, he's abusive and cruel to his girlfriend (who is much more clearly endeared to Butch) and, in most respects, a lousy friend.  He's also a total creeper.

Which brings me to point number two:  the Burt Bacharach score isn't weird, it's entirely typical of the film. The "Raindrops" scene is memorable not because it is an anomaly in the film, but because it is the first of a series of anachronistic and disjunctive scenes.  It's worth noting that the musical number immediately follows one of the more distressing moments in the film: Sundance's quasi-rape of his girlfriend in the middle of the night.  In case you've forgotten, the scene I'm talking about begins with Sundance waiting in a chair inside a girl's room; when she enters, he points (and cocks) a gun at her and forces her to strip.  Slowly.  And completely.  In the end, he grabs her and forces himself on her, kissing her hard on the lips.  It's only after this kiss that we get any sense of our bearings in the scene: the girl glares at him and growls: "Just once I wish you would show up on time!"  Some comfort.  It's also followed by the first of two strange train robbery sequences, both of which end with the same hapless railroad employee being blown up by dynamite (the first time, we see him face down and unconscious afterwards, blood running out of his ears).  Again, levity is played against violence, and our horror--with our heroes' actions; with the reality and proximity of death to these characters--is juxtaposed with action-entertainment.  This becomes the dominant theme of the second half of the film, culminating in Butch and Sundance's killings of a group of Bolivian outlaws who attempt to rob the bank convoy they are protecting.  After the slow-motion shots of their deaths and the fixed-camera images of wind blowing dust over their corpses are over, Butch quietly asks his partner what, exactly, they've done by "going straight."  The point the director Hill emphasizes is that it doesn't matter for these two which side of the robbery they are on--whether they're blowing up trains or warding off bandits--they are men capable of dealing death.  As a result, their screen charisma breaks down and the audience is reminded that despite their wit or sexual allure, they are at heart mysterious--and being mysterious, by definition, means being the subject of the gazes of others.  Perhaps this is one reason Sundance engages in the role-playing game with his girlfriend earlier in the film: it offers him a chance to stop being the subject of the looks of others and permits him to become the voyeur.  Is this comfortable territory for an audience?  Certainly not.  However, it does help us understand the odd nature of the film's rhythm and editing as one more tool in Hill's arsenal, complementing his work on not only the reality of death, but its close proximity to precisely those characters we want to believe are immune to it.

Without a doubt, this is the most striking feature of the film upon a second viewing: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid  is a movie about the irreconcilability of who these outlaws are and who we wish them to be.
 And this, ultimately, is what makes the movie so effective (and, even, great): we realize that our love for Newman and Redford is a mirror of our love for Cassidy and Sundance.  In both cases, we fall not for men, but the images of men, not as pictures of themselves, but as symbols for a mythical kind of life.

Best 125 Films of All-Time

Hey, folks.  A few people have asked me recently if I've ever made a list of the best 100 movies I have ever seen.  The short answer to that question is "yes," I have.  However, the list I used to keep had not been updated in the last 5 or 6 years.  So, tonight, I decided to tackle the project again.

Fair warning: I feel this list is about 95% complete.  There are a handful of universally-recognized "great films" I have yet to see, including Jules et Jim, L'Avventura, Giant, and several others.  However, I have seen a tremendous number of films from a wide collection of other critics' lists, and I do feel firmly that this is a useful list for all practical intents and purposes.  Additionally, the blog post format allows me the opportunity to edit the list as the need arises.  My hope is that I will be more diligent in this over the next few years than I have been over the last few.

Alright, get ready to fire up those Netflix cues--there's work to be done.  Without further ado:

The Top 100

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
5. Schindler’s List (1994)
6. The Searchers (1956)
7. The Godfather, Part II (1974)
8. La Dolce Vita (1959)
9. Seven Samurai (1954)
10. Psycho (1960)
11. The Seventh Seal (1957)
12. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
13. Gone With the Wind (1939)
14. Rashomon (1950)
15. The Bicycle Thief (1949)
16. On the Waterfront (1954)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
19. The Third Man (1949)
20. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
21. The Great Dictator (1940)
22. Chinatown (1974)
23. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
24. Pulp Fiction (1994)
25. Annie Hall (1977)
26. Vertigo (1958)
27. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
28. Sherlock Jr. (1924)
29. Raging Bull (1980)
30. Jaws (1975)
31. Ran (1985)
32. Days of Heaven (1978)
33. Sunrise (1928)
34. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
35. The Lord of the Rings (2003)
36. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
37. Metropolis (1926)
38. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
39. Taxi Driver (1976)
40. Duck Soup (1933)
41. Apocalypse Now (1979)
42. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
43. It Happened One Night (1934)
44. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
45. Easy Rider (1969)
46. There Will Be Blood (2007)
47. All About Eve (1950)
48. The Gold Rush (1925)
49. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
50. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
51. Rear Window (1954)
52. Network (1976)
53. Paths of Glory (1957)
54. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
55. Blade Runner (1982)
56. The Apartment (1960)
57. Unforgiven (1992)
58. Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind (1977)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
61. Double Indemnity (1944)
62. 8 ½ (1963)
63. Star Wars (1977)
64. Strangers on a Train (1951)
65. Notorious (1946)
66. The Quiet Man (1952)
67. Touch of Evil (1958)
68. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
69. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
70. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
71. The Lost Weekend (1945)
72. Badlands (1973)
73. Kill Bill (2003)
74. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (1969)
75. The Elephant Man (1980)
76. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
77. Nosferatu (1922)
78. Brazil (1985)
79. The Sting (1973)
80. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
81. High Noon (1952)
82. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
83. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
84. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
85. King Kong (1933)
86. The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
87. Life is Beautiful (1999)
88. Black Swan (2010)
89. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
90. Patton (1970)
91. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
92. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
93. E.T. – the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
94. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
95. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
96. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
97. La Strada (1954)
98. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
99. The Conversation (1974)
100. The Big Sleep (1946)

Honorable Mentions

1. Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
2. The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
3. Fargo (1996)
4. The Deer Hunter (1976)
5. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
6. Goodfellas (1990)
7. The 400 Blows (1959)
8. M (1931)
9. Some Like It Hot (1959)
10. The Last Picture Show (1971)
11. The Right Stuff (1983)
12. Modern Times (1936)
13. United 93 (2005)
14. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
15. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
16. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
17. Munich (2005)
18. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
19. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
20. Traffic (2000)
21. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
22. Blow-Up (1966)
23. The Wild Bunch (1969)
24. North By Northwest (1959)
25. This is Spinal Tap (1984)

Give me feedback here!  What have I missed?  What are you surprised by?  Let's talk this through in the comments section.  

Movie Night: Children of Men

A few quick observations on last week's movie, Children of Men:

1)  Man, there are a lot of animals in that movie.  I mean, there are animals in literally every scene.  A rundown: Children of Men features dogs (lots of 'em), cats (climbing up Clive Owen's legs), zebras, camels, ostriches, a flying pig, a wild deer, more dogs, more cats, cows, goats, horses, cow corpses, a pig corpse...lots of animals.  It must have been literal hell for the producers of the film: really?  A zebra and a camel for the background of a single shot?  Why?

Well, I suppose the conventional reading would be that in a world without children, animals become fitting substitutes, accepting the love and nurturing that we, as people, want to give.  But the wrinkle in that reading is the stark and upsetting vision the movie casts of humanity: without hope for a future, men and women are themselves animalistic, destroying the arts (hence Danny Huston's "art ark"), killing one another in droves, wrecking cityscapes and (in one advertisement in the film) destroying entire countries.  Why would compassion redirect itself towards animals?  What hope do they offer anyone?

There's also the issue of rebellion organizations in the film.  Julianne Moore's character is the acting leader of the "Fishes," a terrorist cell seeking equal rights for "Fujis," or illegal immigrants (or, more accurately, refugees).  The name of the group isn't an acronym, nor is it incidental: in one scene, a cell member explains to Clive Owen's character that his wife is a "cod"--an "English fish."  The Fishes also hide out on an old farm, and in one critical scene, Clive Owen's character finds out exactly what he's committed to in a barn, where the film's female lead stands naked in the midst of a dairy cow pen.  The message is confusing: is this girl actually cattle?  She seems worried about this, as her comments about the mutilation of cow udders to "fit the machines" hints.  But then again, maybe that's the whole thing: maybe the problem isn't animals, it's the subordination of animals to the causes and desires of human beings.  In that sense, the udder comments make a lot of sense: almost intuitively, the girl realizes that she is not being cared for by the Fishes, she is being used by them: first, as a vessel for her unborn child, and second, as a kind of "flag-bearer," whose body is a symbol for an otherwise absent God's implicit blessing of their particular political cause.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is that the animal imagery seems truly ambivalent: animals are, in a sense, surrogate children in this film, receiving the lost affections of mothers and fathers who are otherwise unable to love something young; however, animals are also instrumentalized over and over again, their bodies taken and used as emblems and symbols for groups with little or no interest in their value.  It's an interesting paradox in the film--and one that begs a retitling of this post: "Is Children of Men the First 'Veganist' Film in Hollywood?"

2) Children of Men is a master class on direction.  Cuaron isn't just telling a story with a camera here, he is making a complete and well-wrought film.  His decisions in this movie--the animals, the tone, the casting of Clive Owen, the unbelievable long tracking shots--are of paramount importance to the film's vision of humanity.  The long tracking shots are a perfect example of this point: whereas one could imagine a thousand easier and similarly effective ways to film the major action sequences of the film, Cuaron's decision to film the biggest action set pieces in two long, single shots produces an almost unbearable sense of tension and dread.  By removing the cuts, Cuaron takes away our ability to "breath" as we watch the scene unfold, and as a result, the sense of peril in these sequences becomes truly, smotheringly real.  Adding to this is Cuaron's decision to keep Owen's character barefoot for the vast majority of the film: not only does Clive never pick up a gun or even threaten another character (he does, of course, smash one guy's face in with a car battery, but in many ways, that's different), he is consistently under the very tangible threat of death.  His shoeless feet give this a sickening gravity: he is unequipped for the conflicts he is a part of, and his life (and our window into the film) is constantly on the verge of being lost.

I suggest a sort of Litmus test for people who have seen the film: imagine the script.  It's an interesting concept, right?  A world without children; one man has to escort the first child born in 18  years to a secret medical ship in international waters to avoid that child's (mis)use as a politcal symbol?  It's great.  But here's the trick: imagine, for a moment, how different this movie would be if it had been given to Michael Bay.  Zach Snyder.  Steven Spielberg.  Ron Howard.  I'll tell you this much: Clive Owen would have found shoes, and in them, (more than likely) two matching handguns with pearl-inlay on the grips.  There's no way any of those directors would have made the decisions Cuaron did--to leave his hero out of the action; to give his characters room for self-sacrifice; to allow his shots to breath for 4, 5, even 7 minutes without a cut or (except in the rarest cases) an explosion.  The movie would have looked different, and as a result, I think it would have been weaker.

To sum that up, Children of Men is the perfect movie to watch if you want to think about what it means to direct a film...and how that job is different than simply framing shots and overseeing an editor in an editing bay.  With Children of Men, Cuaron announced himself as a true talent capable of a complex, inviting, powerful, and excellent film.  If you want to see a direct doing his job unbelievably well, watch this movie.

3) Children of Men has a natural companion piece, if you're interested in branching out, in District 9 (2009).  Both films deal with the last issue I want to raise here (and only raise--I'm running out of space): the need to reach a sensible balance between Homeland Security operations and human compassion.  More specifically, both films deal explicitly with immigration issues, and in both cases, a government defends itself from global chaos by turning away or locking up people/aliens who are simply seeking asylum.  I don't know what to make of this in this film, but I wanted to introduce it as a topic: are these reasonable portraits of the immigration issue?  How can we balance our responsibilities toward the least of these and our need to keep our nations and the values they stand for strong and consistent?  Where is the line in the sand, so to speak, between selfishness and self-preservation?  I honestly don't know the answer to that, but I think it's worth thinking about.  Also, if District 9 only stokes the fire, it's worth watching or reading The Road--it's take on this issue is perhaps the most clear and poignant.

4) The future loves Banksy, even if the Academy doesn't.  Notice that one of Banksy's works--a graffiti painting of two male British police officers hugging and kissing one another--is in the foyer of the "Art Ark," just before we see Michelangelo's David and Picasso's Guernica.  No Future, indeed.

Best Music of 2010 - The Full List

I hope everyone enjoyed the write-ups on the three "4 star" records from last year (at least, in this blogger's opinion).  Now, on to the full list.  Click each link to hear a sample song from the album.

1.  Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
2.  Jonsi - Go
3.  Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
4.  Sleigh Bells - Treats
     *This is maybe my favorite new artist of the year--click this, and stick around for the kick-in
5.  Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
6.  Beach House - Teen Dream
7.  Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
8.  The National - High Violet
9.  Girl Talk - All Day
10. Menomena - Mines
11. Owen Pallett - Heartland
12. Nest - re told
13. Wavves - King of the Beach
14. Sam Amidon - I See the Sign
15. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
16. Thee Silver Mt. Zion - Kollaps Tradixionales
17. The Black Keys - Brothers
18. Buke and Gass - Riposte
19. The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
20. Vampire Weekend - Contra
21. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
22. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
23. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
24. The Walkmen - Lisbon
25. Damien Jurado - Saint Bartlett

OTHER ALBUMS I LOVED:

--. The Books - The Way Out
     *best music video of the year?  best music video of the year.
--. Roky Erickson (w/ Okkervil River) - True Love Casts Out All Evil
--. Best Coast - Crazy for You
--. The Morning Benders - Big Echo
--. Surfer Blood - Astrocoast

...I hope you guys enjoy the links and please, let me know what you think.  Take care, all.

Best Music of 2010 - #2 and #3

2.  JONSI - GO

Former Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi's first solo record--Go--is everything great about Sigur Ros, but faster and more propulsive.  What amazes me most about this record is not just its inventiveness and its style--although those two elements are impressive--but its consistency.  Jonsi makes songs that ought to be impossible--orchestral-fused dance-mix folk pieces--and not only pulls them off but makes them beautiful.  His move to broken English, about which I was skeptical, actually clarifies the entire "Hopelandic" mess.  It's not "invented" the way a code might be, it's spontaneous and cathartic.  I know I rate this album more highly than most people, but I think the reason more people aren't blown away by what Jonsi is doing is because he makes it seem, by album's end, so commonplace.  If you've got this record, listen to it again and tell me why a song like "Tornado" is any less aurally spectacular than those first two tracks--go ahead; the comments section is open, and I'd love to hear what you think.  For me, this record never lets up.

Talking about Jonsi reminds me of a drive I took with my brother, Chris, probably in 2003.  We were on our way to play a show, and for the entire 2 hour drive, we listened only to Sigur Ros.  After an hour or so, Chris looked at me said, "It's impossible not to be happy when you're listening to this."  I think Jonsi's Go is Chris's kind of a record--a record that you can't help but be in love with and in love to.


3.  KANYE WEST - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

We'll get to it a bit later, but to me, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an (even) better version of what Sufjan Stevens is up to with The Age of Adz: it's paranoia--of self, of fame, of craft--ripped open and writ large.  Kanye isn't being "just" an egomaniac here, he is being all-out psychotic.  In tracks like "Power" and "Monster," he vacillates by the verse between being a cocksure "A"rtist and being pathetically insecure, between seeming untouchable and suicidal: it is a strange thing to behold.  Like Sufjan, Kanye's album seems to be the product of not simply a desire for reinvention, but a desire for reinvention fueled by 21st century expectations: Kanye can't get through a song (much less an album) with a singular vision of himself in mind, and his lyrics reflect this tension.  In "Power," West recognizes but then counters the industry's perceived "blackballing" of his career after his interruption of the 2009 Grammys with his own "black balls," insisting that he "know[s] damn well [we're] feeling this shit"--he's right, of course: the song is an unmistakable hit.  However, the more insightful moments come on the back half of the album, highlighted, at least thematically, by his inclusion of indie folk artist Bon Iver on two separate tracks.  It's hard to read Bon Iver's inclusion in this collection coherently: is this crossover moneygrubbing?  A critical kowtow?  Or did West just dig Iver's stuff and then bring him on board?  That last option seems most likely, but it just leads to another question: what in the hell was Kanye freaking West doing listening to Justin Vernon's "Blood Bank EP" in the first place?  Was it because he was interested, or because it made sense for him to be interested?  I think this question is answered in some ways by the retreats into the past in songs like "Monster": God only knows what Kanye means with that "sarcophagus" lyric, but its pretext--that Kanye isn't just "like" a pharaoh, he is one--feels less like a search for a power metaphor and more like an attempt to ground the instability of his own paranoia and fame in what he imagines as a more stable and survivable past.  After all, pharaohs weren't crazy, they were exploitative, greedy, prideful, warmongering assholes.  They were monsters.  For Kanye, even being a monster feels a bit too cliche...which means even that role is relegated to a (beautiful?  twisted?) fantasy.

My read is that the tension that makes this album great is the same tension that makes Kanye so simultaneously typical and enigmatic: he can't seem to go a moment without seeing his musical and personal selves through the eyes of others, and as this feedback loop closes--sample, song, praise, criticism, inspection, obsession, fear, paranoia, rebellion, exploration, sample again--Kanye seems to be increasingly driven to spell out the names others give to him.  Of course, what makes this record great is that it does all of this so well and so unabashedly: for all their postmodern musings, these tracks are almost-all killers, and the guests Kanye rings along--Kid CuDi, Niki Minaj, Jay-Z, etc.--don't just take verses and fill them, they inhabit spaces in these songs that are custom tailored to who they are as both musicians and individuals.

So sure, blame it on Twitter, blame it on UsWeekly, blame it on whatever you want, but this record gets two things right, and sets them in stone: the loudest voices in your head are almost never your own, and you can't sell out something that was never entirely yours in the first place.

Best Music of 2010

Alright folks, the first entry in the list nobody asked for: my picks for the best 25 records* released in 2010, unveiled 1 (or 2...or 5) at a time.  Tonight, I'm going to start with my #1 of 2010: Titus Andronicus's The Monitor.  But before I get started, a quick note on how this list was compiled: although I listen to as much music each year as I can, I am by no means a music expert.  When it comes to evaluating art, I'm much more comfortable talking about movies than I am records.  But, like I said, I listen to a lot of music each year--somewhere between 70 and 100 albums--and while I'm doing that, I oftentimes stumble on records that worth sharing.  This list, in part, is the end result of that effort: this is me, trying to share stuff I like with you.

I hope you find something to spin and dig it.

[re-loops pony tail; slips bare feet out of home-made sandals]


1. (BEST RECORD OF THE  YEAR)

TITUS ANDRONICUS -- THE MONITOR
Okay, I'm not going to write-up every one of these entries, but this record deserves the extra praise: The Monitor is a brilliant piece of music.  The album's conceit embodies most everything I like about it: it purports to be a "punk record about the American Civil War," and in order to do this, Titus Andronicus thematically arrange songs to mirror the progression of the conflict, use multiple re-recordings of period speeches by Lincoln and others to ground lyrical abstractions in specific historical moments, and, of course, cribbing that sweet cover photo of the deck gun of the U.S.S. Monitor, one of the first American ironclads (suck it, Merrimack!).  But a close listen to The Monitor reveals its not, exactly, historical audio-fiction: it's a punk record, with all the requisite hook-ups, break-ups, and angsty teenage ravings you might expect to go along with such a record.  Which, of course, is what makes this thing so downright awesome: Titus Andronicus set you up for the concept record with such gusto that its function as a metaphor seems so hyperbolic that it never can quite settle into cliche--obviously, a break-up isn't as dramatic as the single most devastating conflict in American history...but to a 16-year old boy, it is.  It's obviously worth noting that the music itself is spectacular--vocals are just the right kind of punk-raw; guitars are overdriven and sloppy-great; songs are propulsive, but organized in movements rather than in chopped-up 2:00 minute screams; and even the lyrics are wonderful (see above)--it's a fantastic listen, and standout tracks like "Richard II," "A More Perfect Union," and "Titus Andronicus Forever" get the energy and the sound of 2010 alt/folk/bar/punk as right as...well, I guess as right as that kind of mix-up can get.

So, why The Monitor?  I'm not sure...but I like that the historical Monitor is best known for two pretty darn punky things: first, it was armored to the teeth.  Second?  It sank.

Movie Night: Best In Show

BEST IN SHOW (2000)
D: Christopher Guest

First of all, I've seen Christopher Guest's Best In Show at least a dozen times: I've shown it to friends (new and old), I've watched it with my wife, I've watched it with my parents, I've caught half of it on TNT at 2 in the morning, I've put it on while grading papers or making lesson plans or listening to Braves games or...well, almost anything; I know the jokes, I know the characters, and I know the scenes like the back of my left hand (or, maybe, my left foot).  But there's a funny thing about Best In Show, and it has little-to-nothing to do with Fred Willard: despite all the times I've seen it, I'm still not sure what, exactly, I think it's up to.

Now, that needs a little explaining.  After all, what are any movies "up to"?  I suppose what I mean when I say that is that I believe most movies are made with an argument in mind.  Sometimes, that argument is simple: The Back-Up Plan wants to convince thirty-somethings love is still out there for them (or, at least, it wants to convince them to spend $12 to be told love is still out there for them); Saw VI wants to get you off on grossing you out.  Heck, even Yogi Bear wants to convince you of something (Bears are poor aeronauts?  Points to the best answer to this question in the comments section).  But some other movies--movies I, subjectively, think of as "better" movies--try to do a bit more: Inception wants us to question what exactly happens when we sit down to "share a dream" in a movie theater; Inglourious Basterds wants to convince us that art makes its own history (and that history leaves a mark); Toy Story 3, of all things, wants desperately to convince us that its the fragility of our lives that makes our relationships meaningful.  In short, movies like these challenge us to think about things earnestly and carefully, and--these movies hope--that will help them move beyond the spectacle (where we are passive) and to a point of true communication (where we are active participants in the exchange of ideas).

But that's where I don't quite get Best In Show.  Best In Show has all the earmarks of a movie with an agenda: it's sharp, it's certainly targeted at a particular group of oddball people, and it's edited with an edge to it--a willingness to let discomfort sit on the faces of its characters (and, at least in Beatrice's case, its dogs) in a way that "begs" us to question what, exactly, we're really laughing at.  And that's what bugs me.  For all the laughs I get at the expense of these yuppies, hicks, schlubs, and golddiggers, I'm not really sure what's being taken apart.  Is the point just that dog show people are freaks?  Who didn't know that already?  Did someone think the dog show world had a quiet dignity we were all simply missing?  Or is the target the broad gathering of regional and cultural stereotypes who bring their dogs to this zoo?  Are we supposed to be laughing at the mumbly North Carolina ventriloquist because all North Carolinians are equally driven towards a kind of lackadaisical curiosity?  Is the short-fused anger and aggression underneath the surface of that yuppie couple--and maybe their desire to perpetually deflect blame or responsibility--an indictment of Starbucks (and L.L. Bean) elitists?  If this is true, what does that make the gay couple here?  Or Cookie Googleman?  I don't know the answer, but the line of logic is strange to me: are these characters just grotesques?

Alright, I know I ran off on a tangent there, but let me bring it back to something simple: it seems to me Best In Show never cares much for these people.  That doesn't mean it isn't funny--I laugh at that damn Busy Bee every single time--but it does give me an answer to why I prefer This Is Spinal Tap and even Guest's follow-up, A Mighty Wind: their characters aren't just losers, they're lovable, too.

One last thought to close out this stream-of-conscious return to the blogosphere:

Last night, while watching Best In Show I noticed something I hadn't noticed before: it is an exclusively white movie.  The closest the movie comes to a non-Anglo character--Ed Begley Jr's hotel manager, who literally looks like a Scandinavian ghost--has his ethnicity reassigned by the script as "Irish-German" ("like Robert Duvall in The Godfather!" notes John Michael Higgins' loud and gay Scott Donlan).  This makes me wonder if one of the questions this movie is asking (or, I suppose, one of the arguments is making) is whether or not these kinds of freak shows--the dog shows, the beauty pageants, the sci-fi conventions, the PBA--are endemic, somehow, to whiteness; that they are a truly peculiar development, stemming less from a real passion for dogs (for a movie about doglovers, it's amazing how little it seems these people love their dogs!) and more from a peculiar cultural licensing of oddity and fancy.  That's an incredibly obnoxious sentence, so let's try again:  Maybe what Best In Show wants us to think about is not only why people are interested in this kind of goofiness, but also why our culture permits and encourages these kinds of curiosities over other kinds.

Hmm.  I'm not sure what I think about that.  But I do know this: that is the only time I've ever done it on a rollercoaster.