1925 - 2006

One for now, one for later

It's hard to describe Guilermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth: It's a fairy tale for adults, a fantasy film about real-life monsters. It's a haunting film, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. I'll say more about it later, but for now think of Borges writing for the Muppets, with Bertolucci directing. Can't imagine that? Good, because that doesn't quite do it justice anyway. The Guardian offers a peek at some of the director's sketches and notebooks for this dreamlike film here.

And while it will probably be another year before we get to see it, a new film by Wong Kar-Wai is always a dreamy experience. His next, My Blueberry Nights, is an American road movie starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Norah Jones. The New York Times takes an advance look at the map.

Until then, here's two small tastes of WKW, the DJ Shadow music video "Six Days" and a very short commercial for Lacoste.

Critical Voices

He can be infuriating, dogmatic, even a bit irrational, but there's little doubt that Robin Wood is one of the most important voices in film criticism, as much now as he was forty years ago. His books on Hitchcock and Hawks are essential contributions to auteurist thinking, his work on horror films (focusing on DePalma, Cronenberg and Cohen) set standards for ideology and genre-based criticism that have yet to be matched, and above all, his relentless honesty about his own life and his willingness to modify his positions over time are a model to anyone who expects criticism to be more than a breathless exclamatory quote for the benefit of film publicists. This brief but fascinating interview from "Your Flesh" offers a kind of "Beginner's Guide" to some of Wood's interests over the years. But don't stop there: If you haven't already read them, proceed immediately to the books below.

Jack Palance

"A need for truth"

Moviegoers in New York (and later, Los Angeles and London) can take in a retrospective of the work of a cinematic master, Roberto Rossellini. The rest of us will just have to make do with the few available titles on video and this assessment by Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.


In Memoriam: Most of the obituaries of Fereydoun Hoveyda, who died a few days ago, make note only of his role as an Iranian diplomat, but film enthusiasts may remember him just as well as one of the founders of "Cahiers du Cinema" and one of its most enthusiastic contributors in the 1950s. This article from The Persian Mirror takes a closer look Hoveyda's critical skills and interest in the arts, and provides a link to this brief note on the roots of his cinephilia.

It's only rock and roll...

...but the news that Martin Scorsese is working on a documentary/concert film about the Rolling Stones - and with documentary giant Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter), no less - is pretty exciting. Scorsese's No Direction Home was pretty close to a masterpiece, but deliberately limited in its scope, focusing entirely on the first half of the 1960s and using the Dylan's conversion to electric music and the release of "Like a Rolling Stone" as a climax. I suspect that his affinity for the Stones and his gift for capturing live performances will push the new film in other directions. At any rate, this comes close to tying Todd Hayne's I'm Not There as the most interesting musical project of 2007.

Other musical diversions:
Is there really a statue of Willie Nelson in Nacogdoches TX, or is this just something they worked up for an album cover?
If it's for real, I want a whole carton of postcards.
And finally, two websites that have wasted a trickload of my time recently:
- Bedazzled! - it's like YouTube for people with eccentric tastes in old pop music.
- the official site for the Tenacious D movie - worth exploring at length, especially the "Satan's VCR" and "Rock The Internet" sections (though the latter was a bit slooooooowwwwww).

Charlie Chaplin to D.W. Griffith: "I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get dizzy"

From a much-reprinted press release earlier this week:
"Tom and Paula are the modern versions of the iconic founders of United Artists - Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith - and our partnership with them reaffirms our commitment to providing creative talent with a comfortable home at United Artists and a dedicated distribution partner in MGM. United Artists is once again the haven for independent filmmakers and a vital resource in developing quality filmed entertainment consistent with MGM's modern studio model."
All of which suggests a grest new game: What contemporary celebrities can be lauded as inappropriate equivalents to silent stars?
Jennifer Aniston is the modern Clara Bow.
Paris Hilton is the modern Greta Garbo.
Madonna is the modern Nazimova.
The Wayans Brothers are the modern Laurel and Hardy.
Any contributions defining the modern Buster Keaton, William S. Hart, Louise Brooks, Gloria Swanson or Fatty Arbuckle are welcome.

Exercise your right to vote...

It's time for the National Film Registry to make its latest list of new additions. You can help out by making your suggestions to Steve Leggett at the Library of Congress. For more information, look here. For a list of what's already made it to the list, look here.

What so proudly we hail...

Clint Eastwood’s devastating Flags of Our Fathers isn’t really a war movie. Or more precisely, it’s much more than a war movie. It’s a meditation on war, on the gap between the nightmarish events experienced by those who fight and the superficial imagery that those outside of war manipulate in the name of politics and patriotism.
It’s the story of an image, the famous photo of American soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima: You’ve seen the picture a thousand times but the ideas behind it – the heroism that you might have taken for granted, just as awestruck observers did when it turned up on every front page back in 1944 - are far more complicated. Used as a symbol of the final rush to victory at the end of World War Two, it’s a powerful icon. But as this film shows, it remains just a symbol, and the gap between that familiar but faceless group struggling with a flagpole and the real lives of the six men in the photo is bitter and heartbreaking.
That Eastwood is a masterful director is no surprise to anyone who’s followed his career, but as he gracefully allowed his own career as an actor to take a backseat, he is becoming increasingly ambitious, backing away from conventional narratives and allowing his films to breathe with their own sense of rhythm and environment. Just as Million Dollar Baby started out as a sports movie and trapped the audience into experiencing something far more deep and disturbing, Flags of Our Fathers starts with a few familiar notes from war movies and nostalgia, but they’re just part of a subtle plan to strip the glamour from the victory rallies and photo opportunities and reveal the real aftermath of war on the men who fought it. Just as his last film considered life and death with insight and depth but without a trace of sentimentality, Eastwood raises issues about war and heroism that few other filmmakers dare to approach.

Random Notes

When word leaked out that Andrew Lloyd Webber had been trying to get Scarlett Johannson to star in a revival of "The Sound of Music", I was a little surprised. Can she sing? And even if she can, does she really want to risk comparisons with the multi-octave range of Julie Andrews? This week, however, interest in Ms. Johannson's musical talents returned with the news of a record deal. The first release (which makes me laugh every time I think about it): "Scarlett Johannson sings Tom Waits".

Most of the obituaries for writer Jerry Belson stress - and rightly so - his work on the likes of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Tracey Ullman Show", both of which deserve their reputations. But I'd also put in a word for two small comic gems Belson wrote for the big screenin the 1970s, Michael Ritchie's Smile, and Burt Reynolds' underrated (in fact, practically unknown) The End. (I could probably add a third Evil Roy Slade, a rare gag-oriented made-for-tv movie.)

Wonkette reports that the Leader of the Free World (TM) watched two movies at Camp David thsi weekend: Talladega Nights: The Story of Ricky Bobby and Jackass 2. I tried to find a news report confirming this, but..well, you just see what happens when you do a Google search containing "President Bush" and "Jackass".

Don't call it a comeback.

Forget all of the silly “comeback” pieces – they’re the province of unimaginative journalists and editors who believe that their primary audience is composed of trend-chasing 24 year olds. The pleasures of The Departed come from Scorsese doing what he has always done best, telling a complex story (in terms of psychology as well as narrative) with a cinematic style that lives up to the medium’s name: moving pictures. It’s fast, sometimes confusing (but in a way that encourages multiple viewings) and unsparingly bleak in its portrayal of corruption and evil. Evil, as it happens, is the central theme of Scorsese’s film, and if you’re thinking that there’s a happy ending that which redeem anyone – from the devilish mob boss played by Jack Nicholson to the twin pairs of moles – a cop pretending to be a hood and a hood pretending to be a cop – played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon – well, you’ve got the wrong picture. I won’t give away plot points: if you’ve seen Infernal Affairs, it’s a surprisingly faithful remake, but with a better grip on the psychological pressures that turn these two warring moles into near-psychotic adversaries. Why worry about comparing it to Goodfellas or Casino or anything else? It’s a serious work from a major film artist. That’s not good enough for you?

A brief and somewhat fatuous interview with Scorsese can be found here.

After Shock

Belatedly turning up on video this week after making the festival rounds in 2004, Wim Wenders’ Land of Plenty has the feel of his more off-the-cuff pictures like Lisbon Story or Alice in the Cities, but its subject – the after-effects of the World Trade Center bombing - give it a searing significance that belies the off-key slightness of the narrative. Like The Million Dollar Hotel and The End of Violence, it uses a decaying Los Angeles as a symbol for a confused and bankrupt culture, but it’s also something of a road movie, a quest for answers in this violent and paranoid time. It’s about two crossed paths: Lana (Michelle William) is a young woman returning from a stay in Palestine to work in a downtown homeless shelter. Her uncle Paul (John Diehl, who gives an almost indescribably good performance) is her sole relative in the area, but he’s reluctant to make much of a connection; he prefers to spend his time cruising the streets in his van like Travis Bickle starring in a one-man version of The Conversation, taking part in an electronic network of paranoiacs keeping tabs on Arabs and other non-Americans. Despite being at cross purposes, the murder of a homeless Middle Eastern man brings uncle and niece together and they try to learn the victim's identity and return him to a suitable resting place. Do they find a common ground? Answers? Not really, but if you're among those who think this country went just a little bit crazy five years ago, you'll admire Land of Plenty for the questions it raises about these nervous times.


View the trailer here.

Speaking of Wenders, he recently took part in some sort of international think-tank called Dropping Knowledge, the Global Dialog Platform. Find out more here.

And for more video – on a much lighter note, Lemony Snicket channels Bob Dylan in this short video reminding us that The End is near – just six days away, in fact.

...and apropos of nothing

... except that I thought it was funny, I was looking at a list of torrent files and found one that included a selection of old r and b recordings, including, it said, "Mr. H. Melville, acc. by the Blue Notes."
If you don't know me by now, call me Ishmael.

Learning to SMiLE

There are already many books (and movies and magazine articles) about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, all of them strangely incomplete – not just in the way that any biography of a still-living figure tends to be unfinished, but in a larger sense, as if the subject escaping from the writer. Wilson’s ghost-written but highly readable autobiography Wouldn’t It Be Nice?” suggested a newly revived hero – the subject is healthier than he’s ever been and, more importantly, is even recording again – but it’s now largely discredited due to the influence of the Svengali-like therapist Eugene Landy, who controlled Wilson’s every waking moment and even forcing himself as co-writer on his songs. Most other accounts seem to love sight of Wilson and the other band members somewhere around the 1976 “Brian is Back” campaign, summarizing the subsequent years through well known public events (lawsuits, etc. ) and chart all corporation selling nostalgia and the California dream to an increasingly complacent audience of Baby Boomers. With fewer traces of the original group remaining (Brian is the last surviving Wilson brother, Al Jardine left the group and tours with a Beach Boys cover-band called Family and Friends; the act currently performing as The Beach Boys has only one original member, Mike Love, along with frequent collaborator Bruce Johnston), Carlin has a better grasp of the business decisions and economic issues that have shaped most of their output in the last 30 years.
It’s not always a very pretty story, but Carlin is lucky to have come in when he did. With the release of “Smile”, the great mystery in the Brian Wilson story, the gap in every previous account, has been solved – and turns out to have been worth the wait. Though the composer is still obviously a very troubled man – see the excellent documentary “Beautiful Dreamer” for evidence – he has surprised many by becoming a successful live performer with a touring band which he regularly – and accurately – describes as far superior to his former co-players. After having been swallowed up by fame, fortune and his own musical legacy, Wilson has miraculously come out on top, giving Carlin’s book something that previous biographers would never have imagined: a happy ending.

Jean-Luc Culture Godard

One of the major cultural events of the year, at least as far as folks in Europe are concerned, is Jean-Luc Godard's massive retrospective/installation "Travels in Utopia" at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. These articles in Senses of Cinema and Rouge jump right into it, while this fairly exhaustive photo gallery helps set the tone. Rouge also provides the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.
Needless to say, the whole thing sounds exhaustive and stimulating and frustrating and brilliant - just like most of Uncle Jean's output for the last few decades!

Murder a la Mod: Brian DePalma still splits screens and opinions; Lemony Snicket faces The End

With the release of The Black Dahlia unlikely to change any sides, Slant Magazine takes a long retrospective look at the career of Brian DePalma, as does The New York Times.

And with less than a month before the final installment of A Series of Unfortunate Events (The 13th volume, The End, will be published on October 13th - a Friday, of course), author Lemony Snicket has been keeping busy with a few related projects, the recently-published The Beatrice Letters and a forthcoming album of grim songs by The Gothic Archies. The Guardian offers this conversation between Snicket and his collaborator Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Stripes.

Same player, new game

When we last saw Griffin Mill, he was sitting on top of the world with a beautiful wife, a great job and a flawless reputation. Sure, he’d murdered a guy, but nobody knew about that and the people in his line of work were too concerned with their own day-to-day survival to let a simple thing like that stir up too much of a fuss. Michael Tolkin's The Return of the Player again takes the reader into the mind of the amoral Mill, whose dealings at the top levels of Hollywood were the subject of both the 1988 predecessor and Robert Altman's ingenious 1992 adaptation. But nearly two decades later, Mill's path has changed. The dramas of marriage, divorce, parenthood and the economic and cultural changes of the period have changed Griffin.

Well, not really; he's as ruthless and self-centered as ever, but his targets have shifted. While his children seethe with anger, his wife breaks down over their crumbling marriage and his ex-wife June (whom he seduced after killing her boyfriend in the earlier novel), inspired by a visit to a Mormon church, develops a private religion in which she and Griffin are still married for eternity, Mill loses his place in Hollywood and goes after bigger targets by aligning himself with one of the richest and most powerful men in the world... who, as it turns out, is equally obsessed with someone even richer and more powerful than himself.

Cut loose from the security of his job, desparate to secure a place in the world of new media (and with another murder - sort of - under his belt), Griffin relies on the only skill that held him together in the studio boardroom, an ability to interpret film pitches through the design of the Hero's Journey a la Joseph Campbell. While the first novel stayed mainly in one environment, the insular world of Hollywood power, the sequel sends Mill into a less definable and more dream-like world ruled by manipulative and nearly invisible barons. His family life disintegrating and his grip on reality never quite certain, Mill's quest for power - which climaxes with an encounter with a real-life public figure I won't name - is not entirely as convincing but in some ways darker and more surreal than in the first novel. Some reviews are already citing Highsmith's Ripley novels as an inspiration (Tolkin even throws in a reference to Purple Noon, incase you miss the connection, but I'm not sure that Tolkin is planning a third volume. The Return of the Player, though not as neat as the first novel, takes a wild flight into the future, where Griffin may well have passed us all.

Tolkin discusses the novel in the current Bookforum.

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More Warhol, Susan Sontag's diary:

More on Andy Warhol from The Guardian, as David Cronenberg comments on an exhibition he's curated.

Susan Sontag kept a journal....sort of. Sex. Gossip. Lists. It won't be published for another year or two, but The New York Times takes an early peek at her diary. The strangest part? How about that list of West Coast rock bands?

Good Evening...

They were two of the most oddly charismatic figures I’ve ever seen on a stage, this comically mismatched pair. One was tall, thin, and absolutely reeked of upper-class British self-contentment, even when it was just an act. The other was short, congenial, the very model of a comic foil. With nothing but the barest necessities in the way of props and lighting, they took one of the most meager forms of theatre – two-man sketch comedy – and came up with vivid bits of absurd theatre conjuring up a world in which the most unlikely premises, from the visitation of the Magi to a one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan – were greeted with deadpan familiarity.
According to William Cook (no relation), who has compiled two books of their material, audiences in England - depending on their age - best remember Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as either “Pete and Dud”, a pair of affable dunces they played on their tv series “Not Only…But Also” in the 1960s, or “Derek and Clive”, the foul-mouthed and filthy-minded stars of a semi-underground recording made in the 70s. Their gift, he argues, was with sketch comedy, and unfortunately the majority of their work was unceremoniously erased by the BBC in order to conserve videotape. Curiously, Cook (the editor of the books) argues that prior to Dudley Moore’s brief standing as a film star in the US, movies were not a good medium for them, but I disagree. If they had never done anything other than Bedazzled, - high on my list of movies shamefully unavailable on DVD – they’d still be remembered as one of the funniest film partnerships in history.
I was fortunate enough to see Cook and Moore in 1975 when they toured the U.S. with “Good Evening” (The original title in other countries was “Behind the Fridge”, a waiter’s mangling of their first triumph “Beyond the Fringe”), the show that contained, in my opinion, many of their best sketches: “The Frog and Peach”, in which Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling explains in his best stiff-upper-lip fashion why his venture in the restaurant business – the name also describes the menu- was a failure; “One Leg Too Few”, in which the above-mentioned would-be Tarzan – Moore bouncing merrily on one leg- would frequently crack his partner up with his giddy optimism ; and my favorite, the opening scene in which two men exchange pleasantries on the street while gradually coming to the realization that they’ve never met before.

PC: Hello.
DM: Hello.
PC: How are you?
DM: I’m terribly well! How are you?
PC: I’m terribly well as well!
DM: I must say you’re looking very fit.
PC: I’m feeling pretty fit actually. Isn’t it amazing – us just bumping into each other like this?
DM: Yes. I mean here of all places.
PC: Here of all places! I mean, I haven’t seen you since…er
DM: Now, er..hold on a minute..er, when was it? Er, we..we haven’t seen each other..
PC: Well actually we haven’t seen each other..
DM: We haven’t seen each other…er… before.
PC: That’s right. We’ve never seen each other before, have we?
DM: NO.
PC: You’ve never seen me.
DM: And I’ve never seen you. What a small world!

And so it goes as they continue to compare notes on family and acquaintances, in every case, finally agreeing that they must get together again soon.
One of the most unique things about Cook and Moore, as Cook (the editor, again) points out, was that their sketches are vitalized by the sheer pleasure they seem to have in working together. While Moore frequently plays the straight man, the energy behind much of their work (like the “Pete and Dud” sketches) comes from the collaboration of the two, stepping on each others lines, reworking and twisting the dialogue simultaneously. At their best, they played off of each other brilliantly, the comic effects materializing from their joint wordplay. Enjoying each others company (the exception of “One Leg Too Few”, it was usually Moore who would lose it on stage), they fix upon an idea, subject it to their fits of fantasy and then quickly make a joint getaway.
Sadly, the pair broke up not long after “Good Evening”. Moore had a brief fling as a film star, made some poor choices and briefly returned to his real love, music, before succumbing to a debilitating variant of Parkinson’s Disease. Cook became increasingly uninterested in performing for the public: In his final days, his best material was delivered in the form of late-night phone calls to a radio host. Both died too young, never really recognized for their talents. Reading their sketches in the two books below, it might be hard to see exactly what made them work. It helps if you can hear their voices or see their mismatched physical presence. (Even an almost purely verbal sketch like “The Frog and Peach” was given touches of physical comedy on stage with an elaborate series of leg-crossings that emphasized the difference in physique between the pair.) But if you’re fortunate enough to have seen them on some old videotape, or in any of their scenes together in Bedazzled – can I mention again what a shame it is that 20th Century Fox will not release this film? – and can fill in the blanks, these are invaluable mementos of two great comic minds, half scripted, half improvised, playing together.

Still Blazing Away...

Still in a documentary-watching mood this week, I stumbled across a copy of Marianne Faithfull: Dreaming My Dreams, a short but thorough biography of one of the most unique voices in popular music. Filmed in 1999, it’s a well-told story of Faithfull’s long and often troubled life, illustrated with an abundance of rare film clips and brief well-chosen interviews from friends and associates, but centered by the gutsy and incisive self-analysis of the subject herself. From her original appearance in the public eye as a slightly exotic pop-princess, little more than the pretty thing attached to Mick Jagger’s arm (being a Rolling Stone’s girlfriend evidently being a more interesting role than her career as a pop singer and actress) to a long and significant slide into heroin addiction, Faithfull once seemed unlikely to survive the 1970s, yet somehow emerged at the end of the decade, her voice having dropped into its current marvelous, growling range, to make a long string of excellent recordings, writing and performing strikingly personal songs of pain and confusion, in an inimitable style that walks a tightrope between punk and cabaret. Dreaming My Dreams – the title comes from a 1977 song that briefly re-ignited Faithfull’s career by becoming a no.1 hit in Ireland – is a warm tribute to a powerful and fascinating woman, revealing without becoming gossipy, its insightful interviews balanced by a generous selection of musical performances. The story of Faithfull’s transformation from school-girl-popstar to a punk Lotte Lenya (not surprisingly, Faithfull has become a gifted interpreter of Kurt Weill and other early 20th century German songs) is more than just the dream implied by the title; Faithfull emerges from the film, as on her records, as less a dream-like waif than a proud and powerful heroine who fought her own battles and triumphed.

Andy Warhol, Silver Screen


It would be easy to complain that Ric Burns’ new Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film has nothing new to say about the pop artist and his life. Warhol’s story has been well documented in dozens of books and films like Steven Watson’s Factory Made and Chuck Workman’s Superstar, both relatively recent and comprehensive accounts. Add to this a handful of additional biographies, a mountain of coffee-table books and even a healthy number of specialized monographs on everything from his Warhol’s interest in the fashion industry to his playful adoption of a drag persona for a series of portraits. But Burns, best known for sober PBS historical documentaries in the style of his brother Ken (he made The West and New York) has a luxury that other Warhol documentarians have lacked: time. With four hours to fill (the film will be shown on PBS over two nights this month as part of the dependable “American Masters” series) and the additional advantage of having the full support of the Andy Warhol Foundation, it’s as close to an authoritative view of the artist as we’ll ever get.
The story is, again, already a familiar one: frail, sick Andy Warhola grows up in Pittsburgh with an inclination toward daydreaming and a possessive mother who never lost her Old World mannerisms. Gifted with a strong imagination, a skillful drawing style and an obsession with celebrity, he attends art school, moves to New York, becomes one of the most successful commercial artists of the fifties, struggles with homosexuality and develops a strong urge to break into the “serious” art world. Emotionally aloof and receptive, even eager, to have other people do his creative thinking for him, Warhol’s breakthrough came after the first pop artists began to rebel against the dominant force of abstract expressionism by bringing familiar pictorial content into painting. Warhol’s brilliant decision to mask any sign of his participation, to make paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans which looked exactly like the real thing, pushed pop art into a new area; stripped of Duchampian irony, Warhol’s paintings were a new kind of object, banal and simple and yet an amazingly powerful call to arms in term of how art could put a claim on the increasingly dominant images of advertising and packaging. The rest, - the factory, Edie, the films, the ’68 shooting, - as they say, was history.
One of the most notable things that distinguishes Burns’ film from other versions of Warhol’s life is that the talking heads are, for the most part, art historians and biographers; of the people who actually worked wih Warhol, only Billy Nimich (better known as Billy Name, the man who gave the Factory its silver coating) and writer Ronald Tavel have a significant presence. (Stephen Koch, whose “Stargazer” was one of the earliest and best books on Warhol, knew him but appears here solely in his role as critic/historian). Where are Viva, Gerard Malanga, Holly Woodlawn, Lou Reed, John Cale or rival artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns – to name just a few? Burns’ intention, as he states in the interview cited below, and as one might expect for a film sponsored by the Warhol foundation, is to establish Warhol’s reputation as an artist. But thanks to the Foundation’s official collaboration, Burns’ film passes other Warhol documentaries by providing more examples of Warhol’s work – especially his early commercial efforts-, excerpts from the films and rare footage showing how he actually prepared his paintings. The Factory scene may have lost some of its wildness, but makes up for it in its intimate glimpse of Warhol in the act of creation.
Oddly, and despite the extended length (which some will certainly feel is more than enough time), the film more or less climaxes with Warhol's near death in '68. The rest - nearly two decades - is collapsed into less than 20 minutes. It's an odd narrative choice to make, yet also a significant sign of how strongly Burns wishes to make the case for Warhol's 60s paintings. If Warhol is truly an "American Master", this film argues that the creation of the Pop Art movement and the shock of those initial silkscreen canvases - the soup cans, the movie stars - were his masterpieces
Even if we already know Warhol’s story, Burns’ film scrapes away the gossip and the myth-making and the name-dropping and adds a sense of history. It’s the story of a pale, awkward man with a vision – tempered by a perverse sense of humor and increasingly obvious homoerotic obsessions – who drew on his middle-class background and the pop-culture dynamics of the mid-20th century to change the way anyone has thought about art and design and the simple act of seeing our groceries-and-newsprint-cluttered world ever since.

Random notes and loose ends

On Nerve, filmmaker Ric Burns talks about his new documentary on the life of Andy Warhol (about which I will be adding my two cents soon).

Writing in The American Interest, Ron Radosh places Bruce Springsteen's amazing "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" squarely within American history. "But is it activism?" he asks. My answer is: absolutely. Springsteen was deeply involved in the MoveOn concerts in 2004 and has a long history as a fund-raiser for a variety of causes and issues. Reviving songs like "The Erie Canal" and "Froggy Went A-Courting" may not seem like a political statement, but what Springsteen's really doing is reclaiming our country's heritage. By placing it within a tribute to Pete Seeger, he establishes a connection with the activism of the 40s, 50s and 60s, and by recasting these songs with a New Orleans jazz band, he raises the issue of Hurricane Katrina. It's a great album and the powerful live performances of the songs (they were broadcast on AOL earlier this year but unfortunately seem to have been taken offline) are even better.

And finally, I don't know how long this has been around, but if you're looking for a way to make your soothsaying sessions gosh darn cute, here's a Hello Kitty Tarot deck.

The Ultimate-Final-Restored-Uncut-This-Time-I-Really-Mean-It-Director's-Cut

I find it ironic that film studios and producers make such a big deal about releasing “Director’s cuts” and “Unrated editions” on DVD, when they obviously didn’t show as much concern for the films when they released them theatrically. At best – and rarest -, these editions restore films to the way the filmmakers intended them to be seen, but I suspect that more often these uncut versions are merely a) a way of restoring filler from the cutting-room floor, b) an excuse for indecisive directors to keep tinkering with their work, or c) a shameless excuse to sell the same title over and over again.
A new case in point is Warner Brothers’ forthcoming release of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a film with a long and difficult history, and with a strong cult following. First released in 1982 with an awkward ending tacked on at the last minute (made from outtakes from the opening sequence of Kubrick’s The Shining) and a heavy-handed voiceover narration, both imposed on the film against Scott’s wishes, the film was reissued in 1992 in a “Director’s Cut” based on the director’s work print. The latter version was not without problems of its own, but it’s been the only version available on DVD. This week, after a brief period out of print, Warners is again releasing the “Director’s Cut”, in a “Remastered Limited Edition” which will be taken off the shelves in a few weeks.
Why? Because once you’ve already put your money down for the latest release, Warners is hoping you’ll pull out you wallet again next year when they release a 4-disc collection containing:
The original 1982 release;
The European version of the above, which is slightly more violent;
The 1992 Director’s Cut; and
A new “Final Director’s Cut” prepared by Scott.

Wow, why’d they leave out the pan-and-scan version, or the “edited for television” cut, or every outtake and rough cut they could find?

Before you make that commitment to devote 8 or 9 hours of your life, ask yourself “how many versions of Blade Runner do we need?”
If the new version is truly Scott’s final word, why preserve the interim 1992 cut?
And while I can see the historical value of keeping the original 1982 version (I’ve used the ending in classrooms a few times), why not stick with the European cut, assuming that the US release was just a censored version?
Whatever your opinion of this ambitious but flawed work, turning it into a multiple-choice question isn’t likely to change it.

From an old PBS special, by way of YouTube, by way of GreenCine, a charming encounter between Woody Allen and Billy Graham in two parts:
Part One
Part Two

Memories of GMRX

One of these days I’m going to give in and write a long diatribe against the ratings system, the MPAA and the cowardly way a lot of well-meaning but uninformed people have allowed them to impose their will on movies for the last 38 years. In the meantime, these two features on Kirby Dick’s “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” a review and an interview with Dick - are worth looking into They're on "Salon", so you'll have to wait a few seconds to get past an ad...). I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t endorse it; in fact, both pieces raise a few well-considered doubts about Dick’s assumptions and his methods. But whatever doubts I may have about the film – and I’m very interested in seeing it – I can only hope that it draws attention to the power the MPAA wields and the irrational and illogical way they wield it.

The Sixth Degree

Atom Egoyan’s “Where the Truth Lies” didn’t get much of a release after losing a battle with the MPAA, and most of the critical comments on it I’ve read have been cheap shots that don’t give any idea of what the film is actually trying to accomplish. On the basis of one viewing, I’m not completely sure what I think, but I’ll at least credit the film as being a lot more interesting than its detractors would have you think – which is hardly a surprise given the director’s track record. Based on a novel by Rupert Holmes (who is probably best known as the composer and singer of “The Pina Colada Song”), it’s about a hugely successful nightclub act in the 1950s (think Martin and Lewis, only Martin’s English rather than Italian…) who break up after being involved in a scandal (the naked-corpse-found-in-hotel-bathtub kind). It’s also about a young writer in 1972 who begins a Kane-like investigation of the story while working on a book with the team’s straight man. In some ways, it seems like this is Egoyan’s “Far From Heaven”, an analysis of the repressed subtext of the 1950s, but his intentions aren’t entirely clear. Nonetheless, I liked the broad star turns of Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon and, despite the widespread criticisms of her performance, though Allison Lohmann was very appealing as the heroine/guide.

Announcement:

You may have noticed that the last post was the first in nearly a year. I originally told myself that I was going to take some time off and then give this a fresh start on New Year’s Day. Well, that didn’t happen, and asI began to reconsider exactly what I was trying to do here while my critical (and academic) career went on hold, I really wasn't sure what – if anything – I really wanted to say to the World At Large. But after far too long a break, I’m back: My goal: I’d like to say one post a day, but if that doesn’t work, at least three a week. I’ m also hoping for a slightly more personal approach though I don’t know how far I want to go with that… Keep watching…

The Kenosha Kid Does America


Ten years have passed since the publication of Simon Callow’s “Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu”, the first volume of what was supposed to be a two-part biography of the great actor-director. The first book, which contained a more thorough analysis of Welles’ 1930s theatre work than any previous biography, ended on a moment of triumph: the 1941 premiere of Citizen Kane. Anyone familiar with Welles’ career will know that the rest of the story - not to discredit the many excellent films that followed Kane – is largely a journey downhill.
It’s also too big to adequately fit in a single volume, so Callow has made the wise decision to turn his two-volume work into a trilogy, the second part of which - the just published "Hello Americans" - follows Welles through much of the 40s, ending with the 1947 departure for what essentially became a period of exile in Europe for most of the rest of his life. It was not a good time for Welles and the failures and false starts far outnumber the successes. His second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, confused preview audiences and was butchered by RKO as Welles’ primary sponsor, George Schaefer, lost control of the studio. Welles himself was unable (or unwilling, some would say) to defend the film because he was occupied elsewhere, having relocated to Rio for an ambitious but under-planned promotion of the Good Neighbor Policy called It’s All True. It was never completed (A partial restoration was assembled and released in 1993) and created the legend of Welles as a spendthrift and dilettante, starting projects that he could never complete.
His career as a director, much less as the Boy Wonder and Master of All Media, was not entirely over, but the films he made during the time covered in this book - The Stranger, The Lady From Shanghai and Macbeth - were the result of hurry and compromise, the result of the diligent work of his agent. (The one near-masterpiece in the batch, Lady from Shanghai, came about because Welles, desperate to finance his ambitious and circus-like stage production of “Around the World in 80 Days”, bartered the services of his soon-to-be-ex-wife Rita Hayworth).
While Callow takes a few shots at those who would defend all of Welles’ work, he doesn’t quite take the position of those critics who accuse the director of being constitutionally incapable of finishing a project. Instead, he points out that the director’s mind was often elsewhere during this period. Yes, that elsewhere often involved chorus girls and night clubs, but this was also a period in which Welles served as a radio commentator, wrote a newspaper column, gave speeches and contemplated a political career. He was, as Callow shows, committed to the cause of a co-operative world government, with close contacts in the Roosevelt administration.
So what went wrong? The story recounted in Hello Americans is largely and sad and frustrating one, and those familiar with Welles’ life know that it will only get worse in Volume Three. Callow shows how Welles’ was often his own worst enemy, not just because he overextended himself or refused to commit himself to ambitious schemes when they got in trouble (though he did those things) but also because he had to live up to his own reputation, a public image that raised as much suspicion among an increasingly reactionary and anti-intellectual America as it did praise. From preview cards at the test screenings of Ambersons (where one viewer complained that the film was “even worse than Citizen Kane”) to hate mail generated by his broadcasts against racism, Callow provides many examples of how the very public figure of Welles was already on his way to becoming a bigger-than-life caricature. Volume Three should have a field day with that issue.
But we should also remember that, brilliance and ambition aside, Welles was still barely an adult in the period covered in this book, only 25 years old when Kane opened, when America entered World War Two and when Nelson Rockefeller asked him to visit Rio as a representative of his country. Callow’s story is of a young man who has been handed a pretty heady gift, makes the most of it and remains, nonetheless, a fairly young and inexperienced man. Welles’ achievements sometimes make us lose sight of that. His story is an extraordinary one, and Callow’s detailed account, more than any previous biography, shows how the talent young man grew with and was shaped by his times.