tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-251899122024-02-06T20:02:42.327-08:00http://killthesnark.blogspot.com.tr/Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.comBlogger162125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-2763728875241146072018-05-23T06:07:00.003-07:002018-05-23T06:07:32.853-07:00Optical Atlas Interview with Bill Doss<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For years I ran a website called Optical Atlas, dedicated to the music of the Elephant 6 collective (Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, of Montreal, and on and on). I retired the website in 2010. Sometime after that, my renewal notice for the domain name came through – to the wrong email address – and what I had hoped would be a permanent archive of E6 interviews and old news items instead has become a link to several dubious dating portals. However, I do have a backup, and though it’s a labyrinth to navigate, I’m uncovering many things I’d either forgotten about or had long since given up for lost. So what I’d like to start doing is reposting some of those old materials here on my personal website, so they can be available to those interested in these fantastic musicians.<br />
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To start, here is an interview that means a lot to me. Bill Doss of The Olivia Tremor Control, The Sunshine Fix, and The Apples in Stereo passed away on July 30, 2012. I always had a strong connection to Bill’s music. In the OTC, he would answer all of Will Cullen Hart’s avant-garde, head-warping travelogues with crystal clear 60’s-inspired pop – it was exhilarating to emerge from the tangled, ominous Black Foliage of sonic collages into the sunny clearing of Bill’s Beach Boys-inspired “Hideaway” or “A New Day.” The two proper Olivia Tremor Control albums, Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle and Black Foliage Animation Music: Vol. 1, remain high watermarks of the E6 collective, right alongside In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.<br />
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This interview was conducted on July 15, 2006.<br />
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“So long Seku, goodbye Wren.” Whisper these lyrics to a true fan of indie pop and watch the fellow buckle at the knees. That the words actually seem to reference Egyptian mythology and William S. Burroughs is almost beside the point; when sung by Bill Doss on “Hideaway,” they embody the pinnacle of psychedelic pop bliss. For six years or so Doss split singing/songwriting duties with Will Cullen Hart in one of the most critically acclaimed indie bands of the 90’s, The Olivia Tremor Control (critically acclaimed in hindsight, anyway, as these bands always seem to be best appreciated just after they’ve split up). The Olivias released two albums and a handful of singles, and with each release seemed to be drawing into tighter and tighter focus a concept of what pop music ought to be: a dream-like space you could occupy in your headphones. It was rumored, or just misunderstood in certain circles, that they really wanted to put out a film of their Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle, perhaps to star Yoko Ono. When Optical Atlas asked about this, Bill Doss replied: “Well, it does say ‘unrealized’ right there in the subtitle. Some pipes you see and some you don’t! We always put Yoko on the guest lists at all our shows because well, you never know…” The follow-up, Black Foliage Animation Music: Volume One, combined the ever-refined pop songs of Will and Bill (and now Peter Erchick) with vast experimental landscapes. The band never officially split, although they performed a “farewell tour” in 1999 (a brief reunion tour strode the countryside last year). Hart launched Circulatory System, and Doss began recording under the name he used for an early Elephant 6 cassette release, The Sunshine Fix. Age of the Sun, on Kindercore/ Emperor Norton, is a pop fantasia on the title topic. Green Imagination, while still a bit trippy, stretched his sound with the addition of a children’s choir and a bit of soul. Following a successful tour as a member of The Apples in Stereo while opening for The Strokes, Bill Doss agreed to talk to Optical Atlas about the tour, the reunion shows with Olivia Tremor Control, and a new direction for the Sunshine Fix.<br />
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1) I love Green Imagination, and the addition of the Georgia Children’s Chorus on a few of the tracks (“What Do You Know,” “Runaway Run”) really adds to the Sunshine Fix sound in a unique way. How did you become involved with the group, and what was it like working with them?<br />
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I had always wanted to have kids involved in my music and the song “Runaway Run” seemed like the perfect place to do this. My wife, Amy, actually set that up for me through her boss. He is involved with the local Presbyterian church here in Athens and the Georgia Children’s Choir is part of that church. So, he put in a call to the choir director and we met and went over the songs so that they could make sure there was nothing too off-color for the kids to sing. I was worried that the song might be too difficult for children to sing but to my surprise, the material they were warming up with was far more complicated than what I had for them! In fact, they learned and perfected the parts so quickly and with so much time left that I decided to also have them sing the refrain on “What Do You Know,” which wasn’t originally planned. The director even had us all go into a classroom to discuss each line of the lyrics individually so that the children could completely understand what they would be singing. This was a little uncomfortable because of the lyrical content. I wouldn’t say that the lyrics are anti-God or anything like that–quite to the contrary–but they are definitely not pro-Christianity or even pro-organized religion. They more refer to a oneness that is expressed better in religions like Taoism. I think ambiguity helped mask that fact. Either that or the kids were down with the Tao! My goal now is to have the kids sing every song on my next record and me not sing at all. I prefer the sound of their voices to mine!<br />
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2) What was it like to spend some time on the road with The Apples in Stereo? Are you involved with their new record?<br />
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Robert [Schneider] and I have known each other for a long, long time – since the early days of high school. In fact, our band, Fat Planet, though not my first band, was my first real band in that the people could actually play, and that really pushed me to get better. So now, playing in a band with Robert for the first time since then, not counting one-offs and the occasional recording session, has just been incredible. It has the carefree feeling that you can only get when you are young and think that you are going to take over the world someday–and maybe someday we will! Plus, our voices really blend well together. There are only a handful of people who I really enjoy singing with and I would have to say that Robert is at the top of the list. I must also commend Hilarie [Sidney] too. Even though this is the first time she and I have sung together, it’s effortless to blend voices with her. She is quite an amazing singer as well and pounding the hell out of the drums at the same time! Quite a feat! Not to mention that all the Apples are super great people to hang with. As for the new album New Magnetic Wonder, Robert came down to Athens recently and brought his entire set-up–computer, mikes, and a rack of mic pres and compressors and set them all up at my house. He was in town for a couple of weeks and we did a lot of overdubs–mostly singing–and had a great time. Will Hart was involved on a track as well. We all hung out and just had a fantastic time getting high and making up stupid parts, some of which actually made it onto the record! The creative energy was unbelievable.<br />
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3) Last year Olivia Tremor Control briefly reunited for a pretty spectacular little tour to enthusiastic crowds. How did it feel to play and tour with your old band again?<br />
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It was just amazing. I couldn’t believe that so many people even remembered who we were, much less wanted to come out and see us dust off those old ditties. I always felt that we aborted the band far too early in our “career” and getting back together with the old guys felt very good. We fell right back into the music without skipping a step. It was very natural and effortless. Plus my friends Andrew Hawthorne and Kevin Evans put together some fantastic visuals and projected them behind us for some of the shows. That made it even extra special for me. I would love to re-rail that train back on the tracks for some new stupidity but that will have to come in its own time.<br />
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4) Can you confirm the rumor that you’re credited as “The Bill Doss” on the Powerpuff Girls tribute album, Heroes & Villains, because the Cartoon Network (or perhaps Kid Rhino) thought “The Sunshine Fix” might be a drug reference? And how did you become involved with this record?<br />
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Starting with the last part first, apparently Craig McCracken, the creator of the show is a fan of Elephant 6. How about that, huh? He told me that he had bought a copy of the first Sunshine Fix single (the one with the insert controversy) and liked it enough to ask me to be on that record. Then they sent me a bunch of episodes of the show and asked me to become familiar with the characters and try to inject them into my song. It was great fun! I was sitting at home watching cartoons and thinking,”I’m working! What better job could anybody have?!?” Plus, the songs were mastered (mine was mixed as well) by Mark Mothersbaugh which thrilled me to no end! As for the name change, yes, the show (or it may have been the label, I forget) thought that The Sunshine Fix was too much of a drug reference for a record about a kids show. I never intended for that name to be a drug reference but when I thought about it I could definitely see it! I’ve always liked names that have multiple meanings and I suppose that one could mean several things depending on how you look at it. So I decided to just use my real name–I played all the parts myself–and thought I’d be really clever and stick a “The” on the beginning so that it would sound more like a band name like The Pink Floyd or The Sonic Youth.<br />
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Of course it came off sounding egoistic as in I am “The” Bill Doss. So much for clever! Actually, I am one of several Bill Dosses. I recently got an email forwarded to me from a paramedic in Ohio named Bill Doss who had received a fan letter saying how much they loved The Sunshine Fix. Nutter.<br />
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5) Are you writing or recording any new material at the moment?<br />
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Oh yeah, I am always writing and recording. I got into ProTools recently and have been experimenting like crazy with it just learning the program. I have also been trying to shy away from writing 60’s-style pop songs and instead come at my songwriting from a different angle, which is not as easy as it sounds after so many years in one direction, and also the reason I don’t have a new record out yet. I will definitely get back to the 60’s thing eventually but for now I am enjoying trying to do things differently. The new stuff is darker and lots of minor keys and sadness closer to Leonard Cohen than John Lennon, I suppose. I don’t know why, actually, because my life is wonderful and I am very happy, but the darker themes seem to be coming through in the new material. I suppose it’s all part of whatever it is…and as Lou Reed said, “I just write ‘em, I don’t explain ‘em…” or some other such nonsense. Plus after writing a galling amount of songs about the sun and light, an about-face was inevitable.<br />
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6) What are you listening to at the moment that you find particularly inspiring?<br />
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Right now, I am listening to a lot of Middle Eastern Music–especially from Lebanon. Also, some old stuff from Japan. It’s all so strange to ears that are used to hearing music from the west–all wooden and tinkly. I also recently got into Paulo Conte. He is an old Italian eccentric who’s crusty and sort of Tom Waits-y and just wonderful. With any luck, I could definitely see myself growing into that sort of character. Also, since I started playing with the Apples, I have gone back and listened to that stuff again and have really rediscovered their music. I think I had forgotten just how brilliant those records are. That has really inspired and reinvigorated me musically. And of course with the passing of Syd [Barrett], I have gone back and listened to all my old Pink Floyd and Syd solo albums. It’s sad for us that he is gone but at least now he is free from any earthly pain and besides, we lost him nearly forty years ago anyway. I think that has inspired me to keep working. You never know how much time you have to do the things you want to do. To paraphrase my friend Will, it’s best to enjoy your sunny day while taking the time to waste it.<br />
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Portrait photo by Amy Hairston<br />
Live photo of Olivia Tremor Control by Chris Yetter </div>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-42384756022165434852018-05-23T05:59:00.002-07:002018-05-23T05:59:58.396-07:00Random Pulp Art #3: Jim Steranko’s Blade Runner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Cover art for the Marvel Comics adaptation of Blade Runner, by <span style="color: cyan;">Jim Steranko</span>.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-12477274601314189932017-05-25T12:20:00.000-07:002017-05-25T12:20:00.486-07:00Optical Atlas Interview with Ideal Free Distribution <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This interview which I conducted with Tony Miller and Craig Morris of the Lexington, KY band Ideal Free Distribution was first posted at Optical Atlas on February 6, 2007.<br />
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Early last year, around the time when Optical Atlas was just coming into creation, a pair of MP3s began to spread around the music blogs accredited to one “Ideal Free Distribution.” Not a lot was known about the band, except that they were from Kentucky and Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo was helping to mix their new record. The MP3s–which might be referred to as the “Apples and Oranges b/w Saturday Drive” single–garnered instant enthusiasm. The sound called to mind the Kinks and the Zombies, and yeah, a little Syd Barrett too. Now an established part of the Lexington scene, along with the Apples, High Water Marks, and Thee American Revolution (in which IFD member Craig Morris plays alongside Schneider), they’ve just released their self-titled debut album on Happy Happy Birthday to Me: 14 tracks of virtuoso melody, harmonies, and mellotron–more on the latter in just a bit. Morris, who wrote the majority of the album’s songs, provides guitar, drums, organ, and piano; he’s joined by lead vocalist Tony Miller and Eric Griffy on bass and electric guitar. (In the band’s live incarnation, they’re joined by Marci Schneider, Shelly Morris, Samantha Herald, Joe Drury, and Mike Grote.) On the strength of their new album alone, they’ve just been invited to play this year’s SXSW Festival. Both Craig Morris and Tony Miller agreed to a joint interview to mark the general public’s introduction to the band, a band which has actually been gestating as a bedroom recording project since 1997–which partially explains why the album is so polished and intricately worked out.</div>
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So how did the band come together? It sounds like it was in gestation for a long time, and started as bedroom recordings–is that accurate?</div>
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CRAIG MORRIS: Yes, we began recording at Eric’s parents house in 1997. We started off as a pretty jangly bunch, pretty heavily influenced by the early Who and the Stone Roses. As time progressed, we began doing more elaborate overdubs to add more depth to the sound. A lot of the stuff from this time is really fun. Some of it is wretched.</div>
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Where was this, in Lexington?</div>
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CM: No, this is our hometown of Benton, KY.</div>
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TONY MILLER: Good ol’ Benton, KY…home of “Tater Day.” Craig and Eric lived right next to each other growing up (parents still do) and I lived about 2 miles away. Craig and Eric are cousins and he used to hang out at the Griffy’s with Eric’s younger brother Alex. Eric used to bully them into pretending they were in a metal band by using tennis rackets as guitars. Craig forgot to mention how intimidated we initially were by Eric. He was a few years older and was a high school football jock, plus he had been playing in metal bands for years (we were afraid of metal too).</div>
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The first time we went down to his house to mess around, he needed to go to the store to get cigarettes, so we rode with him…he had the front floor board full of cassettes that were his own 4-track recordings. He played a few that he considered trash and it was the best music Craig and I had ever heard. That was the initial “one-up” that got us thinking harder about songwriting. Shortly thereafter, Craig retailiated with the most brilliant two pop songs ever and we’ve been competing unofficially ever since. Eric and I are a little bit behind considering the effort that Craig put into the new album.</div>
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What kind of equipment were you using back then, and was there a moment when you purchased some recording equipment that made you feel you were beginning to take serious steps to make this a recording project?</div>
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CM: We started with a Marantz cassette 4 track and a Shure SM-57. It’s hard to botch things with a 57. We really had no other gear besides my Telecaster and Fender VibroChamp, Tony’s guitar at the time and Eric’s bass. We really thought we hit the big leagues when we purchased a Roland VS880 digital 8 track. We got quite a bit more ambitious with that thing since it had more tracks, and there wasn’t as much signal loss when you bounced tracks together onto one track, like with the cassette. About 2001, I bought an M-Audio Omni computer interface and we started recording on computer. We also started getting cheap RODE and Audio Technica condenser mics, which gave us a few more options soundwise. A word to anyone reading who might be getting into recording: We do NOT use ProTools! The Windows version is the most user unfriendly program ever. Cubase, Sonar, and Vegas are much easier to use and are more likely to promote creativity rather than hold you back. To get ready for recording our next record, I’ve purchased some awesome mics and built a bunch of cool mic pres. I’ve also got a couple snazzy old compressors in the studio right now.</div>
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TM: As cheesy as it sounds now…Eric bought the most generic condenser mic around ’98 (seems like it was 9-volt powered) that, with the suspension mount, made me feel like I was Sam Cooke or something.</div>
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So when did Ideal Free Distribution begin playing live?</div>
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CM: Only when we had to. When a track was appearing on a Lexington compilation.</div>
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TM: It’s not like we didn’t try though. The odds of three musicians, with leanings toward 60’s influenced pop, finding each other in western Kentucky were astronomical…we weren’t so lucky with a drummer. We went through six drummers trying to put together a live act with no luck. It was like Spinal Tap or something…they just kept disappearing. Of course, I’m not sure where we planned on playing even if we would have gotten our shit together. There wasn’t exactly a “scene” in our area. I moved to Lexington after being away at grad school and put together a band here (The Melody Function) because I was dying to perform. Those guys became part of the Ideal Free Distribution when the UK radio station (WRFL) asked us to play a show in association with a local artists CD compilation. It was great! Our friend Robert Schneider played guitar on a couple of songs. We can directly attribute his friendship and eternal cheerleading to all the attention we’ve gotten so far.</div>
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The impression I get is that you perform live out of necessity, and you’re more concerned with how you sound on the album, is that correct?</div>
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CM: That isn’t entirely true. It’s just such an effort to get an eight piece band together that lives four hours apart.</div>
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TM: We like performing, but after 10 years of recording (and no performing), the bedroom collaborations are our first love.</div>
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How did you meet Robert Schneider? I’m aware that he’s married to Marci, but did you naturally come across each other as part of the Lexington scene? And for that matter, what was it like to work with Robert and Jason NeSmith on the record?<br />
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TM: Marci started dating Robert right around the time we finished the album. I met him at a Yo La Tengo concert around that time and then hung out with him shortly thereafter at one of Marci and Sammy’s (my girlfriend and bandmate) parties. I think that was right after he heard one of our older songs (“Kodak Stare”) that was in Marci’s music collection. It was overwhelming how much he gushed about that song. We had long ago given up on getting anyone to listen to our music and in no way did we try to get Marci to push it on him. I guess Craig got him a copy of the album shortly thereafter, which ultimately led to his barrage of promotional cheerleading, and our signing to HHBTM, and the mixing of our album.<br />
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It was so surreal to have Robert sitting in Craig’s garage studio twisting the knobs on something we recorded! We of course are big Apples/E6 fans so it was really mind-blowing. I always remember the first time I heard the Apples around ’99. Craig got a copy of Wallpaper Reverie and I remember being initially pissed off! I thought we had a completely original 60’s influenced sound and then we discovered that there was an entire collective out in Denver doing the same thing. It was initially disappointing, but then we became fans. To have become such good friends now with Robert and some of the other E6ers is very cool.<br />
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CM: I met Robert because he and Marci (my sister) started dating. Otherwise, living three hours away, I wouldn’t have had any reason to meet and get to know Robert. I have a conspiracy theory about Robert and the music though. I think Marci was intentionally listening to our best song at the time, “Kodak Stare,” because she knew if he heard it, he would freak out. She claims it was a coincidence, but either way, I suppose it worked. It was great working with Robert throughout the recording and especially the mixing process. I now understand how to use compression and EQ, and a long list of invaluable information. Playing with him in Thee American Revolution, I learned how much fun could be a part of rocking out. Jason is such a cool guy because he didn’t run our record through a mackie console and a walkman for mastering as he threatened. I gave that guy HELL one night after the American Revolution opened for Casper and the Cookies.<br />
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One of the things I really enjoy about the album is the diversity of the subject matter, from pure pop songs to the dark storytelling of “New Madrid, 1811” to the political commentary of “Someone’s Gonna Die.” It seems like there’s nothing out of bounds for the band to tackle, but they’re all recognizably from the same album and band–they connect and have the same strong voice. Can you specifically address those two songs and what the inspiration was?<br />
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CM: Sure. On “New Madrid,” growing up in western KY near the New Madrid Fault, we are always faced with the threat of another catastrophic earthquake. Some non-scientist nut said we would have one on a specific day in the early 90’s, and everybody around was let out school and stuff! It was hilarious. But seriously, there are hundreds of rumors about the 1811-1812 earthquakes that float around our part of the country, so I began reading primary source documents such as personal journals of folks that were there to try to learn what it was really like. That’s what “New Madrid” is based on. “Someone’s Gonna Die” was me sitting around in ’03 getting pissed off at the blind stupidity of people being so idiotically patriotic (I’m patriotic, I like being American, I cheer for the US Olympic team and stuff, but I won’t cheer for a war that I don’t agree with). It was obvious to me and a lot of people at the time that the Bush administration was dying to have the fake war in Iraq (the premise behind the war being fake, not that there aren’t people dying there). In Kentucky, every idiot had everything they owned plastered with flag stickers and flag this and flag that. It struck me that any time when the masses of flags come out, some poor bastard is going to have to die for it.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-89943442774073831922017-05-25T12:16:00.000-07:002017-05-25T12:16:09.254-07:00Camels Have Wings <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Walked past this toy store window display: just to be clear, this is a camel with angel wings and a severed giraffe head on its hump. Kids…buy?<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-52299029615890184742016-12-30T07:34:00.001-08:002016-12-30T07:36:31.370-08:00On Steampunk “Rivets are our glitter.”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">– Lord Bobbins, of <a href="http://www.teslacon.com/"><span style="color: cyan;">Teslacon</span></a>, on Steampunk costume design, speaking at the </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> <b>2015 Wisconsin Writers’ Institute.</b></span></div>
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-88409121464926424522016-12-30T07:27:00.000-08:002016-12-30T07:27:38.616-08:00Random Pulp Art #2: The Zap Gun<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-32027861916200894592016-12-30T06:43:00.000-08:002016-12-30T07:21:05.686-08:00Wisconsin Film Festival Dispatch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The 2015 Wisconsin Film Festival is in full force, continuing through Thursday. Although I had to cut one film last night due to major eye issues – I didn’t really want to sit through a long French crime drama if I can’t read subtitles – so far it’s been a rewarding experience. There’s been a bit of silent film (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, click for review), Orson Welles (Chimes at Midnight, click for review), a new comedy from the director of Computer Chess (Results, an unconventional and very funny rom-com with Guy Pierce, Cobie Smulders, and Kevin Corrigan), and what’s pictured below, a trio of short documentaries on three key elements of Wisconsin life: beer, supper clubs, and amusement parks. “Little America” (D: Kurt Raether) profiles the Little A-Merrick-A park, which places rollercoasters right up next to a cemetery; “Tale of the Spotted Cow” (D: Bill Roach) profiles Wisconsin’s storied New Glarus Brewing Company; and “Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club” (D: Holly L. De Ruyter) finally explains to me what a supper club is while showcasing some truly fabulous decor (how could I have not paid a visit to Beaver Dam’s Pyramid on the Nile before their recent closing?).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">“Old Fashioned: The<br /> Story of the <br />Wisconsin Supper <br />Club.”</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">“Dinner, Drinks, and<br />Entertainment”<br /> post-film Q&A.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Bill Roach discusses<br /> “The Tale of the <br />Spotted Cow.”</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Director Kurt <br />Raether discusses<br /> “Little America.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Director Holly De <br />Ruyter discusses <br />“Old Fashioned: The<br /> Story of the<br /> Wisconsin Supper <br />Club.”</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Kyle Cherek, host of<br /> public television’s <br />“Wisconsin Foodie,”<br /> introduces the films.</span></td></tr>
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-32223727444059684022016-12-30T06:27:00.000-08:002016-12-30T07:20:41.089-08:00Gene Expression Center<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is the bulletin board outside my wife’s workplace. I can’t name all the <br />
Genes, sorry.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-8084887468502323142015-10-19T12:13:00.001-07:002015-10-19T12:13:27.452-07:00Random Pulp Art #1: The Sailor on the Sea of Fate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(In which I randomly scan things and post them here…)<br />
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This Michael Whelan illustration from the old DAW paperback – my favorite in Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga – captures the dream-like quality of an episodic novel, as Elric boards a ship that travels between dimensions.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-74090843950700503812015-10-19T12:10:00.000-07:002015-10-19T12:10:20.792-07:00The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlv8ZfI2S-jQmVqA5PjCM1C78AGumHvvVJccd6acfbvCsAcoiujK-q4gUTMOJjffHdbtaRYE61GFMVsd_3oX2Xra6ynKtkU70KdaV3KT1UBSUWCdtVTTkGBjz5ApnhVAm7T4jV/s1600/ronlogo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlv8ZfI2S-jQmVqA5PjCM1C78AGumHvvVJccd6acfbvCsAcoiujK-q4gUTMOJjffHdbtaRYE61GFMVsd_3oX2Xra6ynKtkU70KdaV3KT1UBSUWCdtVTTkGBjz5ApnhVAm7T4jV/s320/ronlogo1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Voting is now open for the 2015 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.<a href="http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/58443"> Cast your ballot here.</a></div>
Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-62985788667378780932015-10-19T12:06:00.000-07:002015-10-19T12:14:42.602-07:00“Salvage” at Fiction Vortex<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My new short story, “<a href="http://www.fictionvortex.com/2015/03/salvage/">Salvage</a>,” is now available for your reading pleasure at<a href="http://www.fictionvortex.com/"> Fiction Vortex</a>, a magazine of speculative fiction.</div>
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“Salvage” is part of a collection of fantasy stories that take place in a larger world called Panidore. I’ve been quietly assembling these tales, and this is the first to reach publication. There are more, including the novel I recently completed as part of the Madison Writers’ Studio.<br />
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Fiction Vortex is currently raising funds to keep the online magazine going. Please consider contributing to the fantastic work they’re doing – more information is at <a href="https://www.patreon.com/FictionVortex">Patreon</a>.<br />
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Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-68332063734932953202009-04-06T07:24:00.000-07:002009-04-06T12:45:20.392-07:002009 Wisconsin Film FestivalThis blog has been hibernating for the winter while I've been off finishing work on a novel. I wasn't planning on blogging about this year's Wisconsin Film Festival, but, well, it's been a tradition...so let's do it. Here's a quick rundown of what I saw this year.<br /><br /><strong>Anvil! The Story of Anvil</strong> (U.S., 2008) * * *<br />D: Sacha Gervasi<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_i9emY7LxDKjL4-tgoSOkJl1g0R3aYkuBtQGkJ3cI5lmAtHhJhakj0-AxnboBbrumsXsfo6EOiDGfZq6RHULCG4ekF_yde69RvXQyb9A7muaBLn4g2jtkY92nQ7_AOyP8a0k3/s1600-h/anvil.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321644280525442722" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 277px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 181px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_i9emY7LxDKjL4-tgoSOkJl1g0R3aYkuBtQGkJ3cI5lmAtHhJhakj0-AxnboBbrumsXsfo6EOiDGfZq6RHULCG4ekF_yde69RvXQyb9A7muaBLn4g2jtkY92nQ7_AOyP8a0k3/s400/anvil.jpg" border="0" /></a>I've been wanting to see this since reading a glowing Film Comment article from last year; it's a documentary about a heavy metal band that hasn't been big since 1984. And even then, they weren't so big. Canadian rockers Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner (yes, his real name) have kept the Anvil brand alive, albeit with just a small group of loyal fans, while laboring at miserable day jobs, still dreaming of one day breaking through to the big time. The film follows their last-ditch effort at success through a mismanaged European tour and a big-budget studio album (their thirteenth, with money fronted by Lips' older sister) in which record labels may or may not have any interest. Much like The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, the dialogue could be straight out of a Christopher Guest comedy (or, more obviously, This is Spinal Tap), were it not all real. But the film is also unexpectedly moving, as Gervasi--who toured with the band as a teenager, and has since become a Hollywood screenwriter--makes pains to emphasize that Lips' devotion to the Anvil dream has real-world consequences to his family and Reiner's, who are waiting on the sidelines for a better life.<br /><br /><strong>Live from New York...: 1950s Television from the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research</strong> (U.S., 1952-1958)<br />D: Sidney Lumet, Hal Keither, Lou Sposa<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfNInV0qi821ygnO-2kNcWvkA4tHMRIVQtS8msz3wbCyRai7JS_f6NCMzp5PhhxHedudiZW0m1rRb-AZ6C0HJJFfLdOswq9VYExU7GM7X5bTtFSpoWGpeZDgei7DBw1BIVwtPx/s1600-h/cox_wally.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321657050439009522" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 115px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 159px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfNInV0qi821ygnO-2kNcWvkA4tHMRIVQtS8msz3wbCyRai7JS_f6NCMzp5PhhxHedudiZW0m1rRb-AZ6C0HJJFfLdOswq9VYExU7GM7X5bTtFSpoWGpeZDgei7DBw1BIVwtPx/s400/cox_wally.jpg" border="0" /></a>This program assembles three half-hour live television broadcasts from the 1950's, rare copies held in the Wisconsin Film and Television Archive (and shown on DVD to preserve the prints). "Danger" was an anthology mystery/suspense program; the episode screened, "Death and the Family Jewels," is an amusing film noir with a young Cloris Leachman prominently featured; but it's of interest primarily for Lumet's innovative camerawork, which does its best to bring a certain amount of style to the live format. More entertaining was an episode of "Mr. Peepers," starring Wally Cox as a nebbishy science teacher. Much of the comedy still works marvellously, although the sitcom format had a long way to go: much of the humor seems to meander aimlessly, which gives the unintended feeling of (bad) improv. Best of all was "ESP," a failed game show hosted by Vincent Price. UW Cinematheque curator Heather Heckman unfortunately forewarned the audience this would be "boring," and so I saw at least one couple leave right as it was starting. Their loss. Poor Vincent Price struggles to make the most of an unworkable concept (none of the contestants demonstrate any psychic powers, unsurprisingly--including the prize fighter, a palooka who admits to not knowing what "ESP" meant until the producers told him he had it). The series, which premiered while the game show trials were ongoing, deserves a DVD release--all two episodes, as the plug was quickly pulled. The unintended humor value is extremely high. I can't imagine that any film at WIFF this year generated louder laughter.<br /><br /><strong>Harvard Beats Yale 29-29</strong> (U.S., 2008) * * * 1/2<br />D: Kevin Rafferty<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLjBcJzTnDTfq2Rr-PIhflfm2r_-6s_8Br_uCQW483vhhh9NIgd7wZ2MsXo_P9CWWNqoAIWWThL_9zCkvq7_1rkW89rBPYy4LCXh5gfh65twLwTRhFiSrq6tIVDZ4erTpIJxD/s1600-h/harvard.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321656806438953666" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 264px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 145px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLjBcJzTnDTfq2Rr-PIhflfm2r_-6s_8Br_uCQW483vhhh9NIgd7wZ2MsXo_P9CWWNqoAIWWThL_9zCkvq7_1rkW89rBPYy4LCXh5gfh65twLwTRhFiSrq6tIVDZ4erTpIJxD/s400/harvard.jpg" border="0" /></a>Rundown of the legendary Harvard/Yale game of 1968 is deceptively simple, cutting between talking heads and footage from the game itself. But this is the best sports film I've ever seen. Despite the necessary distancing of the talking heads, despite the grainy quality of the 1968 film, despite the fact that the outcome of the game is in the TITLE ITSELF, the enjoyment and the palpable suspense of the game is translated perfectly, partly because of director Rafferty's clean technique, but mostly because it was a damn good game. First and only celebrity spotting of the festival: Mayor Dave attended. First "sensurround" experience of the festival: sitting next to me was a gentleman who attended the actual game, and helped provide me with additional play-by-play commentary. (Past "sensurround" festival experiences include watching Werner Herzog's Buddhism documentary Wheel of Time with exiled Tibetan monks, and the horror film "Isolation" next to a WIFF volunteer who was in hysterics and borderline catatonic collapse for the entire film.)<br /><br /><strong>The Trap</strong> (Serbia/Germany/Hungary, 2007) * * 1/2<br />D: Srdan Golubović<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95IOAkg-1gjKPnJ0k3MI1CwadepqTTQcD6YxiMaxifRIyEnx3cp6jkUwClNHWU20aKmF34Sl4PXu9RZa8azmRQlx70A1Vs5plZdQmUU9B0xpJoFMyuWFXqWbEiVL4k6aYDEcJ/s1600-h/thetrap01.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321657618603789986" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 247px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 162px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95IOAkg-1gjKPnJ0k3MI1CwadepqTTQcD6YxiMaxifRIyEnx3cp6jkUwClNHWU20aKmF34Sl4PXu9RZa8azmRQlx70A1Vs5plZdQmUU9B0xpJoFMyuWFXqWbEiVL4k6aYDEcJ/s400/thetrap01.jpg" border="0" /></a>When the son of a middle-class couple falls ill, only an expensive surgery can save his life. In desperation for the money, the wife places an ad in the paper despite her husband's protests and injured pride. But options are running out when the husband, Mladen, receives the only answer to the ad, from a mysterious benefactor who will provide the money on one condition: that Mladen perform a murder. While he agonizes over the decision, their son is hospitalized, and Mladen's marriage begins to fall apart when he refuses to tell his wife just what's been bothering him. Golubović does a fine job illustrating the "quiet desperation" of a man living through hard economic times (it's easy for the viewer to relate anyway), but unfortunately the film is predictable from its plot through its method: in every scene the viewer can anticipate what will follow--which on the one hand provides a sense of doomed inevitability, but on the other hand makes for a very plodding film. One good twist regarding the blackmailer, in an excellent scene at the climax, almost redeems the enterprise, but it's a long time coming, and all too fleeting. It's not bad, but this has all been done before, and in more rewarding or insightful films.<br /><br /><strong>Our Beloved Month of August</strong> (Portugal, 2008) * * *<br />D: Miguel Gomes<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRYcpJPWjRJPF7VvnGdyDrIn6h-5InI_9CboDfNUMT34YV_9gLI8iyznTvUcnElXFHAJApEQ2StuoqmbALXjNPu18LRJ-jff1pz_ODRviw0NfMoxTfsecDRP3y7jovrAdNduWy/s1600-h/ourbeloved.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321659093194390418" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 281px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 174px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRYcpJPWjRJPF7VvnGdyDrIn6h-5InI_9CboDfNUMT34YV_9gLI8iyznTvUcnElXFHAJApEQ2StuoqmbALXjNPu18LRJ-jff1pz_ODRviw0NfMoxTfsecDRP3y7jovrAdNduWy/s400/ourbeloved.jpg" border="0" /></a>As an (almost Godardian) experiment, this film is fascinating. Imagine a filmmaker who wants to tell a story called "Our Beloved Month of August," involving a teenage singer, her tentative flirtations with her handsome cousin, and her overprotective father. Then imagine that while the director prepares to shoot, in his research he becomes distracted by the Portuguese countryside and its eccentric inhabitants. Thus, he begins to film 2nd-unit footage without much interest in initiating the main story itself, much to the chagrin of his investors. Essentially this is the story of Miguel Gomes' Our Beloved Month of August, which does, ultimately, get to its story-within-a-story, but not before spending about half its 147-minute running time in leisurely distraction. We meet a young man who, once a year, jumps off a bridge; we watch local bands play; we go up and down the river and its surrounding hills, occasionally glimpsing the director, or locals who may or may not want to involve themselves in his film. The temptation is to speculate on what the film would have been as a conventional narrative, without such an expansive prologue, but truth is that it's the experiment which makes the film something which can't be dismissed. An endurance test, perhaps (there were many walkouts), but a rewarding one.<br /><br /><strong>Between the Folds</strong> (U.S., 2008) * * *<br />D: Vanessa Gould<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnmvdEGYMpyM4PMwXnp4b6KX5ZOjwA-B9WMKvATbLYdeyTGeOlFfLGibwzO1IJboqaJSNrY-AWLYEItRkBBDRJjWM9Q5x2LJiiqOC-uDL_Ldu4MBf7MLOIB2ORxg7zmAwrcAJ/s1600-h/origami.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321659464125012098" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 322px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 195px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcnmvdEGYMpyM4PMwXnp4b6KX5ZOjwA-B9WMKvATbLYdeyTGeOlFfLGibwzO1IJboqaJSNrY-AWLYEItRkBBDRJjWM9Q5x2LJiiqOC-uDL_Ldu4MBf7MLOIB2ORxg7zmAwrcAJ/s400/origami.jpg" border="0" /></a>This documentary on the art of paper-folding transforms one's notions of what origami is, as we witness artists from different nations creating elaborate three-dimensional sculptures: figures with detailed facial expressions, flowers that blossom before your eyes, beasts which stand as tall as a person. Most surprisingly, we learn of its practical application to fields of math and science, from designing unfolding solar panels for satellites, or doing cutting-edge research on protein folding; which is why the art is of growing interest to professors who spend their spare time folding paper and elaborately diagramming their work. Great fun at a sold-out show (one of many this year), with director Gould in attendance. Accompanied by two animated short films on the origami theme.<br /><br /><strong>Tulpan</strong> (Kazakhstan, 2008) * * *<br />D: Sergey Dvortsevoy<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFFAS9UHFtoMJCSo-iVDpNJ7E8Cn_7_ZZHRv4PVoJwbtn4wacKne3_lk1id_6cwTFWtfoaMWTaSu5CL6f0x0RkMiRVjiBgeWe6o5lvKjKRp4jN5_ZpCGkQPPomfSxmFfEvxfWP/s1600-h/10301-tulpan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321659775047353650" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 173px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFFAS9UHFtoMJCSo-iVDpNJ7E8Cn_7_ZZHRv4PVoJwbtn4wacKne3_lk1id_6cwTFWtfoaMWTaSu5CL6f0x0RkMiRVjiBgeWe6o5lvKjKRp4jN5_ZpCGkQPPomfSxmFfEvxfWP/s320/10301-tulpan.jpg" border="0" /></a>Dvortsevoy's portrait of a family of Kazakh farmers living within the same small dwelling on the dust-devil-swept steppes is most remarkable for capturing the rhythms of life: herding the sheep, singing to pass the time, eating dinner on the sandy floor of the hut, playing with a radio to capture the fleeting signal from a distant broadcast, and occasionally venturing out to try to get young Asa a wife. There's only one eligible girl left on their corner of the steppes, and that's Tulpan, who is never seen, though she advises her parents that Asa's ears are too big. Thus deemed unsuitable, Asa miserably returns to his homelife, and chafes at the idea of being just another shepherd, his big-city dreams fueled largely by his hyperactive friend Boni, who collects Western pornography and tapes it to the inside of his truck. Very similar to The Story of Weeping Camel--in fact, replete with a graphic animal birth--but with, naturally, a more adult edge.<br /><br /><strong>Idiots and Angels</strong> (U.S., 2008) * * *<br />D: Bill Plympton<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6XbN1nrAD83tvR0UXuvwZ_HI1_wpZRICSaeQzZJfwfiHJp4IF5tXT9ZnNAnhtk7DbLVyAmz8nLv3QZoZDbHi-5fhgsqGg31afftLJHMcg6ntCrJhE8MvsgUUuemX1iZrtE1pn/s1600-h/idiots.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321660378424254898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6XbN1nrAD83tvR0UXuvwZ_HI1_wpZRICSaeQzZJfwfiHJp4IF5tXT9ZnNAnhtk7DbLVyAmz8nLv3QZoZDbHi-5fhgsqGg31afftLJHMcg6ntCrJhE8MvsgUUuemX1iZrtE1pn/s320/idiots.jpg" border="0" /></a>Plympton's fifth feature-length animated film is, once again, done almost entirely by Plympton himself, which is still a very rare and exceptional thing--and which is why it's so unusual that there are <em>two</em> such works in this year's festival (the other being Sita Sings the Blues, reviewed below). I haven't seen his last, Hair High, but have been following him pretty avidly otherwise, being a fan since his first film, the surreal musical The Tune (to date, his only "family" picture). Plympton's style is unique: hand-drawn, sketchy, ribald, violent, and most of all a slow-burning surrealism, where one incident leads to another with a deliberately-paced comic inevitability. Idiots and Angels is the apotheosis of his style, and one he's been building toward since The Tune and, in particular, I Married a Strange Person (previously my favorite, now usurped). Like IMASP, Idiots and Angels follows a man who inexplicably receives strange powers. <em>Unlike</em> IMASP, those powers--which come in the form of angel-like wings--manage to inhibit rather than enable his out-of-control Id. Our protagonist, who begins the play as a thoroughly wicked scoundrel who follows his every lustful and vengeful whim, is pummeled into an unwilling character arc by his animate wings, which blind him when he tries to spy on a nude sunbather, and send him soaring to right every wrong <em>against his wishes</em>. Meanwhile, two others--a surgeon and a barkeep--want the wings for their own personal gain. Plympton has been working toward dialogue-free storytelling for decades now, and he achieves it with Idiots and Angels; it's telling that even though sound problems took out the soundtrack for the first five minutes (thanks, Wisconsin Union Theater!), the audience could follow along perfectly, and were laughing at every gag. Plympton also simplifies his elements, limiting himself to the same locations and a small cast of characters, so that only the surreal comic action becomes complex and rich, as with the best Loony Toons. WIFF Sensurround moment #2: when the ending credits began to roll, a man toward the front of the theater stood up as his pants fell down, mooning the audience--a perfectly Plympton finale.<br /><br /><strong>Revanche</strong> (Austria, 2008) * * * *<br />D: Götz Spielmann<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRuqkS-vDGCReCDNdt0tYQG4OEJt7zT74ak3Fs2X4ObNiXUYARltBRIEyqjvcI1Hu5GUrtIVTtfXPpA0MVJxY_Yil_bh7a9Nki_rAaSXwRKEv5jfaV333yklIVAqM6k3C6NaQ/s1600-h/revanche.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321661223423421010" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 199px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWRuqkS-vDGCReCDNdt0tYQG4OEJt7zT74ak3Fs2X4ObNiXUYARltBRIEyqjvcI1Hu5GUrtIVTtfXPpA0MVJxY_Yil_bh7a9Nki_rAaSXwRKEv5jfaV333yklIVAqM6k3C6NaQ/s320/revanche.jpg" border="0" /></a>Alex is carrying on a secret relationship with the Ukrainian prostitute Tamara, against the wishes of their mutual employer at a Viennese brothel. Tamara is offered a chance to move up to the role of a higher-class escort for the elite, at a fancy hotel, but when she refuses, her pimp hires someone to rough her up. Alex offers her a chance to escape when he concocts a bank heist plan, but when it goes horrifically awry, he's left to pick up the pieces in a country village with his sickly, accordion-playing grandfather, and the couple next door, a police officer and his wife, who are unable to conceive. I've probably given too much away already. What should be stressed is that Spielmann is uninterested in crafting a traditional thriller, and forsakes "suspense" in favor of a documentary-style realism as he tries to access the emotional lives of the characters, and untangle the very complex moral dilemma each one faces. What makes Revanche so remarkable is that it arrives at a rare and potent emotional space, one which could never be anticipated from the setup.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Mermaid </strong>(Russia, 2007) * * 1/2<br />D: Anna Melikyan<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibveiXQOhwle4xmLdk56wcLL8PkLSY-yAGLpH454EcTvNqj0gJ4EGlYWWg-1jIh27vDE9GFGLlxUreJpzGbvPifvvjiAdOFuEOLgEAWdYAkg4TssNT_XAoK95FcsdYLb7HEG0j/s1600-h/mermaid.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321662652005377842" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 314px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 221px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibveiXQOhwle4xmLdk56wcLL8PkLSY-yAGLpH454EcTvNqj0gJ4EGlYWWg-1jIh27vDE9GFGLlxUreJpzGbvPifvvjiAdOFuEOLgEAWdYAkg4TssNT_XAoK95FcsdYLb7HEG0j/s400/mermaid.jpg" border="0" /></a>I want to award this film higher marks simply for existing: it's a Russian fantasy-comedy, directed by a woman, aiming for Amelie-style imagination and romance. But it never quite pulls together, and leaves one dissatisfied, even at 115 minutes. Masha Shalayeva plays Alisa (Alice, by the subtitles, perhaps to emphasize an Alice in Wonderland connection), who was born out of a waterbound tryst, and who decides to become a mute after witnessing her mother seducing a passing sailor (her father has been absent for many years, though she still waits for him). Sent to a school for special needs children, she focuses on honing her latent psychic ability, at first by causing apples to fall from trees, and later by orchestrating much larger events, usually unintentional catastrophes (to Alisa's distress, many people die in the course of this film as the results of her psychically-enhanced Id). When her mother moves the family--which includes Alisa and her grandmother--to Moscow, she adjusts to city life by taking a job as a cell phone ad (wearing an elaborate phone costume), and eventually falls in with a man who makes big money selling plots on the moon. That is, "falls in" with him literally--rescuing him from a suicide attempt as he jumps off a bridge, and seconds before she was going to off herself in the same fashion. Enamored perhaps as much by her own legend (how she was conceived) as the man himself, she devotes herself to becoming his housemaid, while he easily bats off her naive advances and continues to stumble, somnambulistically, through his life. Of course, eventually she persuades him to see the world--and her--differently, but this happens as abruptly as the contrived crisis/climax which follows almost immediately afterward. The film feels a bit like a missed opportunity.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Sita Sings the Blues </strong>(U.S., 2008) * * * *<br />D: Nina Paley<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDKGBNLSwB7bvG-AnH2gMZw8CdHdooVT1-aW84mchRMxbYJcUVvwPc5HtlJYU64DByD8dXBKKNUtIdgWwMH6m4s5WB2BGwabb8jDpbuif-BkDJYl1Eay2EB1WgtcuNB1vP7ZZw/s1600-h/Sita.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321662940325794642" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 180px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDKGBNLSwB7bvG-AnH2gMZw8CdHdooVT1-aW84mchRMxbYJcUVvwPc5HtlJYU64DByD8dXBKKNUtIdgWwMH6m4s5WB2BGwabb8jDpbuif-BkDJYl1Eay2EB1WgtcuNB1vP7ZZw/s320/Sita.jpg" border="0" /></a>A dazzling first feature-length animated film by Nina Paley, Sita Sings the Blues combines legends from the Ramayana, autobiography, and the songs of 1920's jazz singer Annette Hanshaw into an extremely personal feminist statement dressed up as sweet psychedelic candy. When I first read about this film on the Cartoon Brew blog, my curiosity was piqued enough to eagerly seek out whatever information I could find. At last able to view the finished product (and on the big screen!), I'm pleased to say that the film exceeds my elevated expectations. Most impressive--apart from the fact that this entire, studio-slick film was done by one person at her home computer--is the blending of animated styles, which dialogue with one another in charming and engaging ways. The Ramayana scenes, in which we learn the legend of Sita, her abduction, rescue, and subsequent marital discord, are illustrated by found art cut-outs, animated Terry Gilliam-style, and set to the voices of three storytellers trying (sometimes vainly) to settle on the details of the legend. These are intercut with scenes of Paley's own domestic upheaval, mirroring Sita's, and animated in a "squiggly" style of animation as if bringing to life doodles sketched into the corners of Paley's diary. Then there are the Hanshaw-driven musical numbers, the highlights of the film, which are frequent and eye-popping, animated like a Betty Boop short as visited by the Yellow Submarine. All of it is woven together so persuasively that the viewer is left convinced that there was no other way of telling the story, either Sita's or Paley's. A wonder: and you can watch it for free at the film's <a href="http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/">website</a>.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-7322822674029747982008-11-09T12:32:00.000-08:002008-11-09T13:14:01.882-08:00I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse<span style="font-weight: bold;">I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse</span> (France, 1973) * *<br />D: Fernando Arrabal<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD61f8cgXXu5e2I1rgdl3z0WFKP-IARPmvHw9z3NpwtL2j6GpORbLi57ZE0ZBkziX_PkqWYn6QciAHYwypU61AJW5F3icPXEA3pi4Q3ktT7G_jtc1CEP9m91AutUUWZ2Gl69m/s1600-h/DVDira.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 229px; height: 316px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD61f8cgXXu5e2I1rgdl3z0WFKP-IARPmvHw9z3NpwtL2j6GpORbLi57ZE0ZBkziX_PkqWYn6QciAHYwypU61AJW5F3icPXEA3pi4Q3ktT7G_jtc1CEP9m91AutUUWZ2Gl69m/s400/DVDira.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5266768928341509106" border="0" /></a>I earlier reviewed Fernando Arrabal's <a href="http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2007/04/panic-prayer-viva-la-muerte.html">Viva La Muerte</a> (1971), a film which I defined as "angry." Here is another film by anger (to borrow the byline used by Kenneth Anger). Arrabal, a founder of the Panic movement, seems determined to outdo fellow Panic artist Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) with a raging, nightmarish film on a similar theme. Like El Topo, I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse focuses on the calamity that unfolds when a holy man from out of the desert comes face to face with corrupt civilization. In this case, the holy man is a dwarf, Marvel (Hachemi Marzouk), who is discovered by a fugitive, Aden Rey (George Shannon), wanted for the murder of his mother - as is explained in an amusing opening newsreel interpreted into sign language for those "deaf-mutes" in the audience. Our hero actually had an excruciatingly Oedipal relationship with his mother, which has left him an epileptic, as well as a basketcase tortured by grotesque daydream/reveries of his childhood. As in a Jodorowsky story, he is unable to escape the shadow of a parent, leaving him in a state of arrested development, a sharply-dressed man of society who secretly longs to dress in his mother's underwear and relive the traumas of his youth. (Those traumas, always revisited to the sound of galloping hooves, include witnessing his mother at the receiving end of a graphic cumshot during an S&M session with a lover.) Having fled the authorities into the desert, he finds Marvel eating sand and goatshit delicacies, a complete innocent who can float into the air and perform other minor miracles. Marvel also grows out one toenail, clipping it only once a year, to store it with his others in a sack. At one point, Aden sorts through the sack to count the toenails, as one might count the rings of a tree, only to find them far too numerous. (Marvel has also lost count, and suggests he might be 10,000 years old.) Determined to introduce his new best friend to civilization, he takes the dwarf and his pet goat to the city, where they rent an apartment together. Disconcerted that there is no soil indoors, Marvel has Aden assist him in transporting bags of dirt inside to construct a garden. Absurdist misadventures follow, as Aden introduces his friend to the modern world (and the authorities continue to pursue, always one step behind). He tries to bring Marvel a lover, introduces him to eating meat in restaurants (which repulses the dwarf), and takes him to church--where Marvel performs a genuine miracle of stigmata that gets him promptly kicked out. All the while themes of incest, repressed homosexuality, and social and religious satire emerge, leading to a climax about as bloody and as memorably repellant as the one which ended Viva La Muerte. Much more so than Jodorowsky, Arrabal seems hellbent on providing a cathartic transcendence through rolling about in the <span style="font-style: italic;">grand guignol</span>.<br /><br />Taboo imagery is Arrabal's cinematic language. An erect penis is lit like a candle - which is the least of the phallic violations on display. Aden and Marvel are depicted shitting (for real) in silhouette against a desert sunset. A flower's stem is stuck into a woman's ass, to emerge coated in shit and devoured (not for real). When two nude lovers in gas masks copulate, it seems almost like a refreshing reprieve - the kind of garden-variety surrealistic symbolism which Arrabal usually tries to stampede past on the way to more aggressive imagery. While the Panic movement was partly established as an anarchic response to the commercialized state of Surrealism (thanks, Dali), I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse reminds one that Surrealism was originally intended as a weapon. This film <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>a weapon, perhaps more than it is a work of art, but as savage as it is, the film also feels less innovative and original than what was concurrently being created by artists such as Jodorowsky, Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini - even the stylish exploitations of Jesus Franco. Perhaps it is because many of the shocks seem pointless. Perhaps it is because the plot feels unoriginal, an imitation of El Topo or Simon of the Desert, but given a psychosexual twist.<br /><br />Yet it is still undeniably a "film by anger," an exorcism of Arrabal's private demons. It is a product of a unique decade in which extreme transgression became, if briefly, not just a valid cinematic tool but also <span style="font-style: italic;">fashionable</span>. I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse still provokes outrage, which is certainly one of Arrabal's chief objectives. That it also provokes weariness, exhaustion, and even cynicism from this viewer is, perhaps, one of the unfortunate effects of witnessing an artist set on taking every concept to its extreme - and bloody, and scatalogical, and repulsive - ends. I liked Viva La Muerte. But perhaps I've now had my fill of this kind of exploration, and hunger for real poetry now, not just belabored gestures at symbolism from the mud and grime.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-59664125723065540192008-10-06T08:41:00.000-07:002008-11-09T13:16:50.966-08:00Don't Touch the Axe<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDumas2Whr5Utzfbt3JFeM-nn_DLCjjt3Cc1DwnaPG-nz1BQHzab1gZ1V4bMA7rxegleZ-cDIRfVUzLkJqbo4sb2eVcoyWhpWSdxauOq0Q2BV7EaSKlFjDKMeLt0JTykjmQMZ9/s1600-h/donttouch.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254111361090510994" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDumas2Whr5Utzfbt3JFeM-nn_DLCjjt3Cc1DwnaPG-nz1BQHzab1gZ1V4bMA7rxegleZ-cDIRfVUzLkJqbo4sb2eVcoyWhpWSdxauOq0Q2BV7EaSKlFjDKMeLt0JTykjmQMZ9/s400/donttouch.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><strong>Don't Touch the Axe</strong> (France, 2006) * * * 1/2<br />D: Jacques Rivette<br /><br />There was, for a little while circa 2006, a bit of a Jacques Rivette revival. Rivette has always been one of the most underrated of the French New Wave directors, perhaps because his films were always more self-consciously theatrical than overtly cinematic. A touring program helped to reestablish his presence in the consciousness of film buffs internationally, screening prints of films such as Celine and Julie Go Boating (to date, his best-known and most highly-regarded film), Duelle, Noroît, Love on the Ground, and the sprawling Out 1. (Alas, when the festival came to my local UW-Cinematheque, they did not screen this last one, at 773 minutes his most legendary.) Oddly, the revival seems to have dimmed, and I'm still waiting on an announcement of some Rivette films on Region 1 DVD (ahem, Criterion?). Still, his latest film, released in the U.S. as The Duchess of Langeais, at least was released stateside, and to favorable attention, at that. </div><br /><div></div><div>Anyone who has taken the time to come to know Rivette through his films will eventually come to Honoré de Balzac and Rivette's great affection for the author; and so it should come as no surprise that in 2006 he adapted "The Duchess of Langeais," a novella included in Balzac's collection The History of the Thirteen. Originally, Balzac intended to call the story "Don't Touch the Axe," after a pivotal line of dialogue. Significantly, Rivette restored the title to his adaptation, although, for reasons I can't quite understand, it was changed to The Duchess of Langeais for festivals and limited release in the U.S. Don't Touch the Axe is a rather savage title, which adds a bit of teeth to what will be, by necessity, a story told mostly through dialogue--a chamber drama of unrequited love, set almost entirely in the Duchess' boudoir. Guillaume Depardieu* plays Montriveau, a decorated general of the Napoleonic wars, visiting Paris with a gruff demeanor, like a seaman who hasn't gotten his land-legs; fittingly, he plays the part with a staggering gait, to imply a war wound, though he seems to move like Frankenstien's monster, and is just as out of place.** At a ball he meets Antoinette (Jeanne Balibar), the wife of the wealthy, and perpetually absent, Duc de Langeais. Finding this fish-out-of-water entertaining, she decides to play with his affections for her own amusement. She invites him to her home, wearing only a flimsy nightgown and acting the engaged audience to his life story. As she intends, he falls intensely in love, declaring that she is the first woman who has ever stolen his heart. She is, of course, being the perfect coquette, building his expectations in perpetuity without ever intending to satisfy his desires. This echoes, ironically, the tale he tells her (in the film, stretched over several nights): of being taken through the African desert by a guide who promises him that the journey will be only a few miles more, a few miles more--until they have gone too far to go back. Montriveau is also being led on, so to speak, but when he reaches that "point of no return," he decides to turn the tables. </div><br /><div></div><div>And here is the only departure from the novella, a minor one: in the film the implication is that Montriveau decides to have his revenge upon the duchess of his own will; in Balzac's story, it is at the instigation of his friend Ronquerolles. Ronquerolles does play a role in Rivette's adaptation, but it's a late and minor part; the result is that Montriveau becomes a more dynamic character here, and more responsible for the tragedy which unfolds. Yet this is a Rivette film, arid, sometimes clinical. We are removed from Montriveau's thoughts and feelings, so that he's somewhat more mysterious than he is the novella. Balzac presents a messy character, emotionally fragile, and given to a rage when he finds that he's been so emotionally exposed by the coquette's wiles. Guillaume Depardieu, to his credit, is effective and sympathetic, but Rivette seems to hold him back. Rivette, like Godard, has always been a little reluctant for the viewers to lose themselves completely in the story--he wants to emphasize the boundary between the viewer and the characters. In the novella, there is a distinct dividing line when the point of view switches from Montriveau to the Duchess. But since we are never entirely within Montriveau's head in Rivette's film, that narrative switch is never really applied. The dividing line of interest for Rivette is the emotional gap between the two characters. Montriveau falls in love with the Duchess, and then she falls in love with him; but they never seem to meet one another. In one of the final images of the film--a rare departure from the narrative, though a minor one--we see a cinematic illustration of this divide, although to avoid spoilers I won't describe it here. Really, this is an anti-love story, and Rivette's emotionally aloof approach seems strangely fitting, even if it was not Balzac's method.</div><br /><div></div><div>Since this is not an experimental film by any means, or at least far less so than Rivette's early works, the result is a fascinating tension between artificiality and authenticity. The dim candles of the salons, the creaking of the floorboards, the dank corridors of the abbey and the clutter of Montriveau's apartment all lend a convincing verisimilitude. But Rivette keeps the emotions in check. He makes little effort to draw the viewer into sympathy with the characters. It is up to the audience to understand the dramatic stakes. Rivette's only cinematic trick is one he's used in the past: using interstitial title cards ("The next day--" "But, the next evening--" etc.), including some with extended quotations from Balzac's prose. He's always been among the most literary of directors; what is amusing is how Rivette, in his autumn years, seems to be pushing cinema toward the form of the novel. One could say that Out 1, which takes as long to see as a novel takes to read, was an early attempt to do just this; but an evening spent with any film of Rivette's is as intimate and as oddly comforting and involving as reading a book. That Don't Touch the Axe is a wonderful film is almost besides the point; it is another wonderful Jacques Rivette film, which is more than enough.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">* Guillaume Depardieu tragically died of pneumonia just a short while after I wrote this review.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">** Not entirely an artistic choice: Depardieu famously had to have his leg amputated following a motorcycle accident.</span><br /></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-68259625216463571452008-09-13T15:57:00.000-07:002008-09-13T17:10:03.770-07:00Lost in America<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNmSTHIYu0nDj1zDobEbXjo-CSW_hAqPks-rvlS2rI8XEDTw7iRSIybrHWt8qIMI3DCPLL65tnO_gMjzN0FBlIAcNUbgVfZqIvEx4dL_nFCj5kxaWu-QSDuCbh1DevGweI8vDr/s1600-h/lia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNmSTHIYu0nDj1zDobEbXjo-CSW_hAqPks-rvlS2rI8XEDTw7iRSIybrHWt8qIMI3DCPLL65tnO_gMjzN0FBlIAcNUbgVfZqIvEx4dL_nFCj5kxaWu-QSDuCbh1DevGweI8vDr/s400/lia.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245644235316204658" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lost in America</span> (U.S., 1985) * * * 1/2<br />D: Albert Brooks<br /><br />Albert Brooks is something of a lone albatross in American comedy for the past three decades; his films are razor-sharp, almost black comedies, but with a heart (and so appear, at first, to be less cynical than they really are). He's more populist than Woody Allen, but not a recognizable commercial name. Even when, in the first year of Saturday Night Live, he produced some brilliant, sardonic short films, he was booted off the show because he didn't fit into the SNL clique (shipping his shorts to NY from LA). Still, he's managed to--every few years--produce some very fine comedies, a handful of which approach masterpieces, and so his chief following is among film critics and film buffs. Lost in America is one of those near-masterpieces, perhaps his finest hour; and since I just found it for $2.99 in the discount bin at Pick 'N' Save, I'm writing about it here.<br /><br />Brooks anticipated the Big Brother-style reality TV show craze with his satire Real Life (1979), in which he played "Albert Brooks" (much as in his shorts and in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, an arrogant send-up of himself), but in 1981 made his first great film, Modern Romance, in which his character cannot find happiness because he distrusts anything resembling contentment, and thus pathologically self-sabotages his relationships; somehow, the film comes across as more brutally self-analytical than Annie Hall, as Brooks dissects his protagonist's narcissism and pities anyone who would have the misfortune to fall for him. (I should mention it's also very funny.) Lost in America could be seen as taking this self-sabotaging character, here called David, into his 40's, having finally settled into a lifestyle, with a loving wife and a lucrative advertising career for which he's invested eight years. Anticipating a promotion, he buys a new home and toys with the idea of purchasing a luxury car; but when he's offered the "Ford account" in New York, and told that a younger, less experienced employee will be taking the promotion, he has an epic meltdown before his boss (a subtle shot suddenly reveals that his boss has been gripping a stress-ball through the entire conversation):<br /><br />"I used to make fun of my friends in college who went out to 'find' themselves. I took the business route. So I end up here. I can't believe it. So what do I get? I get a transfer. After all these years, I get a transfer. I can get that at a bus stop, right now, I don't need any qualifications. Oh, by the way, our hairpiece secret is off."<br /><br />After getting fired, he marches directly to his wife, Linda (Julie Hagerty), at work, channeling all of his frustration and crushing disappointment into a frenzy of euphoric inspiration: they're going to leave their jobs behind, sell everything, buy a motor home, and travel across America "just like 'Easy Rider.'" Never mind that this never happened in Easy Rider. Soon they're on the road in their motor home (a leather-clad man on a motorcycle pointedly flips the bird), and make a fateful stop in Vegas to get remarried. The chapel is closed, so they go to the Desert Inn and settle for the "junior honeymoon suite," which, impractically, has two small heart-shaped beds. While David sleeps--the beds pushed awkwardly together--Linda sneaks down to the casino for an all-night gambling spree. At 6 AM he stumbled into the casino in a bathrobe, only to find Linda playing roulette with the look of a strung-out heroin addict, perpetually putting chips on "twenty-two, twenty-two." <br /><br />"The man says you're not on a lucky streak."<br />"I was down earlier, but come on, I mean--"<br />"And you're up now?"<br />"No, I'm still down, but I'm gonna hit now--"<br />"How down are you?"<br />"David, you're going to bring me bad luck, now stop it."<br />"But he's saying you've got bad luck..."<br />"Come on, come on, twenty-two, twenty-two...yes! Yes!"<br />"Wow! All right! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! All right! How much?"<br />"Thirty-five dollars."<br />"We're up! We're up!"<br />"We're still down."<br />"Down? How bad?"<br />"Down. Down. Twenty-two, down! Come on...twenty-two!"<br />"Down? How much have we lost?"<br />"Everything. Everything."<br />"Everything?"<br />"Everything...on twenty-two and make it happen for me!"<br /><br />All of their life savings are gone, including the precious "nest egg." David goes to speak to the manager of the casino (Garry Marshall), who sympathetically offers to comp the room and breakfast. David has a better idea. Still wearing his bathrobe, he proceeds to make the biggest advertising pitch of his life. <br /><br />"I'm going to tell you this idea now, and please, be secretive, because if another hotel hears about this, they'll take it. This is my business. As the boldest experiment in advertising history, you give us our money back... Think of the publicity. The Hilton hotel has these billboards all over Los Angeles with the winners of these slot machine jackpots; their faces are all over L.A., and I know that works. I've seen people in corners look up and say, 'Maybe I'll go to the Hilton.' Well, you give us our money back. I--I don't even know now, 'cause I'm just coming off the top of my head, but a visual where, if we have a billboard and the Desert Inn just handed us our money back. This gives the Desert Inn, really--Vegas is not associated with feeling."<br /><br />The extended scene is the centerpiece of the film, and as David continues to pitch, and the manager continues to politely, but firmly, refuse him, the desperation seems to sweat out of the screen, until at last David is describing a Santa Claus/Vegas advertising campaign, and the manager replies, "We're finished talking." If ever Brooks touched greatness, this scene is probably it.<br /><br />From there, events become slightly more predictible, and slightly less funny, although the performances of Brooks and Hagerty continue to shine, as they milk each moment for all its potential. The climax is a climax as only Brooks would stage it--understated and purely conceptual, and the natural endpoint of the satire: David, returning from his first day as a crossing guard, listens while Linda enthusiastically describes her day working as the assistant manager of a Wienerschnitzel, and then introduces her boss, a teenager. A more hopeful coda is then applied, but tempered by Brooks' cynicism: they return to the lives they had, having been permanently warned off the pursuit of happiness.<br /><br />One imagines that if Brooks had been able to make a series with these characters, and Hollywood had that to offer in the 80's rather than Chevy Chase vehicles, the world at large might be a better place. Still, most recently he produced Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005), surely one of that year's most underrated (and underseen) comedies, whose plot suggests that even post-9/11, societies of all persuasions can unite under a solitary cause (in the case of that film, the cause is not liking the comedy of Albert Brooks). Yet who could dislike Lost in America, or any film which features this exchange: <br /><br />"Phil Shabano, the unqualified son of a bitch! Why? I'll tell you why, because life isn't fair. But you know what'll happen? It'll balance out. He'll buy that boat I've had to look at in that stupid catalog for three years and he'll crash in Catalina and die and seals will eat him."<br /><br />"Oh, now--you like fish."<br /><br />"So what? I'm just telling what might be. Fine, he won't die, and he won't be eaten, but he'll never find his way back to the mainland."Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-44765243470463205472008-08-30T09:18:00.000-07:002008-08-30T10:04:38.317-07:00The Skull<span style="font-weight: bold;">The Skull</span> (U.K., 1965) * * * 1/2<br />D: Freddie Francis<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4GUfkPZngvY-W1i6RzDpqPgqLDgDc5KOVf_nVTaZIkHmEWSdnyL61r2Ajv0DqokYOPIYl_o2blaQtNxURNSgO-zfciECM9Lenfnm9NNFNuPAVBRaWPsBxAv25pJZqV_XAizSU/s1600-h/skull_lee_cushing.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4GUfkPZngvY-W1i6RzDpqPgqLDgDc5KOVf_nVTaZIkHmEWSdnyL61r2Ajv0DqokYOPIYl_o2blaQtNxURNSgO-zfciECM9Lenfnm9NNFNuPAVBRaWPsBxAv25pJZqV_XAizSU/s400/skull_lee_cushing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240347199120662914" border="0" /></a>What a curious, wonderful find this film is, now finally available in a definitive presentation from Legend Films, which has given us the recent (unfortunately) colorized restorations of Ray Harryhausen's early films, but here has nothing to colorize, and so offers up the simple, perfect pleasure of a widescreen transfer of an oft-neglected, overlooked horror classic. Though it features many stock players of Hammer horror franchises (Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Michael Gough, in particular), and is directed by Freddie Francis, veteran of many Hammer horrors, The Skull is actually a product of Hammer's chief competitor, Amicus, which is best known for producing anthology horror films like Torture Garden (1967) and Tales from the Crypt (1972). When I was in college, and watching Hammer movies voraciously--wondering why it had taken this horror fan so long to discover them--I would rent the Amicus films as a last resort (i.e. I couldn't find any Draculas or Frankensteins at the video store), and would derive modest pleasures from them. They often seemed like pale imitations of Hammer, featuring many of the players and directors, but with results that are choppy, garish, and considerably less handsome. (Although it should be noted that in Hammer's waning years, there wasn't much discernible difference between the studios.) The Skull is different. It's based on a short story by Robert Bloch, built upon the premise that the Marquis de Sade was possessed by an evil spirit, and that his skull still contains that spirit trapped within. Cushing plays a collector of occult items, who uses them in his research for books on demonology. Lee is his friendly rival. In the first proper scene in the story (after a pre-titles sequence in which we learn how the skull was first stolen from de Sade's corpse), the two Hammer superstars engage in a strangely obsessive bidding war over three Satanic statuettes, presided over by judge Michael Gough. This sequence alone should make the film a treasure for Hammer fans, and indeed is probably the best Hammer sequence never made by the studio; it also, being an auction of ancient and occult memorabilia, seems like an inspiration for an early scene in Guillermo del Toro's homage-laden Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Lee outbids his rival and wins the statues, though he's hard-pressed to explain to Cushing just why he wanted them so badly. Not a good sign. Later, Cushing is visited by Patrick Wymark (Repulsion, The Witchfinder General), who has two items which he thinks Cushing will want to buy--the first being a rare book on de Sade, the second being the man's very skull, for which he wants a thousand pounds. Of course, he can't very well prove it to be de Sade's skull, and he hopes that his own reputation will persuade Cushing; nevertheless, Cushing, though intrigued, refuses an immediate decision. Later, we learn that Wymark stole the skull from Lee, though Lee is only happy to be rid of it: he believes it was the skull which urged him to purchase the Satanic figures (for reasons unknown, but certainly sinister), and will now exert its unholy influence upon Cushing if he decides to take it. Of course, now that Cushing has been urged to stay away from the skull, his curiosity is piqued, and so begins an obsessive spiral which is one of the most peculiar and unique in the genre of British horror. Cushing, so often playing the most heroic of Hammer archetypes, here gets to sink his teeth (so to speak) into a more unsavory role. As his fascination with de Sade's skull grows, and his actions become more irrational and dangerous, he takes the viewer step-by-step through the man's unraveling--much more gradually and believably than, say, Jack Nicholson in The Shining. The film's long final stretch, almost set in real-time, is hypnotic, overpowering, almost claustrophobic, and beautifully illogical in the way nightmares are, in the way that the best Poe and Lovecraft stories are. Freddie Francis, always stylish but not always consistently good, here relishes the dreamlike quality of the story, and particularly indulges in the film's one actual dream sequence, which Tim Lucas rightly compares to Kafka's The Trial, but which also--in one drawn-out game of Russian Roulette--provides the kind of intense, sickening dread for which the horror genre is best suited. In Francis' most stylish and distinctive touch, several shots are taken from the point of view of the skull itself, as we gaze out of the skull's hollow sockets and the actors hit their marks so that they are perfectly framed--as though, somehow, the skull were arranging them like pieces on its chessboard. In several delirious moments, we are trapped in this POV as the skull actually pivots to follow them. All of this is most effective in a film in which so many of the Hammer horror clichés have been surgically removed, the plot stripped to its most archetypal players with all comic relief and other rote frivolities cast aside. The Skull gets straight to the heart of the matter, the heart of horror, but with the same stride as a sleepwalker grasping a knife in his sweaty fist.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-64191953766796242772008-07-26T05:38:00.001-07:002008-07-26T06:43:26.960-07:00The X-Files: I Want to Believe<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_u3-gtNAWZdx31HYmmjlXCpAa6GOGZnz58XwU1P1mGnRDq2eywrq7kJoRpFIMuUGJKSLUDgp3m1P-0qVO1a1Jv-MmBc1ulXV-xS8eBxgxuWkDfTnMY1jRyVyg3RlSOBfqridt/s1600-h/xfiles.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_u3-gtNAWZdx31HYmmjlXCpAa6GOGZnz58XwU1P1mGnRDq2eywrq7kJoRpFIMuUGJKSLUDgp3m1P-0qVO1a1Jv-MmBc1ulXV-xS8eBxgxuWkDfTnMY1jRyVyg3RlSOBfqridt/s400/xfiles.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227302172458198946" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The X-Files: I Want to Believe</span> (U.S., 2008) * * *<br />D: Chris Carter<br /><br />What if, in the middle of a summer of expensive, special effects-driven superhero blockbusters, they released a modest, intelligent, adult thriller based on the cult TV series The X-Files? What if it had almost no special effects, no extraterrestrials, no "government conspiracy"--and went in the exact opposite direction of its previous big-screen outing of ten years before (1998's The X-Files, <span style="font-style: italic;">aka </span>The X-Files: Fight the Future)? What if, instead of delivering on what fans and non-fans would expect, they actually answered the criticisms leveled at the first film (and at the series' later, less-valued years)? The answer, I'm afraid, might be the death of the whole enterprise. And it's a shame, because in doing all these things they've actually delivered a very good film.<br /><br />As every X-Phile knows, there are two kinds of X-Files episodes: one from the formidable "mythology" arc--involving UFOs, alien abductions, and government cover-ups--and the more common "stand-alone" hour, which might be either a "monster of the week" installment or a thriller on a variety of paranormal topics. Contrary to what an outsider might think, most fans prefer the latter, and indeed, the best episodes of the series have been stand-alone episodes with nothing to do with "black oil" or Alex Krycek or little spikes to be jabbed in the back of the alien bounty hunter's neck. Early in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, an FBI agent tips off the viewer by referencing a handful of the stronger X-Files episodes ("Beyond the Sea," "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"), all of them having to do with psychic phenomena. And that's exactly what you're getting here: a stronger stand-alone episode, stretched out to just under two hours. Expect anything else and you'll be greatly disappointed. Many of you will be. <br /><br />It's a FBI-procedural mystery first and foremost, the kind you'd expect to see in a thriller starring Morgan Freeman and/or Ashley Judd. As the movie begins, FBI agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) is employing a psychic, Father Joe (Billy Connolly), to help track down a missing agent. Instead he finds a severed arm buried in the snow. She then brings in former agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), late of the X-Files and now a practicing doctor, in hopes that she can contact paranormal expert Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), who has been in hiding for years (the 2002 series finale left Mulder and Scully on the run from the shadow government lurking within the FBI). Mulder is now living in exile, having grown an Al Gore beard and working out of a cramped room layered with newspaper cutouts and the familiar "I Want to Believe" UFO poster, dozens of pencils stuck in the ceiling. It's pretty much how you'd expect the obsessive, eternally driven Mulder to be getting on. Distrusting the FBI, he thinks this is just a trap to bring him into the open; nevertheless, as another agent's life is at stake, he's persuaded to meet with Agent Whitney and the psychic Father Joe, who, we quickly learn, is a convicted pedophile, now castrated, and living in squalor while nursing an addiction to cigarettes. The man's visions are beyond his control, and very often lead nowhere. Scully is disgusted by his crimes and convinced he's a fraud, although when he tells her, apropos of nothing, "Don't give up," she can't help but wonder if it's a message from God, as she's locked in an ongoing battle to save the life of a young child afflicted with a terminal illness. She wants to put the child through an experimental and grueling stem cell therapy treatment, but another priest (Adam Godley), the "good" priest to Joe's "bad" priest, counsels the parents to have the boy taken out of the hospital, where he can die in peace. It's a completely unrelated subplot that regardless brings an emotional and philosophical weight to the film. Meanwhile, Mulder puts all his faith in the increasingly discredited Father Joe, and just as the investigation seems to be drying up, a sinister conspiracy of an altogether different sort begins to reveal itself. No, aliens are not involved. Stop thinking that.<br /><br />While it's jarring to see how much Anderson and Duchovny have aged over the intervening years (a familiar face makes a cameo late in the film, and he looks uncannily, almost comfortingly the same), they slip so naturally into their old and best roles that it becomes easy to accept this as the latest chapter in their continuing relationship. Viewers unfamiliar with the last two seasons of the series (and, let's face it, that's 90% of the audience) will find it jarring to see the two agents romantically involved, the sexual tension of the first film long since dissolved as they hop into bed with each other early into this sequel. The more obvious path would have been to treat the agents like ex-lovers, with a frosty reception before finally rekindling their affection for one another--an overly-familiar arc that, I think, anyone else would have taken. But writer/director/series creator Chris Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz have chosen a braver path with this film, more respectful of the fans who want to see Mulder & Scully grow, but also respectful of adults who want a mystery-thriller that <span style="font-style: italic;">treats </span>them like adults. The plot goes in genuinely unexpected directions. The moral dilemma each agent faces has a severe and real-world weightiness--particularly Scully's. Father Joe is a fascinating character, alternately creepy and sympathetic, sometimes at the same moment, and a concrete symbol of the moral gray areas with which the plot concerns itself. The film's biggest flaw is that the climax feels too muted--and when Mulder wields a wrench and groggily shouts, "Does anyone here speak English?", it's easily the most embarrassing scene in the film. The movie is also slow and talky, which is poison in the middle of the popcorn season. But I will also admit that when someone complains to me that a movie was "boring" and "nothing happened," I consider that an endorsement. (Would you rather Michael Bay direct this?) What you actually have here is not a "boring" movie, but one that will, I suspect, look a lot better when viewed outside of the bigger-is-better frenzy of The Dark Knight (which is great, but an altogether different beast), Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc. It will seem considerably more appealing when viewed on DVD in the fall. It will also age well, as it doesn't tie itself up in knots trying to connect itself to the series' convoluted plotline.<br /><br />But in making all these risky choices, Carter and Spotnitz may very well have killed off the franchise. <span style="font-style: italic;">Good grief</span>, I thought as I left the theater: <span style="font-style: italic;">who knew that they would make such a modest movie? And release it in July? What were they thinking?</span> But if you sit through the credits you'll get a clue that they knew the risk they were taking, in a cute, unexpected farewell shot of Mulder and Scully which might be--they know very well--the last time we glimpse the two characters. It's a sweet, whimsical wave goodbye. I would rather hope that they get to make at least one more.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-90618600907245637552008-07-14T16:42:00.000-07:002008-07-15T21:00:35.169-07:00The Best of the X-Files<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNEvqD3Ix9l4eRkc9mV7P5728ghS6OIvN6fRV0Zck0R_ZUq5IBHvJhT1bR6piOwrenCKUOZPAQyCLm19N3-Z-fOzBfODrx3SZDyqhmp0ejnGtI8UmStmIDfHkxYzp7dAcKxE9I/s1600-h/xfiles01ebe2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNEvqD3Ix9l4eRkc9mV7P5728ghS6OIvN6fRV0Zck0R_ZUq5IBHvJhT1bR6piOwrenCKUOZPAQyCLm19N3-Z-fOzBfODrx3SZDyqhmp0ejnGtI8UmStmIDfHkxYzp7dAcKxE9I/s400/xfiles01ebe2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223034400198221058" border="0" /></a>On July 25th we will finally have a second X-Files feature film (the first was released ten years ago). The original FOX Network series ran from 1993-2002, and most X-Philes would agree that it went on a bit <span style="font-style: italic;">too </span>long, leaving many fans feeling a bit disillusioned with the series. But it is without a doubt one of the most popular science fiction series of all time, and Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, FBI investigators of the paranormal, have became iconic figures on a level few TV characters achieve. We should be reminded that there was a time, around the third season, when the show went from being a cult hit to a mainstream smash, and Mulder & Scully made the cover of Rolling Stone (naked and in bed together, of course), and a soundtrack was released featuring R.E.M., William S. Burroughs, Nick Cave, and the Foo Fighters. The X-Files, for a while, was hip. Long before Alias, Lost, or Heroes, viewers obsessed over the details of the tangled "mythology" plotline, trying to guess which secondary character would get killed next. The feature film marked both the height of the series' popularity as well as its demise; like those viewers who hoped to find out who killed Laura Palmer at the end of the first season of Twin Peaks, those expecting to get "all the answers" in the X-Files: Fight the Future walked away disappointed (though the reviews weren't bad). The seasons that followed were greeted with increasing indifference from the public; the ratings were enough to justify Fox's insistence that it stay on the schedule, but the phenomenon was over. Eventually David Duchovny was replaced by Robert Patrick (Agent John Doggett), and Gillian Anderson was slowly edged out of the series by Annabeth Gish (Agent Monica Reyes). Fans weren't enthusiastic about the changes, and while the ninth season began as a relaunch, halfway through the creators changed focus and began to wrap up the storylines, sometimes hastily.<br /><br />I became a fan of the series from the first episode (attractively entitled "Pilot"), watching it only because it debuted right after The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., the show which Fox was really putting its money and marketing behind. Brisco disappeared quickly, but the X-Files got rave reviews and slowly attracted a rabid cult following, who took possession of this new thing called the "internet" to use as their own virtual water cooler to discuss the show. Having been there from the beginning, I felt a certain ownership of the show; while I was never a part of the fan communities, I made it a point to learn who all the writers and directors were, so I could figure out who was behind the best episodes and the worst. I bought the trading cards and the fan magazines. I was first in line when the movie opened, and obsessively taped the show off television, in those days before "complete season" box sets. But around the sixth season I began to lose interest, and I was dismayed enough by the Doggett/Reyes thing that I tuned out of the ninth season entirely. (Although this was just as much because The Sopranos was airing in the same time slot--a show whose quality I was more excited about.) A while back I took advantage of a sale at a certain brick & mortar store and picked up the first few seasons of the series, to revisit the show that I hadn't watched in years. I figured that even if I disliked what the show became, it was such a part of my life between about 1993 and 1999 that it deserved some special space on my shelf. Watching the episodes, the "comfort food" factor kicked in, and I quickly became a fan again. While the worst episodes are still the worst, the best of the series has stood the test of time. And taking a break of a few months between Netflixing the seventh and eighth seasons, I could even gain a newfound appreciation for the Doggett/Reyes years, as I gained a much greater respect for Robert Patrick's nuanced performance. (Let's face it, he can emote with more skill than Duchovny.) Now, following another sale at that brick & mortar store, I've got all the seasons but the ninth. It's just a matter of time before I break down and buy that one too.<br /><br />In anticipation of the new X-Files film, which will either revive or permanently bury the franchise, here's a guide to the best of the X-Files. If you want to revisit the series with a bit more caution that I, these are the episodes worth watching.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgSJCka77EDc8SW7MRr3gktPXbe7d4t6l2tTudPgtigIL7TUnf6mjZEuDtm4WvtnSQxPTuOhPJIQ_0Rc4G30XpARQOLcPDQthmJ1fFMHD8iLPHzR8WUvm0IGZo8F7LZZjpWE7/s1600-h/xfiles01ebe.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgSJCka77EDc8SW7MRr3gktPXbe7d4t6l2tTudPgtigIL7TUnf6mjZEuDtm4WvtnSQxPTuOhPJIQ_0Rc4G30XpARQOLcPDQthmJ1fFMHD8iLPHzR8WUvm0IGZo8F7LZZjpWE7/s400/xfiles01ebe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223034297689113634" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) inside an abandoned truck in <span style="font-weight: bold;">E.B.E.</span></span><br /><br /></span></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season One (1993-1994)</span><br /><br />While Duchovny and Anderson are still getting a handle on their characters in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Pilot</span> (1x79), creator Chris Carter fully understands them, and the classic formula is already in place: Mulder and Scully uncovering a conspiracy--here involving alien abductions--in a small town and in the deep woods, poking around with flashlights while Scully rolls her eyes at Mulder's every theory. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Deep Throat</span> (1x01) is even better, making plain the show's All the President's Men inspiration (exploited to its full in the feature film), and with a plot the "conspiracy" episodes would mimic countless times: Mulder attempts to infiltrate a military base to learn the truth about the government's involvement in UFO activity. (A young Seth Green seems to be working out his persona as Dr. Evil's son in the Austin Powers movie that was just a few years away.) <span style="font-weight: bold;">Squeeze </span>(1x02) is the first "stand-alone" episode, and one of the most fondly remembered: Eugene Tooms (Doug Hutchison) is a serial killer who can contort his body to fit into very small spaces; he also hibernates without aging, and eats human livers. It's written by Glen Morgan & James Wong, who were to become the first celebrities of the series' writing staff; they became known for writing crackerjack goosebump thrillers, before using their success on the series to launch a movie career (to this day, they're best known for creating the Final Destination franchise). <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ice </span>(1x07) is heavily derivative of "Who Goes There?", the classic John W. Campbell science fiction story remade--twice--as The Thing. Once again characters are trapped in an arctic environment, paranoid about who they can trust and who has been infected by a monster; in this case, it's a parasite which makes people hyper-aggressive. Despite its lack of inspiration, the episode is so tense and effective that it justifiably became a fan favorite of the early seasons. Yet <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eve </span>(1x10) has aged more gracefully. Possibly the most exquisitely crafted episode of the first season, this begins as a supernatural thriller (doppelgangers? ghosts?) before becoming a human cloning horror story featuring two murderous little girls and a climax worthy of Hitchcock. It would have been nice to have seen this story thread tied into the wider conspiracy plotline that later developed, and in retrospect it seems curious that it wasn't. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Beyond the Sea</span> (1x12) is another winner, this time taking Silence of the Lambs as an inspiration (Chris Carter was inspired by Jodie Foster's performance in that film to create Dana Scully). Brad Dourif, best known as Grima Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and as the sickly town doctor of Deadwood, here gives another unbearably intense performance as death-row inmate Luther Lee Boggs, who claims to have psychic insights into a killer pursued by the FBI. Mulder this time becomes the skeptic, while Scully is disturbed by Boggs' seeming ability to communicate with her recently-deceased father. This is probably Morgan & Wong's finest script, and the director, David Nutter, would become known as the go-to suspense director for the series, earned in part by the skills on display here. But the episode also packs an emotional punch rare for the show's first season. <span style="font-weight: bold;">E.B.E. </span>(1x16 - pictured above) is a great romp, as Mulder and Scully chase a UFO cross-country; along the way we meet The Lone Gunmen, publishers of a conspiracy-theory newspaper, and a backhanded homage to the growing X-Phile community. The killer from Squeeze returns in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tooms </span>(1x20), which has the unusual distinction of bringing back a popular character within the same season (though story continuity necessitates it). Morgan & Wong here begin to establish the black humor which be one of the series' strongest traits. In the season finale, <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Erlenmeyer Flask</span> (1x23), the "mythology" finally gets going, as Scully sees her first "evidence" of alien life, and a cold-blooded assassination occurs when the two agents get a little too close to the truth.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6WzROCOqs9JD2FDSxKdmDv8Ro7iHehXWjxGAJsZfJcutEXRl2sF8WFtvF34mRU3rzmrS_2DmncR-U2zPjJ-Rli9fDikXMBR5M1XHByYDoufvSCaj9q0Y-LkotF08YtnEg0mHq/s1600-h/xfiles02host.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6WzROCOqs9JD2FDSxKdmDv8Ro7iHehXWjxGAJsZfJcutEXRl2sF8WFtvF34mRU3rzmrS_2DmncR-U2zPjJ-Rli9fDikXMBR5M1XHByYDoufvSCaj9q0Y-LkotF08YtnEg0mHq/s400/xfiles02host.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223034615086758594" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Peering at the Flukeman with fascination and disgust in <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Host</span>.<br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Two (1994-1995)</span><br /><br />A bigger budget and the glow of good reviews led to a more confident and stylish second season. This is also the season that made the show famous, with a richly-developing conspiracy plotline and stand-alone episodes that made for perfect Friday night chills. (The show would later move to Sunday nights in search of higher ratings, to the disapproval of many fans.) <span style="font-weight: bold;">Little Green Men </span>(2x01) shows off the bigger budget as Mulder heads to the jungles of Puerto Rico for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, on a tip from the sympathetic Senator Matheson (named after Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson). In the Chris Carter-scripted <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Host</span> (2x02 - pictured), AKA the notorious "Flukeman" episode, a monster in New Jersey's sewage system is growing at an alarming rate, and killing in alarming ways. The Flukeman was played by Glen Morgan's brother Darin, who would later become the series' most acclaimed writer. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Duane Barry/Ascension</span> (2x05/06) is a two-parter prompted by Anderson's real-life pregnancy; working around her maternity leave, the writers concocted a plotline which would have ramifications for the rest of the series: Scully's kidnapping by a deranged UFO abductee (Steve Railsback), who hands her over for sinister experiments by forces which are either alien or--worse?--part of a shadow government. Later in the season is <span style="font-weight: bold;">Die Hand Die Verletzt</span> (2x14), a witty black satire and a Morgan & Wong <span style="font-style: italic;">tour de force</span>, with the agents facing off against the Satan-worshiping faculty of a high school (the pre-title sequence, featuring a typical faculty meeting, is one of the greatest in the series' history). <span style="font-weight: bold;">Colony/End Game</span> (2x16/17) ties the biggest life-altering event in Mulder's past--the abduction of his sister when he was an adolescent--and ties it into the mythology, with surprising results. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Humbug </span>(2x20) is Darin Morgan's first script, and possesses his distinctive stamp: irreverent humor that pokes fun at the X-Files clichés (already well established, although at the time it seemed that only Morgan had noticed). Sideshow performers are being murdered by a tiny, crawling mutant--but every aberration of nature has someone who loves him. <span style="font-weight: bold;">F. Emasculata </span>(2x22) is the X-Files take on the virus/outbreak thrillers that were then popular in bestsellers and in film, and works better than most of them. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Town </span>(2x24), written by Frank Spotnitz, effectively demonstrates that even cannibalism can bring a community closer together. But don't watch it while eating KFC.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaSOyb65uldfqS1CWl0E3VB95pR9s-PUV2CrKOkmiQAX6pl0yGle54q2Jhu4UqsRfALa2doYBvmQQ7c065jwBUQL8fx7C2eHhfS1lP2o4NHo_-u29DdWlPDeTYv0xvKE8BA1g/s1600-h/xfiles03clyde.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaSOyb65uldfqS1CWl0E3VB95pR9s-PUV2CrKOkmiQAX6pl0yGle54q2Jhu4UqsRfALa2doYBvmQQ7c065jwBUQL8fx7C2eHhfS1lP2o4NHo_-u29DdWlPDeTYv0xvKE8BA1g/s400/xfiles03clyde.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223045005519421122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Peter Boyle guest stars in the series' high watermark, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose</span>.</span><br /><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Three (1995-1996)</span><br /><br />Here is the show at its zenith, when the creative staff was firing at all cylinders (Darin Morgan in particular), and the ratings began to reciprocate as the show became a genuine phenomenon. The opening two-parter, <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Blessing Way/Paper Clip</span> (3x01/02) is riveting stuff, even if it also marks the first overuse of a technique that would quickly become tiresome: the pre-credits extended, pretentious monologe spoken in voice-over to accompany a montage. It was first used in Little Green Men, and apparently deemed successful enough to warrant its overextension for the rest of the series. Here, one can tolerate the voice-overs to get to the really good stuff, namely Mulder & Scully discovering miles of mysterious filing cabinets in an underground facility, where there also lurks an alien spacecraft. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose</span> (3x04) is, however, utterly flawless, and arguably the best hour the series ever produced. A showcase for the talents of writer Darin Morgan and guest actor Peter Boyle, it concerns an insurance salesman whose psychic gift is also a curse--he can only see how people will die. (He suggests that Mulder will die of autoerotic asphyxiation.) It's about fate and destiny, and whether life is a gift or a long, weary, miserable crawl toward death; but it's also existentialism by way of Woody Allen (the name "Clyde Bruckman" is taken from the famous director of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd silent comedies). The ending is both tragic and moving. His <span style="font-weight: bold;">War of the Coprophages</span> (3x12) is less emotionally serious--the plot is about killer cockroaches, after all--but just as serious philosophically. While the parody is even more outrageous than in his effort for Season Two, Humbug, the intelligent sensibility is quite present. His final script for the series, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jose Chung's From Outer Space</span> (3x20), pushed these seemingly conflicting impulses--the silly and the thoughtful--to extremes. An instant fan favorite, it shrinks not from goofy cameos (Jesse Ventura, Alex Trebek), or girly screams (from Agent Mulder), yet when it's all over, ask yourself: why does the episode feel so bittersweet? How did he do that? Apart from writing beautiful scripts, Morgan was also establishing wider parameters for the series to explore. Now the X-Files could be touching <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>funny. And when it was funny, it could also be delirious and bizarre. Some X-Files scribes would imitate him poorly, and others would pick up the baton for some really inspiring work--namely Vince Gilligan. Gilligan, who most recently co-wrote this summer's Hancock, produced efficient, lean scripts that also made room for whimsical ideas. His second outing, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Pusher </span>(3x17), is actually one of his few "straight" episodes, proving that he could create the ideal X-Files mystery thriller, that was the show's bread and butter. Of that mode, the episode is one of the series' best. Mulder and Scully are put up against one of their most formidable villains in Robert Modell (Robert Wisden), a man who can psychically "push" other people into doing his will, or seeing what he wants them to see. As with all of Gilligan's scripts, the premise is fully and satisfyingly explored, with a memorable stand-off in the climax, Mulder's will pitted against Modell's. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Quagmire </span>(3x22), written by Kim Newton, is marked most heavily by Morgan (it even acts as a sequel to two of them, since Clyde Bruckman's dog, Queequeg, plays a central role here, and the stoners from War of the Coprophages make an appearance). Mulder and Scully investigate murders attributed to a lake monster, but their investigation hits one snag after another, and their culprit is not what they expect. The season's mythology arc, meanwhile, gets more interesting--and more tangled--with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Piper Maru/Apocrypha</span> (3x15/16), which introduces the "black oil" alien that can hop from one body to another, the payoff ultimately reserved for the feature film.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm9Ov9uZng8zy5Y3Z52TZBSwWUDrj0zT5Bc0-lL4SGA7LsirXAkrUtqwxI42cHY9xtIlasfeYpcg5vY9_NFRsDRlLa4qWKRNYjJCoMWAhpCIVDbMvwYpJRSyvxVmW2g7M3yGcj/s1600-h/xfiles04home.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm9Ov9uZng8zy5Y3Z52TZBSwWUDrj0zT5Bc0-lL4SGA7LsirXAkrUtqwxI42cHY9xtIlasfeYpcg5vY9_NFRsDRlLa4qWKRNYjJCoMWAhpCIVDbMvwYpJRSyvxVmW2g7M3yGcj/s400/xfiles04home.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223055322675443778" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">A member of the inbred Peacock family guards his territory in the savage <span style="font-weight: bold;">Home.</span></span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Four (1996-1997)</span><br /><br />A strategic move to Sunday nights was accompanied by the slick, satisfying season premiere <span style="font-weight: bold;">Herrenvolk </span>(4x01). But it was the second aired episode, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Home </span>(4x03), which gained the most attention--or notoriety. Preceded by a parental advisory, the Morgan & Wong-scripted hour proved, if nothing else, that the X-Files could still be scary on a Sunday night. Some have called it the scariest hour ever produced for television. It's actually wittily done, with Mulder's spoken nostalgia for small-town America undermined thoroughly as we're introduced to the Peacock family, inbred mutants who, in the pre-titles sequence, bury a squealing infant in the yard minutes after it's been born. The agents' investigation into infant murders leads to a final, violent battle for the Peacock home. This was the comeback for Morgan & Wong, who had left the show for a season; it would also be their last season with the series before they left for good. Home is their standout script of the season, and a calling card for Kim Manners, who, from here on out, replaced David Nutter as the show's unsurpassed "thriller" director. Vince Gilligan's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Unruhe </span>(4x02) is one of many episodes in which Scully is taken hostage, but one of the most unnerving, with a killer who can take psychic photographs, and uses them as justification to perform amateur lobotomies on his unwilling patients. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man</span> (4x07) concentrates on the central villain of the mythology arc, filling in his history generously (tying him to the assassinations of JFK and MLK), with the qualifier that none of this might actually be true. It's a mythology episode that pokes fun at the idea of government conspiracies, but humanizes the CSM regardless. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Leonard Betts</span> (4x14) and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Memento Mori</span> (4x15), on the other hand, take the X-Files mythology completely seriously, and go to a greater extent to humanize those effected by the government conspiracy. Leonard Betts in particular benefits by sneaking in a key mythology plot element into what seems like a stand-alone episode, leading to a shocker of a denouement. The season's lightest note is struck by an extended Darin Morgan homage, Gilligan's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Small Potatoes</span> (4x20), which even casts Morgan himself as the main character, a schlub with the remarkable ability to take anyone's face--even Luke Skywalker's--which may explain why there have been a number of spontaneous pregnancies in town.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5rMIrslP3rJ2aGvKgmSXejWxPJ5pWgnvZ1xwwdfC-KKGYVTjjDbIbWkr_wBlxlLjfA_FdITlHEExk4DEfCpcTpf08uXd01CYqAE_qrv9_lq99FfEIJM1hj2AvDJpisbJOgfT/s1600-h/xfiles05killswitch.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5rMIrslP3rJ2aGvKgmSXejWxPJ5pWgnvZ1xwwdfC-KKGYVTjjDbIbWkr_wBlxlLjfA_FdITlHEExk4DEfCpcTpf08uXd01CYqAE_qrv9_lq99FfEIJM1hj2AvDJpisbJOgfT/s400/xfiles05killswitch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223205592267402194" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">The Lone Gunmen meet a real cyberpunk in William Gibson & Tom Maddox's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kill Switch</span>.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Five (1997-1998)</span><br /><br />With the X-Files: Fight the Future in production, Season Five became a build-up to the main event, which would open about a month after the season finale aired. So while the mythology episodes lay the groundwork for the film (with an eye, it seems, toward the possibility that this might be the last season of the show), it's the stand-alone episodes which really shine, introducing the idea of the guest star writer, as Stephen King and science fiction writers William Gibson and Tom Maddox each take a crack at adapting their distinctive styles to suit the show. To that end, King's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chinga </span>(5x10, co-written by Chris Carter), about a demonic doll, is most interesting as a meeting of the two fictional universes, as Scully seems to wander into King's New England hell. It is, however, not as effective as Gibson & Maddox's script for <span style="font-weight: bold;">Kill Switch</span> (5x11), which smoothly incorporates Mulder and Scully (and, naturally, the Lone Gunmen) into the cyberpunk genre that Gibson helped invent. A novel's worth of action and twists are packed neatly into the show's forty-five minutes. A crossover of a different kind occurs in Vince Gilligan's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Unusual Suspects</span> (5x01), which brings in Richard Belzer's Detective Munsch from NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street, investigating an incident involving the Lone Gunmen. With Duchovny and Anderson off filming the movie, this episode acts as a placeholder until they returned, though it doesn't feel like filler, thanks to Gilligan's extremely entertaining script--good enough, in fact, to inspire a short-lived spin-off series called The Lone Gunmen not long after. Frank Spotnitz's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Detour </span>(5x04) sees the agents return to battle chameleon-like monsters in the Everglades; despite a far-fetched explanation (even by X-Files standards), the episode features one of the season's most memorable scenes, as, stranded in the forest in the middle of the night, Scully sings Three Dog Night to a sleeping Mulder. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Post-Modern Prometheus </span>(5x06), though it borrows from the plot to last season's Small Potatoes, is nevertheless one of the oddest episodes in the series' history. Written and directed by Chris Carter, it's an extended, black-and-white Frankenstein homage which also involves possible sexual assaults and plenty of Cher music. It works, somehow. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Bad Blood</span> (5x12) is Gilligan's best-known episode, and most popular; a Rashomon-style tale (the same approach taken by Darin Morgan with Jose Chung's From Outer Space) that sends up vampire lore. It's the series' second shot at vampires, after the second season's unsuccessful, Gothy "3." <span style="font-weight: bold;">Travelers </span>(5x15), written by John Shiban & Frank Spotnitz, finally brings X-Files inspiration Kolchak the Night Stalker into the series--Darren McGavin, here playing Agent Arthur Dales, who recounts an X-File from decades prior. Tim Minear's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mind's Eye</span> (5x16) showcases the acting chops of guest star Lili Taylor, playing a blind woman who can only see out the eyes of a killer. Finally, the season's penultimate episode, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Folie a Deux</span> (5x19), has a call center employee driven mad by visions of his boss as a man-eating insect, a madness which is passed on to Mulder.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL_eI88-WSDNJgqojjmtMiP7bEPzAT0-hw_sIQqOR8LPWp0-0nWeKMQTLijeUlVnD0AbBfLszFUCa0OdRM3Y5ToqSi21Kwc7pBKvS9zaLlcfY9EB6TEmJuh0ExTCVDnaEPALRS/s1600-h/xfiles06tithonus.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL_eI88-WSDNJgqojjmtMiP7bEPzAT0-hw_sIQqOR8LPWp0-0nWeKMQTLijeUlVnD0AbBfLszFUCa0OdRM3Y5ToqSi21Kwc7pBKvS9zaLlcfY9EB6TEmJuh0ExTCVDnaEPALRS/s400/xfiles06tithonus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223427921247925298" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Scully, marked for death in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tithonus</span>.<br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Six (1998-1999)</span><br /><br />It's unusual for a TV show to continue in the wake of its big screen spinoff; usually feature film adaptations come only after the show has left the air, such as this summer's Sex and the City. But The X-Files returned, and many fans would say that it was the show's mistake, or the moment when it "jumped the shark" (a notion parodied in the Ninth Season episode of the same name). Certainly the mythology episodes began to repeat themselves and grow a bit tedious (with some exceptions), and the series began to rely a bit too heavily on comic relief episodes, at least in this season and the next. But Vince Gilligan's scripts continued to provide bright spots, and Chris Carter wrote and directed the satisfying and ambitious stylistic experiment <span style="font-weight: bold;">Triangle </span>(6x03), which sees Mulder wandering into the Bermuda Triangle and onto a 1939 luxury liner taken hostage by Nazi spies. Here he encounters doppelgängers of Scully and the Cigarette-Smoking Man, while the real Scully tries to finagle his rescue within the bureaucracy of the FBI. Every scene is an extended tracking shot, with minimal edits, a la Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Drive </span>(6x02) , by Gilligan, is a premise inspired by Speed with elements of Vanishing Point: a man is infected with something that will make him explode unless he drives as fast as he can westward. It's a good opportunity to show off the series' recent relocation from Vancouver to Los Angeles, utilizing striking desert locales that are in contrast to the series' familiar dark, damp forests and overcast suburbs. Gilligan's script to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tithonus </span>(6x09) ranks among his best work. A world-weary newspaper photographer takes photos of people just <span style="font-style: italic;">before </span>they die; his secret, and what he's attempting to accomplish, take Scully by surprise. His script to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Monday </span>(6x15), co-written with John Shiban, does the Groundhog Day thing--one woman keeps reliving the same day over and over--but with urgency as well as palpable despair. She's part of a bank heist that ends tragically, and must somehow find a way to convince Mulder and Scully that the best way to stop the heist is to <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>interfere; or, more impossibly, convince them that they've lived through this again and again. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Arcadia </span>(6x13), smartly conceived by writer Daniel Arkin, sends Mulder and Scully undercover into a gated community, investigating a murder while posing as the perfect married couple. They quickly bump up against the strict community guidelines, which inspires Mulder to become something of a suburban terrorist, sticking pink flamingos in his front lawn and a basketball hoop on his driveway. In <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Unnatural</span> (6x20), written and directed by Duchovny, we again return to the archives of the X-Files courtesy Agent Arthur Dales--or, rather, his brother (when McGavin bowed out)--in a tale of a shapeshifting alien who infiltrates the Negro baseball leagues, just because he wants to play baseball. During the series Duchovny would return a couple more times to the director's chair, but this is his best effort by far. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Field Trip</span> (6x21) involves some strange phenomena occurring after the discovery by Scully and Mulder of two skeletons buried in a tunnel in the woods. To give away the ending would be a crime, but suffice it to say that the key revelation is a lot of fun. As for the mythology episodes, the series from here on out seemed to want to answer the criticism that the conspiracy plotline was too complicated to follow, so the elements were simplified and the plot was frequently spelled out and underlined by the dialogue. What you finally get is something of a satisfying payoff in the two-parter <span style="font-weight: bold;">Two Fathers/One Son</span> (6x11/6x12), which brings the saga of the "Syndicate"--the Mafia-like shadow government--to a resolution that feels like a series finale (although it comes in the middle of the season). Yes, for once something actually <span style="font-style: italic;">happens</span>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQMh0_bRx_i2z5q1o-3pv2LjXA4ppC6KxWVcQFGmczPQwwopPPd0XEtLbMw9GbZ0KrQj-kxLLgGT_NiIxuKhqXLRLqt4dCivOLChyL_LNyfT2fpu83xtdlyEbMLwMIhMnyGJB/s1600-h/xfiles07brandx.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQQMh0_bRx_i2z5q1o-3pv2LjXA4ppC6KxWVcQFGmczPQwwopPPd0XEtLbMw9GbZ0KrQj-kxLLgGT_NiIxuKhqXLRLqt4dCivOLChyL_LNyfT2fpu83xtdlyEbMLwMIhMnyGJB/s400/xfiles07brandx.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223436131234758930" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">In <span style="font-weight: bold;">Brand X</span>, Assistant Director Skinner discovers just how evil the tobacco industry can be.<br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Seven (1999-2000)</span><br /><br />The last full season with David Duchovny, Season Seven had its share of highlights, but a certain weariness seemed to be setting in, in particular infecting the mythology episodes--with a key exception. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sein Und Zeit</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Closure </span>(7x10/7x11) wraps up the subplot involving Mulder's abducted sister in a manner both unexpected and incredibly moving. It's also the most subdued two-parter of the mythology storyline, more in line with the Season One episode "Conduit" (which also explored the effect of Samantha Mulder's abduction upon Fox) which was a wise decision. As for the stand-alones, <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Goldberg Variation</span> (7x02), written by Jeffrey Bell, is a lot of fun; Goldberg is for Rube Goldberg, whose ghost seems to haunt this episode--the story of a man with unusually good luck, who's marked for murder by an increasingly frustrated Mafia. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Amazing Maleeni</span> (7x08) stars David Mamet's favorite magician, Ricky Jay, who in the opening sequence appears to be murdered by a rival magician. The fact that Ricky Jay is in the episode at all should give you a clue that nothing is going to be what it seems. <span style="font-weight: bold;">X-Cops</span> (7x12) presents an X-File as an episode of the long-running FOX series Cops, as Mulder and Scully are chased through Los Angeles by a camera crew, while working with the LAPD to catch a monster that can take on the form of whatever its victim most fears. In <span style="font-weight: bold;">En Ami </span>(7x15), the Cigarette-Smoking Man promises Scully a cure to her cancer if she travels with him to an unknown destination. Written by Cancer Man himself, William B. Davis, it's an interesting presentation of how the actor perceives his most famous character. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Brand X</span> (7x19) has exactly the sort of premise that would have made it a classic if it had aired a few years earlier, when the show was making a name for itself: smoking a new, experimental brand of cigarette leads to a grisly demise. The explanation has the quality of a convincing urban legend, and surely must have convinced at least a few viewers to quit smoking. It's admirably straight-faced too; a relief in a season with too much over-the-top comedy. Though I admired the humor in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Je Souhaite</span> (7x21), a thoroughly unnecessary X-Files take on the djinni legend (and "three wishes") that is nonetheless hilariously perceptive: one man asks to become invisible, and is immediately struck by a car.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBmNdkjD9m2evjkVoI4gEwxUAkp-ss2rkKsXPKQJx1QkdkXreeGlK9YBdvMS_8VMvNWdm8GtH41AdtZI1b91_0hrfXNQFfopxF0e7lL8XsntVXoWSsDS0UIa6Lde0f5z1zyRpE/s1600-h/xfiles08alone2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBmNdkjD9m2evjkVoI4gEwxUAkp-ss2rkKsXPKQJx1QkdkXreeGlK9YBdvMS_8VMvNWdm8GtH41AdtZI1b91_0hrfXNQFfopxF0e7lL8XsntVXoWSsDS0UIa6Lde0f5z1zyRpE/s400/xfiles08alone2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223441962663178370" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Agent Doggett is annoyed by number-one X-Files fan Leyla Harrison in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alone</span>.<br /></span></div> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Eight (2000-2001)</span><br /><br />Season Eight finds the series in transition between the Mulder & Scully years and what Chris Carter apparently hoped to be a long-running stretch with Agents John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish). To ease the pain for fans, Anderson is still present, though Duchovny, on his way out, appears in only a handful of episodes late in the season. I despised this season when it first aired, and gave up on the show; revisiting it this last year, I was surprised to see that it had many pluses: it shunned the jokey/parodic episodes to return to a more serious tone in line with the show's first season; Doggett is well-developed and sympathetic, and superbly played by Patrick; and there's a sense of excitement when Mulder does, belatedly, return, leading to a two-part season finale that delivers--and should have been, alas, the very final episode. So let's count the positives: there's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Roadrunners </span>(8x05), about a strange cult in the deserts of Utah who want Scully to host an alien creature whom they worship; I also liked <span style="font-weight: bold;">Invocation </span>(8x06), by David Amann, with a simple but involving mystery plot--a boy returns years after his disappearance, having not aged a day--that also humanizes Doggett (whose own son was kidnapped and murdered). <span style="font-weight: bold;">Redrum </span>(8x03), written by Steven Maeda, is one of the season's very best, and only tangentially involves Doggett and Scully: a lawyer (Joe Morton) finds himself on death row for the murder of his wife--and then finds himself slipping backward in time, inexorably moving toward that critical event. After Mulder's return (involving a literal rebirth), the almost nostalgic <span style="font-weight: bold;">Three Words</span> (8x18) sees him again infiltrating a top-secret installation with the aid of the Lone Gunmen. (The three words, by the way? "Fight the Future," unfortunately.) <span style="font-weight: bold;">Vienen </span>(8x16) is another old-school romp, this time with Mulder and Doggett aboard an oil rig that's become infected with the alien black oil (it also, once more, has shades of The Thing). Frank Spotnitz's <span style="font-weight: bold;">Alone </span>(8x19) teams Doggett with FBI agent Leyla Harrison (Jolie Jenkins), a real X-Phile who has memorized all the past cases, much to Doggett's annoyance. (When she finds a mysterious slimy substance, she immediately assumes it to be bile, referencing a moment in "Squeeze.") The villain actually seems to be the Lizard from the Spider-Man comics, though no one seems to catch that (unintentional) reference. Finally, the season draws to a satisfying close with <span style="font-weight: bold;">Essence/Existence</span> (8x20/21), with exciting action scenes, the death of a major character, and a long-awaited emotional resolution for two others. Unfortunately, there was one more season still left.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2wzWtHcXi7Rnk8hBoZSTuJSOv5JLq59LOXoEyZD9y3P_d_AgDjvPR_tpLsBH6QkR5S-JqvB5u7jTLPRXMzrnv-OGUgOzEvXlcSXa3-_qnq_1QQ9-0xk3Png6HGwcQjzmkRGK/s1600-h/xfiles09scary.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic2wzWtHcXi7Rnk8hBoZSTuJSOv5JLq59LOXoEyZD9y3P_d_AgDjvPR_tpLsBH6QkR5S-JqvB5u7jTLPRXMzrnv-OGUgOzEvXlcSXa3-_qnq_1QQ9-0xk3Png6HGwcQjzmkRGK/s400/xfiles09scary.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223447718791698786" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Scully performs a kitchen autopsy on a cat in the late-series standout <span style="font-weight: bold;">Scary Monsters.</span><br /></span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Season Nine (2001-2002)</span><br /><br />What turned out to be the final season of The X-Files was clearly intended to be the first of The X-Files 2.0. For the first time, the opening title sequence was completely revamped (not just subtly altered, as it had been in past seasons). It was flashier, more up-to-date, and even included Mitch Pileggi's name and face--deservedly so. But it also misguidedly assumed that Doggett and Reyes would be an adequate substitute for Mulder and Scully, who were always the heart of the series. While Robert Patrick was engaging as Doggett, Annabeth Gish never quite comes to own the role of Agent Reyes; it doesn't help that her character is so weakly conceived (she's New Agey, and she's trying to quit smoking). Luckily Anderson stuck around in Duchovny's absence, but it's quite clear that she wasn't going to stick around long. Late in the season, there's a dramatic shift in approach, and rather than launching new story threads (as begun unimpressively in the two-part season premiere), the writers begin to wrap them up; clearly, Chris Carter had decided that this was it. In the meantime, you had few stellar episodes. But <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lord of the Flies</span> (9x06) has a clever idea even though it doesn't quite come together the way it ought to: an awkward adolescent, addicted to the music of outcast icon (and schizophrenic) Syd Barrett, finds himself undergoing biological changes when his hormones begin raging--he begins to transform into an insect. Which makes it difficult when he wants to impress a girl. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Improbable </span>(9x14), written and directed by Chris Carter, is even more eccentric and bizarre than Season Five's "The Post-Modern Prometheus." Burt Reynolds guest stars as a man with some kind of connection to a serial killer who, in turn, commits murders that adhere to a strict numerology which only Agent Reyes notices. Imagine Darren Aronofsky's Pi reimagined as a jolly Italian musical, and you might approach what is happening here. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Scary Monsters</span> (9x12), written by Thomas Schnauz, is easily the best episodes of the season, and is the real discovery of the neglected "Doggett years." It also has one of the best openings of the entire series: a little boy, terrified of monsters under the bed, cries out for his father. The father looks under the bed and sees something scurrying in the darkness, and deliberately ignores it; then he closes the door and holds it shut while his son screams helplessly, besieged by the monsters of his nightmares. While Scully stays behind to autopsy a cat on her kitchen table, Doggett, Reyes, and Leyla Harrison (from last season's "Alone") travel to the secluded home to find out if the boy's allegations about his father are correct. Just about as perfect as an X-Files episode gets; or, at least, one without Mulder. But now the loose ends were beginning to get tied up. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Jump the Shark</span> (9x15) is an affectionate goodbye to the Lone Gunmen, also providing closure for their prematurely canceled spinoff series. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Release </span>(9x16) ties up the mystery regarding Agent Doggett's son--rather devastatingly. It's an excellent script by David Amann and John Shiban. Finally, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sunshine Days</span> (9x18), a Vince Gilligan script, involves the Brady Bunch, bodies launching through rooftops, and telekenesis, and yet it's ultimately<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>sweet-natured and smart. As for the series finale, well: it's there. "The Truth" is two hours that feel like a marathon runner crawling with anguish across the finish line. The first hour is a laborious summary of the mythology arc, attempting to draw the threads together; the second hour is all over-the-top action. One wishes the two halves had been better coordinated. Still, when all is said and done, the X-Files legacy was preserved, however tattered around the edges. The episodes highlighted above rank as some of the finest hours network television has ever produced, and certainly are in the pinnacle of science fiction TV, right there next to classics from The Twilight Zone. The series has become iconic, and the next feature film has an intimidating legacy to live up to. Though I truly wonder if the series was ever meant for the big screen. My fondest memories of watching the shows: when it aired on Friday nights, with none of the fanfare (and little of the budget), just the excitement that this week there was a new episode from one of television's best-kept secrets. One of the great things about DVD is that the X-Files can become a Friday-night spook-show staple once again.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-79848540291255994122008-06-22T18:51:00.000-07:002008-06-22T19:40:33.814-07:00Morvern Callar<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy9rD5E47ZKDwTlanvmD1Ed5DLg7KJ-m7T1FPsDbdDACcOqSUhK5qdbh36UOZ34saCGCEdNDFshjLqzDeBdWL_FTaMtNtMe1dT8jDED6kBpZdBnnZi1RtBHWLakerQw4Oy3n2/s1600-h/morvern.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy9rD5E47ZKDwTlanvmD1Ed5DLg7KJ-m7T1FPsDbdDACcOqSUhK5qdbh36UOZ34saCGCEdNDFshjLqzDeBdWL_FTaMtNtMe1dT8jDED6kBpZdBnnZi1RtBHWLakerQw4Oy3n2/s400/morvern.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214889913734958674" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Morvern Callar</span> (U.K., 2002) * * * 1/2<br />D: Lynne Ramsay<br /><br />Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar is, above all else, valuable for being an experiential film, a film of sensations. The plot is quite beside the point--which will be trying for some. But it seeks to place you in the shoes of its title protagonist (the always-great Samantha Morton), who witnesses the world through headphones--drowning out the world around her--and even when she removes them, she seems to still be listening, waiting for the world to transform into something <span style="font-style: italic;">other than ordinary</span>.<br /><br />As the film opens, to a strobe effect which will be echoed several times in the film--here created by flickering Christmas tree lights in a dark room--we see a half-naked man sprawled upon the floor, and then Morvern, stroking his arm, and stroking the blood at his wrist. This is how she's found her boyfriend, but he's left her presents, including a mixtape (shades of <a href="http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2007/04/day-1-2007-wisconsin-film-festival.html">Radio On</a>) and a novel he's just completed, which he asks to be sent to a publisher. The man sounds insufferable, but luckily for us it is not his movie. Morvern does not call the cops, but lets the body sit for days while she contemplates what to do; she hits the town with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) in what is, for them, a typically decadent night, dancing, tripping, making out. They're Scottish; they work in a supermarket; their idea of ambition is to travel to Spain to hang out at a hotel for spring break debauchery, picking up guys and taking shots. But an idea has struck Morvern, and she decides to take her dead boyfriend's suicide letter literally--he has written "For Morvern"--so she changes the byline to her own name before submitting it to a publisher. To her surprise, the publisher shows interest, and now she has to meet up with them so they can make their offer. In Spain, she wanders the hotel, at one point hooking up for anonymous sex, but for her own reasons: to comfort a grieving man. (The parallel scene occurs near the beginning of the film, when she picks up a ringing payphone at the train station and offers open comfort to the distraught somebody on the other end.) She urges Lanna away from the parties of the pool resort to see the real Spain, which goes better for Morvern than it does for Lanna.<br /><br />Morvern remains fascinating throughout, because while she is not the artist that her boyfriend was--and therefore has a difficult time fooling the overeager publishers--she yearns to express herself in some fashion, if only she had the means. Woody Allen once nailed the idea in his Bergmanesque drama Interiors: "What happens to those of us who can't create?" All poor Morvern can do is wander with her headphones, feeling something in the mixtape that makes her yearn for more than she has. But her inspirations are morbid: taking credit for the manuscript, disposing of her boyfriend's body (she buries the pieces on a hill using a garden spade), ditching her friend in the Spanish wilderness. You don't exactly root for Morvern; you wonder at her. She carries the movie with her unpredictability. And yet she is not the typical, boring surrogate for the sensitive screenwriter: she <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>a party girl, prone to fits of giggling at inappropriate moments, restlessly immature, and really unable to understand that pull she feels toward expanding her life into something other than working by day and partying by night. What is most refreshing about Morvern Callar is that I'm not sure I've seen this character in a film before.<br /><br />It's based on a novel by Alan Warner, but the film is directed by Ramsey, a woman (who also made another cult film, Ratcatcher), and written by Ramsey and Liana Dognini. It has a woman's eye, a woman's gaze; the female nudity (abundant) is not eroticized but feels raw and natural. It is voyeuristic only in the sense that one feels, as one does throughout the film, a sense of discomfort, of prying into someone else's life. The film seems remarkably real, in much the way of another recent (and raw) Scottish film, <a href="http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2007/04/day-4-2007-wisconsin-film-festival.html">Red Road</a>. But it also has a lightness, matched by the disorienting soundtrack selections (often at a sharp angle from what is happening on-screen); a dreamlike quality, and a sense that anything can happen because the standard rules don't seem to be applying.<br /><br />Frequently the soundtrack songs drop out, essentially moving from what Morvern hears (enveloping beats and melodies that push out all ambient sounds) to what someone else would hear--tinny, muted noises. It's the most critical contrast Ramsey provides for the world that Morvern sees and a starkly different "reality." But when you're caught in that misguided swoon of Morvern's, the film is strangely transporting, like jumping off a building--the thrill of feeling the wind against your skin just before the inevitable crash.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-47206545718266168792008-06-16T14:54:00.003-07:002008-06-16T15:58:49.796-07:00The Desert of the Tartars<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOW37mtK2-pzE8Q-5eNap4bHK0ehwYLHOASDZ3NCOwlNWTl3OrRQ51ZC37IRywyldSiB9JbG1i9Lon9MSpp41N_G5Ed6QzHNbagj4EXZsaFOnNUDzsjPVAuk33_ISf9gt1GzF/s1600-h/tartars.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkOW37mtK2-pzE8Q-5eNap4bHK0ehwYLHOASDZ3NCOwlNWTl3OrRQ51ZC37IRywyldSiB9JbG1i9Lon9MSpp41N_G5Ed6QzHNbagj4EXZsaFOnNUDzsjPVAuk33_ISf9gt1GzF/s400/tartars.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212601260126533346" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Desert of the Tartars</span> (Italy, 1976) * * *<br />D: Valerio Zurlini<br /><br />The young, handsome Drogo (Jacques Perrin), having just enlisted in the military, is assigned as a lieutenant at the distant outpost of Bastiani, which lies between a vast, empty desert and high, snow-capped mountains. This ancient fort's purpose is to mark a territorial border, but the enemy, the "North Kingdom," is almost forgotten, so quiet has this war become. As time passes and he gains stature within the ranks of the garrison, he learns of the subtle frictions between the officers, as well as the suicidal despair of the soldiers who serve under them, waiting constantly for a conflict that never happens. Yet there does seem to be something brewing out upon the desert horizon: Captain Hortiz (Max Von Sydow) claims to have once seen figures riding white horses--Tartar horses--though he is reluctant to speak of it now; soon Drogo and his companions sight a white, riderless horse trotting just beyond the border, and heated discussion arises as to whether or not they should go over the border (forbidden) to seize the horse, and whether or not it actually belongs to the enemy at all. If that enemy even exists.<br /><br />Time passes, Drogo grows older, and his discreet attempts to find another station somewhere else are denied. The bureaucracy of the garrison leads to stupid, sometimes disastrous decisions: when one soldier doesn't know the password to gain re-admittance to the fort, he is shot down--as though he might be the enemy even though they can easily <span style="font-style: italic;">recognize </span>that he isn't. Rumors of a possible Tartar invasion increase, as evidence mounts that the enemy is on the move; yet, somehow, it is justified to reduce the population of the fort and weaken it. The absurdities might sound like something out of Catch-22, but Valerio Zurlini's The Desert of the Tartars, based on the novel by Dino Buzzati (published in English as The Tartar Steppe), is more somber, with a premise, bordering on the allegorical, that calls to mind Kafka. As in Kafka's stories and novels, all actions lead to futility and frustration, with utter catastrophe constantly on the horizon.<br /><br />Zurlini's film--his last--is beautifully photographed, with fine (if deliberately muted) acting, and an austere, slightly removed quality that calls to mind Visconti (in particular The Leopard and Senso) and Bertolucci (in particular The Conformist). It is austere, however, to a fault. While Zurlini might be serving the novel with the greatest respect, and certainly gets across the erosion of time (the film is 140 minutes) as well as the unidentifiable dread of the story's premise, the film could only be helped by a little auteurist kick in the pants. Imagine what Bunuel could have done with the material (never find the fetishes he would have imposed). Or Herzog (who probably would have hypnotized his cast). The problem with the film is that it hasn't the guts to push the film into the territory of real greatness--to lull the audience into the trance that the story requires and then really <span style="font-style: italic;">show </span>them something, <span style="font-style: italic;">take </span>them someplace. A little humor wouldn't hurt, either.<br /><br />Yet the journey is worthwhile, and there are a few moments within the film that are stunningly imagined. When Drogo first arrives at Bastiani, riding alone on horseback, the camera pans slowly across the deserted, ancient fortress, which appears to be abandoned. He finds bayonets stuck into the ground, but no soldiers, all while the tower of the fortress looks magnificently, ominously down upon him from the background. Much is made of what can be seen from the tower through binoculars--the strange evidence of the unseen enemy--and Zurlini effectively puts across the idea that to look through them is to confront one's fears and paranoias. When Drogo, late in the film, collapses in a faint when he attempts to look through his pair, it is perhaps the most strange and shocking moment in the picture.<br /><br />If the film were a bit more strange, a bit more shocking, it may have been better remembered, these three decades later. As it is, The Desert of the Tartars is an interesting, literary, and occasionally fascinating film; it has a peerless, professional sheen. Perhaps a little smudge here and there could have made it a masterpiece. Sometimes a director needs to get his hands dirty.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-78742487027474062462008-06-10T16:57:00.000-07:002008-06-10T17:39:40.366-07:00The White Hell of Pitz Palu<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90vxrBzfKuMirE6FW4UcOiQQaebfKfgPzhFy3JibckVgD-pOTKAl5dQCOtoWsAF9EI4xH0wifqVpemoiX-jLBswGES2SDm9Q9fTLpP3tK9tbwQSLtC-7ATyIRNCJOgzC2oUSt/s1600-h/whitehell10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90vxrBzfKuMirE6FW4UcOiQQaebfKfgPzhFy3JibckVgD-pOTKAl5dQCOtoWsAF9EI4xH0wifqVpemoiX-jLBswGES2SDm9Q9fTLpP3tK9tbwQSLtC-7ATyIRNCJOgzC2oUSt/s400/whitehell10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5210406802276809586" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The White Hell of Pitz Palu </span>(Germany, 1929) * * *<br />D: Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst<br /><br />Long before she directed Triumph of the Will and became the most notorious propagandist director of all time, Leni Riefenstahl was an athletic, daredevil actress, who starred in a string of "mountain" pictures which took advantage of the natural beauty of remote alpine locations, as well as Leni's own statuesque glamor. Many of these were directed by Arnold Fanck (G.W. Pabst, director of Pandora's Box, co-directs), who had an eye for the spectacular, almost alien landscapes of high climes. He also knew his way around an action scene. Early in The White Hell of Pitz Palu, Dr. Krafft (Gustav Diessl, also in Fritz Lang's wondrous Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is accompanying his wife and their friend on a trek across the cliffs of the sinister Piz Palü glacier; his wife, alas, plummets down a dark crevasse, too deep for a rescue. Now she is frozen for eternity within its hellish depths, as Dr. Krafft later forlornly tells engaged couple Maria (Riefenstahl) and Hans (Ernst Petersen), who are vacationing off the glacier. Time for another trek, of course, which leads to another, greater catastrophe: a group of young students are swept by an avalanche <span style="font-style: italic;">en masse</span> down steep cliffs and into hidden crevasses and caves, and Krafft, Maria, and Hans become stranded, exposed to the elements, unable to scale their way to safety. The plot--of disasters, search parties, and rescue attempts--is nothing more than an excuse for Fanck's delirious stunt sequences and powerful editing. The action scenes are almost abstract, carefully plotted and edited swiftly, just like Psycho's shower scene. I highly recommend renting Kino's DVD and keeping your finger on the pause button, deconstructing frame by frame how Fanck constructs each shot (i.e. man's coat is splashed with snow, shocked heads with wide mouths whirl as the camera spins upside-down, a dummy is shoved over a ravine, etc.), and then play it back at standard speed to see how the images become almost impressionistic, forming the <span style="font-style: italic;">idea </span>of the event rather than a coherent depiction of what has just happened. For 1929, it's astonishingly innovative, and one can almost imagine that Fanck has laid the groundwork for later blockbuster action films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, with their carefully storyboarded action setpieces. Fanck also deserves applause for simply having the gall to film on the locations he's chosen; in a 20's silent film, particularly one of German vintage, one might expect lots of expressionistic sets and makeup. Fanck is the antidote to that approach: he strives for realism, filming on location and in deep ice caverns with cascading layers of cannot-be-faked stalactites, perching his actors (and actress) on the edges of the slopes with mountain vistas behind them. This is not to say that some sets are used, and plenty of special effects applied, but a veracity is achieved--what Werner Herzog calls the "voodoo of location"--which transports the viewer <span style="font-style: italic;">inside </span>the cinematic space. Yet these secret mountain caverns can look just as otherworldly as anything in a film by Murnau or Lang, and Fanck knows it. In the most memorable scene, when dozens of members of a rescue team penetrate a labyrinthine ice cave, each holding a flare with an eerie glow, all scattered throughout the frame to fill it completely, the fires illuminating the many frozen bodies of the dead students, Fanck indulges in superimposing a title-card: "Inferno!" It's the one moment when Fanck is willing to cop to the visual poetry he's achieved.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-67151850212880216902008-06-08T08:35:00.000-07:002008-06-08T09:32:00.110-07:00Red Desert<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDPzNHNLvHPKDuQhdGBhHqCfjj9F5Y8sGJfMOBAWBU4f4gNrOLPxM0Y5n92Dw7RtYypZju9ICvu5fu5dilCxjnZTo03ZegbxjNKNrP-nxK25quDXI7cDxkyTzTkBB8_J5kWtC/s1600-h/Red_Desert.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGDPzNHNLvHPKDuQhdGBhHqCfjj9F5Y8sGJfMOBAWBU4f4gNrOLPxM0Y5n92Dw7RtYypZju9ICvu5fu5dilCxjnZTo03ZegbxjNKNrP-nxK25quDXI7cDxkyTzTkBB8_J5kWtC/s400/Red_Desert.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209536106367577858" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Red Desert</span> (Italy, 1965) * * * *<br />D: Michelangelo Antonioni<br /><br />If there is fault to be found in Antonioni's 1965 Red Desert, it is not within the borders of the film's frames: Antonioni is, at this stage of his career, such an impeccable artist that there is not a single moment of the film which could not provoke a healthy paper from a thoughtful film student. Red Desert is a magnificent meditation on human alienation, thoroughly schematized, yet open to enigmatic possibilities as Antonioni lets his camera wander across these bizarre industrial landscapes (visually, it is almost a science fiction film). The only fair criticism might be that Antonioni had already done this many times before, and that the reason he's so <span style="font-style: italic;">good </span>at it by 1965 is that he's just very well practiced on the subject matter. And yet, you wouldn't criticize Hitchcock for making a "wrong man" film--you'd pop one in the DVD player when you're in the mood to watch the <span style="font-style: italic;">best </span>of wrong man films. If you're hankering for a slowly-paced, gorgeously-shot, meditative film about upper-class existential angst, may I recommend L'Eclisse, La Notte, L'Avventura, or Il Deserto Rosso, all representing the cream of the crop, and all by Antonioni?<br /><br />Monica Vitti again stars, here cast as the wife to the manager of a factory, whose plant is suffering under the impact of a worker's strike. She has just been involved in a terrible car accident, and although she's physically recovered, she is, as her husband complains, not quite right. In fact, she's crippled by neuroses, almost schizophrenic, as she literally cringes and recoils at the oppressive, rusting, decayed, and polluted world around her, which Antonioni frames so that it visually presses in on her from all sides. In his films, empty space carries as much weight as heavy concrete. She ponders opening a ceramics shop, and explains to an only <span style="font-style: italic;">slightly </span>less disaffected engineer (Richard Harris) that she must choose just the right color for the shop--something "neutral," she says, as she shows him the paint samples she's splashed on the wall. Of course, her world is filled with neutral colors--browns and grays, primarily--and so whenever Antonioni introduces a splash of bright red, or a delirious purple, a flag should be raised in the viewer's mind. But the reddest room, low-ceilinged, hidden in the back of a shack sitting on a foggy pier, is gaudy and almost shameful, and it's where Vitti, her husband, and their friends gather for a debauched party that sits temptingly on the verge of an all-out orgy. This kind of debauchery has been chronicled in Italian 60's cinema before, most notably in Fellini's La Dolce Vita, but the way Antonioni treats it is telling. The couples find the encounter rife with sexy possibilities, but Antonioni doesn't: he's noticing how gaudily the paint is splashed on these rotting old planks, how Vitti and Harris have a slightly distant, haunted look about them, how the biggest lech in the room is almost reptilian in his movements, and that the cold, bottomless ocean is only just below them; most of all he points out how truly awkward and desperate they seem. When another couple arrives to peer down into the room, the partygoers--either middle-aged or approaching middle-age, and lying on their sides and backs like children in a cramped playroom--seem briefly self-aware, before they try to lure that visiting couple into their lustful self-delusion.<br /><br />It's delusion in which Antonioni is most interested: his central characters, often played by Vitti, seem to have broken that spell, suddenly facing a universe which is cruel and meaningless, and which no one else can see. That--and the fact that we're all in it alone. The most powerful, almost supernatural image in the film is a vision Vitti has while standing in the foggy harbor with her friends, all of them having just fled the proximity of an arriving ship that's being quarantined: Vitti sees each of her companions slowly absorbed by the mist, one at a time, while they stand, frozen, staring at her. It's one of many iconic images in Antonioni's filmography, but perhaps the closest he comes to actually visualizing that <span style="font-style: italic;">nothingness </span>which is assaulting his characters. But the cruelty can also come from other people. She tries to explain it to Harris: "If you pinch me, only I suffer..." Even her son can be cruel, though indirectly, when he leads his mother to believing, for a day, that he's become paralyzed by polio. When she discovers him standing, perfectly healthy, on top of his bed, she's relieved, overwhelmed with gratitude; and then struck by horror--not just that a trick was played on her, but that her own child could so carelessly thrust her into such an awful alternate reality. It's just another one of her epiphanies, as the film chronicles Vitti's deterioration on the path to a grim "enlightenment."<br /><br />Antonioni would subsequently challenge himself by taking his approach to different cultures: first to swinging London with Blow-Up, then to American campus radicalism with Zabriskie Point. Red Desert feels like the last film in a series, mastering his themes, or, perhaps, just finally expressing something he'd been trying to get at for the past several films. You might prefer any of those other films (me, I'll take La Notte), but one thing that strikes me about Red Desert is the feeling that the director has finally scratched that itch. He's gotten out what he's been wanting to say, and now he can move on--if only a <span style="font-style: italic;">little </span>bit.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-78580687037918318452008-06-07T20:03:00.001-07:002008-06-07T20:47:33.328-07:00Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfsajJZuXQ1MigJy6a4Uxd9aypXptluJUNH9wX6Zv43zR6BJVqG79fzvs432TKgOSTyUjTZ5qKX8oK1NMczChhEK8eCmgkLdkkEOdoOgcxmToKpiuvxmT2YomLb31hgVLhz-4q/s1600-h/pollymaggoo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfsajJZuXQ1MigJy6a4Uxd9aypXptluJUNH9wX6Zv43zR6BJVqG79fzvs432TKgOSTyUjTZ5qKX8oK1NMczChhEK8eCmgkLdkkEOdoOgcxmToKpiuvxmT2YomLb31hgVLhz-4q/s400/pollymaggoo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209341154407247826" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? </span> (France, 1966) * * *<br />D: William Klein<br /><br />The ninth box set from the Criterion Collection's Eclipse imprint collects three rare films from the little-known, American-born satirist William Klein: Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), Mr. Freedom (1969), and The Model Couple (1977). A renowned New York fashion photographer who became an expatriate, Klein's first feature-length film is French, and wholly absorbs swinging 60's Paris; it's a biting but playful critique of the fashion industry and pop culture in general. I couldn't help but be reminded of Richard Lester's imaginative satires, including Help! and How I Won the War. And, like those films, it's impossible to imagine it being produced in any decade but the 60's.<br /><br />Polly Maggoo (Dorothy MacGowan) is a Parisian cover girl adored worldwide. She is also something of a blank slate, upon which the various characters of the film--including a TV documentarian, a wealthy prince, bumbling secret agents, and haughty fashion designers--project all their ideals, lusts, and fantasies. On top of this threadbare plot (which can be summarized as: "Polly is pursued"), Klein layers witty dialogue, pointed satire, surreal dreams, endless digressions, TV commercials, sloganeering, even cut-out animation, all to demonstrate how Polly the person disappears beneath Polly the idol, a papier-mâché construct whom all the peripheral characters have built in their private fantasies. <br /><br />At 101 minutes, it's all a little <span style="font-style: italic;">too </span>much, and becomes slightly exhausting after a while. But the film picks up in its final stretch--even as the narrative becomes even more disjointed--with an odd and unexpected finale, followed by one of the funniest ending credit sequences I've seen (with drawings by famed cartoonist Roland Topor). What's most impressive about the film is that it demonstrates Klein to be an instant natural as a filmmaker. With restlessly creative techniques--super-fast editing, crowded and dizzying compositions--he reinvents his film every few minutes. The effect is like reading a glossy pop-art magazine: a little Vogue, a little Mad Magazine, a little New Yorker, with plenty of eye-popping ads.<br /><br />Most of all, as a freewheeling, madcap 60's satire, Polly Maggoo is endearing for actually being <span style="font-style: italic;">clever </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">fun</span>--something many of its larger-budgeted rivals (What's New, Pussycat?, Casino Royale) only dreamed of being. But this would make a brilliant double-feature with Godard's equally stylish Masculin-Féminin, a <span style="font-style: italic;">yé-yé girl</span> critique of a (slightly) more serious tone. Have at it.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-25759868814621090712008-06-07T11:13:00.000-07:002008-06-07T12:23:14.288-07:00Love on the Ground<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuk6D54bqCYYxNdH7Z1Cm5Q14NX3CkMN3OOkpGFR0JXDPoGudxBSM0BZ8r_Xn2Q4NpKJ2K-s8mUv5aBIVVOG1mg0VoUyDHjCMyP518nPx1tuyk9W07nSCufoD95cyW8lcGaTk/s1600-h/loveontheground.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuk6D54bqCYYxNdH7Z1Cm5Q14NX3CkMN3OOkpGFR0JXDPoGudxBSM0BZ8r_Xn2Q4NpKJ2K-s8mUv5aBIVVOG1mg0VoUyDHjCMyP518nPx1tuyk9W07nSCufoD95cyW8lcGaTk/s400/loveontheground.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209205584946107554" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Love on the Ground</span> (France, 1983) * * * *<br />D: Jacques Rivette<br /><br />Unable to wait any longer for Criterion or Criterion's Eclipse line to release a Jacques Rivette box set, I went on an import DVD-buying binge recently and ordered from overseas Noroit, Duelle (both 1976), Love on the Ground (1983), and Don't Touch the Axe [aka The Duchess of Langeais] (2007), all films from one of the French New Wave's most underappreciated directors. Rivette is best known for two films, the little-seen but notorious 773-minute film Out 1 (1971), and the elliptical fantasy Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974). Love on the Ground acts as a pseudo-sequel to Celine and Julie, again pairing two female friends, who behave like twins, and thrusting them into a mystery and a haunted house. Only this time those latter elements seem less critical, stylistic dressing that only adds to the playfulness of the tangled narrative.<br /><br />See if you can follow: Charlotte (Geraldine Chaplin) and Emily (Jane Birkin) are actresses partaking in an experimental theater which takes place in an apartment; the audience becomes voyeurs walking from one room to the next as they follow the action. One of the guests to the performance is a writer, Clement (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), who recognizes that the play is a bastardization of his own work (the man who stole the play, Silvano, is also one of the actors). Rather than taking offense, or suing them, Clement invites the three actors to his secluded estate to act in his own new play, which he would like to produce in a similarly interactive fashion, with his entire mansion becoming the theater. The only other occupants of the home are his servant, Virgil (Laszlo Szabo), who in his spare time is "translating Hamlet into Finnish," and the stage magician Paul (Andre Dussollier). Charlotte, Emily, and Silvano are assigned roles: Silvano is the tempestuous playwright, Emily is "Pierre," and Charlotte is the hotly-desired woman over whom they duel, Barbara. Yet soon it becomes apparent that another artistic theft has taken place. The play is actually closely based on recent events in the life of the magician, Paul, whose ex-lover Beatrice was also pursued by Clement. To complicate matters even further, when Paul takes a lover, that woman has visions which subsequently come true. Emily takes up with Paul, and sees a vision of herself, apparently dead, lying on the floor with blood upon her brow, an unfamiliar woman in a red dress leaning over her. It doesn't help matters that the estate is apparently haunted, or at least has strange properties: a secret, locked room emits strange sounds (jungle wildlife, or waves washing upon a beach), and glimpsing down a dark corridor might suddenly reveal strange sights.<br /><br />The languidly-paced film (almost all of Rivette's films are paced to mimic the realistic rhythms of everyday life) takes place over the course of a week, as the unlikely troupe rehearses, rewrites, and prepares for the big performance--all while Clement refuses to write the final act, waiting for inspiration to strike. Love affairs begin and end, taking different shapes and interweaving in complicated patterns. Mysteries are launched--(What is Virgil writing? What is in the locked room? What happened to Beatrice? etc.)--and many of them go unanswered. Late in the film, Charlotte says to Emily, "It seems like we've been here forever," and indeed that's the feeling Rivette intends to invoke. He creates a continuum into which the viewer is thrust, and sets cycles spinning kaleidoscopically, so that events seem to recur in different colors, though not exactly in a linear progression. Unlike his more famous contemporaries, Godard and Truffaut, Rivette is not the most stylish or cinematic of directors. There is no score on the soundtrack, and he doesn't want to distract with camera tricks or flashy compositions or editing (although his languorous camera tracking always manages to find the perfect way to frame his cast of characters, theatrically embracing as many bodies in the mise-en-scène as he can). His method, as far as filmmaking goes, is to strip the film down to its barest essentials, while drawing the viewer's attention to the artifice of the production. Perhaps the key visual moments in Love on the Ground are those at the beginning and end of the film, when spectators frame the action at the edges of the screen, leaning around corners and into doorways to watch the players. Rivette is more interested in thematic resonances of a literary level; indeed, his films might be more suited to novel-readers--or to devotees of avant-garde theater--than to film buffs. You need to be able to appreciate that not only are we watching spectators watching a play--but that those characters are in turn based on other characters, who are, in turn, watching themselves represented in the play. It's as though two mirrors have been turned to face each other, forming a reflection that repeats infinitely onward. (Early in the film, someone even comments that Clement's house is like a mirror, shortly before Charlotte sees an alternate-reality version of herself reflected down a hallway.)<br /><br />Love on the Ground is currently available on a PAL Region 2 DVD from Bluebell Films, with English subtitles. It is advertised as the "newly restored and remastered director's cut." It did seem to feature scenes that I didn't recall from a Rivette revival at the University of Wisconsin's Cinematheque a couple years ago, although the IMDB implies that the "cut" version is 125 minutes, and I'm pretty sure that the print I watched was closer to 2 1/2 hours. At any rate, the DVD is the full 169-minute version. There are no extras--not even a chapter menu--and the picture quality is adequate, though much better than the pink-hued old print I'd watched. I recommend it highly as one of Rivette's most elaborately-constructed, intellectually entertaining puzzle-boxes.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25189912.post-75452142912382913062008-05-30T20:02:00.000-07:002008-06-01T14:46:23.066-07:00The Fall<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9VQ8NxLfpDZgVRqO2sw67LjRHQBbQ8p7GMWE3TMKCh3XIOFSZMzBRJ7lrU2630fFCXH-jhkN212HOSXoYiU8f8HTeekGa__Z3Kk8-0hPg9y0SeUoWyOREa9_YsrpONrMH-Wh/s1600-h/thefall.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw9VQ8NxLfpDZgVRqO2sw67LjRHQBbQ8p7GMWE3TMKCh3XIOFSZMzBRJ7lrU2630fFCXH-jhkN212HOSXoYiU8f8HTeekGa__Z3Kk8-0hPg9y0SeUoWyOREa9_YsrpONrMH-Wh/s400/thefall.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206372834652729474" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Fall</span> (U.S./U.K./etc., 2006) * * * *<br />D: Tarsem<br /><br />I don't get it.<br /><br />Oh, I get Tarsem's ravishing new motion picture, The Fall. That I get. And love. What I don't get is why the film played once in 2006, at the Toronto Film Festival, a handful of festivals in 2007, and is only finally getting a U.S. art house run the summer of 2008. I also don't get how any film critic in the world could dismiss a film of such originality, wit, and intelligence--all that <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>it's a film that celebrates filmmaking, to boot. I would posit that any critic who dislikes The Fall should hand in their credentials at the front desk on their way out.<br /><br />Griping aside, I am still awash in the glow of this film I saw tonight, which accomplishes a rare feat: it is a production of enormous spectacle which also has a rich emotional depth. It is the reason cinema was invented. I don't mean this in the most hyperbolic sense. I don't mean that The Fall is the apex of the art, or that it stands among the greatest films ever made. (It is easily the best film I've seen so far in 2008.) I mean that because it is the sort of story which could only be told cinematically, and because its strengths are almost impossible to describe without directing the reader to go and see for himself, the film seems to represent the most elusive, magical element of the cinema-going experience. And it's a full-course meal.<br /><br />The story is paper-thin as it reads in a review. After a near-fatal accident (the titular "fall") filming a stunt scene for a silent-movie comedy, the Buster Keaton-like actor Roy Walker (Lee Pace) becomes bedridden in a hospital; his heart has been broken by a girl, and he's trying to end it all. Key to his suicidal plan is tricking a five-year child, Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), into stealing some morphine so that he can overdose. He begins telling her a story about her father, which she visualizes (for <span style="font-style: italic;">us</span>) in a manner that calls to mind The Little Prince, or tales from the Arabian Nights, or anecdotes from The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, or something out of Rudyard Kipling.<br /><br />If I can just pause to point out: this is a movie made in 2008, and it's referencing the literature I cited above. This is significant to me because, in 2008, to be successfully marketed to Americans a movie must either be a mainstream Hollywood special effects blockbuster (preferably about a superhero, or based on a toy or TV show, or a sequel to something), or it must be sold to the art houses as a serious-minded award contender. The Fall is neither. The Fall is for people who wouldn't mind, before they go to bed tonight, reading a chapter from an H. Rider Haggard novel or an article in the latest National Geographic, or maybe watching an old movie like Fritz Lang's The Indian Tomb or The Thief of Bagdad (either one). If my name-dropping is putting images in your head, I want you to take those images and ideas and dunk them into an aquarium filled with fluorescent-blue water, with wondrous little toy props resting among the bright-green pebbles, so that everything seems transformed into pop art with a surrealist's touch. Indeed, Tarsem invokes Dali at least once in the film, as a man's face transforms into a desert landscape that somehow, through a play of shadows and rocks, retains his image--free of special effects, as most of the film is. He also invokes M.C. Escher (with a labyrinthine palace of staircases which is, also, very real). For filmmakers, his influences range from Alejandro Jodorowsky (when one fictional character dies, birds escape from his mouth) to the Brothers Quay (quite out of nowhere and late in the film comes a snappy little stop-motion sequence). Yet it's telling that to compare his style to anyone else, you have to name those at the extreme edges of the list (Herzog is another); that's because Tarsem is uncompromising, and delivers, with every shot, not just a polished mise-en-scene but an original <span style="font-style: italic;">idea </span>over which he obviously labored. When I go to the movies, just as when I read novels, I crave imagination. Tarsem has it in abundance.<br /><br />I'll admit I was not completely bowled over by Tarsem's first film, The Cell (2000), which was also visually impeccable but a bit too self-serious and stifling. But The Fall, for all its serious themes (suicide, depression), is rescued by young Untaro's convincing, endearingly funny performance, and by a razor-sharp wit in the extended fantasy sequences. (One of the bandit heroes of Roy Walker's story is Charles Darwin, who has a pet monkey that helps him catch butterflies, and who at one point nobly proclaims to his assailants, "Shoot, you animals! They'll pay you well for Darwin's hide!" The "fictional" thread to the story is, of course, why you're paying to see this on the big screen, and now I'm compelled to mention that every location in this film, no matter how fantastic it appears, really exists. You could not build sets this large, nor make CG this tactile. Tarsem, carting a camera and a small crew to the far corners of the Earth, has made a travelogue for an alien planet that just hasn't been <span style="font-style: italic;">filmed </span>very much before. How fitting that I saw this on the same day that the news was running photos from a lost tribe in Brazil, never having contacted "civilization," bodies painted red, aiming their bows up at the aircraft snapping their photo. Well, I bet they've met Tarsem.<br /><br />It's not just that The Fall is a wonderful and one-of-a-kind film, which it is. For everything Tarsem went through to get this movie made, he should be hailed just as Peter Jackson was a few years back: he financed the film out-of-pocket, shot it in scattered locations across the globe, <span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>wrangled a performance from Untaru that is one of the rare child performances wholly deserving of an Oscar, a performance which roots all of the spectacle and fantasia onto a human and emotional plane. What is happening?<br /><br />What is happening is that audiences will respond as the press hasn't. See this film on the big screen now, before it quickly vanishes; in a few years, when The Fall is a revered cult film, you'll be able to brag to your friends that you saw it how it was meant to be seen. Plus, unlike everything else playing in the cinemas this weekend, <span style="font-style: italic;">you have never seen this film before.</span>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996372338942224659noreply@blogger.com0