Frownland

This review was originally published here on Tiny Mix Tapes.

Dir. Ronald Bronstein
2008
9.0


The trick and motivation of independent cinema has always been the same: to do more with less. This ideology is hardly revolutionary and in many cases is not so much a stylistic choice but rather a necessity for existence. Enter: Frownland, a 2007 low budget drama by first time director Ronald Bronstein. Frownland categorizes the contradiction of independent cinema in that it is both remarkable and mundane; with the two aspects feeding into each other simultaneously. It takes a bizarre, twisted, and ultimate depressing urban existence and forces us to realize that it is our own. It makes us hate and pity characters only to realize they are us. It makes us recoil in disgust at the abomination of life only to realize that this is it. Frownland is not a 21st century indie film. It is life.

Frownland does not reveal too much of its transcendence upon its initial viewing. Its opening segment is long, difficult and a precursor to all the long, difficult scenes ahead. To put it plainly: Frownland is a long, difficult movie. It is at times almost unwatchable, not because it is, by any standard, bad but because the shards of its awareness cut very deeply and can be severely uncomfortable. It is filled with the awkward silences and pathological anxiety that we desperately try to shield ourselves from in life. In many ways Frownland begs to be turned off; forgotten about; dismissed. It takes an extraordinary risk in being so hopelessly frank and honest, one that not every viewer is going to be OK with. The film contains no romance, a miserably unhappy yet cathartic ending, and an almost indiscernible plot. But something far more profound and unexpected happens during the film's 105 minutes. Something plain and yet spectacular. Slowly the viewer is interpolated into the film's hopelessness and becomes one with its misguided entourage of characters. Like a famous novel, what is deep between the lines of perfectly human dialog begins to reveal itself. Frownland is the sound and text of human suffering and alienation. It is a disgusting, beautiful portrait of regret and contempt. It is the cinematic rendering of the see-saw of indifference.

It is difficult to explain how Frownland accomplishes all these accolades. There are few instances of truly revealing dialog. More is said by following the arc of the film's characters. At the start of the film Keith, the mentally unsound main character, is confronted with a friend's tears and finds no reaction within himself. By the end of the film, through endless and tireless scenes of sweat, tribulation and panic, Keith finds himself crying and broken on the rooftop of a New York City apartment building. Along the way Keith experiences perhaps the single most appropriate rendering of a physical catharsis. Surrounded by the ungodly noise and color of a city party in a scene that is ferociously dizzying and maddeningly reminiscent of Antonioni's Blow Up, Keith pukes before exiting the building. All his fear and anxiety comes to the surface in this final scene and his rooftop weeping is the film's most prominently upsetting moments. His roommate Charles also experiences a similar revelation. He lives in a comfortable world of cultural know-how and academia only to find that he is losing his ability to pay his rent and maintain his bubbled-in lifestyle. He comes face to face with a nameless hypocritical antagonist who verbally assaults his desperate need for comfort, telling him in one of the film's funnier moments (paraphrase) “You're telling me in the middle of this ontological crisis (the test Charles has just taken) that all you can think about is fucking candy.” What these two story lines drive at is the whole of Frownland's message: any person can be driven to any logical extreme. No one is safe from a life that is hard, complex and painful revelatory.

While all this is happening the film maintains the gritty iconography of 1970s American New Wave. It's elegance is in its lack of polish, the rejection of classic ideals in beauty. The characters are ugly and normal. They lack the outstanding physical features that have become detractors to content in Hollywood. Frownland is filled with a mysterious pus that is somewhere between a disease and a soul. It is all the grandeur and decadence of sadness and anonymity. It lets light through to illuminate but refuses to reveal its own design. It is miraculous and somehow not miraculous at all. It points to the fact that we have all suffered trauma. If you haven't, perhaps consider yourself unlucky. Frownland meditates on and seems to fully believe in the modern notion that to suffer is to live. Growth is painful. Experience can hurt like hell. But it brings us closer to ourselves. And it is largely unavoidable. Everyday is a struggle, but without that inherent struggle our lives would lack a fundamental dichotomy. They would lose all semblance of meaning, of value. So, in that sense, maybe Frownland had a happy ending after all.

The Science of Sleep

Dir. Michel Gondry
2006
6.8


In the 1930s during Stalin's rise to power many great filmmakers in the Soviet Union were accused of formalism and subsequently banned from producing their art. Formalism, as described by film historian David A. Cook is “the sometimes deadly sin of exalting the aesthetic form of a work above its ideological content.” In other words: style over substance. Early landmark Soviet directors such as Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, and national hero Sergei Eisenstein, were all silenced under Stalin's artistic tyranny. Today, things are quite different. Style is exalted. David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino, whose respective style occasionally become a means unto itself, are among America's most popular directors. The 21st century has thus far bore witness to impressive advancements in reproducing life via film technology. Between Peter Jackson, Tarantino, Pixar, and a host of films such as Children of Men, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Mulholland Dr., silver screen possibilities have never seemed more infinite. Among the technically ambitious there is French director Michel Gondry whose pioneering visual work, like Fincher and Spike Jonze, stems from his time spent producing music videos. If you've never seen one of his music videos I suggest starting here. Gondry spent the early part of his film career working closely with the brilliant screen writer Charlie Kaufman, a union that produced Human Nature (2001) and the romantic epic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). In 2006 Gondry wrote and directed The Science of Sleep, which is a film that ultimately proves the difference between a visually stimulating film counterbalanced by an intoxicating and bitter sweet script and a visually stimulating film that exists by and for itself.

Following in the vein of Eternal Sunshine, The Science of Sleep is the story of a rather twisted romance. Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) returns to his former home in France after his father dies. Here he meets and falls in love with his neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Their relationship begins with a series of bumbling, half-witted lies that later create an opportunity for comedic relief. Said relief is necessary as Stephane is a horribly awkward, insular and hyper creative person whose imagination has a tendency to take control. As the film begins to swirl downwards like water draining from a sink, we find out that Stephane is largely unable to separate reality and his dreamworld. His wild imagination roams free while sleeping, but occasionally (and more often as the film progresses) it entirely detaches and the result, psychologically, is vaguely interesting rather than insightful. Gondry clearly knows how to handle and enhance the visual aspect of Stephane's unconscious paradise, but his grasp on its psychological aspect is at best basic, and at worst horribly understated. Stephane is portrayed as a child and his desires conform to his adolescent concept of romance. The problem is that Gondry fills the cinematic dead space between ocular episodes that border on hallucination with emotional responses to them that could only be the biproduct of a more experienced person, one with acute knowledge of death and the twisted, confusing realities of the world. This contradiction ruins the emotional continuity of the film to the point at which it literally falls apart. The film's final sequence, a very obvious reference to Freudian wish-fulfillment, is a narrative cop-out if there ever was one.

Though hugely flawed in its ignorance of psychological relations, The Science of Sleep is still a visual masterpiece. Gondry's art direction is simply unparalleled and is taken to its very limit. The sheer amount of vision required to visualize and produce everything from the vivid, surreal dream sequences of Stephane to the plausible and pleasant aesthetics of Stephanie's Parisian apartment is awe inspiring. This is not to suggest that Gondry was alone in this endeavor, but The Silence of Sleep is very clearly his brainchild. He proves, without any trace of doubt, that he is a genius visionary and a prolific innovator. Still, The Science of Sleep fails in spite of, or perhaps because of, this vision and artistic perseverance. The film plays like an extended music video, subjecting the viewer to a lavish display of artistic refinement and technological know-how, but ultimately fails to form a cohesive statement. It is likely his work with Kaufman encouraged a reevaluation of traditional film structure. However, Gondry takes the idea one step too far and abandons it altogether. Gondry, like Stephane, operates best in the absence of reality, with nothing tethering him to his fears and insecurities. I shall conclude simply by saying that, despite its impressive stimuli, Stalin probably would have exiled Michel Gondry to Siberia for The Silence of Sleep.

Shadows

Dir. John Cassavetes
1959
n/a
There's an episode of AMC's Mad Men where a few insubordinate staff members sneak into Mr. Cooper's office to see his new acquisition: a painting by the now-famous abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. Staring at the painting affixed someone asks what the painting means. The young Ken Cosgrove offers a profound explanation. He suggests that the painting isn't supposed to mean anything but rather the point is that one “falls into it.” If there is any better explanation for the work done by so many modern artists all over the world in the period following WWII's aftermath, I have yet to hear one. The conclusion of the war, the horrific revelation of Hitler's concentration camps and, most importantly, the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was the beginning of a new era in art. A certain listlessness pervaded in the young post-war generation. It manifested itself many different ways but one of the most important was a dramatic sense of nihilism. While the film capitol of the world, Hollywood, largely sought to continue boosting morale, many young people nevertheless went on to deeper and more depraved states of hopelessness and apathy. The war time boom and subsequent celebration likely felt disingenuous to them and certainly did not renew feelings of purpose. The coping mechanism of the world seemed to be to treat the war as a distant memory even after it had just occurred. By the late 1950s, with Cold War paranoia reaching a climactic point and disruption and chaos creeping back into everyday life, the skepticism and doubt of this disenfranchised lot must have been all but confirmed; their convictions in the absurdity of existence undoubtedly strengthened. In producing and directing his first film, Shadows, in 1959, John Cassavetes firmly squared himself as the voice of the forgotten who cannot forget; those who suffer with an invisible, internal burden which they can never shake off.

Shadows' legacy is built off its meticulous attention to reactionary lives. When viewing the film one doesn't get a sense of construction but rather organic process and movement, which has become a key feature in the ongoing American independent film movement which owes a great deal to Cassavetes. His film is a study of self destructive behavior at the dynamic and artistic heart of America: Newt York City. Where two years before author Jack Kerouac published an intelligentsia oriented study of the common man in “On the Road,” wherein he horrendously glorified the strivings of simple, unrealized people and cruelly, if inadvertently, widened the gap between himself and working man's world, Cassavetes sought to undue the damage caused by lack of perspective. Cassavete's characters in Shadows are not the aristocracy of cool or the Man-God Dean Moriarty of Kerouac's world, but just people. They are people without careers, without direction and without anything to do. At times they rejoice in their condition and other times they are humbled and broken by it. Without the plot devices of Hollywood or the conditioned detachment of the Beat Generation, they still manage to learn lessons and grow. In inaugurating independent cinema Cassavetes proved that lives are not products of cultural indoctrination and mind control, but rather that our existence is the basis for all creation, petty or sublime.

Using improvisation to build his narrative, Cassavetes achieves two remarkable, interrelated goals. First, he demonstrates the cinema's unique ability to capture and recreate the natural, if only given the opportunity to break free of the contrivances of stereotypes. Second, he shows how art, and in particular the cinema, can bring disparate people together and destroy the barrier between participant and viewer. In demonstrating its capacity to unite, Cassavetes christened a new relationship between people and cinema. Moving beyond the voyeurism of Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock, Cassavetes does more than just implicate his viewers, he involves them. Extreme closeups, a disorienting and complex diegetic system (which closely ties it to legendary French independent film: Breathless), and authentic realism drive the viewer's close relationship to the film. Even the film's politics (interracial relations were still taboo at the time), which could be a vehicle onto itself, are subordinate to the film's intensive dedication to the engaging and animated lives of its characters.

All things considered, it is not hard to see why Shadows wasn't a great commercial or critical success when it was released. In the year of Hitchcock's magnum opus Vertigo (which itself was a box office failure), the historical epic Ben-Hur (which won a record setting 11 Oscars), Some Like it Hot (perhaps the most subversive Hollywood picture of its time) amongst so many others, the likelihood of an upstart director's cheap shot-on-location film, which stars a troop of amateur actors largely playing themselves, getting noticed by a large audience was hardly plausible. Conversely, the idea that Shadows and John Cassavetes would become a considerable part of the catalyst for a new generation of noble and daring young filmmakers seems almost fundamental now. In his bold attempt to recondition audiences and reprocess reality into a coarser but more fulfilling substance, Cassavetes took a great risk. Lucky for us, it would turn out to be a risk that inspired generations of risk takers who, to this day, continue to define American independent cinema.

Sunset Boulevard

Dir. Billy Wilder
1950
n/a


Industry in America is unforgiving. Hollywood is no exception. Perhaps the most relevant observation about our capitalist (which has become something of a dirty word in the last half century) society is how progress is something of a double edged sword. On the one hand progress is necessary in order to compete in the world markets. On the other, progress that falls into the realm of radicalism tends to be quickly quashed. Take for instance Hollywood in the 1920s. Already, big business was becoming intrinsically intertwined with the movie making process and affecting output. Charlie Chaplin, the first seminal American comedy director, made films all throughout the 20s and into the 30s that waged strong criticisms against societal elites. Though he was critically acclaimed and hugely popular Chaplin was eventually ostracized and very nearly excommunicated by the U.S. Government in a coup to censor his strongly satiric voice. Buster Keaton suffered a similar fate, not at the hands of a culturally totalitarian government, but rather equally brutal Hollywood producers who forced him into artistic subordination when America's attention turned toward the new era of sound films. All this is to emphasize the heartless depravity of progress. There is one Hollywood picture that better illuminates the intolerable cruelty of the thin line of progress than any other. Billy Wilder's dramatic masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is the acme of self-reflexive cinema. Not just about Hollywood but about our culture as a whole, it reminds the viewer of the internal suffering of the stubborn and the anxiety of the hopeful. The film, like Wilder's whole career, is emblematic of just how difficult it can be to do “good work” when restricted by the confines of a loving but controlling body.

Joe Gillis (William Holden), the film's protagonist, is a smooth talking script writer down on his luck. He often speaks of the ambition all young people, actors and writers alike, arrive with in Hollywood, which in turn slowly dissolves into cynicism and hopelessness. Gillis is terribly observant, wry and confident even in the face of destitution. He and later-romantic interest Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olsen), an eager and earnest reader with grand aspirations, represent the film's modern half; the young Hollywood pioneers working to change the system from the inside out to suit their own needs. It is not until Gillis meets defunct silent film star Norma Desmond (played in a self-realized, semi-autobiographical style by Gloria Swanson) and her scrupulous butler/ex-husband/former director Max (played, again semi-autobiographically by tragic mastermind director Erich von Stoheim) that he begins to sense the danger in becoming to closely involved with Hollywood. Norma and Max represent the long forgotten age of silent film stars in the 20s; an age that passed, almost without notice, with the coming of sound in 1928. By the 30s these once great stars had been dismissed from the studios whose legacy had once relied upon their namesakes. Norma raves about the temporary era of sound that will, in her opinion, no doubt fall in on itself and out of the ashes silent pictures will enjoy their reincarnation. She offers Gillis a job editing her “masterpiece”, a narcissistic and indulgent historical epic which she demands be directed by Cecil B. DeMille and of course star her. From here a shocking and grotesque tale of fate and temptation unfolds, on the scale of true Greek tragedy. Norma's pathologies eventually drown any connection between her and the real world and Joe meets his own tragic, aqueous end.

Sunset Boulevard is littered with filmic references. With Erich von Stroheim as “the man you can't help but feel empathy toward”, and appearances by Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton, among others, playing themselves, Wilder no doubt means to show his appreciation for the film's that defined early Hollywood. But this film is far more than a nod to the masters. It is itself a model of cinematic greatness. The film represents the meeting point and reconciliation between the now remote silent era and the blossoming sound era. By 1950 nearly the same amount of time (roughly 20 years) had passed since the inception of sound as had passed between Griffith's narrative expansion at the end of the century's first decade and the demise of silent films. One could even suggest that Wilder represents, especially at this point in his career the Charlie Chaplin of sound. Not so much because he was a great comedic director (although few films are funnier than Some Like It Hot), but because Wilder used subversive intelligence to manipulate the medium and speak his human message to millions.

If Norma Desmond represents the silent era's depressing self-importance, stuck in perpetual state of “sleep walking” having exited the dream of stardom, and Joe Gillis represents the self-aware but no less depressing reality of the modern sound film then one can only conclude that although both meant well they will never be able to coexist. This might seem obvious to those of who have grown up amongst not only sound but color and television and Blu-Ray etc. etc., but there was a time when it was believed by many of Hollywood's biggest production companies that there would be a market for sound and silent films. Few directors have paid their respects to those early pioneers more eloquently than Wilder did in Sunset Boulevard. On top of everything else, the entire film takes place within a highly taught and engaging narrative. It is gorgeous to observe with all those disenchanting but somehow still plenty glamorous behind-the-scenes shots of Hollywood back lots. However, Sunset Boulevard is not a happy film. It is a raw and powerful statement about the harsh and bland aspects of Hollywood. It shows the daily tribulation of just attempting to make a living. It demonstrates the anonymity that has only further increased as more and more talent streams to Hollywood each year in hope's of becoming the next Who Ever. It paints a picture of near universal melancholy and moral incertitude. Yet, somehow it always makes me want to pack my bags and head west...

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dir. Stanley Kubrick
1964
n/a


Recently, I've seen this new Mercedes Benz commercial which advertises "top of the line" features to keep drivers safe. Such technologies include sensors to identify if a driver is losing focus and automated braking if obstructions occur. Mercedes makes it sound like a dream: a car with an insurance policy built right in. To those mindful of the technological shifts of the last decade it exemplifies the ongoing trend of willfully relinquishing personal control to automated technological processes. Take for example Microsoft's latest development: Bing.com, billed as the “first ever decision engine.” Like the iPod Shuffle before them, Bing.com, Mercedes Benz and a myriad of other developments have arisen that alleviate the burden of thoughtful cognition while simultaneously increasing the need for further production of supplemental equipment. In so many respects we, as an international community of industrialized (and furthermore, computerized) nations, are entering into a Digital Dark Age.

The Digital Dark Age is coming about as computer based technologies evolve at a faster and faster rate. We as a society experience a paradoxical helplessness because of this rapid growth. If we do not attempt to form a working knowledge of these technologies then we surrender, but if we attempt an understanding, it is likely that by the time we achieve it (if we achieve it) the technology has further evolved to another point of incomprehensibility. In Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's seventh film and the first in a string of six formidable films whose legacy would earn Kubrick his reputation as one of the “most accomplished, innovative and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema,” this concept of absurd dependence on occult technologies is catapulted into the structure of political satire as Kubrick anticipates our now-reality and prophesies our self-destructive end.

Kubrick did all this within the cultural framework of the mid 1960s, during which time a paradigmatic shift in cinema's priorities were taking place. A new batch of young independent producers and film makers, who desired to work outside the confines of the current strict Hollywood system, were coming of age in America. The ensuing movement, known as American New Wave or New Hollywood, would be inaugurated with Bonnie and Clyde and span well into the 1980s. However, Dr. Strangelove foreshadowed many of the themes that would become prevalent during this and later film movements. His use of Vera Lynn's soothing “We'll Meet Again” juxtaposed with stock footage of atomic explosions foresaw David Lynch's own unnerving use of digetic and visual juxtaposition. His deceptively economic cinematics coupled with Hollywood's resources had a distinct influence on directors such as Peter Bogdanovich. Most importantly, like the German Expressionism of the 20s, Italian Neorealism of the 50s and the rising French New Wave, Kubrick placed an emphasis on authenticity. This new realism, which at times manifested itself very graphically (Bonnie and Clyde, Mean Streets, Kubrick's own A Clockwork Orange), would be the movements biggest focal point. Kubrick makes Strangelove almost dizzyingly realistic, overloading his audiences with a blur of military jargon and a mass of technological terms which are never aptly defined. This is Kubrick's intent: to show the impossible vastness of machine-based information. As if the technology itself wasn't complicated enough the bureaucratic lexicon of the film's purported U.S. government further complicates matters. This is demonstrated by General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) explanation of the inevitability of Plan F (a coordinated strike on all Russian military targets) to the President (Peter Sellers) who stares at him blankly, clearly not understanding the complexities of a bill he signed into law.

This is essentially Kubrick's post-modern “comedy of errors” and simultaneous rejection of classic Hollywood tropes. He largely abandons the novelty of a single hero, adopting instead something closer to Eisenstein's group protagonist, which in itself is pointedly contradicted by Peter Sellers' tri-role in the film. Protagonist in this sense is a moot point as the “antagonist” is General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) the delusional and paranoid hyper patriot who orders the assault on the USSR in order to protect our “precious bodily fluids.” Brilliantly, Kubrick mirrors this patriotic insanity in his War Room proceedings, the ravings of Turgidson and, of course, the pronunciations of former Nazi scientist: Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove is essentially a symbolic device used to wage a strong condemnation against the United States' own hypocrisy in treating the Soviets with the same indignity and fear as they did for the Germans during WWII, exemplifying an utter lack of moral retention. Cinematically the doctor endures as one of the great highlights of the film, in particular the sequence in which he explains an elaborate plan (which involves a 100 year subterranean existence) that is essentially Hitler's manic belief in a chosen race. White House chiefs of staff sit around mesmerized by his promise that they will be safe and encouraged to copulate. The film's final line is perhaps Kubrick's most memorable: “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”

It is important to remember that Dr. Strangelove is a black comedy. Unlike almost all of the films that followed it (with the exception of Full Metal Jacket) Strangelove is funny and deeply affecting. Kubrick's sense of dark humor and commitment to intense socio-political satire would only grow more intense and profound as he progressed as a director. Dr. Strangelove represents Kubrick's jumping off point and conversely illuminates, in retrospect of course, that by 1964 he had already reached an impressive point of cinematic sophistication, but that he also had so much farther to go. As film historians have said of Griffith pre-The Birth of a Nation, had Kubrick only gone as far as Dr. Strangelove he would have still been considered a noteworthy and highly fascinating director. Luckily, Dr. Strangelove was not the end of the world after all but rather the tone setting beginning of it.

Y Tu Mamá También

Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
2002
9.7

People tend to view their individual progressions through time geographically. Youth and adolescence is a slow climb toward a plateau which eventually becomes a slow or rapid descent into the valley that is our departure from the mortal world. I prefer to see life musically. The first two decades or so are a slow crescendo, a quick and lively section that ultimately reaches the point at which the music remains the same volume for a long period of time. Nevertheless, during this passage of uniform loudness there are plenty of unique moments that never fail to elicit some form of reaction. The phrases become more and more complex; there are key and tempo changes; notes are missed while others are just a few cents off. Sometimes there is the passion of vibrato and other times the staleness of pizzicato. And then, just like that, the music tapers off until the final, resounding chord is struck. It is this chord which ultimately defines the entire piece. If we choose to use this life as music metaphor than there are few contemporary pieces more violently dramatic and emotionally rich than Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También, an insurmountable work of genius film making that synthesizes the director's immediate sense of naturalism and his beyond-brilliant ability to capture symbolic details latent in everyday life.

The film's primary theory, the one that drives its inner and exterior conflict, is the notion that truth is partial. As primary characters, thoughtless teenagers and best friends, Julio (Gael García Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna) explain to sexy, heartbroken Luisa (Maribel Verdú) that truth is cool but “unattainable.” The irony of course being that as 18 year olds living in Mexico City (set against the backdrop of the turn-of-the-century Mexican socio-political clash between the ruling bourgeois and mutinous proletariat) who spend most of their time partying and masturbating, Julio and Tenoch have a very limited concept of “the truth.” After meeting Luisa, the boys begin to plan a road trip that will result in the culmination of their desires: a satisfying (which to teenage boys is of course a very partial term) sexual experience with Luisa, which essentially represents their seamless transition into adulthood. What happens instead is the painful growth of their consciousness, their evacuation from their sheltered childhood, the ultimate demise of their friendship and their reaching the point at which the music of their respective lives will remain at the same volume. In other words: their true transition into adulthood.

This is the bare story. So much happens that it is difficult to contextualize the abundance of details that enrich the narrative, never mind analyze the film's sublime subtext of shrinking and burgeoning life experiences. The style of the film alone is a pamphlet on Expressionist modes of communicating in cinema. Emmanuel Lubezki, one of my favorite contemporary cinematographers, utilizes a spiritual, subjective third person view point. Spiritual, in the sense that the camera is not omnipresent but rather is subject to the limitations of our temporal universe. His camera wanders throughout the homes of Julio, Tenoch and Luisa, positions itself in the remaining passenger seat in Julio's car, and is limited by the physical restrictions of a regular person. This constraint actually becomes a means to an end. Lubezki uses it to produce creative, awe-inspiring and fluid shots, working the camera in harmony with his surroundings rather than forcing the opposite. Lubezki's cinematography exemplifies a whole new level of voyeurism that is emotionally subjective, allowing the viewer to be interpolated into the visceral experience of the film.

And still the film barrels on toward its psychological train wreck of a climax. While on the road Luisa seduces Tenoch which inflicts a bitter, Shakespearean angst in Julio who seeks to punish Tenoch by telling him he slept with his girlfriend. Thus begins a long and painful disintegration of their bond, which proves to be the uncomfortably confidential and subconscious bond of adolescence. Luisa attempts to rectify this situation by having sex with Julio but instead causes the violence to escalate. If we see Julio and Tenoch as the essentially innocent, customarily arrogant, premature protagonists that they are then it is Luisa who is both victim and antagonist as result of her sexual philanthropy. Tenoch and Julio experience an Oedipal desire for Luisa who is in fact almost 10 years older than they are, and the result is a near complete dependence on her. As it is, Luisa has had dependents her whole life. It is only at the point when she meets the two boys that she seeks to become a “fully realized women,” by shrinking her plane of existence to the point at which she can control every aspect of her life; shirking the responsibility she has felt toward others and freeing herself from the confines of her maternal instinct. However, there is one aspect, revealed in the final minutes of the film, that she cannot control and it is the one that fuels her progression, allowing her to move beyond the trivial ennui of modern life.

There is a scene near the end of Y Tu Mamá También where Luisa, Tenoch and Julio are sitting around a table talking, joking and drinking. They talk mostly of sex, the sex that makes this film both intimate and controversial. Luisa imparts on the boys a very simple, adult and self-less piece of advice: the greatest pleasure is giving pleasure. Balanced and fully realized lives are contained not within the self but outside it: experiencing and exploring the canals, tunnels, and caverns of other people's lives. Y Tu Mamá También is a coming-of-age tale as well as a departure from life anecdote. It is a double helix of a film in so many respects. Its interwoven narrative of explosive expansion and subtle contraction of vision is paralleled by the rise of Julio and Tenoch's consciousness and the fall of Luisa's desire to live amongst falsity and betrayal. The film represents the ubiquitous but not generic universality of life's music and is, in and of itself, not so much perfect as it is truly real.

There Will Be Blood

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
2007
10.0

In 1941 the wife of Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov finished what would become his lasting triumph: “The Master and Margarita.” In contemporary literary circles it is hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Sixty-five years later a young director began working on a film whose eloquence and power would find significant parallel in Bulgakov's masterpiece. Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is often described as an “American epic.” However, it is far more than that. Its implications and inspirations are intensely universal. Like Bulgakov's late epic, There Will Be Blood is Biblical in scope and content. Its themes are morality, evil usurping good, and the weakness and corruptibility of the human spirit. Its implications are soul crushing. Its ambitions are enlightening. There Will Be Blood represents the point at which a film becomes a world and that world becomes a reflection of hellish truth seething a hair's breath beneath the surface of our own derelict existence.

There are two other pieces of artistic brilliance from the last century that come to mind when thinking about There Will Be Blood. The first is Orson Welles' legendary Citizen Kane and the second is Stanley Kubrick's equally immortal 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick's late 60s space age film might not immediately make the same connections as Citizen Kane but the associations are there, subtly. Firstly, there is Jonny Greenwood's classically driven score of unnerving microtonal and monumentally symphonic music. More importantly,  are the themes of moral philosophy and mankind's ethical lineage. Kubrick hypothesized that man was born not out of goodness but out of malice, murder and desire and that these tendencies have increased exponentially throughout our evolution. Citizen Kane shows a man whose inexorable egomania forces him into going against his conscience for the sake of appearances. It shows the madness latent in arrogance and affluence, and how the two are interrelated. Both films purport the disturbing notion that it takes less to be evil than to be good, and thus is a certain degree easier. There Will Be Blood takes this idea a step further, introducing the susceptibility of potential goodness to the gravity of sinister yet lucrative temptation. It suggests a certain powerlessness in the face of easy capital, be it physical (as in the case of Daniel Plainview) or existential (the case of Eli Sunday).

If one considers There Will Be Blood as at least a partial re-narrating of the story of Eden, where Little Boston is paradise, then Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is most certainly the devil. However, the film is not a simple reapplication of the timeless metaphor of creation and invention of consciousness. In fact, Little Boston has all the undertones of a town unsure of its own motivations. Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) is at first glance a hero in the vein of Elijah. He is the preacher at the local Church of the Third Revelation, a branch of Christianity which believes that God will reveal himself to his believers through a number of “spirits”. Though it may sound like madness one must consider the solidarity of the town's people's lives and the ease at which rhetoric can be become doctrine without any points of reference. Along comes Daniel who instinctively takes advantage of the town's naivete. With the exception of Eli, the town hands over not only its land buts its principles as well. In the fierce emotional and geographical desert there is little resistance to improved living conditions regardless of what form they take. In this case the form is inky blackness of oil.

There is also a theme of de-evolution in There Will Be Blood; of falling into madness. Daniel begins as a cunning, ambitious business man. He is a self proclaimed “oil man,” and the money that can be made from oil always comes first for him. Daniel's vocation leads him down darker paths of solipsism and greed with only fleeting moments of self-realization and regret, the most powerful manifestation of course being his baptism in the church during which he is made to surrender his agony over having sent his young son (who proves, in the end, not to be his son at all, adding to the complex subtext of relationships and family in the narrative) off to private school after an accident leaves him deaf. Daniel, like so many great men before and after him, believe that if he can only achieve peace, stability and wealth that he will reclaim his transient humanity. This is not the case and never is. Daniel's dealings transform him into a raving, drunken monster. Daniel's corrupted capitalist mindset totally overcomes his sense of morality. He viciously beats the "false prophet" Eli who comes to him begging. Eli has lost himself in the ramifications and moral ambiguity of the business world and has landed himself in monstrous debt, which he blames not on himself but on the Lord. His faith in purity has been broken and the two men both wallow in the shadows of graveness and sin. They have both lost their spirit. Where Daniel has given his away in exchange for riches, like Faust before him, Eli has had his ripped away leaving him a vacant shell of a human being filled up instead by loneliness and loathing.

The long and terrible arc that brings these two characters to their respective points at the film's finale is, at every single moment, perfect. For such a young director, Paul Thomas Anderson shows a simply immaculate sense of timing and pacing. He refuses to rush moments. Rather, he lets them breathe organically, allowing his characters to come to life and inhabit a sphere of simulacrum reserved only for the most taught and stunning portraits of reality. There Will Be Blood is as dark as realist cinema gets. The core of the film pulsates with tireless insistence that never becomes overwrought but rather gains momentum, clarity and terrifying power with each successive viewing. There Will Be Blood is without a doubt the new American classic, an epic on par with Casablanca and in league with the films that have defined the greatest aspects of cinema for the past 100 years. 

Happy-Go-Lucky

Dir. Mike Leigh
2008
8.3


There is something seriously paralyzing about unrestrained optimism. In a time when pessimism encroaches on us from all sides and dissent is a way to spend a free afternoon, optimism has the potential to seem like baseness. There is an assumption of hollow dumbness when it comes to those free-of-care types. A subconscious envy of their bliss exists that is senselessly undercut by an open deriding of their pacified nature. The belief is that happiness stems from ignorance while hopelessness stems from enlightenment; that happiness is a byproduct of stupidity. Those who are miserable defend their anguish with paranoia and anxious morbidity. One side sees a brilliant green lawn, the other side sees chemicals and the autocratic cultural need to “keep up the Johnsons.” Like oil and water the two groups are bound to mix but never mingle. Happy-Go-Luck is the sublime story of a woman, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), who lives in an exalted state of joy. She acts without pretensions, loves without regret and forgives without question. She is not just an exemplar of passionate goodwill, but a reason to do good in this troubled world.

We are introduced to Poppy as she rides her bike down a city street, stopping to inspect a local bookstore. Inside she attempts to converse with the man working there. He completely ignores her cheery gabbing and wisecracks. She exits nonchalantly unaffected by the man's lack of hospitality. Outside her bike has been stolen. Where the former scene of poor temperament may have possibly gone unnoticed by the average person having a good day, the stolen bike surely would have swung their internal emotional pendulum back toward antipathy. Polly's reaction? She didn't get to say goodbye to the inanimate object of her affection. Thus her heroic world begins to unfold before us with all its intricacies and delicate folds, like living origami.

The first assumption a person might make about Poppy is the same one mentioned above: that she is blind to reality. If you saw only the first half of Happy-Go-Lucky you might be prone to agree. The first hour of the film meanders, daintily plucking scenes from Poppy's day to day life as a primary school teacher, drinking buddy and good natured, fun loving girl. Terms like “fun loving” and “good natured” are like the word “nice”: we use them when there is little else to say about a person. Poppy is at no point completely unidirectional, but dimensionally she flourishes in the film's second half.

At this point the film wanders away from the emotional ground upon which it was founded. In order to prove its versatility, it puts the viewer in awkward, intimate environments with friends, family and strangers. We meet vicious , emotionally unstable driving instructor Scott as well as over controlling, defensive and unsatisfied sister Suzy. These two characters in particular represent challenges to Poppy's earnest, grounded optimism. Scott tells her, during paranoid rants, that she should be unhappy because the government is making its people into slaves and seemingly everyone is moronic beyond comprehension. Suzy tells her she needs to “plan for the future” and “take life seriously”. They both cruelly make assumptions about Poppy's good nature, mostly that she is lying to herself. Poppy on the other hand knows her happiness but also instinctively puts others before herself. She doesn't need to argue because her conviction cannot be shaken. Poppy doesn't make any grand, sweeping statements about the state of the world, nor does she try to inflict her ways upon others. She exerts her influence in positive, thoughtful ways that make her not only irresistible but inspirational as well.

The film's message is clear: It is good to be happy and it is also good to be balanced, suggesting that the one enhances the other. Poppy is both. She meets the challenges in her life rather than attempting to avoid them. In a climactic scene with Scott, during which he flies into in an inexcusable rage fueled in part by his repressed childhood trauma and his unrestrained passion for Poppy, the audience is given a true picture of her character. In the face of physical abuse she still tries to help Scott, doing everything in her power to extend even a little bit of her happiness to him. He refuses it. The incident is not ignored but rather kept in context, one of Poppy's best qualities. She moves forward not giving up but rather taking from the encounter any lesson that could have possibly been learned and adding it thoughtfully to her lexicon of satisfied living.

In Happy-Go-Lucky Mike Leigh, through a penchant for natural filmmaking and a strong belief in humanity, has given the world a character worth talking about and a story worth remembering. He has conquered the injustice of insensitive fools who equate naivete to happiness and cynicism to rationality. He has shed light upon the complexities latent in the optimist. Most of all though he has a told a story of a hero who actually deserves her happy ending.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Dir. Nicholas Stoller
2008
6.5
The break up film is a weapon of mass confusion and illusion in America. The very words conjure up images of lone men sprinting through airports, heart broken singles in sappy song montages, and, for some reason, the Seattle Space Needle. The whole purpose of the genre, tied inexorably to the romantic comedy, is the affirmation of love and life and that both go on in the wake of personal upheaval. It is supposed to get the viewer slightly emotional and relatively connected to the plight of its characters. It is supposed to relieve that viewer of any and all anxieties about severed romance, nomadic loneliness, and all other banal abstractions somehow related to losing some kind of a connection. What break up films do instead is instill a false confidence about the irrefutable obviousness of the now-ex-lover's stable mental health. In Layman's terms they suggest that we are too stupid to be sad. Everything is going to be fine because we're not even thinking of the alternative: that everything will NOT be fine. That the world is going to fucking end. That we will never love again.

Recuperating from a bad break-up (in which you, the reader, are the victim) is like recuperating from a bad break up movie. At first you feel OK because you want to feel OK. Then you reflect. After feeling OK for a little while you over compensate by being hugely critical. You assume everything was a waste of time. You are remorselessly cruel to yourself for even participating in the travesty. However, after enough time goes by you can put everything into proper perspective. You can calmly evaluate the pros and cons. You kinda realize that you were cheated by falsity, but that harshness would have really hurt your feelings. You go back and see how things could have been a little more balanced and a little more real. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is not your typical break up movie, although it is mostly about a typical break up, only on a much larger scale. Though Appatowian (official terminology) in its realism, the film is restless without the crutch of the standard romantic comedy structure. Full of modest laughs and efficient dialog the film ends up hobbling around for 90 minutes before deciding to sit down, get some work done, and get over itself.

So all that was pretty meta. The break up film as break up; the film as protagonist; its self realized nature. It's a mind fuck when you really think about it. But that's what films associated with producer/director/writer/cult god Judd Appatow are like. They are intensely self-reflective, unsure of themselves and geeky as fuck, kind of like Appatow and most of his buddies. They take the tried and true genres we're familiar with and give them a truly enlightening sense of earnestness and familiarity. Appatow's most effective weapon, besides his humor, is his disarming sense of honesty. I don't need to remind you that Appatow, in one way or another, has been a part of the best film comedies of the last five years. Appatow's influence on a film isn't always so much seen as it is felt. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Appatow is not the director nor a writer, yet you can feel his aged wisdom in lead actor Jason Segel's script. You can also see it in his performance. Segel plays Peter Bretter, a gawky guy trying to be funny, failing a lot of the time, disconnected and basically waiting to have his life ruptured in some way. Of course, that happens when long time girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell) breaks up with him for “tragically hip” rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Then Peter accidentally follows the new couple to Hawaii. He attempts to sabotage their rendezvous but ends up upsetting himself to greater and greater extents until he meets and falls for hotel receptionist Rachel (That 70s Show's Mila Kunis).

Given all that, what's most disappointing about this movie is also what's most obvious: the absence of a noteworthy climax. Is it when Peter rides his surfboard into Aldous after finding out how long his ex-girlfriend's affair had been going on? Or is it when he propels himself off the side of a cliff into the crystal clear Pacific? Is it when Sarah and Peter attempt to have post-break up sex only to find that Peter's penis is too near the heart that Sarah smashed into a million pieces to have effective consensual intercourse? It is pretty unclear. What's clear is that toward the end of the film things go down hill cinematically while conversely becoming cliché and uplifting. The film submits to it's own disingenuous desire to fit a pattern, to pull the wool back over our collective eyes. After opening the viewer's mind to the myriad ways in which reasonable, sane and otherwise average people react to being broken up with, it turns around and insists that even if you're writing a rock opera about Dracula which incorporates lots of streamers and puppets, the hot girl you met in Hawaii will totally come to see it and realize she wants to be with you. Oh, and she will see you naked. Synopsis: Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Funny? Yes. Disappointing? Indeed. Broke my heart? Well, let's just say I'm just getting off the couch.

District 9

Dir. Neill Blomkamp
2009
8.6


On an episode of the British comedy Spaced, Tim Bisley (Simon Pegg) tells Daisy Steiner (Jessica Stevenson) in defense of science fiction that “the thoughts and speculations of our contemporary authors and thinkers have never been closer to the truth.” Quickly undermining this point is a scene of several children/midgets in shiny silver alien costumes outside a comic book store. Nevertheless, Bisley's point remains supremely valid. Science fiction has long been a medium where certain socio-political statements can be made because of the unreal realm in which they take place. In the 50s American science fiction worked as an anti-Soviet propaganda machine and since then has functioned to both critique and commend society. Working inside the super natural framework of the genre there is a sense of leniency that is unavailable to other modes of film making. Where a political documentary film maker can level accusations against the government that instantly become controversial, a post-apocalyptic vision of the future where human beings subject a body of nomadic, homesick aliens to ghastly persecution can slip under the radar as an inter-galactic and imaginative thriller. Even at their most ludicrously transparent sci-fi films making or attempting to make statements about the nature of humanity and its susceptibility to corruption struggle to cause the same uncomfortable tremor that realist fiction or documentary make. District 9, the debut feature film of director Neill Blomkamp, is aware of the limitations and possibilities of its genre. Despite the by-now-well-defined boundaries the film works within, it finds an impressive balance between the awe inspiring spectacle that viewers expect from sci-fi and the engaging landscape of insinuative metaphor that goes on beneath it.

Taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa District 9 at first begs to be seen as an anti-apartheid film. This is certainly the most basic reading of the film's narrative. An oppressive private military contracting company (MNU) is put in charge of controlling a body of 1.8 million aliens who are forced to land due to their malfunctioning ship. The film's cinéma vérité style allows for a number of “experts” to give their initial impressions on the ship's landing, the discovery of the arthropod-like creatures that were found inside and the ensuing, indelicate scramble of relocating them to an internment camp within city limits. Intercut between these interviews and the film's well paced storyline is sequences of television broadcasts which greatly assist the serious realism the director is aiming for while still maintaining a plot that exists only in the sphere of speculation or fantasy, depending on the candor of your imagination.

District 9 exists to illuminate the potential Pandora's Box that could be opened if/when an unforeseen event of incomparable magnitude occurs. It is a strong criticism not only of the xenophobia and social inequality prevalent not just in South Africa but all over the world, but also the greedy administrators who calm the public conscience into believing that such deplorable acts as those historically seen and cinematically witnessed in District 9 are not only acceptable but morally correct. Despite apartheid, the Holocaust, genocide and all other forms of mass, ritual murder District 9 makes a convincing case that rather than learn from these horrendous atrocities, we as a species have only blinded ourselves from the suffering of others. The arthropod “Prawns”, as they are derogatorily named, function as the physical representation of the dehumanized subject. Throughout the film they are thoughtlessly slaughtered, disdainfully banned from public places, and abominably abused.

While the film insinuates much about our growth, or lack thereof, as a species my biggest complaint is that after an exciting 20 minute faux-historical introduction, the film by and large surrenders to its own appetite for violence. The brute force with which the soldiers harass the Prawns into complying with their forced eviction escalates into the explosive recovery of the black liquid from MNU headquarters by humanoid Wikus van de Merwe, the film's zealous and slightly idiotic protagonist, and Christopher Johnson, the intelligent and perceptive Prawn attempting to rescue his people from persecution, climaxing with an all out invasion of District 9 by military forces to recover Wikus, who combats the army from within a Mecha-like fighting suit capable not only of stopping bullets with magnetism but rockets with its bare metallic claws. See what I mean? What was once a sociological study has devolved into a substantial melee.

To his credit, Blomkamp's violence is spectacular, well arranged and infinitely exciting. However at times it nearly overpowers the emotional core of the film, whose powerful message is about humanely embracing life and not attempting to control it. It has all the overtones of oppressed populations everywhere; the desperate cries for help; the pleads for equality. The film concludes on a morally speculative note with the fate of Prawns and humans left up to Christopher Johnson as he soars off toward his home planet. The film's external monologue begs the question: what will he do if/when he returns? Rescue his fellow Prawns? Wage war on humans? Make peace between the disparate races? It is here that focal point of the entire film is revealed, drawing the curtains away from the physical story in order to reveal the ethical narrative that has been coursing beneath the surface throughout. District 9 achieves intellectual and visceral weight by encouraging the viewer to consider all sides of the dilemma. It is a stimulating and thought inspiring film, proving once again the underrated abilities of science fiction.

NBC Thursday Night Comedy

Although television falls mostly outside the focus of this blog I couldn't help jotting down some thoughts on NBC's new Thursday night comedy line up and its relation to its audience, especially younger viewers. Reaching a younger audience, and by younger I mean college aged, especially one whose humors lie in the network of dark, satirical, and ever changing arenas has always been difficult. The major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and here I'm also including Fox) have never been big risk takers. Where a network can renew a gruesome drama like CSI year after year, the shelf life of a comedy tends to be much shorter. That's because the formula to make the viewer laugh is constantly changing based mostly on what jokes have already been made. Dramas can be formulaic. See: House. See: Law and Order. Throw in a twist every few weeks, a cast change every few years and a drama can become almost infinitely sustainable no matter how trite and banal it actually gets. Comedies lose their edge when they cease to make people laugh, and we can only laugh at the same joke so many times. That's a major reason why comedies tend to expand their territory after their second or third successful season, branching out with new characters and new environments. This can be very laborious for the viewer who contradictorily wants to be constantly entertained but does not in fact want to deal with lots of details. Hence comedy's generic reputation as being dumber than drama. Here I'd like to show comedy's self-defeating tendencies but also high-light one network's universal approach toward getting people, both young and old, to appreciate and watch comedy.

Like it or not NBC just might be the best network on cable, mostly by default. ABC is the quintessential middle of the road network. Its been running Scrubs for years and it hasn't been funny since you were in middle school, and each season adds a new show that is destined to fail. Likely the only thing keeping people watching the network is the myth-making Lost and off-kilter, strangely upsetting Ugly Betty. Fox is the most infuriating network with its blase "talent shows", aging animated comedies, spin-off animated comedies that are some how worse than their originators, and House. As of right now the funniest show on Fox is COPS. CBS is without a doubt the most sensationalist network with a myriad of cop dramas as well as Big Brother. CBS also continues to renew Two and a Half Men. Yuck. The only thing holding CBS up in the 18-24 category is the Emmy nominated How I Met Your Mother, which is not as bad as it sounds but also not as good as an Emmy.

All things considered the mere fact that NBC has a late night show with Conan O'Brien sets the network up to funnier than any other. NBC still has it's flaws: America's Got Talent, Carson Daily, Jimmy Fallon, Merlin, etc. but statistically speaking its doing much better than its competition. On the drama side the network has the Law and Order series. Law and Order was once one of my favorite shows. It was one of those shows you could watch in marathon format for hours on end. But let's be fair: Jeff Goldblum replaced Vincent D'Onofrio on Criminal Intent though continues to play the same character which is awkward and unambitious. More importantly: SVU, what happened? SVU used to be the edgiest, most exciting iteration of L&O and now it is just absurd. Its not even relatively believable anymore. Every other episode is just internal Eliot psycho-drama. Snore. So, after several years of Criminal Intent and SVU casting a shadow, we may all realize now that the original Law and Order is the most consistent and watchable version on TV right now.

Returning now to comedy. NBC debuted its Fall comedy line-up last night. I don't know if you've been paying attention by NBC has been hyping the shit out of this line-up, as well as a couple of new, non-Thursday dramas (Mercy and Trauma). Below is the schedule and some insights:

Saturday Night Live:
So SNL is in prime time. Holy shit. With a half an hour slot time I was curious as to what they would actually do. Now, I'm not sure if this will be the formula for every episode but if it is let me first say I'm pretty OK with it: the show starts with the standard SNL opening skit and then segues into 15+ minutes of Weekend Update with Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Pretty great. Falling somewhere between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the segment is literally just an elongated version of the regular Weekend Update sketch with more space for featured impersonations, which were pretty great. Also added to the program is a segment called "Really!?!" where Seth and Amy, this week, took on Kanye West's "performance" at the MTV Music Awards. It was as good as it sounds.


Parks and Recreation:
Before last night I had watched a few episodes of Parks and Recreation, dubbed it an Office-type spinoff and quickly lost interest. However, when I began to see the spots for the new season I realized that I ought to give the show another chance as many comedies begin to gain definition during their second season. Parks and Rec is more involved, thus far, than The Office, but is setting itself up for a very similar dramatic arc with a cross-over character. Rashida Jones, who plays Jim's girlfriend during the third season of The Office, is involved in a developing love-triangle. As of yet there isn't anything to spoil, but the show proved to be a little funnier than the prior season. Individually the characters are evolving on their own but what's even more exciting is the way they are interacting, less like characters and more like really awkward people. Despite the drawback of being seen as an Office spin-off, Parks and Recreation still has a chance to define itself as a unique comedy.


The Office:
Believe it or not we are only entering into the sixth season of The Office. It feels like much longer than that, doesn't it? That's likely because the narrative arc of The Office really feels like it moves in real time. In the initial seasons there was no great push to develop exterior plots and many episodes were dedicated simply to the every day madness of the office. With the third and fourth seasons The Office increased its emotional budget, bringing in more dramatic elements than ever. Still, it was these same dramatic elements that caused viewers to watch week after week to see if the writer's would indulge them with any small, romantic developments. The Office also shattered expectations by bringing on new characters, after two complete seasons, that proved to be as funny or funnier than the original cast. I'm speaking mostly of Andy Bernard who continues to be one of my favorite characters (remember the "dance off" in season five?) But we are no longer in the elementary stages of The Office and as far as I can tell the writers are slowly running out of places to take the show. Pam and Jim are having a baby. After seasons worth of Pam-Jim drama there is little left to work with. The jokes are still pretty funny but the one dimensional archetypes are becoming woefully predictable. In short its becoming hard to sustain any interest in the show. My prediction is that this will be either the last season of The Office (pulling a Seinfeld and choosing nobly to call it quits) or its second to last season (embarrassingly not renewed due to lack of interest).


Community:
Community was the most hyped show on the new Thursday lineup, and with good reason: it is the only really new show on the lineup. Jay Leno is a staple of NBC so although he has a "new" show (we'll get to that soon) nothing there is actually new. At all. Community, despite the hype, was a mixed bag. With Chevy Chase in a supporting role I kind of figured the show would rely on his comedic presence. It did not. Instead the focus was almost entirely on Joel McHale, whose character Jeff, once a lawyer now a community college student, is a morally corrupted former lawyer looking for success and action. The main characters, introduced (presumably) in its entirety during the first episode are quirky enough. Excluding Chase and Alison Brie who played a sidebar character in AMC's Mad Men, the cast is almost completely unknown, another reason NBC probably pushed the show so hard. The jokes are sub-standard with the previews giving away some of the better one's (which still weren't that great), although the dialog is witty and well timed. The show seems like its got a good sense of what it is but thus far doesn't seem terribly sustainable. Maybe good for one season? We'll see.


The Jay Leno Show:
So Jay Leno ceded his late night spot to Conan (good) but refused to go away (bad). The Jay Leno Show is a carbon copy of his late night program. Jay comes out, makes topical jokes (more like screams them) for far too long, interviews a couple of guests, makes a few more jokes and then thankfully goes away. The show is unfortunately totally renewable as for some reason Leno appeals to people. Who these people are, I'm not sure. Leno's comedy is based on things that you and your friends might discover on the internet and have a good chuckle about but which are totally unworthy of television. All of his opening topical bits are like Onion cover stories only told by Jay Leno so they aren't funny at all. With people like Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon hosting shows it begs the question: what does it take, if anything, to host a talk show? My guess is that Leno's new program will run out of steam shortly after he runs out of relevant A-list celebrity guests and returns to interviewing soon-forgotten stars of even sooner-forgotten Hollywood blockbusters.



Overall Thursdays on NBC are still the best night of television. They are honest, intelligent comedy as opposed to the trashy accidental comedy of the CW (Gossip Girl, The Beautiful Life, America's Next Top Model, etc.). The biggest disappointment of the night: where the fuck is 30 Rock?! Far and away NBC's best comedy, the network has been promising "The return of 30 Rock" for weeks only to acknowledge in the middle of Community that the premier of its fourth season won't occur until October 15th. By that point Parks and Rec., Community and the new season of The Office will have a chance to prove their worth before (I predict) 30 Rock flattens them completely. There are many reasons why this will happen. 30 Rock, after three seasons, is still fresh and unpredictable. Its cast, one of the best I've seen, is self-sufficient but also gloriously interactive. Each character can sustain him or herself but is ultimately funnier in combination: they greater than the sum of their parts, which is still pretty great. The show is topical, yes, but also self referential, weaving an elaborate pattern of inside jokes. The writing is sharp, raunchy, relatively romantic, obscure, and absurd all at once. The best part about 30 Rock is that it is young enough to attract the 18-24 demographic but not so young as to alienate older viewers. Not to mention the fact that it has the best taste in guests of any show on television. It has an undeniable claim to that age-old adage "there's something for everyone!"

NBC, unlike the other networks mentioned here is a network that is constantly growing and shifting, rather than just covering up its same old blunders with new shapes and colors in order to distract its audience away from its own laziness and bad, boring taste. This is what a young audience is looking for. Their is an internal restlessness that is built into the comedic audience, and especially into the college age viewer who is being exposed to so many things in such a brief period of time that they are instinctively conditioned to move on quickly. A good comedy does not just develop unseen and inexplicably between seasons, but also during the season, sometimes within the framework of a single episode. At NBC the focus is on movement and growth. Even if a show fails it is a risk worth taking to provide something fresh. Other networks will renew a show because its successful and there's nothing wrong with this. Shows like Two and a Half Men and House are renewed because people watch them. NBC is answering the call of viewers who are bored with network comedy that does nothing and doesn't go anywhere. In a time when the boundaries of television are being dramatically expanded, it is important that the established networks participate in the trends that may one day define a new era of television.


ps: Stay tuned for my review of District 9 and a possible belated and unnecessary review of Amelie.

Inglourious Basterds

Dir. Quentin Tarantino
2009
3.0


Quentin Tarantino is a hype monger. His films are so kitchy, so absurd and yet so popular they defy all reason and logic. His cult-like following has been growing exponentially since his emergence in the early 1990s. However, the quality of Tarantino's films since the turn of the century has been inversely shrinking. His neurosis, which waxes alongside his stardom, is threatening to engulf him. Constructing a fictional universe out of his spectacular awareness of film history, Tarantino has always stood apart from the rest of the major Hollywood film directors. Originally his films were boldly unique and unnervingly occult. Their intense visual stimuli was appeased by subtext, something just out of sight like a gold light emanating from a brief case. It was this subtext, this profound and exciting sense of mystery, in the early Tarantino films that culled the sycophantic behavior most of us are familiar with in his fanbase. The trouble is that that enticing Esotericism has all but disappeared and in its place violence and indolent carnal pleasure have taken up a position of self-satisfied, smirking hedonism, casting occasional condescending glances towards a devout viewership who still believe these delights mask anything meaningful.

Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's worst film to date. The follow up to 2007's Death Proof which, although surprisingly well focused given both Kill Bill's vague vagrancy, felt more like a warm up to a full length feature rather than a feature itself, Inglourious Basterds is the culmination of what feels like too much thought and far too much money. It is a sprawling war epic described by Tarantino as a “spaghetti western with WWII iconography,” which should come as no surprise. By Tarantino's loose definition of Spaghetti Western half his filmography has been some iteration of that short lived genre. The formula is relatively simple: take clear cut villains and good guys, both of whom possess a pathological tenacity, mix with a generous portion of memorable/inventive cinematic effects and plenty of gutsy violence and you have it. Nevertheless, there is a unmistakable aspect of IG which separates it from the rest Tarantino's filmography: realism. Despite being a questionable transposition of socio-political history, the film is, in many ways, shockingly grounded. Even if any parts of Tarantino's other films were possible they were more importantly unbelievable. What's different about IG is the potential for the film to drag you into its universe and not in a surrealist, dreamy way like Pulp Fiction.

Of course that is aided by its premise: the Nazi occupation of Europe and more specifically, France. Tarantino's universe becomes a tangent universe to our own. What disappoints about the film is the potential for it to unveil something deeply subconscious about our relation to this memorable time in international history. Tarantino could have suggested something about our relation to history and how much we take it for granted; how where we are today is largely due to history we hardly consider consciously but which nonetheless is ingrained in us from our earliest years onward. Instead Tarantino takes the easy route, lamentably inserting his stylistic and thematic cues into a genre they are not suited for. Like a child's play toy with shapes that correspond to holes for those same shapes to pass through, Tarantino obstinately tries to make a square peg fit in a round hole. His Nazi's are one dimensional clowns, unlike the humanized WWI German foot soldiers of Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the high water marks in war cinema. Tarantino's Nazis are brutal and merciless, inducing the same fear that Michael Meyers or Freddy Krueger might, imparting a sense of fantasy that moves far beyond plaintive “suspension of disbelief”. The symbols of the Nazi party, like the rising strings that suddenly cut to silence as the college coed creeps through a silent, dark forest, will always terrify. They contain an unstoppable emotional inertia, but without creativity we are simply crushed by their blandness. Even the film's sympathetic German Sergeant Yorke is a Fascist at heart. Which is not so terrible because he is a Fascist, but because he is only an idea.

This is my biggest complaint about Tarantino's characters. They are almost always some variant of Sociopathic personality. Tarantino's Sociopath archetypes are, in many ways, the type of people we want to be: goal oriented, inhumanely focused, and capable of doing anything that “needs” to be done. Much in the same way Tarantino does everything that “needs” to be done in order to continue being recognized. More than just sacrificing content for style, Tarantino is trading genius for wit, at best. He is cutting himself off from the industry, rather than expanding beyond it. Tarantino is one of the most recognizable names in the industry and also its most indulgent. Like his characters he refuses to interact with a reality that he is quickly losing touch with. His own Sociopathic tendencies are beginning to show.

With pathetically underdeveloped characters, slapdash cultural innuendo, and so much graphic violence that it literally detaches the viewer from any emotional relationship with the travesty he is portraying, Inglourious Basterds is a severe low point in Quentin Tarantino's career. It relies far too heavily on his reputation instead of the skills that define it. His films operate within an insular sphere of the Intelligensia and conversely the myth making Fanboy. The hype that surrounds them is almost indestructible. The ensuing post-release intellectual debate is insusceptible to doubt. What Inglourious Basterds forces us to confront is exactly why that is.

Julie and Julia

Dir. Nora Ephron
2009
8.0

I don't know about you but when I get in the kitchen things start happening. If I haven't made the recipe before you can count on a lot of swearing and no! no! no!'s but an inevitable trance-like state comes over me. Perhaps it is the precision of working with a recipe mixed with a few last minute “I hope to God this comes out alright” alterations but there is something about cooking that is wholly absorbing. It's a process and one that can be either extremely rewarding or completely devastating. What is often forgotten in the age of microwave dinners and Thanksgiving leftovers is that cooking is an art; a bi-lateral interaction between person and form. That fact is at the heart of Nora Ephron's 2009 film Julie and Julia: a poignant and timely renewal of the romantic comedy with an intrinsically satisfying psychology.

The first thing that strikes the viewer about Julie and Julia is its binary narrative. Beginning after WWII in Paris, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) is a recently married upper-middle class woman who is bored. After experimenting in a few other fields Julia settles on a cooking class where she quickly eclipses her male classmates, incrementally discovering new opportunities in the world of food. Julia endeavors to design a French cookbook for “servantless” middle class Americans. On the other side of the world more than 40 years later Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is a servantless American living with her husband in Queens. Her life as a social worker in post-9/11 New York is exhausting. Nearly at her wit's end, Julie lands on her pet project which also becomes the premise for her slice of the storyline: cook the entirety of Julia Child's “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, all 524 recipes, in one year. At this point the lives of the two women, separated by thousands of miles and several decades, converge elegantly and their frequencies begin to resonate as one.

Coincidence is not a word that describes this portion of the film. Rather than inaptly suggesting a certain level of parallelism between two characters, Julie and Julia naturally weaves together key similarities between the two women. On both sides, the relationships between the characters are preformed. This is not a “boy meets girl then proceeds to wins girl over in an hour and a half” romantic comedy. When we meet Julie and Julia they are already cemented in the relationships that will carry them through to the end of the film. The dominant male aggressor, passive female recipient relationship does not exist in this film. In a genre nearly monopolized by men it is so refreshing to see strong, independent women. Not only that, these are women who, while being totally in love with their respective husbands, are enamored not with a man or even another human but with an art. For the most part men play ancillary roles. They are morally supportive, witty, and capable. Both male leads, Julie's husband Eric (Chris Messina) and Julia's husband Paul (Stanley Tucci), are nuanced and gracefully subtle characters. They have dreams and aspirations but are mature enough to realize that they are not the main characters of this story.

The drawback is that this format nearly keeps the film from having any dramatic arc at all. While Julia fights to get her book published and bring French cooking to America, struggling with her home country's pre-occupied, stay-at-home mom style of cooking which is simple, quick and entirely lifeless, Julie's presence is comparably vapid. Her lifestyle and storyline are terribly sedentary. Either she is consoling the grieved over the phone in her office, blogging on her home computer, or eating. Her drama can even be difficult to understand if one is not willing to submit themselves to the hopelessness of Julie's existence. New York is an alienating and lonely place, even when one is neither alienated nor alone. Her friends are growing up and becoming successful and she is deliberately portrayed as being younger and less mature. She is writhing under the crushing burden of a boring job which devours most of her time. Her blog, the appropriate medium of a failed writer, where she publishes her culinary introspections, paired with her cooking is her escape. Bordering on addiction she begins to neglect her husband until his misery (which is coarsely entrenched in his not getting laid) upends Julie's daydream. This is really the only point where the film borders on being unconvincing. Writer/director Ephron weaves an enthralling story out of such a plain life and keeps the viewer's attention even when it is framed next to Meryl Streep's characteristically on-point portrayal of Julia Child, that the moment in which Julie's husband leaves her we suffer from emotional whiplash. It would seem from the pacing and organic passion, built piecemeal from the ground up, that all of a sudden Ephron realized she had to insert some kind of tension or else the movie was destined to remain on one plane throughout. It is vaguely forced and quickly settled, resolving back to the film's naturally uplifting tone.

Cooking has come a long way since Julia Child first exploded onto the scene. Julia introduced to women all over America the indulging and engrossing world of home cooking. Her impact on female independence cannot be overestimated. However, Julie and Julia is not a feminist film, at least not in a textbook sense. Its more of a film about the exceptional qualities inherent in ordinary lives, a concept relatively common in art but rarely displayed as gracefully as Ephron has done here. Julie and Julia is the culmination of a measured directorial hand, precise dramatic ingredients, and a few contemporary inclusions added to enhance dramatic affect and appeal. Ephron clearly knows how to handle all of her supplies and is not afraid to experiment. The resulting fare is delicious and nourishing. Bon appetit.

I Sell the Dead

This review was originally published here on Tiny Mix Tapes.

Dir. Glenn McQuaid
2009
6.5



The term “low budget” is written all over writer/director Glenn McQuaid's debut feature film I Sell the Dead, both subtlety within the film and literally in the director's statements about it. In so many instances the term “low budget” is used as a general defense of a flawed portion or portions of a film. For instance if the cinematography seems to have been shot mostly with a Handicam or if the special effects appear to have been designed by a 15 year old boy with an unnerving idolatry of Stephen Segal movies. I Sell the Dead suffers from neither of these conditions but in a sense is still making excuses for itself. It is a study of how a film with all the potential to be perfectly good can fall by the wayside if all of its elements are not tended properly.

Like so many low budget films I Sell the Dead suffers from the theory that it is almost always easier to make a low budget comedy than a low budget drama. History has shown that a couple grand and a penchant for raunchy or corrupted dark humor can yield a noteworthy or even significant comedy. Low budget drama, on the other hand, rarely translates. Having lost the ability to turn in on itself and mock its own contemptible lack of funds, the low-budget drama tends to overdo it like a teenage drama queen with larger aspirations. It's those same aspirations and vanities that flourish in Hollywood where grit can be transformed into gold almost overnight. IStD is not a Hollywood movie but it is a highly stylish and insular piece of cinema. Starting as a manageable drama it quickly devolves into lowest common denominator comedy. It takes equally from the pulp fiction of comic books and cult nature of B-list horror films, with the built-in campiness of both. Although the film is at times tongue in cheek and at others painfully sincere its biggest hindrance is not its cast, crew, or plot but rather its director.

IStD is more an elongated montage than a film. Using the near cliché narrative device of a condemned criminal's flashbacks on a life spent in an underworld closed to the average law abiding citizen, in this case grave robbing, the methodical development of the film's protagonist, Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan), is inferred rather than shown, leaving the audience to fill in the evolutionary blank spots between his tales. As the film progresses these stories become increasingly outrageous, bordering on and finally plunging head first into fictional absurdity. The introduction of fantasy into the narrative doesn't necessarily ruin it but it is a detractor. The film also has a disagreeable tendency of being winkingly modern and inauthentic which may be more a flaw of budgetary restrictions than slack writing. Authenticity is a purchasable commodity in the film world. A big budget buys sets, experts and most importantly: time. Where Martin Scorsese has the time and financiers to make a bold period film like Gangs of New York other less fortunate (read: rightly legendary) directors have to make due with what they can get. In the end, what could have been a potentially interesting musing on life and death is turned into a farce. Still, this is not entirely uncommon in film and IStD might serve quite nicely alongside a film like Shaun of the Dead in the ever growing canon Zom-Com.

All this would have been tolerable, perhaps even seriously enjoyable if the film was not so painfully aimless. Despite being adequately cast and containing a visual ideal which at times borders on brilliantly original, the film lacks a distinct direction or message. Perhaps it is high-brow idealism to believe that a film should contain a definitive message. However it should at least have a point. Curiously similar to Albert Camus' first novel “A Happy Death”, IStD suffers from an eagerness to prove something and in the process forgets that it is supposed to be telling a story, a common syndrome of an artist's first work. Curiously what both need is to be condensed as Camus did when he ultimately re-drafted parts of that forgotten first novel into his unforgettable second “The Stranger”. If McQuaid can condense his ideas, extend his budget and knowledge, and most importantly focus inwardly on what he is trying to communicate he has a more than a fighting chance at becoming a memorable film maker. He already has the style, confidence and adept hand of an older, more experienced director. Now all he needs is to become settled. Though I Sell the Dead falls short of being a marked success due to certain aspects of it being left untended and others over cared for it is nonetheless a striking debut and an impressive film given its self-declared low-budget label.