June 20, 2010
GEKKOED
Oliver Stone has never made a truly successful movie*, and he has made many terrible ones. His most lauded film - PLATOON, which netted him several Oscars - is one of the most overrated movies ever made. At the time it seemed a revelation of realism and political polemic, now it stands as a fake epic of Manichean struggles that seems a particularly reductive way of thinking about Vietnam. Compared to the contemporary FULL METAL JACKET (overshadowed by the success of PLATOON), it lacks any complexity in its ham-handed points and dramatic binaries. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY also dates badly. NATURAL BORN KILLERS and JFK have their fans (Roger Ebert, in particular, worships almost uncritically at the altar of Stone), but it can be argued that every film Stone has made since 1990 is on some level a disaster, a visceral up-front overload that only heightens the emptiness inside.
Yet studios keep giving Stone the big money to make his big-scale stinkers even after ALEXANDER was one of the highest-profile bombs of the decade. Stone responded to that failure by blaming a homophobic American public, even though most critics argued that the filmed homosexuality was at a minimum. W was a golden opportunity misplayed by broad caricatures and easy political points. WORLD TRADE CENTER was ignored despite its jingoistic and populist celebrations. Which is why it's little surprise that he's returning to the well of his most successful and archetypal moment with a timely sequel to WALL STREET.
A word about WALL STREET: I love it. I've seen it about twenty times even though I have no idea what the hell is going on. The business talk is exhilarating, shots of people on the phone moving around more money than I've ever thought about. It's an endearingly ridiculous timepiece, as when Gordon Gekko shows Bud Fox his portable TV and we the audience are supposed in wonder of the new technology that money can buy. It has an amazing cast: Hal Holbrook reminds us, as he always does, why he is a national treasure even if his good-guy gestures are forgotten. Even fans of the movie criticize the moment when Bud stands out on the balcony of his posh penthouse and asks, "Who am I?" But I think this scene is kind of perfect: like Stone's movies, this obvious dramatic gesture is supposed to be meaningful to its sayer, even as the rest of us comment on its obvious shallowness. It works.
And it also has great David Byrne songs. After watching it again, I noticed for the first time the use of tunes from the standout Byrne/Eno effort MY LIFE IN THE BUSH WITH GHOSTS. "Naïve Melody," a favorite of any Talking Heads fan, is used to good ironic effect here. Stone definitely can film a good scene or two.
But what is so ironic about WS, and I'm not the first person to say this, is how Stone romanticizes the very thing that draws his liberal ire. The movie is supposed to be a Faustian morality tale about selling your soul but gaining the world, and we're supposed to deplore Gekko's slick greed. And yet his "Greed is Good" speech became a rallying cry for people who wished Ayn Rand had written more books. The 2000 film BOILER ROOM didn't have a lot of perceptiveness to it, but it did capture the group of frat boy stock-brokers who see Gekko as their strategic and stylistic mentor.
So WALL STREET fails spectacularly at the same time it succeeds wildly. Its success is based on its mixed messages and posh surface. Like a converted Hells Angel who tells about the whiskey he drank and fun he had before he read the Bible, we're left remembering the glorious excesses rather than the necessity of salvation. The decline is so rushed that we're left to be compelled by the same things Stone is: Michael Douglas' suits, Darryl Hannah, and a portable TV. A few years later GOODFELLAS would sell this message by matching the dizzying highs with terrifying lows, but that's because it wasn't made by a morally compromised filmmaker who nonetheless views himself as a cultural visionary and a liberal saint.
Now WALL STREET 2 threatens to revisit the same ground with similar shallow cautionaries hidden by the glare of Stone's slickness. I imagine that if Stone wanted to see himself as a surrogate for any of his characters, it would be an unholy union between Jim Morrison and BORN's missionary-like Ron Kovic. But it is ironic how much Stone has embodied the traits of his most iconic creation, Gordon Gekko - selling the public on a promise that isn't fulfilled, all style and no substance.
*- I know that SALVADOR has its adherents, but it is really a movie you want to watch again any time soon? Is it a movie you've watched or thought about recently? I think at the time, they over-praised James Woods for being able to act like a blustering asshole when we've learned that this is the one performance he's capable of giving on a moment's notice.
| By Andytown | 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2010
ON MUMBLECORE AND CYRUS
Here is an interesting take on Mumblecore, a genre I love and am fascinated by is in alternate camps controversial or ignored. 2010 might just be the year mumblecore (a term its movementeers did not sanction and don't really like) emerges from cult following into a more prominent mainstream. The reasons are two: GREENBERG*, which features the genre's it-girl Greta Gerwig giving the finest performance by an actress in many a moon; and the upcoming CYRUS, directed by the stalwart Duplass brothers (THE PUFFY CHAIR, BAGHEAD). To give an idea of the inter-connective tissue of the genre (one of its greatest virtues, IMHO), Mark Duplass has a small role in GREENBERG, and stars in the recent HUMPDAY (he also stars in the FX series THE LEAGUE, which I haven't seen); he has the possibility of becoming its breakout star as an actor.
The cast of CYRUS features Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, which makes it the highest profile mumble-core movie ever made. You can read about it here. Seven million dollars is a lot of money for these guys, who the digital revolution allowed to exist. As I see it, mumblecore - and not Michael Mann's use of it to shoot chase scenes or David Lynch's realization that he doesn't have to include "plot" in any of his film - is the most exciting result of the cheaper technology and easier entrance to film-making. This is a lineage that begins with Italian Neo-Realism, travels through folks like Cassavettes and Soderbergh, places like the Sundance labs, and has also produced some truly awful movies.
My concern for mumblecore is the crisis that the New York Times article suggests: when they get the money, will what made the films unique and relevant disappear? This quote, while qualified, at once excites and troubles me:
"We told them they didn't have to keep the location exactly the same. We'll find a can of paint and spruce it up a little bit. It was a strange position to be in."
I compare this scenario to what happened in the movie WAYNE'S WORLD. Once Rob Lowe's corporate suit buys them, their crappy but wonderful public access TV show gets homogenized into everything but what made it fun to begin with. They have a sponsor, an announcer, a band who actually play guitars, and special effects. As Garth says, "We're looking down on Wayne's basement. Only that's not Wayne's basement. Isn't that weird?" WAYNE'S WORLD could exist in Wayne's basement, just as mumblecore seems only to belong to the no-budget, no-stars, no-frills world that spawned it.
But I like that, apparently, the Duplasses refuse to "spruce it up a bit." It holds out hope that a cocktail of studio politics and public reception won't challenge their aesthetic. But if these films aren't modest successes, you can expect they won't be made.
One of the reasons mumblecore is so exciting is because there are so many key players and all of them are putting out exciting, interesting, personal work. In addition to the Duplass brothers films, which are more broadly comedic than most of the genre offerings, you should check out
- Aaron Katz: DANCE PARTY USA, QUIET CITY (both astounding exercises in minimalistic filmmaking)
- Joe Swanberg: NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS, HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, ALEXANDER THE LAST
- Andrew Bujalski: FUNNY HA HA, MUTUAL APPRECIATION (in my opinion, the best two films; here's hoping he gets back to work)
Whatever the case, I'm excited about CYRUS. Reilly may be my favorite actor (more on him later) and he seems to be peaking, which is saying a lot considering MAGNOLIA was ten years ago. I'm getting a little tired of Marisa Tomei's insistence on taking her clothes off in every movie, but she's a fine actress and I can see her being great in this. And Jonah Hill, who I mostly know as a corpulent chucklehead and have never acknowledged his acting chops, looks good in the previews.
* - Whether or not GREENBERG fits the genre is up for debate. Regardless of the participation of Gerwig and Duplass, it seems to fit the self-destructive characterizations and rambling, overlapping dialogue of most mumblecore movies. But it's also very firmly a Noah Baumbach movie. Also, a discussion should be had about Kelly Reichardt (OLD JOY), but I would exclude her just because she doesn't seem connected to the key players.
| By Andytown | 1:18 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2010
BEST ALBUM OF THE DECADE #1: ELLIOTT SMITH - FIGURE 8
There is a temptation to read the last album produced in Elliott Smith's lifetime, FIGURE 8, as a suicide note - or at least as a statement about the profound malaise that led up to his baffling and mysterious death. I think this reading operates more as an effort to explain what many see as the worst album Smith ever produced: a step back from the artistic triumphs of EITHER/OR and XO, and the breakthrough of the GOOD WILL HUNTING soundtrack. Therefore it seems fitting that Smith offers songs with titles like "Everything Means Nothing To Me" and "I Better Be Quiet Now" in which he adds, "I'm tired of wasting my breath." And the haunting closing titular cover of the Schoolhouse Rock "Figure 8" song, included on the Japan release, was just ambiguous and spooky enough to suggest a closing ellipsis from the enigmatic Smith, a weird, ornate nightmare.
It's a stretch, and one I don't really buy; Smith was working on two projects when he died: providing the soundtrack for THUMBERSUCKER for Mike Mills (which is collected with other B-sides and rarities on NEW MOON) and finishing his final album, the solid FROM A BASEMENT ON A HILL. Those share the same glum sense of melancholy that are apparent on all the 90s Smith albums, only without as much of the sonic instrumentalism - each album in the three years before he died is more subdued than the ones than preceded it, at least since his debut ROMAN CANDLE.
I challenge the argument that FIGURE 8 is a sub-par album and counter by claiming that it is actually his best album: his BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, an emotionally charged and coherent masterpiece. If FIGURE 8 has a weakness, it's that it lacks the memorable songs of Smith's previous efforts - a greatest hits collection would probably only include the opening track "Son of Sam."
"Son of Sam" got untypical radio play back then, and it's the one song on FIGURE 8 that seems out of place. Skipping to the next song begins a theme - this is about a breakup, a relationship ending, and I don't know enough about Smith's biography to know if this is biographical; but it hits the beats pretty perfectly. "Somebody I Used To Know" kicks things off:
"I had tender feelings that you made hard
But it's your heart, not mine, that's scarred
So when I go home I'll be happy to go
You're just somebody that I used to know"
This opening salvo is an rueful evaluation, but its also a statement of inner tranquility proven hopelessly idealistic in the later songs. "Somebody" suggests that a relationship can be redefined when its over, and a satisfaction and resolve can be gained from that. Next up, "Junk Bond Trader" seems to fit with some of Smith's earlier cultural iconoclasm, where he rejects anything artificial even while admitting there is probably nothing real. It might fit that standard pretty well in terms of an actual Junk Bond Trader - "A stickman flashing a fine line smile / Junk bond trader trying to sell a sucker a style" - until we realize that this is the "somebody" from that first song:
"I won't take your medicine, I don't need a remedy / To be everything I'm supposed to be / I don't want nobody else / I can do it by myself / We're meant to be together / Now I'm a policeman directing traffic / Keeping everything moving, everything static / I'm the hitchhiker you'll recognize passing / On your way to some everlasting . . . Better sell it while you can"
Mixing metaphors, we realize the depth of his animosity toward "you:" On your way to some everlasting what? It's the same assurance that marks the first song, in rewriting the jilting lover as a deluded, selfish, and cruel individual, while the singer both in control (a "policeman") and a non-inhabitant (a "hitchhiker") of the world the ex wanders through aimlessly into certain self-destruction. This blame and self-assurance fittingly turns into deep remorse, and honest reflection, in "Everything Reminds Me of Her." These ambiguous pronouns are key ("Somebody, "Your," "We," "Everything") in connection the more specific ones ("Her, Me"), because it is immediately followed by "Everything Means Nothing To Me," in which "Everything" and "Her" are shown to be interchangeable. Before ending with the title repeated sadly, Smith mourns, "Reflection in the water showed an iron man still trying to / Salute people from a time when he was everything he's supposed to be." He is that iron man, and the past is only comprehendible when viewed through the prism of the sad memories that consume him.
Admittedly, "LA" is a spookily upbeat ballad that portends Smith's eventual fate (I am assuming that Smith committed suicide here, or that at the very least, he died a very sad man) - After announcing "Good morning all, it's a beautiful day," he admits "Last night I was about to throw it all away." This is Smith's most articulate statement of his manic depressive personality, what had to be constant shifts between mellow satisfaction and unbearable misery: the misery that marks his most famous song, "Miss Misery," when he explains "I'll fake it through the day with some help from Johnny Walker Red," the mellow languishing of ROMAN CANDLE when failed romance makes you drive all over town.
The holding pattern continues in "Lost and Found." The lyrics are typically cryptic, but I think it suggests a new relationship - there's "Angelina." I'm reminded of the character of Sarah (played by Lili Taylor) in HIGH FIDELITY, with whom Rob makes an arrangement based on their mutual dumped-ness. This is probably not accurate symbolism; in fact I base my whole reading on the lines: "Day breaks and every morning when he wakes he thinks of you / I'm alone, that's okay, I don't mind." It's two people who have both been hurt, have been abandoned, and have found a place where the can hang around until they're claimed.
"Stupidity Tries" has Smith recognizing his smallness in the face of an indifferent God. Challenging him is, simply, "stupidity," yet Smith still tries.
"I couldn't think of a thing
That I hope tomorrow brings
Oh what a surprise
Stupidity tries"
"Easy Way Out," another possible harbinger of suicide, belies that forecast. Instead, it's clearly about his recognition that relationships are not the easy way the title suggests might be possible. It may be a way out, but it is anything but "easy." He tells us, "There's no escape for you except in someone else," which might be the sign that the mysterious heartbreaker(s?) who inhabit this album have found that someone else, and that that someone else is a temporary solution to their inability to solve all of the problems that they're avoiding, ignoring, or blissfully reimagining. Yet Smith is not about to let this pass idly:
"I wish you luck, I really do
With the problem, with the puzzle
Whatever's left of you
I heard you found another audience to bore
A creative thinker who imagined you were more
A new body for you to push around and pose"
I love the caustic-ness of "a creative thinker who imagined you were more," because it seems as though Smith is trying to contrast this new chuck to himself, when he's in fact describing himself. Everything we've heard about the relationship before reveals a "body" pushed around. And Smith clearly adds weight to his own sense of meaning by arguing that his ex is now "Whatever's left of you," as though he's taken something that she can't have back.
"Wouldn't Mama Be Proud" and "Color Bars" are fine songs, but they're almost an intermission for "Happiness" - an emotional powerhouse belied by the sweet stylings of its lyrical tone. In this, the narrator we've seen earlier - struggling with the broken romance, speaks about himself in third person. Check out this live performance (the acoustic version is better than what's on the album).
As the song ends, it becomes a bare statement of his absurd idealistic beliefs that, whoever she is, she can save him, heal him, redeem him. "What I used to be will pass away and then you'll see / That all I want now is happiness for you and me." It's an admission of guilt, the first on the album. In "Pretty Mary K," he again calls on the possibility that a girl can save him, like the soldier lying in an infirmary bed. In an album that's been angry and hateful toward some not-present woman, here he calls on an ideal so heavenly and saintly that she becomes like Florence Nightingale in her ability to provide bedside salvation. It's her that he's been looking for, and will keep look for.
That said, the final two songs are his realization that it didn't work, it won't work, and the best thing he can do is be quiet. Stop calling her, stop writing her, stop singing about her. He's tired, after all, of "wasting his breath." This is a statement along the lines of TS Eliot saying "We are the Hollow Men." Art, while wonderful, can't save you, and the best thing to do is move on. I love this song. It's my favorite on the album, and it's one of my favorite songs ever. Without going into detail why, I once listened to song over and over again, thinking Smith so beautiful in his simplicity with the line: "Alot of hours to occupy, it was easy when I didn't know you yet." In the early songs, Smith pointed out that he could be angry, nihilistic, but still resolute, and here he shatters that myth. All he can do is stop talking about it. As if he even needed to, he hammers this home in "Can't Make A Sound," the last song (before the instrumental "Bye"), where he admits he has become a "silent movie"
(A live version is here; I can't embed it)
But the passing time is brutal, even though each second allows him to get further away. He's come from hating the heartbreaker, to spurning her, to watching her find someone else, to realizing he'll never stop loving her, and finally, he's got to forget her. Even though he wants her to explain, to help him understand this unfathomable decision she's made: "Wish I knew what you're doing / And why you want to do it this way, so I can't go the distance." But in the end, he'll say nothing. He's got a long time to go.
He's getting further away.
| By Andytown | 9:45 PM | Comments (1)
April 24, 2010
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE #2: THE FLAMING LIPS - YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS
For an album with a silly name, YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS has a lot on its mind. Its opening song, "Fight Test," is the musical equivalent of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be" soliloquy, and that tone hangs over the entire album, a continuation of similar themes from their 1999 critical breakthrough THE SOFT BULLETIN. The Lips are so goofy in theory, what with their costumes and Wayne Coyne's Jay Leno appearances, that we fail to remember what makes them so interesting: each album acts as a philosophical and stylistic polemic rejecting any hopes we might have of classifying them.
"Fight Test" gained notoriety for shamelessly ripping of Cat Stevens' "Father and Son," spurring a legal battle that that Yusaf Islam won. Fair enough, Yusaf, but while musically it's similar to Cat, lyrically it's more like Hamlet - wondering if the incomprehensible mysteries of life are even worth dealing with.
"so when it came time to
Fight I thought I'll just step aside and that the time would
Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool"
"Fight Test" wonders about the bigness about the universe and the tiny speck we occupy in it, and renders all previous conclusions about it a bit arrogant. It's a giant question mark that opens the album, foreshadowing that we will live within that question, rather than answer it.
The next three songs introduce our ass-kicking titular protagonist, Yoshimi, and her enemies. We're living in a dystopia kind of like of the one describe in the TERMINATOR movies: robots "learn to be something more than a machine." Of course, this can also be read as a grand allegory for any kind of emotion whatsoever, that we're all constructs of some mechanical something and when we love we come out of that. "Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the Why you feel - is it wrong to think it's love When it tries the way it does..." The sinister hum that hangs over this lets us have it both ways.
Yoshimi: she's a vitamin-eating blackbelt in karate who works for the city; she's all that stands between us and the robots. We believe in her because she stops the entities who will "eat" us. And that fight is emphasized in some pretty intense guitar work and background noise. Whether she wins or loses remains unknown. It's the instability that matters to the lips, and the clang and noise of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part II" requires a leap of creativity to be read as optimistic.
Trying to fit the later songs into some kind of concept album frameworkdoesn't work: they're ostensibly about relationships and memory, but ultimately about leaving something behind that you don't want to, to go somewhere you're not sure you want to go, even if it's kind of awesome. "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" is just a riff on that spectacular title, the futility and necessity of it. "Are You A Hypnotist" makes even more symbolic that girl who Robert Johnson was complaining about in the 30s, likening love to hypnotism in a move that, while familiar, still resonates here. "It's Summertime" is another familiar move, done really well with the weird symphony of noises the Lips bring to it. Summertime, that vestige of hope and happiness, is here reduced to "self-reflected inner sadness."
Of course, there's an argument to be made that the Lips and bands like them are more interested in the noise than the ideas around them. But that gambit belies the coherence here - the defiance of one set of ideas in the face of another conflicting things: summertime and sadness; love and hyptonism; ego and death; Yoshimi and Pink Robots; suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune taking up arms against that sea of troubles. In that sense, the allusion to "Father and Son" makes more sense in light of this dualistic view of life - its simplistic but at the same time makes you tremble at its bigness.
"Do You Realize" is the best song on the album, and along with "Fight Test," the closest to a radio hit. The irony is that all the stuff we "realize" is pretty obvious, because it's all about death. Yet in between, there's the realization that "happiness makes you cry" and ultimately that "you" have a "beautiful face." Something very sweet is happening here, and any accusation that Coyne and co. are up to some saccharine motives fly away in the face of the experimentalism that pervades the album. In light of realizing that we're all going to die, you have to focus on the things that makes today meaningful. While, indeed, "it's hard to make the good things last," that doesn't mean we can't enjoy them. This is why they end with the "beautiful face."
"All We Have Is Now" closes the poetic aspect of the album by concluding on the central theme that "Do You Realize" imparts. It fits the nameless fighter of "Fight Test," Yoshimi in her perhaps hopeless quest against the machine, and the fool who dares to strut his stuff before the gates of hell. In THE SOFT BULLETIN and YOSHIMI, we are always being, never becoming - which is why it seems they choose to end the album in flux: "Approaching Pavonis Mon by Balloon."
The Flaming Lips subsequent albums have proven, sadly, to be diminishing returns. AT WAR WITH THE MYSTICS is at more radio-friendly and more absurdly symbolic, but not better for it. EMBRYIONIC seems to be a (over)reaction to those accusations of selling out. Whether Wayne Coyne and his burning mouth can re-approach the creative peak of SOFT BULLETIN and YOSHIMI remains to be seen. Whether their move to become icons of a certain independent spirit that's been fittingly homogenized for Jay Leno has ruined them for the rest of us . . . still up in the air.
But for a moment they were perfect. And let's not forget that.
| By Andytown | 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2010
BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE #3: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH - SOME LOUD THUNDER
In his novel HOCUS POCUS, Kurt Vonnegut relays the story about a guy who, as a kid, got stuck in an elevator. He was stuck for about twenty minutes; he thinks that this is a major point in American history; he thinks there is going to a banquet and a celebration afterward; finally the elevator starts and goes to the floor it's supposed to go to: the customers are simply waiting for the elevator, and the kid is surprised to find out that he was not a part of something important. This is Vonnegut's analogy for soldiers coming home from the Vietnam War - for me it is the experience of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's SOME LOUD THUNDER.
After all the rave reviews for first self-titled album from the band with the imperative for a name, I found it a bit underwhelming. They were not as interesting as the bands they were clearly trying to emulate, and their novelty wore off pretty quick. Alec Ounsworth, that energetic, raspy fellow who yells now matter soft or loud the music behind him, didn't seem to have a lot to sing about. Needless to say, I wasn't expecting much from their follow-up.
My friend, frequent blog-reader Bethan, gave me an advanced copy that I otherwise wouldn't have listen to. When I heard the first song, I imagined that something had gone wrong in the burning process: it seemed to start mid-lick. After one second, the lyrics came crashing in and neither the song, nor the album, never relented from the energy of that first moment. It was a brash, bold feat, and I've never heard anything like it before or since. Their first album was all catch and quirk and pop-tastic lyrics hidden by a grungy aesthetic, but this one immediately told you it would be nothing like that. The lo-fi style is never betrayed by any grander ambitions, and what remains is something at once stunningly personal and not quite attainable.
And that's where the Vonnegut comparison came up. I assumed I had heard the advanced copy of the album everyone would be talking about. I was flummoxed when I found, after its release, that the advanced reviews were so lukewarm, occasionally dismissive. But each I listen to it, I reassure myself that I'm right - I have no secret motive or ambition for selling this album; I'm merely surprised that it hasn't even developed a cult following.
The title track is a knock-out, a post-modern anthem never acknowledged. It's about being unable to communicate, a descriptive cacophony of noises that mirrors the frenetic sound. As Ounsworth keeps shrieking, "That's the state of my story / and it could be maybe something complete someday," we're reminded that much of the best music wasn't supposed to mean anything, and this album - with its artless cover and chaotic exuberance becomes a blank slate on which we can all project our meanings. Yet I find that its poetic even its discord.
And it's followed by the most gentle song CYHSH has ever sung, a mix of their familiar nonsense and a fascinatingly earnest love song:
"You're not like me
It seems that people stick like flies to you
And my mystery
Is just that I've no one to cling to"
"Emily Jean Stock," who is in reality Ounsworth's wife, highlights our insecurities in relationships while reminding us why they're so wonderful when they work. The song contrasts the beautiful, charismatic title character with the singer's realization that he doesn't belong with her. Knowing that this is about his wife makes its combination of saccharine intensity and vulnerable confession welcome.
The next show stopper is "Satan Said Dance," a perverse, ambitious dance number which mixes electronic music with actual electronic dissonance. Its absurd balance sounds like an explosion at the studio and speaks to and exemplifies the liberation of hedonism while parodying the earliest critics of the genre: if dancing is really Satan's lurid vehicle for God's creatures, it might end up looking and sounding something like this electro-nightmare.
The one-two-three punch that leads to the end of the album - "Arm and Hammer," "Yankee Go Home," and "Underwater (You and Me)" keeps this from being as uneven as their debut. Because SOME LOUD THUNDER is ultimately about the failure to communicate with anyone, even though we need that communication to survive, and its oscillation between those two extremes is what makes it moving even its dissonance, coming together in "Underwater." If the album opens with "All this talking / You'd think I'd have something to say" and closes with:
"We'll design a clever disguise
Or retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives
Underwater you and me"
Ounsworth ultimately gives us a love letter in spite of itself.
The last song - the shouting and sounds of "Five Easy Pieces" is kind of a letdown; I wish it closed with the aforementioned "Underwater;" it's this that keeps it from being number 2 (but not number 1). But I will continue to sing the praises for the best album you haven't heard, listened to once, or didn't listen to carefully enough.
| By Andytown | 8:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 4, 2010
SHORT THOUGHTS ON THE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEES
Short Thoughts on the Academy Award Nominees:
AVATAR - It is what it is: a three hour spectacle that I have no interest in seeing again. Sigourney Weaver, adding humor and pathos, was a welcome presence because the Na'vi themselves were kind of dull noble savages. Their world, however, was anything but dull, and the 3D and the IMAX made it an enchanting experience, even if it was caught up in a pretty standard anti-imperalism narrative (the DANCES WITH WOLVES comparisons are appropriate). So while every beat of the story and its characterizations were familiar, the visuals brought it to the level of a really awesome documentary about space that you might see in a planetarium. If it wins the Oscar, it will be the ironic equivalent of a movie that is nothing like it: AMERICAN BEAUTY. We look back at its 2000 victory and wonder why; AVATAR will certainly be surpassed by better, more inventive movies that share its visual flourish. It's like a Cecil DeMille movie without the camp, but I found myself wanting the camp.
THE BLIND SIDE - Here is what this movie is saying, and sadly it is why some of its audience liked it: if poor African Americans could only get on board with the spunky upper-class ethos of white people, they would just be fine. Because other than its central virtuous manchild, all the people of color in this movie are repulsive stereotypes: at one point we see they are smoking weed and drinking malt liquor and talking about raping white teenagers around illegitimate children. I imagine the real Michael Oher story is one of nuance, complexity, and troubling projections about race, class, and culture. The movie whitewashes all those to tell a neat story about a rich white woman who teaches a black kid how to play football (literally; there is a scene when she tells him how to be an offensive tackle). It's inspiration is drawn from that, and the most troubling feature of the story - true and fictional - is breezed over in a hamfisted way: Oher ultimately went to play for a university for which his foster parents were consistent boosters. I really have no problem with this last fact - the family practically raised Oher for three years, they should have some say in where he goes to college - but the way the movie artlessly deals with it suggests that you should be suspicious. Sandra Bullock's performance is pedestrian at best, embarrassing at worst, and I say this as a begrudging fan: she was really quite good in 28 DAYS. But Bullock lacks the innate charm of a southern woman and broadcasts her confidence in actorly gestures. She succeeds because the story gives her offensive stereotypes to react to: the African American community with no perceivable values who, apparently, are there because they aren't enough like Bullock or Tim McGraw. It is unfortunate that this film will endure as a monument to an undeserving actor and a troubling "inspirational" tale.
DISTRICT 9 - This inventive, highly political alien movie worked for audiences because it established its premise quickly and effectively, putting us in an alternate universe that we never once questioned. Neil Blomkamp has made the first realistic alien movie, using the documentary style to good effect. The movie is fascinatingly bureaucratic, only enhancing the realism, and that commitment draws in much of its absurdity. But showing how ill-equipped contemporary diplomacy is to handle outsiders or "threats," we're left asking questions about the implications of any foreign policy. My issue with the movie is its protagonist - "Wikus." I couldn't stand him. He bugged the crap out of me. He distracted me. I kept wanting him to go away, and his central presence made the movie difficult to watch. But that strangely adds to the integrity of this piece.
AN EDUCATION - Carey Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance, making her a breakthrough star and eventually (perhaps) an icon. The iconography she fits into loves her: Audrey Hepburn, the early 1960s, the yet-to-come British Invasion. But mostly the movie is an anecdote to all those "manic pixie dreamgirl" flicks in which quirky romance leads to a freeing sense of individual perspective. This drama, more kitchen sink than soap opera, eschews such conventional readings. Peter Saarsgard is equally great - his Americanness makes him out of place even as his charming personality helps him to fit in: it's inspired casting. I loved the details of this movie: the dog races, the Oxford bars, and the papers by teenage girls about Jane Eyre. I didn't much care for the ending which, without spoiling too much, turns a denouement into the kind of conventional theatrics that the movie usually avoids.
THE HURT LOCKER - Jeremy Renner is the other breakout star of the year, and I've liked him even when he's been in awful movies as diverse as SWAT and NORTH COUNTRY. THE HURT LOCKER gives him a role he's born to play, and I wonder whether he'll ever be able to play anything but: a jockish, slightly thoughtful dude who is only happy when he's in some kind of immanent danger. THE HURT LOCKER is driven primarily by the performances of Renner and Anthony Mackie (who deserved a nomination but stupidly didn't get one), and the overt political commentary that has produced a number of forgettable movies about Iraq is gone here. Kathryn Bigelow treats the film as a character study under duress, and it works as such. That said, I wasn't as entranced as most audiences: it was fine piece of craftsmanship and a nicely intimate portrait, but nothing particularly profound or fascinating.
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS - Here is my favorite of the nominated films: like all Tarantino movies it is in love with movies, but this one is brash and bold enough to make the movies a means of liberation and history. My only complaint is that it isn't long enough: we needed another scene of the Basterds wreaking havoc in France. All the polyglots are remarkable: not only Christoph Waltz but also the many German and French speakers who make up the other heroes and villains - every beat they hit is just right. Tarantino takes two of his loves - World War II action movies and Sergio Leone Superhero Spaghetti Westerns - and maps it onto a historical terrain; the result reminds of the virtues and glorious excesses of both (their music, their revisionist history, their archetypes, their killer dialogue).
PRECIOUS - Didn't see it . . .
A SERIOUS MAN - It's probably my least favorite Coen Brothers movie other than the two in between THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I've noted before that the Coens are experts at diving into a dialect and a sub-culture and putting their own joyfully weird spin on it. A SERIOUS MAN, however, is a prolonged exercise in nihilism, both implicitly and explicitly, and in many ways this very, very Jewish movie resembles that most famous of Hebrew tales of suffering: the book of Job, with its endless suffering and backseat religious commentary. The Coens sit us through every painful moment: ineffectual Rabbis, Lawyers who need retainer fees, and (of course) a really stiflingly filmed Bar Mitzvah. It's the one Coen brothers movie that I've appreciated more than liked.
UP - I saw UP at a drive-thru with my girlfriend on a beautiful summer evening. So obviously I was in a good mood. I laughed the whole time - it's one of two Pixar movies that captures the goofy, go-for-broke charm and imagination of Disney flicks (RATATOUILLE is the other). The opening scenes are wistful and sad and go places that animated films uses don't.
UP IN THE AIR - I do NOT understand why everyone is freaking out about this movie or about George Clooney's performance. I've heard that Clooney is vulnerable, which means that this is the first movie he's made where he's allowed himself to look older than normal. But, come on . . . George Clooney is from Wisconsin and has two unglamorous sisters? And I found his "job" a bit disingenuous: every scene sounded scripted to give Clooney the winning shot. The best scenes involved the two females: Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga, but the worst had Clooney brazenly praising the airline industry. Even the final revelations didn't make this shallow; you leave thinking that American Airlines is an awesome company.
That's it!
| By Andytown | 6:41 PM | Comments (1)