What I Give Up

Two videos today, cataloged here in place of my own writing, because I get home at night too tired to think.



And now, just because I was thinking of it, the coolest music video ever made:

Z

Dieter Dengler Needs To Fly

If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books - Werner Herzog

I'm pretty sure I need to see Rescue Dawn again too. Maybe before Gone Baby Gone. I watched it in some earlier stages of my return (still pending) to normal human feeling. Full-body exhaustion, weakness, chemical withdrawal, and similar fun slices of lemon pie have made every viewing of a movie since November a kind of Zen-like, stoned overdrive. The movies mean a lot to me right now, and I interpret them through a lens of memory and regret (try quitting smoking while breaking your back at menial labor. Near as I can tell, that, on top of other things I'd already been grappling with, has been the culprit of my shortcomings lately).

Which brings me again to Herzog's previous film, one I didn't think of very often, until lately. It's a more or less plotless movie about trapped men, bonded slowly in insanity. That insanity is caused by the need to survive. Memories of cheeseburgers, home and freedom are all simply memories to those men.

When I was uhh... five or somethin', I was looking out the window, with my brother... and we see this fighter plane was coming right at us. I was not scared. I was mesmerized! Because for me, this pilot was this all-mighty being from the clouds. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be him. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be a pilot.

Dieter Dengler, as portrayed by Christian Bale, gives that description of a pivotal childhood moment, one that echoes a crucial scene from Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, where the thirteen year old protagonist sees American fighter planes fly over the camp he's interned in.

That thirteen year old protagonist was, of course, played by Christian Bale.

This is certainly a coincidence, as Rescue Dawn is based on fact (Empire of the Sun is based on a memoir). But Herzog doesn't care much for the difference between documentary and narrative, reality and unreality, and I'd prefer to believe it was supposed to happen that way.

What'd I Miss?

Seeing Jef's Original/Unoriginal checklist on a weekly basis has reminded me that I want some kind of regular feature to write. Jef's cataloguing of films that come from a source vs. films that spring fresh from a screenwriter or director's head is an informative, funny time saver for me.

Jef's feature has a simplicity that would be dogged by my unstoppable neuroses. I would immediately start laying out my notion of the transmogrification of previous materials alchemizing a new and sometimes better, purer work (more original for being an update!).

That, however, would be too complex for such a feature, and thankfully, Jef doesn't muddy up the works like I would.

'Round these parts, muddy those works up I will, chiefly bringing front and center the perennial and but recently turned forty years old 2001: A Space Odyssey

This is a film which, by Jef's basic standards, is unoriginal, being gleaned from the Arthur C. Clarke (RIP) material eventually released under the same name. I've never read it, but Kubrick never left a work in its original state. He went Meta on its ass over what was always a long and freakishly psychic process.

The fact that Clarke was writing his book while Kubrick was shooting the film (from Clarke's primary short story, The Sentinel), and that Kubrick was also working (who knows with what fidelity) from a screenplay that he and Clarke had both worked on, leads one further into a quandary of who got it first.

Which leads me finally to my reason for posting, which was Kubrick's comment from an interview in which he rose to defend his film from its early critical (and often NY based) lacerations:

..I would say that there are elements in any good film that would increase the viewer's interest and appreciation on a second viewing; the momentum of a movie often prevents every stimulating detail or nuance from having a full impact the first time it's seen. The whole idea that a movie should be seen only once is an extension of our traditional conception of the film as an ephemeral entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don't believe that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great painting once, or even read a great book just once. But the film has until recent years been exempted from the category of art—a situation I'm glad is finally changing.


I would say that of all the films I've seen in the past few months (it being the whirlwind of a year that it's been for excellent films), I definitely have a list of 'em I believe should be viewed more than once:

No Country For Old Men
Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days
Michael Clayton
Atonement (Love it or hate it, it might be worth seeing again simply to figure out whether you love it or hate it)
There Will Be Blood
Persepolis
The Darjeeling Limited
Once
In Bruges
Rescue Dawn
Eastern Promises
3:10 To Yuma

And of course, the one I'm most anxious to relive:

Gone Baby Gone

Mind. On. Brink.

Things Keeping Me Going:

Renewing Synapses vis. smoking cessation.

Ishiguru's The Remains of the Day

HBO's John Adams, with Abigail coming off as much less of a bitch than I've heard (but we all knew I'd go for her)

All the freakin' music. Viddy well the charts, down where it says 'charts'.

My 2 new Gigs of RAM.

Things too crazy to handle:

My synapses renewing vis. smoking cessation (or maybe not. I just know my body's changing to something new)

The never-ending exhaustion I've been enduring since November.

The Future.

The Past.

4 Capital Letters

Hate to post two videos in one night, but So Me is my hero.

Uh Uh Uh

If you haven't seen Persepolis, you really, really should.

Yes Yes Yes

Incredible.

Put the Glaaaases Onnnn!

AV Club picks this after yesterday's set?

Those Black Skinned Blue-Eyed Boys Ain't Gonna Fight No Wars

Fresh off some kind of liquid Tylenol daze I'm not sure I entirely fathom, Holly just had to go and cap off the recounting of her Vegas trip with mention of hearing Adam Freeland's new set.

Go Here to download. Right Click. Save As.

Check this fucking set list:


Billy Nayer - Ship Alarm (BSG Records)
Siriusmo - Girls Rock (Bungalow)
Unkle – Restless [loop] (Surrender All)
Evil Nine – They Live(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Rogerseventytwo – Imagination (Tiger Trax)
Grinderman - No Pussy Blues [Adam Freeland Edit] (CDR)
Adam Freeland – Glowstix (Marine Parade)
Boys Noize - Let's Buy Happiness (Boys Noize Records)
Autolux – Blanket [Adam Freeland Mix] (Full Time Hobby)
Junkie XL - Cities in Dust [Glimmers Mix] (Artwerk)
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor [Soulwax Mix (EMI)
Shadow Dancer - End Hit (Boys Noize Records)
Alan Braxe – Addicted (Vulture)
U.N.K.L.E. – Restless (Surrender All)
Blake Baxter/Mark Romboy - House Ya [Bootleg] (CDR)
Alex Metric – Pins (Marine Parade)
Crookers - Love To Edit (Crack Crack Records)
Bloody Beetroots – Butter (Crack Crack Records)
DJ Shadow - Right thing/Ztrip - Set off the party (Island)
Freeland – Do Ya(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Map Of Africa - Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys (Whatever We Want)
Black Strobe - Shining Brightstar [Phones Mix] (Playlouder / Beggars France)
Sebasien Tellier - Sexual Sportswear [SebastiAn Mix] (Record Makers)
Breakbot – Happy Rabbit (Moshi Moshi)
Tepr - Midniut Jacuzzi [Data Mix] (Wall of Sound)
Soulwax – Krack [Nite Version] (Play It Again Sam)
Midnight Juggernaughts - Road to Discovery (Siberia Records)
Adam Freeland – Hate (Marine Parade)
Freeland - How To Fake Your Life(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Splitter - All Alone [Alex Metric Mix] (Eye Industries)
Can – Mothersky (United Artists Records)
Swayzak - Smile & Receive [Apparat Mix] (K7!)
Simple Minds - Theme for Great Cities (Sanctuary)
Caribou – Niobe [Adam Freeland Edit] (CDR)

Just reading that caused to stand on end the numerous hairs on my body.


I am Up All Night.

Addendum: Never much used drugs. I don't have to. I have music like this. I thought last year was a peak. Thank God these people got the madness.

I Used To Be Much Older

First: See In Bruges. I'm not at all the first to sing about it, but I haven't seen anything quite so zany that wasn't also drowned in whimsy. It pulls no punches, it takes unbelievable chances, and to top it all off, most of it is hysterical.

Second: Two movies I'm developing a larger appetite for:



and

Hope Floats

Yes. Like the rest of you, heard the Obama speech in all its Obamity. His speech was easily the best campaign speech on race the world has ever heard. This is not a small thing.

And then this shows up.

Neither one of them is giving us much but from the mouths of babes, here. I've never understood how Hillary could play the experience card. She hasn't got that much on Obama at all.

Then there's this:

A little disenchantment with Obama could turn out to be a good thing. Too much idealism can blind a leader to reality as surely as too much ideology can.

-From Cozy Curmudgeonly Dowd's response column today.

Obama was forced to examine his alliance with extreme characters, and responded to controversy, trying to confront his shortcomings.

To be forthright is a breath of fresh air after the past eight years, hell, after the past several decades.

Elect him. If he isn't up to the job, we'll replace him in four years. So long as we're making choices bravely, no matter what we're offered, the choices so offered might get better.

He'll still be better suited than Bush, or perhaps, so will she.

Besides, all of the experience in the world isn't alone going to put this place back together again. Experience gave us the atom bomb as well the New Deal.

Obama has the power to move us, and he may very well have the power to lead us. What the hell, let's find out.

Eucharist of this Our Age

the object in its Journey, comes nigh, among the excursions of Chance, the sins of ministers, the inscriptions upon walls of Gate-posts, -- the birth of the 'Sandwhich' at this exact moment in Christianity,-- one of the Noble and Fallen for its Angel! Disks of secular Bread, --enclosing whilst concealing slices of real Flesh, yet a-sop with Blood, under the earthly guise of British Beef, all,-- but for the Species of course,--Consubstantiate, thus...the Sandwhich, Eucharist of this our Age.

- From Mason and Dixon - Thomas Pynchon

The above was a summer spent reading when I should have been tending to more important things, but either way, I get easily distracted by dense, very possibly crackpot writing, and I had this strange, elusive piece as a part of my FB profile for the longest time, unable to take it down due to a fascination with it that I can't quite put my finger on.

I'm intrigued by theology, by belief systems as they affect society, both the good and bad effects those may be (I find it more enlightening to focus on the good things, since we've been dealing too heavily with the results of bad theology in recent years). I find as much good in Religious belief as most Agnostics find bad, which is a turnaround from the cranky Atheist I left behind from my teen years.

Most of all, I kept the quote up for two years because I love language that can find meter, humor and a wily confusion in anything religious, and seriously, have you picked up a copy of Mason & Dixon? It's like 7,000 pages the fuck long and I'll never find that quote again. Yeesh. Gotta save it somewhere.

Auteur Poseur?

"I started out by calling Mr. Haneke a sadist, but it seems to me that he may be too naïve, too delicate, to merit that designation, which should be reserved only for the greatest filmmakers."

- A.O. Scott, reviewing Michael Haneke's remake of his 1998 film Funny Games


I'd hate to do this, but I already agree with A.O. Scott, and must link his Funny Games review. Have I seen Haneke's update? No, I've seen the original German version, and the new one is a shot-by-shot American version, the director's first film in English.

I'll do without. I was propelled, by a fascination with The Piano Teacher and Caché, to see another Haneke feature, Netflixed the original Funny Games (unaware, at the time, of its impending remake), and was thoroughly unhappy for a few days after watching it.

I don't care that that is partly his intention. I don't care that he's deconstructing 'our' predilection for or 'enjoyment' of violence. Nor am I impressed that he lets us know it's all only a movie.

If you want to see acting on a level you've rarely seen, rent the original version. I don't doubt that Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and others give performances that are equally powerful, but I know all the twists and turns, and don't wish to return to Hell.

The horror we witness on the screen during your film is borne so realistically and painfully by your actors that it's most certainly hypocritical to deride us for the natural, primal attention we give it in return. But deride us you do. You mock us for wanting them to survive it all, as if you're taking us to task for rubber-necking.

Doddering, curmudgeonly, pomo nonsense like that cheapens both the humanity of your film's suffering actors and the accomplishment of their performances, which, in your original version are considerably brave ones.

Michael Haneke, you make Lars Von Trier look like Marc Forster.

Just Wait for Seagal....

My Favorites

Are winning.

Tilda Swinton

Coens

Robert Elswit


Fuckin' Glen and Marketa repr'zent!

This never happens.

Call It

Song

Winner: Falling Slowly (Once)

My Fav: Falling Slowly (Once)


Editing

Winner: No Country For Old Men

My Fav: No Country For Old Men


Cinematography

Winner: Atonement

My Fav: There Will Be Blood


Art Direction

Winner: Atonement

My Fav: There Will Be Blood


Original Screenplay

Winner: Juno

My Fav: Juno


Adapted Screenplay

Winner: No Country For Old Men

My Fav: No Country For Old Men


Foreign Film

Haven't seen any of this category, but will mention it because Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is a chilling, superbly acted and directed film that should've been at least nominated.


Best Director

Winner: Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men)

My Fav: Joel-Paul Thomas Coen Ethan-Anderson Fuck


Supporting Actress

Winner: Ruby Dee (American Gangster)

My Fav: Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)


Supporting Actor

Winner: Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)

My Fav: Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)


Actress

Winner: Julie Christie (Away From Her)

My Fav: Ellen Page (Juno)


Actor

Winner: Daniel DAY Lewis (There Will Be Blood)

My Fav: Daniel DAY Lewis (There Will Be Blood)


Best Picture

Winner: No Country For Old Men

My Fav: There Will Be Blood

I Say Thee Write Your Own Original Content...

Because I have to post a section of this article verbatim here, in anticipation of the most significant Oscar Night I've ever seen (in my short life):

From The Carpetbagger:

A Critic’s Critic

Paul Thomas Anderson, apart from being the holy vessel of hope and aspiration for critics and cineastes, is known in the industry as both a straight shooter and a barrel of monkeys — someone who takes the work seriously, but not himself. On Thursday night at STK, he did not disappoint.

He was in full cry with his mates, staying late and talking with all comers. The Bagger, who has admitted here that he finds “There Will Be Blood” more admirable than convincing, introduced himself. Mr. Anderson laughed for a while. And then he laughed a bunch more.

“You know you don’t know a thing about movies,” he said.

Um, gee, the Bagger thought, maybe this is the point where he should change the topic to “Punch-Drunk Love,” another movie by Mr. Anderson, one of his favorite films of all time? But the filmmaker just kept laughing.

“ ‘There Will Be Blood’ was the best movie of the year,” Mr. Anderson said. “Except for maybe ‘Juno.’ And ‘Clayton.’ And ‘Atonement.’ Other than that, it was the best movie of the year.”

Um, there seems to be one omission in that gracious tick-tock, the Bagger noted. The one that sent the Bagger into fan-boy convulsions. The Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men.”

“You really think that movie was better than ours!” Mr. Anderson said, scoffing. “C’mon, do you really believe that?” Mr. Anderson laughed one more time, clapped the Bagger on his back and wished him on his merry, misguided way.


My original content for the day? Why, if I encounter one more article reminding us of the "obscurity" of this year's noms, I'm going to just drink the editor's fuckin' milkshake. Seriously, I know you have stuff to do, people, but you've gotta be kidding me. Y'all went to see Hayden Christensen refuse to use a damned car door this weekend, right?!! C'mon, eejits.

Of Course...

...none of the previous post means for a second that Terry Gilliam's solution isn't worth noting.

Your Mother Should Know

These past few months have been the most chemical imbalancy, abject, crazy-town, gut-wrenchingful months of a life full of 'em, and I figure culminating stress found fulmination finally in a fight or flight response that squarely found itself in column "flight".

Not, mind you, the kind of flight that makes me reparations for being a twenty five year old with a B.A. in Theatre and no discernible future on the horizon, save for the obvious future of time. Consequently, that flight was the kind which shuts you down and cold cocks your system but good. I ran out of "fight" for the first time in my life, and am just left with the angry.

So we're in recuperation land, have been shuffling there in all possible ways since early November, and who knows what bright patch or dark patch we might land into? Keep fastened your seatbelts, because around the corner it's the end of delayed adolescence land, that white elephantine part of yourself that you've concocted with the help of a Protestant-like devotion to films, breakbeats, literature, intense and worthy friendships, theatre, and other forms of worship that were a part of an ego-involved attempt to be a good boy.

I didn't want to be the next disaster in my family. I spent the next eleven years more or less exceeding that expectation. There are many, many things I'd desperately like to keep from those years, least of which are my dreams. My Protestantism, however, needs to make peace with a personal life of some kind.

This should be interesting.