Brandon's movie memory

Addictive series full of distinct characters getting into overblown soap-opera situations. It concerns changing social structure in the early 1900′s – specifically, bookended by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 and the start of WWI (for Britain) in August 1914 – then season two takes us to the end of the war. An extremely busy series with excellent writing and acting and no wasted time.

Upstairs:

The Earl Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville, star of Asylum) is in charge of the “abbey” (mansion? I see no monks).

His American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern of Once Upon a Time in America and The House of Mirth) provided all the family’s monetary wealth, has scary eyes.

Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery, who played the murdered decoy-Cate Blanchett in Hanna) is the oldest daughter who should be married by now, but drives away all suitors except a Turkish diplomat, who dies in her bed provoking hushed scandal. She’s supposed to hook up with Matthew in order to keep the fortune in the family, but they drive each other away until the end of the post-s2 Christmas special.

Lady Sybil (Jessica Findlay) is the kinda nice middle daughter who turns political, gets excited about equal rights for women, and finally runs off to Scotland or someplace to marry the chauffeur.

Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) is the youngest daughter, defined mainly by her fights with Mary, which quickly escalate (Mary scares off her would-be-fiancee, Edith writes to the Turkish embassy explaining how their diplomat died). She also has a wartime fling with a neighboring farmer.

The Dowager Countess (the great Maggie Smith), Crawley’s mom, hangs around to provide the official old-world upper-class perspective on everything. She grudgingly agrees to some of the major changes and improprieties, thus staying a lovably wonderful character instead of an increasingly out-of-touch old sourpuss.

Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is a distant cousin who becomes heir to Downton after a nearer cousin dies on the Titanic. He moves his law practice into town to familiarise himself with his future estate, is being set up to marry Mary, but instead gets engaged to Lavinia. He’s injured in WWI in the same blast that mortally wounds William, and will never walk again. But of course, he walks again.

Isobel Crawley (Penelope Wilton, Shaun of the Dead‘s mother, also in Match Point) is Matthew’s mom, a contentious nurse who takes over the house when it becomes a recovery home for wounded soldiers during the war.

Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle) is the beloved fiancee of Matthew, who is too perfect to ever leave him or do anything wrong, so instead she’s killed off by Spanish Influenza.

Downstairs:

Mr. Carson, head butler (Dennis Potter regular Jim Carter), is the servant equivalent of Maggie Smith – knows exactly his place, and everyone else’s.

Mrs. Hughes, head housekeeper (Phyllis Logan, star of Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies) is a benevolent leader and problem-solver, like a female Carson but friendlier.

Mr. Bates, Crawley’s valet (Brendan Coyle of an upcoming, annoying-looking Poe adaptation/bio-pic) and servant during the Boer War (1900-ish), is hired and allowed to stay despite his controversial leg injury. He and Anna fall in love, but Bates is secretly married, and after his wife takes all his money and still won’t agree to a divorce, Bates possibly kills her. But we’ll see in season 3.

Ms. O’Brien, head maid (Siobhan Finneran of the Andrew Garfield starmaker Boy A) is evil and resentful, always scheming with Thomas, causes Cora’s miscarriage.

Thomas, first footman (Rob James-Collier), is possibly even more evil, also a closeted homosexual. Coincidence? He gets out of the war by arranging a hand injury, A Very Long Engagement-style, loses his fortune in a black-market scam, then achieves his long-held goal of taking Bates’s job as valet.

William, second footman (Thomas Howes), is a hapless, bullied fellow, lovestruck for Daisy.

Anna, head maid (Joanne Froggatt of an upcoming movie with description “a teenage boy’s descent into the dangerous world of the Internet”), is Bates’s sweetheart.

Gwen, maid (Rose Leslie), is learning to type so she can leave service and hold a proper job, secretly assisted by Sybil.

Ethel (Amy Nuttall) is the s2 replacement for Gwen. Even more of a free-spirited, liberated woman than her predecessor, she gets knocked up by a hospital guest and leaves the house in shame. Good, I was sick of her.

Mrs. Patmore, cook (Lesley Nicol), is losing her sight until the family sends her off for cataract surgery – spends the next ten episodes berating Daisy.

Daisy, cook’s assistant (Sophie McShera) is cute, tiny, guilted into marrying William on his death bed from war injuries.

Molesley (Kevin Doyle) is assigned to be Matthew’s servant, keeps almost getting regular plot threads but he’s not quite interesting enough so they get pushed aside.

Branson (Allen Leech) is the commie chauffeur who manages to marry into the family – but never gets invited into the house.

Crew:

Writer/producer Julian Fellowes was an actor for years, appearing in a Bond movie and bunches of miniseries, also wrote Gosford Park, Vanity Fair, The Young Victoria and a new version of Titanic with Toby Jones.

Buy from Amazon:
Downton Abbey season 1 DVD
Downton Abbey season 2 blu-ray

Screenwipe season 3 (2007)

I think I watched seasons one and two all in a couple days, but put s3 aside for almost two years because I was afraid of Wire spoilers. But Charlie Brooker didn’t even mention The Wire in this one – it must’ve been between seasons. Instead, the one show he doesn’t slag off is Battlestar Galactica. I like that it’s not entirely about show episodes anymore – he has segments on commercials, being an on-camera presenter, people with menial jobs in the TV industry, the news, and deceptive editing practices on “reality” shows. Brooker’s attacks on poor Ken Russell in Celebrity Big Brother probably didn’t seem overly tasteless at the time, but it was slightly shocking for me to hear them so soon after Ken’s death – I’ll let that one go, since Brooker spent more of the segment attacking the other racist participants and the show as a whole. As usual I didn’t catch half the references, have never heard of half the shows, and as usual it was funny anyway.

Brooker:

Parks & Recreation season 2 (2009-10)

Finished this a while ago, but I forgot to mention. The first season was decent, but this one was even better than 30 Rock. Ann dates Mark Brendanawicz (who leaves the show at the end of the season to be in Water For Elephants), Tom gets divorced, Leslie develops into one of TV’s greatest characters (and dates Justin Theroux) and the Hole is trimphantly turned into a Vacant Lot.

Other shows:
I watch about an episode a month of The Larry Sanders Show. Watched the first episode of Louie twice and haven’t made it to the second. Never started on season 2 of Saxondale or The Thick of It, though I keep intending to, and I have no idea where I left off with The Sarah Silverman Show, Futurama or Metalocalype.

A few annoyances – Cousins’s lilting voice makes me laugh for a few minutes at the start of each episode (I never get used to it), and all the statements that the well-known film classics aren’t really the great films (as opposed to Rosenbaum’s distinction between acknowledged greats and personal favorites). I tried to keep my ears sharp for factual errors after reading an early account on Shadowplay, but by the five minute mark I’d completely melted, just enjoying the hell out of the clips on display, the cinematic history lesson and its clever organization. Also, I couldn’t believe he mentioned Samira Makhmalbaf in his introduction.

Part 1: 1895-1918, Thrill Becomes Story

From the earliest works through DW Griffith’s Intolerance in 1916, with spotlights on Lumiere and Melies, Billy Bitzer, Edwin Porter (his Life of an American Fireman gets the most play), Alice Guy, Victor Sjostrom and Griffith.

Part 2: 1918-1928, The Triumph of American film and the first of its rebels

About the industrialization of Hollywood, then the breakout comic stars of Keaton, Chaplin and Lloyd, the beginning of documentary with Nanook of the North (with a shout out to The Five Obstructions) and realism in fiction film. More rebels: first The Crowd, then Aelita and Yevgeni Bauer, then a spotlight on Carl Dreyer and The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Part 3: 1918-1932, Great Rebel Filmmakers around the world

Focuses on challenges to the dominant Hollywood romanticism in the 1920′s and 30′s. Lubitsch’s style and innuendo, French impressionism (Abel Gance), German expressionism (Caligari, Metropolis, Sunrise), experimentalists (Walter Ruttmann, Entr’acte, Alberto Cavalcanti, Un Chien Andalou and L’age d’or), Soviet montage (Potemkin and Arsenal), Ozu’s humanism and compositional innovations, Mizoguchi’s feminine miserablism and the realistic acting of Ruan Lingyu.

I see that Mark Cousins doesn’t have a better copy of A Page of Madness than I do – a shame. I hope a decent print of it exists somewhere. Five years before that one, he calls Souls on the Road the first great Japanese film.

Part 4: The 1930′s, Great American movie genres and the brilliance of European film

Sound film in hollywood and europe: Love Me Tonight as example.
The genres: horror, gangster, western, comedy, musical, cartoon
Europeans who push boundaries: Cocteau, Vigo, Carne/Prevert, Renoir
in South America: Limite (looks great)
in Poland: The Adventures of a Good Citizen (whoa, looks just like Polanski’s Two Men and a Wardrobe)
in Germany: Leni Riefenstahl (way to go, Germany)
Back in Hollywood, reasons why Hitchcock was “the greatest image maker of the 20th century” then a run through the women of Ninotchka, Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind

Part 5: 1939-1952, The Devastation of War and a new movie language

On to neorealism, but wait – first Ford’s and Welles’s use of deep space and wide lenses – okay, back to neorealism, then film noir (Gun Crazy looks amazing). He calls the Hollywood blacklist “the single greatest trauma in american cinema.” A chat with Stanley Donen, then onto Britain for Powell and Pressburger, Humphrey Jennings and The Third Man (“a compendium of 40′s cinema”). I like how he keeps flashing-forward to Martin Scorsese films influenced by the clips he’s showing.

Part 6: 1953-1957, The Swollen Story: world cinema bursting at the seams

Another world cinema round-up: Youssef Chahine – “the founding father of creative african cinema” for Cairo Station – is the original James Dean. Indian realism in the mid-30′s to Pather Panchali to Mother India. A melodrama called Two Stage Sisters by Xie Jin. A few by Kurosawa. Rio 40 degrees by Dos Santos in Brazil. In Mexico, Dona Barbara and La Perla and the return of Bunuel with Los Olvidados. Then on to Sirk, attacking Hollywood melodrama from within, along with Kenneth Anger and Nick Ray. The rise of television, Marty, and method acting. Checking in with old friends Welles, Ford, Hawks and Hitchcock, then in Britain, David Lean vs. Lindsay Anderson. A sign of sexy things to come: Brigitte Bardot.

Lars Von Trier:

Part 7: 1957-1964, The Shock of the New: Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe

Bergman, Bresson, Tati and Fellini led the way in making European films personal – a couple examples of each. Then enter the French New Wave, beginning not with Breathless and The 400 Blows but, happily, with Cleo from 5 to 7 and Last Year at Marienbad. New waves everywhere: in Italy you’ve got Pasolini’s Accatone and The Gospel According to St. Matthew plus Visconti and Sergio Leone. Nice how he talks about each filmmaker’s specific innovations, instead of just listing them out like I’m doing. In Spain, Marco Ferreri (The Wheelchair) and the return (briefly) of Bunuel. In Sweden, I Am Curious, Yellow. And then back to France, where The Mother and the Whore knocked the wind out of the new wave.

Part 8: 1965-1969, New Waves sweep around the world

In Poland, Wajda and Polanski (again with his wardrobe short). Czech: Jiri Trnka, Milos Forman and Vera Chytilova. Hungary: Jancso. Soviet: Tarkovsky and Parajanov. Japan: Oshima, Imamura. India: Ghatak (I interrupted his Ajantrik to watch this show, and Cousins gave away the bloody ending) and Mani Kaul. Brazil: Glauber Rocha. I Am Cuba. Iran: The House Is Black. Senegal: Black Girl (by the “founding father of black african cinema” – note the extra word). Britain: Karel Reisz, Ken Loach and Richard Lester. And in the USA, a curious list of titles I would not have come up with: Primary, Shadows, Psycho, Blow Job, Medium Cool, Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Part 9: 1967-1979, New American Cinema

Unlike Adam Curtis, Cousins doesn’t seem to have enough footage to go around. His pillow shots of city streets in between interviews and film clips start to feel repetitive. Anyway, he divides New American Cinema into three categories. 1. Satirical Movies (Buck Henry, Frank Tashlin, Robert Altman, Milos Forman). He brings up some of the great, subversive stuff Buck Henry wrote in The Graduate and Catch-22, then in his interview Henry points out that these come straight from the source novels. Good stuff on Altman though, and always nice to see Artists & Models get some credit. 2. Dissident Movies (Charles Burnett, Dennis Hopper). Nice, but where are Robert Downey and Frank Zappa? 3. Assimilationist Movies (Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, P-Bog, Sam Peckinpah, Terence Malick, Bob Fosse, F.F. Coppola, Martin Scorsese). Shout out to Woody Allen for bringing the Jewish experience onto the screen. A bit about how Schrader’s solution to the emptiness of his protagonists was “astonishing” – he stole from Pickpocket. Then he stole the ending of Pickpocket AGAIN in another movie (the two being American Gigolo and Light Sleeper). I guess that is pretty astonishing, but I wouldn’t go bragging about it in TV interviews.

I don’t know who was responsible for this, but in a corner of the screen during the closing credits, over a picture of Paul Schrader they throw up the words PAUL SHRADER. Perhaps an unhappy Bresson fan at the studio?

Charles Burnett:

Part 10: 1969-1979, Radical Director in the 70′s make state of the nation films.

A globetrotting look at films about identity in the 70′s. I’ve only seen a few films discussed in this segment but need to watch them all – they look stupendous. In Germany: Fassbinder, Wenders (Alice in the Cities), Margarethe von Trotta and Herzog. Italy: Pasolini again (Arabian Nights) and Bertolucci. Ken Russell and Nic Roeg and Gillian Armstrong. Documentaries in Japan: Minamata, The Victims and Their World and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On with an interview with Kazuo Hara. On to Africa with La Nouba, Xala, Kaddu Beykat, Harvest: 3000 Years and Mambety. Yilmaz Guney with Hope and Yol. The Battle of Chile and finally, The Holy Mountain.

Part 11: The 1970′s and onwards, Innovation in popular culture around the world

“Cinema of sensation rather than contemplation”

In Hong Kong with Bruce Lee, John Woo and Yuen Woo-ping, with special notice given to King Hu as innovator and Tsui Hark for producing every 80′s and 90′s movie he didn’t direct. In India with insanely popular actors Sharmila Tagore (who started in Satyajit Ray’s Devi and The World of Apu) and Amitabh Bachchan, scenes from Mughal e Azam and a long segment on Sholay, which looks like a Western. On to Arab countries with The Message and The Sparrow, and Cousins seems to have gotten Youssef Chahine incensed by calling Egypt a developing country. Then back to Hollywood for the rise of the blockbuster, more “sensation,” with Jaws, The Exorcist and Star Wars.

Part 12: The 1980′s, Moviemaking and Protest around the world

“Speaking truth to power” is the theme of the episode – he uses that phrase about thirty times. Another globetrotting decade-roundup. The Chinese “fifth generation” filmmakers like Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang (Horse Thief) and Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth) are discussed with Stanley Kwan. In Spain, “protest had a sex-change” with Almodovar, who he pits against Victor Erice. Cousins declares Come and See the greatest war film ever made, Kira Muratova one of the most underrated filmmakers, Yeelen “one of cinema’s most complex works of art,” Distant Voices, Still Lives the greatest British film of the 1980′s, and John Sayles & Maggie Renzi “America’s state-of-the-nation filmmakers.” I like how he demonstrates different filmmakers’ techniques with his own camera, training us to watch for specific techniques in the following clips.

Part 13: 1990-1998, The Last Days of Celluloid before the coming of digital

A great round-up of self-reflexive Iranian cinema starting with Samira Makhmalbaf, then her dad, then Kiarostami’s Friend’s Home trilogy. I showed this section to Katy, since she suffered through Where is the Friend’s Home with me, not understanding the fascination. Though his mantra is “the last days of celluloid,” the point in this episode isn’t film itself but the filmmakers who are still making personal art in new ways as multiplex fare gets ever more glittery and disconnected from reality. So there’s Wong Kar Wai and Irma Vep, an interview with Tsai Ming-liang who discusses Hou Hsiao-hsien. Miles away from their cinema is Shinya Tsukamoto with Tetsuo, then Ring and Audition (what, no Pulse?). Interview with Lars Von Trier, discussion of La Haine, L’Humanite, Rosetta. Claire Denis says she was greatly influenced by Touki Bouki. Crows, Wednesday and Haneke.

Part 14: The 1990′s, the first days of digital, reality losing its realness in America and Australia

Discussion of the possibilities of digital with Gladiator and Terminator 2. The opposite ends of the digital spectrum with Toy Story and Blair Witch, then asian innovation in House of Flying Daggers. Referential postmodernism in Goodfellas and the movies of Tarantino and the Coens. An interview with Gus Van Sant. “No movies in the 90′s was more complexly connected to film history” than Elephant – I wouldn’t have guessed that one. I love when Gus reveals his utter cluelessness about video games. Cousins is such an auteurist that he puts the name of Tomb Raider’s lead designer over the footage. Matthew Barney with Cremaster 3. Robocop and Starship Troopers mixed sci-fi, comedy and politics. Jane Campion talks about the unconscious and subjectivity in An Angel at My Table and The Piano, and we close on a good interview with Baz Luhrmann.

Part 15: 2000 onwards, film moves full circle and the future of movies

“The clash between reality and dreaming.” A hilarious metaphor, referring to innovation as “the gorilla.” Post-2001, documentaries got big: Fahrenheit 9/11, To Be and To Have, Zidane. Reality in fiction photography with The Assassination of Jesse James, Climates, Mr. Lazarescu, The Headless Woman, Battle in Heaven. In Korea: Oasis, Memories of Murder and Oldboy. American dream films: Mulholland Dr., Requiem for a Dream. Then the combination of reality and dreams with Songs from the Second Floor, and digitally screwing with perception with The Rules of Attraction and Avatar. The boldness of Tropical Malady (he pronounces the director’s name Vair-suh-THACK-ull). Cousins ends the series in the present, not with some hot young filmmaker who may be the voice of the future, but with sixty-year-old Aleksandr Sokurov: Mother and Son, Russian Ark (“perhaps the most inventive film ever made”). But wait, here it is, an epilogue set in the future: Inception, Eternal Sunshine and a lovely post-cinema roundup closing in Burkina Faso.

Of course, while watching The Story of Film I kept seeing clips and hearing mention of great films that I never got around to watching, and so I hereby declare The Story of Film Festival, during which I’m watching one never-seen film from each episode. Lineup below – will update as I go.

1. Intolerance
2. The Crowd
3. Nothing But Time & Entr’acte
4. Daybreak
5. Gun Crazy
6. Rio 40 Degrees or Cairo Station or Mother India
7. Curious Yellow or Wheelchair or Accatone or St Matthew
8. Daisies
9. The Last Picture Show
10. ?
11. A Touch of Zen, Dragon Inn or Chahine’s The Sparrow
12. The Horse Thief
13. The Apple or A Moment of Innocence or Beau Travail
14. Gerry or An Angel at My Table
15. Mother and Son

You can’t buy the series at Amazon, but you can get the book:
The Story of Film

British series with a brilliant premise, but kinda gets old over six episodes. Three or four would’ve been perfect. And no, I didn’t watch them all the same day. Matthew Holness (cowriter) plays Garth Marenghi, self-aggrandizing pulp horror author, Richard Ayoade (director/cowriter) plays TV producer Dean Lerner, and Matt “Dixon Bainbridge” Berry plays cheesy dreamboat actor Todd Rivers. These three present Garth’s unjustly forgotten 1980′s TV series Darkplace (which also stars Alice Lowe, Timothy Dalton’s assistant in Hot Fuzz), stopping the show frequently to comment on the story or its production. The humor comes from how terrible the show is (Dean Lerner’s acting is especially hilarious) and how deluded the cast and crew is about its greatness and importance. Both of the Mighty Boosh stars have cameos, though Vince was hard to spot under his monkey suit

The main cast:

The Boosh:

More shows to search for: Bruiser, My Life in Film, Nathan Barley, and (obviously) Man to Man with Dean Lerner

Watched a few episodes of this Boris Karloff-hosted series.

Well of Doom
It’s the night before the wedding of rich property owner Penrose to his bride Laura. He drives towards the bachelor party with old family friend/employee Teal (Torin Thatcher of Blackbeard the Pirate) when they’re stopped by an evil wizard (Henry Daniell who appeared with Karloff in The Body Snatcher, also in The Great Dictator) and his minion (Richard Kiel in one of his first screen roles). The wizard kills Teal and their chauffeur and locks bride and groom in a dungeon with the titular well, demanding Penrose sign over his estate. Penrose complies, fakes his death (having tied a rope inside the well to escape) and learns that there’s no magic – all trickery perpetrated by the long-suffering Teal who plans to take over the estate, claiming the couple had eloped. A shootout ensues between power-hungry plotters, Kiel stumbles into a fatal fall and love and money are preserved. Pretty decent. John Brahm also directed The Locket and a remake of The Lodger. Written by Donald Sanford (Midway).

Kiel hulking over Henry Daniell:

Trio for Terror
Three shorts from various stories, all adapted by Barré Lyndon (The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse) and directed by Ida Lupino (The Hitch-Hiker).

Simon (cousin Richard Lupino) has thought of the perfect crime (or at least the perfect alibi), murdering his rich uncle by slipping unseen out of his train car while the ticket-taker thinks he’s napping. Unfortunately, his murdered uncle (Terence de Marney, who’d appear with Karloff in Die Monster Die) was into voodoo, appears as a rooster-beast in Simon’s train car for revenge.

Richard Lupino, who should’ve known not to murder anyone who keeps a rooster tied to a circular astrology table:

Terence de Marney, who should’ve been able to see his murderous nephew coming through that glass bulb:

Collins (Robin Hughes, the talking head in The Thing That Couldn’t Die) goes to a gambling hall, breaks the bank winning at roulette, then escapes from a potentially murderous trap-bed. No way to make this one too exciting.

Eyepatch man (didn’t catch his name) with silent-talking eerie conquistador headed Robin Hughes:

Manhunt for a strangler, who escapes into a mannequin museum run by Milo (John Abbott of Slapstick), a serial killer who preys on serial killers, turning them to stone with the head of Medusa.

L-R: dummy, strangler, Milo:

Papa Benjamin
Wilson (John Ireland, Monty Clift’s buddy/rival in Red River) comes to the police station, says he just killed a man named Papa Benjamin. It seems Wilson followed his band’s drummer into a private voodoo club looking for “that new sound,” then promptly ripped off that sound with his all-white orchestra. A year later Wilson has been suffering from pain, cursed for betraying the voodoo secrets, so he “kills” the voodoo leader, but when he leads the cops there, no evidence. Dummy goes out with his band and performs the “voodoo rhapsody” once again, is struck dead at the end of it. Directed by Ted Post (Dirty Harry 2, Planet of the Apes 2) based on a story by popular mystery writer Cornell Woolrich.

John Ireland getting forcibly inducted into a voodoo cult:

Buy from Amazon:
Thriller: The Complete Series

A couple of TV shows I watched after finishing The Wire but before starting The Prisoner…

Time Trumpet (2006)

It’s one of those stupid look-back-at-a-certain-year half-hour entertainment-news shows – but set in the distant future, “looking back” into our near future, and created by Armando Iannucci. Brilliant. Talking-head interviews with Charlotte Church, Tony Blair, and “an increasingly erratic Tom Cruise.” Surprisingly good visual effects throughout. Highly enjoyable, even to a non-Brit like myself who missed more than half the references. An IMDB reviewer warns that it’s “an enquired taste.”

Look, Dean Learner!

Human Giant season 2 (2008)

What a great show. I miss it already.

Huebel is on Childrens Hospital now, Scheer on NTSF:SD:SUV and The League, and co-creator Jason Woliner (who was on Shining Time Station as a kid) on Players and Eagleheart. Must watch all of these.

Look, Omar!

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A tourist.”

I was planning to watch this anyway, but not as a memorial screening. Low-quality copy of this three-episode miniseries. You can see through the dubbed videotape murk and the MPEG blocks that much of the lighting and composition is probably wonderful (and the music score too good to be consigned to a lost TV-movie) – hope there will be an official release some day. This shows no compromise to the commercial requirements of television, just as twisty as the great City of Pirates, and similarly featuring featuring ships, pirate ghosts, islands, children, plot paradoxes and murder.

Part 1: Manoel’s Destinies

A narrator sets up the time-travel theme right away.
“I’m called ‘long ago.’ This story took place in the past, but I’m sure it will happen again soon. That’s why I chose to tell it to you in the present.”

Seven-year-old Manoel is on his way to school the morning after his family’s jewelry was stolen in the night, when he hears whispered voices, sidetracks into a courtyard and meets himself, six years older. Older Manoel says six years ago he was on his way to school, sidetracked into the courtyard and met a fisherman in a cave, went boating with him, came home and his life changed. His parents’ hopes in their son were shattered, his mother died, and he went off to work after dropping out of school. But he sidetracked into a courtyard, met the fisherman again, and boated backwards through time, retrieved his family’s jewels from the sea, and met his seven-year-old self.

So, young Manoel continues to school, follows the advice of older Manoel, becomes an extreme overachiever, and a few years later his father dies. So he visits the fisherman, goes back and yells his young self. “This time he chooses caution: he must ignore the fisherman’s call, but he mustn’t succeed at school.” At the end of the day, his parents are fine, but the townspeople find a dead boy on the beach: older Manoel.

Part 2: The Picnic of Dreams

More tense-twisting from the narrator, and Manoel’s class is on a field trip, literally to a field, where the teacher wants them to attempt to fall asleep and dream a hospital, which might become real. This doesn’t work, and Manoel walks through the dream forest and meets a large man who talks to trees.

The giant takes a coin from Manoel, and with it they swap bodies. Now Manoel in the man’s body must reclaim the coin, breaks into his own house at night and grabs it from his piggybank. A more straightforward story than the other parts.

Part 3: The Little Chess Champion

After his mother dies (guess he failed to save her through time-travel) Manoel is sent to live with his aunt, who lives with her son and two nephews in a museum. “The staff had moved out because of ghosts.”

Manoel plays violent games with the servant’s sons Pedro and Paulo, and visits the funhouse on Elephant Island with his cousins and a mysterious sea captain – but that may have been a dream. He meets seven-year-old Marylina, a genetically-engineered super-child who’s now the world chess champion and has a fiancee named Rock who has exchanged brains with a famed pianist.

There’s levitation, shadow plays, and my favorite visual effect, a bit of perspective-play with a hand coming through a keyhole. The captain takes Pedro into the shadow world, so Manoel visits the chess girl for help. But she and her fiancee have been discovering secret codes hidden in the structures of things. My favorite: “The Eiffel Tower is an iron code that translates French body odor into perfume.” The Captain comes and steals more children into his shadow world. It’s a completely insane episode.

The Captain and his demise:

“Now after all these years, when I remember my childhood, I think these things were just my imagination.”

This has played in different forms (a four-episode version, a theatrical film) in different places, including at Cannes. The acting credits are listed without character names, but someone figured out that Teresa Madruga (of Joao Monteiro’s Silvestre) plays Manoel’s mother. Fernando Heitor and Diogo Doria (an Oliveira regular, also in Love Torn in Dream) may play his father and teacher. The rest is a mystery to me.

F. Daly:

Writing or filming for children can sometimes bring a person straight to the source of their art. Having to perceptibly adapt their style confronts them with what must be included. Manoel leaves us with the essential Ruiz, the audio-visual companion to his extraordinary book Poetics of Cinema. Its dizzying narrative fold-over-fold methodology creates a labyrinthine temporal structure.

Also watched a TV episode called Exiles from 1988, which provides a nice career summary, focusing on Ruiz’s relationship with Chile and identity as an exile within his film stories.

The Great Man:

And something called Screen Pioneers (episode 3) from 1985 – an eccentric biography program, purporting to be from the future (like Time Trumpet) looking back on our present, and on this semi-unknown character named Raoul Ruiz. Written by Michael Powell expert Ian Christie – I’ve listened to some of his Criterion audio commentaries.
It’s only ten minutes long, plays like an extended intro to…

Return of a Library Lover (1983)

A first-person travel essay about Ruiz’s first return to Chile in ten years. Everything seems the same as when he left (it’s first-person narrated), except he notices a single pink book is missing from his shelf, a book he decides holds “the key to what happened on that night of Pinochet’s coup.” He interviews friends (including a “renowned library constructor”), and checks the bars. He talks to a bookseller. “I deduced that he couldn’t speak Spanish anymore and constantly had to check his own subtitles and translate them laboriously back.” What started out as a personal slideshow has turned into a full-fledged Ruiz movie. The book is discovered at the end, by contemporary Chilean poet Juan Uribe Echevarria.

My favorite line, a casual, matter-of-fact note on subjective memory: “Apart from having shrunk a little, the house was still intact.”

“From the Mayans I’ve inherited the knack of changing my childhood
just as one changes one’s native country.”

Best show I’ve seen.

Taking suggestions for what to watch next. Current considerations include dramas Deadwood and The Prisoner, Wire-related dramas The Corner and Homicide, or an anthology show like Thriller or Twilight Zone.

The actors, and where I might see ‘em next:

McNutty (Dominic West) I’ve seen in Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, next appearing in John Carter of Mars and the TV show The Hour.

Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters) – Treme and The Corner, also played Nelson Mandela in the movie Endgame, and appeared in Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa. Sydnor (Corey Robinson) is from The Corner.

The Bunk (Wendell Pierce) moved on to Treme. Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) is in a new medical/crime show, was in Scorsese’s Bringing Out The Dead.

Herc (Domenick Lombardozzi) – Miami Vice, Find Me Guilty and a new crime show called Breakout Kings. Carver (Seth Gilliam) – Oz and Starship Troopers.

Prez (Jim True-Frost) was Buzz in The Hudsucker Proxy. I had no idea. Also in Affliction and The Conspirator, and making appearances in Treme. Beadie (Amy Ryan) moved on to the American version of The Office when not pulling oscar nominations for Gone Baby Gone.

Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) was just in Night Catches Us, also in a season of Heroes. Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams) was the thief whom Viggo left naked in The Road, also in Gone Baby Gone (which I’ve long wanted to watch) and Life During Wartime (which I am suddenly desiring to watch)

Bubbles (Andre Royo) – recent movie Super, upcoming Shoedog. Cutty Wise (Chad Coleman) just appeared in The Green Hornet.

Michael (Tristan Wilds) is in the 90210 series remake and the movie Half Nelson. Dukie (Jermaine Crawford) is in the new movies by Joel Schumacher and Whit Stillman.

Clay Davis (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) I remember from 25th Hour and She Hate Me. Proposition Joe (Robert F. Chew) was in a few episodes of the other David Simon series.

Mayor Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) just starred in a British show called Identity, previously starred in Queer as Folk, and was the villain in Shanghai Knights. Norman (Reg Cathey) I’ve seen in at least eight movies, including Pootie Tang and The Machinist.

City Editor Gus (Clark Johnson) was one of the four leads in Homicide. Reporter Scott (Thomas McCarthy) directed The Station Agent and co-wrote Up! Also appeared in Year of the Dog, Duplicity and The Lovely Bones, though I don’t remember him.

Chris (Gbenga Akinnagbe) was in the TV version of Barbershop, also The Savages and the Taking of Pelham remake. Snoop (Felicia Pearson) was just in the news for being arrested on drug charges, but got a suspended sentence, yay.

Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick) is starring in Fringe, also appeared in Oz. Rhonda (Deirdre Lovejoy) played somebody’s mom in Bad Teacher.

Rawls (John Doman) is currently starring in a historical drama, was in Blue Valentine, also that Bruce Campbell show and that Glenn Close show. Ex-Mayor Royce (Glynn Turman) was just in Super 8, in the upcoming movie by Don Coscarelli (!)

Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom) was in The Hawk Is Dying, Masked & Anonymous and Storytelling. Commissioner Burrell (Frankie Faison) was in Do The Right Thing, Mother Night, My Blueberry Nights and all four Hannibal Lecter movies.

Quoth a banker: “We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed.”

Another Adam Curtis miracle. Katy and I are pleased as punch by the film’s research, structure and presentation, while being terrified by its content.

Curtis tells how Freud’s theories were pitched in the States by his nephew Edward Bernays, who thought to use his uncle’s psychological techniques in advertising and public relations, a field he effectively started. Freud’s theories are thought to explain the rise of naziism, so the American power elite looks to his daughter Anna for ideas on how to control the peoples’ minds. Former Freud student Wilhelm Reich who became a sex hippie (see also W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism), is the godfather of the opposite side: freeing your mind from conformity, and while Reich himself is imprisoned, his work destroyed by the U.S. government, his ideas inspire industry to promote self-identity through spending. Still later, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton (so apparently well-meaning, yet so deflated by the Adam Curtis docs) use focus groups to turn government and politics into a kind of marketing. And Curtis uses the same language that he’d return to in The Trap: what our leaders and big business presented as a new form of freedom became instead a form of control.