Category: the state of things

After All These Years, To Believe in Jesus/Narrative-rhea

Did somebody take this blog off its feeding tube? In what is perhaps a misguided attempt to revive it, let me ask a question or a series of interrelated questions:

When not sculpting an exact scale model of Notre Dame from a bar of Zest I spend a great deal of time watching TV—I follow regularly the dramas The Shield, Third Watch (in reruns on A&E), NYPD Blue (until it lamely went off the air a couple of weeks ago), West Wing and 24, as well as The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle; occasionally I also catch various versions of CSI and Law and Order and Raymond. And I am leaving out the various movies—what I see in theaters, what I rent and what I catch glimpses of on TV (god help me, I am so weak I will sit through the whole showing of “Home Dangerous Home” starring Karen Valentine and Richard Crenna on Court TV, only to discover what I already suspected—it wasn’t her husband (Steven Weber) at all but the envious business partner (Morgan Fairchild)).
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mira nair–vanity fair etc.

we didn’t get to “sin city” last night–instead we watched “vanity fair” on dvd. as some of you know i have a strong antipathy to mira nair. when asked to explain this i sometimes, in the interests of economy, say only that someone who makes a film like “kamasutra” should and can never be taken seriously again. she is an interesting figure, however: the minority/third world director trying to make it in mainstream hollywood. and it may be interesting to compare her career, and choices, with those of directors like ang lee and wayne wang (to name only two). i’m not going to do that here. i’ll note only that unlike those two nair hasn’t (or hadn’t until “vanity fair”) succeeded in crossing over into the hollywood mainstream–which for such directors may be marked by the making of a marquee film that has nothing to do with their culture of origin (nair’s “the perez family” flopped and i don’t know that it was a marquee film anyway).

i would argue that nair’s career is essentially all about the search for this mainstream crossover and that what differentiates her from someone like lee or wang is her continued deployment of her culture of origin whether it is wholesale in exoticizing trash like “kamasutra” or cynical ethnic-chic like “my big fat monsoon wedding”, or in what may finally have been her ticket to the big time, a big-budget costume extravaganza with a big hollywood star: “vanity fair”.

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speaking of boys’ clubs

did you lot read this article in the ny times about the new hollywood comedy power brokers?

Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Apatow and Ben Stiller are among the club’s kingpins. Mr. McKay, Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn and Jack Black belong, as do Nick Stevens, a United Talent agent who represents Mr. Carrey and Mr. Stiller, and Mr. Gold and Mr. Miller, who have much of the group in their stable.

The funnymen appear in one another’s movies, from “Dodgeball” to “Anchorman” to “Elf” to “Zoolander,” creating a wheel-of-comedy effect that can leave viewers wondering just whose movie they’re watching. What’s more, the stars and their representatives live, work and play in a continuum that has virtually shut the studios out of the development process. By coming up with their own concepts, finding screenwriters and then offering the whole package for production – script, director and cast, take it or leave it – this group is reshaping screen humor to their liking.

whatever happened to janeane garofalo and sarah silverman?

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?

Action and Violence

Maybe these are two genres. Maybe they’re 50. But let’s lump ’em together.

I am curious about two things from Arnab’s recent posts:
–Name 2, 3 good action films that people here won’t know. Then try to say why.
[I was glad to see Michael clarify why “Wolf” wasn’t good, since I’d forgotten. (And I’d note: Arnab, I did see it in the theaters. It was good to watch for about ten minutes, then…. see what Michael said. And THAT said, watch the thing again and come back and tell us why we’re wrong.)]

–I can think of any number of films that, like “Funny Games,” ostensibly show how the audience’s pleasures in violence should be challenged. I can’t think of one that works, that doesn’t arouse the wrong passions, that doesn’t thrill. Are there any successful anti-violence films? (I recall, vaguely, that Truffaut said you can’t make an anti-war film; the medium sensationalizes, is about arousing sensations in the viewer…)

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over the top french action movies

now there’s a genre for you. i began this as a response to the michaels in the “garden state” discussion but decided it needed a place all to itself.

while being right generally about luc besson you’re all wrong about “the fifth element”. that film kicks ass– even though there is a lot deeply, politically wrong with it. but the rest of the luc besson catalog is all crap. however, i am a connoisseur of the scenery-chewing performance and besson has enabled some of the greatest of this kind in screen history. oldman’s performance in “the professional” may never be topped–though daniel day lewis does make a strong case in “gangs of new york”, but i digress. aesthetic problems with his movies aside, besson’s penchant for putting the female body in pain is somewhat disturbing. i think he may have issues.
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horror conventions and culture

in a comment over in the “the wicker man/spirited away” thread mark posted some interesting stuff about more “amoral” japanese horror vs. the christian ethic of the average american horror film. i think this might deserve its own thread and so am cutting and pasting the relevant portion of mark’s comments here.

What I did discover that interested me was the lack of morals of the spirits and whom they choose to reward and punish. This didn’t come up much in Spirited Away – for example the girl’s parents are turned into pigs not out of some god’s whim, but b/c they dared to eat food that belonged to someone else. They “sinned.” In the Japanese ghost story books I read, it seemed punishments were meted out for no good reason; that the spirits were simply mischievous, weren’t judging based on sin, and in some cases couldn’t even be classified as “thinking” (which reminded me of the Cthuhlu mythos, where the malevolence is pure, and the monsters aren’t even really capable of rational thought.)
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wes anderson

i started writing this as a response to mike in the “i heart huckabees” conversation but decided it merited its own thread:

anderson’s best movie is “bottle rocket”–the ne plus ultra of uncloaked, goofy sincerity. i love all his movies but none of them (or any of the later characters) move me the way anthony and dignan did. he needs to get out of his rut and write a new movie–everything since has been a new take on “bottle rocket” with the pleasures of a repertory company and a higher art direction budget taking the place of growth as a writer. though i must admit that he’s gotten better at writing women: inez in “bottle rocket” barely spoke, and olivia williams’ character in “rushmore” pretty much just raised her eyebrows–then again maybe its just angelica huston.

what does scorcese have to do?

at our oscar gathering the consensus was that his best shot will be to make a holocaust movie about a black paraplegic who survives the camps and then single-handedly de-segregates alabama (jamie foxx wins best supporting actor as martin luther king). that or maybe a mussolini biopic.

not that any of us (at the gathering) have actually seen “the aviator”.

and oh, in your face, rwanda!