Shadows and 02/02

My notes from tonight's class with Jonathan Rosenbaum are all over the page. I was scribbling madly trying to absorb as much as possible. Maybe over doing it a bit. But of course, I've got the insane urge to suck the nectar out of this history and use it for my own good.

I was always weary of Cassavetes in the past. I'm not even sure why. But I liked Shadows a lot. Maybe because of the iconography. The architecture and structure of jazz NYC. Cassavetes made films with the artifice of reality and humanism. But at the same time extremely fictionalized. Shadows breaks 180, no eyeline matches (remember Straub: eye line matches is boring Hollywood shit.), editing all over the place. But the 16mm B&W dirty film with its sync off has an extreme reality to it, in the sense that you're so aware of this being an artifact and a document of the time.

Shadows, Cassavetes

Which brings up similar ideas to another class I am in called Bordering on Fiction. Our first assignment is to take Saturday (02/02) and create a piece that is teetering on the edge of fiction and non-fiction. It can be a document of Saturday, or taking an event that has happened on that day in history, and crafting a less than 5 minute film or video. I'll explain what I'm working on later, but I'm choosing a historical event, I'll say that.

Recently I am noticing that the line between fiction and reality is very thin, more so than ever. Imamura's A Man Vanishes was really woke me up from a narrative slumber, a film that seems to be a documentary until that world starts to fall apart and you no longer know what is real and what is fabricated.

Whenever I start thinking about this subject I think about an Antonioni quote a friend passed on to me:
"We need to be more violent to reality."

As for Shadows, it seems so raw and based in such a specific time and place, with the actors names the same as their characters, it could be taken for reality, easy. And maybe it should be.

Imamura

Pigs and Battleships, Imamura

I can't really articulate how I feel about the Imamura movies I've seen during the retrospective at the Siskel. I was going to wait until it was over. But I can't.

If you're in Chicagoland - go, go, go - see these films. You may never be able to again.

Also Conversations at the Edge begins this week with a look at Zach Stiglicz' work, who passed away last year.

I also start class with Jonathan Rosenbaum on Wednesday, the first film being shown: Cassavetes' Shadows.

Slipstream

Slipstream, Anthony Hopkins (2007)

10.14.07
Anthony, you are a great actor. But this film (Slipstream) you directed was terrible. I’ll give you props for trying to be experimental, but no, this is just awful. You aren’t David Lynch. I’m sorry, but I have no idea what to say. DO NOT WANT.
What is interesting though is to compare this film with the Schnabel film, both are Hollywood Experimental films, bordering on the edge of continuity, and sticking it to the man. Schnabel was able to do a good job of crossing that line, yet Hopkins went overboard.
By the way, what is up with no Q & A after the movie, Sir Anthony? Just an introduction doesn’t warrant that astronomical ticket price.

A Night with Udo Kier

10.09.07
We went and saw Udo Kier talk at Columbia College. Kier is one of the jurors of the Chicago International Film Festival. He has worked with directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars Von Trier, and Gus Van Sant. He is supposedly a gay icon, but hates the term and would rather just be called an icon.
Kier has been in almost 180 movies, but still seems down to earth and loves his wine and his three dogs. He told us that no matter what you decide to do just make sure that you always respect one another.
Most of the talk Kier was being goofy and telling anecdotes of his life as a teacher of acting, and instead of staying in the confines of the class room he would teach in the forest. He told stories of Bjork, and how their scene together in Dancer in the Dark was completely un-scripted and just them talking.
I would also recommend to those of you who don’t know who Udo Kier is to go watch “John Carpenter: Cigarette Burns” in it Udo discovers the most beautiful film in the world (you are in for a treat!)
Kier is reported to have an amazing Marlene Dietrich impersonation as well.
Udo, you are an icon.

A Letter to Brett Morgen, the director of Chicago 10

Dear Mr. Morgen,
Your film wasn’t half bad, but there comes a point when you gotta realize that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to make a movie about the sixties if you think that they don’t normally translate well on film. The people that are going to go see your film are the people that already know who Abbie Hoffman is and know about the ’68 National convention. Just because you have Eminem and Rage Against the Machine--covering the MC5 (when the MC5 is on the screen, c’mon! –Which makes some of us wonder, who are you going to get to cover Nirvana songs for your Kurt Cobain movie?) doesn’t make it more contemporary or accessible to younger audiences.
For that matter, when visiting an art school, you should know the people in your audience are kids that are learning and used to the idea of critique. So when you ask us what we truly thought of your movie, chill out, don’t start sprouting off some cover-up line that you are working in Brechtian tradition. You’re going around thinking that everyone has no clue what you are talking about and that by using rotoscope, oh sorry, motion capture, that will make it fresh. It’s history, and ultimately you can’t go rewriting it to make it “the most commercial and marketable” (as you advised us to do). Do you really think Hoffman or Rubin would agree with these comments?
But I mean, hey, good job on getting that Silver Hugo for Documentary, but maybe it’d be better if you stuck to your own advice and made fictional films.
Yours Truly.
The Society

A Walk Into the Sea

A Walk Into the Sea, Esther Robinson

10.07.2007
Esther Robinson seemed to have a problem most filmmakers have, “How to structure the film?” In her film A Walk Into the Sea I found the story interesting, but she wavered many times with what she wanted the film to say. It jumped from a few common themes: the disappearance of her uncle, her uncle’s involvement in Andy Warhol’s Factory, Andy Warhol’s cronies at the Factory and all the relationships with Andy and Warhol putting his name on other people’s work. It would switch from storyline to storyline too frequently.
The story of her uncle, Dan Williams, is really fascinating. He was an artist in the sixties who had an affair with Warhol and made films at the Factory. Robinson uses interviews with all the key players in that scene to figure out who her uncle was and what happened to him. I found the interviews intriguing, but what I liked most about the movie was Williams’ own films that were shown. The interviews were shot in video with a gross film grain filter and sometimes you would hear her interviewing the people. Though she started the film explaining the story with voiceover, she never appears on camera, and the occasional voice from behind the camera was annoying. It felt too much like a school project with a good soundtrack. But at the same time it makes it this intimate story of her trying to fill this void in her past, and it seems kind of juvenile the way she is trying to answer these questions by rely on personal accounts of others.
I wish more information about Dan Williams existed. It was more of an overview of his life and his demise instead of who he was, which bummed me out a little. But I think it was a good idea to see what all these different sources had to say, but the execution could’ve been cleaned up. Though Robinson was able to invoke the need for me to want see the films of her uncle. She was able to give exposure to the forgotten films of her uncle, which is inevitably a tribute to him as an artist.

(Filmmaker Magazine did an interview with Esther Robinson: here.
While reading the interview I saw that she said, "There's this moment in Stranger Than Paradise where it goes to black in between scenes, and I remember sitting in this black theater thinking, “Holy fuck! You can do that?! You can just go to black?!” It literally changed my life. I went to NYU because of sitting in the black in Stranger Than Paradise."
As a filmmaker myself I have had that exact same revelation, and it was endearing to read.)

Never Apologize (An Evening with Malcolm McDowell)

Never Apologize, Mike Kaplan

10.15.07

Today I’ve been listening to the soundtrack of O Lucky Man! on my Fisher Price record player. It’s a shame that this film seemed to slip out of people’s memory over the years. Finally it is getting a DVD release on October 23rd (ed. note: out now). The director of O Lucky Man!, Lindsay Anderson, seems to have been forgotten as well. Malcolm McDowell who was a close friend of Anderson’s and worked with him numerous times said, “Many people don’t even know who Lindsay is any more, and some of those people work at Warner Bros!” (Who refused to release the DVD for years.)
McDowell appeared at the Chicago International Film Festival to introduce and answer questions about Never Apologize, a feature length video of McDowell giving an informal lecture, more of a stage show actually, about his relationship with Anderson and the groundbreaking work they made together. Even though as a movie Never Apologize is basically just documentation and archive footage, but with McDowell there is never a dull moment. McDowell alone commands your attention and his ability to tell stories is amazing, along with uncanny impressions of other actors and directors.
It was endearing to watch McDowell express so much pure love for a director and mentor. McDowell said Never Apologize was “a love poem to a director” and it is exactly that. Anderson had started McDowell’s career by casting him as Mick Travis in If… a movie about students rebelling against their boarding school, in reality they are rebelling against England. It won the 1969 Golden Palm at Cannes, right around when the Paris Commune and student revolutions were happening. It marked that moment in history. McDowell became a star from that film, and it is the film that Stanley Kubrick saw and decided that McDowell would be perfect to star in his next film. A Clockwork Orange.
McDowell brought up the point, after the screening, that there are very few directors that care about actors, and Lindsay Anderson was one of them. McDowell saw Anderson as a teacher, friend, and mentor, which lasted longer than the times they spent on set together. Kubrick wasn’t like that at all, they’ve barely talked since A Clockwork Orange. McDowell came up with the idea for O Lucky Man! based on his experiences, as a coffee salesman, and Anderson didn’t dismiss him, they developed it together, with writer David Sherwin. Which doesn’t happen a lot, McDowell said he was a 20-something year old cocky actor who told Anderson, “We make a great team, let’s do another film together.” But Anderson didn’t brush him off, and O Lucky Man! became a definitive moment of British cinema.
Like Godard and Truffaut, Anderson was a film critic before he was a director, but somehow his name isn’t pushed onto film students and his movies aren’t overplayed in classes. Yet they should be, they mark a time and a history that is very important to England and to the era they represent. Like Godard to France and the sixties. Without McDowell, who knows if these stories of Anderson would be told outside of the realm of British Cinema critics and lovers? For McDowell to have that power to breathe life back into his old friend and pass that on to others is incredible. McDowell created the perfect homage to Anderson.

(Criterion is releasing "This Sporting Life" Anderson's first feature on January 22nd 2008)

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

these next few posts are from the chicago international film festival that were left unpublished by the magazine i was writing for, but they are dealing with films that are out now or available for rent.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel (2007)

10.12.2007
Julian Schnabel was originally an art star out of Brooklyn, New York. He got into filmmaking after his success as a painter. His debut film was the biopic of the artist Basquiat. His new movie, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, is the story of the French Elle editor (Jean-Dominique Bauby) who suffers a massive stroke and is diagnosed with “locked-in syndrome”. He is unable to speak or move. The only way he learns to communicate is through blinking.
The opening scene of the movie is all in the point of view of Bauby. The viewer becomes the character through the lens. The lens opens up and there is extreme overexposure and smearing of colors. There are rough edits that imply blinking and there is chaos and confusion, and the camera isn’t focusing, there is dizziness. But it’s all using the film conceptual as a sensory device. You, the audience, is waking up from a deep coma. Schnabel is using the camera in this way to make the viewer become attached to the character, who turns out to be kind of an asshole, but the feeling of experiencing what is happening to him is enough not to care. It creates an intense emotional bond with Bauby. Yet Schnabel does not show the character for the first 20 minutes of the film (other than a brief rock-n-roll styled flashback when it is revealed Bauby was the editor of Elle, with a Lenny Kravitz cameo in tow).
The scene where Bauby is revealed to the audience is after his one of his eyes is sewn up, to prevent infection (still point of view), so the eyelid covers the lens and the needle piercing the skin and coming through, then with a cut to black, and a pan around to uncover Bauby.
Janusz Kaminski (Chicago favorite, Columbia College alum) did an amazing job with cinematography; the colors are stunning and each shot is a piece of art within itself. Kaminski won the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes, while Schnabel took Best Director.
There is this question of Hollywood art cinema, which is this idea of independent filmmaking with unconventional camera style and editing. Which may seem really experimental to some people, but to a lot of the filmmakers it may seem pretty conservative. Yet I think it is still noticeable that this is something that probably seems really innovative. And for myself, at least, I think it is interesting to see this fusion of techniques to create a more provocative mainstream film. Editing shouldn’t have to be used just to create eye-line matches and continuity, but a conceptual feeling. Schnabel and Kaminski did a fairly good job of creating that synthesis. It had a narrative structured well enough for people to watch and not get tired of the techniques used, but I suppose it was “modern” enough for the viewer to take notice of them. Revealing that is a story being told to you through the lens. But it still is strange to hear that term, art film, in context to a Hollywood independent film.

Golden Globes

The Golden Globes were announced last night. It makes me lose a lot of hope for the future of cinema. Growing up I always assumed that the award shows like the Globes and the Oscars represented the best films and actors picked by qualified judges, educated scholars, critics, and industry people. But over the years it just becomes more apparent that this isn't true. Sure, I'm satisfied with some of the winners of this years Globe, and I honestly can say I haven't seen a lot of the movies that were nominated. Why? Because it is not worth the time to go out and see a whole bunch of crap, when I have the opportunity to see much better films in Chicago.
(Unfortunately, like Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed out in his Critics' Choice 2007 article in the Chicago Reader most of the films that were worth seeing in Chicago were not even made in 2007.)

Without seeing the majority of the films I still have the ability to see the error in the Globes choices (in most categories).

Best Picture (Drama) to Atonement.
Some how this film beat out a number of actual good films that were released last year. Maybe the Globes think that nominating these films are credit enough. But Atonement beat out There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, and Eastern Promises. Of course, I have not seen Atonement, but I don't really have any intention to see it. I haven't even seen No Country For Old Men or Eastern Promises yet (yes, I will see them soon), but I know that these films are going to be much more intriguing: visually and in the narratives. Same for There Will Be Blood, it was amazing cinematography and strong characters (see Best Actor). I don't think that we should be rewarding a film on their ability to sell a story that has been told before.

Best Picture (Comedy) to Sweeney Todd.
These films are probably great for enjoyment, but worthless to talk about.

Best Actor (Drama) to Daniel Day Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Best Supporting Actor to Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men)
Best Supporting Actress to Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
This is where the Golden Globes got it pretty right. I guess this year the actors and actress were undeniably the showstoppers. Unfortunately their coworkers didn't get much credit, but these people really did a good job.
Since I haven't seen No Country For Old Men I'll just say that Bardem seemed like the only contender in his category, but Filmmaker Magazine has called it his, "tour de force performance." Cate Blanchett made I'm Not There, without her performance (and David Cross' Allen Ginsberg) the film most likely would've been a celebrity driven over edited shot at a "postmodern" film. Good job, Blanchett. And Daniel Day Lewis (other than being extremely sexy) was the perfect fit for Anderson's oil tycoon, though I would've liked to see Paul Dano at least nominated for his role as the preacher.

Best Director to Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
Beating out the Coen brothers, I thought Schnabel did a good job with Diving Bell but I think I'd rather see credit given to Janusz Kaminski (cinematographer) or to Juliette Welfing (editor), but I guess I have a special place in my heart for artists turned filmmakers.

Other points of mention:

Coen brothers won Best Screenplay.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was awarded Best Foreign Language Film, which brings up a point of contention that I had with a friend when we saw the movie at The Chicago International Film Festival. Schnabel is an American director, telling a French story. What exactly makes this film have the ability to be considered a foreign film? Is it just because it is in a different language? Or is it because the production companies are predominantly French? And when do you decide to have the film be in the original language, when you haven't in the past? It's just a point to bring up.

Daniel Day Lewis and Dillon Freasier in There Will Be Blood

Lightning Over Water

I've heard many directors say in order to make a successful documentary you must fictionalize it. Even though Cinema Verite may be a boring concept, there is something about the innocence of trying to create a film about reality, even if it is altered by the camera.
Wenders in 1980's, Lightning Over Water
As for Wim Wenders and Nicholas Ray's film, Lightning Over Water, which chronicles Ray last few weeks before his death of lung cancer, the film is extremely stylized and staged. Even though there is a rawness to it (Wenders said he could see Ray dying in the viewfinder), each shot was set up to provide correct lighting and shot/reverse shot editing techniques. The film was immensely well photographed, but what made the film feel authentic was the inclusion of Tom Farrell's videos that show behind the scenes of Wenders and his crew preparing the shots.
Some criticize Wenders for taking advantage of Ray and his illness, but I saw it as Wenders trying to let Ray complete one last film before his death, which was imminent.

Though I thought the best part of the film was the inclusion of Wenders, Ray, his wife, and Farrell watching (the now hard to find) We Can't Go Home Again, Ray's 1976 film about the 1968 democratic national convention that was rephotographed footage and extremely stylized. I wish I could find this film in its entirety because it seems like one of the most interesting artifacts from the '68 riots (instead of the duller grainy black and white documentation).