The Sleeper Curve

Television makes you smarter! I knew all those hours invested in LOST and 24 and The Sopranos were worthwhile (though Reynolds will want to smack Steven Johnson for not mentioning his faves Deadwood and The Wire). I say more TV shows that traffic in a “thick network of affiliations.” For the uninitiated click here (you may need to register but I’m assuming you already are).

Birth

When I first watched this film in the cinema, I admired the Kubrickian grandeur of Harris Savides’ cinematography and Kevin Thompson’s production design, and I found the dramatic narrative to be compelling if, at times, farfetched. In the end, I drove away from the cineplex ambivalent about its merits and confused by the filmmakers’ unwillingness to provide “proper” narrative closure. In an earlier post on this blog I even suggested Birth to contain moments best defined as ludicrous. But I popped the DVD in the other night and found myself even more glued to the screen—more compelled to watch the actions unfold without the need to define them. I found myself held captive by the taut, sexually menacing and ominous atmosphere (shades of Pinter?). Perhaps I was too caught up in solving the film’s many mysteries the first time around. Continue reading Birth

Millions

Whimsical, delightfully sentimental (I looked it up and it’s not such a bad word), visually stylish, and sophisticated about childhood, consumerism and global economics; Millions was pleasurable without feeling “important.” It’s the kind of film you always felt Spielberg was capable of if he just didn’t feel the need to try so damn hard.

Japan

I’ve been on a Japanese bender recently, especially after reading Peter Carey’s memoir Wrong About Japan: A Father’s Journey with His Son. I’ve read two novels by Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore and The Chronicle of the Wind-Up Bird (while critics seem to favor the latter I found his most recent novel, despite its flaws, the more entertaining and thought-provoking read) and watched a number of films: Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds, Isao Takahatu’s Grave of the Fireflies, Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s Like Grains of Sand, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life and Nobody Knows. I also watched Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou Chou for a second time. I can’t say I have come any closer to an understanding of Japanese culture—if anything these works seem to reflect a country that is more radiant chimera than coherent nation. Continue reading Japan

Manohla Dargis

She writes: “The fact that “Oldboy” is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it’s all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.” If there are no women on this site willing to speak, I’ll let Ms. Dargis do the talking. Boys what do you think?

Iranian Cinema

I’m pretty ignorant about Iranian cinema, but I watched Abbos Kiarostami’s Ten last night and thought it was damn good. J. Hoberman tells me it “questions the notion of film as narrative,” describing Ten as “conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.” That may very well be the critical kiss of death, but I was very much engaged by this complex glimpse of contemporary Iran. Are there other Iranian films out there I should see?

Black Comedies of the 1990s

Unlike Mike and his hi-brow students writing about Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders, I have a student who wants to write about the reproduction of black subjectivity in comedies from the 1990s. She has chosen the following titles: House Party, BAPS, Friday, Bulworth, Hollywood Shuffle, School Daze, Soul Food, and The Best Man. I’m of a mind that she has to have an understanding of comedy (if such a thing is even possible) before she can begin to treat these films as texts that tell us (her) something about the nature of black identity in 90s culture. Any advice?

LOST

I keep waiting for this show to stumble but 17 hours in and I’m still hooked by the unusual depth of characterization as well as the series’ ability to maintain dramatic tension and narrative ambiguity. What first seemed to be a potentially hokey amalgamation of Land of the Lost, Lord of the Flies, and Gilligan’s Island has transformed itself into a potent post-9/11 story of human redemption. With its cast of Koreans, Australians, Iraquis and Americans, a crazy French lady and some polar bears; LOST may be the best hour of network television since . . . well, Freaks and Geeks (24’s “wham bam thank you mam” aesthetics and the convoluted machinations of Alias’ Rimbaldi plot do not measure up). Will it, however, be able to sustain itself into a second and third season, or will it flame out spectacularly like Twin Peaks?

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

I watched Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 release last night. Anybody into this fellow’s films (a Chinese-Malaysian filmmaker who has lived and worked in Taiwan since his early twenties)? Goodbye, Dragon Inn was stunningly frustrating yet captivating all the same. There are basically two narratives that drive the action. Set in what once was a regal now dilapidated Taipei movie palace (a concrete mausoleum full of ghosts or maybe those mysterious men in the belly of the building are simply cruising for sex, I’m not sure), the film captures the theatre’s final screening before closing its doors and jumps back and forth between the handful of audience members and staff in the cavernous theatre with the 1966 King Hu kung-fu epic Dragon Inn being projected on the screen.

Continue reading Goodbye, Dragon Inn