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September 29, 2008
AV CLUB/ANDYTOWN ON STEELY DAN
I haven't really been too enamored with The AV Club's weekly feature, POPLESS, in which a music reviewer goes through his record collection. This is mainly because music reviewers write with either objective reserve or aching nostalgia and end up trying to categorize the uncategorizable (pop music) according to a subjective standard that gets passed off as taste. With some exceptions, the list is a mix of esoteric selections and the Chuck Klosterman-inspired new phase of rock criticism, which is to suggest that someone or something you think is terrible (Billy Joel, Heavy Metal) has unseen merits that only a clever rock critic can expound.
That said, I was moved and excited by Noel Murray's latest entry on Steely Dan. I tend to agree that the Dan is something you reject and later appreciate, and I've come full circle on accept Becker and Fagan as among my five favorite groups of all time. Last year, they played a terribly crappy Music fest in Memphis and still managed to rock the place out. They had a great touring band and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Becker looks like a computer programmer and Fagan looks like a hep-cat heroin dealer from the early fifties, but these are two brilliant, ironic creative forces. Like most, I found their last two albums merely okay, but their work that culminated in (the underrated) GAUCHO makes up one of the best runs you'll ever listen to - if you give them a chance and don't write them off as the kind of music you'd hear on a cruise ship.
You probably have your reasons for hating them ("because they're awful," you'll say); or you'll characterize them only for their more overplayed radio hits like "Reelin in the Years," "Dirty Work" or "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," which you don't like for whatever reason. All three work as breezy pop songs, but all are also about rejection, uncertainty, moral ambiguity, and settling in to the crap that surrounds you with reluctant grace.
"Rikki" is probably their most derided song. It often gets confused with a truly terrible song about a phone number, that "867-5309" jingle that shows up on every "Superhits of the 80s" album commercial that scrolls your screen at 1 AM. But while that slumber-party staple is about a guy who wants to call a girl, "Rikki" is not. Maybe it is about a girl, but it appears to be about a career move, about the only good thing that has ever happened to Rikki. The number may not even be a phone number. Becker and Fagan are smart enough to know the many ambiguities that unravel from the word "number" (and "call"), and that the stipulative definition might throw people off, making a song about desperation and desire also curiously acceptable as a dance number.
"Rikki dont lose that number
You dont wanna call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself
Rikki dont lose that number
Its the only one you own
You might use it if you feel better
When you get home"
Listen to the song again. Listen to the intensity that surrounds the line "Its the only one you own;" the Dan don't write love songs. Find one. Rikki is a loser who has the chance to be happy when he gets "home," but he may blow it; it may turn into the kind of unremitting pain and loss that he's been used to his whole life.
This song and many other great ones come off PRETZEL LOGIC, arguably their best album. I prefer KATY LIED, which closes with the transcendent "Throw Back The Little Ones" - a coda in that song has become my academic motto:
"Hot Licks and Rhetoric Don't Count Much For Nothing. Be Glad If You Can Use What You Can Borrow."
Over the last year, I've completed the relatively easy accomplishment of collecting every pre-1982 album that Steely Dan produced. I don't do it out of some commitment to irony. I do it because they have the most unique sound I've ever heard.
Send it off in a letter to yourself.
Posted by Andytown at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2008
RIP PAUL NEWMAN
Sorry to break up the normal routine, but Paul Newman, perhaps my all-time favorite actor, died today. For years, Newman aged gracefully on the screen, from the unusually handsome blue-eyed method actor to the silver-haired old coot who would steal a much younger girlfriend from you. In the last year, he apparently deteriorated rapidly. Recent pictures showed him looking gaunt and withered - his rambunctious and easy grin, immortalized in the closing scenes of COOL HAND LUKE, corrupted painfully.
More than any other actor, Newman looked he has having fun on screen. His BUTCH CASSIDY persona is the one that fit him best - a guy who couldn't believe he was getting away with the life he was living and would rather die than have a normal job. As such, any Newman performance of too much gravity suffered. He liked to wink at the camera, to crack open a beer, or to tell someone they were full of shit and always would be. Marlon Brando never left his moody method days - it's inconceivable to consider him playing the laconic roles that Newman mastered, just as its impossible to picture Newman doing LAST TANGO IN PARIS or Superman's father. Though it would be easy to picture a young Newman playing the pretty-boy tough in THE WILD ONES, or Brando doing Fast Eddie in THE HUSTLER, the paths they took after the youth left them are remarkably divergent. Newman was perfectly happy popping his own popcorn or grinning on the front of a jar of his charitable salad dressing while lending an ordinary guy charm to movies like ABSENCE OF MALICE or THE VERDICT.
THE COLOR OF MONEY is the last great movie Newman made. It won him an Oscar, but I think it's somewhat underrated. The scene where Fast Eddie is manhandled by a young Forrest Whitaker is one of my favorite movie moments of the 80s. Next to Tom Cruise, another fast-rising pretty boy movie star, Newman is a smooth as the kid is cocky: both have swagger, but this time Cruise gets to brood while Newman gets to scoff (a role previously given to George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason). It's an amazing role, and Martin Scorsese won't leave Newman alone. He lingers in the background of scenes he probably shouldn't be in, giving Richard Price's staccato dialogue the unforced rhythm and confused confidence it deserves. "It ain't about pool, sex, love. It's about money. The best is the guy with the most . . . in all walks of life."
What followed was Newman occasionally goofing wonderfully, as Richard Russo's childish geriatrics in NOBODY'S FOOL and EMPIRE FALLS, as the scheming Sid Mussburger in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY, and as an old-codger bank robber in the otherwise horrible WHERE THE MONEY IS. But he also tried to do the grand old man thing, and it never really worked, other than his perfect voicing in CARS (which turned out to be a nice and understated, if not particularly inspiring, swan song).
Some occasionally lament that Newman and Robert Redford never teamed up for another buddy picture. There were always rumors, and it is rare to see two guys with as much chemistry as these two dudes who brought out the best in each other. Newman always let the less charismatic Redford steal scenes from him. But the franchise that never was was Newman's HARPER films. There were only two: HARPER and THE DROWNING POOL, but they're among my favorite detective movies. In some ridiculously convoluted plots involving maniacs and regional weirdoes who want to kill him, Harper breaks in houses, gets the crap kicked out of him, flirts aimlessly, finds out his friends are actually creeps, and mutters terrific one-liners. Few roles suited him as well as Harper.
There's more that I can write, but I would be kind of stupid. So I'll close out with the kind of inane blog stuff you've come to expect:
ANDYTOWN'S TOP FIVE FAVORITE PAUL NEWMAN ROLES
1) Reg Dunlop - SLAP SHOT
2) Fast Eddie Felson - THE HUSTLER and THE COLOR OF MONEY
3) Lew Harper - HARPER and THE DROWNING POOL
4) Luke - COOL HAND LUKE
5) Rocky Graziano - SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME
ANDYTOWN'S TOP FIVE FAVORITE PAUL NEWMAN MOMENTS
1) His final scene in THE HUSTLER
2) When Newman says "They brought their ****ing toys" in SLAP SHOT
3) The nutkick in BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
4) Playing the guitar after his mother's death in COOL HAND LUKE
5) Beating Doyle Lonnegan in poker in THE STING
And here's one of my all-time favorite Newman moments: I can't embed it so you'll have to click here.
Posted by Andytown at 11:34 AM | Comments (1)
September 23, 2008
THE COEN BROTHERS (Part 1)
For the last twenty-odd years, Joel and Ethan Coen have put their unique stamp on the film landscape. To put their movies together is to create a patchwork quilt of history, American culture, film lore, and completely original zaniness. Despite a few failures (mild in scope), their successes are the kind that all filmmakers aspire to - every Coen Brothers movie is an event, offering the kind of unexpected thrills but completely expected quality
Before I get to their latest, BURN AFTER READING, I'll go through their whole filmography. (This will probably take two posts):
BLOOD SIMPLE - BLOOD SIMPLE is a cult favorite whose makers have gone onto the type of success usually not offered to such a niche. That the film is a dark comic noir is not particular unusual; in the early '80s Hollywood was caught in noir fever. But BLOOD SIMPLE didn't merely recycle old clichés, it took the genre to dark new places, operating with kind of realism that even most noirs ignore. When disposing of a body becomes a terrifying, confusing, bloody ordeal, the Coens deal with a situation that most films bypass for the sake of storytelling. And to top it off is M. Emmett Walsh as one of the many "big men" who manipulate the story by the sheer force of personality. BLOOD SIMPLE introduced the world to Frances McDormand, Joel's future wife, many-time star of his films, and perhaps the most prolific actress of her time.
RAISING ARIZONA - The next film could have not eschewed the trappings of the first any further. RAISING ARIZONA is everything BLOOD SIMPLE is not: light, sweet, intentionally hilarious, and slapstick. I could make an argument that Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter have never been better. Overlooked in the stark ongoings of BLOOD SIMPLE was the Coens' gift for dialogue and set-pieces. Where BLOOD SIMPLE was all about mood and setting, RAISING ARIZONA could be conceived as a Tex Avery cartoon. The film also offers the first of many masterpieces of the Coen's idea of regional dialogue, perfectly spouted by Cage's H.I. and (R.I.P.) Trey Wilson's Unpainted Furniture Salesman. The movie goes off the rails a little at the end, but what can you really expect from something as free-wheeling, inventive, and wacked-out as this amazingly rewatchable little film.
MILLERS CROSSING - Moving from the invented hick-talk of ARIZONA to the filmic language of gangsters, the Coens perfectly matched the respective darkness and humor of their first two films. What CROSSING brought to the table was a rich knowledge of film lore; BLOOD SIMPLE rejected a lot of noir stylings, but CROSSING wears its debt on every scene. The Coens are most interested in the gangster movie as a personal morality tale, and the way decisions and choices haunt even the most disaffected types. It's also a flawless recreation of the period both in scenery and costume. Released around the same time of GOODFELLAS, it offers a different take on the gangster genre - one where the stoicism is often challenged by the tendency toward humanistic impulses, and the way that compassion doesn't ultimately function in a too-real world.
BARTON FINK - A spot-on parody of both the pretentious 30s Broadway scene and the Golden Age of Hollywood, BARTON FINK gives career roles to two Coen favorites: John Turturro and John Goodman. As an integrity-driven writer scoffing the plasticity of Hollywood, Turturro has never been better. This is the best movie ever made about writers block, as Barton's room becomes his cell and the world he once laughed at becomes a living nightmare. This is balanced by Michael Lerner's studio boss, a man just as vapid as Barton thinks himself principled. FINK is at times brutal and grotesque, and it spirals to a hellish conclusion that its opening artistry doesn't predict. The more I watch it, the more I appreciate it.
THE HUDSUCKER PROXY - Waiting three years from their darkest film, the Coens returned to the comic well with this uncharacteristically clean take on the fifties. In many ways, this film would have been as a Dupont Movie in 1957. Tim Robbins' innocent becomes the pawn of Paul Newman's Faust-like corporate string-puller. The film both idealizes and demonizes the industry of the fifties, but its visually inventive to the core, and like ARIZONA, endlessly quotable ("It's for kids!"). More than any other movie of the 90s, this resembles a silent movie with its smooth, virtuoso visual storytelling. Many montages are wordless, relying on clever cuts and evocative close-ups. Also like ARIZONA, the film goes into cloud-cuckoo land at the end (when a godlike janitor stops time and saves the life of the suicidal Robbins), but it takes elements of thirties screwball comedies and appropriates them in unforgettable ways: from Jennifer Jason Leigh's Rosalind Russell imitation to the jovial elevator man to the Rube Goldberg scenario that inexplicably gets Robbins his job.
(To be continued: Up next, FARGO, etc.)
Posted by Andytown at 9:49 PM | Comments (1)
September 20, 2008
BIG TOP ANDYTOWN
Five remarkable thoughts I had:
1) In my last post, I crapped all over TROPIC THUNDER. Not that I want to revisit that crud-fest, but I was recently struck by its remarkable similarities to childhood favorite THREE AMIGOS. Both are about clueless movie stars duped into a real situation they think is fake and acting accordingly dumb until they are forced to become the stereotypes they usually portray. In both, a villain sympathizes with a character because of his association with an on-screen persona. And both are send-ups of the artificiality a genre that fancies itself to be realistic. In the far-superior AMIGOS, however there are THREE as opposed to the convoluted five of THUNDER - and then added in are an agent, studio head, studio head's assistant, a director, a special effects guy, the writer, etc. etc. AMIGOS is also breezy and light, while THUNDER attempts commentary and topical humor that won't make sense to anyone watching it five years from now (see also: ZOOLANDER). AMIGOS has a lot of silliness about an invisible swordsman and a bandito named El Guapo while THUNDER invokes insulting stereotypes about Asian drug lords and "retards" in an attempt to be shockingly offensive (and indeed it is offensive, but never very funny) - in other words, one is clever and informed by movies, and the other takes xenophobic cheap shots. THREE AMIGOS: not a masterpiece by anyone's standards but nonetheless looking like one in comparison to the recent thud of thunder.
2) In contrast to that big budget dud, I was regenerated by the happy unfussiness of mumblecore. One of the first posts on this new forum was about my love for this exciting new low-budget genre. I was also excited by HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, the most erotic (if least successful) of the bunch, and now have enjoyed THE PUFFY CHAIR, which is the EASY RIDER/BOTTLE ROCKET/TWO-LANE BLACKTOP of the bunch. Meaning its an existential road movie with any profound sense of existentialism. Stuff just kind of happens; there's more plot here than the anti-plot films of Andrew Bujalski, and the film often has a sketch comedy sense of staging. But the slacker vibe and ethos moves things along to nice scenes of revelation and recovery. What excites me most about this genre is the democratic free-for-all that these movies are: co-writer and star of CHAIR Mark Duplass is also in HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS and the upcoming BAGHEAD, while Bujalski (a fun actor whose sense of place in his own films resembles that of Spike Lee) co-stars in his own movies but also HANNAH.
3) The Mets won last night after dropping two of four to the Nationals, one of which was attended by me. With my favorite college football teams tanking, the Mets playoff run has an unequalled level of primacy in my current life. I care more about John Maine's shoulder than my own personal hygiene (and like my hygiene, neither is improving). I admit that my Mets fanship is fairly recent, but most of that has to do with the fact that baseball just started getting fun again about three years ago. Granted, free-agency takes some of punch out of things - as this years' team only slightly resembles the NLCS team two years ago - but since all the steroids guys got called out, and since Barry Bonds all-but-disappearance after his asterick-worthy record, baseball has resurged in my interests.
4) I need to blog about MAD MEN. This season, in my opinion, hasn't held up with the fresh surprise of last season, but the show seems to be saving its power for the end: this explains why we're gradually learning more about the purposely elusive Don Draper - whose internal struggles have become more prominent this year, and the spiritual and personal psychoses of Peggy. This is an amazing show - the episode a few weeks ago, THREE SUNDAYS, would work as a movie. As I've been saying, if Walker Percy and Richard Yates got together to write a TV show directed by Douglas Sirk, it would end up being a lot like MAD MEN.
5) New albums I like:
Bloc Party, INTIMACY (Better than they say it is)
Dr. Dog, FATE (kind of; I'm obsessed with it)
The Walkmen, YOU AND ME (One of the front runners for the best album of the year)
Brian Wilson, THAT OLD LUCKY SUN (It's no SMILE, but I'm happy to have it)
Calexico, CARRIED TO DUST (More of the same from a consistent favorite)
Glen Campbell, MEET GLEN CAMPBELL (I'm a sucker for these types of projects
Were you expecting me to blog about Sarah Palin? Sorry to disappoint
Posted by Andytown at 1:57 PM | Comments (0)
September 9, 2008
TROPIC THUD
According to this article on the Wikipedia, there are fifteen genres (or classifications) of comedy. In my mind, a good comedy should integrate these evenly, and not be too much of one and not enough of the other. Too much blackness (as in SIX FEET UNDER) is not a comedy, while too much bawdiness (like this stand-up comic I saw in Manhattan) only draws attention to the shock of its lewdness. THE BIG LEBOWSKI, perhaps the best comedy ever made, balances at least nine of these. Here's the breakdown:
Black/dark comedy: The plot involves the kidnapping of the trophy-wife of a "gold-bricking" millionaire. Dysfunctional family drama ensues. At one point, her excised toe drives the story.
Blue comedy: "You're not interested in sex?" "You mean coitus?" Also, either of the Jackie Treehorn productions.
Character comedy: I would argue that this is the movie's comedic strength, as the detective story events are handled by the last possible person in the world who should be handling it.
Observational comedy: The movie is a brilliant satire on Bush's foreign policy, as embodied by Walter Sobchak, on former sixties radicals/current burnouts (The Dude and Smokey), on the nouveau art scene (Maude Lebowski), all while lovingly poking fun at the disparate group of weirdos who inhabit Los Angeles and the bowling scene in particular.
Surrealism: The dream sequences, in particular.
Satire: The narrator who loses his place and comments about the parts he didn't like at the end. Also it works as a sendup of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe stories in particular and the L.A. detective movie in general, without depending on the genre its sending up for its humor (see any of these _______ MOVIE / AIRPLANE wannabes). If anything, LEBOWSKI deepens the genre by exploring its conventions.
Physical Comedy: Too many to mention, but my favorite is when the Malibu Police Chief throws a coffee cup at the Dude's head.
Deadpan Comedy: Much of the brilliance of Steve Buscemi's performance is in his ability to play a complete imbecile who has no idea that he's imbecile.
Wit/Word Play: The Dude is constantly misunderstanding the lingo that other characters throw his way. My favorite is when a classic movie detective-type tells him he's a "brother Shamus," to which the Dude responds, "Like an Irish Monk?"
This is why THE BIG LEBOWSKI is not just a stoner movie, but a brilliant comedy - all its pieces come together, they're all funny, and the movie is endlessly watchable and quotable for this. I think you can also apply this to RAISING ARIZONA.
I mention this because last night I saw a really terrible comedy, TROPIC THUNDER, that is getting some really excellent reviews. I can't really tell what's funny about it; mostly the critics are chuckling about the concept of Hollywood movie stars stuck in a real war that they think is being filmed. This is also apparently what the filmmakers find funny because they have few other jokes than this. When they do, it's about something called "Booty Sweat," Jack Black's character's heroin problem, and Robert Downey Jr. playing an actor who is black, and Tom Cruise's turn as a foul-mouthed, power-hungry studio, dancing studio head. Rather than writing jokes, the filmmakers just march out these ideas and we're supposed to chuckle at their ingenuity.
The film is straight up slapstick, intertwined with some ridiculous stereotypes and physical humor. The observational humor, so brilliant and actually subtle in LEBOWSKI, is here limited to the trenchant new insight that Hollywood people are shallow, moneyed, addiction-fueled, glory seekers. I tend to agree with those who say the film is offensive to African Americans, Asians, and the Mentally Challenged; which might be interesting if it were funny (as SOUTH PARK often is), but here its shock value stands alone without much of a viewpoint or a sense of humor. Ben Stiller's character imitates a retard, badly. That's the joke.
There is not actor whose schtick gets more tiring than Stiller. In MEET THE PARENTS and THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, he played bewildered straight men with such amazing timing that he suggested a young Jack Lemmon. Lemmon, however, never went outside of this. Lemmon never did DODGEBALL, for instance, or ZOOLANDER - two movies that get old after the trailer. Stiller's decision to play a dim-witted action star only shows how much he misapprehends his own gifts. As a director, he's equally week - and this is coming from someone who likes his often derided THE CABLE GUY - Jack Black's humor comes largely because of his corpulence, despite Black's improvisational gift for investing oddball outsiders with at once a sense of familiarity and distinctiveness. But Stiller thinks it's funnier to have him talking about farting.
I once had a concept for a Kierkegaard-esque statement about the nature of performance: it's called "The Funniest Man In The World." The scene starts with an audience laughing in anticipation. Why wouldn't they - it's the funniest man in the world? Then the man comes out and, before he even says anything, they laugh harder. When he finally does say one word, he brings the house down in uproarious laughter and walks off the stage to thunderous applause. In other words, the concept of something funny is often more pertinent than the humor itself. This is what the makers of TROPIC THUNDER were banking on, and this is why it's such a terrible experience.
Sorry, gang: the movie comedy is dying, no matter how much you love Judd Apatow. TV is much better showcase for those who have great comic gifts. Tina Fey, Will Arnott, Tracy Morgan, Rainn Wilson, and Steve Carell are wonderful in a little box, mediocre on a big screen. Bob Oedenkirk creates genius sketch comedy, directs terrible movies. Tenacious D is brilliant in twenty minute increments, terrible in an hour and a half long movie. Ricky Gervais, soon to headline a movie, will probably have the same fate.
And that's not funny.
Posted by Andytown at 5:29 PM | Comments (1)