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Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon: Let the perversity begin!

JJ Hunsecker is calling YOU to participate in the Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon!

Presidents’ Day Special: What the heck, it’s a three-day weekend for some of us in the States. Now you have an extra day to contribute your contrarian wisdom — through Monday!

And thanks to all those who have already contributed and helped to spread the word. We’ve had submissions from all over the US — and Canada, France, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Philippines…

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This weekend we’re saying to hell with the conventional wisdom. We usually say that anyway, but consider the Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon (Friday through Sunday Monday) an excuse to express how you really feel. You know, like Valentine’s Day is supposed to be, only more perverse. (Yes, more perverse!) So, I hope you’re feeling cranky.

Check back here for contributions that are sure to get you riled up or make your head explode with satisfaction as you appreciate the inherent wisdom of the cases made by cine-sthetes from across the blogosphere. Please send your contributions to me at the e-mail link above (jim at scannersblog dot com).

And please feel free to COMMENT on the submissions below. This endeavor requires some back-and-forth, don’t you think?

“For serious critics … the second-best thing to perfection is often the near-miss, the disreputable and even the despised. Next to discovering a new director, planting a flag in an uncharted national cinema or sitting next to Zooey Deschanel at an event, few things please a critic more than polishing a tarnished career or taking on a dubious cause, particularly if everyone else really hated it.”

— Manohla Dargis, New York Times, February 14, 2007

“I deeply believe that taste is a kind of prison for oneself – when a critic finds himself or herself always rigidly repeating the same opinions, the same positions, the same likes and dislikes (that is the kind of bad posture which Pauline Kael bequeathed to criticism). Critics should feel free to bring in their own emotional reactions to films – it is hard to keep them out of writing – but the phenomenon known as the ‘gut feeling’ or gut reaction can become a terrible end in itself: ‘this film makes me angry or it makes me happy, so it’s a rotten film or a great film, and I’m not going to discuss it any further.’ The important thing is always argument, analysis, logic. I have an irrational side (critics need it), but my rational side believes in logical demonstration: if you can prove to me that what are saying about a film makes internal sense, if you can marshal the evidence from the film itself to back up what you say, then I too can be persuaded to disregard my own first gut reaction and explore that film again in a new, more open way.” — Adrian Martin, Cinemascope, January – April, 2007

“There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.”

— Daniel Dennett

Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon (Feb. 16 – 1819, 2007)(UPDATED: 5 p.m. PST, Monday)

Kristin Thompson: Classical cinema lives! New evidence for old norms

Think classical film style is dead? Think again.

Peet Gelderblom @ Lost in Negative Space: Au Contraire (cartoon)

“The contrarian critic took issue with just about everything…”

Evan Qatsi: “You’ve Got Mail,” Gnosticism and Movie Snobbery

“YGM”: Reprehensible, but fun!

flickhead: It’s boring, but is it art?

“Last November I was sent a DVD screener of Theo Angelopoulos’s ‘The Weeping Meadow,’ and was so horrifyingly bored that I felt that all film in general was no longer worth writing about.”

Pacheco @ bohemiancinema: “Starship Troopers”: In Defense Of…”

“They’ll Keep Fighting, And They’ll Win!”

Piper @ Lazy Eye Theatre: Grandpa Joe The Imposter

“Contrary to what everyone has come to believe, Grandpa Joe is not the sweet, lovable old-man everyone thought he was.”

Squish @ filmsquish.com (The Film Vituperatem): “L’ Age d’or”: Weird & Wacky

“There’s the kind of film that deserves the highest of praise, and there’s the kind that needs to be strung up and beat like a piñata until its guts give its treasures…. but sadly this movie isn’t worth any of these intense emotions.”

Peet Gelderblom @ Lost in Negative Space (encore!): Boys like Peet are not afraid of wolves

“The best animated picture of 2006 wasn’t made by Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, Warner Bros. or Sony Pictures…. Hell, it wasn’t even released in the US last year.”

Oggs Cruz @ Oggs’ Movie Thoughts: “The Fountain”

“I viewed the three storylines of ‘The Fountain’ as existing in different dimensions…”

Brian Thomson @ stereoroid.com: Jackassism

“The shopping cart, a harmless symbol of domestic consumption, becomes a

conveyance; delivering its contents to the terminal checkout…”

C. Jerry Kutner @ Bright Lights After Dark: Why Murch’s “Touch of Evil” Doesn’t Make the Cut!

“I can’t imagine that Welles would have approved this evisceration of his work…. If you want to see the superior Second Studio Cut, you would have to know someone who has it on videotape or laserdisc.”

Bob Westal @ Forward to Yesterday: The Big Sleep — A Confession

“I am a filmnambulist. And it’s not just austere minimalists who can lull me into one of my cinematic siestas. If I’m tired enough, I can sleep through any universally acclaimed auteur.”

Jeremy Mathews @ The Same Dame: Contradicting the Contrarian

“If nothing else, the contrarian serves to push those in the majority to really express themselves, instead of standing around agreeing with one another.”

Kenneth R. Morefield @ the matthew’s house project: Contrarianism, “Munich” and Effective Arguments

“…I think that the usefulness of a contrarian review depends more upon the ethos of the reviewer than the rhetorical style or technique of his or her argument.”

Kenneth R. Morefield (redux!) @ All Things Ken: MacGuffins of Men

“In this day of marketing hype and review saturation, the difference between a contrarian review and an assenting review is often little more than a matter of which the viewer trusts more — the consensus opinion or his or her own two eyes.”

Campaspe @ Self-Styled Siren: Do the Contrarian: “Once Upon a Time in the West”

“… Leone’s camera doesn’t seem to care if we ever get interested or not. Again and again we return to the basic pattern of long shot (flat, sun-bleached, not terribly interesting desert) to close-up (flat, sun-creased, not terribly expressive face), close-up to long shot.”

Dennis Cozzalio @ Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: Nuts to “Brazil”

“… [T]oo much the showman, or the eager kid who wants to shock his parents by playing with poop and get pats on the back for it, Gilliam wears his depressive inclinations on his court jester’s sleeve. He wants credit for being a scatological imp and a serious buzz-kill at the same time.”

Harry Tuttle @ Screenville: Outlandish Dargis Empire

“This is a gameplay of course, as Dargis is a great critic and my tentative analysis is pretentious. Nitpicky mode intentionally exaggerated. For the fun of being contrarian, at least let’s not bash a little helpless reviewer, let’s go for the best and see where it takes us.”

Ted Pigeon @ The Cinematic Art: Transcending Time and Space: The Guilty Pleasure and the Problem With Film Criticism

“Which brings me back to the “Guilty Pleasure.” Such an idea only exists within an understanding of cinema as plot, and “content.” We then become conditioned to like certain genres and dislike others on the grounds of the kind of narrative they may embody. Coming from the approach that form creates content, we can open ourselves up to understanding that any plot or narrative can be executed effectively and interestingly in the medium of moving images we know as cinema. Viewers should not feel guilty for enjoying something.”

GD Williamson @ Where the Green Ants Dream: An Odyssey Through Contrarianism in Society

“This is why an American Contrarian, whether that’s Chomsky or White, is usually so angry and so fearful of dark conspiracies who push ‘their’ influence on the general public (and thereby reduce the influence of whichever Contrarian is complaining about it?). Britain, meanwhile, breeds people like Xan Brooks and the anonymous author of ‘101 Movies To Avoid’; people who can barely muster the energy to raise their eyelids, but want you to know that they’re dangerous and controversial all the same.”

Reilly Owens: Sancho Panza at the Wedding Feast: Last Action Hero

“Among the many amazing things Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Children Of Men’ does is hang its story on the acts of an antihero. Not antihero in the classic Bogart sense — although Theo Faron seems to fit that mold: rumpled trench coat, hangdog expression, ‘I stick my neck out for nobody’ attitude. No, this character is something different, a new breed. He goes against the grain of the common action hero; he is a passive hero.”

Robert Humaneck @ The House Next Door: The Unscrupulous Side of Kubrick: “A Clockwork Orange”

“Real horrorshow, yes, but Kubrick’s orchestration of so much mayhem is lacking a much-needed ideological backbone…. Kubrick never takes the necessary next step in subverting the violence he engages us with.”

Tom Shipp (Comment): “Sunset Boulevard”: A Stylish Load of Hooey (My Contrarian Opinion)

“‘Sunset Boulevard’ is a cheap shot exploitation film wrapped in sheep’s clothing. Norma Desmond is a one note caricature beginning and ending the film cartoonish, one dimesional, and completely to blame for everything.”

Steve Carlson @ Blogcritics: “I Spit on Your Grave”

“As it turns out, ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ is not the hateful nadir of cinema. It is, instead, the ‘Unforgiven’ of the rape-revenge genre, in that it is simultaneously the perfect expression of and the eulogy for the genre. It’s as brutal and confrontational a cinematic work as I’ve yet seen; Zarchi reduces the genre ito its barest elements and in doing so asks the audience to consider why they are there in the first place.”

Dan Eisenberg @ Cinemathematics: More Like the Big Snoozefest

“I must have seen ‘The Big Sleep’ at least three times, trying to find out what is so good about it…. And so far I’ve come up empty handed. It doesn’t work as a noir or as a romance. And I’ve tried to make it work. I’ve looked at praises for it to see what I’m missing. Or maybe it’s what they’re missing.”

Neil @ The Bleeding Tree: “The Exorcist”

“Ultimately, the most reprehensible aspect of the movie is its unsubtle metaphor for a single mother raising an out of control child and her responsibility for allowing the Devil as well as ‘the devil’ to take her child’s mind and soul.”

Nobody @ Any Eventuality: Deconstructing “Babel”: “Epic Movie” and the Illusion of Continuity

“I can think of no more pretentious and self-important film than “Babel,” and “Epic Movie” is a devastating critique of the illusion of continuity attempted by Inarritu and Arriaga.”

Piper @ Lazy Eye Theatre (extra!): When Oil and Water Mix it’s “Punch Drunk Love”

“This movie is more than Adam Sandler and Paul Thomas Anderson going against type.”

Jeff Ignatius @ Culture Snob: Conventional Contrarianism: A Practical Guide

“A good contrarian will anticipate the buzz-and-backlash cycle of popular culture and must carefully position an opinion for maximum contrarian durability. Yesterday’s contrarian can quickly become today’s peddler of safe opinions.”

Noel Vera @ Critic After Dark “The Exorcist”: Scary Movie?

“… [After] after all is said and done, ‘The Exorcist’ isn’t exactly the great horror classic it’s all pumped up to be — certainly not one that can’t stand a little revision, and I’ll tell you why: It just isn’t evil enough.”

Andy Horbal @ No More Marriages! Some Possibly “Contrarian” Thoughts On Blogging and Blog-a-Thons

“They’re more valuable for collecting a variety of extant positions on a subject than they are for promoting a discussion on a subject, for moving towards a reconception of that subject. For someone who prides himself on being part of a community focused on conversation this upsets me to a certain degree.”

Andy Horbal @ No More Marriages! (x2!) Why I Like Jonathan Rosenbaum and Armond White

“I did not come here to defend these critics–that would, again, require legwork I haven’t done–but instead to talk about why I’m always interested in their criticism and suggest a possible approach for identifying (or not identifying) them as bona fide contrarians.”

Andy Horbal @ No More Marriages! (x3!) The Black Maria Film Festival

“I’ve been itching to write about the Black Maria Film Festival since I returned from the Pittsburgh screening of their touring program this Saturday, and I offer this post now in the “contrarian” spirit of championing contemporary “unseen cinema.”

Steve Carlson (the sequel!) @ The Ongoing Cinematic Education of Steven Carlson “Freddy Got Fingered,” or: Daddy, Would You Like Some Dada?

“In 1917, Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and called it art. In 2001, Tom Green waggled a horse’s penis and called it a movie. The line of separation between the two actions is a lot thinner than would seem apparent.”

Pacheco @ bohemiancinema (he’s back!): “Any Given Sunday”: In Defense Of…”

“‘Any Given Sunday’ didn’t polarize the way ‘Natural Born Killers’ did, and after Oliver Stone made Alexander, the public’s new punching bag, his football opus seemed to fall off the radar, which I would argue is an even worse place to be.”

Pyko Moose @ Confessions of a Flick Junkie: A Pervert’s Guide to Faith: “The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

“But the film does not so much function as a criticism of faith as a meditation on its nature. In the opening shot we witness the creation of Man: First a landscape, still and silent in its endless deadness. A dog howls somewhere beyond our range of perception, calling into existence (and into frame) an ugly, twisted face….”

Counter-arguments & subjects for further investigation:(These pieces weren’t necessarily written in response to Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon posts, but nevertheless contribute to further exploration of some of the posts above…)

Chris Cagle @ Category D: A Film and Media Studies Blog: Post-ClassicismA response to Kristin Thompson’s post, above.

CK Dexter, Scanners Comment: Re: Taste into Theory & “You’ve Got Mail”

“Of course there are good and bad movies…. Those who say otherwise do so in bad faith, as part of a pragmatic social contract in which I graciously grant you your own private You’ve-Got-Mail’s so that you, in return, will grant my own egregious lapses in taste an equal amount of tolerance.”

Matt Zoller Seitz @ The House Next Door: Theo Angelopoulos’ “The Weeping Meadow”(For HarryTuttle’s Contemplative Cinema Blog-a-Thon, January 2007)

“It finds a cool-headed but empathetic visual analogy for the way we tend to envision history: as anecdotes about masses of unknown people moving from place to place, enduring unimaginable suffering, then shaking off the pain, reinventing themselves and moving on.”

girish: On Film CriticismA terrific ongoing discussion in response to the Adrian Martin piece quoted above.

jmac @ girishshambu.com/blog: Comment

“There is such CONFORMITY in writing movie reviews, and furthermore, most people seem to ACCEPT this PROSAIC approach to WRITING a review. It’s horrible!!!… Manohla Dargis’s review was the first step in introducing some CREATIVITY to the NYT movie section…. I actually think that Manohla Dargis’s review of ‘Inland Empire’ was beautiful.”

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: L’Age d’or

“Thanks to his mastery of montage, Buñuel naturalizes Dalí’s images into a duplicitous rhythm of normality and outrage. The film suggests instances of sex and violence far more extreme than any actually represented while contriving effronteries so offhanded you can’t believe you’ve actually seen them.”

Kim Newman, Empire Magazine (UK): “Once Upon a Time in the West”

“Leone showed with ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ that it was possible to honour the Western tradition while raising the artistic bar to such a level that nobody has made a better Western since. In fact, nobody has made a better Western, period.”

Preparatory postings:

Peet Gelderblom: The contrarian fallacy: Armond White vs. the Hipsters

David Bordwell: Indie Guignol

Dennis Cozzalio: Julie Andrews: Governess of Goodness or Nanny from the Netherworld?

Scanners: Do the Contrarian (Part I)

Scanners: Do the Contrarian (Part II)

Jim Emerson: The Big Lie

Yes, long before “Crash” there were movies that claimed to do one thing while actually doing the very opposite…

Catherine O’Hara: Queen of Comedy

View image Catherine O’Hara, the funniest person on the planet, with John Michael Higgins, who’s no slouch himself.

Please note that, in the list of Categories in the column at right, there is one topic that still has no entires. That is “Oscars.” Because, really, after last year what’s even left to joke about? And it’s only November.

Nevertheless, I have a couple of Chicago Sun-Times/RogerEbert.com reviews this week, and one of them is of Christopher Guest’s “For Your Consideration”:

Hey, I heard Catherine O’Hara is so splendid in Christopher Guest’s latest ensemble comedy, “For Your Consideration,” she’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.

It’s true — she is that good. And she’s long overdue. (I would already have given her an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, a Peabody, a Nobel and a People’s Global Golden Choice Award for her performances as Lola Heatherton and Dusty Towne in the 1982 SCTV “Network 90” Christmas special alone.)

Also: “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus”:Perhaps the two biggest problems with “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” are the last two words of the title. This through-the-looking-glass “Beauty and the Beast” fable has little to do with Diane Arbus, the famous photographer, or with her work, which is not seen in the film. As a Lewis Carroll title card explains, this “is not a historical biography” but instead “reaches beyond reality to express what might have been Arbus’ inner experience on her extraordinary path” to becoming an artist. Sure. All that’s missing is a sense of who Arbus was, and how the fictional journey depicted in the film is reflected in (or, rather, distilled from) her art.Meanwhile, over at The Onion, the question is considered: “Are Oscar Prognosticators Evil?.”

Two manifestations of genius in music and animation

“What would I give if I could live / Out of these waters? / What would I pay just for one day / Warm on the sand? / Betcha on land, they understand / Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters / Bright young women, sick o’ swimmin’ / Ready to stand!”

“Part of Their World” by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, from “The Little Mermaid” (John Musker and Ron Clements, 1989).

(reminder: @ryknight)

NEXT…

Forget it, Keyboard Cat. It’s Chinatown

SPOILER WARNING: Do not watch this if you haven’t seen “Chinatown.” Besides, why are you wasting time with Keyboard Cat if you haven’t seen “Chinatown,” one of the greatest films ever made?

The BJ

That’s the way they’re promoting the British heist movie “The Bank Job” — on the web, anyway. The Flash ads say “The BJ,” and then the B and the J move around and spell out the title. Gets your attention, I guess. This follows a catchy set-up slogan that says, “Somebody’s Getting Royally Screwed!” Just to put you in a susceptive frame of mind.

Anyway, my review of “The Bank Job” is at RogerEbert.com. Here’s an excerpt:

A serviceable B-grade British heist movie, “The Bank Job” is no worse than its generic title. And no better. It front-loads the naughty sex and back-loads the plot twists (the titular crime takes place in the middle), but apart from the prominence of Princess Margaret in the subterfuge, it’s a pretty routine job, as the use of the hackneyed phrase “plot twists” earlier in this sentence should indicate.

“The Bank Job” begins with a quick time-shuffle of the sort to which modern audiences have become accustomed. It starts in 1970 in the Caribbean. Literally in it. Brief shots of sub-aquatic toplessness are followed by a quick-and-blurry tropical fornication montage and a little retro-voyeuristic shutterbugging. Next, it’s East London in 1971 and some hoods are making violent threats against a stubbly car shop dealer named Terry Leather (Jason Statham). Then it’s three weeks earlier and…

You know the drill. At first you think Guy Ritchie might be rolling in his grave — only he’s not dead, just his career. That’s the kind of cheap shot you have plenty of time to think about as this movie grinds through its laboriously disjointed exposition….

Sex and the City: Girls do poop!

View image SJP sports her power flower.

“The weekend opening [of ‘Sex and the City’] also ranked as the strongest ever for a movie carried by a female lead (at least if ticket-price inflation is not taken into account). Paramount’s ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’ was the previous record-holder, with $47.7 million in ticket sales for Paramount during its opener in 2001.

“’I am so excited about the possibilities for movies about women,’ Ms. Parker said.”

— “Gal Pals of ‘Sex and the City’ Knock Indiana Jones From Top Spot,” New York Times, June 2, 2008

Summer’s here and the time is right for fart, diarrhea and masturbation jokes in the theaters. Not just in raunchy male-oriented comedies, but in so-called “chick flicks” — the kind groups of pals attend together after a few cocktails. I’m speaking, of course, about “Sex and the City.” Could it, perhaps, be the long-awaited Judd Apatow(ish) movie for gals? You know, the one about a group of friends who hang out and get drunk or stoned, complain about their relationships (or lack thereof), make dirty scatalogical jokes, and generally prefer one another’s company to that of the opposite sex?

You tell me. Because, sadly, nobody has enough money to pay me to go see “Sex and the City.” I am not the target audience and I know that. I have no objection to it, either. As Roger Ebert succinctly stated at the top of his review “I am not the person to review this movie.” Me, too. I am also not that person.

Beautiful Girls (and Mad Men): Ghosts of the 37th Floor

“Mad Men” Season 4, Episode 9 — “The Beautiful Girls” — was another of the series’ killer movies. Like “The Rejected” (which I wrote and vuddeoed about a few weeks ago), it made superb use of office space — the hallways, windows, corners and doors that those familiar with the sky-high digs of Sterling Cooper Draper Price have become part of the “Mad Men” memory-architecture. I wanted to pay tribute to that aspect of the series in this little essay about the ghosts on the 37th floor. Please take a look (it opens with a montage of portraits) and then read below for some notes…

I wanted to begin with an appreciation of these women, young and old, whose lives intersect at various angles throughout the episode — written by Dahvi Waller and Matthew Weiner and directed by Michael Uppendahl (who also shot Episode 2 this season, “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”). So, I decided to start with some faded film portraits (OK, Photoshopped frame grabs), with a semi-ironic nod to feminist film theory that would soon become popular (since politics and civil rights actually play a dramatic part in this episode). Each of the “girls” in the montage is the object of another’s gaze — usually a man’s, and usually the one who is her most receptive audience, or at least her most important, at SCDP. Faye is seen doing what she does best, giving a presentation; Joan stands up for/to Roger; exception: Peggy and her friend Joyce (seen by Stan, who Peggy outplayed in “Waldorf Stories,” and for whom they are both performing here); Miss Blankenship is talking to her boss, Don Draper (commenting that his daughter Sally looks much chubbier in photos); Sally is sitting on the couch in her father’s office, while he is on the phone with her mother; Betty is on the other end of the line — the only woman in this sequence who isn’t being watched; Megan, SCDP’s receptionist, is seen from Sally’s POV, because Sally has a sympathetic connection with her; now we switch to another female-female perspective: Joyce (love her Bacall-like pocket pose affectation) in Peggy’s office; and Peggy, in conversation with Joyce, but not beholden to her gaze (as you know, it is my contention that Peggy is the strongest character on the show). The overall movement of the sequence has brought us closer, from medium shot to Peggy’s close-up. And, finally, almost all of the women in the preceding portraits, surrounding Don and bearing witness to the handover of Sally to Betty. This is an amazing shot — the power of all those eyes. And for some reason it breaks my heart when Joyce enters that glass door (a significant location for her and Peggy) just as Betty and Sally are exiting. These three are strangers to one another, but everyone in the lobby is connected in some way, whether they know it or not.

Loose Canon: Paul Schrader and the end of movies

Paul Schrader

As you probably know by now, writer-director Paul Schrader (whose book “Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer” I consider an indispensable part of my film library) has a hefty article in the current Film Comment in which he discusses his abandoned book project, based on the idea of a 60-film cinematic canon.

Schrader writes:

Aesthetics, like the canon, is a narrative. It has a beginning, middle, and end. To understand the canon is to understand its narrative. Art is a narrative. Life is a narrative. The universe is a narrative. To understand the universe is to understand its history. Each and every thing is part of a story—beginning, middle, and end.

The much-debated “end of Art��? is not the end of painting and sculpture (they abound), but the closing of the plastic arts’ narrative. Life is full of ends; species die or become outmoded. There are still horses, but the horse’s role in transportation has come to an end. Likewise movies. We’re making horseshoes. […]

I’ve always been interested in films that address the contemporary situation. Historical films interest me more as history than art. I have, perhaps, 10 years of films left in me, and I’m perfectly content to ride the broken-down horse called movies into the cinematic sunset. But if I were starting out (at the beginning of my narrative, so to speak), I doubt I’d turn to films as defined by the 20th century for personal expression.

I’ve always found Schrader to be a fascinating writer (“Obsession,” “Taxi Driver,” “Last Temptation of Christ”) and director (“Blue Collar,” “Light of Day,” Light Sleeper,” “Affliction”), and I can see how he might view life as a “narrative” (he is, after all, a professional storyteller), but I don’t agree with him. Life isn’t a story. We pattern-seeking animals (my favorite phrase) just find it more comprehensible when we pretend that it is.

Beginnings, middles and endings are more often than not elusive, in life and in movies. When I think of my favorite films in these terms, I wonder: What is the beginning of the story of “Citizen Kane,” or “Mulholland Drive,” or “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” or “Nashville,” or “Taxi Driver”? What is the end? For me, these films are great in part because they don’t insist on neatly defined linear storytelling. (Still, movies do give some kind of shape and structure to experience; lives, as they are lived, don’t have much narrative structure.)

Evolution itself — and I appreciate Schrader’s contention that cinema is evolving into new forms, whatever they may be — resists the beginning-middle-end formulation, because everything is always in a state of flux. Evolution does not start or end — it’s all middle. A species may come into being, and may die off, but other branches will continue to grow and die and change. On the other hand, a story is still a story, no matter what form or language or medium is used to tell it. And storytelling has been around for thousands of years, because that’s a fundamental way we give shape to experience. So, will telling stories with images be all that much different from what we know now — even if the grammar and the language and the form all change?

Roman Polanski: Art trumps life?

“You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t.”

— Noah Cross, “Chinatown”

Roman Polanski gets under people’s skin. Not just his movies, but there’s something about him that dredges up deep, dark, disturbing feelings. I hope you’ve seen Marina Zenovich’s 2008 documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired” (trailer below), the biographical film that recounts the sex charges brought against Polanski in 1977, the resulting media melee, his guilty plea to a lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and his escape to France before sentencing. Watching the film, you may find yourself feeling a little like Rosemary Woodhouse, disoriented by the bleeding together of dreams, paranoia, irrationality, ambition, drugs, sex… and movies. (“This is really happening!”) The tagline for the doc was “The truth couldn’t fit in the headlines” — and that’s the case now, too.

TIFF: Tower to nowhere

Wandering, lost, in the desert of “Babel.”

“Babel” is the very model of a modern major motion picture about the inter-connectedness of people around the globe, speaking different languages in different countries and socio-political situations. The problem is that it remains a model for a movie, a contrivance. I was somehow reminded of the fantastic — even sympathetic — mutant creature from “The Host” turning into the flat, washed-up, dead sea monster from the end of “La Dolce Vita.” “Babel” has the very best of intentions, and tries very hard, but cannot bring them to life. What I mean is, it left me cold. (And I cried almost all the way through the writer’s last picture, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” because those feelings of lives tangentially but profoundly inter-related were so beautifully realized.)

After the screening, a film critic friend compared it to last year’s “Crash” — but quickly took it back, admitting it’s not as painfully schematic as that. The intertwined stories concern: 1) a family of goat herders in Morocco, who come into possession of a gun for shooting jackals that threaten their herds; 2) the Tokyo businessman who originally gave the gun as a gift to a nearby villager while on safari in Morocco, and his deaf daughter, a schoolgirl who is desperate to lose her virginity; 3) an American couple (big names Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett — both excellent) who have come to Morocco after their youngest son has died of SIDS, and who are plunged into the middle of an international incident — though left feeling terribly alone — when “terrorists” (actually one of the kids with the new rifle) shoot at their tourist bus and severely wound the woman; 4) the Mexican illegal caretaker of the American couple’s two other children, who takes them with her to her son’s wedding in Mexico when nobody else can look after them for the day.

I confess, I was interested in following each one of these threads, but by the end of the movie I felt the overall tapestry amounted to less than — what should I call it? — the aggregate of its warp and woof, I guess. I had reason to expect something more substantial and resonant from Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of “Amores Perros” and Guillermo Arriaga, the writer of that film and (especially) “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” — the best movie of last year’s Toronto Film Festival, of last year in general, and (for my money) of the 21st century so far.

ADDENDUM Just remembered something else I wanted to say about “Babel,” an example of what’s missing. The deaf Japanese girl and a friend accompany some boys to a Tokyo club, where a remixed Earth, Wind & Fire song blares over the sound system so loud that I could feel it in my chest. Yet, when the movie cuts to the girl’s POV, there’s no beat. In fact, she would feel the vibrations the way anyone else would, and I was surprised the movie didn’t attempt to portray this (if only through the sub-woofers on the digital sound track). This struck me as a key failure of empathetic imagination, and a hackneyed portrayal of deafness, especially for a movie that claims to be about experiencing life through others in disparate circumstances around the world.

Hurdy Gurdys and Aqua Velvas: Misc. “Zodiac” fax…

There’s something about an Aqua Velva Man.

Don’t worry; no spoilers here.

>> The blue Aqua Velva cocktail that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character orders is named after a popular after-shave lotion of a similar color. The drink consists of vodka, gin, blue curaçao and Sprite or 7-Up. (Today you might even be able to get away with Sierra Mist.) Some variations also include rum and tequila. And, perhaps, a sprig of mint or an orange slice. Other recipes call for Baileys Irish Cream (for that foggy look, I guess). And still one other is made of tequila, blue curaçao, and fruit juices. It’s not necessarily as frou-frou as it seems in the movie (with those fancy glasses, umbrellas, maraschino cherries and all): In WWII, US sailors were said to drink it for its alcohol content (which has since been reduced). A little soapy, perhaps (ingredients: Alcohol 40, water, glycerin, fragrance, menthol), but it went down smooth, evidently…

Aqua Velva

3/4 oz. vodka

3/4 oz. gin

1/4 oz. Sprite

1/2 oz blue curaçao

1/2 oz. Sprite

Shake vodka, gin, blue curaçao and Sprite with ice. Pour/strain into glass and top off with Sprite. Cocktail umbrella and fruit/mint garnish optional.

>> Paul Avery, the San Francisco Chronicle reporter played by Robert Downey Jr., married Margo St. James, founder of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), the sex-workers’ rights organization. St. James ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1996 and 1998.

>> Avery covered the Zodiac case for the SF Chronicle (which reprints one of the stories featured in the movie here), and Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith (played by Gyllenhaal) wrote the book, “Zodiac,” on which the movie was based. But Avery later co-wrote a book about another famous Bay Area case he covered, the Patricia Hearst kidnapping. Avery and Vin McLellan published “The Voices of Guns: The Definitive and Dramatic Story of the Twenty-two-month Career of the Symbionese Liberation Army, One of the Most Bizarre Chapters in the History of the American Left” (Putnam, 1977).

>> Recording sessions for the haunting Donovan song “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” (and the album of the same name), used to spine-tingling effect in the movie, included John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page and/or John Bonham, who would go on to form Led Zeppelin. Donovan claimed George Harrison wrote part of a lyric for “Hurdy Gurdy Man” when they were in Rishikesh, India, with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — along with the other Beatles, Jane Asher, Mia Farrow, Beach Boy Mike Love and others. (Another Donovan song, “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” from 1967, was featured in TV commercials for Love’s Baby Soft cosmetics, targeted at teen and pre-teen girls, in 1968.)

>> According to Donovan’s autobiography, “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” the verse George Harrison wrote was cut from the “Hurdy Gurdy Man” single (to keep it short for DJs), but was used by Donovan on a 1990 live album. The verse (which would have worked perfectly in the movie):

When the truth gets buried deep

Beneath a thousand years asleep

Time demands a turnaround

And once again the truth is found

>> Construction on San Francisco’s famous pyramidal Transamerica building began in 1969 and was finished in 1972. It is still the city’s tallest skyscraper.

>> Although crude fax technology existed in the late 19th century, and a modified form was used by the Associated Press to transmit what were identified as “AP Wirephotos” beginning in 1934, the modern fax machine did not come into general use until the mid-1970s. By the mid-1980s, falling electronics prices and improved phone technology made the fax a ubiquitous office tool.

>> The opening song in “Zodiac” is “Easy to be Hard” (from “The American Tribal Love/Rock Musical,” “Hair”) performed by Three Dog Night — one of the best-selling bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose hit singles included “One” (written by Harry Nilsson; recorded by Aimee Mann for the soundtrack of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”), “Mama Told Me Not to Come” (written by Randy Newman; also used in PTA’s “Boogie Nights”), “Eli’s Coming” (written by Laura Nyro) and “Joy to the World” (written by Hoyt Axton — the guy who buys the gremlin in Joe Dante’s “Gremlins”). The Three Dog Night version of “Shambala” (1973) was featured in a recent episode of the TV show “Lost,” in which an eight-track cassette of the song is found in a crashed VW bus. TDN’s version of “Shambala” was also used on the soundtrack of Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects.”

Pop notes: 101 essential movies

You must remember this: one of the movies’ iconic images.

Further reflections on the 2006 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO: John Lennon said life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. Life is also the process of finding connections between everything that happens to you (there he goes with that “We’re all pattern-seeking animals” thing again!). So, last week at the CWA, three panels I was on ran together in my head in ways I think are interesting. But then, it’s my head we’re talking about, so I’m probably inclined to think my digressions and free-associations are interesting, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent so much time mucking about with them.

Veteran’s Day: The skin beneath the uniform

“When in uniform I have to be the exact same as everyone else, I need to look exactly like them.”

— a soldier in “Tattooed Under Fire”

As a person of ink (and I’m not just referring to the stuff that runs through my newspaperman veins, but to my eight tattoos — so far), I know how intimately tattoos can project images of who you are (or were at the time of the tattooing) from the inside out. And how they conversely shape your identity through the incorporation of symbols, literally internalizing them under your skin. My tattoos are me, as much as any other part of my mind or body. They are physical memories, ideas made flesh. Beginning Wednesday (11/11/09), Veteran’s Day, PBS stations will be showing a documentary about Fort Hood soldiers and their skin art called “Tattooed Under Fire.” I haven’t seen it in advance (my TiVo is set to record it tonight), but Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote at Salon.com just a few days ago:

“This is Fort Hood, and it goes on for miles and miles and miles.” Director Nancy Schiesari’s riveting documentary, “Tattooed Under Fire,” about the River City parlor in Killeen, Texas, and the soldiers who patronize it, was already being hailed as one of the great unreleased films of the year when it finally got picked up to air this month on PBS. But in a grim piece of poetic timing, suddenly the world is looking to understand how the largest military base in the country could become the site of one its worst mass murders, an attack that left 13 dead and 30 injured.

Trailer and showtimes after the jump…

Opening Shots: ‘Ghost World’

From Robb Hamilton, Seattle, WA:

A few weeks ago I took my kids to see “Cars” at a theater off Aurora Avenue in Seattle. Aurora would be a perfect setting for a Clowes/Zwigoff picture: seedy motels, diners, people waiting for buses, adult book stores, etc. We were seeing the movie a week or two after it opened so the crowds had died down. The cast of characters in the lobby getting snacks (the overweight family loading up on jumbo popcorn, the chaperone with the retarded kids, the guy with the NASCAR hat) made me remark to my wife that I felt like i was in a Dan Clowes comic.

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The opening shots of “Ghost World” cut back and forth between “Jaan Pehachaan Ho” from the Bollywood movie “Gumnaam” and a camera movement to the back of Enid’s apartment building. We find out at the end of the shot that the movie is playing on Enid’s TV. Terry Zwigoff does a great job of capturing Dan Clowes’ style as well as Enid’s character. All of the inhabitants in the apartments seem brain dead, while Enid’s apartment is pink and blue, filled with thrift store finds, toys and a Pufnstuf poster. Later in the movie Enid is eventually able to escape the dead end that is her life. The opening shots of “Ghost World” drop you right into the pages of a Dan Clowes comic book and more importantly shows the juxtaposition between Enid and her surroundings.

An alley off Aurora Avenue North near 80th — east side of street. Residential facilities on the right; a structure housing the Baseball Barber Shop on the left. Keep heading north for lots, lots more… (A9 Local Search)

JE: Muchas gracias, Hammy! (I recently wrote an appreciation of “Jaan Pehachaan Ho” here.) As you know, I love Aurora and consider it the greatest street in the entire world. (Sorry, State Street — Seattle’s my kinda town.) My theory is that every town in America has an Aurora Avenue (the old Highway 99), a main commercial drag (possibly the former primary arterial route) that takes you past parks, parking lots, and used car lots, and is littered with establishments where merchants provide for the exchange of goods and services of every conceivable type — from birth (diaper services) to death (funeral homes, cemetaries). In LA, it’s Pico Boulevard. In Spokane, I suppose it’s Division. Anybody reading this should know the clogged arterial in their particular burgh. What’s yours? (BTW, if you want to take a simulated drive down Aurora, you can do so right now, thanks to Amazon’s fantastic A9 Local Search, which photographs both sides of streets to help you find just the merchants with the goods and services you require. Here it is: Seattle’s Aurora Avenue North, between Green Lake (and Woodland Park) and 80th.)

The way I look at this opening is much like you describe. The first two shots are really a “title card,” because they are really a suggested frame-within-the-frame image of “Gumnaam” playing on TV (although we don’t know that yet). After the title appears, there’s the first shot proper: a great image down the side of an apartment complex, with the silhouettes of wires and ceramic insulators in the foreground. In the windows receding into the distance, we see the flickering of light from cathode-ray tubes. The camera begins to move toward them. Although the rest of the sequence involves cutting back and forth between “Jaan Pehachaan Ho” and shots that slide past and peer into those windows, it feels like one continuous camera movement. I’ve said it before: It perfectly legitimate to talk about the context for these Opening Shots — as Robert Horton also does for “Cutter’s Way.” More images after the jump…