So I watched this last night, in the wake of Tony Wilson's death. Jon in the Morning on KEXP Seattle has been promoting the film as, like, utterly necessary viewing for anyone interested in music, playing The Clash, The Happy Mondays, Joy Division, The Sex Pistols, A Certain Ratio, New Order, and whoever else this marketing and managerial genius Wilson backed during the late 70's, 80's and 90's. The man went to Cambridge and certainyl has a head for business. You can't tell from thsi vesion whether they guy really was such a "cunt" as everyone, including Ian Curtis, said he was.
(Side note: Jon in the morning is strating to make me a little angry. Yeah he plays good music and KEXP is listener supported etc etc. But he's constantly playing shit, too, and then gloating about it. His kid is always in the wings doing something "hilarious". And this fucking Bumbershoot concert. What the fuck is Bumbershoot and why does it have to have that name? Jon manages to say Bumbershoot at least 3 or 4 times/minute. As does the intentionally "sexy" sounding commercial girl. Bands and Seattle natives seem to like the guy because he's modest and constantly self-effacing and he plays their shit, but more often than not the guy's annoying as hell. His passion for Cloud Cult is ridiculous. That band. "Suck up, suck up and take your medicine"? How tragic and poignant and accurate for our age. And their shitty cover of Mr. Tambourine Man, which manages to give an entirely unsentimental song the most blasphemously sentimental treatment of any shitty cover I've heard. I can see the lead singer of this band right now smoking a Clove and listening to Tangled Up in Blue and trying to figure out how to fuck it up as badly as he did Mr. Tambourine Man. Cloud Cult. Like, a potentially dangerous sect of obviously harmless accumulations of moisture. They'll live on.)
Steve Coogan plays Wilson, a very dry British bloke with a tendency to quote W.B. Yeats, William Blake and Shaun Ryder, whom he thought the best poet sincce Yeats himself. I admit I didn't know who Shauan Ryder was, but the gloating over his "genius" seems a little strange. Like those who can't stop saying what a brilliant lyricist Pete Doherty is. Couldn't the prophetic anticipation of musical and cultural trends everyone attributes to Ryder simply be on account of him being at the right place at the right time, inside the Hacienda hanging out with Tony Wilson and meeting the guy who, it seems, introduced Ecstasy to planet earth? If you're at the center of things and you happen to write semi-coherently about what's happening, then you're going to seem like prophet, I guess, to those who are lined up outside the club waiting to get in and see who's playing and whether they can score this new drug their friend said they have to try.
The movie is good though. I liked the splicing of actual footage into the scenes. Iggy Pop and Johnny Rotten appear. You don't see Ian Curtis though, unless I missed it, which would have been nice. In order to convey that "Ian Curtis will soon commit suicide" the director goes a bit far. Everyone knows the guy will do it. The extended shots of him looking miserably out rainy windows as "Love Will Tear Us Apart" plays could have been cut by about 30 seconds. All that was needed was a few quick glimpses of the guy withdrawing into himself. Not the broadcasting of: "Secretly entertaining suicidal ideations whle listening to his own hit song." And the use of a cartoon rooster on the television beyond Curtis's dangling feet. Right. Cartoon juxtaposed with suicide equals pathos.
Either way, whatever, I liked it. Tony Wilson. Interesting guy. Would've been cool to be him.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Hiroshima Mon Amour
So I watched Hiroshima Mon Amour last night.
Here are some quotes:
"Looking closely at something has to be learned." Yes.
"You were bored in a way that makes a man want to know a woman." OK.
"What do you call having 'dubious morals?'"
"Being dubious about other people's morals." Right.
Overall not the most exciting film, although it would have been better to see it in the theater of course. It's one of Scorcese's favorite films; it changed the way he viewed filmmaking. The images are pretty incredible. The documentary footage in the beginning especially, which seems to alternate between staged re-enactments and actual footage from the days following the bombing. Burnt men staring into space with there mouths open, the hair singed from their heads. [Female lead] travels to Hiroshima partly to film a movie, in which she plays a nurse, but partly because she's fascinated by the place, with its history of tragedy. The change in her attitude is drastic, and very realistic. The first 15 minutes show her to be a well-spoken, giddy lover, clawing her Japanese man's soft back, and smiling hugely like someone who's never been damaged by love. But gradually she becomes more and more aware of her past, starts to remember it for him, referring to both her ex-lover, who died of sniper fire as she was en route to meet him for a private rendezvous, and her current fling. Her love is one continuous personage over time. Simply "You." And she relates the original "You", who died in her arms, with the here-and-now "You." A bad idea. She's living in the past. So little happens in the now, in the film's present. The film is dominated by flashbacks.
At the start, the two are talking in bed.She relating what she saw years after the bomb was dropped, form re-enacted footage, from the museums which preserved the hair that fell like wigs from women's heads, pieces of flesh, photos of deformed hands and feet, lip-less faces, women missing eyes. She tells him all that she saw, and he says something like, "You did not see Hiroshima." He having experienced it. Although he does none of the telling. (This is imperfectly remembered, but interesting for it.) He, having experienced the bombing, does not contribute any details. He lets the woman - who has a husband and a few kids - give her imperfect interpretation of the events, recalling things she never saw. And then she goes on to tell her own story, of how she went mad over the loss of her love. A pretty chilling series of scenes of her confined to a basement, chewing on the salty cellar walls, escaping in the middle of the night to gnaw on tree bark, wandering around in a daze. All pretty haunting. Supposed to be one of the first films of the New Wave movement. Alain Resnais. What else has he done?
Here are some quotes:
"Looking closely at something has to be learned." Yes.
"You were bored in a way that makes a man want to know a woman." OK.
"What do you call having 'dubious morals?'"
"Being dubious about other people's morals." Right.
Overall not the most exciting film, although it would have been better to see it in the theater of course. It's one of Scorcese's favorite films; it changed the way he viewed filmmaking. The images are pretty incredible. The documentary footage in the beginning especially, which seems to alternate between staged re-enactments and actual footage from the days following the bombing. Burnt men staring into space with there mouths open, the hair singed from their heads. [Female lead] travels to Hiroshima partly to film a movie, in which she plays a nurse, but partly because she's fascinated by the place, with its history of tragedy. The change in her attitude is drastic, and very realistic. The first 15 minutes show her to be a well-spoken, giddy lover, clawing her Japanese man's soft back, and smiling hugely like someone who's never been damaged by love. But gradually she becomes more and more aware of her past, starts to remember it for him, referring to both her ex-lover, who died of sniper fire as she was en route to meet him for a private rendezvous, and her current fling. Her love is one continuous personage over time. Simply "You." And she relates the original "You", who died in her arms, with the here-and-now "You." A bad idea. She's living in the past. So little happens in the now, in the film's present. The film is dominated by flashbacks.
At the start, the two are talking in bed.She relating what she saw years after the bomb was dropped, form re-enacted footage, from the museums which preserved the hair that fell like wigs from women's heads, pieces of flesh, photos of deformed hands and feet, lip-less faces, women missing eyes. She tells him all that she saw, and he says something like, "You did not see Hiroshima." He having experienced it. Although he does none of the telling. (This is imperfectly remembered, but interesting for it.) He, having experienced the bombing, does not contribute any details. He lets the woman - who has a husband and a few kids - give her imperfect interpretation of the events, recalling things she never saw. And then she goes on to tell her own story, of how she went mad over the loss of her love. A pretty chilling series of scenes of her confined to a basement, chewing on the salty cellar walls, escaping in the middle of the night to gnaw on tree bark, wandering around in a daze. All pretty haunting. Supposed to be one of the first films of the New Wave movement. Alain Resnais. What else has he done?
Friday, August 24, 2007
Billy Wilder
First entry for "Teeth on Film", maybe a stupid title for a blog. But who cares.
My writings on film now include four pieces:
1. The documentary films of Werner Herzog
2. Woman is the Future of Man, by Hong Sangsoo
3. The films of Luis Bunuel (a man whose films I had never seen until approx one week before the assignment was due)
4. Ace in the Hole, by Billy Wilder.
I freely admit my ignorance when it comes to film. I've read too many books in the past to have time for films. Plus it makes me feel a bit lazy, watching movies. I always feel as if I should be engaging more with the screen, helping it along, but it does everything for you. The film will play itself out regardless of whether you're watching or not. But it's fun. Watching the way the plots move, the way the director's transition from one shot to the next. Films are getting more and more interesting too, it seems. I'd rather watch a new film than an old film, that is. As long as the new one is decent. I can't say as much for books, novels. The technology - and the same goes for music - is just so much more enticing nowadays. Anyway.
Recently watched:
Sunset Boulevard
The Apartment
The Seven Year Itch
Ace in the Hole
And then read some of Cameron Crowe's book of interviews with Wilder himself. Crowe offered the mentor role in Jerry McGuire to Wilder, who vociferously turned him down. Sad. Would have been fun to see him act.
I've been having trouble writing about Bunuel. I'm taking the piece too seriously. Whereas my 500 word reviews are almost sassy, the Bunuel thing comes off as if I really want you to know how much I just learned about Surrealist film and Bunuel's influence on such contemporary Surrealist filmmakers as Michel Gondry and Matthew Barney. Pompous you could say. But when the piece comes out it comes out, and changing the entire scope is nearly impossible without writing the whole thing again from a completely different angle.
I'm going to start reading more Pauline Kael, who "reigned" over the NYC film reviewing circuit for like two decades. She said of "Maidstone," one of Mailer's strange movies in 1968, that it's "the worst movie I've ever stayed to see all the way through." Ouch. I wonder what she was like in person, what she looked like, why she chose film reviewing instead of, say, short story writing or the personal essay form. What makes a person a film reviewer for life? A fondness for dark theatres?
Anyway. So ends the first film entry. Hope to watch "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and "Ratatouille" pretty soon.
My writings on film now include four pieces:
1. The documentary films of Werner Herzog
2. Woman is the Future of Man, by Hong Sangsoo
3. The films of Luis Bunuel (a man whose films I had never seen until approx one week before the assignment was due)
4. Ace in the Hole, by Billy Wilder.
I freely admit my ignorance when it comes to film. I've read too many books in the past to have time for films. Plus it makes me feel a bit lazy, watching movies. I always feel as if I should be engaging more with the screen, helping it along, but it does everything for you. The film will play itself out regardless of whether you're watching or not. But it's fun. Watching the way the plots move, the way the director's transition from one shot to the next. Films are getting more and more interesting too, it seems. I'd rather watch a new film than an old film, that is. As long as the new one is decent. I can't say as much for books, novels. The technology - and the same goes for music - is just so much more enticing nowadays. Anyway.
Recently watched:
Sunset Boulevard
The Apartment
The Seven Year Itch
Ace in the Hole
And then read some of Cameron Crowe's book of interviews with Wilder himself. Crowe offered the mentor role in Jerry McGuire to Wilder, who vociferously turned him down. Sad. Would have been fun to see him act.
I've been having trouble writing about Bunuel. I'm taking the piece too seriously. Whereas my 500 word reviews are almost sassy, the Bunuel thing comes off as if I really want you to know how much I just learned about Surrealist film and Bunuel's influence on such contemporary Surrealist filmmakers as Michel Gondry and Matthew Barney. Pompous you could say. But when the piece comes out it comes out, and changing the entire scope is nearly impossible without writing the whole thing again from a completely different angle.
I'm going to start reading more Pauline Kael, who "reigned" over the NYC film reviewing circuit for like two decades. She said of "Maidstone," one of Mailer's strange movies in 1968, that it's "the worst movie I've ever stayed to see all the way through." Ouch. I wonder what she was like in person, what she looked like, why she chose film reviewing instead of, say, short story writing or the personal essay form. What makes a person a film reviewer for life? A fondness for dark theatres?
Anyway. So ends the first film entry. Hope to watch "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and "Ratatouille" pretty soon.
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