Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Monday, January 30, 2006 Why I Love the Metal Gear Solid Games in Two Quotes Quote One: "I first came up with this character who controls bees and also has bees inside him and spits out bees." --Hideo Kojima, writer/director/creative force of the Metal Gear Solid games, 2004Quote Two: "What are you gonna do? Sick your dogs on me? Or your bees? Or dogs with bees in their mouth so when they bark they shoot bees at me?" --Homer Simpson, around 1999 or so. There's a chance the translator took liberties with the translation, but, yeah. The Homer Simpson side of Hideo Kojima is part of what makes him awesome. posted by Jeff | 5:50 PM | Thursday, January 05, 2006 The Pitch: It's like Crumb meets Northwestern! By a more-or-less accidental confluence of movie-watching, I ended up watching Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects this morning, sandwiched between the first and second halves of American Movie (last night and tonight).Huh. American Movie focuses on Mark Borchardt's year long struggles to get his 35 min short horror film made and released over a period of years. While I'm sure Rob Zombie had his problems as well, it's kind of hard to think what they could have been by the fourth time you see a close-up of his wife's perky ass flouncing around all the mutilated tortured corpses. He made Lion's Gate enough money with his notorious House of 1000 Corpses that he had 100% creative control this time around. Good for him and his Sheryl Crowesque wife, but for the viewer? Well... To be fair, The Devil's Rejects is a great looking film (some of those shots of Coven look pretty good as well)--oversaturated Super-16 film stock, some fine handheld camera work, and it's nice to see someone who loves the patented '70s freeze frame as I do. But Zombie spends so much time covering his murderous family of outsiders torturing and killing the innocent, it's a bit mystifying when his impressive setpiece ending (the family is gunned down in slow-mo to Skynard's "Freebird") is filmed as a tragedy. What's going on with this film? Did Zombie actually think he could take the ending of Bonnie & Clyde, swap out the main characters with Leatherface and family and actually expect the results to be the same? I'd read an interview from Zombie at the Onion A.V. Club where he talks about his love for '70s cinema and the difference in societal tone between then and now. ("It's a very P.C. world and this is a very un-P.C. movie.") If there's any way I can see The Devil's Rejects working as a film with something--anything--to say, it might be as a strange elegy to '70s culture. Certainly, the best moments of the movie are where Zombie teams some bizarre awfulness to a classic piece of '70s Southern Rock. I can maybe see how the '70s and the endemic fixation on the outlaw as a necessary and vital component of the culture is what is actually being examined and/or mourned by Zombie. You can watch CSI practically every night of the week on TV now, but does they dare to suggest to that the audience identify with the serial killers and stripper stranglers rather than the dutiful cops? (I don't actually watch the shows, but I'd guess not.) So what Zombie is mourning at the end of The Devil's Rejects isn't the death of his evil, sadistic crew of killers but rather the end of a time in which they might have been. If you remove the gradations, the potsmoking free thinker and the serial killer are both outlaws of the state, and now there's no more place for either. Or maybe Zombie is inept, and expects us to feel sorry for his clan after showing a few shots of them laughing and joking together, smiling and laughing out in the mountains, despite watching them do horrific acts of torture and violence. I'm still not really sure. But even if one gives Zombie the benefit of the doubt, there's at least one fatal flaw in such a conception. It's precisely that annhilation of gradation--the equating of the killer with the intellectual--that creates the repressive police state in the first place. If we're sitting in a P.C. world where subversion and artistic expression are smothered ("It's a very P.C. world..."), it'd be nice if Mr. Zombie could recognize and perhaps even acknowledge his role in it. And not even as some sort of independent artist/outlaw whose shocking works pushes the state to more restrictive behavior; but as a a numbskull whose lack of clarity on such matters makes such a state possible. posted by Jeff | 9:36 PM | Tuesday, January 03, 2006 The Pitch: It's like Ignorance meets Bliss! Happy New Year, everyone! On the personal front, lots going on but nothing I'm really exactly peeing myself to discuss so I'll wait. I thought it'd be amusing to post my best of list for movies of this year considering I didn't really see that many currently released movies (of the 98 films I saw in 2005, only 28 were released in 2005, and I would say only half of those I caught in the theaters). But that's the great thing about movies: a good one can be the highlight of your year no matter what year it was released.So, in approximately the order I saw them: 1. Croupier (1998): After seeing Clive Owen in Closer, it was obvious I was missing something by not seeing his early indie thriller--plus, it's one of Edi's faves. If you like voiceover narration, this flick about an emotionally disconnected card-dealer who wants to be a writer is the film for you. I definitely feel sorry for Clive having to make third-rate thrillers with Jennifer Aniston after making a little gem like this. Just keep cashing those paychecks, Clive. 2. Meeting People is Easy (1999): This music documentary about Radiohead coming unglued while touring for "Ok, Computer" captures why Radiohead's music is so appealing for me--it's simultaneously present and prescient as the album the band is touring in support of seems to prophesize their resultant paranoid, disquieted and uncomfortable state. Absurdly influential on this year's crappy Nanovel. 3. Kung-Fu Hustle (2004): Probably counts as a 2005 film since it got released in theaters. But I didn't see it in the theater: I saw it on our all-region DVD player at the beginning of April and I loved it. I could turn this entry into a screed against the low levels of public courtesy that make seeing movies in an actual theater a crapshoot, but let's focus on the positive. This comedy by Stephen Chow is an engaging anarchic slapdash frolic where one quickly learns never to second-guess what direction the film will be heading two scenes after the scene one's watching. The less you know about it, the better it gets so I'll shut up about it. But it's a fave. 4. Best of Youth, Parts I and II (2003): Made for Italian television but released theatrically, Best of Youth is a six-hour novel on film, with characters moving through decades of Italian life. Part of the joy is in watching how a single event will change the lives of everyone involved for decades to come. And part of the joy is simply watching, allowing oneself to get swept away by a masterfully-told story. 5. The "Up" Series (1964-): Michael Apted's series of documentaries following the same group of Britishers every seven years offers a lot of the same joys as Best of Youth. Although one of the frightening truths about reality is that it can be much harder to predict than fiction. Having watched all of them (although, hmmm, I stopped listing them after 21 Up, why'd I do that?), Edi and I eagerly await 49 Up which hit Brit TV in 2005 and hopefully will get released here in the U.S. this year. 6. The Wicker Man (1973): An M. Night Shamalyan film decades before there was such a thing, The Wicker Man is the best musical horror movie ever made (I know, lots of competition for the title, right?) which achieves its unique sense of disquiet by maintaining a gently bemused tone perfect for the pagan traditions it explores. I'm really glad I made this list now because I was going to watch the DVD after writing this and realize it's not on my shelf. Fuck, did I loan this to somebody? 7. Pistol Opera (2002): Seijun Suzuki's return to filmmaking, via a very loose remake of his own Branded to Kill, really delighted me (much more than the original, to be honest). Suzuki is obtuse about what his films might mean, but his confident directorial choices tease you to construct and discard any number of theories while viewing. This playful quality--plus the presence of boobies and guns--makes Pistol Opera immenently (re)watchable. 8. Young Adam (2003) & The Machinist (2004) (tie): Neither of these films are perfect, I admit. But David Mackenzie's adaptation of a classic existential Scots novel and Brad Anderson's nouveau-classic thriller have significant charms--gorgeous cinematography, classic scores (particularly The Machinist, which sounds like a Bernard Herrmann score), and a desire to craft complexly ambiguous title characters. I've got to give Young Adam the lead, overall (and not just because I was able to get a used copy for under $5 at Hollywood Video); in the end, The Machinist is just the loveliest episode of The Twilight Zone ever filmed (and possessing, in Christian Bale's dramatic weight loss, one of the most chilling special effects ever filmed). Young Adam stays true to its literary roots and keeps its study of good and evil far away from cheap psychological pulp. And yet, I admit it, The Machinist is very watchable cheap psychological pulp. 9. The Squid and the Whale (2005): Noah Baumbach's tale of divorce among the New York intelligentsia is hilarious and deeply moving--I thought it was like The Royal Tenenbaums with all the bullshit removed. Edi and I kind of saw this one on a lark and I'm so glad we did--I think it's my movie of the year. 10. I don't know, really--maybe another tie for a bunch of far-from perfect flicks that had something so engaging to them they've continued to stay on the brain: Mario Bava's decadent and absurd Danger: Diabolik! was kind of dull when it wasn't being absolutely enthralling; Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain seems to get about as deep as it's going to in the first forty minutes and never does much else, but the cinematography and Heath Ledger's performace are both to die for; I thought Serenity (2005) had some performances and plot points that didn't translate well to the big screen but it also had some great lines and action setpieces; Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Wererabbit (2005) was wonderful but suffered a bit from being a full-length feature. All of them are worth seeing once. Other great bits and pieces: the closing credits to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) ; Reese Witherspoon's performance in Walk The Line (2005) (although somebody give that woman a sandwich!); David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck; the barking dog in The Triplettes of Belleville (2003); Bill Nighy in The Girl in the Cafe (2005); Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (2005); John Abraham's charismatic villain in Dhoom (2004); the kids in Mad Hot Ballroom (2005); the fake-out in Batman Begins (2005); the over-the-top absurdity of Torque (2004); Mickey Rourke as Marv in Sin City (2005) (as well as the faithfulness of the look and feel of the film to the original comics); Ewan McGregor's double duty in The Island (2005); Lars in Some Kind of Monster (2004); Seu Jorge covering David Bowie's songs in Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). Finally, if you wanted to know what I saw for the year (so you can understand that, say, Kongpote didn't make my list because I didn't see it), you can look here. posted by Jeff | 1:01 PM | |
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