At long last, I'm glad to finally point you towards the InRo Decade in Review feature. One of the benefits of online writing is the unlimited space, hence some lovely full color graphics and a few words on each title (as opposed to say, the recent Film Comment decade project, featuring a laundry list of titles and a few scattered words to suggest significance or contextualize within larger happenings during the decade). The down side is the lack of pay and the reliance on someone's word, as opposed to a deadline backed up by a paycheck. Nevertheless, I think it turned out pretty well, despite the usual oversights that will always accompany any project of this sort. So scoot on over and check it out. I'm responsible for one of the honorable mentions, as well as numbers 21, 44, 45, 51, 53, 54, 60, 61, 66, 68, 86, 96 and 99. If I'm not mistaken, #'s 100-51 will go live tomorrow, with the rest to follow the day after. I'll update each number as they become available with a link. Big props to Mr. Andrew Alexander Dowd for spearheading and organizing this fairly massive undertaking, as well as taking on a lion's share of the writing duties. You make it look it easy sir.
I suppose this officially puts the decade to rest, at least as far as writing about it goes, but movie love is a full time job. I look forward to the day I glance back at this list and kick myself for neglecting to include some great, as of yet undiscovered talent. Let's keep watching, shall we?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
List-O-Mania: The Year (Finally)
Is it possible to talk about the year in film 2009 without bringing up Avatar? James Cameron’s behemoth has become, as of this writing, the highest grossing picture world wide of all time, and the domestic record (set by his majesty’s own Titanic) is set to fall any day now. Of course, crunching the numbers reveals that only around half as many people that flocked to Titanic have seen Avatar. So what does all of this mean? I’m not entirely sure myself. I’m particularly cautious of zeitgeist criticism (as David Bordwell is fond of saying – which zeitgeist do you want to talk about?), and the notion that Avatar is some kind of game changer akin to the coming of sound, color or Cinemascope is particularly vexing. One thing is for sure – Avatar isn’t doing much in the way of storytelling, character development, or political discourse, nor is particularly interested in changing the grammar of the action-spectacular (for that, you’ll need to go and see Mann and To). Record setting box office grosses being what it is, Avatar is certain to influence a new crop of imitations, while continuing the fad of extra expensive 3D spectacle. Dave Kehr has an essential article in the current Film Comment that talks specifically about the new generation of 3D, as well as its history and formal properties. The article is also a bracing reminder that while the history books are fond of ‘eureka’, ‘lightning-in-a-bottle’ moments, the coming of sound and color went through many incarnations and incremental gradations before becoming the standards that they are today. I have no intention of getting all Bosley Crowther on you; for all I know, 3D might very well eventually become normalized, just another tool in the filmmaker’s arsenal. As Kehr notes, just such a normalizing was taking place when the studios decided to kill the 3D experiment, releasing Hitchcock’s 3D produced Dial M For Murder in 2D versions and abandoning the process all together. So perhaps what I’m arguing against is not the process itself, but its new found place in the sun courtesy of Cameron’s onerous, simple minded fantasy spectacle.
One thing is for sure: the films that mattered most to me this past year have nothing to do with Avatar or its ilk. I’m not interested in trying to yolk together thirty odd disparate films, but a quick glance reveals more than a few filmmakers concerned with where we are right now, and how we are doing, as opposed to where we can travel with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special effects. And as an exercise in world-building and fantastical speculation, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has Cameron beat hands down.
So here you are, in no particular order:
24 City (Zhang-ke)
Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa)
Summer Hours (Assayas)
35 Shots of Rum (Denis)
Bright Star (Campion)
Public Enemies (Mann)
Shirin (Kiarostami)
Two Lovers (Gray)
The Headless Woman (Martel)
The Beaches of Agnes (Varda)
The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)
Lorna’s Silence (Dardenne Bros.)
Treeless Mountain (Kim)
Sugar (Boden/Fleck)
The Sun (Sokurov)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Gilliam)
That’s a hell of a year, no matter how you look at it. I could have also made room for Soderbergh’s twin experiments Che and The Girlfriend Experience, one an epic spectacle made with the most intimate of means, the other a quick one-off that happens to be a bold statement about capitalism; Rian Johnson’s The Brother’s Bloom, a charming lark of a film that’s ostensibly about con men, but is actually a profound meditation on the nature of storytelling; Steve McQueen’s installation in search of a gallery Hunger; Laurent Cantet’s public schools docudrama The Class; Brillante Mendoza’s pseudo-verite riff on 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' Serbis; Philippe Garrel’s fevered, doom laden romantic mind-fuck Frontier of Dawn; Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, two ‘kids films’ that sneak in more adult emotional baggage than this adult might be willing to admit; John Hillcoat’s noble failure The Road, Park Chan-Wook’s fuck you to ‘Twilight’ Thirst; Gotz Spielmann’s slow-burn (damn near glacial) knife-twist of a revenge thriller Revanche; and of course, so as not be left out of all the other reindeer games, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (yeah, at this point it's become a bit over hyped. But damn do those action scenes work like gang busters).
One of the things that annoy me most about these kinds of year-in-review type articles is that we frequently forget that cinephilia is a full time job. I saw a couple of hundred films this year that were entirely new to me, although less than half of those were current releases. Of course, whatever isn’t currently in release isn’t in the position to become a hot commodity, and is therefore unlikely to generate much ado about anything. Dave Kehr and The Auteurs are doing their part to redress the balance, with Kehr’s weekly NY Times column on older films hitting dvd (and presiding over the web’s best discussion forum) and The Auteurs maximizing the autonomy of the web to talk about whatever the fuck they feel like. One of the years most important events had nothing to do with what’s new and hot, and everything to do with exploring the past as a way towards pointing to the future. The Gene Siskel Film Center provided a near-exhaustive retrospective of Nagisa Oshima (courtesy of the estimable James Quandt of the Cinematheque Ontario), a criminally under rated auteur of the Japanese post-war cinema and, along with Shohei Imamura, an essential voice of social critique and protest (Imamura himself got some past due recognition of his own with a Criterion box set release of three hard-to-see early features). Often dubbed the Japanese Godard, Oshima dabbled in a lot of genres, appropriated a lot of styles and ruffled a lot of feathers while exploring deeply embedded themes of psycho-sexual disgust, self loathing, institutionalized violence, post-colonial racism and macho self-aggrandizement, sometimes within a strikingly modern meta-idiom. We’ve still got a lot to learn if we are only now discovering the likes of Oshima while hailing Cameron and his obliteration of the human body (you can take that literally or figuratively).
Way back in 2000, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an essential essay lambasting critical complacency and the lazy, counter-productive, Hollywood sponsored notion that the cinema was ‘dead’. A decade on, she’s proving more resilient than ever.
Random thoughts:
Seven essential films by female directors? Now we’re talking. More please.
The release of ‘Farber on Film’: an essential collection, poised to bring Farber to a new generation of people hungry for authentic movie talk. His voice is missed, but it lives on.
The death of film criticism carries on unabated, or so I’m told. Myself, I can barely read all the words proliferating wildly all over the web. Yes, much of it is unpaid, and that’s a shame. Long live the passionate ‘amateur’.
Koch Lorber released Godard’s La Chinoise and Le Gai Savoir, and Masters of Cinema got their hands on the long unavailable Un Femme Mariee, while Criterion unleashed definitive editions of Made in USA and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, with Vivre sa Vie on the way. At this point, someone has got to suck it up and get around to releasing Godard’s forgotten Dziga-Vertov Group films. It amounts to a kind of phantom oeuvre, and past critical assessments to the contrary, it’s time to let us decide for ourselves the (potential) value of these (lost?) films.
One thing is for sure: the films that mattered most to me this past year have nothing to do with Avatar or its ilk. I’m not interested in trying to yolk together thirty odd disparate films, but a quick glance reveals more than a few filmmakers concerned with where we are right now, and how we are doing, as opposed to where we can travel with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of special effects. And as an exercise in world-building and fantastical speculation, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has Cameron beat hands down.
So here you are, in no particular order:
24 City (Zhang-ke)
Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa)
Summer Hours (Assayas)
35 Shots of Rum (Denis)
Bright Star (Campion)
Public Enemies (Mann)
Shirin (Kiarostami)
Two Lovers (Gray)
The Headless Woman (Martel)
The Beaches of Agnes (Varda)
The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)
Lorna’s Silence (Dardenne Bros.)
Treeless Mountain (Kim)
Sugar (Boden/Fleck)
The Sun (Sokurov)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Gilliam)
That’s a hell of a year, no matter how you look at it. I could have also made room for Soderbergh’s twin experiments Che and The Girlfriend Experience, one an epic spectacle made with the most intimate of means, the other a quick one-off that happens to be a bold statement about capitalism; Rian Johnson’s The Brother’s Bloom, a charming lark of a film that’s ostensibly about con men, but is actually a profound meditation on the nature of storytelling; Steve McQueen’s installation in search of a gallery Hunger; Laurent Cantet’s public schools docudrama The Class; Brillante Mendoza’s pseudo-verite riff on 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' Serbis; Philippe Garrel’s fevered, doom laden romantic mind-fuck Frontier of Dawn; Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, two ‘kids films’ that sneak in more adult emotional baggage than this adult might be willing to admit; John Hillcoat’s noble failure The Road, Park Chan-Wook’s fuck you to ‘Twilight’ Thirst; Gotz Spielmann’s slow-burn (damn near glacial) knife-twist of a revenge thriller Revanche; and of course, so as not be left out of all the other reindeer games, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (yeah, at this point it's become a bit over hyped. But damn do those action scenes work like gang busters).
One of the things that annoy me most about these kinds of year-in-review type articles is that we frequently forget that cinephilia is a full time job. I saw a couple of hundred films this year that were entirely new to me, although less than half of those were current releases. Of course, whatever isn’t currently in release isn’t in the position to become a hot commodity, and is therefore unlikely to generate much ado about anything. Dave Kehr and The Auteurs are doing their part to redress the balance, with Kehr’s weekly NY Times column on older films hitting dvd (and presiding over the web’s best discussion forum) and The Auteurs maximizing the autonomy of the web to talk about whatever the fuck they feel like. One of the years most important events had nothing to do with what’s new and hot, and everything to do with exploring the past as a way towards pointing to the future. The Gene Siskel Film Center provided a near-exhaustive retrospective of Nagisa Oshima (courtesy of the estimable James Quandt of the Cinematheque Ontario), a criminally under rated auteur of the Japanese post-war cinema and, along with Shohei Imamura, an essential voice of social critique and protest (Imamura himself got some past due recognition of his own with a Criterion box set release of three hard-to-see early features). Often dubbed the Japanese Godard, Oshima dabbled in a lot of genres, appropriated a lot of styles and ruffled a lot of feathers while exploring deeply embedded themes of psycho-sexual disgust, self loathing, institutionalized violence, post-colonial racism and macho self-aggrandizement, sometimes within a strikingly modern meta-idiom. We’ve still got a lot to learn if we are only now discovering the likes of Oshima while hailing Cameron and his obliteration of the human body (you can take that literally or figuratively).
Way back in 2000, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an essential essay lambasting critical complacency and the lazy, counter-productive, Hollywood sponsored notion that the cinema was ‘dead’. A decade on, she’s proving more resilient than ever.
Random thoughts:
Seven essential films by female directors? Now we’re talking. More please.
The release of ‘Farber on Film’: an essential collection, poised to bring Farber to a new generation of people hungry for authentic movie talk. His voice is missed, but it lives on.
The death of film criticism carries on unabated, or so I’m told. Myself, I can barely read all the words proliferating wildly all over the web. Yes, much of it is unpaid, and that’s a shame. Long live the passionate ‘amateur’.
Koch Lorber released Godard’s La Chinoise and Le Gai Savoir, and Masters of Cinema got their hands on the long unavailable Un Femme Mariee, while Criterion unleashed definitive editions of Made in USA and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, with Vivre sa Vie on the way. At this point, someone has got to suck it up and get around to releasing Godard’s forgotten Dziga-Vertov Group films. It amounts to a kind of phantom oeuvre, and past critical assessments to the contrary, it’s time to let us decide for ourselves the (potential) value of these (lost?) films.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Hope:
Francis Ford Coppola in conversation with Adam Nayman in the Fall 2009 issue of Cinema Scope:
"I don't want a career. I had one and I gave it up. I'm just an amateur. I do it for the love of it... At my age, I can afford for film to be a passion and not a business. I approach it with respect, and with the knowledge of how lucky I am to be able to express myself in this beautiful art form that is so young that it still requires experimentation to learn about it. I want to learn about it."
Some thoughts for the New Year. Lets learn.
"I don't want a career. I had one and I gave it up. I'm just an amateur. I do it for the love of it... At my age, I can afford for film to be a passion and not a business. I approach it with respect, and with the knowledge of how lucky I am to be able to express myself in this beautiful art form that is so young that it still requires experimentation to learn about it. I want to learn about it."
Some thoughts for the New Year. Lets learn.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
List-O-Mania, Part 3: The Decade in Music
Because you demanded it:
Mastadon: Blood Mountain – epic and pulverizing; mixes the heaviness of Leviathan with a proggy intricacy that, arguably, went too far with Crack the Skye. This will make your ears bleed and have you begging for more.
Boris: Pink – epic riffs, and the best balls-to-the-wall guitar rock in ages. Loud and proud.
Wolf Parade: Apologies to the Queen Mary – beautiful pop melodies.
Arcade Fire: Funeral – delicate, wistful arrangements that belie a certain kind of youthful longing. Dances on the edge of twee and heart breaking.
Explosions in the Sky: All of a Sudden I Miss Everybody – each song builds to a glorious, epically crashing crescendo before fading into a mournful silence.
TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain – art nerds decide to mix dance rock with elctro clash, adding just a hint of punk and some whispers of groovy Motown – aka, a fucking blast.
Shellac: 1000 Hurts – jittery, angular math rock; these guys have a precision that’s not unlike being inside the head of a schizophrenic.
Mono: You Are Here – a spacey, ethereal opera.
The Walkmen: You and Me – has a barroom jam session kind of vibe, until they build to a crashing chorus, mixing propulsive drums and brusque howling, all whiskey sours and cigarettes.
Animal Collective: Feels – are they freak folk? Noise rock? Crafty pop song writers hiding their riffs behind layers of sonic debris? Yes, yes and yes.
New Pornographers: Mass Romantic – the decade’s finest power pop, heir to the throne of Big Star.
Deerhunter: Microcastle – My Bloody Valentine lives on – moody trances segue into tentative rock, bordering on the creepy.
Broken Social Scene: S/T – insane Canadian super-group creates the most whimsical pop of the decade. Not surprisingly, the album switches gears about a dozen times, but every moment is spot on.
Liars: Drums Not Dead – dark crooning gradually gives way to explosions of noise and fury, before retreating into moody, opaque soundscapes.
Godspeed You Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! – It’s not unlike listening to a gathering storm – there’s a slow, low rumbling as the sky darkens, clouds splintering, eventually releasing a violent downpour. Bleak and epic.
Sunn O}}} & Boris: Altar – music for the apocalypse.
Mission of Burma: the Obliterati – indie rock legends take a hiatus for a decade or two, and return with three strong efforts in as many years. This is the best of the three, old school, straight ahead rocking out.
Deerhoof: Runners Four – like Liars, but cuter and bouncier.
Battles: Mirrored – math-y post rock with a psychedelic edge; jam session improvisations grounded by a tight-as-nails rhythm section. These fuckers are having fun.
Pelican: City of Echoes: expertly mixes stoner sludge with prodigious riffs into a doom laden concoction that makes the soul hurt. Their songs build and build and build until you’re standing on the edge of a precipice, tempted to plunge ahead.
Wilderness: S/T – with all due respect to Interpol (who I also like), these guys are the true successors to Joy Division.
Runners up:
Pelican: The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
Pig Destroyer: Prowler in the Yard
The Sword: Age of Winter
Angels of Light: You Are Him
Uzeda: Stella
Sunset Rubdown: Shut up I am Dreaming
Bloc Party: Silent Alarm
Parts + Labor: Mapmaker
Jesu: S/T
Sigur Ros: Tak
31 Knots: It Was High Time to Escape
Shellac: Excellent Italian Greyhound
Mogwai: Mr. Beast
Low: Drums and Guns
Mastadon: Blood Mountain – epic and pulverizing; mixes the heaviness of Leviathan with a proggy intricacy that, arguably, went too far with Crack the Skye. This will make your ears bleed and have you begging for more.
Boris: Pink – epic riffs, and the best balls-to-the-wall guitar rock in ages. Loud and proud.
Wolf Parade: Apologies to the Queen Mary – beautiful pop melodies.
Arcade Fire: Funeral – delicate, wistful arrangements that belie a certain kind of youthful longing. Dances on the edge of twee and heart breaking.
Explosions in the Sky: All of a Sudden I Miss Everybody – each song builds to a glorious, epically crashing crescendo before fading into a mournful silence.
TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain – art nerds decide to mix dance rock with elctro clash, adding just a hint of punk and some whispers of groovy Motown – aka, a fucking blast.
Shellac: 1000 Hurts – jittery, angular math rock; these guys have a precision that’s not unlike being inside the head of a schizophrenic.
Mono: You Are Here – a spacey, ethereal opera.
The Walkmen: You and Me – has a barroom jam session kind of vibe, until they build to a crashing chorus, mixing propulsive drums and brusque howling, all whiskey sours and cigarettes.
Animal Collective: Feels – are they freak folk? Noise rock? Crafty pop song writers hiding their riffs behind layers of sonic debris? Yes, yes and yes.
New Pornographers: Mass Romantic – the decade’s finest power pop, heir to the throne of Big Star.
Deerhunter: Microcastle – My Bloody Valentine lives on – moody trances segue into tentative rock, bordering on the creepy.
Broken Social Scene: S/T – insane Canadian super-group creates the most whimsical pop of the decade. Not surprisingly, the album switches gears about a dozen times, but every moment is spot on.
Liars: Drums Not Dead – dark crooning gradually gives way to explosions of noise and fury, before retreating into moody, opaque soundscapes.
Godspeed You Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! – It’s not unlike listening to a gathering storm – there’s a slow, low rumbling as the sky darkens, clouds splintering, eventually releasing a violent downpour. Bleak and epic.
Sunn O}}} & Boris: Altar – music for the apocalypse.
Mission of Burma: the Obliterati – indie rock legends take a hiatus for a decade or two, and return with three strong efforts in as many years. This is the best of the three, old school, straight ahead rocking out.
Deerhoof: Runners Four – like Liars, but cuter and bouncier.
Battles: Mirrored – math-y post rock with a psychedelic edge; jam session improvisations grounded by a tight-as-nails rhythm section. These fuckers are having fun.
Pelican: City of Echoes: expertly mixes stoner sludge with prodigious riffs into a doom laden concoction that makes the soul hurt. Their songs build and build and build until you’re standing on the edge of a precipice, tempted to plunge ahead.
Wilderness: S/T – with all due respect to Interpol (who I also like), these guys are the true successors to Joy Division.
Runners up:
Pelican: The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
Pig Destroyer: Prowler in the Yard
The Sword: Age of Winter
Angels of Light: You Are Him
Uzeda: Stella
Sunset Rubdown: Shut up I am Dreaming
Bloc Party: Silent Alarm
Parts + Labor: Mapmaker
Jesu: S/T
Sigur Ros: Tak
31 Knots: It Was High Time to Escape
Shellac: Excellent Italian Greyhound
Mogwai: Mr. Beast
Low: Drums and Guns
Monday, December 14, 2009
List-O-Mania, Part 2: The Decade
The decade comes to a close, and we can't resist making lists. Here's The AV Club; the delightfully surly Michael Atkinson weighs in here; here's the aggregate Time Out New York list, with links to critic's individual ballots; Richard Brody of The New Yorker has a delightfully pretentious list here (even more so than my own); the online social networking/streaming video, and home of friend-of-this-here blog Ignatius Vishnevetsky, The Auteurs, has got a huge collection of links here and here; James Quandt and TIFF Cinematheque have a list compiled Indiewire style from a bunch of international critics, curators and programmers.
My participation in a list of the decade's best came about originally as a simple joint effort between myself and some close friends, under the auspices and benevolent editorial hand of Alex Dowd. As of now, the project has expanded to include writers for the relatively new film/music website In Review Online, home to Mr. Dowd and a few other friends. I've got no problem with this, although the inclusion of several new people has changed the eventual consensus Top 100 (coming soon!), which I'm also assuming will be eventually unveiled on their website. Contributors have been encouraged to release their own personal ballots, so here we go.
A few thoughts on list making: There is no 'Dark Knight'. Nor will you be seeing the Coen Brothers or Almodovar. You'll also notice a lack of documentaries and animated films on my list. With the exception of Pixar and a handful of anime titles, there wasn't a lot else to even begin to consider. In the end, I decided that offering a unique and artistic statement about our world using the building blocks of filmed reality were more important than mentioning, once again, how rad Pixar movies are. Call me an old fashioned Bazinian, but that's how it goes. At the risk of incurring further wrath, I'll also say that most straight forward documentaries don't particularly interest me, from an aesthetic point of view. This decade saw an impressive group of home grown, DIY docs about the war, 9/11, Katrina, corporate malfeasance, etc. I applaud their intentions, and am happy that they exist - these are truly important pedagogic utensils. Nevertheless, their polemic intent frequently overshadows any exploration of film as a medium; in other words, the camera is simply a means to an end. I'll also add that some of the films on my list do utilize documentary film techniques, blending them in fascinating ways with traditional narrative visual grammar. This intersecting of mediums is what interest me. I did make an effort to think globally, although their are no 'token' films present on the list - in other words, the Sembene film is not on here simply because I needed an 'African' film. There is also a lack of films from 2009 - simply put, there hasn't been, in my mind, enough time to fully live with '09 films, or to see them again. The way thoughts and feelings change over time and multiple viewings is very important to me, and as much as I value 'Serbis', 'Public Enemies', 'The Headless Woman' and 'Where the Wild Things Are', I simply haven't had a chance to revisit and test my initial responses. Incidentally, all of these films will appear on my 'Best of '09' list, and I have seen 'Public Enemies' more than once - but Mann has plenty of love on the list already. On that note:
1. Miami Vice (Mann; 2006/USA)
2. Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr; 2000/Hungary)
3. Inland Empire (Lynch; 2007/USA)
4. Notre Musique (Godard; 2004/France)
5. Ten/10 on Ten/Five (Kiarostami; 2002;2004;2003/Iran)
6. Demonlover (Assayas; 2002/France)
7. The Intruder (Denis; 2004/France)
8. Millennium Mambo (Hou; 2001/Taiwan)
9. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai; 2003/Taiwan)
10. Moolaade (Sembene; 2004/Senegal)
11. Exiled (To; 2007/Hong Kong)
12. Bright Future (Kurosawa; 2003/Japan)
13. Code Unknown (Haneke; 2000/France)
14. Morvern Callar (Ramsay; 2002/UK)
15. ABC Africa (Kiarostami; 2001/Iran)
16. The Uncertainty Principle (de Oliveira;
17. The Holy Girl (Martel; 2002/Portugal)
18. Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul; 2006/Thailand)
19. In the Mood For Love (Wong; 2000/Hong Kong)
20. 24 City (Zhang-ke; 2008/China)
21. Yi Yi (Yang; 2000/Taiwan)
22. A History of Violence (Cronenberg; 2005/USA)
23. Offside (Panahi; 2006/Iran)
24. L’Enfant (Dardenne’s; 2005/France)
25. Zodiac (Fincher; USA)
26. The Duchess of Langeais (Rivette; France)
27. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Anderson; 2003/USA)
28. Regular Lovers (Garrel; 2005/France)
29. Ali (Mann; 2002/USA)
30. Bamako (Sissako; 2006/Mali)
31. Colossal Youth (Costa; 2006/Portugal)
32. Memento (Nolan; 2000/USA)
33. Russian Ark (Sokurov; 2002/Russia)
34. Children of Men (Cuaron/USA/UK
35. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry/USA)
36. The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson/USA)
37. Last Days (Van Sant/USA)
38. Invisible Waves (Ratanaruang; 2006/Thailand)
39. Esther Kahn (Desplechin; 2000/France/UK)
40. Los Muertos (Alonso; 2004/Argentina)
41. The Flower of Evil (Chabrol/France)
42. The Believer (Bean/USA)
43. Before Sunset (Linklater/USA)
44. The Proposition (Hillcoat/Australia)
45. Woman is the Future of Man (Hong/South Korea)
46. All the Real Girls (Green/USA)
47. Dogville (Von Trier/Denmark/UK)
48. Case of the Grinning Cat (Marker; 2004/France)
49. There Will Be Blood (Anderson/USA)
50. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik/USA)
51. Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema (Godard; 2004/France)
52. Spider (Cronenberg; 2002/Canada/UK)
53. Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (Imamura; 2001/Japan)
54. Mulholland Dr. (Lynch/USA)
55. The Man From London (Tarr/Hungary)
56. Summer Hours (Assayas/France)
57. Kings and Queen (Desplechin; 2004/France)
58. The Son (Dardenne’s; 2002/Belgium/France)
59. Strayed (Techine/France)
60. Divine Intervention (Suleiman; 2002/Palestine)
61. Chekovian Motifs (Muratova; 2002/Ukraine/Russia)
62. Aporto of My Childhood (de Oliveira/Portugal)
63. Fat Girl (Breillat/France)
64. The Captive (Akerman/France)
65. Comedy of Power (Chabrol/France)
66. Nobody Knows (Koreeda; 2004/Japan)
67. Eureka (Aoyama; 2000/Japan)
68. Sparrow (To; 2007/Hong Kong)
69. 2046 (Wong/Hong Kong)
70. Still Life/Dong (Zhang-ke; China)
71. Three Times (Hou; 2005/Taiwan)
72. Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa; 2008/Japan)
73. Last Life in the Universe (Ratanaruang; 2003/Thailand)
74. What Time is it There? (Liang; 2001/Taiwan)
75. Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul; 2004/Thailand)
76. George Washington (Green/USA)
77. School of Rock (Linklater/USA)
78. Spartan (Mamet/USA)
79. Brick (Johnson/USA)
80. Half Nelson (Fleck and Boden/USA)
81. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (Gianvito; 2001/USA)
82. Punch Drunk Love (Anderson/USA)
83. We Own the Night (Gray/USA)
84. Code 46 (Winterbottom/UK)
85. Paranoid Park (Van Sant/USA)
86. Sunshine (Boyle/UK)
87. I Heart Huckabees (Russel/USA)
88. The Devil’s Backbone (del Toro/Spain/Mexico)
89. Homecoming (Dante/USA/Canada)
90. 25th Hour (Lee/USA)
91. Marie Antoinette (Coppola/USA)
92. Primer (Carruth/USA)
93. Space Cowboys (Eastwood/USA)
94. 28 Days Later (Boyle/UK)
95. The Devil’s Rejects (Zombie/USA)
96. Black Book (Verhoeven/Netherlands/Germany)
97. Keane (Kerrigan/USA)
98. The Descent (Marshall/UK)
99. Vera Drake (Leigh/UK)
100. A.I. (Spielberg/USA)
My participation in a list of the decade's best came about originally as a simple joint effort between myself and some close friends, under the auspices and benevolent editorial hand of Alex Dowd. As of now, the project has expanded to include writers for the relatively new film/music website In Review Online, home to Mr. Dowd and a few other friends. I've got no problem with this, although the inclusion of several new people has changed the eventual consensus Top 100 (coming soon!), which I'm also assuming will be eventually unveiled on their website. Contributors have been encouraged to release their own personal ballots, so here we go.
A few thoughts on list making: There is no 'Dark Knight'. Nor will you be seeing the Coen Brothers or Almodovar. You'll also notice a lack of documentaries and animated films on my list. With the exception of Pixar and a handful of anime titles, there wasn't a lot else to even begin to consider. In the end, I decided that offering a unique and artistic statement about our world using the building blocks of filmed reality were more important than mentioning, once again, how rad Pixar movies are. Call me an old fashioned Bazinian, but that's how it goes. At the risk of incurring further wrath, I'll also say that most straight forward documentaries don't particularly interest me, from an aesthetic point of view. This decade saw an impressive group of home grown, DIY docs about the war, 9/11, Katrina, corporate malfeasance, etc. I applaud their intentions, and am happy that they exist - these are truly important pedagogic utensils. Nevertheless, their polemic intent frequently overshadows any exploration of film as a medium; in other words, the camera is simply a means to an end. I'll also add that some of the films on my list do utilize documentary film techniques, blending them in fascinating ways with traditional narrative visual grammar. This intersecting of mediums is what interest me. I did make an effort to think globally, although their are no 'token' films present on the list - in other words, the Sembene film is not on here simply because I needed an 'African' film. There is also a lack of films from 2009 - simply put, there hasn't been, in my mind, enough time to fully live with '09 films, or to see them again. The way thoughts and feelings change over time and multiple viewings is very important to me, and as much as I value 'Serbis', 'Public Enemies', 'The Headless Woman' and 'Where the Wild Things Are', I simply haven't had a chance to revisit and test my initial responses. Incidentally, all of these films will appear on my 'Best of '09' list, and I have seen 'Public Enemies' more than once - but Mann has plenty of love on the list already. On that note:
1. Miami Vice (Mann; 2006/USA)
2. Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr; 2000/Hungary)
3. Inland Empire (Lynch; 2007/USA)
4. Notre Musique (Godard; 2004/France)
5. Ten/10 on Ten/Five (Kiarostami; 2002;2004;2003/Iran)
6. Demonlover (Assayas; 2002/France)
7. The Intruder (Denis; 2004/France)
8. Millennium Mambo (Hou; 2001/Taiwan)
9. Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai; 2003/Taiwan)
10. Moolaade (Sembene; 2004/Senegal)
11. Exiled (To; 2007/Hong Kong)
12. Bright Future (Kurosawa; 2003/Japan)
13. Code Unknown (Haneke; 2000/France)
14. Morvern Callar (Ramsay; 2002/UK)
15. ABC Africa (Kiarostami; 2001/Iran)
16. The Uncertainty Principle (de Oliveira;
17. The Holy Girl (Martel; 2002/Portugal)
18. Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul; 2006/Thailand)
19. In the Mood For Love (Wong; 2000/Hong Kong)
20. 24 City (Zhang-ke; 2008/China)
21. Yi Yi (Yang; 2000/Taiwan)
22. A History of Violence (Cronenberg; 2005/USA)
23. Offside (Panahi; 2006/Iran)
24. L’Enfant (Dardenne’s; 2005/France)
25. Zodiac (Fincher; USA)
26. The Duchess of Langeais (Rivette; France)
27. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Anderson; 2003/USA)
28. Regular Lovers (Garrel; 2005/France)
29. Ali (Mann; 2002/USA)
30. Bamako (Sissako; 2006/Mali)
31. Colossal Youth (Costa; 2006/Portugal)
32. Memento (Nolan; 2000/USA)
33. Russian Ark (Sokurov; 2002/Russia)
34. Children of Men (Cuaron/USA/UK
35. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry/USA)
36. The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson/USA)
37. Last Days (Van Sant/USA)
38. Invisible Waves (Ratanaruang; 2006/Thailand)
39. Esther Kahn (Desplechin; 2000/France/UK)
40. Los Muertos (Alonso; 2004/Argentina)
41. The Flower of Evil (Chabrol/France)
42. The Believer (Bean/USA)
43. Before Sunset (Linklater/USA)
44. The Proposition (Hillcoat/Australia)
45. Woman is the Future of Man (Hong/South Korea)
46. All the Real Girls (Green/USA)
47. Dogville (Von Trier/Denmark/UK)
48. Case of the Grinning Cat (Marker; 2004/France)
49. There Will Be Blood (Anderson/USA)
50. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik/USA)
51. Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema (Godard; 2004/France)
52. Spider (Cronenberg; 2002/Canada/UK)
53. Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (Imamura; 2001/Japan)
54. Mulholland Dr. (Lynch/USA)
55. The Man From London (Tarr/Hungary)
56. Summer Hours (Assayas/France)
57. Kings and Queen (Desplechin; 2004/France)
58. The Son (Dardenne’s; 2002/Belgium/France)
59. Strayed (Techine/France)
60. Divine Intervention (Suleiman; 2002/Palestine)
61. Chekovian Motifs (Muratova; 2002/Ukraine/Russia)
62. Aporto of My Childhood (de Oliveira/Portugal)
63. Fat Girl (Breillat/France)
64. The Captive (Akerman/France)
65. Comedy of Power (Chabrol/France)
66. Nobody Knows (Koreeda; 2004/Japan)
67. Eureka (Aoyama; 2000/Japan)
68. Sparrow (To; 2007/Hong Kong)
69. 2046 (Wong/Hong Kong)
70. Still Life/Dong (Zhang-ke; China)
71. Three Times (Hou; 2005/Taiwan)
72. Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa; 2008/Japan)
73. Last Life in the Universe (Ratanaruang; 2003/Thailand)
74. What Time is it There? (Liang; 2001/Taiwan)
75. Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul; 2004/Thailand)
76. George Washington (Green/USA)
77. School of Rock (Linklater/USA)
78. Spartan (Mamet/USA)
79. Brick (Johnson/USA)
80. Half Nelson (Fleck and Boden/USA)
81. The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (Gianvito; 2001/USA)
82. Punch Drunk Love (Anderson/USA)
83. We Own the Night (Gray/USA)
84. Code 46 (Winterbottom/UK)
85. Paranoid Park (Van Sant/USA)
86. Sunshine (Boyle/UK)
87. I Heart Huckabees (Russel/USA)
88. The Devil’s Backbone (del Toro/Spain/Mexico)
89. Homecoming (Dante/USA/Canada)
90. 25th Hour (Lee/USA)
91. Marie Antoinette (Coppola/USA)
92. Primer (Carruth/USA)
93. Space Cowboys (Eastwood/USA)
94. 28 Days Later (Boyle/UK)
95. The Devil’s Rejects (Zombie/USA)
96. Black Book (Verhoeven/Netherlands/Germany)
97. Keane (Kerrigan/USA)
98. The Descent (Marshall/UK)
99. Vera Drake (Leigh/UK)
100. A.I. (Spielberg/USA)
Monday, December 7, 2009
List-O-mania, Part 1: DVDs
The decade’s best lists are rolling in by the truck load, but I’m interested in a different, yet equally important (to my mind) kind of list – this soon to be past decade has presented the most important development in film connoisseurship since VHS, the digital versatile disc, affectionately dubbed the DVD. The introduction of the video cassette and its effects of film viewing habits cannot be overstated. Not only enabling us film fanatics to posses, watch and rewatch our favorite films, over and over, (changing film scholarship, academic or otherwise, in the process), but allowing even the most casual viewer to procure a personal object. Obviously, this has engendered not only a huge shift in how we consume media, but also the business of consumption itself. VHS changed studio distribution patterns, regional and international release windows, international copyright laws and sales, created an entirely new revenue stream for studios and their corporate conglomerate parent companies, and forever altered how we interact with, and ultimately value, images – filmed or otherwise. DVD has heightened that phenomena, not only with an increased awareness of sound and picture quality, but more importantly, an increased awareness of aspect ratios. Those of us raised on VHS became accustomed to experiencing film on demand, but DVD became a bracing rejoinder that we recognize that what we were experiencing was not in actuality a home based phenomena. In other words, we became aware that watching our favorite movies in the comfort of our own homes was not in any way ideal. As far as I know, Michael Mann was the first director to demand that the VHS reproduction of his film ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ be presented in letterboxed format, virtually unheard of at that time. And while letterboxed VHS caught on as a niche collectors format, it wasn’t until the introduction of DVD that reproduction of original aspect ratios became not only accepted, but the norm (witness the gradual decline of fullscreen DVD, a practice not unrelated to, but which predates, the ascendance of widescreen TVs). People might not have any interest in the technical lingo of ‘scope and widescreen, 1:85 versus 2:35, or the classic academy ratio of 1:33, nor the preferred European ration of 1:66. Regardless, even the casual viewer now knows what those black bars at the top and bottom of their screen signifies. Simply put, it signifies artistic intent, and an increased awareness of how to best appreciate that intent.
Obviously, the home viewing experience is nowhere near unproblematic – the very great critic Fred Camper has an essential article on how viewing films on TV differs from film projection, and there has been numerous spats on what exactly constitutes a films original aspect ratio (most recently a heated exchange on Universal’s 50th Anniversary release of Welles’s ‘Touch of Evil’). Admittedly, it is entirely possible to project a film print incorrectly, and I’ve seen 35mm prints on the big screen that pale in comparison to my restored DVD copies. Even Mr. Camper capitulated at one point, and supervised a Criterion Collection set of Stan Brakhage films. There’s also those extreme restorations that have been carried out digitally, existing only on disc form and therefore circumventing the original format in which the object was created (film stock, 35mm or otherwise). This can be done with intelligence and erudition, ala the recent Coppola supervised restoration of ‘The Godfather’, or can be done ineptly, ala the recent Friedkin supervised restoration of ‘The French Connection’.
All of which is to suggest the multitude of complexities inherent in film viewing, either in a theatre or at home. Nonetheless, I’d like to single out my favorite DVDs of the decade – a decade that belonged, for better or for worse, to the rise of DVD, as both market force and collector’s choice. For the record, these choices are based on 1. DVDs that I own, not only that I’ve seen or know about, 2. I’m basically Region 1 locked. Sorry; and 3. A combination of quality of film and maximizing of the format’s capabilities. In other words, regardless of how much I value Hill’s ‘The Driver’, de Toth’s ‘Day of the Outlaw’, Ray’s ‘Bitter Victory’, Aldrich’s ‘Attack!’, or Universal’s Marlene Dietrich Collection (and how amazed I am that these films exist for my consumption at home on my couch), these discs don’t exactly epitomize what the format is capable of. Conversely, films like Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy use the format brilliantly, with exhaustive behind-the-scenes features and substantially different cuts of the films themselves. These novelties aside, additional bells and whistles don’t elevate the actual films from big budget novelties, and ultimately epitomize the darkside of DVD as pure marketing device – a special edition version of a film appearing just before its sequel hits theatres has become endemic.
Sony’s Budd Boetticher Collection: an essential revelation, and evidence of the format’s ability to resurrect a reputation, while introducing Boetticher to a new generation and allowing entry to the pantheon with Ford, Hawks, Mann (Anthony) and de Toth. Hopefully we’ll get a Region 1 Allan Dwan set sooner rather than later.
Warner Bro’s John Wayne/John Ford:
Fox’s Ford at Fox: two releases that finally give the master his due. Ford has quickly become one of the filmmakers best represented in the digital format, and we are all the richer for it. Accompanied by an exquisite hard back book and ample supplemental materials, this box set is easily the equivalent of a college course.
Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection: Ditto. If I’m not mistaken, with the exception of ‘Under Capricorn’, every Hitchcock film is now available for home viewing. With the decline of repertory theatres, it is increasingly difficult to see the films of the masters on a big screen, so I suppose we’ll take what we can get. Minus his early British films, you get the full gamut here, from the acknowledged masterpieces to some lesser known gems to those eccentric, late-period oddities: Family Plot, Frenzy, and Topaz, all of which are underrated.
Tati’s Playtime: Jonathan Rosenbaum has famously quoted Noel Burch that Playtime might be the first genuinely ‘open’ film, fulfilling the dreams of Bazin’s fabled ‘democratic’, long-take based cinema, and a film which requires not only multiple viewings, but viewings from different seats in the same theatre. Home video might not be the best venue with which to put this theory to the test, but Criterion’s superior edition of the film at least gives us the chance to revisit Tati’s grand folly for the grace of its design, its production values, and the intricacy of its choreography. It might be blasphemous of me to suggest this, but I value Tati over Chaplin and Keaton – all three comedians are inherently modern, but only Tati seems to have bent celluloid to his own whims in so fearless a manner.
Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar: If I where cornered with a gun to my head, then I might have to admit that this is my favorite film of all time. I encountered it early on, totally unaware of Bresson as an artist, and while I could initially make neither heads nor tails out of what was unfolding in front of me, it felt new and special – unique in a way I had never encountered before. Half a dozen viewings later, I’ve decoded some of the films mysteries, but by no means all – Bresson remains, along with Dreyer, one of those opaque masters. Totally concrete – every composition and edit lands with force, and no gesture or glance is wasted - yet ephemeral, and threatening to float away at a moments notice. I was lucky enough to see the film twice on the big screen in ’99, but revisiting the film required seeking out a bootleg vhs copy - suitable enough, although it was not unlike trying to watch a movie through a window, from some distance, with the screen covered by various layers of cloth - in other words, the ghost of an image. Thanks to Criterion for removing at least a few of those distracting layers.
Fantoma’s The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volumes I & II: our favorite experimental phantom of Hollywood, and a grand alchemist cum fetishist, finally gets some respect. This is an essential starting point for any understanding of avant garde film. Tom Gunning: ‘Anger does it all, bending the essential stuff of cinema into works that transport a viewer even while the filmmaker strips enthrallment and enchantment of any alibi of innocence.’
Criterion’s John Cassavettes: Five Films: It’s not quite accurate to claim that Cassavettes invented the American independent film, but it is a useful short hand. One has to experience the exhilaration of his peculiar brand of emotional damage, a kind of manic nervousness that results in absurdity and comedy as much as it does violence. This box set includes the exhaustive, nearly three hour documentary ‘A Constant Forge’.
Criterion’s Contempt: available for ages only on a pan and scan, dubbed VHS release, Criterion unleashed the full force of Godard’s acerbic masterpiece with this beautiful restored disc, overflowing with bountiful extras (the conversation between Godard and Fritz Land is a revelation). Meanwhile, witness the eroding of a relationship in all its protracted agony, one of the most searing set pieces in all of film.
Eclipse’s Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu: perhaps no national cinema has benefited more from the digital revolution than Japan. We’ve gradually shifted from Kurosawa to Ozu, and then to Mizoguchi. Now, we can asses the contributions of Naruse and Shimizu as well.
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction: Or, a resurrection; bless Warner Bro’s for giving Richard Schickel the money to produce this DVD package. Not only is the film about 45 minutes longer than the only know previous edition, but even more importantly, key sequences have been reworked and expanded, deepening the film’s narrative and emotional range, and the psychological ramifications of boys at war. War is hell, but in Fuller’s world, it is also sometimes surreal, sometimes absurd, and occasionally funny.
Criterion’s The Complete Mr. Arkadin: something of a misnomer, as Jonathan Rosenbaum has pointed out in several commentaries. The complex history and travels of Welle’s orphan film are far to complex to be easily resolved into a definitive, final version. Instead, we are offered three different versions of the film, allowing those interested to study variation after variation – some minute, and some more drastic. Plus, we get an essential audio commentary on the ‘Cornith’ version, with Rosenbaum and the great James Naremore discussing Welles and the various iterations of Arkadin. Not only is this film history class in a box, but it suggests the archival possibilities of the medium.
Criterion’s By Brakhage: An Anthology: once you’ve made your way through those Kenneth Anger films, you can start on this set. P. Adams Sitney has claimed that Brakhage had the most astonishing career in the history of cinema, leaving a body of work consisting of over 400 films over the last fifty years, and I’m not about to disagree. Brakhage wants to change the way we see the world, not only as a photo chemical phenomena but deep into our central nervous system.
Chris Marker’s AK: this is actually an extra feature on Criterion’s two disc release of Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’. I wish I was as enthusiastic about Kurosawa as Marker is, but nevertheless his poetic, essayistic making-of film journal is a small masterpiece of the personal documentary. There’s an interesting number of very great films that have been packaged as ‘bonus features’ on discs for other different films. I suppose one should just be grateful that these films are available at all, but I fear that this ghettoizing suggests that these films are somehow less than important. See also ’10 on Ten’, attached to Kiarostami’s ‘Ten’ (Zeitgeist Video); Wender’s ‘Tokyo Ga’, on the second disc of Ozu’s ‘Late Spring’ (Criterion); Zhang-ke’s ‘Dong’, released with his ‘Still Life’ (the now defunct New Yorker Video).
Auteurs in a box: A brief appreciation of a particular phenomena – the grouping of otherwise disparate auteurist masterpieces into box sets dedicated to a particular star personality. I certainly understand studios trying to capitalize in any way they can on an easy, ready made, selling point. More often than not it results in us getting a group of films that might not otherwise ever see the light of day. Case in point, Warner Brother’s Film Noir series: my personal favorite is volume five, with films by Andre de Toth (Crimewave) and Anthony Mann (Side Street). The real gem is Nick Ray’s glorious directorial debut, the phenomenal ‘They live By Night’, the first (and best) version of Bonnie and Clyde, and an ideal introduction to this supreme master. Sony’s Cary Grant box set has got two (count’em) Howard Hawks masterpieces – the definitive screwball romance yarn ‘His Girl Friday’ and the tough-guys-don’t-cry action vehicle ‘Only Angels Have Wings’. It’s a combo that represents the long running Hawksian dialectic between action and comedy, the masculine and the feminine, and always that particular sense of mortality so prevalent in Hawk’s work. We also get Leo McCarey’s ‘The Awful Truth’ and George Cukor’s underrated ‘Holiday’. Rounding out the set is the ok George Steven’s ‘The Talk of the Town’. At least it’s not as lugubrious as Steven’s prestige, Oscar bait vehicles. Warner Bros’ Robert Mitchum box set offers us one of Vincente Minnelli’s greatest efforts, the family melodrama ‘Home From the Hill’. Mitchum is particularly fierce as an emotionally distant Southern patriarch tearing his family apart. Otto Preminger’s ‘Angel Face’ is one of the great noirs, with a deceitful Jean Simmons wrapping Mitchum around her little finger until he cracks. It’s one of Preminger’s darkest thrillers, with a mechanical precision leading inexorably to one of the great cruel endings of all time. There’s also that strange, auteurist odd duck – the Von Sternberg/Nick Ray mash-up ‘Macao. While both are great directors, neither sensibility translates much in this noir-ish little crime thriller. Some nice photography and a certain level of pessimism make it an intriguing one-off. Rounding out the set is ‘The Yakuza’, which boasts some of the finest credits ever (directed by Sydney Pollack, from a screenplay by Paul Shrader and Robert Towne) for such a tepid crime picture. Mitchum soldiers through it, stoic as ever.
Up next for List-O-Mania: the albums of the year, my 100 best films of the decade (in conjunction with Mr. Andrew Alexander Dowd), wrapping up 2009, and some abandoned fragments on both a great recent film and a great older film.
Obviously, the home viewing experience is nowhere near unproblematic – the very great critic Fred Camper has an essential article on how viewing films on TV differs from film projection, and there has been numerous spats on what exactly constitutes a films original aspect ratio (most recently a heated exchange on Universal’s 50th Anniversary release of Welles’s ‘Touch of Evil’). Admittedly, it is entirely possible to project a film print incorrectly, and I’ve seen 35mm prints on the big screen that pale in comparison to my restored DVD copies. Even Mr. Camper capitulated at one point, and supervised a Criterion Collection set of Stan Brakhage films. There’s also those extreme restorations that have been carried out digitally, existing only on disc form and therefore circumventing the original format in which the object was created (film stock, 35mm or otherwise). This can be done with intelligence and erudition, ala the recent Coppola supervised restoration of ‘The Godfather’, or can be done ineptly, ala the recent Friedkin supervised restoration of ‘The French Connection’.
All of which is to suggest the multitude of complexities inherent in film viewing, either in a theatre or at home. Nonetheless, I’d like to single out my favorite DVDs of the decade – a decade that belonged, for better or for worse, to the rise of DVD, as both market force and collector’s choice. For the record, these choices are based on 1. DVDs that I own, not only that I’ve seen or know about, 2. I’m basically Region 1 locked. Sorry; and 3. A combination of quality of film and maximizing of the format’s capabilities. In other words, regardless of how much I value Hill’s ‘The Driver’, de Toth’s ‘Day of the Outlaw’, Ray’s ‘Bitter Victory’, Aldrich’s ‘Attack!’, or Universal’s Marlene Dietrich Collection (and how amazed I am that these films exist for my consumption at home on my couch), these discs don’t exactly epitomize what the format is capable of. Conversely, films like Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy use the format brilliantly, with exhaustive behind-the-scenes features and substantially different cuts of the films themselves. These novelties aside, additional bells and whistles don’t elevate the actual films from big budget novelties, and ultimately epitomize the darkside of DVD as pure marketing device – a special edition version of a film appearing just before its sequel hits theatres has become endemic.
Sony’s Budd Boetticher Collection: an essential revelation, and evidence of the format’s ability to resurrect a reputation, while introducing Boetticher to a new generation and allowing entry to the pantheon with Ford, Hawks, Mann (Anthony) and de Toth. Hopefully we’ll get a Region 1 Allan Dwan set sooner rather than later.
Warner Bro’s John Wayne/John Ford:
Fox’s Ford at Fox: two releases that finally give the master his due. Ford has quickly become one of the filmmakers best represented in the digital format, and we are all the richer for it. Accompanied by an exquisite hard back book and ample supplemental materials, this box set is easily the equivalent of a college course.
Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection: Ditto. If I’m not mistaken, with the exception of ‘Under Capricorn’, every Hitchcock film is now available for home viewing. With the decline of repertory theatres, it is increasingly difficult to see the films of the masters on a big screen, so I suppose we’ll take what we can get. Minus his early British films, you get the full gamut here, from the acknowledged masterpieces to some lesser known gems to those eccentric, late-period oddities: Family Plot, Frenzy, and Topaz, all of which are underrated.
Tati’s Playtime: Jonathan Rosenbaum has famously quoted Noel Burch that Playtime might be the first genuinely ‘open’ film, fulfilling the dreams of Bazin’s fabled ‘democratic’, long-take based cinema, and a film which requires not only multiple viewings, but viewings from different seats in the same theatre. Home video might not be the best venue with which to put this theory to the test, but Criterion’s superior edition of the film at least gives us the chance to revisit Tati’s grand folly for the grace of its design, its production values, and the intricacy of its choreography. It might be blasphemous of me to suggest this, but I value Tati over Chaplin and Keaton – all three comedians are inherently modern, but only Tati seems to have bent celluloid to his own whims in so fearless a manner.
Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar: If I where cornered with a gun to my head, then I might have to admit that this is my favorite film of all time. I encountered it early on, totally unaware of Bresson as an artist, and while I could initially make neither heads nor tails out of what was unfolding in front of me, it felt new and special – unique in a way I had never encountered before. Half a dozen viewings later, I’ve decoded some of the films mysteries, but by no means all – Bresson remains, along with Dreyer, one of those opaque masters. Totally concrete – every composition and edit lands with force, and no gesture or glance is wasted - yet ephemeral, and threatening to float away at a moments notice. I was lucky enough to see the film twice on the big screen in ’99, but revisiting the film required seeking out a bootleg vhs copy - suitable enough, although it was not unlike trying to watch a movie through a window, from some distance, with the screen covered by various layers of cloth - in other words, the ghost of an image. Thanks to Criterion for removing at least a few of those distracting layers.
Fantoma’s The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volumes I & II: our favorite experimental phantom of Hollywood, and a grand alchemist cum fetishist, finally gets some respect. This is an essential starting point for any understanding of avant garde film. Tom Gunning: ‘Anger does it all, bending the essential stuff of cinema into works that transport a viewer even while the filmmaker strips enthrallment and enchantment of any alibi of innocence.’
Criterion’s John Cassavettes: Five Films: It’s not quite accurate to claim that Cassavettes invented the American independent film, but it is a useful short hand. One has to experience the exhilaration of his peculiar brand of emotional damage, a kind of manic nervousness that results in absurdity and comedy as much as it does violence. This box set includes the exhaustive, nearly three hour documentary ‘A Constant Forge’.
Criterion’s Contempt: available for ages only on a pan and scan, dubbed VHS release, Criterion unleashed the full force of Godard’s acerbic masterpiece with this beautiful restored disc, overflowing with bountiful extras (the conversation between Godard and Fritz Land is a revelation). Meanwhile, witness the eroding of a relationship in all its protracted agony, one of the most searing set pieces in all of film.
Eclipse’s Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu: perhaps no national cinema has benefited more from the digital revolution than Japan. We’ve gradually shifted from Kurosawa to Ozu, and then to Mizoguchi. Now, we can asses the contributions of Naruse and Shimizu as well.
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction: Or, a resurrection; bless Warner Bro’s for giving Richard Schickel the money to produce this DVD package. Not only is the film about 45 minutes longer than the only know previous edition, but even more importantly, key sequences have been reworked and expanded, deepening the film’s narrative and emotional range, and the psychological ramifications of boys at war. War is hell, but in Fuller’s world, it is also sometimes surreal, sometimes absurd, and occasionally funny.
Criterion’s The Complete Mr. Arkadin: something of a misnomer, as Jonathan Rosenbaum has pointed out in several commentaries. The complex history and travels of Welle’s orphan film are far to complex to be easily resolved into a definitive, final version. Instead, we are offered three different versions of the film, allowing those interested to study variation after variation – some minute, and some more drastic. Plus, we get an essential audio commentary on the ‘Cornith’ version, with Rosenbaum and the great James Naremore discussing Welles and the various iterations of Arkadin. Not only is this film history class in a box, but it suggests the archival possibilities of the medium.
Criterion’s By Brakhage: An Anthology: once you’ve made your way through those Kenneth Anger films, you can start on this set. P. Adams Sitney has claimed that Brakhage had the most astonishing career in the history of cinema, leaving a body of work consisting of over 400 films over the last fifty years, and I’m not about to disagree. Brakhage wants to change the way we see the world, not only as a photo chemical phenomena but deep into our central nervous system.
Chris Marker’s AK: this is actually an extra feature on Criterion’s two disc release of Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’. I wish I was as enthusiastic about Kurosawa as Marker is, but nevertheless his poetic, essayistic making-of film journal is a small masterpiece of the personal documentary. There’s an interesting number of very great films that have been packaged as ‘bonus features’ on discs for other different films. I suppose one should just be grateful that these films are available at all, but I fear that this ghettoizing suggests that these films are somehow less than important. See also ’10 on Ten’, attached to Kiarostami’s ‘Ten’ (Zeitgeist Video); Wender’s ‘Tokyo Ga’, on the second disc of Ozu’s ‘Late Spring’ (Criterion); Zhang-ke’s ‘Dong’, released with his ‘Still Life’ (the now defunct New Yorker Video).
Auteurs in a box: A brief appreciation of a particular phenomena – the grouping of otherwise disparate auteurist masterpieces into box sets dedicated to a particular star personality. I certainly understand studios trying to capitalize in any way they can on an easy, ready made, selling point. More often than not it results in us getting a group of films that might not otherwise ever see the light of day. Case in point, Warner Brother’s Film Noir series: my personal favorite is volume five, with films by Andre de Toth (Crimewave) and Anthony Mann (Side Street). The real gem is Nick Ray’s glorious directorial debut, the phenomenal ‘They live By Night’, the first (and best) version of Bonnie and Clyde, and an ideal introduction to this supreme master. Sony’s Cary Grant box set has got two (count’em) Howard Hawks masterpieces – the definitive screwball romance yarn ‘His Girl Friday’ and the tough-guys-don’t-cry action vehicle ‘Only Angels Have Wings’. It’s a combo that represents the long running Hawksian dialectic between action and comedy, the masculine and the feminine, and always that particular sense of mortality so prevalent in Hawk’s work. We also get Leo McCarey’s ‘The Awful Truth’ and George Cukor’s underrated ‘Holiday’. Rounding out the set is the ok George Steven’s ‘The Talk of the Town’. At least it’s not as lugubrious as Steven’s prestige, Oscar bait vehicles. Warner Bros’ Robert Mitchum box set offers us one of Vincente Minnelli’s greatest efforts, the family melodrama ‘Home From the Hill’. Mitchum is particularly fierce as an emotionally distant Southern patriarch tearing his family apart. Otto Preminger’s ‘Angel Face’ is one of the great noirs, with a deceitful Jean Simmons wrapping Mitchum around her little finger until he cracks. It’s one of Preminger’s darkest thrillers, with a mechanical precision leading inexorably to one of the great cruel endings of all time. There’s also that strange, auteurist odd duck – the Von Sternberg/Nick Ray mash-up ‘Macao. While both are great directors, neither sensibility translates much in this noir-ish little crime thriller. Some nice photography and a certain level of pessimism make it an intriguing one-off. Rounding out the set is ‘The Yakuza’, which boasts some of the finest credits ever (directed by Sydney Pollack, from a screenplay by Paul Shrader and Robert Towne) for such a tepid crime picture. Mitchum soldiers through it, stoic as ever.
Up next for List-O-Mania: the albums of the year, my 100 best films of the decade (in conjunction with Mr. Andrew Alexander Dowd), wrapping up 2009, and some abandoned fragments on both a great recent film and a great older film.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Tsai's FACE:
It's difficult to know how to approach a film as strange and shocking as The River--Tsai Ming-liang's third feature… I want to start by labeling it a masterpiece, but in cases such as this that assertion seems more a gamble than a certainty, however much I'd prefer to pretend otherwise.
How to explain my lack of confidence? First of all, when encountering something as peculiar as The River, my first impulse isn't to assert anything but to ask, "What the hell is this?"…
That I regard The River as a masterpiece and the work of a master doesn't mean that I consider it fun or pleasant--terrifying and beautiful would be more appropriate. It's been a subject of dispute ever since it won the special jury prize in Berlin in 1997, and I can't exactly quarrel with those who complain that it's sick or boring; I can understand how one could have these responses, even though I don't share them
It’s been more than ten years since Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote these words, and not much has changed. ‘Face’ isn’t instilled with the same sense of foreboding doom as ‘The River’ or ‘The Hole’, nor the apocalyptic ‘The Wayward Cloud’, although it is not quite as gentle as 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' or ‘What Time is it There?’. But the same deadpan comedy laced with melancholic nostalgia that links all of his films is alive and well, superbly realized in what might be his most simple, understatedly beautiful film to date. To praise the film’s surfaces is neither a back handed compliment (resonance usually come later for Tsai’s films, after contemplation and further viewings), nor to suggest a lack of depth (ditto).
There have always been intimations of cinephilia in Tsai, in a way not as common to say, Hou or Yang. With ‘Face’, Tsai dives into the behind-the-scenes-of-a-film-shoot film, aligning himself to Fassbinder’s ‘Beware of a Holy Whore’, Godard’s ‘Contempt’, Assayas’ ‘Irma Vep’ and especially Truffaut’s ‘Day for Night’. Tsai’s Truaffaut love has popped up before, complete with Jean-Pierre Leaud cameos, and while ‘Face’ is not full blown homage, it is a full fledged love letter/eulogy. Truffaut regular Fanny Ardant is the put upon production manager trying to manage quirky, antsy leading man Leaud, young ingénue Latetia Casta, and director Lee Kang-Sheng, who doesn’t speak a word of French. I hasten to add that even this minimal amount of plot is divulged slowly and elliptically, with Tsai’s penchant for long scenes that only reveal their meanings towards the end of their duration, or when coupled retroactively with forthcoming scenes. Both the film’s proponents and detractors have mentioned its sketchy nature, consisting of a series of moments strung together. It’s hard to disagree, although I would add that there is a cumulative effect of recurring motifs; Leaud’s attempts at communing with nature, first with a deer, then with a small bird (leading to as unique a funeral scene as one is ever likely to see); an emphasis on close ups of faces that encompasses three different long scenes of Casta putting black tape over windows and mirrors, and which eventually leads to her seduction of Lee’s translator in near pitch black; Ardant traversing various terrains in high heels, over dressed and clearly ill-equipped to deal with various pressures; the death of Lee’s mother and her ghost subsequently hanging out, keeping an eye on things. What holds it all together is Tsai’s mastery of the match cut, which effortlessly segues us from scene to scene, along with his seemingly innate ability to time out a scene. As always, time is of the essence in Tsai.
Visually speaking: one of the film’s most striking tableau comes late, with a camera mounted outside of a high rise building, its depth of field capturing both Fanny Ardent on a bed inside her hotel room, as well as a labyrinthine system of freeways below, with a sparse cityscape visible in the distant background. Tsai has been building to this moment in several ways – the extreme distances involved within the shot contrast his consistent emphasis on faces in close up, and the bustling traffic is visually and architecturally opposed to a general stillness that pervades the rest of the film. We hear Ardent on the phone discussing an actress who is refusing to play a role, an actress we at first assume to be Casta, although later scenes do not confirm this. As Ardent sarcastically proposes to simply play the role herself, we realize that the soundtrack is not in synch with the image - as the dialogue continues, Ardent approaches the window, revealing that she is neither holding a phone nor moving her lips. The past tense invades the present (the clarity of the window rhymes nicely with those scenes involving Casta blackening out any and all reflective surface – someone who does not want to be gazed upon, fearful either of her own reflection or of what other people might see).
If my good friend and fellow Tsai enthusiast Ignatius is correct, and the film is Tsai's sketchbook (including the blank pages), it is important to qualify that term, blank. Empty spaces are always monumental in Tsai – while directors like Denis or Mann use negative space within the frame to isolate characters and reflect certain emotional states, Tsai’s space is always charged with a sense of the potential; even in stillness there is a kinetic possibility. Face might be a simple compendium of specific personal obsessions on Tsai’s part (might being the operative term, since I’m not convinced that there isn’t more to it) – even so, there are few places I would rather roam around in than Tsai’s mind.
How to explain my lack of confidence? First of all, when encountering something as peculiar as The River, my first impulse isn't to assert anything but to ask, "What the hell is this?"…
That I regard The River as a masterpiece and the work of a master doesn't mean that I consider it fun or pleasant--terrifying and beautiful would be more appropriate. It's been a subject of dispute ever since it won the special jury prize in Berlin in 1997, and I can't exactly quarrel with those who complain that it's sick or boring; I can understand how one could have these responses, even though I don't share them
It’s been more than ten years since Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote these words, and not much has changed. ‘Face’ isn’t instilled with the same sense of foreboding doom as ‘The River’ or ‘The Hole’, nor the apocalyptic ‘The Wayward Cloud’, although it is not quite as gentle as 'Goodbye Dragon Inn' or ‘What Time is it There?’. But the same deadpan comedy laced with melancholic nostalgia that links all of his films is alive and well, superbly realized in what might be his most simple, understatedly beautiful film to date. To praise the film’s surfaces is neither a back handed compliment (resonance usually come later for Tsai’s films, after contemplation and further viewings), nor to suggest a lack of depth (ditto).
There have always been intimations of cinephilia in Tsai, in a way not as common to say, Hou or Yang. With ‘Face’, Tsai dives into the behind-the-scenes-of-a-film-shoot film, aligning himself to Fassbinder’s ‘Beware of a Holy Whore’, Godard’s ‘Contempt’, Assayas’ ‘Irma Vep’ and especially Truffaut’s ‘Day for Night’. Tsai’s Truaffaut love has popped up before, complete with Jean-Pierre Leaud cameos, and while ‘Face’ is not full blown homage, it is a full fledged love letter/eulogy. Truffaut regular Fanny Ardant is the put upon production manager trying to manage quirky, antsy leading man Leaud, young ingénue Latetia Casta, and director Lee Kang-Sheng, who doesn’t speak a word of French. I hasten to add that even this minimal amount of plot is divulged slowly and elliptically, with Tsai’s penchant for long scenes that only reveal their meanings towards the end of their duration, or when coupled retroactively with forthcoming scenes. Both the film’s proponents and detractors have mentioned its sketchy nature, consisting of a series of moments strung together. It’s hard to disagree, although I would add that there is a cumulative effect of recurring motifs; Leaud’s attempts at communing with nature, first with a deer, then with a small bird (leading to as unique a funeral scene as one is ever likely to see); an emphasis on close ups of faces that encompasses three different long scenes of Casta putting black tape over windows and mirrors, and which eventually leads to her seduction of Lee’s translator in near pitch black; Ardant traversing various terrains in high heels, over dressed and clearly ill-equipped to deal with various pressures; the death of Lee’s mother and her ghost subsequently hanging out, keeping an eye on things. What holds it all together is Tsai’s mastery of the match cut, which effortlessly segues us from scene to scene, along with his seemingly innate ability to time out a scene. As always, time is of the essence in Tsai.
Visually speaking: one of the film’s most striking tableau comes late, with a camera mounted outside of a high rise building, its depth of field capturing both Fanny Ardent on a bed inside her hotel room, as well as a labyrinthine system of freeways below, with a sparse cityscape visible in the distant background. Tsai has been building to this moment in several ways – the extreme distances involved within the shot contrast his consistent emphasis on faces in close up, and the bustling traffic is visually and architecturally opposed to a general stillness that pervades the rest of the film. We hear Ardent on the phone discussing an actress who is refusing to play a role, an actress we at first assume to be Casta, although later scenes do not confirm this. As Ardent sarcastically proposes to simply play the role herself, we realize that the soundtrack is not in synch with the image - as the dialogue continues, Ardent approaches the window, revealing that she is neither holding a phone nor moving her lips. The past tense invades the present (the clarity of the window rhymes nicely with those scenes involving Casta blackening out any and all reflective surface – someone who does not want to be gazed upon, fearful either of her own reflection or of what other people might see).
If my good friend and fellow Tsai enthusiast Ignatius is correct, and the film is Tsai's sketchbook (including the blank pages), it is important to qualify that term, blank. Empty spaces are always monumental in Tsai – while directors like Denis or Mann use negative space within the frame to isolate characters and reflect certain emotional states, Tsai’s space is always charged with a sense of the potential; even in stillness there is a kinetic possibility. Face might be a simple compendium of specific personal obsessions on Tsai’s part (might being the operative term, since I’m not convinced that there isn’t more to it) – even so, there are few places I would rather roam around in than Tsai’s mind.
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