Hell On Frisco Bay

Noir Is...Noir Ain't

2012-01-27T00:23:00.000-08:00

A pre-code exposé of municipal corruption. A 1964 made-for-television remake of a Robert Siodmak classic. An Antonioni-esque meditation on the futility of vengeance in a corporate-controlled culture. A glossy, multiple-Oscar-nominated whodunit with intense Freudian undercurrents and a relatively happy ending. A career-defining vehicle for the biggest star at Columbia Pictures, Rita Hayworth. A pair of out-and-out comedies. A Technicolor, Cinemascope interracial romance shot on location in post-Macarthur Japan. For those who hear the term film noir and immediately think of low-budget, fatalistic B-movies like Detour and D.O.A., none of my above descriptions (which I trust no-one will find too distorting) make the films they describe sound like they'd play at a film festival devoted to noir. Yet Afraid To Talk, The Killers, Point Blank, Laura, Gilda, Unfaithfully Yours, The Good Humor Man and House Of Bamboo are all among the films seen so far this week by attendees of the tenth edition of Noir City at the Castro Theatre.

For 2012, festival producers Eddie Muller and Anita Monga have put together the most diverse slate of films in the decade-long history of Noir City. From year one the festival has built a reputation of showing the best available prints of canonized classics of the genre as well as bringing to light some of the obscurities most deserving of being rescued from the cultural memory hole. Both functions are certainly in full force at this year's festival. What's different from previous years is that, more than ever, many of the festival selections represent the boundaries of noir, landing well outside the word's traditionalist definition. There are certainly films in this year's festival that fit snugly into the commonly-regarded parameters: chiaroscuro black-and-white photography, downward-spiraling trajectory for a doomed protagonist with possible assist from a femme fatale, post-World War II themes wrestled with by war vet characters, etc. Tonight's still-underrated Thieves' Highway fits into these very snugly, depending on your interpretation of the final three minutes of the film, that director Jules Dassin had nothing to do with. But many others don't.

Thanks to last Saturday's pre-code double-bill of Afraid To Talk and Okay, America (the latter of which I unfortunately had to miss) and the four early adaptations of Dashiell Hammett stories that make up the afternnoon portion of this Sunday's Hammett Marathon, there are more films from the 1930s than in any previous edition of Noir City. According to my calculations, the average year of release for a film at this year's festival is 1946- the earliest ever (other years averaged between 1947 and 1951). It took five early-1930s proto-noirs to balance out the record number of 1960s selections: The Killers, Point Blank, The Money Trap and Underworld U.S.A. (the latter two being, respectively, the weakest and strongest of the festival films I'd never seen before. So far.) Strange, if the noir period ended by 1958 or so, as many sources contend. Color is another sticky issue for noir purists. Noir City has shown the occasional color film before- Leave Her To Heaven and Slightly Scarlet for instance. This year there are three: The Killers, Point Blank and House Of Bamboo.

I'm interested in the heated debates about what qualifies as noir and what doesn't. Articles like this multi-parter that look at the historical roots of the term are sure to attract my attention, especially when they argue against enshrined classics like Laura and festival closer The Maltese Falcon as true noir. But I really don't have a dog in that fight. I don't attend Noir City because it celebrates noir, but because it celebrates film. Learning that a film is considered a noir doesn't make me any more or less likely to want to see it. Learning that it was made by a great director, or written by a reliable writer, or acted by a terrific cast, or shot by a favorite cinematographer, probably will. Learning that it has influenced other filmmakers, or that it has been unjustly locked in a studio archive away from public view for years, might tantalize me as well. But what I am ultimately interested in seeing is a wide sampling of interesting films from every genre, from every period of history, using every technological development and aesthetic approach available. Ideally under historically accurate circumstances, which means theatrically with an audience if it was something made before scare quotes began appearing around the term "ancillary markets". It's an unending and perhaps ultimately futile quest, but I'm thankful for local institutions like Noir City, the Stanford Theatre (which has just released its most impressive calendar in a couple years), and the Roxie (which brings a pre-code series in March) that help me remain on it.

I know some cinephiles who avoid Noir City, or at the very least limit their attendance, because they dislike the atmosphere. Yes, audiences do dress up. They appreciate Eddie Muller's introductions, especially when he's accompanied by a special guest. They're not shy about expressing themselves during the film, whether to applaud Rita Hayworth's Gilda entrance or to laugh at dialogue about coffee shops in Underworld U.S.A. (Eric Beetner wrote about the laughter phenomenon in the Noir City Sentinal, reprinted in the first of three increasingly expansive, but not increasingly expensive, books available for sale at the festival or online.) I understand the desire for a more austere setting in which to view the work of great filmmakers, and I'm glad that, at least for now, the Frisco Bay region supports other venues when they showcase some of the same restorations seen at Noir City. But I take another view. I think it's great that we have in Muller an impresario with the deep knowledge and the show biz sense to annually attract to the Castro not only dyed-in-the-wool film lovers but also innocent bystanders who have never even heard of the films they're about to watch. Weren't we all there someday? And won't it take all of us working together to send a message to the studios that the preservation and exhibition of 35mm prints must not end?

I've often wondered if the success of Noir City and the Film Noir Foundation could be replicated with other Hollywood genres I adore. Imagine a comparable destination festival called "West County", for instance. Or a similar series devoted to musicals, or swashbuckling adventure films. Until somebody tries out the Noir City model on non-noirs, I'm grateful that Noir City can expand the umbrella of films it preserves and projects to include films that are (to borrow Elliot Levine's term) "not necessarily noir". Like pre-codes. Or 1960s films. Or comedies. Comedies?

I missed Tuesday's screening of Preston Sturges's Unfaithfully Yours (which I've seen theatrically and adore), but it was a real thrill to experience the second half of the Noir City "Comedy Noir" night, The Good Humor Man. Not every gag works in this Frank Tashlin-scripted slapstick piece, starring Mildred Pierce slimeball Jack Carson as a lovable lunk who gets mixed up in murder plots while doing his daily ice cream deliveries. Some of Heinz Roemheld's music cues, in particular, were awkward and dated. However, the satire of suburbia was sharp and the laughs were abundant. Some of the film's violence, especially in the insane schoolhouse finale where every imagined elective from music and home economics, to physical education and woodshop, becomes a hazardous menace, seemed to outdo the brutality of even the grittiest mid-century noirs. I must wonder if censors didn't take their duties as "seriously" when evaluating comic violence as opposed to its dramatic counterpoint. Of course, Tashlin perfected his gag-writing skills while making Looney Tunes for the most mayhemic cartoon studio, Warner Brothers. The following evening while introducing a Sam Fuller double bill, Muller admitted to getting misty-eyed imagining what Tashlin would have thought if he'd seen an audience of hundreds roaring to bits he'd written over sixty years ago.

The Castro's new programmer Keith Arnold could, at least theoretically, book a series of Tashlin comedies without the help of a non-profit like the Film Noir Foundation to help secure prints. Theoretically, because certain studios are increasingly unwilling to rent out their own prints to repertory theatres, and archives traditionally don't lend directly to for-profit enterprises like the Castro. Still, I'm pleased with the direction Arnold's own programming is taking, and I hope mass audiences are as well. The venue's February schedule has many gems on it, including two films that have played previous Noir City editions: The Lineup on February 18th, and Ace In The Hole February 22.

A February 8th double-bill merits special mention: Robert Bresson's Pickpocket plays with a film by Bresson's most well-known American acolyte, Paul Schrader: American Gigolo. The calendar note for the latter film is marked with a warning: "URGENT INVITATION: This could very well be your last opportunity to see the film in 35mm – enjoy it while you can!" Presumably this message is a result of the increasing unwillingness I mentioned a paragraph ago, and its presence makes me pleased that at least there are no other February films with such a warning label. As for Pickpocket, I'm truly impressed with this booking. I can't remember a Bresson film gracing the Castro screen in the decade-plus that I've been obsessively paying attention. I've seen all my Bresson prints at the Pacific Film Archive, which is currently hosting a near-complete retrospective of the Frenchman's work. If you were sad at the prospect of skipping this Saturday's PFA Pickpocket showing in order to see that day's Noir City screenings and attend the party (or vice versa), it may be a nice surprise to have a second chance to see it so soon.

On Sunday, while introducing Laura, Eddie Muller held Keith Arnold's feet to the fire, relaying that the former Fine Arts Cinema booker had recently mentioned the possibility of bringing a Dana Andrews series to the Castro. A great idea. The fact that Muller was standing next to the Laura star's daughter Susan Andrews made the prospect seem all the more enticing, and possible, and maybe even a little embarrassing if it doesn't come to pass. It was all in fun of course, but I hope that there's the will to put together such a series, not to mention the audiences to attend it. Would encouraging people to dress up as occultists to see Curse of the Demon, or as trappers to see Swamp Water help get people who've never heard of Jacques Tourneur and Jean Renoir out to their pictures? If so, it might be worth doing.

I'm certain there will be plenty of people in suits and fedoras coming out to see The Maltese Falcon on the final day of the festival. Muller has gone on record predicting that this will be the last time a 35mm print of the landmark film will play the Castro. If that's true for the 1941 version, it's likely true for the lesser-known but in certain respects better-made 1931 version starring Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels in the Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor roles. Both films are owned by the same studio. I'm hoping to see both on that giant screen one last time. I'm also excited for the weekend's two Alan Ladd films, The Great Gatsby and The Glass Key; Ladd is the star of the 1955 Cinemascope, Eastmancolor gangster picture Hell On Frisco Bay, the namesake for this blog, which is generally seen only in poor-quality bootlegs; it's for obvious reasons a preservation project I'm personally very interested in. Every ticket to an Alan Ladd film bought in 2012 is a vote to see more Alan Ladd films in 2013 and beyond. So come join me and at least a thousand of my closest friends this weekend in celebrating film, or noir, or better yet, both!

I Only Have Two Eyes 2011

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

What's in store for us in 2012? Interpreters of Mayan archaeology, Biblical prophecy, ecological indicators, Presidential polls, etc. all have their ideas. I personally don't think anybody knows in advance when a given era is going to end, but we do get a cultural charge out of imagining ourselves in a Fin de siècle moment.

These days I'm equally skeptical of oracles predicting apocalyptic changes in the cinematic landscape. I've heard the warnings, seen the threatening letters to exhibitors, read the premature eulogies, and signed the petition. But though of course technological change is undeniable, the idea that it's all-encompassing, spelling the sudden death of repertory film as we know it, defies the everyday evidence I see as a moviegoer. Perhaps I'm being obstinate or naïve, but the popularity of going to the cinema to watch a print of a beloved classic or an undiscovered treasure (which can be the same movie to different people) continued through 2011 and looks like it will in 2012 as well. It's hard for me to see how completely upending that ecosystem benefits anyone.

I'm sure my perspective is skewed by geography; the San Francisco Bay Area for all its modern sheen is a hotbed of technological contrarians. And our cinema programmers are a resourceful bunch, as they must be in order to stay in step with the desires of the passionate filmmakers, students, historians, fans, critics, archivists, projectionists, collectors, and other everyday punters who make up their audience. As I've done for the past four years now, I've invited a handful of such folks to share their favorite experiences watching repertory/revival cinema in the Bay Area over the last twelve months. I'll be updating with new lists daily. The following testimony should convince any doubter that there's still vigor in Frisco Bay's film scene:

Film preservationist/researcher Rob Byrne, who blogs at Starts Thursday!.
Kurtiss Hare, cinema enthusiast and blogger at cinefrisco.com.
Cinephile/critic Michael Hawley, who blogs at film-415.
Critic Lincoln Spector, who operates Bayflicks.
Cinephile Lawrence Chadbourne, part of the Film On Film Foundation.
Film studies major Shahn, who blogs at six martinis and the seventh art.
Adam Hartzell, who has written for many outlets, listed here.
Box Cubed manager and lapsed cinephile Ben Armington.
Carl Martin, who compiles the Bay Area Film Calendar.
Critic Frako Loden, whose writing is seen at The Evening Class & elsewhere.
Victoria Jaschob, who has written for the SF Silent Film Festival.
Cinephile Jason Wiener, who blogs at Jason Watches Movies.
Educator/impresario Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, who runs MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS.
Artist & writer Terri Saul, whose website is found here.
Maureen Russell, film festival volunteer & cinephile.
Filmmaker Mark Wilson, who has work available through Canyon Cinema.
Ryland Walker Knight, who blogs at Vinyl Is Heavy.
Comedian-actor-projectionist Austin Wolf_Sothern, who blogs here.
Margarita Landazuri, who writes & edits articles for the SF Silent Film Festival.
Cinephile David Robson, who blogs at The House of Sparrows.
James Brown, cinephile, musician and DJ.
Your host, Brian Darr.

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY CREATED JANUARY 11, 2012, AND UPDATED DAILY UNTIL JANUARY 20, 2012.

Brian Darr Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-20T01:31:00.001-08:00

When I decided to roll out my annual round-up of reflections on the year in local repertory and revival screenings over the past week or so, I hadn't the faintest idea that it would sync up with a new flurry of Twitter conversation and media coverage of Time Warner shutting the doors to its vaults of 35mm exhibition prints in its holdings (which includes all First National and most classic MGM & RKO titles, as well as those produced with the Warner Brothers imprint.) It seems repertory theatre requests to screen The Shining (for instance) on film rather than on DVD are being denied. Although the Pacific Film Archive's current Howard Hawks retrospective and the quickly-upcoming Noir City both promise to screen numerous Warner-owned titles in 35mm prints, it may be that the prints all will be sourced from independent archives and not the studio itself. Such a trend may soon leave repertory as we know it in the exclusive hands of independent collections and not-for-profit organizations.

As bad as that sounds, as I hint at in my introduction to this year's "I Only Have Two Eyes" blog series, the eternal optimist in me feels convinced that both the demand for and supply of Frisco Bay repertory screenings will continue into the future, even if the process of connecting supply and demand shakes out into a new form. It's sad if a for-profit theatre like the Castro can no longer offer 35mm screenings of wonderful Warner-owned titles 2001: A Space Odyssey, Footlight Parade, Badlands, He Who Gets Slapped, Meet Me In St. Louis, etc. (all of which I re-visited in that space in 2011, some for the first time on the big screen) at everyday prices, without the muscle of a film festival's involvement in securing prints from a non-standard source. I look forward to seeing how it all plays out in the coming months, but for now, let me share with you my own top ten cinema screenings of films I'd never seen prior to 2011:

the Wrong Man
2011 began with a series that filled gaps in my cinematic experience I'd been quietly embarrassed about for years. Alfred Hitchcock films are a mainstay of the Castro Theatre programming; I love that the venue offers near-annual opportunities to see classics like Vertigo (which I savored once again during the venue's 70mm series in June.) But in January they showcased a dozen films that tend to be screened more infrequently. I was able to see nine of them which I'd never seen before on the big screen, in some cases never at all. All were various shades of great, and 1956's The Wrong Man proved to be the greatest. It centers on an ordinary man (Henry Fonda) thrust into extraordinary circumstances thanks to a mistake in identity. But the mistake leads not to the thrills and adventure of The Thirty-Nine Steps or North By Northwest, but to devastation. Based on a true story, and treated with utmost seriousness and even a Hitchcockian sort of realism, the film may be (perhaps barring the more personal Vertigo) the director's saddest, and most socially important work.

Beau Travail
I haven't done a full accounting, but my sense is that the Pacific Film Archive's Claire Denis retrospective last Spring, and Beau Travail in particular, received more mentions in this year's "I Only Have Two Eyes" wrap-up than any other selection. And no wonder. This poetic resetting of Herman Melville's story Billy Budd to the Horn of Africa is every bit the masterpiece I'd heard, and more. At the time it came out (at festivals in 1999, commercially the next year) I was living and working abroad, in a relatively remote (from cinephile culture, at any rate) region of the world, so I missed it even if I didn't miss all of the critical praise which (rightly) insisted that the big screen was the way to see it. So although I found a cheap copy of the DVD when a nearby rental store went out of business, I refrained from watching it until I could view it projected somewhere. It took a while. Sometimes waiting to see a film in a proper setting can set up disappointment, but not this time. My years of anticipation, and my decade of distance from my own time living in a foreign land, could only have made the film's strange beauty more profoundly and personally felt inside of me.

Ruthless
This, on the other hand, was something completely off my radar until the Roxie screened it in May as part of its third annual I Wake Up Dreaming series of Golden Age noir. Though I only attended a few, largely unmemorable films in this year's series, and picked Ruthless simply because it fit my schedule that week, it absolutely floored me with its technical virtuosity, its relative lavishness (for a 1948 Edgar G. Ulmer picture) and its sophisticated, lacerating assault on the "rags to riches" myth underlying our economic system. Critics have justly compared Ruthless to no less than Citizen Kane and I was equally reminded of, The Magnificent Ambersons, not just for shared thematics and aesthetics, but because, like that Orson Wells film, Ruthless manages to be a kind of masterpiece despite some very evident flaws that would sink most lesser pictures.

Carmen Comes Home
I spent many many hours during the first half of 2011 reading about, watching, and re-watching movies made by Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Shimizu and particularly Yasujiro Ozu, to help me prepare an essay for the program guide of the Silent Film Festival, which screened Ozu's best-known silent film I Was Born, But... in mid-July. By the time the PFA's Japanese Divas series rolled around I'd completed my research, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Particularly this 1951 film by former Ozu apprentice Keisuke Kinoshita, starring the brilliant Hideko Takemine as a high-minded stripteaser who returns to her family's village, now notorious from her big city escapades. Japan's first full-color film and eye-poppingly so, Carmen Comes Home is a wonderful window into national values during the final year or so of the Allied occupation, and an opportunity to see some of Ozu's favorite actors (Chishu Ryu, Takeshi Sakamoto, Shuji Sano, etc.) hamming it up in a somewhat broader -and bawdier- comedy than Ozu's own comedies tended to be.

Three Ages
By reputation, the first feature film Buster Keaton directed (with his frequent early co-director Edward F. Cline) is not among his best. It's often repeated that its makers lacked confidence in its success, which is why it consists of three distinct stories intercutting between each other; if the film flopped as a six-reel feature, at least it could be reconstituted into three two-reelers, the form which Keaton was a surefire draw in. Assuming this risk-averse strategy was true, what's not often mentioned is that few slapstick comedians had successfully crossed over from shorts to features in 1923. Nor that the film Three Ages is famously spoofing, D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, had been created with the very same sort of strategy; intercutting four feature films worth of material into an epic, and Griffith re-edited two of its four segments (the Babylonian and modern-day episodes) into stand-alone features released three years after the full film failed to ignite box office records in 1916. Three Ages, on the other hand, stood on its own financially, both in its day, and on a late Summer evening last year when a huge crowd packed the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto to see Dennis James beautifully accompany a 35mm print on the Wurlitzer organ. Watching it in such an ideal setting, and laughing along with almost every gag, makes the gap in quality between this and Keaton's top-tier features (The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and what have you) seem extremely small; perhaps non-existent.

Curse of the Demon
I didn't see any familiar Frisco Bay cinephile faces in the healthy-sized crowd when I went to see this last September; perhaps there are few regulars of the usual haunts (the other venues represented on this list) who also check to see what's playing at the UA Berkeley on Shattuck Avenue. The regular Thursday night screening series there generally screens prints of more recent cult "classics" like The Professional and Labyrinth, so I initially wondered if a listing for this rarely-shown horror film was in error. But a confirmation phone call led to a BART trip led to one of the scariest and most thoughtful explorations of the supernatural I've seen. And no, the above image (which has haunted me since seeing it in a book my elementary school library) does not represent the overall tone of the film, which is one of the few examples I've seen of 1950s cinéma fantastique to truly earn its earnest gravitas. I'm only sad that, after seeing his three films made for Val Lewton and this, I no longer have any "straight" Jacques Tourneur-directed horror films to look forward to. Although I suppose there's Comedy of Terrors...

Migration of the Blubberoids
2011 was shaping up to be a great year for local screenings of George Kuchar pictures (In my head I can hear him say the word: "pict-shas"), with a beautiful presentation of Eclipse of the Sun Virgin, restored, at Crossroads and an extensive dual-retrospective with his twin brother Mike at the PFA, just the latest of many tributes the man received from Frisco Bay film institutions over the forty years he spent living here (the MVFF, SFIFF, and, with Mike, Frameline, for instance). Then, so very tragically for everyone who had befriended him, or even met him or been touched by his generous artistic spirit, he died shortly after his 69th birthday. Several venues hosted posthumous screening events; the SF Cinematheque-presented set at SFMOMA was a particularly well-curated selection of lesser-known videos and better-known film work, and the Canyon Cinema screening at the 9th Street Film Center was an amazing set of some of his most rarely-seen 16mm films. But it was at Artists' Television Access where in October I saw the piece that shattered my preconceptions about career arcs: a city symphony from his late-eighties in-camera-edited video period with the unusual but not uncharacteristic title Migration of the Blubberoids. This alternatively lovely and anxious portrait of the Kuchars' native Bronx at Thanksgiving-time, set to music from (according to a 1991 interview) "some kind of a King Kong movie" deserves to be more widely known and shown, especially to anyone unsure of whether George Kuchar could make "pict-shas" as vital, innovative, and formally satisfying in the second half of his career as he could in the first.

In Spring
Hmmm. Two city symphonies in a row on this list. Except that this one, like its cinematographic predecessor Man With A Movie Camera, might equally be called a "country symphony", or better, a "nation symphony". Ever since researching Man With A Movie Camera (also for the Silent Film Festival) I'd been dying to see the film that Mikhael Kaufman, the eponymous "Man" in that film, both as actor and as cinematographer, had directed himself after disagreements with his brother Dziga Vertov caused a rift between the two. When a touring Vertov retrospective arrived at the PFA this fall, I was very pleased to discover that, hidden away as if an Easter Egg, In Spring was to screen as a second feature to a Vertov I'd never been able to track down, Stride, Soviet! Watching them together the Vertov felt overly deterministic and repetitious, but the Kaufman soared with visual lyricism. Pianist Judith Rosenberg improvised first-class musical accompaniments to them both (and to the other Vertov silents I saw in the series) but when the evening was through I began to wonder if the wizardry of Man With A Movie Camera might have been cast under its cinematographer's influence more than its nominal director's. Although the retro proved that Vertov's own talent shone through in some the sound films made after the dissolution of the brotherly collaboration: particularly Enthusiasm (which I'd only before seen on a terrible VHS transfer) and For You, Front!

Through The Olive Trees
It's getting late and this post has gotten long. So I won't say much about this 1994 masterpiece by Iran's foremost director Abbas Kiarostami, working at the peak of his powers. I will say I'm so thankful that the PFA provided an opportunity for me to finally catch up with it, as such opportunities are few and far between in this country without resorting to quasi-legal methods. Why? It has something to do with Muriel's Wedding of all movies, at least according to Jonathan Rosenbaum's book Movie Wars.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Just as I was sending out e-mail invitations for this year's "I Only Have Two Eyes" project, and putting the finishing touches on my own list, I went with moderate-to-low expectations to the Castro to see this 1964 musical on the third-from-last day of 2011. I knew it was the best-known film of Jacques Demy, a director I'd had mixed results exploring, and that its recitative musical style had been aped in at least one much more recent French film I'd seen, liked, and largely forgotten (Jeanne And The Perfect Guy). I was prepared for a pleasant time out at the movies: pretty music, pretty actors (Catherine Deneuve), pretty colors, a small French town, all there. I was fully unprepared to get so involved in the characters, for the waves of complex emotions the film would elicit, and for the brilliant ending, perhaps as heartbreaking as the finale to Demy's wife Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur, released a year later (and featured on my "I Only Have Two Eyes list from last year). One might say the French New Wave was about being inspired by the best Hollywood films to make something completely new and different and even subversive, rather than blandly aping Hollywood's worst traits on French sets, as the Cahiers Du Cinema crew frequently accused their forebears of doing. This, then, is a perfectly New Wave film. And, perhaps, a perfectly perfect one.

James Brown Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-19T16:37:00.000-08:00

David Robson Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-18T16:45:00.000-08:00

Margarita Landazuri Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

Austin Wolf-Sothern Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

Ryland Walker Knight Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Mark Wilson Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Maureen Russell Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

Terri Saul Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

It's impossible for any pair of eyes to view all of Frisco Bay's worthwhile film screenings. I'm so pleased that a number of local filmgoers have let me post their repertory/revival screening highlights of 2011. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from artist and writer Terri Saul, who tweets under the handle SisterRye.

2011 Rep House List; Sister Rye

I could write this year's list by mentioning only one director, one series, and one venue –HANDS UP! ESSENTIAL SKOLIMOWSKI- which played from July 22-August 25 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. I had never heard of Skolimowski until my friend Charles suggested I check him out. His films are what defined my year of movie watching more than any others. Though regretfully, I did miss a few.

Every film I saw last year that wasn't a new release, I saw at the PFA. I'm listing the films in reverse chronological order, starting from the most recent screening and working my way backward.

Although only one of the films he stars in appears on my list, Vincent Gallo both surprised and disappointed in one of the best films I saw this year and one of the worst I suffered through. The first (and an outstanding rare film on my list) is ESSENTIAL KILLING (Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 2010), directed by Jerzy Skolimowksi. It screened at the PFA on August 20th, at 9pm. Read Skolimowski's comments about the inspiration for making this film (and perhaps why it doesn't screen with much frequency) here. In TROUBLE EVERY DAY (part of the UNDER THE SKIN: THE FILMS OF CLAIRE DENIS, which ran from March 4-April 16) Gallo had to talk and act at the same time, not something he did well in 2001. Both ESSENTIAL KILLING and TROUBLE EVERY DAY were provocative, shocking, gritty, and memorable. I think the reason Gallo was superb in ESSENTIAL KILLING is because he acted without speaking much. A film without dialog is a film that works well for Gallo. The wordless script didn't only benefit Gallo's portrayal of Mohammed, but also was in keeping with the silenced, desperate prisoner on the run in a strange place. Mohammed's ability to communicate, muffled by snow, anomie, confusion, and starvation, in this timely and politically astute piece of humanist drama was whittled down to the narrow features of Gallo's roaming eyes and gnashing teeth. Not unfamiliar territory for Skolimowski, who also chose to have his supporting actress, Emmanuelle Seigner, play a mute woman, silent cinema makes up much of Skolimowski's student films.

The second film on my list is FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA (Poland/France, 2008) also directed by Jerzy Skolimowksi. It screened at the PFA on August 5th, at 7pm. The one sentence description of FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA on IMDB is enough to drive the curious to watch it, if only for its absurd premise, "A crematorium worker repeatedly breaks into a woman's house at night to help with housework." Skolimowski somehow manages to make the preposterous possible; the crude, sweet; the creepy, charming; and the quotidian, extraordinary. From Jim Emerson writing on Alt Screen, "Four Nights with Anna is one of the great movies about voyeurism (think Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love, to name a few). As such, it’s also a movie about movie-watching and movie-making" Read the rest of the write-up here.

The third film is THE SHOUT (UK, 1978), yet another by Skolimowski. I watched (and was mesmerized by) THE SHOUT as I sank deeply into my seat at the PFA on July 22nd, at 8:50pm. THE SHOUT was like a good mass-market paperback mystery by a writer who is known and trusted to transport and transform the reader. The use of sound in the film and as a plot device is indescribable and unmatched, best heard in a large space with a good sound system. One of the leading characters, Anthonyn Fielding, is a sound artist. We spend time with him in his recording studio where he traps bugs to hear and collect their reverberations against his microphone. His obsession with the power of sound is shared by his opposing character, Crossley, who brags about possessing a mystical shout. Also, THE SHOUT repeatedly references one of my favorite painters, Francis Bacon. I'm leaving out DEEP END, BARRIER, KING, QUEEN, KNAVE, MOONLIGHTING, IDENTIFCATION MARKS: NONE, and WALKOVER, all worthy of discussion and repeated viewings.

The fourth is 1900 (Italy/France/West Germany, 1976), by Bertolucci, part of BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: IN SEARCH OF MYSTERY, which ate up a lot of my time between, July 8-August 18. 1900 played, starting at 6pm, on July 16th, and lasted 311 minutes (according to the PFA calendar). I wouldn't have cut one. Although Lincoln Spector says in his review that this wasn't the 5-hour director's cut, but a 4-hour US version. Now I'm wondering which "director's cut" I saw. I remember a brief discussion of the numerous cuts before-hand, but I didn't take notes. It was long and I was glad it was long. One well-known scene in 1900 is the forest ocarina waltz, in which dancers dance to the music of small and large ocarinas, ancient flutes (While discussing this scene with a friend I learned that there's now an iPhone ocarina app that can be played by blowing into the microphone as the mouthpiece of a woodwind). 1900 is one of the most visually musical films I've seen (The composition of each shot seems to dance and divide itself up mathematically, like music), and the most direct when it comes to telling the story of class struggle and class conflict among friends. I'm picking 1900 for my list over THE CONFORMIST, THE LAST EMPEROR, and THE SHELTERING SKY, partly because the last two are so well known and loved and THE CONFORMIST (though stunningly beautiful) didn't leave as much of an epic impression as 1900, although I'm glad I saw it.

Number five is Lisandro Alonso’s debut feature LA LIBERTAD (2001). I'm partially favoring this screening because of the odd short that preceded it and made for a unique film night overall: CHEESE (Mika Rottenberg, U.S., 2008). CHEESE and LA LIBERTAD (Argentina 2001) were featured as part of FIRST PERSON RURAL: THE NEW NONFICTION, which ran from March 26-April 17. LA LIBERTAD was like a view taken in while having nothing to do, or a chore done with loving attention and mindfulness. The camera is allowed to disappear in LA LIBERTAD. The audience is left to fend for itself in the wild solitude of the film. CHEESE just has to be seen to be believed. You won't have to go to art school because you'll give yourself an honorary degree and afterward dream of sustenance, substance, hair, and the feminine ability to create something out of nothing.

The sixth film is BEAU TRAVAIL (France, 1999). I caught BEAU TRAVAIL as part of the previously mentioned Claire Denis retrospective at the PFA, on March 25th, at 9pm. I would like to write an essay about BEAU TRAVAIL, especially the ending, which I won't spoil for you if you haven't seen it. Denis Lavant is amazing as Galoup. BEAU TRAVAIL is an extended dance, a ballet with an eclectic score, a study of the male figure, military limbo, domination, jealousy, competitiveness, colonial anxiety, boredom, and Sisyphean feats, all shot with impeccable attention to light, color, dimensionally, and detail.

Number seven is NENETTE ET BONI (France, 1996), also part of the Denis series. It screened at the PFA on the same night, prior to BEAU TRAVAIL March 25th, at 7pm. Sound and corporeal puns–cheap coffee percolating, kneading pizza dough–make for some startling, sexual and poetic transitions between scenes. Vincent Gallo shows up in this one too, briefly speaking English amid French, and providing comic relief. Tindersticks provides a typical Claire Denis soundtrack. I can't imagine her films without their music. "Tiny Tears" will always remind me of this film.

The eighth film on my list is WHITE MATERIAL (France, 2009), another by Denis, one that was shown early in the series, on March 4th, at 7pm. Michael Koreski wrote well about the film in Reverse Shot here. I haven’t seen any other film that addresses the issue of child soldiers so clearly and with so much tenderness. Everyone in the film is misguided, corrupt, delusional, and seeking short-term pleasure, the freedom of psychosis, or revenge. But the gun-toting children seem mainly driven by hunger, craving for basic comforts, and hero-worship. Denis does an excellent job of critiquing or examining colonialism and the post-colonial, while also laying out some possible responses to finding oneself born or awakening into it on one side or another. The only thread tying all characters together is their commitment to staying in place, rather than fleeing the violence that arrives one day and escalates without pause, although one key difference is the ability to make the choice to leave. Some of the people don’t have that choice, either because of illness and advanced age, youth and poverty, or those driven mad by their situation. Isabelle Huppert’s character is all about stubbornness, almost a play on the word “plantation” as if she had planted her own feet into the soil, like a dominating country would.

Ninth on my list is LA CEREMONIE (France, 1995), by Claude Chabrol, part of SUSPICION: THE FILMS OF CLAUDE CHABROL AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK, January 13-February 25, following the death of Chabrol in 2010. I haven't read A Judgment in Stone, the Ruth Rendell book that LA CEREMONIE is based on, but considering the primacy of plot and social circumstance, it makes sense that LA CEREMONIE is based on her writing. LE BOUCHER should also be on my list, but I chose LA CEREMONIE, probably because it features two of my favorite French actresses, Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, not to mention Jacqueline Bisset.

Number ten is the film I saw first in 2011, TOUKI BOUKI (Senegal, 1973), directed by Djibril Diop-Mambéty. I was introduced to this film while studying the history of ethnographic and international film as an undergraduate. It was part of the series last year called WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION: SAFEGUARDING CINEMATIC TREASURES, which ran from January 15- February 10. In the story, friends become divided over a pull to escape hardship, coruption and petty crime and flee to mythical Paris vs. remaining in Senegal and continuing political action. Humiliation and revenge over political differences features strongly, as well as decisions about theft, subservience, tricksterism, magic, and dressing up to pass as European. The film uses magical realism, experimental editing, such as jumpcuts, flashbacks, and jarring cutaways to mysterious and sometimes violent sequences in a way that seems appropriate to its decade. This film, as do many on my list, is critical of capitalism, colonialism, and post-colonial corruption, but also the behavior of those seeking revolution. The use of the Josephine Baker singing "Paris, Paris, Paris!" is unforgettable, and contrasts well with the action on screen. A good summary of the film can be found here.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

Jason Wiener Only has Two Eyes

2012-01-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Victora Jaschob Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

Frako Loden Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

Carl Martin Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

Ben Armington Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

Adam Hartzell Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

Shahn Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

Lawrence Chadbourne Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Lincoln Spector Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Michael Hawley Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Kurtiss Hare Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara 1964) @ VIZ Cinema, seen 6/21/2011.

Meaningful allegories, for me, work best when they aren’t needed. On a granular level, this film is a compelling piece of horror/suspense with sensual visual details. A larger reading of the protagonist’s existential tightrope-walk manages to enhance without usurping. Again, the VIZ’s projection was acute enough to leave me sandblasted.

Kuroneko (Shindō 1968)
House (Obayashi 1977)
@ The Castro Theater, seen 3/23/2011.

OK, so there are two films here, but they were part of a delightful Japanese feline horror-themed double feature. From Kuroneko’s sexy & vicious apparitions to House’s ultra-campy blood floods, this was one hell of an afternoon altercation.

Days of Heaven (Malick 1978)
Badlands (Malick 1973)
@ The Castro Theater, seen 8/25/2011.

A somewhat less creatively curated duo, but no less appreciated. I sometimes think Malick's quiet internal monologues were positively designed to resound through the Castro's arched ceilings before reaching the ear. This was my first time seeing Days of Heaven, and while sometimes a theatrical screening makes me want to hug a curator, other times the curator beats me to the punch.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog 1974) @ Red Vic Movie House, seen 3/30/2011.

Kaspar was not the last film I saw at the Red Vic, but it will be the one by which I choose to remember our departed. Here, Herzog puts the entire genre of science fiction to shame by excavating human gems from a plausible, if controversial, case of man-in-the-wild.

It (Badger 1927) @ Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, seen 5/28/2011.

As in, Clara Bow has got "it." Her charisma and peppiness are monuments unto themselves, having injected a potent substance into the veins of our modern outlook on celebrity and Hollywoodland romance. This evening at the Niles-Essanay gave me a taste of silent film the way its original audiences might have enjoyed it.

The Goose Woman (Brown 1925) @ The Castro Theater, seen 7/16/2011.

Another silent, this time during the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at The Castro. Some alpha-noir stylings and an enthralling characterization of haggard, piercing irrelevance by Louise Dresser left me quite taken. We have our own Stanford Theatre Foundation to thank for its preservation.

Gaslight (Cukor 1944) @ The Castro Theater, seen 1/22/2011.

One of the more psychologically twisted (my favorite kind!) noirs I saw this year. I don't know its technical term, but I just googled "the derivation of pleasure from simulated insanity," so that should tell you something. Oh, according to wikipedia, the word "gaslighting" has been appropriated for just such an occasion.

Streets of Shame (Mizoguchi 1956) @ The PFA, seen 6/25/2011.

For me, this very much more focused film is "streets ahead" of Mizoguchi's sweeping epic, Sansho the Bailiff, which I also saw as part of the Pacific Film Archive's Japanese Divas series. It's structured to examine multiple facets of prostitution that are typically hidden behind the bamboo curtain of everyday sensibilities. This was one film in an excellent series overall.

Rob Byrne Only Has Two Eyes

2012-01-11T00:29:00.000-08:00

There Haven't Been Any Quiet Moments

2012-01-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2012 and a New Year of Frisco Bay cinephilia! Rumors of the Castro Theatre's demise were greatly exaggerated, and it's running repertory and festival screenings, now with newly-hired general manager Keith Arnold at the helm. After largely avoiding Japanese films in the first months of programming their year-round venue New People, the SF Film Society, its identity as an exhibitor of varied, cutting-edge from around the globe now established at the venue, brings samurai classics back to that screen in January. Yerba Buena Center For the Arts begins a promising Spring season this week with the local premiere of a new restoration of Nick Ray's We Can't Go Home Again; check Max Goldberg for an excellent recent article (complete with comment by one of Ray's former student-filmmakers!) The Rafael Film Center hosts its annual For Your Consideration series of Oscar-contending foreign films for a week starting Friday; first looks at new films by Béla Tarr, Ann Hui & Nuri Bilge Ceylan are among the most tantalizing of those considered.

Perhaps most excitingly of all, on Thursday Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive opens up again for a new semester featuring, among other offerings, retrospectives for Henri-Georges Clouzot, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Bresson and Howard Hawks. The latter, though not complete, is a hearty mixture of the consummate classic-era Hollywood director's best-known and least-known films, including four rarely-seen silents, and the pair of important pre-code action dramas that open the series: The Crowd Roars and Monterey Bay-shot Tiger Shark (pictured above). It's on the occasion of this Hawks series that I introduce a new guest contributor to Hell On Frisco Bay, one of my longest-standing cinephile friends, moving image archivist and philatelic blogger Sterling Hedgpeth. He previews the series through the prism of the film aptly chosen to play the PFA on February 14th.

Here's his article.

The Curious Case of Bringing Up Baby

2012-01-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

written by guest blogger Sterling Hedgpeth, a.k.a.The Filmatelist:

As both a film lover and a stamp collector, I was thrilled when the US Postal Service announced that they’d be honoring four directors from the Golden Age of Hollywood in 2012. And when I heard who they were going to be—Ford, Capra, Wilder, Huston—my first reaction was a simple one:

“Where the hell is Howard Hawks?!?”

Because for me, Hawks embodies a seamless, no frills style of classic American filmmaking, while at the same time transcending that deceptive simplicity. Suspended between the sentimentality of Ford and Capra and the cynicism of Wilder and Huston, Hawks mastered a variety of genres with a clarity of vision and perspective that makes his films feel, 70+ years later, still quite contemporary. And fortunately for us, the Pacific Film Archive on the U.C. Berkeley campus will be holding a months-long retrospective of his work, starting on Friday, January 13.

Much has been written about the masculine ethos of Hawks’s world—a world with men of will and stoic action, motley crews united by an unspoken moral compass, women who give as good as they get, and conflicts that require solidarity and resourcefulness. It’s a recurring motif in all his films, to the point that critic David Thomson wrote “Like Monet forever painting lilies or Bon-nard always re-creating his wife in her bath, Hawks made only one artwork. It is the principle of that movie that men are more expressive rolling a cigarette than saving the world.”

But of his most revered films, one stands apart from the rest. For Bringing Up Baby (1938), while perfectly Hawksian in its wit, sexual sophistication, and breezy tone, is unusual for a couple of interesting reasons.

The first is that while most of his films either take place in the urban jungle (His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep) are on outposts far from civilization (Red River, Only Angels Have Wings), Baby bridges the two, for in the telling of David Huxley (Cary Grant) and his search for his intercostal clavicle, we move from the city and its social trappings to the Connecticut backwoods and then back again. This is done not only to point out the humorous incongruities of a leopard being walked down a busy thoroughfare, but to have the unpredictability of the outdoors be the vehicle by which the stifled David can discover himself.

Hawks’s cowboys and adventurers find a natural affinity with their surroundings, but for David, nature is something new and uncomfortable. Still, it’s the perfect place where a butterfly (as his even more uptight fiancée describes him) can take wing—and quite literally get caught in the net of Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). Hawks rarely indulged in flights-of-fancy, keeping the tone of his films very grounded, but there’s something almost mystical about the moonlit excursion of David and Susan in search of her leopard. You almost expect Mickey Rooney’s Puck to pop his head out—a Midsummer Night’s Fever Dream. And what better place to abandon pretenses and your own senses?

Hawks’s classic women (Slim in To Have and Have Not, Feathers in Rio Bravo) can hold their own amidst the insular brotherhoods of his films, but Susan is unique by being the most masculine presence in Baby. For who else is there? The effete Charlie Ruggles with his animal calls? The plastered Barry Fitzgerald or clueless Fritz Feld? Nature abhors a vacuum, and Susan fills the testosterone void, be it sinking that impressive putt on the golf course, or pretending to be the quick-talking toughie and gang member. Hawks usually has his men shepherd each other through this rite of redemption, but lacking any other male role model, David steps up to the plate with Susan as his guide. It’s the Rising of Mr. Bone (which David is also called in the film).

But the film is still fundamentally a romance, and the film revolves around how the unlikely pairing of the mismatched duo is still a perfect fit. This is not a new conceit to the genre, but Hawks gets plenty of mileage out of finding simple ways of demonstrating this. When Hepburn rips the back of her party dress, the two walk in perfect lockstep, him behind her, as if they were a single unit. When singing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby”, their serenade consists of deft, spontaneous two-part vocals. Harmony. Synchronization. Balance.

Well, given that last remarkable stunt back in the museum—maybe there’s room for improvement on keeping balance. But that’s the moment when David realizes he loves Susan. So equilibrium between city/country, male/female, order/chaos are all on display in a way that we rarely see in Hawks. Hawks has been criticized for indulging in his Boys Club too often, a bromance ethos that has its own internal rules and memes. But Baby shows he can be just as brilliant at undermining those tropes while still having it feel perfectly at home in his body of work.

Sadly, Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964) is not part of the PFA series, because 25 years later, he updates this sensibility without ever losing his sense of humor or irony. Essentially a loose remake of Baby, it has cityboy Rock Hudson also return to nature, a faux fisherman and himself a fish out of water, with Paula Prentiss the most irresistible steamroller you might find. Like Baby, it has its flights of fancy, with slapstick sequences which emulate Looney Toons cartoons perfectly (a high comedic compliment indeed)—very atypical for Hawks, yet still fitting right in.

And with the exception of Sirk and Frankenheimer, nobody ever used Hudson quite so knowingly. For in his Doris Day vehicles, Rock played the rabid lothario who felt obliged to fake a sensitive side to get to first base with his object of pursuit. But in Sport, his entire existence consists of pretending to be someone he’s not, putting on a false image for the world, his fear of being outed a constant one. The premise (as well as Rock’s ritual humiliation throughout the film) is a cutting metaphor for Hudson’s career. All that’s missing is him putting on a female bathrobe (as Cary does in Baby)…”because I just went gay all of a sudden!”

Between them, Ford, Capra, Huston & Wilder earned over a dozen competitive Oscars. Hawks had to settle for a single nod (for Sergeant York) and a Lifetime Achievement kudo from the Academy decades later. The USPS will probably be the same way; Hawks will get his stamp eventually. But even for this Hawks veteran, the PFA offers some golden opportunities for films rarely screened. It’s a chance not to be missed. Hope to see you there.

For more discussion on Baby and postage stamps, come visit my blog here.

BANG BANG: Brian Darr

2011-12-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

Finally time for me to contribute to this BANG BANG thing we've cooked up. Many many thanks to Ryland for doing the greater part of the organizing legwork. On to my wrap-up...

2011 was a year filled with terrible and wonderful things for me. When it comes to film-watching, there was plenty that fell into the "wonderful" category. My relationship with the cinema, and especially the "new" cinema, is constantly changing, and finding a way to put together a coherent top ten list encapsulation was more of a struggle for me than ever this year. So in true obsessive fashion, I've made a "modular" top ten, exploiting various quirks of eligibility that diehard list-watchers and -makers may recognize, but that everyone else can just read as an excuse for a nice round top 25.

Five magnificent films that had a week-long "commercial" release in San Francisco in 2011. Definitely on my top ten list, no matter how you slice it:

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011) From the beautifully slo-mo opening sequence of Manhattanites in ritualized motion, reminiscent of James Benning's early collaborations with Bette Gordon, I suspected I was seeing something special. Drying my eyes during the closing credits, I knew for sure that I had. "You will weep and know why." If you've heard of this sprawling, 150-minute character drama about a teenager (Anna Paquin) struggling with every emotion under the sun in the wake of a traffic accident, you've probably also heard how it was given short shrift by a studio contractually obliged to release it but seemingly determined to take a loss on it. Though frustrations of the legal system is a sub-theme of the movie, (as are poetry, post-9/11 stress, burgeoning sexuality, opera, and a million other concerns) it's a shame that the story of Margaret's belated and shoddy distribution has overshadowed all other discussions about the film. To be expected when prints disappear from theatres after a week or two, and perhaps reversible now that the film is re-opening at a Greenwich Village theatre today; I hope a Frisco Bay venue tries the same gambit soon.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Part Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) Into the cave.
The Tree of Life (Terence Malick, 2011) Into the light. Multiple viewings and much ruminating have made its evident flaws insignificant in the face of its visionary design.

A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011) Keira Knightley's polarizing performance in this impeccably composed, perfectly Cronenbergian film, led my way to a new understanding of my long-least favorite genre: the biopic. Historical figures perform specific functions for modern humans; why not allow actors to embody these functions by acting them out on screen?
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010) It's a bit strange that the San Francisco Film Critics Circle picked a largely English-language film for their 2011 Foreign Language Film award. I'll approve and attribute it to the masterful illusionism practiced by its Iranian director, its French star (Juliette Binoche), and the Tuscan countryside setting. All three create a mesmerizing surface beneath which there is even more to see, and contemplate. English-language films just don't do that, do they? Except for the exceptions.

Five superb films I saw in 2011 that screened in San Francisco for the first time this year. All had so-called "commercial" releases except the first one listed; it played for a week in New York but had only a handful of screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival here:

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (Andrei Ujica, 2010) "Look in my eyes; what do you see?...I'm the smiling face on your TV..." The past months have seen the final days of two of the world's most reviled dictators. We can hope, but not really expect, that they won't be replaced by others equally heinous somewhere in the world. But how often does tyranny conform to the images we expect from it? Such a question is at the center of this three-hour compilation of naked newsreel footage taken from the archives of the 1965-1989 Romanian leader's personal photographers. Kim Jong-il's father Kim Il-sung makes an astonishing cameo appearance.
The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman, 2009) Palestinian director Suleiman applies the darkly absurdist, somewhat Tati-esque style he perfected in his previous film Divine Intervention to even more overtly autobiographical material. If its predecessor is any indication, it should only grow in my estimation with repeated viewings in the coming years.
The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010) A strange and remarkable work. The documentary tradition in theatre is long but little-known, so bringing some of its techniques for merging non-fiction material with acted performance into a cinematic sphere feels like a real breath of fresh air. It's particularly inspired in the service of its subject: the life and legacy of Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar.

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011) I run hot and cold on Pedro's filmography, and had even skipped Broken Embraces after being disappointed by his previous two features. I'm back on board. Here, he forays into horror and science fiction without upsetting his delicate balance of telenovelistic melodrama and cinematic spectacle. To hint at why this film is something only Almodovar might have devised is to give too much of its plot away. I'll just say that maybe Bad Education could've been improved with a hint of Karl Freund's 1935 Mad Love in it.
Inni (Vincent Morisset, 2011) Is this monochromatic, visually experimental shadow box a new way forward for the concert film? If you prefer imagining the Icelandic band's sustains ricocheting against the back of a darkened concert hall rather than off beautiful mountains and lakes (as in 2007's Heima), then this is the Sigur Rós movie for you.

Five beautiful films which I didn't see in 2011, but which were first publicly screened in San Francisco this year and were a big part of my conversations about cinema. Having seen them in 2010, I wish I'd made time to see them again when they played in local cinemas in 2011:

A Useful Life (Federico Veiroj, 2010) I never had to see a Uruguayan film before this one to fall in love with this neorealist-goes-expressionist oratorio for that tiny country's cinema culture and one average man's place in it. And out of it.
The Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz, 2010) A fitting swan song for one of the most mysterious filmmakers I know. The impossible-to-peg Chilean died in August but not before gracing us with a beautiful, sprawling adaptation of a novel by 19th-century Romantic Camilo Castelo Branco. (No, I hadn't heard of hm before either.) Dig those digital split diopter shots!
Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010) The British misanthrope-or-is-he's most Ozu-esque film to date.
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) One of the American filmmakers best at portraying the so-called "outsiders" (or should I say the 99%?) of our modern society points her camera into history, showing us the stratifications found among a small community of pioneers heading West circa 1845.
Essential Killing (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010) Just as exciting as The Fugitive except far more ambiguous and ambivalent about its moral position. Pure cinema.

Five terrific films that I saw at San Francisco festivals or other alternative venues in 2011, that have yet to secure "commercial" distribution in this country, as far as I am aware. In alphabetical, not preferential, order:

28.IV.81 (Descending Figures) (Christopher Harris, 2011) A brightly-colored dual-projector comedy set amidst a Florida amusement park passion play where baseball caps mingle with Centurion helmets.
Chantrapas (Otar Iosseliani, 2010) Films about filmmaking are cinephile catnip, right? Well, this certainly trumps The Artist as an authentically moving tribute to a vanished mode of production left behind for a new life and search for meaning.
Disorder (Weikai Huang, 2009) Around Guangzhao in an hour. Dizzying in design, execution, imagery, editing style, and political audaciousness. Truly the closest thing to Dziga Vertov's vision for his kinoks the 21st Century has seen thus far in a single work.
HaHaHa (Hong Sangsoo, 2010) One of the funniest and most thought-provoking films from one of my favorite working directors. Need I say more?
Lethe (Lewis Klahr, 2009) Klahr's collage films can provide a closer look at vintage comic book art than even the most finicky collector is likely to take unless scrutinizing that line between "very fine" and "near mint". We see the visual DNA of colors and shading magnified, and at the same time we read between the panels, guided by the filmmaker's temporal and spatial dislocations. The standout of a strong set of new-ish work Klahr brought for local premieres this year, Lethe is a remix of a 1960s Doctor Solar story that becomes a noirish drama set to Gustav Mahler.

Five amazing films I saw in 2011 that have yet to screen publicly anywhere in San Francisco. In alphabetical, not preferential, order:

Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011) Entrancingly old-fashioned adaptation of Joseph Conrad's first novel, transposed to stuck-in-time Cambodia.
the Day He Arrives (Hong Sangsoo, 2011) Is Hong's return to black-and-white cinematography, eleven years and as many films after Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, a sign that we should question the veracity of every scene, but this time around without a bifurcated structure to help guide us?
Ghost Dance (Mark Wilson, 2009) Named for the call to apocalyptic change performed by the Modoc (as beautifully described in Rebecca Solnit's book River of Shadows), this brief, but spectacularly ever-expanding animation recalls Eadweard Muybridge's own technological call for for a paradigm shift.
Longhorn Tremelo (Scott Stark, 2010) Begins and ends as a study of black shadows against mobile fields, but goes through a dazzling array of burnt-orange-and-white permutations in between. A version is viewable on vimeo, but I'd love to be able to see the full two-projector version somehow.
The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, 2011) A Nietzche-inspired tour de force from one of the most forceful visions around.

BANG BANG: Ryland Walker Knight

2011-12-23T11:25:00.001-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Earlier this week my Indiewire ballot appeared. I still stand by it, I suppose, but even just a week after publication I itch to change things. In fact, the whole enterprise gives me hives to a certain degree. The whole idea of absolutes in general, in any context. If you take a look at that list, you'll see a collection of films, I'd wager, premised on contingency, or some form of mystery or mess or exuberance. Even the more "straight" narratives (Cronenberg's & Jacobs' portrait-films) exhibit an interest in how things do not fit, or ever fix into reliable—much less accepted, normal—forms. Perhaps the best term I can reduce this idea to is a favorite on this blog: navigation. Life's not a maze, but there are hurdles every day, including waking up, not to mention the unexpected tidal wave every so often. We're so used to the narratives we're given or that we give ourselves that eluding the unwanted can wreck a day, a month, a year. (Lucky me: my year saw hiccups and headaches but nothing got wrecked. Truth is, I had a fantastic year. And I'm grateful.) Naturally, I'm attracted to films about finding ways through life.
———
Finding a way to make movie-going more a part of my movie-watching has been difficult this year, the past couple years. Granted, I got to attend Cannes. But the pleasures of that were certainly "extracurricular" as much as within the salles and theaters. The dinners, the new friends, the jokes over whiskey and rosé with Danny and Adrian after long days. But I still cherish movie-going.

Early last week, in fact, I had the supreme pleasure to take in one of the best double bills in recent memory at the Roxie Theatre (with Brian, yes): the early show was Borzage's Moonrise followed by Renoir's first H'wood venture, the insanely under-seen and apparently under-recognized Swamp Water. Two films about the south made by not-southerners that understand the south and southerners in ways you rarely see anymore. (Of course, I'm not a southerner; I'm a Californian. My Okie roots are roots and my relationship to GA/SC is tertiary at best.) But aside from any obtuse anthropological/ethnological reading I can offer, the films exist and excel simply as films. Borzage's at his Murnau best and Renoir is at his dollies-everywhere (and "people as people") best. And they spoke to one another in delicious ways the way a double bill is supposed to work. Steve Seid usually knows what he's doing but this was a special program. The swamp has different narrative functions in the films, but in both the swamp is a hunting ground, a space of violence, something untamable that few can master or at least negotiate (or inhabit!). Again, this speaks to how I see the world at large. Life takes skills we never anticipate requiring, but nonetheless accrue. True to this optimism I harbor—inside an unavoidable but I hope healthy cynicism w/r/t life's obstacles, including people (above all people?)—both protagonists of these films find ways to join the world by their stories' ends.

Then again, not every path is a success. The film I felt worst about leaving off my "official" top ten was Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day. That movie's all about the disconnect we're forced to confront as we grow through adolescence. It's about a lot more, too, including light, but there's a violence in adolescence that it understands (something Haz and I talk about as he is a teacher). This is true of all the Yang pictures I've seen, but this one is obviously special. Its length affords its narrative the space for us to observe characters rationalize their way through choices good and bad alike (though mostly bad) all the way. This is what critics mean when they call a film novelistic: time affording space for character. Granted, that's a limited view of what "the novel" is or can be, but this film in particular, as with many likewise classified films, is after a Dickensian kind of scope forever grounded in place and details. This, too, is how best to think of something like Breaking Bad, which Jen talked about yesterday.

Television, after all, is serialized much how the early money-making novels were; both are strategized as much as constructed with plot doled out in delimited chunks. But, as Jen noted, one of the pleasures of BB is just how digressive it is, how much air time is given to behavior and go-nowhere episodes of bickering. And it's not like this show's hopeful. It's got a pretty grim take on human desire and nature and intelligence. As I've said before, these characters are idiots. Walter White seems to have figured out a few things watching Gus operate, like the cost of survival in such a dangerous game as the drug racket, but he's still a bald, selfish, myopic stranger to himself and his oh-so-beloved family by the end of this last season. And the person he's closest to has every reason in the world to want to slit his throat.
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I've been using my tumblr more than this home base throughout the year. Part of it is simply ease of use. Another is desire. The last is time. I like the scrapbook/notebook feel of the microblog. It feels like a repository of reminders. And it usually takes very little effort. Writing here is more work. (Writing anything is work!) Not sure what the new year will bring, but I'm not quite ready to quit my baby. But I quit making zines to make this blog and I may wind up quitting this blog to wind up making more films. Even if they're just little goofs about the sounds of seagulls or odd poems about light and memory. The future has more answers than me.
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One thing I know for sure: though I've made some great friends via emails (cf. this week), there's a lot I'm proud of from this past year outside the walls and tubes of the internet. Thank you to everybody who helped make those realities real. You know who you are.

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Ryland Walker Knight is a writer and filmmaker living in San Francisco. He has three names, which you can read above, at left, and all over this blog.

BANG BANG: Durga Chew-Bose

2011-12-22T10:49:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

by Durga Chew-Bose

I’ve been especially preoccupied with women this year. My desktop is a cluttered mess of young Michelle Pfeiffers and Diane Lanes, a spitfire-y Linda Manz, a pouty Tatum O’Neal, Elaine May, Gilda, Sissy and Shelley, Karen Black (multiple times), Cher with Winona, and screengrabs of Gena as Minnie. The young mother in Andrea Arnold’s short film, Wasp, is giving me the finger, Haydée Politoff, her back, Geraldine Chaplin and Monica Vitti seduce, smoke…seduce, and Bibi Andersson is beside herself. Marie-France Posier—who in an eerie way, congeals into "Laura Palmer"—is slouched in a bathtub, moon-eyed and fully-clothed, hair braided and boots dangling over the edge like a child who’s not quite sure how she got there or if she wants to get out.

I should probably organize all of these pictures. Or at least drag them into a folder. But what’s the fun in that? I enjoy the distraction; their perpetual orbit, the familiarity. The delight of seeing Chiara Mastroianni and remembering the way she says “Ann-Gé-lah Bah-ssette” when ribbing about Emmanuelle Devos’ butt in Desplechin’s Un conte de Noël. Or even now as I write, on the top right corner of my screen, Diane Keaton’s Kay Adams is smiling: red dress and sun hat, she’s listening as Michael tells her to eat her spaghetti while he spins a story about Luca Brasi.

Barbara Loden’s Wanda aired on TCM in the fall. I watched it twice in a row—the first time completely crushed but immediately devoted; the second time, with a pen and my notebook. I jotted down images and words that drew near in the way some movies—the most pressing ones—appear to come from somewhere itchy inside me. I also copied dialogue; harmless in print, vivid, near wicked on screen. Like how credulously Wanda asks at a dive bar if “[She] can borrow a comb,” or how promptly a patron spots her sitting alone with no money and says, “I’ll take care of this.” I scribbled stuff like “washed-up cheerleader ponytail,” “WOOLWORTH’S parking lot,” “Mabel Longhetti, Rayette Dipesto…” “pincushion top bun, hand resting on forehead as cigarette burns,” “sitting in back of empty bus,” “sits with knees up at movie theater,” “follows instructions!!!” Soon after, I wrote about the film and Loden, and her marriage to Elia Kazan for This Recording.

At least twice a month this year I watched the same YouTube clip: a 1974 episode of the Dick Cavett Show with guest Lucille Ball. Cavett’s hair looks two days short of a haircut and Lucille is wrapped in a brown Muppet-trimmed jacket. Her legs are crossed away from him, impassive as if sitting at a coffee shop one table over. She turns her torso only slightly to answer his questions, as if saying, “Why are you talking to me?” It’s incredible. But when Cavett recalls the time a Marx brother appeared on her show, Lucille melts. Her eyes roll back as she says his name—“Haaaaaarpo." Pure piety. As Dick sets up the clip, Lucille falls back into her sad clown state, burrowing in her feathers, only to jump at any chance to honor her friend; a "darling man." Mimicking the famous mirror scene in Duck Soup, Lucy, dressed as Harpo, surprises him and matches his every move. Two Harpos. Two distressed top-hats. Two bulb horns. Out-and-out laughs. My face gets mangled with cheer each time.

Mia Hansen-Løve makes moments on screen that I'd like to elope with. Her 2009 feature, Le père de mes enfants, plucks ornament from the everyday—the way three daughters occupy adult spaces, a father's unexpected helplessness, adolescent agonies, a parent's things—and her follow-up, Un amour de jeunesse, kindly plots the elaborate confusion and spectacle of first love and teenage heartbreak. It screened once at IFC and I made sure to see it.

Teenagers, especially French girls, are terrifically soulful characters. Like Sandrine Bonnaire's Suzanne or Virginie Ledoyen as Christine in L'eau Froide, they are rash, sneaky, jumpy, and dip into dark bouts of misery or big dopey loves. Hansen-Løve (who too, looks eternally adolescent and slightly anonymous like a face in a found passport photo) perfectly maneuvers teenage girl unrest. Tethered to a boy who leaves her, Camille (Lola Creton) undergoes grueling grief—inexplicably endless when we're young. But before that—and what Hansen-Løve does so well—Romance is breathless, braless, a series of grand gestures and promises that bank on time never ticking. In one scene, Camille and Sullivan are in the country experiencing an afternoon cold war; she upstairs in bed moping, he outside, somewhere. He returns with food and cooks dinner for the two of them. Later, Camille stumbles downstairs and slides into her chair. She has one bite before slowly crawling across the table's bench which separates them and nudges her head into his neck. All is forgotten, for now. The audience knows that this brief moment of peace is bittersweet and that we cannot will it to last longer.

And finally, here are bits from a November 1993 PREMIERE piece, She’s Done Everything (except direct) by Rachel Abramowitz, about Polly Platt, a woman I truly admire. When she died on July 27th, I read everything I could find on her life.

"Tonight she seems quite ebullient, charged up by her recent discovery of two young filmmakers from Texas… Bottle Rocket makes her giddy….'If I were young, I’d give up everything -boyfriend, home- and go to Texas and beg these guys to let me work on their movie.'

…

"Still, when her ex-husband picks up, all her expansiveness vanishes. She seems to contract into an almost fetal position. Her voice becomes tight, careful. The conversation has a ritualistic quality: all the habits of intimacy, but no longer the trust. She treats him as if he were fragile, thanking him for the flowers he sent her, babying him with the good buzz she’s heard about his latest venture. She tells him about Bottle Rocket. 'It’s in Texas and there’s no Larry McMurtry, but it has a bit of the feel of The Last Picture Show, she says. She asks him to talk to PREMIERE about her. He refuses. 'I’ve been talking all these fucking years about you!' she erupts."

...

"One year later, they packed their meager belongings into a car, along with Platt’s one-eyed dog, Puppy, and set out for L.A., where they soon befriended the auteurs they worshiped. One night, Howard Hawks took the pair out for dinner, along with a beautiful young starlet from Rio Lobo named Sherry Lansing. Toward the end of the meal, Lansing decided to visit the ladies’ room. 'She stood up, and she was gorgeous. And I was not,' says Platt. 'Peter and Howard watched her. She walked to the bathroom, and I remember having Howard on my right and Peter on my left, and their eyes were following her.' As Lansing disappeared from view, Platt recalls, Hawks leaned across her and said, ‘Peter, now that is the kind of girl that you should be with.’ I remember thinking, It’s like I don’t exist.'"

…

"One summer while the children were with Bogdanovich, Platt drank seventeen cases of beer and wrote Pretty Baby."

…

"After sending other emissaries, Brooks asked her personally to produce Broadcast News, which she did. Her all-around dedication to the project renewed her legend for telling detail. Brooks had wanted Broadcast News’ key color to be red; now he was shooting the schoolyard scene where the young Aaron is getting beaten up. He looked up and saw the woman who fifteen years ago had removed the E from a TEXACO sign; she was down on her knees, painting a red accent line on a staircase. 'If you were putting together a baseball team, this is the person you’d kill for,' says Albert Brooks, who played the adult Aaron. 'She can play any position. She can hit; she can pitch.'"

…

"'There are times when I hear Jim talk that I experience something that is so much worse than the jealousy that I felt toward Cybill. I am so envious of his ability to think and express himself that I think I’m going to die. I totally identify with Salieri [in Amadeus], because when he picks up Mozart’s music and starts talking about how brilliant it is, I feel like that’s me. But I don’t have any desire to destroy Jim or Peter or anybody.'"

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Durga Chew-Bose is a writer living in Brooklyn. She twitters here and tumbls here.

BANG BANG: Jennifer K. Stewart

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

Even though television serials are the right medium with which to tell immersive character stories, it is still a pretty rare thing to see a show that isn’t primarily plot-driven. What I mean is that our usual (pedestrian mainstream) experience in front of the screen is to be very quickly clued into certain archetypical/idealized characters, so that we may watch said characters react to a series of events (loosely, ‘plot’). Nothing explains this better than the Hangover movies, where the whole point is to watch oh-so-subtly differentiated dudes responding to outrageous events. Note that Hangover’s reverse chronology is just the ideal cinematic contrivance for getting the audience to salivate in anticipation of immanent character reactions. We want to see that guy being that guy, etc.

And really, I shouldn’t be smug or cynical, because at the very least, all these structural conventions (i.e. beginning the film at its chronological end) are interesting, if only insofar as they get allied to other generic conventions (the dude movie, etc.) Film itself mentors us into reading character and personality as popular film conventions have conceived them. A show begins by showing us just enough characterization to clarify precisely what the character will experience and exactly how s/he will and will not change (ex: The Godfather trilogy), so that we may watch a certain stability of who they truly are prevail through all happenstance/fantastical events. This film shorthand for characterization is itself highly formulaic, though it can still be interesting or even original – think of how There Will Be Blood showed you who Daniel Plainview is through his incredibly tense and impatient dealings with Paul/Eli Sunday. The innovation being that Plainview was too horrifying to be legibly revealed all at once, and his character so graphically linked with the confusion of blood and oil (insights for another essay never written, alas).

Anyhow, that this kind of storytelling continues to prevail – namely, 1. introduction of characters 2. embroil characters in plot machine so we can see them being themselves OR turning inevitably into who we suspect they are to be – is easily explained by how much we enjoy watching eccentric, essentialized, and/or idealized personalities undergo life and its passions.

The past couple years, I’ve been thinking about how the advent of great serial television series has allowed groundbreaks from this tradition. Pretty simply, serials have the requisite time in which to do so. Even a film trilogy has such limited space within which to upset the normal character/plot formula. This is because most of the disruptive work requires defamiliarizing who it was you thought was on screen, and a two-hour film simply hasn’t the time to lay groundwork. Imagine trying to make a Breaking Bad movie capable of showing any of the central characters (Skyler, Jessie, Gus, Walt Jr, Marie, and Hank, let alone Walter). Disastrous.

Breaking Bad is doing something subtle and thrilling. Think of how cursory the ‘plot’ is – nothing just happens, all events are a precipitated by complex backmoves and antecedents between combinations of characters, and virtually all of these on-the-fly miracles of impulse in the face of struggle and resistance from others. Even Walt’s vainglorious inability to let Hank mistake Gale for Heisenberg owes to the same uncertainty principle (right?) as rashly swerving into traffic to keep Hank from Gus’ laundry. If there is anything predictable about Walt, it is that he finds himself – much to his own horror – capable of unpredictability. It is neither characteristic nor uncharacteristic, and this is what the show has been demonstrating from the start. Consider Walt’s tortured and circumambulating dispensing of Krazy-8 in the early episodes of Season One. Attempting to, oh, rationally persuade himself to murder the drug dealer bike-locked by the neck in Jessie’s basement, Walt composes a pro versus con list whilst sitting on the toilet. But it took a sandwhich, a fall down the stairs, and a shattered plate shard in Walt’s leg; committed decision not being enough, he needed a chance for reactive adrenaline.

Note how Skyler’s resolve against Walt was at first backed by steadfast principle, only to then just wear away. She seizes upon the delusion that good (paying for Hank’s rehabilitation) justifies the means. Welcomes it even, so that the war of attrition is over and she need no longer resist. On any other show, once established that her character stood for any principled stance, there’d be no need to show any more of her. Instead, she breaks, just like everyone else on Breaking Bad.

By the end of 2011’s fourth season, we can see Walt’s now refined ability to premeditate complex manipulations on equal par with Gus. Yet recall the heartbreaking scene between Walt and his son in S04E10, “Salud.” It’s the morning after Walt and Jessie’s physical fight. Junior’s calling and buzzing as Walt, disorientated, medicated, beaten, pulls back a sheet stuck to his face with dried blood. The shroud comes away for a few precious minutes and Junior sees his dad unguarded. At first Walt sticks to the story – “don’t tell your mother, I was gambling, can we just keep this between us?” – but when Junior asks who did you get into a fight with that’s the end of Walt’s posturing. Walt sees Jessie where Junior is; the possibility of relief, forgiveness. But as sobriety dawns Walt takes it all back and the layers of blood-caked cover go back on. Now Walt asks Junior not for connection and forgiveness, but to promise to not take that unshrouded image as defining; the way the “empty spray-paint can” imagine of his rasping father dying of Huntington’s disease, is Walt’s only “real memory” of his father.

W: “I don’t want that to be your memory of me when I’m gone.”

Jr: “Remembering you that way wouldn’t be so bad. The bad way to remember you would be the way you’ve been this whole last year. At least last night, you were real. Y’know?”

Walt is confusing the revelation of nothing beneath the shroud with emptiness. RJ Mitte kinda steals this scene, and Walt junior is now the character to watch in Season Five…

p.s. Jessie. No one’s been broken more than Jessie, in ways he has yet to fully discover.

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Jennifer K Stewart is a philosopher and yoga instructor living in Canada. She believes in the body.

BANG BANG: Akiva Gottlieb

2011-12-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

by Akiva Gottlieb

The movie I most wanted to evangelize for all year—at least before Margaret started kicking down doors—was usually synopsized in embarrassing fashion. Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, in prose courtesy of IMDb: “A sixty-something woman, faced with the discovery of a heinous family crime and in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, finds strength and purpose when she enrolls in a poetry class.” Yes, every word of this heartwarming short story is technically accurate, but the implied causality is almost willfully misleading. In actuality, her discovery of the heinous crime is sublimated, her awareness of her Alzheimer’s is either denied or forgotten, and if she finds strength and purpose when enrolling in a poetry class, it’s not the result of anything she learns there.

The perverse irony of this unpredictable, quietly devastating film is Lee’s framing of his protagonist’s terminal illness as less of an impediment than an enabler—it causes her to forget, but just as crucially gives her license to walk away from trauma. Poetry’s most resonant mysteries pivot upon the impossibility of knowing the difference between a selective memory and a faulty one.

Lee’s film is an object lesson in everyday escapism, and if he never indicts the movies as our favorite emotional management tool, he probably expects we’d repress that knowledge anyway. Poetry draws a precise visual map of those other places we hide from what we don’t want to know—behind locked doors, under the covers, in the shower, in a karaoke bar, in a poem—and the negotiations we’re willing to make with ourselves and others to keep an ugly truth from coming to light. This is not a chronicle of disease and triumph, or finding one’s voice, but a testimonial to compartments and evasions. Poetry’s poetry lessons allegorize the process of emotional disengagement as a method of scaling back, limiting one’s scope, concentrating. To repress one memory might just be way of focusing more intensely on another. A debilitating illness is a tragedy, but Poetry discovers a state of grace—or at least a deferral of inevitabilities—in being lost for words.

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Akiva Gottlieb writes about film for The Nation, but does not write poetry. He lives in Michigan.

BANG BANG: Eric Freeman

2011-12-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

Things I Found Interesting in Things I Saw This Year by Eric Freeman

A Brighter Summer Day (dir. Edward Yang): I saw this in January at a mostly empty screening with no intermission in Berkeley, and it’s still probably the best thing I’ve seen all year, old or new. Read Rosenbaum's longer piece if you want more comprehensive breakdown. I’ll just note that what strikes me about ABSD (and Yi Yi, as well) is that the epic scope follows not from stunning natural vistas or loud pronouncements of import, as we’ve come to expect from the medium, but finding an interesting situation and treating the context and its characters with complete respect and as much depth as necessary. It’s an epic because it’s so true to the way people relate to one another.

World on a Wire (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder): If ABSD is the best movie I saw this year, then this one has proven to have fascinated me the most. It was my first Fassbinder, and since then I’ve steadily run through a good chunk of his career. One thing I love about this one, apart from the “what if we shot through four panes of glass?” aesthetic, is how RWF sets up shots where a pan finishes in a hilariously overdetermined setup. It’s the movie in microcosm: things may appear free-flowing, but everything has been decided already.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (dir. Sean Durkin): A disappointment even as I enjoyed it, if only because it’s so easy to see how it could be better. While the structure is indeed very clever, many of the match cuts fall flat because it’s immediately when and where the scenes take place. As the last shot proves, Durkin wants the audience to identify with Martha’s displacement, yet continually keeps her at remove. Which is all a way of saying that the film needs more moments of actual ambiguity, like the several shots of Martha walking through a dark hall, when it’s unclear where she is until she ends up in a room she herself might not have expected to enter.

Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami): Ryland thinks this film is fundamentally a work of criticism, and I mostly agree with that statement. But I also think it comes across as more dismissive than it should, because in this case the criticism gets at important points about how relationships change over time, the value of authenticity in everything from art to interactions, and all sorts of other deep philosophical questions that we tend not to consider on a daily basis. So, yes, it’s criticism, but also proof that criticism isn’t really about the thing it directly addresses, but deeper conceptions and feelings about how people relate to the world around them.

Mildred Pierce (dir. Todd Haynes): It’s no surprise that a director who regularly gets great performances from actresses does so well with Kate Winslet, who plays this role as a mix of her usual technical strength and the rare looseness usually lacking in her most awarded work. What’s less expected is that Evan Rachel Wood acquits herself so well. Veda can easily come off as a monster, but Wood instills her with enough relatable pride to seem human. Her best moment (and also the one that will make me seem particularly pervy for noting) comes when, directly after Mildred finds out about the affair with Monty, Veda gets out of bed fully naked, struts over to her vanity, and regards herself in the mirror, all as a sort of victory celebration after embarrassing her mother. It’s a triumphant moment for the character, the point at which she believes to have finally proven herself as a dominant woman. For different reasons, the scene makes the same case for the actress.

Drive (dir. Nicholas Winding Refn): I’m of the camp that takes this movie as a massive spastic fuckup, mostly because NWR has no idea what he was trying to do and not for some difficulty in melding tones and styles. But there are some delightful moments of clarity, especially the opening set-piece and the various music videos (not like music videos) that distill the latent emotions of the piece into perfect pairings of image and sound. For all the talk of Drive as an arthouse action movie, the best parts are almost always the most overtly commercial.

Rango (dir. Gore Verbinski): It’s become standard in some circles to say that the home-viewing experience is almost as good as the theater these days, but Rango is the first movie that ever made me think it could be true. I loved the movie in March, mostly for its gag-a-minute pace, but I don’t think I fully appreciate the visual dazzle until I saw it on the very excellent Blu-Ray transfer on a reasonably-sized TV. Multiplex projection standards are so poor that, for a detail-driven, wide-audience movie like this one, it’s almost preferable to watch it on a couch.

Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig): As the thinkpieces all said, an important step forward for the status of women in Hollywood comedies. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a sad commentary on exactly what those Hollywood comedies entail. Almost all the best parts are moments of emotional discord between Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph or throwaway lines from the amazing Melissa McCarthy -- the worst are the zany, insert-setpiece-here laugh-generators that could have been ported in from any Apatowville (or, worse yet, Farrelly Bros) creation. Turn this into a movie about adult friendship with regular laughs, and it might have felt a little more true to its characters. Instead, it’s all too familiar.

Enlightened (created by Mike White and Laura Dern): This HBO series isn’t especially cinematic, but it deserves mention on this list for Laura Dern’s performance as Amy Jellicoe, in my opinion the best acting work of the year. It’s easy to caricature Amy—the pilot arguably does it too often—as a hypocritical woman who believes herself to have found inner peace when she falls victim to the same sort of jealousies and grudges she did before getting a few weeks of new-age counseling. In Dern’s hands, however, Amy is fascinatingly complicated, oblivious enough to peacock a new friend in front of past confidants but introspective enough to acknowledge that pettiness a few hours later. In a TV landscape heavy on melodrama, Enlightened stands out as a series about the everyday difficulties of trying to be a better person in a world that tends to incentivize the opposite behavior. It’s about self-awareness and emotional processes, and those battles register on Dern’s face as often as they manifest in an external conflict.

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Eric Freeman writes regularly about sports at The Classical and Ball Don’t Lie, and intermittently elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @freemaneric.

BANG BANG: Matthew Flanagan

2011-12-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

by Matthew Flanagan

I seem to be roughly a year behind with everything at the moment, so will have to shirk the brief here and recall films I saw in and from 2010 instead. Perhaps that’s best: reflecting on a year too soon tends not to leave enough time for its patterns and convergences to emerge, if they are to. A few neat couplings from 2010: films about the sea and its displacement of capital (trade and gold) — The Forgotten Space, Film socialisme; gentle forest fictions — Yuki & Nina, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; the past and present of American cities — Get Out of the Car!, Cold Weather; sharp, lucid digital films, shot for love and little money — Saskia Gruyaert, Raya Martin, Antoine Thirion’s Tales & Gina Telaroli’s A Little Death; and, loosely, Daïchi Saïto’s Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis & Richard Skelton’s LP Landings. There were other films of note — Thomas Arslan’s In the Shadows, Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide, Jean-Claude Rousseau’s Festival, Nathaniel Dorsky’s sublime Compline & Aubade — but, in all, two favourites: Liu Jiayin’s 607 and Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins.

Liu’s Oxhide II (2009) is, in its small way, an extraordinary structural film, but I think I like the lesser-known 607 more. It’s an ostensibly minimalist work: a single, 16-minute shot (followed by three brief dissolves) of clear water in a wooden bathtub: a quiet, almost serene, space, just theatrical enough. The actors are Liu’s hands and those of her mother and father, a porcelain fish, a few bobbing mushrooms and the disruptions of the water line. That’s all. The hands tease and hook each other, and it seems most movements exist for their sound: ripples breaking and bubbles tearing the surface. A minor, playful film, and the most pleasurable of recent memory.

Robinson in Ruins was first screened here in the UK at LFF on the 19th and 21st of October, the days immediately before and after what was probably the year’s defining domestic event: the announcement of the CSR, a structural adjustment programme aimed at permanently altering the role of the welfare state in British society. Keiller’s film was shot between January and November of 2008, documenting that year’s financial crisis before the cost of its systemic collapse was transformed into the class project of austerity. Its study of mostly agrarian, bucolic spaces — connected by a network of military bases, oil pipelines and sites of social unrest — questions, laterally, the autonomy of our landscape by way of a biophilic inventory of flowers, plants, trees and a few animals. With this shift in focus, Robinson in Ruins leaves behind the urban and (increasingly invisible) sites of industrial activity in London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), and that geography is remapped instead in Owen Hatherley’s superb book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, published concurrently. Hatherley’s book is a more pointed analysis of the abject failure of the neoliberal project, and together with Robinson in Ruins offers a vital base to reflect on the point of transition at which we find ourselves: wondering whether the CSR signals a permanent reentrenchment of neoliberalism amidst crisis (seemingly, its natural state), or whether the strain of underwriting its collapse will prove too much for the vestiges of democratic capitalism to bear. This year, we’ve watched as the locus of what began to unravel in 2008 has shifted from the US, via the UK, to the most intertwined states of Europe, and it’s likely one particular sequence from 2011 could prove prophetic: the end of Christoph Hochhausler’s high-finance art movie The City Below and its hushed final retreat: “…it’s begun.” Hatherley’s book ends its dérive in Liverpool amidst one of the most striking visible corpses of the Blairite redevelopment project: the few lonely cultural and residential substitutes for deindustrialisation at the heart of its docks, the thinnest of economic and social hopes. We visited Liverpool on the second to last day of 2010, and, picking out some lights on the other side of the Mersey, the immediate future looked pretty bleak. This year, it’s bleaker still.

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Matthew Flanagan lives in the UK and blogs sometimes at his blog.

BANG BANG: Dave McDougall

2011-12-20T10:56:00.001-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

Selected 2011 discoveries, briefly noted and across various media by Dave McDougall.
———

Homeland —— the characters on this show run deep; their history and demons are as much a driver as the twists of plot. Which certainly helps Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin and Damian Lewis and Morena Baccarin act their asses off. Allegiances don't shift as much as they are gradually revealed; even though the audience isn't only in the headspace of Danes' rebellious CIA agent, everything is filtered through the line between the watchers and the suspects, and the further into each world we're given access, the more complicated the line between terrorist and hero. This isn't a war of ideas as much as a war between wounded people who've sided with ideas, and those wounds are what drive both the terrorists and those trying to stop them. This week's showstopping season finale toyed with heavy political and personal dénouement and teased an even greater moral complexity to come. If there's a better show on television right now, I'd like to see it.

The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011) —— A masterpiece, a perfect screwball comedy, and a vicious, misanthropic, prickly little thing. What Ignatiy said, and then some.

And two other filmic masterpieces-to-be-named-later that also tackle communication (and shared histories) between men and women, on which I'll have more to say in the Mubi year-end roundup.
———
Governments toppled, not by social media but by people going to the streets to battle for their due. But the dynamics of open source protest and new media communication flows were a big part of why this was the year that kicked off an #ArabSpring, an indignado movement, a global coalition of #Occupy protests. It's not just coordination of protests but the ability for knowledge flows to reveal the silent political preferences of a people, and to rally supporters to the cause. None of these movements were created by the emergence of social media -- all grew out of previous organization by activists on the ground, over years and decade -- but it's hard to deny that these movements could only coalesce through communication, and that new forms of one-to-many communication smooth the friction of reaching out to wide audiences.
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As the 2008 financial crisis has shifted to become a crisis of solvency and liquidity in the Eurozone, the economic intelligence of the left-ish political blogotwittersphere rises almost as fast as events shift; but the key insight is that, unlike the people-powered movements and revolutions mentioned above, is that the fate of all of our economic lives still hangs in the balance of deals to be cut in back rooms by power brokers. Which, as those same movements will attest, is the opposite of democracy. If the revolutions of Egypt or Libya or Tunisia (or Syria or Bahrain or Yemen, if you're looking for revolutions-in-the-making) were best revealed by the participants themselves in 140 characters (or 140 character updates, compiled), then the stories of our economic dilemmas have been best told by those savvy enough to get to the bottom of capital flows and reveal these inner workings via blogs, articles, and interviews, whose links were embedded in 140-character updates themselves. Information, in all its forms -- pictures, videos, charts, analysis, stories from the front lines -- move and flicker and flow just the ways frames do in the cinema. For me, these were a few of the sources that made the leap to essential in 2011, from the MENA uprisings to the Econopocalyse and the social movements pushing back:

———
Among all the books and blogs and analysis, an epic cornerstone of how to even begin to think of how we got here — David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years.
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David McDougall is a writer, filmmaker, and media strategist based in London and Los Angeles. He's got blogs and films and words in various places, some of them on the internet. He twitters here.

BANG BANG: Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger

2011-12-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger Present: Crime

Netflix doubled our monthly fee this year. What a crime. Here are the best crime movies we saw on Netflix this year.

1. Carlos (Mini-Series), 2010, Olivier Assayas. Carlos is an interesting movie because the entire six hours is comprised of five repeating scenes: Cars driving up to a place; Johnny Walker Red being consumed; Shooting into a ceiling with an automatic weapon; Deboarding planes; The Cure. Because of, not despite, this simplicity, Carlos is irresistible, like (see picture). Don’t let the six hour running time dissuade you – Assayas burns through scenes with the naïve recklessness of a true Marxist. In a good way.

2. The Robber (Der Räuber), 2010, Benjamin Heissenberg. Further proof that rich people run. Madoff probably ran 5 miles, 5 days a week, before going into the office and robbing half the eastern seaboard. The Robber runs before and after his job. He also amasses a sizeable fortune, although his main asset is physical endurance. Unfortunately, even the best marathon runners tire and shit themselves, which is probably exactly what Madoff is doing these days.

3. Army of Shadows (L'armée des ombres), 1969, Jean-Pierre Melville. Not a crime movie exactly, unless you count Nazis as criminals, which basically nobody does anymore. Vive la Résistance.

4. Body Heat, 1981, Lawrence Kasdan. Body Heat is about a lawyer played by William Hurt who has an affair with the wife of a wealthy businessman. He is quickly ensnared in a plot to kill her husband. See, lawyers are people too. It’s the single largest act of betrayal perpetrated in Miami-Dade county pre-Lebron James. And the sex. Oh, the sex. It’s so inappropriately graphic, it’s like watching your parents do it. Great performances by Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Ted Danson, and Kasdan captures the fetid, damp rot of south Florida perfectly, which is fortunate, as I personally have no desire to visit.

5. Revanche, 2008, Götz Spielmann. We all know one of the dumbest crimes is trying to turn a Ho into a Housewife. Thankfully, Revanche knows this too. By killing off the female lead, the film is allowed to move onto more interesting relationships, like that of an aging father and his wayward son. Alex (played by Johannes Krisch) contemplates revenge numerous times: against his lover’s killer (gun), against his own father (Oedipal), and against many logs of firewood (axe) but manages to find a sort of redemption.

6. VOICEOVER: The Only Thing More Dangerous Than a Bartender Serving You Drinks is One That’s Feeding You LIES. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a 1973 Film by Peter Yates.

[cut to: A MASKED MAN FIRING A SHOTGUN. The screen goes black.]

V.O. (CONT’D): With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies.

[title: NOW PLAYING.]

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Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger are writers living in New York. But they're friends, just like California. Julian can be found here and Cuyler writes at http://cablesports.blogspot.com

BANG BANG: Adam Hartzell

2011-12-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

BANG BANG is our week-long look back at 20!!, or "Twenty-bang-bang," or 2011, with contributions from all over aiming to cover all sorts of enthusiasms from film to music to words and beyond.

by Adam Hartzell

I spend most of my time watching movies out of sync with my time and place. Since I prefer cinema from elsewhere, only one U.S. film makes my Top Ten, though it does make the top spot. Work and financial constraints keep me from traveling abroad for film festival premieres, which means I have to wait until they make it here to San Francisco. So my Top Ten lists usually say something about my cosmopolitan dreams that are anchored awake by my restricted finances and mobility. But here are 10 films which were released this year, or made their way to Bay Area festivals in 2011, about which I have found myself still ruminating in a positive way since they shined their light and heat on my eyes.
　
10. Passion (Khusel Shunal) (Byamba Sakhya, 2010, Mongolia) I knew nothing about Mongolian cinema until this documentary about said cinema, told through a lonely road movie, found its way into the program of this year's San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival. Now I want to know more, which is ironic since the film presents a pessimistic view of Mongolian cinema's future. But it's at least caught the fascination of one viewer even more isolated from this nation's cinema than the Mongolian residents portrayed in the documentary.

9. Aurélie Laflamme's Diary (Christian Laurence, 2010, Canada) A French language film from Quebec that was part of the NY/SF International Children's Film Festival that ran from October 21-23 at Viz Cinema, it ended up winning an audience award. I would have voted for it as well, had I seen it in the theater along with that awarding audience rather than on DVD for an sf360.org overview I wrote on the festival. It's a teen film that doesn't have to throw an American-Pie in our faces thinking that will entertain the kids and kidults. Marianne Verville is a refreshing presence in the lead role, allowed to be awkward in what is an awkward time of our lives. Plus, although she gets the boy the genre demands, she isn't swan-ed away from her duckling beginnings.

8. The Trip (Michael Winterbottom, 2011, United Kingdom) I am still laughing about the scene where Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are riffing on announcing the inexact time of an ancient battle. Adding to this comedic pleasure was that I got to laugh at this scene along with a friend I hadn’t seen in some time whom I randomly ran into in the lobby of The Bridge theatre before the screening. It was a nice day in the Richmond neighborhood thanks to the run-ins such local establishments afford.

7. Oki's Movie (Hong Sang-soo, 2010, South Korea) I got to see three of my favorite director’s films for the first time this year. (The others were Ha Ha Ha on DVD because I couldn't make the screenings at the San Francisco International Film Festival and The Day He Arrives on screen at the Starz Denver Film Festival in mid-November with the proprietor of the Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee blog, Peter Nellhaus.) Thanks to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, I was able to watch Oki's Movie in the theatre in late June after having already seen it on DVD to prepare a piece for sf360. I'm biased in that I always find something to ruminate on endlessly in a Hong film (even with my least favorite, Woman Is the Future of Man). But Oki's Movie seems to have won over those who haven't been fans of his work. I think a big reason is the auditioning of men in Oki's movie nested within "Oki's Movie" that Andrew Tracy expertly analyzes in the Fall 2010 issue of Cinema Scope magazine.

6. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (Leanne Pooley, 2009, New Zealand) Finally getting the theatre release it deserved, The Topp Twins graced our local screens outside of the film festivals that started the momentum (Frameline in 2010 and Mostly British in 2011). I own the DVD and saw the film in the theatre three times, once each at those festivals and once in Berkeley at Shattuck Cinemas with my cousin when it was released. Even after all these screenings, I'm still moved by how much major moments of the lives of these yodeling, country singing lesbian twins are tied up with major political successes in New Zealand history. I am still giddy about getting to meet them for an interview for sf360, the most nervous I have ever been for an interview.

5. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong, 2010, South Korea) Poetry definitively represents what I have been appreciating lately about South Korean cinema - how much it has opened up cinematic space for its senior actresses. Yun Jung-hee came out of retirement for this virtuoso performance of Lee Chang-dong's as he continues to explore the life of the outsider in South Korea. During my first draft of this brief commentary on Poetry, I went into a rant about how, if there failed to be a Best Actress nom nod to Yun, the Oscars would continue to be irrelevant in my cinematic life. But after writing that draft, I went to talk with Brian Darr of Hell on Frisco Bay blog and he informed me the Los Angeles Critic Circle gave Yun their Best Actress award. As a result, I put my seething rage at the Oscars as a failed institution back into its cage to be unleashed some other day.

4. The Salesman (Sébastian Pilote, 2011, Canada) I am someone upon whom car commercials fail to make the intended impact. I don't desire the products they advertise. And I don't buy into the false sense of freedom the commercials purport to symbolize. (The streets are usually much more crowded than as portrayed in the commercials and buying a car shackles you with debt, high gas prices, and vast acres of asphalt requirements for roads and parking.) That said, I'm primed to appreciate the tragedy in The Salesman, a perfect example of a genre I'm calling 'Post Peak Oil Cinema', where the life of a successful car salesman is turned on its head by the very products he sells so successfully. The Salesman is a sad, sad film that doesn't pummel you but rather slowly piles upon you like the snow that surrounds this little Quebec town.

3. The Life of Fish (Matías Bize, 2010, Chile) My wife and I caught this film during our yearly Caltrain trip to Cinequest in San Jose because it fit with our schedule and it's one of those happy accident, eeny-meeny-miney-mo(e)ments where you select a film with no real sense of what you are getting yourself into and you realize the programmers have made an excellent choice for you. In this film, we travel through a party held in a single house as our main character relives his younger self through his memories and those of others. Simple, poignant, and delightful.

2. Nostalgia for the Light (Patrico Guzmán, 2010, France/Chile/Germany) This was a truly amazing film I saw in the Dolby screening room as part of the press screenings for the San Francisco International Film Festival this year. Guzmán’s pairing of professional astronomers with amateur archaeologists works on so many levels. Even though the archaeologists are searching for the remains of family members killed by their own government, somehow, in spite of all this, Guzmán leaves us with tremendous hope for humanity.

1. Deaf Jam (Judy Lieff, 2011, USA) I have not had the experience with a film for a long time like I had with Lieff’s documentary about high school Deaf poets venturing out into the venues of a (hearing) poetry slam. Cinema transfixed me again at the Mill Valley Film Festival like it did the first time I could not stopping about the impact a film had on me. Lieff captures the vibrancy of American Sign Language through several tactics of translation. Her willingness to mess with the text of subtitling the poems in the opening sequence is mesmerizing. At the same time, she even took the risk not to translate the ASL later in the film and it is just as powerful sans subtitles. Mixed in with this story of the life of young Deaf folk is a story about the struggles of immigrant children whose parents’ citizenship comes after they enter adulthood and a friendship between a young Israeli Jew and Palestinian Muslim. Lieff and the subjects of her documentary show us how ASL is as perfect a language of cinema as any other, leaving you hoping Lieff and the students she films don’t stop here. We need these stories. We need this kind of active, engaged cinema.

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Adam Hartzell is totally bummed that sf360.org is no longer publishing because he had a blast writing for them for three years. He continues to write for Brian Darr's San Francisco film blog, Hell on Frisco Bay, and the premier English language website on South Korean cinema, Koreanfilm.org. He began this year as a guest on an episode of the VCinema podcast where he discussed the original version and the recent re-visioning of the South Korean classic The Housemaid (MP3). He has had a few magazine pieces in Kyoto Journal, a chapter on The Power of Kangwon Province for The Cinema of Japan and Korea (Wallflower Press), and next year he will have a bunch of essays in the upcoming publication of World Directory of Cinema: Korea (Intellect, Ltd.).

The BANG BANG Wagon

2011-12-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

Year's running out. Holidays are closing in. Frisco Bay movie theatres wrapping up their 2011 programming with annual traditions like Wizard of Oz at the Paramount December 30 and It's A Wonderful Life at the Stanford December 24th, although it's already sold out there. Not at the Balboa or (on the 25th) at New People though, both theatres hoping what's proven popular in Palo Alto can be so here in SF too. New People's also trying a late Friday holiday screening of the Finnish monster movie (with Santa as monster) Rare Exports: a Christmas Tale, as well as a run of the wintry Silent Souls and a new 35mm print of the cold, cold Truffaut classic The Bride Wore Black from now until Thursday, December 22. The Rafael in Marin has another snowbound film starting December 23: Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush with a newly adapted version of Chaplin's score (the occasion for the new 35mm release). The Castro is counter-programming all this chilliness with a full week of heart-warming musicals, starting with a knockout Vincente Minnelli double bill of Meet Me In St. Louis and The Band Wagon December 26th, and winding up with a "sing-a-long" (that is, lyrically subtitled) 35mm print of West Side Story. And this Friday's Oddball Films program is simply a must-see for anyone into Georges Méliès, or Warner Brothers cartoons not on DVD, or the films of Charles & Ray Eames, or all of the above (like me!)

I had to get that paragraph out of the way before coming to the main purpose of this post: to announce, and to provide an index for, a year-end-project cooked up by my buddy Ryland Walker Knight and myself to be cross-posted here at Hell On Frisco Bay and on Ryland's blog Vinyl Is Heavy this week. BANG BANG refers to the double vertical numerals we've been living with since January. We've asked a number of fine folks to weigh in with various year-end-wrap-up articles. Top tens, mostly, though not exclusively. Movies, mostly, though not exclusively. We'll wrap-up the week with our own top ten new releases of 2011. Watch this space!

On The Wagon:

Adam Hartzell offers his top ten with commentary
Julian Tran and Cuyler Ballenger share six crime movies they loved seeing last year
Dave McDougall's selected 2011 discoveries, briefly noted and across various media
Matthew Flanagan gives a quick rundown of stuff he loved from last year
Eric Freeman walks us through some things he found interesting in some things he saw this year
Akiva Gottlieb's got some love for Poetry
Jenny Stewart offers notes on storytelling, and how Breaking Bad's so good at it
Durga Chew-Bose loves ladies
Ryland Walker Knight gabs on some stuff about impermanence
My own entry

Lonely Boy

2011-12-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

Most of the specialized cinemas in town have announced their programming for the rest of the year, and some of them (like YBCA) into early 2012. December themes at the Roxie, PFA, Castro & New People include Southen (Dis)Comfort, classic musicals, and François Truffaut.

The screening space at SF Museum of Modern Art has been relatively quiet in the past few months, but December it becomes more active. A three-film series in conjunction with the ongoing exhibit devoted to designer Dieter Rams includes Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a documentary featuring Rams, Objectified. This Thursday's George Kuchar tribute offers a chance to see restored prints of many of that dearly departed teacher & maker's most influential, beautiful films, including Hold Me When I'm Naked and Wild Night In El Reno.

And today at noon, SFMOMA hosts a free screening of six films selected by Goldie-awarded filmmaker Paul Clipson. Three by Peter Kubelka, one by Nagisa Oshima, one collaboration of Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, and one by the comparatively lesser-known Canadian documentarians Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor. Yesterday Brecht Andersch ably previewed the full program on the SFMOMA blog, reminding that I was sitting on an unpublished piece of my own on one of the selections: Koenig & Kroitor's Lonely Boy. Here it is:

The 1962 film Lonely Boy, directed by National Film Board of Canada filmmakers Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroiter, may seem at first glance like a piece of fluff, unworthy of a place in the annals of great documentary history. It's a portrait of pop singer Paul Anka on tour in New Jersey and New York, told through fans-eye views of his concerts, a certain amount of backstage access, and largely self-aggrandizing interviews from Anka and his manager Irvin Field. But it's a testament to the importance and influence of the new technologies becoming available to non-fiction filmmakers in the early 1960s that Lonely Boy looks as familiar and modern as it does to us today. The music and hairstyles may date the film as a fifty-year-old artifact, but the technological (and philosophical)-driven techniques are recognizable as some of the same ones dominant in documentaries of 2011.

When Lonely Boy was made, cameras and sound equipment were becoming available in easily-portable versions. Technologies developed for usage by war photographers and others during World War II became crucial in the development of "civilian" filmmaking. Perhaps none was more crucial than the increased infrastructure for the production and distribution of 16mm film stock, which is only about a quarter the width, resolution and weight of the 35mm standard in use in industrialized film production around the world. Most feature films and studio-produced shorts still used this standard (and indeed, the most lavish productions were now beginning to regularly utilize the even-more cumbersome 70mm film format) but avant-garde and independent work, as well as documentaries, found 16mm cheap and convenient enough that it proliferated. Film stocks were becoming more light-sensitive as well, freeing filmmakers from the necessity of bringing bulky electric lighting equipment everywhere they wanted to shoot.

16mm cameras themselves were more light-weight and portable than ever. I'm not sure there's a single shot in Lonely Boy which uses a tripod or dolly. Zoom lens technology improved significantly, giving filmmakers access to images far beyond the range of previous cameras -- a valuable asset when shooting "in the field." Audio recording equipment had become far lighter and more easily transportable as well, and improvements in synchronization technology meant that for the first time, a modestly-budgeted documentary could capture picture and image simultaneously on location, unshackling filmmakers from the tyranny of the voice-over narration. Interviews could be gathered on the street, or wherever the action was, and not just in a specially-prepared studio.

Though Lonely Boy makes use of all these technologies, providing an easygoing, behind-the-scenes look at a popular star that would have been simply impossible (especially on a NFB budget) only a few years before, perhaps it's most fascinating because it doesn't stick purely to new, often considered "realer" techniques, unlike the Direct Cinema films being made at around the same time with the same kinds of equipment. A key moment of the film is at a concert in New York, filled with female Paul Anka fans. For a time we experience the scene as if we are amidst the crowd, hearing Anka's music only when it cuts through the din of the near-constant youthful screaming. But when Anka brings a young woman up onto the stage with him, the soundtrack smoothly switches from the synchronous sound recording of the event, to the hit record version of the song he's singing, "Put Your Head on My Shoulder." Skillful matching of the camera-captured lip movements to the studio-recorded lyrics reminds us of the role of technology in selling pop music to mass markets, and the pop singer's mandate to sonically recreate a specific performance every night. But the transition also may be read as an entry into the young fan's head, where the sounds of the other concert-goers can be blocked out and only the emotion and the music (its ingrained memory as much or more than its physical sound) exists.

Adam Hartzell on Curling

2011-11-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I took a two-day jaunt away from Frisco Bay, down to Hollywood to watch six films at the AFI Fest. I got to see Pedro Almodóvar and Antonio Banderas introduce my favorite of their collaborations, Law Of Desire at the famous Grauman's Chinese (digitally- the only dint on my first trip inside this genuine movie palace), and see five films new enough not to have reached Frisco Bay yet, including the latest films by Chantal Akerman, Alexander Sokurov, Hong Sangsoo, and Béla Tarr. All four of these were excellent (Sokurov's Faust less decidedly so than the other three) and I hope and expect to get chances to re-watch them with local audiences some time next year, assuming local film programmers are wise enough to bring them to town.

I also saw the California premiere of Silver Bullets, one of the half-dozen features the prolific young director Joe Swanberg has completed since his third one Hannah Takes The Stairs played here nearly four years ago. If Silver Bullets (my own first encounter with his directing work) is at all typical, I can understand why he polarizes audiences (and perhaps programmers as well); though there's evidence of conceptual brilliance, it's overshadowed by a half-heartedness of execution that asserts itself as a visual style. Or perhaps in place of one.

I believe I keep track of the Frisco Bay screening scene well enough to assert that Canadian DIY director Denis Côté's exhibition history here is on track to becoming the mirror image of Swanberg's. If the latter's work has been absent from local screens after seeing his first three films brought to town, Côté has had a steady increase in global acclaim for his first five films, none of which have shown locally. Finally, he broke through when his fascinating short Les Lignes Ennemies screened earlier this year at Yerba Buena Center For The Arts (which has a terrific December-January lineup by the way). And this week (for only one and a half more days, "thanks" to the holiday Thursday) his latest feature Curling is playing New People Cinema. I saw it in Toronto last Fall, and can highly recommend it, but my friend Adam Hartzell is much more attuned to particulars of the cinema of Canada, so I'm proud to host his review here on my blog. Adam:

In my continuing project to companion books with films, I found reason to read André Loiselle's Cinema as History: Michel Brault and Modern Quebec before the San Francisco Film Society's week long run of Denis Côté's Curling at their new home in the New People theatre. The retrospective of director and director of photography Michel Brault's work at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley in March of 2006 made me a huge fan of Brault specifically and solidified my interest in French-Canadian cinema generally. Loiselle's book would have been required reading for that retrospective, but since it was published in 2007 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, adding it to my personal syllabus was impossible without breaking laws of physics. So Loiselle’s excellent book on Quebec’s history and Quebec Cinema’s history as told through the work of Michel Brault became the reading rock I slid towards the house of the wider cinematic sheet that is Cote’s Curling.
　
Loiselle's argument is that Brault has "never ceased to reflect, and reflect on, Quebec society" (page 182) as consistently, prominently, and for as long as any other Quebec filmmakers. With a couple exceptions (which Loiselle notes being the topics of queer culture and the media panopticon that made themselves present in Quebec cinema of the 80's and 90's), Brault was involved in echoing and projecting every major aspect of Quebec history activating during his time behind the camera - from early commercial cinema (Little Aurore, the Martyr Child, on which Brault was assistant director to Jean-Yves Bigras) to the emerging direct cinema (Les Raquetteurs with Gilles Groulx and the classic Of Whales, the Moon and Men, with Pierre Perrault); onward to auteur cinema (Mon Oncle Antoine, directed by Claude Jutra); to the rise of feminist cinema (Scream from Silence, directed by Anne Claire Poirier); to delayed acknowledgment of non-Quebec, francophone populations in Canada 9Éloge du Chiac) and Quebecois minorities (Les Noces de papier, Paper Wedding); and finally to the shift from film to digital cinema (his 2002 film La Manic). Denis Côté's Curling reflects what appears to be a recent evolution of Quebec Cinema that Brault would possibly have touched on himself were he still making films - the sadness of the suburban, exurban enclaves of Quebec in the age of the post-peak oil slide, something that can resonate throughout similar establishments in North America.
　
Curling follows the claustrophobic and creepy disturbing life of Jean-François that he imposes on his 12-year-old daughter Julyvonne (played by the real-life father-daughter team of Emmanuel and Philomene Bilodeau). We are first exposed to the prison around both our characters when Julyvonne is told she has astigmatism and that she must have realized something was wrong by not seeing the chalkboard at school. It is here we learn she doesn’t attend school. And it is here that her father is brought into the frame and focus is retained on him while Julyvonne, in the center of the image, becomes slightly blurry, offering a wonderful moment of breaking the fourth wall so we can better identify with Julyvonne’s plight while metaphorically visualizing through an astigmatic image the askew view her father nests Julyvonne within. The rest of the film develops this dysfunctional world Jean-François has created for himself and his daughter while other individuals, such as his bosses and co-workers, try to pull him out of his paranoia and open up the world to him and his daughter. The title of the film relates to the brief moments in a curling club where Jean-François finally gets, as Côté puts it in an interview with Jason Anderson in the Fall 2010 issue of Cinemascope, “a spark in his eye”. Curling the movie extends the arguments in the book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community where Robert D. Putnam describes the decline in ‘social capital’ or the active civil engagement that makes for strong democracies, by having Jean-François working in a bowling alley and later discovering a brighter social world in the heavily lit dome of a curling club. “People ask me,” says Côté in that same interview, “’Why curling?’ Well, first of all, curling is a collective sport, so he could get closer to his community if he would curl.” Côté clutters this cinematic curling house with several stones obstructing Jean-François from making better choices for himself and his daughter, but it’s a different type of curling that finally further feeds the initial spark in Jean-François‘ eyes.
　
There is a striking similarity in the winter scenes of the abandoned economy of this Quebec town to the one we found in the excellent debut film The Salesman by Sébastien Pilote at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival, where it deservedly won the FIPRESCI Prize. Both these films highlight the ennui and socially-distant communities we have created through our cheap-oil-fueled, car-dependent housing developments beyond our denser, socially-networking urban centers. Marcel Lévesque (played powerfully by Gilbert Sicotte), as a successful car salesman, represents the person who thinks he’s benefited from this community that cheap oil built in The Salesman, whereas Jean-François is, from the very beginning, the self-perpetuating victim of this development of isolated housing. (After the visit to the eye doctor, Jean-François is actually ‘pulled over’ by a cop for not driving, as if being without a car is suspect. Whereas part of the plot of The Salesman is Lévesque pushing greater car dependency and financial ruin on a soon to be laid-off factory worker.) This is one of the developments in Quebec cinema that can resonate with those of us outside of Quebec who are experiencing the social isolation our suburbs and exurbs cause, either for ourselves, or for our elders who have retired within these cul-de-sac-ing mazes that falsely pass for community. And this is one of the developments in Quebec cinema Brault may have touched on were he still behind the camera in some way in the same way he chronicled the history of Quebec in the era of cheap oil.

Feast Your Eyes

2011-11-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the SF Film Society's annual Cinema By The Bay festival, a smörgåsbord of film screenings showing off the quality and diversity of Frisco Bay filmmaking, and culminating in an awards ceremony tomorrow honoring documentarians Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Allie Light and Irving Saraf, impresario/filmmaker Joshua Grannell, writer/editor Susan Gerhard, publicist Karen Larsen, and the 50-year-old distribution institution Canyon Cinema. All exceedingly worthy honorees, and I wish I were available to attend the event tomorrow evening.

Not long ago I sat down for an interview with one of last year's honorees, the amazing, undervalued chronicler of music, cuisine, and the cultures encircling and encircled by them both, Les Blank. The interview was for an article to be published in the next issue of First Person Magazine, entitled "Radical Foods". When editor Betty Nguyen told me of this theme, Blank came to mind immediately as an ideal person to get involved. One of the most unique aspects of his filmmaking is his integration of food into the presentation of his films, as I experienced several years ago at a screening of his 1980 film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers. Here's Blank's response to my question about the difference between "Smell-O-Vision" and "Aromaround":

Well, I've never used Smell-O-Vision. I use Smell-Around. Smell-O-Vision was, I believe, a patented system. When they first brought this concept out in the theatres I think they piped in smells. One theatre I think even had them under the seat. They had an exhaust fan to get 'em out, but they had trouble getting one smell out in order to make room for the next one.

John Waters had scratch and sniff cards. I didn't care for that myself. No one I know has the actual food being cooked in the actual theatre. When I'd screen Always For Pleasure and cook red beans and rice, I'd call that Smell-Around. If I was showing Yum Yum Yum or Spend It All, which has gumbo in it, I would call it Smell-Around too. But the garlic film, I'd always call Aromaround.

An elaborate version would be to take the pot of beans that hasn't been completely cooked yet. They're still in the small-making phase. Once you start cooking they let off their aromas and then, the aromas dwindle down, so the cooking beans don't really smell that much towards the end of the cooking period, but if you take a portion of the beans you're gonna be serving the public, and hold them back, then get 'em going to the point where they make the most smell, then you take that into the theatre, and one person carries the pot, one person stirs the pot, and the other person has a fan and they fan the fumes into the audience. You walk all the way around the theatre so everyone sees this whole operation. during the part of the film, where the film is being cooked or served, or in the cajun films, there's the gumbo.

With the garlic film you put toaster ovens in the front or the rear of the theatre, and then you turn on the oven to 350 degrees. If you turn it on in the beginning, the smell will be full strength about halfway through, about 20-25 minutes in. I like it best when it hits its peak when Alice Waters says "can you smell the garlic?" The audience might yell back. It might laugh, or sigh.

To read more from my interview with Blank, you'll have to find a copy of the magazine. I'm not sure of all the locations where it will be sold as yet, but it will certainly be available at the issue launch event this Thursday night at St. John's Church. The ticket price includes a dinner prepared by issue co-editor and artist chef Leif Hedendal, an edible sculpture presented by artist Leah Rosenberg, and Les Blank in attendance with a screening of Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. Hope to see you there!

Adam Hartzell on Three Upcoming Documentaries

2011-11-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly recovering from the busiest time of my year, Halloween. I haven't blogged in weeks, haven't tweeted in days, and am just about to get back into my cinephile swing. Today's the right timing, as tonight the new November-December Pacific Film Archive calendar launches with The Unstable Object, the first of four Alternative Visions screenings Wednesdays this month. The Castro Theatre screens four masterpieces in a Nick Ray centennial mini-fest today and tomorrow, and the Roxie chimes in with a fifth Ray (Johnny Guitar) Sunday as part of its Not Necessarily Noir 2 series. And the SF Film Society closes French Cinema Now tonight and opens Cinema By The Bay tomorrow; I'm intrigued by the screening of the 1926 silent The Bat and the films by Lawrence Jordan, Carolee Schneeman, etc. playing the Canyon Cinema spotlight. But my friend Adam Hartzell has just added three more upcoming films to my to-see list, each sampled at the Mill Valley Film Festival last month. Here, Adam writes on the discoveries made in his cinemagoing travels:

In order avoid adding to both our financial and carbon footprint debt, my wife and I have been limiting our plane-dependent vacations to one a year. And we never travel by car anymore. But we still long to 'get-away'. So we've been venturing around the Bay Area, to places that can be reached by ferry, train, or bus. And many of these advanced 'stay-cations' have been for film festivals. We've taken Amtrak to Sacramento for the French Film Festival where we got to see Alex Deliporte's Angèle & Tony and the Audrey Tatou vehicle Beautiful Lies before San Francisco French Cinema Now attendees did this past week. It was also in Sacramento that we got to see the wonderful scene where Je t'aime . . . moi non plus is first heard by Serge Gainsbourg's record company in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life that opened at the Embarcadero this past weekend. We've also made the Tiburon International Film Festival an annual trip since it's such a green convenience to walk off the ferry right smack dab into the festival.
　
The Mill Valley Film Festival makes it a bit more difficult to travel to on a green stream. They do provide a shuttle from the San Rafael and Mill Valley venues, but we chose films showing in Mill Valley and there wasn't a direct bus from the Larkspur Ferry as far as we could tell, so we grabbed a cab to get to Mill Valley for our overnight stay. (We did take the shuttle to San Rafael in order to take Golden Gate Bus back, however.)
　
Although we didn't plan it this way, all three of the films we caught at MVFF will be released in San Francisco before the year is out. Coming to the Balboa December 2nd will be Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's Eames: The Architect and The Painter. I had heard about the Charles and Ray Eames's marriage and professional partnership in a past podcast (the name of which escapes me), so I was ready for the most revealing aspect of Cohn and Jersey's documentary; that is, how important Ray Eames's work was to the success of their designs. They were a couple speeding past the Zeitgeist of the 50's, having to negotiate the respect Ray wanted and Charles wanted for Ray within the patriarchal narratives demanded of the times. The television clip where the hostess can't seem to integrate the female half of this couple is a very valuable moment of archival retrieval. Eames: The Architect and The Painter is an example of the value and necessity of what is often called 'revisionist history', a term sadly intended negatively by too many mindless talking heads. Much history is 'revisionist history' in that it is the applying of recently excavated information to create a new narrative that is hopefully more representative of what actually happened and why. In this way, Eames: The Architect and The Painter brings a lathe to refine the record of the impact of the Eames studio. It's no longer just Charles who gets a seat at the table since he wasn't alone in the creation of those seats and tables.

Our Saturday morning show, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey, was disappointingly lacking in the young folk hoped for as part of the DocFest just past or the Lumiere in SF or Rafael Film Center in San Rafael come December 16th. Or, as my wife suggested, perhaps the kids didn't want the magic of Elmo ruined by seeing the man behind him. The man that brought a voice and aesthetic to Elmo that no other puppeteers were able to bring, Kevin Clash, definitely makes an effort to move his body away whenever he meets kids in real life, as if his contortions are abracadabra gesticulations maintaining the magic. The film is about a dreamer, a geek picked on at school, who works hard at his craft and eventually makes his way to the big leagues as well as the respect of his peers. His parents support is endearing and tantamount to Clash's success, as is the public funding that contributed to Clash's career trajectory. Besides the public television funding that made Sesame Street successful along with the massive research and talent that was part of the Children's Television Workshop that Clash became a part of, military research has a place to play in a particularly puzzling aspect of professional puppetry for young Clash. (I'm going to be vague about it to allow for the pleasure of that reveal.) The public money behind Elmo provided opportunities for artists and researchers to leverage their interests, skills, talents and dreams, resulting in tremendous benefit for individuals, communities and economies. If you're cynical to the joy Elmo has brought to so many children, Elmo did, after all, do more than tickle the economy in all the ancillary products sold.
　
As much as I enjoyed the Eames and Clash documentaries, the best film I saw at MVFF will possibly be the best film I see all year. Judy Lief's Deaf Jam is a celebration of American Sign Language poetry that doubles as a primer of Deaf Culture, triples as a personal story of Israeli and Palestinian friendship, quadruples as a snapshot of the economic impact of our immigration law, and multiplies as many, many other things. This is truly a beautiful, powerful film, providing a mesmerizing experience that I have not had in a theatre for a long time. Lief's dance background is clearly on display in her framing of the hand, body and facial movements that make up the ASL equivalents of phonemes, words, and sentences. She gives us a precise primer on ASL Poetry and thrusts us into the world of ASL Poetry performance by taking the text of subtitles and swirling them around in the translation with such vibrancy that it truly works, rather than coming off as a gimmick. This effort to struggle with how to demonstrate the vitality of ASL through translation even includes a segment where the piece is left respectfully un-translated.
　
Deaf Jam's main subject Aneta Brodski is that charismatic individual many documentarians hope to capture. When we hear the immigration issues she runs up against, you can't help but see how the obstacles financially imposed upon Deaf folks will hit her even harder. Hopefully she will be able to negotiate the college education and later employment she deserves in spite of these obstacles, but you do worry that such a vibrant spirit might be hardened, if not squelched, considering what she will be forced to maneuver around in the future.
　
Screening in a truncated form as part of the Independent Lens series on PBS networks on Thursday November 3rd, Deaf Jam is an example of the tremendous value film festivals can provide through the different lenses they focus onto the world. (And Deaf Jam is another example of the huge benefits provided by public funding - thank you, ITVS!) Even with the chain of transit options we have to step on to get there, MVFF has consistently been a festival worth the journey.

UPDATE 11/3/11: I've just learned from Adam that Eames: The Architect and the Painter will also be opening at the Elmwood in Berkeley and the Rafael in Marin on December 2nd, the same day it comes to the Balboa. I'm glad this documentary is going to be spreading out to various Frisco Bay venues. Is it too much to dream that one or more of them might track down a print of one of Charles & Ray's own wonderful short films (Powers of Ten, Atlas, Blacktop, etc.) to screen prior to the documentary feature?

Pinoy Sunday, by Adam Hartzell

2011-10-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday the Mill Valley Film Festival opened, and with it a run of forty-five straight days of the thus-far foreseeable future where there will be a minimum of one film festival happening somewhere here on Frisco Bay every single day. According to the running list on this blog's right-hand sidebar, on most days there will be three or four festivals running somewhere in the area, and on a few as many as six or seven! It's a testament to the vitality of Frisco Bay audiences for movies outside the usual multiplex offerings that so many festivals can co-exist year after year in the same month-and-a-half period. But tickets sell briskly for many of these festivals, and it's worth obtaining them in advance if there's a particular film you're set upon seeing. There are still (pricey) tickets available for the MVFF closing night film gala The Artist this Sunday. I've seen it, and though it couldn't possibly live up to my expectations after its triumphantly successful screenings in Cannes and Toronto, I do think it will charm just about anybody else who watches it, and I'm not alone in hoping will function as an evangelizing force for the authentic silent film art that I so dearly love. Unfortunately, tickets to an MVFF feature I liked even better have been at "rush status" for over a week: tonight's screening of Pina, which is the best Wim Wenders film in in years if not decades. At least in my case, it's definitely an evangelizing force for choreographer Pina Bausch, who I previously knew next to nothing about, and for 3-D presentation of great dance. I'd certainly pay to see full versions of some of the works excerpted in Pina on a local 3-D screen.

Next to open are this weekend's Arab Film Festival (Jonathan Curiel has an article on Muslim lesbian drama Three Veils), the South Bay's Poppy Jaspar Short Film Festival, and the 10th annual edition of DocFest, which is called "SF's quirkiest festival" in Cheryl Eddy's new Guardian preview. And the San Francisco Film Society's Fall Season enters its next phase with Taiwan Film Days. I understand that the sf360 website is going to publish my writing buddy Adam Hartzell's preview of this mini-festival's selections imminently. In the meantime he has generously offered a piece on a film playing this Saturday and Sunday,Pinoy Sunday, for Hell On Frisco Bay. Here's Adam:

Ho Wi-ding's Pinoy Sunday is one of those films I watch while preparing a festival primer that has me itching to write more about it than a primer will allow. It isn't a brilliant film, but it is a fairly entertaining one that touches on issues I wish more films explored, in this case, the lives of migrant workers. And considering it's a Taiwanese film, (although with production help from the Philippines, Japan, and France, and a Malaysia-born director), I'm particularly happy to see the film highlight migrant issues unique to Taiwan, specifically the lives of Filipino migrant laborers in Taiwan. Along with the particular, Pinoy Sunday also enables more general discussion of the lives of migrants regardless of where they toil.
　
Pinoy Sunday follows two Filipino migrant laborers, Dado (played by Bayani Aqbayani) and Manuel (Jeffrey Quizon). Dado has a family back home but a girlfriend in Taiwan, posing an ethical quandary he seeks to resolve early on in the film. Manuel is the wanna-be playboy who puts up a good front to survive the romantic rejection he receives. He also is a bit of a player when it comes to the rules of the factory where he works, particularly the factory's curfew. Arriving on occasion just after the curfew, he is able to finagle his way around possible deportation from such violations of his contract by slipping the Taiwanese guard some betel nut for his troubles.
　
Besides his playboy dreams, Manuel has another simpler dream. He wants a couch, a sofa, (or what my grandmother called a davenport), for the top of their factory dormitory where they can sit and drink beer after a long day of manual labor. As Manuel and Dado recover from opposite ends of romantic rejection (Manuel the rejected, Dado the rejecter) in a public park, they stumble on an abandoned sofa. They begin their journey to take this sofa back to their dorm before curfew, a journey that has them at each others throats as well as discovering a deeper bond. They find kindness where it wasn't expected, along with finding themselves mistaken for heroes, thieves, and Indonesians.
　
Since Hell on Frisco Bay caters to the San Francisco Bay Area, most readers here are likely familiar with the slang term 'Pinoy'. Some may also be familiar with some of the controversy around the term. North Americans of Filipino descent often use the term affectionately, but some from the Philippines still hear the term tied up to ridicule from U.S. soldiers before and during World War II. In this film, as evidenced on his t-shirt worn early on in the film, Manuel wears the moniker with pride. (This same scene where the t-shirt is introduced also underscores a class/race transportation divide in that all the Filipino migrant workers are riding bicycles, perhaps made at the very factory where Dado and Manuel work, in contrast to the ubiquitous presence of the motorized scooter ridden by many, many Taiwanese.) The 'Sunday' in the title represents to the single day of the week many migrant factory workers in Taiwan tend to get off. The key words there are 'factory workers', since domestic laborers, mostly female and many Filipina, often do not get their Sundays off, or any day off at all. In Pinoy Sunday, Dado's girlfriend Anna, (played by Meryll Soriano), underscores this point in a nicely nuanced way. At first, you might assume she gets her Sundays off too because she and Dado meet up every Sunday at church. But then why is the elderly woman for whom Anna is a caretaker always with her? As much as Anna might get to do what she wants on Sunday, she still has to bring her ward with her. The ward is portrayed as mute, rather than demanding and difficult, partly as a means to contain the plot. But I find the nuanced portrayal here poignant. It hints at the conditions and differences between how gender is policed in the lives of migrant laborers rather than pummeling us over the head with it. (For those who want to explore that particular issue in more detail, check out an article from National Taiwan University professor Pei-chin Lan's available as a pdf here.)
　
Besides wrapping up issues faced by Filipino migrant laborers in a tight little title, there are other scenes particular to the transience of the migrant experience. There is the mall specifically catering to needs of Filipinos/Filipinas. These malls are often only open on the weekends. In these malls you will find restaurants serving Filipino food and the ubiquitously Filipino balakbayan box stores that send goodies back to families in the Philippines. A couple other issues the film highlights are the serious ramifications of violating curfew and the moment they are mistaken for Indonesian. According to Lan, the Council of Labor Affairs "dictates that a migrant worker can work for only one particular employer during a stay in Taiwan." There are some specific exceptions to this, but failure to make curfew at the factory could result in being sent back to The Philippines, and this strict policing of bodies is demonstrated at the very beginning of the film, when Dado runs into a fellow Filipino washing his face in the airport bathroom while still in handcuffs, escorted all the way to the airport gate to be sure he is deported. Such policing also confronts Manuel when a colleague is caught while on the lam. Another matter detailed in Lan's article is how Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers are played off each other in media stereotypes of fabricated essential natures. This makes the moment in Pinoy Sunday when the media mistake Dado and Manuel for Indonesian a much more layered critique, and the peppering of accusations upon brown bodies all the more poignant, as the film helps the political medicine go down by playing up the comedy involved in such outlandish media theatre.

One of my problems with Pinoy Sunday is the ending. But for spoiler-avoidance I won't go into how the ending ignores global economic realities otherwise prominent in the film. I understand this film doesn't want to be a serious downer. It wants to entertain, to show respect for migrants who too often go ignored. So I won't harp on Pinoy Sunday too much since it does bring to the attention of Taiwanese audiences some of the plights of those brought into Taiwan in order to make their economy work in ways more privileged citizens demand.
　
In its portrayal of present Taiwan (Film) day reality, Pinoy Sunday avoids being The Help. As Noy Thrupkaew so expertly critiques in The American Prospect, The Help may "peep into the past" of American injustices, but without any hint that that past is still with us in the present treatment of domestic workers in the U.S. (now more likely Latina than African-American). But it takes a movie like this to inspire a great (yet underappreciated) writer like Thrupkaew to school us on the lives of domestic workers in the U.S. today, so I'm glad The Help is out there hoping viewers smitten by it might stumble onto Thrupkaew's online history lesson. Pinoy Sunday may not confront all the issues of Filipino migrant laborers in Taiwan, but it confronts nonetheless, while staying more entertaining than didactic, which might make all the difference regarding its ability to reach folks who sequester themselves off from facing up to economic realities.

You Wish To Go To The Festival(s)?

2011-09-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

Fall festivals are flying fast and furious, as Frisco Bay film organizations jockey for the attention of eager movie lovers. Two local film festivals are already winding down as I type this (Michael Hawley has details), and undoubtedly at least one or two more will send an announcement into my inbox before I finish writing this post. Tonight marks the beginning of a pair of weekend-long festivals I've never attended, the SF Irish Film Festival at the Roxie, and the Oakland Underground Film Festival at various venues in that city. The former screens new work from the Emerald Isle along with some retrospective entries like Once, In The Name of the Father (both, according to Film On Film, on 35mm prints), and artist-turned-film director Steve McQueen's Hunger. As for the OUFF, if their Friday night selection Marimbas From Hell is any indication of the festival's spirit, expect a weekend of wonderfully weird films unlikely to find commercial distribution. Marimbas From Hell is Guatemalan filmmaker Julio Hernández Cordón's first film since his low-budget scorcher of a debut Gasoline, and it bursts with humanity and eccentricity as it follows an unemployed xylophone player who joins forces with an aging heavy metal god to create a musical fusion that blurs documentary and fiction as much as Julio Cordón's style seems to.

Tonight is also the Sf Film Society's kickoff party for its 2011 Fall Season, a nearly nonstop parade of themed collections of international film selections at its new home New People Cinema (and a few other venues as well). Festivals announced so far include: Hong Kong Cinema (September 23-25) with recent films by directors Ann Hui, Johnnie To and others; read Adam Hartzell's write-up for more. Taiwan Film Days (October 14-16) including the goofy cross-cultural comedy Pinoy Sunday. The NY/SF International Children's Film Festival (October 21-23) features at least one 3-D animation with serious potential to impress, French silhouette master Michel Ocelot's Tales Of The Night, to be screened at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio rather than at New People as most of the rest of the Children's Fest will be. This is a rare opportunity to experience perhaps what's probably the most technically perfect screening venue in town.

Though Cinema By The Bay (Nov. 3-6), the San Francisco International Animation Festival (Nov. 10-13) and New Italian Cinema (Nov. 13-20) have yet to be unveiled on the SFFS website, they'll have to be pretty impressive to displace French Cinema Now (October 27-November 2) as my most anticipated of these Fall Season series. Three of the most talked-about films from this year's international festival circuit (Cannes, Toronto, etc.) get their Frisco Bay debuts during this series, and I can't wait to see all three of them: Goodbye, First Love, young director Mia Hansen-Løve's follow-up to her stunning second feature Father Of My Children, The Dardennes Brothers' The Kid With A Bike, which won the Grand Prix (essentially second prize to Terence Malick's Tree of Life) at Cannes back in May, and Le Havre, the new feature by Finland's most famous director, Aki Kaurismäki, his first in more than five years. The original mission of French Cinema Now is stretched by the inclusion of films from Finland and Belgium along with France, but if we interpret the "French" in the series title as a reference to the language of the dialogue and not the nationality of the crew, all three films are equally at home here. As are the other French-language films in the program, none of which I've heard much about as of yet. Mathieu Amalric's The Screen Illusion is the only one of these directed by a filmmaker I've seen other work by: his On Tour closed the the last SF International Film Festival. That screening was the final public appearance of Graham Leggat, who ran the Film Society brilliantly for more than five years until stepping down shortly before he succumbed to cancer late last month.

Leggat's recent passing was solemnly mentioned, along with local legendary filmmaker George Kuchar's, at a press conference announcing the line-up of the 34th Mill Valley Film Festival last week. Kuchar was subject of a MVFF tribute in its second year of operation, back in 1979. (He'll be subject of a pair of posthumous tributes by SF Cinematheque this December. Jordan Belson, another recently departed Frisco filmmaking giant, will be posthumously honored at the Pacific Film Archive in October). These days MVFF tributees are less likely to be dedicated underground filmmakers like Kuchar and more likely to be individuals in the early stages of an Oscar campaign. This year the festival tributes Glenn Close with a screening of Albert Nobbs, and spotlights Michelle Yeoh, Ezra Miller and Jennifer Olson, all year-end-awards possibilities for their new films, The Lady, We Need To Talk About Kevin and Martha Marcy May Marlene, respectively. One 2011 MVFF tributee is most definitely not stumping in hopes of hearing his name mentioned by Eddie Murphy next February. Gaston Kaboré is one of the top film directors from Burkina Faso, the country that hosts Sub-Saharan Africa's most prestigious film festival, the biannual FESPACO. Though his films are known to some cinephiles, they are rarely revived and, apart from his brief contribution to the international omnibus Lumiere And Company (all I've seen of his work), not easily found on DVD. So it's wonderful that two of his most acclaimed films Wend Kuuni and its sequel Buud Yam are being brought to Marin along with their maker next month. Unfortunately tickets to Buud Yam are already at "Rush Status" so make sure to buy tickets in advance for Wend Kuuni if you don't want to have to wait in line on a Tuesday night for a sample of Burkinabé cinema.

Also gone to "Rush Status" at MVFF are opening night Sequoia Theatre screening-only tickets to Jeff, Who Lives At Home, the latest from the Duplass Brothers, who made The Puffy Chair, Baghead and Cyrus. This was screened at the festival press conference, and from the moment early in the film when they start to make reference to M. Night Shyamalan's Signs I knew the film was going to be a lot smarter than the average contemporary comedy about unlikable man-children. I'm not supposed to say too much about the film until its general release next Spring, but I found it a very satisfying exercise in enjoyable audience manipulation. It's still possible to buy tickets to the film+party package, though they're quite expensive. The closing night film is another one I'm hotly anticipating: Michel Hazanavicius's neo-silent The Artist. More MVFF titles are commented on in Jackson Scarlett's SF360 article.

Since I mentioned silent cinema, let me step away from film festivals for a moment to note the Niles Silent Film Museum's current calendar. October brings, along with many other films, a pair of classics I've seen and can comment on: A Fool There Was is not a very good film, but it's a very important one as it's among the only features still surviving of superstar sex symbol Theda Bara's prodigious output. The Man Who Laughs, meanwhile, is a really wonderful film to see with an audience; it stars Conrad Veidt as a disfigured nobleman striving against a lifelong conspiracy against him. His make-up famously inspired Batman creator Bob Kane's vision of The Joker. The final Niles show of September 2011 reunites Mary Pickford and Cecil B. DeMille, who had acted together on the New York stage, but who came to Boulder Creek, CA to make Romance of the Redwoods with Pickford in front of the camera and DeMille behind it. Also on this Saturday's program are a Max Linder short and my favorite of all of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's films, the two-reel Fatty and Mabel Adrift. Earlier this month, I wrote an Indiewire article on Arbuckle, informed by my last trip to Niles, to see a film he made just before the scandal that destroyed his career ninety years ago: Leap Year. I hope you take a look at the piece and let me know what you think.

I could go on, but I really ought to wrap this post up. So I'll just mention the other Frisco Bay festivals coming up in the next month or so, and hope that you can tell me whether there are films screening at them that you're interested in, or think I might be. There's the brand-new Palo Alto International Film Festival (which includes what may be your last chances to see Werner Herzog's Cave Of Forgotten Dreams in "Real D" 3-D before the inevitable stereoscopic retrospectives come along), the Arab Film Festival, the 10th SF DocFest, the 14th United Nations Association Film Festival, and the ATA Film & Video Festival.

Linking Feller, August 2011

2011-08-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here in nearly six weeks (you don't need to hear the excuses), but I don't want to let the month of August go by without a single post- it'd be my first completely blogless month since first starting Hell On Frisco Bay in 2005.

So, without further ado, five links that seem relevant to Frisco Bay cinephiles on this final day of August 2011:

1. The San Francisco Cinematheque has announced its full program on its website. I don't have time right this moment to break down all the deliciousness in the programming, but since today is the 69th birthday of George Kuchar (and his oft-collaborating twin Mike Kuchar), I should definitely highlight the December 8 & 16 screenings of his films, from works as well-known as Hold Me While I'm Naked to those as rare as Aqueerius.

2. "Dan" of Dan's Movie Blog has been far more diligent at writing about the local cinema scene than I have lately. His latest post deals with the sad passing of San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Graham Leggatt, as well as the cloudy futures of the Balboa and the New Parkway, as well as discussing some recent screenings at the Castro,

3. Cheryl Eddy's fall repertory film preview from last week's SF Bay Guardian summarizes nearly all of the local screening venues' and organizations' fall highlights. Yes, Fall starts this week at many of our beloved venues.

4. One Frisco Bay venue Eddy's piece does not cover is the UA Shattuck in Berkeley, which runs a Thursday night repertory series for five dollars a ticket. Here's an article listing all the titles being brought through November. Though a few are digital screenings, most are 35mm prints, some of them of films that rarely get projected these days. Note the September 15th showing of Jacques Tourneur's Curse of the Demon, or the October 27th show of John Carpenter's The Thing. Though other websites indicate to the contrary, tomorrow night's 35mm screening of Metropolis is not a version of the 1927 Fritz Lang silent film, but of the 2002 Japanese animation (and, to my memory, Fifth Element ripoff) by Rintaro.

5. However, according to Kino International, Lang's Metropolis will come to the Castro for one screening only on October 27th. No, not the near-complete cut that's been popping up on Castro calendars for over a year now, but the Giorgio Moroder cut from the 1980s, complete with music from the likes of Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar and Adam Ant. It's all in preparation for this version's release on DVD & Blu-Ray the following month. It seems strange that Kino is able to put out this version, when they were prevented by German rightsholders from providing Alloy Orchestra as an alternate score for the DVD/Blu release of the "Complete Metropolis" last year. But what do I know about these kinds of wheelings and dealings. Anyway, this seems the apropos moment to provide an extra, fifth-and-a-half link to the site where you can buy a compact disc with the Alloys' complete score, which it's possible to play while watching the DVD at home. I wonder, since the Alloys' first Metropolis score was synced to the Moroder cut, could they make available a version we could play on headphones during the upcoming Castro screening?