by ·Comments Off on Three Christmas Movies

The Holly and the Ivy (1952, George More O’Ferrall)

A typical holiday family-crisis movie (see also: A Christmas Tale). Bulb-nosed Ralph Richardson (lead butler in The Fallen Idol) is a parson who doesn’t realize his whole family has come to resent him. They trade family secrets amongst themselves, then finally tell off the old man, causing him to proclaim that he’s wasted his life. Merry Christmas!

Ralph and Denholm:

Daughter Jenny (Celia Johnson, star of Brief Encounter) lives at home wishing she was free to marry her (apparently Christmas-hating) boyfriend David and move to South America. Daughter Margaret (Margaret Leighton of The Elusive Pimpernel and Under Capricorn) is a bitter drunk because her secret out-of-wedlock baby died earlier that year. She has towed along some relative named Richard (Hugh Williams of One of Our Aircraft is Missing) – never figured out what his deal was. Michael (a very young Denholm Elliott) is on leave from the military, meddling in his siblings’ affairs, and two aunts are around for comic relief and a teeny bit of wisdom: jolly Lydia and forbidding Bridget.

Celia and Margaret:

A Christmas Carol (1971, Richard Williams)

It’s just not Christmas until we watch some version of the Dickens story. This half-hour oscar-winner from renowned animator Williams (we just saw his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit) is pretty excellent, with complex and impressive character animation. He recast Marley and Ebenezer from the movie Scrooge, which we watched two years ago, and added narrator Michael Redgrave. Marley is horrifying here, his jaw hanging open while he speaks, his coat-tails like tentacles behind him, and Christmas Past is a white flickering flame.

We also love Scrooge’s blue socks and yellow slippers:

Santa Claus Is Coming Tonight (1974, Pierre Hebert)

Opens with live-action footage of Santa descending by helicopter, the bulk of the movie is animated. A lonely old man full of Christmas spirit decorates his house for Santa’s arrival, while elsewhere an identical man working as a department-store Santa gets fired for stealing. Santa comes to the old man’s house and they party all night, then when Santa wakes up the old man is (I think) dead. Strange.

by ·Comments Off on Television: end of 2012 edition

Sports Night season 1 (1998-99)

Good Aaron Sorkin show. Casey (Peter Krause of Six Feet Under) and darker-haired Dan (Josh Charles of Muppets From Space) are anchors of a sports show run by Felicity Huffman (of Transamerica and apparently Magnolia) and Robert Guillaume (Benson, Rafiki in The Lion King). Casey likes Felicity, who is engaged to Ted McGinley, and Dan likes Teri Polo (mom in The Hole), who is married. The only stable relationship is Felicity’s assistant Sabrina Lloyd (Harley’s The Girl From Monday) with new guy Joshua Malina (a Sorkin regular).

Asylum (1996)

Edgar Wright’s first series – and he has four others that I’ve never heard of between this and Spaced. Cowritten with the cast, overall uneven with a slim overarching story and characters that get tiresome if you watch the episodes too close together.

Simon Pegg is a pizza boy called to an asylum then imprisoned there. Jessica Stevenson plays the sadistic head nurse and a daytime-TV-addict inmate. Mighty Boosh star Julian Barratt is a talkative, pretentious artist (and the highlight of the show). Standup comic Adam Bloom is a Lenny Bruce obsessive, Paul Morocco a mute juggler, Norman Lovett (of Red Dwarf) the head doctor and Mick O’Connor (whose only other credit is The Falls) the receptionist. Each episode ends with a music video, which I kinda loved.

Big Train season 1 (1998)

Excellent sketch comedy show starring Simon Pegg (between Asylum and Spaced), Mark Heap (Brian in Spaced) and Kevin Eldon (a dim officer in Hot Fuzz), with Julia Davis (Nighty Night) and Amelia Bullmore (Jam and I’m Alan Partridge).

Weird to hear a Tortoise song scoring a fake TV ad in episode 3, and to see a parody of the intro to A Matter of Life and Death. Lots of animated (barely) footage of the staring-contest world finals.

Cowriters Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan worked on The Fast Show, and with Christopher Morris on Jam and Brass Eye. Still need to watch Morris’s feature Four Lions

Arrested Development season 3 (2005-06)

So very good. I love how it ends with none of the characters having learned anything at all. Appearances by Justine Bateman, Judge Reinhold and a long section with Charlize Theron.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006)

Since I didn’t watch this with the release of The Drift like I was supposed to, I watched it with the release of his follow-up album. Wow. Some records I need to get: Night Flight, Climate of Hunter, the Ute Lemper album. Scott worked on Pola X so they show some behind-the-scenes bits of the warehouse performance and motorcycle crash.

The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway (2011)

Apparently, Pee Wee is better remembered than revisited.

Also watched Maria Bamford‘s stand-up thing recorded at her house with no audience – weird and awesome. She’s got a new one with her parents as the audience, which sounds even better.

The Queen of Versailles (2012, Lauren Greenfield)

Katy watched on netflix in a couple installments – I think I was there for all of it, but not too sure. Belongs in the Movies I Only Sorta Watched category. Pretty fascinating, starting as a document of the loony mega-rich couple building the largest house in America, until the housing crisis delays their plans and threatens his timeshare business. Wonderful to see things from the 1% perspective, especially when they’re in what they consider to be desperate financial straits (though the wife has a five-shopping-cart trip to walmart and visits the warehouses where their extraneous crap is stored), repeatedly referring to themselves as normal people who got screwed by the banks.

by ·Comments Off on A quick Chris Marker round-up

Pictures at an Exhibition (2008)

Tour through a simple 3D computer gallery, stopping to view each of Marker’s mash-up portraits, some of which I’ve seen before in Immemory. Posted on Marker’s youtube page a few years ago. Gentle, repetitive piano music by Arvo Part. Probably named after the piano suite by Mussorgsky.

Silent Movie (1995)

Nine minutes of classical-Hollywood-evoking footage of a glamorously-lit, black-and-white Catherine Belkhodja, star of Level Five, first in motion smoking a cigarette in different poses, then as a series of stills. The stills of Catherine with eyes closed then open can’t help but evoke La Jetee. This was part of a video installation for the Wexner Center in Ohio, along with essays and photos and posters and more videos – “a highly personal response to the one-hundredth anniversary of the invention of cinema.”

I also rewatched We Maintain It Is Possible, and liked it better than last time, and the English version of Chats Perches.

“The owl is to the cat as the angel is to the man.”

by ·Comments Off on Life of Pi (2012, Ang Lee)

Irrfan Khan is Pi, having a quiet day at home when an annoyingly Richard Dreyfuss-looking writer (Rafe Spall, one of the Andys in Hot Fuzz) shows up demanding to be told a story. So Pi starts at the beginning – he is named after a French swimming pool and lives with brother and parents (Tabu, who played Khan’s wife in The Namesake, is his mom) at a zoo, and is interested in religion.

One day the family packs up their zoo and heads off in a ship, which sinks in stormy waters, presumably killing Pi’s whole family. He finds himself on a lifeboat with an injured zebra, an orangutan, a rat, a hyena and a bengal tiger named Richard Parker, but the animals soon eat each other until it’s just Pi and the tiger. He fashions a raft so he can sleep without getting killed, but loses all his food and water due to a leaping whale. Formerly vegetarian, Pi learns to catch and eat fish. Boy and tiger stop on a “carnivorous island,” then get the hell out of there after loading up on edible roots. Finally, land and rescue, though Pi is sad that he never managed to connect with the tiger.

Rafe Spall thinks the whole thing is pretty far-fetched, so Pi gives another version of the story (told, not shown), where the lifeboat survivors were people, including Pi’s mother and a sadistic cook from the boat (Gerard Depardieu), then asks Rafe which story he prefers. The center of the film is just perfect – more colorful and awe-inspiring than a shipwreck story has any right to be.

G. Kenny:

But the frame story, in which an older Pi, a happily settled vegetarian living in Canada, tells his tale to a white male writer who in the credits is called “The Writer” is both a little cloying and forced and smacks a bit of, dare I say it, colonialist thought. I know that it’s a faithful adaptation from the book, and I know the book’s author is a white male writer, but I personally am just a wee bit tired of the convention in which a representative of The Other relates a tale of profundity to a white dude. Changing it up a little can’t hurt. Hell, a white woman would be less boring. I understand that second-guessing the artist is poor critical practice. But that fact remains that this convention, which was always pretty patronizing to begin with, has ossified into cliché, and the movie suffers for it.

by ·Comments Off on Metropolitan (1990, Whit Stillman)

It’s debutante season (Katy had to explain to me what that is) in Manhattan, so a group of friends home from college for the holidays get dressed up and hang out every night, mostly just the seven of them – but they pick up a “downwardly mobile” red-haired outsider named Tom early in the season and rope him into joining them for the whole two weeks of party games, dancing, jealousy and highly literate conversation.

Tom claims to be too much of a radical socialist to participate in such old-fashioned upper-class nonsense, but is easily enough convinced to buy a secondhand tuxedo and join in, especially when he finds out his ex-girlfriend Serena is a friend of the group. Molly Ringwald-looking Audrey crushes on Tom, while Charlie (a more intellectual Max Fischer) crushes on Audrey – as the others fade away over the second week, these three will remain from the core group.

Sally is the group’s host, who ends up with a gross record producer, Cynthia an easily-annoyed argument-baiter, Fred a tired guy who drinks too much then decides the group’s no fun anymore once he sobers up, and Nick the self-aggrandizing center of attention until he returns to school early. Nick’s at war with ladies’ man Rick who is currently dating Tom’s ex. Oh and there’s Jane, whom I already can’t remember.

After Tom hurts Audrey’s feelings pining after his ex, Audrey and Cynthia disappear to Rick’s house. Charlie and Tom are concerned enough for her welfare that they take a two-hour cab ride to rescue her. Audrey seems to be in no danger, but every girl likes to be rescued, so she goes with them, walking back to Manhattan talking vaguely about their futures. I kinda loved the movie, and especially the ending.

Beaten by Ghost for the screenplay oscar, Chameleon Street for best picture at sundance, and To Sleep With Anger (fair enough) for indy awards screenplay. Looks like half the cast appears in Last Days of Disco. Audrey (Carolyn Farina) was in The Age of Innocence as a relative (sister?) of Daniel Day-Lewis. Nick (Chris Eigeman) in a bunch of indie movies including Kicking and Screaming. Cynthia (Isabel Gillies) is billed just under David Lynch in the Nadja cast and Charlie (Taylor Nichols) appeared in Jurassic Park III.

L. Sante:

The dialogue is ostentatiously written; every character wields subordinate clauses and uses words like however and nevertheless. The combination of stilted speeches and deft behavioral acting sometimes seems peculiar, but it is also peculiarly apposite. Like Austen, Stillman wears his irony lightly and deploys it affectionately.
…
Urban haute bourgeoisie… is a term coined by Charlie, who is obsessed with the ongoing failure and imminent doom of his class. Stillman obviously thinks something of the sort himself—the movie’s title is subtle in its archly irrelevant grandeur, but you wonder if Twilight of the Gods didn’t cross his mind. (At one point, Tom’s bedside book is shown to be Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West.)

Speaking of the low-budget resourcefulness of the movie’s production, Sante says “a picture about the rites of passage of the urban haute bourgeoisie might be expected to appear as impeccably composed as The Earrings of Madame de…“. Having just watched that film, I thought of it in a different respect. At the beginning of both movies, as we’re being introduced to the characters I groan inwardly: not another movie that expects me to care about the minor problems of privileged rich people. At the end of Madame de… the minor problems have become major and I still don’t care (actually I came to respect General Charles Boyer somewhat), but Metropolitan made me love its overeducated rich-kid protagonists.

by ·Comments Off on Elf (2003, Jon Favreau)

A surprisingly sweet movie. Will Ferrell is an elf-adopted human in Santa’s workshop who goes to New York to find his real dad, James Caan, falling for toy store drone Zooey Deschanel on the way. Bob Newhart is lovable as Will’s elf stepfather. Everyone learns a little something about the spirit of Christmas, except Peter Dinklage. From the writer of the same year’s Haunted Mansion.

by ·Comments Off on Agnes Varda’s Jacques Demy double-feature (and Demy shorts)

Jacquot de Nantes (1991, Agnes Varda)

A pretty good movie about a kid growing up in small-town France wishing to make films – but if you’re a Varda/Demy fan who knows the backstory, that she’s filming her husband’s childhood memories as he’s dying, it becomes extremely wonderful and moving.

The Beaches of Jacques:

You see inspirations for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Donkey Skin, Pied Piper and Lola, family life, the love for music and cinema. Largely black and white with splashes of color. Varda flips between childhood events and the film they’d inspire, flashing a graphic of a pointing hand from the Demy Garage sign in between.

Jacquot 1:

“Seeing my name there when I was so young gave me a sense of the fragility of our existence.”

WWII occupies much of the film. His father helps with wartime manufacturing. The kids see Les Visiteurs du soir instead of Baron Munchausen because they’re not allowed see German films. In September 1943 his town is bombed. “There were dead all over town.” Adult Demy tells us he’s hated violence ever since.

Jacquot 2:

Making La Ballerine:

Young Demy spends a season with the clogmakers, works with puppet shows, decides he wants to manufacture theater and film sets. After tiring of the 8mm Chaplin film he’s given, he scrapes off the emulsion and hand-draws his own war story on the film. After a failed attempt at live-action shooting, he continues making films alone – stop-motion this time.

Jacquot 3:

Demy is sent to trade school but hates it, makes his stop-motion and keeps dreaming of cinema. The movie ends quite suddenly. “Later, Christian-Jaque came to Nantes to present his film D’homme a hommes. Christian-Jaque was kind enough to look at my film.” Demy gets to enroll in film school. “I met a woman filmmaker, we made a few films, then she gave me a fine son, and now I paint.”

L’Univers de Jacques Demy (1995, Agnes Varda)

Varda’s doc about her late husband’s films, with some personal details and stories thrown in, and interviews with key participants. Varda says they didn’t work together until Jacquot de Nantes, “so I’ll be discreet in this documentary.”

Demy on the set of Lola:

Covering all his films, in no particular order: Lola (with Anouk Aimee, Marc Michel and Michel Legrand), Three Seats for the 26th (with Francoise Fabian), Donkey Skin (with footage of Jim Morrison visiting the set). “I wanted to recreate things that Marais did with Cocteau.”

A Slightly Pregnant Man, then flashback to the war, the nazi bombing of his hometown. “After something as horrible as that, you get the feeling nothing worse can ever happen. And that’s when you start creating a fantasy world.” A Room in Town with Michel Piccoli. La Table tournante, codirected with animator Paul Grimault at the end of both men’s careers. A hilarious montage of scenes from 1954’s The Rebels of Lomanach in which Demy plays the soldier who dies first in every battle scene, then assisting Jean Masson and Georges Rouquier, who encouraged Demy by producing his clogmaker short.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg with Deneuve and producer Mag Bodard. Model Shop, which was “Lola in L.A.” and would have starred Harrison Ford if the studio hadn’t insisted on bankable star Gary Lockwood (heh). Varda catches up with Ford and asks Aimee about the sequel. Demy: “I called it Model Flop, which it was.” On to Pied Piper (also in English), The Seven Capital Sins (Demy drew Lust), and his weird-looking 1980’s Orpheus story Parking, “a fairy tale where there’s no fairy.” Back to Bay of Angels, then Lady Oscar and the TV movie La Naissance du jour (“I like it because I thought it was unfilmable”) before ending on a high note with Young Girls of Rochefort.

So, having just heard about them for the first time, I watched some of Demy’s early shorts.

Le Sabotier du Val de Loire (1956)

A solemn documentary about the clogmakers of Demy’s youth – or perhaps a half-documentary with a dramatic story added, including a death and a climactic wheelbarrow purchase.

Le Bel indifferent (1957)

Demy’s first non-hand-drawn color work, based on a Cocteau play about a very desperate and lonely woman, waiting all day for her man to return, but seeming even more alone when he does. Cinematography by Franju regular Marcel Fradetal.

Lead Actress Jeanne Allard appeared in Varda’s Les Creatures.

Ars (1959)

Another black-and-white semi-doc, this time about Jean-Marie Vianney, parish priest of the small town of Ars, who’d be named a saint after his death. Demy films museums and artifacts while briefly telling Vianney’s story, but most effectively he shoots the present-day town as if the events were happening currently.

Also watched Les Horizons Morts (1951) again – a very accomplished student film.

And happily, Demy’s homemade animations are available to watch in full, apart from their appearances in the above two features.

Le Pont de mauves (1944)
Bombing of the bridge.

Attaque Nocturne (1948)
Looks like the mugger is walking past the Demy Garage entrance.

La Ballerine (unknown date)
I love the pinholes tracing her path.

by ·Comments Off on El Sicario Room 164 (2010, Gianfranco Rosi)

Similar to Collapse, in that both are documentaries set in a room where a single subject is speaking to the camera, and both are completely terrifying. Collapse left me aimlessly afraid of the end of the world, this one offers a clear action item: Never go to Mexico.

A former “sicario” (drug cartel enforcer) who has escaped with his family tells about his youth (driving cars full of drugs over the border before he was even old enough to drive), training (at the police academy, where 25% of graduates are already working for the cartels) and 20-year career as a kidnapper, torturer and murderer at the behest of an unworthy man, as the now church-going ex-sicario realizes. The drug business basically runs the government, police, and even military, if this guy is to be believed. Never go to Mexico.

M. Peranson:

More so than Police, Adjective, the film that came to mind when watching El Sicario is the still relevant Chambre 666, wherein Wim Wenders set up a stationary camera in Room 666 of the Hotel Martinez during the 1982 Cannes film festival and asked filmmakers like Godard, Fassbinder, Herzog and Spielberg the question: “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” It’s no coincidence that the directors are framed, like the sicario often is, next to a television set.

by ·Comments Off on Crazy Horse (2011, Frederick Wiseman)

I watched it for the nudity but stayed for the choreography. After a while there are so many breasts you stop noticing them. Excellent behind-the-scenes doc of the preparation of a new season of Paris’s famous nude dancing show.

Antony does a song, making this the second nude-girls doc this year to feature his voice. Also a brief Michael Jackson clip. And lots of original songs, most of them quite bad, which makes it funnier that Ali, the bald creepy assistant director, is obsessed with them.

The three main talking heads: Ali sitting between creative director Philippe and shareholder rep Andree:

Funny: the dancers watch a tape of ballet bloopers to unwind backstage. A never-explained two-man disco tapdance routine takes place offstage. The movie opens with shadow puppets then a recording session of orgasm noises, which twice defeated my attempts to watch this quietly by myself while Katy and Maria were home.

Twin tapdancers:

Moonrise:

I’m sure Wiseman’s Juvenile Court and Domestic Violence and State Legislature are interesting and valueable, but I’ve never tried very hard to watch them. As soon as he made a film full of naked girls, I got interested. Let this be a lesson to all filmmakers everywhere.

M. Peranson:

The dancers’ bodies themselves are cinematic vehicles, either used to produce shadows on coloured backdrops, or as objects themselves onto which light and image is projected. Cinema in essence involves the projection of desire, and what Wiseman cleverly does in Crazy Horse is present desire, illustrate its operation and deconstruct it, with the technical rehearsals of the numbers showing the peculiar sweat and effort required to create this seamless illusion.