Author: michael

to watch or not to watch this 15-hour documentary on PBS. Honestly, when I hear the name “Ken Burns” I flinch and suddenly wish to do something un-American, like join the Worker’s Party or mock an aging ballplayer. I don’t know why, since I have never seen anything by Ken Burns. have you? I fear that I will hear a great deal about what makes an American, thereby getting a rather precise measurement of my own alienation. I also fear another go-round with “The Greatest Generation”–hearing all those grizzled decent and unpretentious men talk about Guadalcanal and Anzio makes me more feel ever more effete, poring over my “cultural studies” assignments for my students and sorting my iTunes selections. I watched the many hours of Band of Brothers and even at the end was still entirely unable to identify a single character with any precision. I did not attend to Tom Brokaw’s edifying lessons. Ashamed, I realized I had no grandfathers or uncles who had made a heroic stand against the Hun and the Yellow Threat. All I had was my hothouse fanboy appreciation for Cross of Iron , Hell is for Heroes , The Big Red One and The Dirty Dozen . Thinking about Ken Burns makes me feel that Lee Marvin is sniggering at me.

I also fear the “intimate” approach, as apparently the documentary focuses on four soldiers from “quintessentially” American towns. Have we had enough of intimate approaches to huge historical-global events? Have we had enough of the homespun American heartland–especially considering the ideology that keeps getting deployed during this current war? And why is it “The War” according to Burns? others wars too complicated, ambiguous, etc.? Isn’t it about time to complicate “The War?” And why did we all have to wait around for Burns to package this neatly—with accompanying DVD, book and CD available at Barnes and Noble–when there must be thousands of reels of unseen footage languishing all over the country? Why does every consideration of the historical have to be an “event?”

Do I fear and carp too much? Has anybody seen other works by Burns? Any thoughts on this one? Will there be a well-modulated voice-over that makes me want to pull my own teeth out? Will there be…..teaching resources??

Hey, Lee, at least I never pranced around in a big-budget musical!

I watched this DVD last night: compelling enough, even exciting, but overlong in the standard fashion now (where every film must skirt at least 2 1/2 hrs) and unnecessarily unclear about the politics of the area, Sierra Leone, in which it was set. The interesting fact is that (spoilers) the film follows the same narrative route as Children of Men and The Constant Gardner : a cynical, amoral or at least disengaged, white men sacrifices his life for a ‘racial other’–thereby presumably redeeming himself, establishing his credentials as part of humanity and making it possible for a black man/woman to escape from the horrifying conditions of his/her current environment. What gives with this move–white guilt which can nevertheless not find the strength to step out of the limelight, the economic necessity for major films to have major (mainly white) stars, a condescending attitude toward Africa and Africans or a persistent religious impulse in which it is necessary to achieve salvation by good works? do you regard this narrative standby cynically–a kind of artistic condescending post colonialism–or more generously as the persistence of a moral viewpoint, evident in so many stories, emphasizing the need to transform the individual “from within”–something no doubt that many white westerners could use? by the way here’s a useful article on the history and current issue of the “conflict diamond”

Well the big night is here and I haven’t heard a word about it here, nor have I heard anything about an Oscar pool. I attribute it to Arnab’s exhaustion and the fact that the date has been moved up. Some predictions, no better or worse than Bill Murray’s. The Queen will be the suprise winner for Best Picture. why? It has broad appeal, i.e. is middlebrow enough for a general consensus, while the others are too specialized ( Little Miss Sunshine and Babel ), too alien Letters from Iwo Jima ) or too violent/cynical ( The Departed ). Scorsese will win the oscar for Best Director, though this film is the weakest of those he’s been nominated for. Pan’s Labyrinth will be the suprise total winner, getting awards for Best Foreign Film, Art Direction, Cinematography, Makeup and Original Score. It will,however, lose best screenplay to The Queen . Children of Men which should have been nominated for Best Picture will win only Best Adapted Screenplay. Babel gets shut out. The highly touted Dreamgirls wins for Hudson, Murphy and Best Song (it has 3 of the 5 nominations–please god let us not hear them all tonight). The main acting goes as expected–Mirren and Whitaker. Whitaker will give the most unusual speech and Ennio Morricone, winning the lifetime award, will charm as with his broken English, as those wacky foreigners do! Jokes will be….lame. Peter O’Toole will be there drunk and Nicholson will shout out something profane.

Has anyone else seen this anthology film (I believe it’s been mentioned elsewhere). 11 short films from an international group of directors. Why do I feel that the collection is a failure, albeit an interesting one. Part of the problem lies in the idea of an “international” perspective on the event I think. Is there such a thing? How is it distinguished from an American perspective. This post derives from the thoughtful commentary provided by Gio at our books site and my somewhat less thoughtful response, claiming that Americans understand 911 in a different way than most of the world. Thoughts? Is the event “ours” not “theirs?” If you’ve seen it, any thoughts on individual segments?

I recommend the collection of shorts called The Ossuary and Other Tales particularly the short title film and the longer piece “Don Juan.” “The Ossuary” is a kind of film poem documenting the chapel built from bones in Sedlec, Czechoslavakia–containing bones from the bodies of approximately 40,000 bodies. The disturbing but compelling images are juxtaposed with a soundtrack recorded from a school visit to the church, a teacher lecturing her young students on the work that went into the chapel, but mainly hectoring them with the directive not to touch any of the bones (they must pay a fine if they do!); inevitably one does and the ghoulish tour ends with a vigorous chastisement. It’s a witty film….as much about education as the eerie setting. one may make a chapel of bones but a student cannot touch a single femur.

“Don Juan” is, yes, an adaptation of the legend, with marionettes. when it started, I thought “oh, no…” but minutes into it I was hooked. Chilling, comic, grotesque and suspenseful all at the same time. The marionnettes and the theatrical setting suggest decay, a lost theatricality and an oppressive European past, but the sensibility is one of contemporary modernist irony. the puppets’ impassivity nevertheless suggests an uncanny expressiveness. DVD

For info on The Ossuary

I recommend Hollywoodland, a neat little noir that is no big shakes but is well-handled and intriguing enough. I expect that it will serve nicely as the first part of a double bill with The Black Dahlia, another story of dashed hopes in hollywood. and speaking of the black dahlia, please read the book by John Gilmore (which I’ve recommended elsewhere) called Severed–you can practically feel the seediness of 1940s LA and the desperation of midwestern starlets who find themselves in quasi-prostitution rather than working with Warner Brothers. In Hollywoodland, the nicest bits are Bob Hoskins as a feral studio exec whose wife overtly cheats on him with George Reeves, the man who played superman in the TV series. Ben Affleck, never known for his acting chops, is very fine as Reeves, getting his manner and vocal inflections down without being overbearing. the heart of the film is probably diane lane as the studio exec’s wife, carrying on with Reeves–she projects an interesting mix of sexiness with a tinge of desperation at getting old and at letting her life go to waste in pointless indulgence. Adrian Brody as the detective/plot exposition device who investigates the whole sordid affair (was Superman’s death a suicide or a murder?) is also good. The movie is competently directed by Allen Coulter, a regular director for The Sopranos. one wishes that Coulter had let go a bit in the manner of, say, Jack Nicholson in The Two Jakes (an unjustly overlooked masterpiece–I don’t care what fans of Chinatown say) or David Lynch in Mulholland Drive, but as a sucker for the fatalistic noir genre, I was happy for two hours. I, too, am afraid of being typecast as the invulnerable he-man type.
Continue reading recent viewings

This message pertains to radio, perhaps a forbidden topic on this visually oriented blog. But I had to take a moment to note the passing of the Phil Hendrie show whose last broadcast will be June 23rd 2006. to my mind it indicates one of the final nails going into the coffin of the medium of radio which once held so much promise. Initially founded on its simplicity–one man/woman and a microphone–the medium is now one of the most visible demonstrations of how homogenized our culture is. Imagine all of “classic rock” being whittled down to the same twenty songs. Imagine romance covered in the treacle of the Delilah show. Politics is now the province of the commentators who range from mild right wing to quasi fascist; even the mildest leftist point of view is reviled as a secular assualt on THE VALUES WE HOLD MOST DEAR! Continue reading Phil Hendrie, R.I.P.

Annual Oscar Odds Roundup, thanks to Canbet.com: notice odds on Hoffman, Witherspoon, Ang Lee and Brokeback (-450 means you have to bet that amount to receive a $100 payoff, +3000 means that you get 3000 on a $100 bet–in other words the first is like 1:5 odds and other is 30:1). Not much to pick from but I think Frances McDormand is an oscar fave and might have a chance and she’s got good odds at 20 to 1, also Keener in the same supporting category at 18 to 1. I don’t see why War of the Worlds wouldn’t win best visual effects over King Kong so I’m happy to take 30 to 1 odds there. Plus it’s a backhand way of recognizing spielberg whose munich will get shut out of the major categories. Ang Lee seems to be the lock at 1:10. I’ve never even seen odds that bad at the racetrack! The foreign language film is a hard one—south africa always has the liberal sentiment so a ham and cheese sandwhich from there could get nominated, “Paradise Now” might also be a backhand way to acknowledge the politics of Munich but in a far more minor way, but then there’s the old standby of the holocaust doc in the form of Sophie Scholl (one who died as a result of the White Rose protest to the Nazis)–the last provides provocative odds at 10 to 1 though it’s from Germany, something of a drawback. I’d say if you have a hundred to burn, split it 3 ways between Keener, War of the Worlds and Sophie Scholl. Jake Gyllenhall is also not getting bad odds at 5 to 1.
Continue reading Annual Oscar Odds Roundup

I’ve decided to make a trek to the New York Museum of TV and Radio sometime in the next month–with the main intention of seeing Peckinpah’s TV adaptation of Noon Wine, which seems to be entirely unavailable otherwise. If you had the chance what other TV or film items would you look for–what’s not available currently, even by the wily pirates on ebay??