The Screening of America

The Way We Live Now

By A. O. SCOTT

A short time ago, in honor of the impending holiday season and the looming depression, I settled in for a viewing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I watched it on the same laptop on which I’m writing these words, with headphones plugged in to filter out distraction, though from time to time I did shrink the image so I could check my e-mail or my favorite blogs.

Did this compromise my experience of the movie? Maybe, but then again, compared to what? Hadn’t there always been commercial breaks and scenes interrupted by a trip to the bathroom or the refrigerator? As I watched Jimmy Stewart discover Zuzu’s petals in his pocket for at least the 20th time, I realized that “It’s a Wonderful Life” — like “Casablanca” and “Ben-Hur” and most of Ingmar Bergman and James Bond, among countless others — was a film I had never seen as a film. I’d never seen it projected through a dark room full of strangers onto a big screen.

How much does that matter? There is a school of thought according to which it matters a great deal, on both aesthetic and communal grounds. The whir of the sprockets, the cone of light passing through frames of celluloid to produce an illusion of continuous movement, the reverent hush, the smell of popcorn — all of this tends to be evoked, by critics of a certain age and temperament, in nostalgic or even elegiac tones. What will happen, in the age of iPod, DVR, VOD, YouTube and BitTorrent, to the experience of moviegoing, to say nothing of the art of cinema?

The answer does not seem to be that people will stop going to the movies. Nothing has stopped us before — certainly not the rise of television in the late 1940s or the spread of home video in the early ’80s. While both of those developments appeared to threaten the uniqueness of film, they also extended the power and pervasiveness of the movies, which never surrendered their position as the highest common denominator of the popular culture, the standard of visual storytelling to which all the others aspired. An unusually successful television show could be praised as “cinematic,” while the sign that a movie had failed was that it went straight to video.

When television came along, Hollywood responded by expanding the scale and size of its spectacles and by making the big screen even bigger. The studios came up with wide-screen formats — with proprietary names like CinemaScope and VistaVision — that promised a level of sensory immersion no home console could ever hope to match.

Home systems eventually caught up, through a dialectical process that is only accelerating. It took a while, but Hollywood discovered that movies could, of all things, actually be shown on television. The older ones were especially adaptable, since their nearly square dimensions (the 1:33:1 aspect ratio known as the Academy standard) were close to those of the average television set. The newer, wider pictures, however, needed to be cropped or squeezed. In the VHS era, movies were routinely packaged in truncated, distorted versions, their camera movements and compositions destroyed by inelegant panning and scanning. So while you could watch a movie on TV or video, it really wasn’t the same.

Now it might actually be better. The size and shape of the television screen has changed, making it more compatible with the shape of the movie screen. The newest DVDs, especially but not only in the high-definition Blu-ray format, offer images of a clarity and fidelity far beyond what could be found in the old revival houses, where the prints might be scratched or faded and the equipment old and run-down. The digital age may well turn out to be a golden age of cinephilia, with a wider variety of movies available for viewing in better conditions than ever.

But the ubiquity of screens — and also of cameras — may also mean the death, or at least the transfiguration, of cinema as we know it. Already, the pre-eminence of the feature film as a delivery system for complex narratives has been eroded by television, both cable and broadcast. The latent novelistic potential of the dramatic series has been realized by shows like “The Wire,” “Mad Men” and “Lost,” which have also dominated conversation to an extent that few recent movies have been able to match.

At the same time, smaller-scale visual narratives have been flourishing on the Internet, delivering topical satire, political commentary and slices of real-life absurdity with a nimbleness and speed that makes both conventional film and traditional television seem unwieldy. Movies, meanwhile, are once again responding by growing louder, brighter and more sensational. Imax and variously improved 3-D formats are becoming more popular with the movie studios, even as the widespread use of digital effects gives their products less and less resemblance to traditional cinema.

Which nonetheless survives, even if it isn’t what it used to be. As we head toward a way of life organized around the diversity of screens — I’m looking over my laptop at the television, while my iPod charges on the desk until I take it with me to my next screening, where I’ll be sure to shut off my cellphone — there will be at least an equal diversity of art forms and ways of appreciating them, alone or in groups. And they will continue to cross-pollinate. Amateur filmmakers with digital cameras will learn the mechanics of classical decoupage with the preinstalled video-editing software on their computers, while professionals will continue to mimic the grainy, jerky texture of video captured by handheld camcorders and cellphone irises.

Maybe cinema is dead, but it’s a wonderful afterlife.

A. O. Scott is a film critic at The Times.

Los Angeles

(Sunset Junction Festival, Saturaday, August 23, 2008)

I’ve been in Los Angeles for three weeks now, actually two because of the week away in Colorado. There are a lot of differences, the big ones are too obvious to mention and I was prepared for them anyway. It’s the small ones. Bananas ripen fast here, the water feels different, it makes my hair coarse. In the Bay, I had ant and spider problems. Down here it is cockroaches and wayward grasshoppers. I haven’t seen a cockroach since I was a teenager in Riverside.

Judy and I had a pleasant drive down from Northern California. I shared my last day in Berkeley with Cody’s. A bank took over what was left of the store and sold everything for 40% off. I purchased some Proust, Pinter screenplays and a Richard Brautigan collection I’ve wanted for some time. We left late in the afternoon and experienced a slow sunset as we made our way down the 5. The car was always shady inside, never hot. We got into Hollywood by 11pm, unpacked and went to bed. The following afternoon I drove to Riverside, grabbed my brother and headed to San Diego to pick up my new car. In the last stretch on my way back to Los Angeles there was awful traffic (a Sunday!) on the 5 in between Oceanside and San Clemente. It was such a strange place for traffic. I sat listening to Exile on Main Street over and over again and got home later than the drive down from the bay.

I spent most of the following week finalizing any paperwork needing to be done, mostly loan forms, for graduate school. The money I made over the summer in Berkeley is quickly disappearing. It’s a strange feeling. Once that money is gone the next for years (for the most part) will be loans and scholarship. I don’t really know how to feel about that.

I’ve been exploring Los Angeles little by little. I favor the Los Feliz district over the others I have visited. Had I decided on AFI, I would most likely have lived there. Judy and I went to the Sunset Junction festival, explored Silverlake and saw Broken Social Scene. The Central Library is amazing, but strange like most things in L.A. It’s enormous, storing probably the biggest (public) collection I’ve ever seen. Their DVD selection is great, but has to many “Video Home” films, super low budget Mexican action films. These films are great but it’s weird to see more of these than Criterion releases. The covers to these things were printed off of an inkjet in someone’s bedroom. Everything is categorized and shelved in a strange way. They don’t even bother alphabetizing the music section. We got lost. The library itself is inaccessible because it is in Downtown, where no one really lives or goes, and there’s no affordable parking. It’s a beautiful place and I could easily spend an entire day there if it weren’t so difficult to get to. I checked out La Cienega by Lucrecia Martel, hoping she would be in Colorado the following week, along with another Bukowski novel, Factotum. Everyone should read Chapter 16 of Factotum, if nothing else by Bukowski. It is four pages of brilliance.

I’m starting to settle in with my new living situation. I can’t really settle in because I let the sublet-er borrow my dresser, so all my clothes are stacked in crates next to my bed. I see and interact with the neighbors a lot, which is different than the Bay. The Bay has a larger general community; everywhere you went everyone seemed to be on the same wavelength or outlook on the world. But there I never interacted with my neighbors on a daily basis. L.A. seems to have strong local/neighborhood communities but with no general, larger unity. There are always children playing outside my window. We say “hi” and talk a little.

September 18 will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. When I started it, I knew I would eventually move to Los Angeles but not in the way I eventually did. As difficult as it was, I’m glad for the last year I had in the Bay. I spent a lot of time by myself and with those few remaining friends in the area. It could be the last time I live like that; and that makes me sad.

I'm officially on the UCLA Film Directing email list. It's giving me a peek into the world I'll soon be immersed in. People I don't know asking for production designers, PA's, sound designers, etc., for films I don't know.

I got my Los Angeles County library card yesterday. Hopefully I’ll get to use it a lot and it’ll be as good to me as my Berkeley card.

Riverside

Earthquake Rattles Southern California
The New York Times - July 29, 2008

LOS ANGELES — A moderately strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, swaying buildings and tossing food off grocery store shelves for about 20 seconds. There were no immediate reports of major injuries or structural damage.

The quake, estimated at 5.4 magnitude (reduced from an initial estimate of 5.8), was centered 35 east of downtown Los Angeles in Chino Hills, just south of Pomona in San Bernardino county. It was felt as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as San Diego.

Cellphone lines were jammed throughout the region as people began to frantically make calls in the immediate moments after the powerful jolt. Some schools, office buildings, tourist attractions and other facilities were evacuated temporarily as people braced for aftershocks, which were numerous and in some cases were as strong as 3.8 magnitude, while the Los Angeles City Council stopped to regroup.

Residents adjusted to that eerie, off-putting sensation of having rolled from side to side on the rollers that are common in seismically engineered buildings, which can leave buildings swaying for several seconds after the quake.

The shake was strong enough to knock pictures off walls and rattle windows, but there appeared to be little damage near the earthquake’s epicenter.

In Riverside, two women suffered minor head injuries from climbing under tables.

Legend

In Memoriam: Bruce Conner (1933-2008)

By Steve Seid

Bruce Conner, the great, irascible and ever-evolving San Francisco–based artist known for his assemblages, films, drawings, and interdisciplinary works, passed away on July 7, 2008. The prototype for much of today’s repurposed art, Conner’s gauzy assemblages of salvaged materials, such as doll parts and nylon stockings, attracted much art-world attention in the late fifties. His landmark film, A Movie (1958), made from scraps of newsreels, soft-core porn, and B movies, augured the future of another form, the music video. Conner moved to the Bay Area in 1957 and quickly became a significant member of the lively Beat community, forming his own makeshift group of funk artists, the Rat Bastard Protective Association. In the ’60s, Conner could be found at the Avalon Ballroom designing light shows; when the ’70s punk scene emerged, Conner was there as well, capturing the dark vitality of the music in the photographs exhibited here. Throughout these countercultural trends, Conner continued to work in many media—drawings, photography, films, sculptural objects—creating powerful works summarized in an ambitious 1999 touring survey, 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story. To further highlight his crucial influence, A Movie was placed on the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

Bruce Conner’s association with BAM/PFA goes back many years. The museum’s collection contains numerous drawings, including the exquisite felt-pen renderings of the mid-‘60s and the much later inkblot drawings. His earliest work is represented by Untitled Collage with Hair Growing Out of It from 1960. Conner was also a MATRIX artist (number 102), displaying his otherworldly photograms, full-scale contact bodyprints on large rolls of photographic paper. Made with Edmund Shea, these towering works seem to capture the trace of one’s spirit. One of these, Angel, is in the BAM collection. Almost all of Conner’s seminal film works reside in the Pacific Film Archive collection, including America Is Waiting (1982), Looking for Mushrooms (1961–67), Marilyn Times Five (1968–73), Mongoloid (1978), Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977), and Report (1963–67). The monumental Crossroads (1976), one of Conner’s most ambitious films, was the object of a PFA preservation project assisted closely by the artist. A pristine 35mm print of this uncanny ode to nuclear terror is now housed in PFA’s vault.

As you view the photographs in Mabuhay Gardens, please keep in mind Bruce Conner, a lively and truculent artistic force, bent on culling order from the loose ends of the everyday. We will miss him.

November

Anxious in America, New York Times, June 29, 2008
by Thomas L. Friedman

Just a few months ago, the consensus view was that Barack Obama would need to choose a hard-core national-security type as his vice presidential running mate to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience and that John McCain would need a running mate who was young and sprightly to compensate for his age. Come August, though, I predict both men will be looking for a financial wizard as their running mates to help them steer America out of what could become a serious economic tailspin.

I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November — whether things get better there or worse. If they get better, we’ll ignore Iraq more; if they get worse, the next president will be under pressure to get out quicker. I think nation-building in America is going to be the issue.

It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not Al Qaeda or Iraq. Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card — one way or another — is, in my view, seriously deluded. Things have changed.

Up to now, the economic crisis we’ve been in has been largely a credit crisis in the capital markets, while consumer spending has kept reasonably steady, as have manufacturing and exports. But with banks still reluctant to lend even to healthy businesses, fuel and food prices soaring and home prices declining, this is starting to affect consumers, shrinking their wallets and crimping spending. Unemployment is already creeping up and manufacturing creeping down.

The straws in the wind are hard to ignore: If you visit any car dealership in America today you will see row after row of unsold S.U.V.’s. And if you own a gas guzzler already, good luck. On Thursday, The Palm Beach Post ran an article on your S.U.V. options: “Continue to spend upward of $100 for a fill-up. Sell or trade in the vehicle for a fraction of the original cost. Or hold out and park the truck in the driveway for occasional use in hopes the market will turn around.” Just be glad you don’t own a bus. Montgomery County, Md., where I live, just announced that more children were going to have to walk to school next year to save money on bus fuel.

On top of it all, our bank crisis is not over. Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs analysts said that U.S. banks may need another $65 billion to cover more write-downs of bad mortgage-related instruments and potential new losses if consumer loans start to buckle. Since President Bush came to office, our national savings have gone from 6 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent, and consumer debt has climbed from $8 trillion to $14 trillion.

My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.

I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry.

“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.”

We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. “But today,” added Hormats, “the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.”

If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.

That’s us. We’re at a 34-year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq. We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.

July 4, 2008

(Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave, New York Times, June 22, 2008)
By Thomas L. Friedman

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”

Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Mr. Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If Congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”

This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.

But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.

That bill is H.R. 6049 — “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,” which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.

These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines — because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.

That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans — sorry to say, with the help of John McCain — have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.

Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer — for geopolitical reasons — that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.

Archival (Not Disposable)

A thoughtful article on The Digital Bits about the love, culture and 10th anniversary of the demise of Laserdiscs. I bought my Pioneer CLD-D704 (I wanted to get the HLD-X9 but I didn't have the money to ship it from Japan) just to watch one disc: the Criterion release of Boogie Nights. That was in 2006. Since then my collection has grown over 150 discs and I love every one. It feels like my own archive with which I can host my own screenings and listen to rare interviews and commentaries that will never be available anywhere else. The Laserdisc Forever website is the best that I know of to research this format. And the LaserDisc Database has the most comprehensive directory of laserdiscs online.

Hollywood and Western

Trailers#12

For films to explore and revisit.

Tran Ahn Hung's Cyclo (1995)

The Film World in Mid-2008

Uncertain Futures for Bounty at Cannes by Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott of The New York Times

Trailers #11

For films to explore and revisit.

Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978)

After watching, read The Vietnam Oscars by Peter Biskind

Trailers #10

For films to explore and revisit.

Robert Atlman's Nashville (1975)

'68

A.O. Scott's N.Y. Times article on films from 1968.

2.5 out of 3

As of yesterday, I’ve received the last letters and phone calls. I’ve been accepted to New York University, American Film Institute and UCLA’s M.F.A programs in film directing. It’s 2.5 out of 3 because the NYU acceptance is for Tisch Asia in Singapore, not Manhattan.

I’m very torn. I have about two and a half weeks to decide. I wasn’t at all expecting AFI to come through. I need to do a lot more research to decide what program is the best for me. But I’m very excited. It’s been a long time coming.

Breakdown

I wrote this entry several months ago. I wanted to document my current living situation. Things change so rapidly and drastically and I wanted to remember exactly what this moment was like. I finally got around to posting it now because a major change will be coming soon.

I live in Oakland, behind a main house in a garage converted into three individual apartments. The one bedroom apartment I occupy is $825 a month, utilities included. I split the cost with my roommate and he lives in the bedroom while I'm in the living room. Outside of rent I spend an additional $20 a month on internet, $77 on car insurance, $30 on gas and $45 on my cellphone. That brings my living expenses to $589.50 excluding groceries. I work, on average, 23.5 hours per week and I make about $1,134.24 a month, after taxes. That leaves about $544.74 a month to purchase food, save or spend on other things like, for this past month, transcripts and fees for graduate school applications.

My apartment is recovering from a severe ant infestation. I couldn't leave a bowl of cereal unattended for longer than a 30 seconds without an ant crawling into it. I spent weeks setting poison, sealing routes of entry and cleaning dozens of ant bodies in a plot to kill the queen. However with the thousands of ants gone I've noticed more spiders in the apartment and I can't decide what it worse. I don't know of anyway to kill spiders other than smashing it. Ants are easy, you just set the poison and it does all the dirty work. I guess I don't like the confrontation.

The extra money I make each month usually goes to film screenings, the monthly trips to Los Angeles or savings. I splurged a little this month on movie posters, but they were all worth it. I've grown older, enjoy collecting and situating myself in a permanent living arrangement. For the past couple years I haven't remained in an apartment for longer than 12 months and I didn't feel right decorating. I know that I'll be moving to Los Angeles soon, but these posters are part of my furnishings, just like my bed and desk. I don't suspect I'll be purchasing more, I'm very content with the ones I already have and, conveniently, I'm running out of wall space.

Trailers #9

For films to explore and revisit.

Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Playing at the Pacific Film Archive, April 5 at 6:30pm

The Spring Season

It began Sunday of this week with Chimes at Midnight by Orson Welles. Followed by A Grin Without a Cat by Chris Marker on Wednesday leading up to another Welles, The Trial on Friday.

I doubt I'll go but The Battle of Algiers is showing this Saturday at 6:30pm. It is one of the best and most important films I can think of. The score by Morricone is reason enough to see it.

Then it will be April 10 with Oshima's The Man Who Left His Will on Film, then a week later on April 17 with Rocha's Antonio das Mortes at the SFMOMA. Unfortunately this is showing the same day as Last Tango in Paris at the Castro, it's the only film part of the United Artist retrospective that I'd like to see on a big screen. It's okay because I'll be see Brando two days later for Pontecorvo's Queimada! on April 19. And then maybe Watkin's La Commune on April 20.

Then the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival starts on April 24.

I'll begin with Frank Black's live score to The Golem on Friday, April 25 at the Castro. Followed by Leave Her to Heaven on April 26 at the Castro as well. Next is Sokurov's Alexandra and the J. Hoberman event on Sunday April 27 at the Kabuki. Then the Errol Morris event on April 29 at the Kabuki and the Mike Leigh event on April 30 at the Castro. Rest a little for Bela Tarr's The Man from London at 8:50pm at the PFA. Maybe Valse Sentimentale and La Zona at the Clay on Saturday May 3 and then the State of Cinema Address and All is Forgiven at the Clay then Still Life at the Kabuki on May 4.

And now I just learned of the 3-day 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema program at the Yerba Buena Arts Center.

Let me know if you'd like to come.

Trailers #8

For films to explore and revisit.

Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970)

Interview

Errol Morris and Werner Herzog discuss their friendship, filmmaking, reality and digging up Ed Gein's mother in Plainfield, Wisconsin.

Trailers #7

For films to watch and revisit.

Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969)

Trailers #6

For films to watch and revisit

John Boorman's Point Blank (1967)

February 5, 2008

Obama vs. the Phobocracy by Michael Chabon

Trailers #5

For films to watch and revisit.

Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996)

Trailers #4

For films to watch and revisit.

Jean Luc-Godard's Pierrot Le Fou (1965)

Weekend in Hollywood

We woke up, bought groceries and made a trip to the Amoeba on Sunset. I found some great lasers: Pulp Fiction, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lawrence of Arabia (all three on hard to find Criterion Collection CAV discs), Psycho (on Universal's Signature Series, another rare one) and a great compilation of Ed Wood films containing Plan 9 from Outerspace, Jail Bait, and Night of the Ghouls. In total they added up to $23.77 because the cashier forgot to charge me the $3.99 for the Ed Wood compilation. Or maybe she didn't, either way should you really have to pay to see some Ed Wood films? I had $14 is store credit from some DVDs I sold back a few weeks ago in Berkeley. That brought the cost to $9.77 for seven films, about $1.40 each from an original $3.40, which I still would have paid. Excluding the Ed Wood compilation, the packaging and special features on the rest of the lasers are great and not available on DVD.

In order to avoid traffic for the afternoon commute, we decided to watch No Country For Old Men again. I feel the same about it; it is a well made film but I'm not impressed with it at all. Not once was I emotionally engaged with the story or characters. This year presented a far superior film of a murderer, the police pursuit to catch him, the surrounding community, and the lives of those left affected. It is a shame that Zodiac has received no recognition. In general I favor the Coen Brothers over Fincher, but for these two individual films competing for accolades in the same year, and when the scale has tipped so heavily in favor of No Country, I have to side with Zodiac. It is sadly, the forgotten great film of 2007. Every year has one.

Afterwards we went to the LACMA to see Thelma Schoonmaker present Michael Powell's Bluebeard's Castle followed by Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann. I was really in awe to see Schoonmaker in person, she's played a huge creative role behind some of my most favorite films. These were the first Powell film's I've seen, a privelege since Bluebeard's Castle has never been screened publicly in the U.S. I was very impressed with The Tales of Hoffmann, but I can't say that I loved both films. I look forward to exploring other film's by Powell and Pressburger. I own Peeping Tom and Judy has 49th Parallel and The Red Shoes. Schoonmaker said that Powell and Pressburger's The Thief of Bagdad will be released soon on Criterion. Her announcement was complimented with a new post at On Five discussing the transfer of Thief that I discovered when I got home.

Trailers #3

For films to explore and revisit.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain (1973)

Prediction

Not until the last years of college, and fairly recently, did I believe there could be films that would connect with me as strongly as the ones I watched when I was younger. I felt confident and stubbornly defensive in the films I claimed to be my own little niche. This all changed when I saw the works of Tran Anh Hung and more than ever I'm excited to explore more filmmakers. It was a long, rewarding wait to see There Will Be Blood because, for me, it was a return to the excited 13 year old who was just discovering the beauty of this medium. And now another wait begins and until then I'm eager to see what new works are yet to be discovered; but I assure everyone that the best film of 2008 will be Je Vien Avec la Pluie (I Come With the Rain).

Trailers #2

For films to explore and revisit.

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Centennial

(Muir Woods, Jan. 1, 2008)

Almendros

The second Great Moments article, titled Nestor Almendros: The International Cineaste, covers the renowned cinematographer's visit to the 1986 San Francisco International Film Festival. I worked a long time on this one and it never really came together (I prefer the Lancaster article). I'm still not satisfied with it but it's an informative piece on a great collaborator who spent a lifetime devoted to cinema.

Lynch

Trailers #1

For films to explore and revisit.

Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982)

Best Films of 2007

1.There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) The year's best film spawned the year's best piece of film criticism: An American Primitive, Forged in a Crucible of Blood and Oil by New York Times writer Manohla Dargis. Don't read it until you see the film.

2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (dir. Cristian Mungiu)

3. Zodiac (dir. David Fincher) The extended Director's Cut will be released Jan 8.

4. Atonement (dir. Joe Wright) Wright is my favorite new filmmaker. He merges traditional British filmmaking with the energy of the French New Wave. Atonement is an extraordinary film.

5. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (dir. Julian Schnabel)

6. Control (dir. Anton Corbijn)

7. Hana (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda) This film is a bit of a cheat since it has not been released theatrically in the U.S. If it were, it would be the year's best and most beautiful comedy. An amazing tribute to the films of Kurosawa and Mizoguchi.

8. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (dir. Sidney Lumet) A modern day Greek tragedy by one of America's greatest filmmakers.

9. The Way I Spent the End of The World (dir. Catalin Mitulescu) Another astonishing piece of Romanian filmmaking. Another cheat since it has not been released theatrically in the U.S.

10. Grindhouse (dir. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez)

11. No Country For Old Men (dir. Coen Bros)

12. American Gangster (dir. Ridley Scott)

13. I'm Not There (dir. Todd Haynes)

14. Charlie Wilson's War (dir. Mike Nichols)

15. Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg)

16. The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass)

17. Boarding Gate (dir. Olivier Assayas) Not yet released in the U.S.

18. Blind Mountain (dir. Yang Li) Not yet released in the U.S.

19. Jar City (dir. Baltasar Kormakur) Not yet released in the U.S.

20. No End in Sight (dir. Charles Ferguson)

21. The Darjeeling Limited (dir. Wes Anderson)

22. Silent Light (dir. Carlos Reygadas)

23. Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee)

Need to See:
Paranoid Park
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Gone Baby Gone
Michael Clayton
The Kite Runner
Rendition
Sweeny Todd
The Savages
Margot at the Wedding
Juno
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Sunshine
Syndromes and a Century
Colossal Youth
Once
The Host