Art

Points of Light

Internal archive coming soon. In the meantime, this review can be found at Journal.fyi.

Thinking Again and Supposing

“An incident occurred,” the facilitator told us in a lecture before our class visit to Concordia University’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery. We were being prepared to go see Thinking Again and Supposing. Trajectory of an Exhibition, a joint show by Concordia professors and artists Sarah Greig and Therese Mastroiacovo. Described as an act of vandalism, the “incident” had been repeated to the class in tragic tones by various representatives of the Montréal artworld. As in our classroom, no natural light reaches this deep inside the institution.

Books

Continuity & Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain

Film

The Lady Vanishes

This review was originally written in 2009 for a blog I kept called Total Cinema.

A Serious Man

This review was originally written in 2009 for a blog I kept called Total Cinema.

Where The Wild Things Are

This review was originally written in 2009 for a blog I kept called Total Cinema.

Flesh

Hipsters never change, it seems. FLESH was made in 1968, and appears filled with clichés to my diluted cultural viewpoint. I feel like I’ve seen the same brand of Tennessee Williams-influenced kitchen sink drama a thousand times; I feel like I’ve heard a thousand liberal jackasses talking about sex and the body like it’s 380 B.C.E. FLESH’s sense of realism is largely the result of its independent aesthetic, with untrained actors appearing more comfortable posing nude than delivering lines; shots are often empty, meaningless, or uncomfortably filled with extreme close-ups; there is unconstrained nudity and the sexual politics harken back to Ancient Greece. All of these things have become standards for any sort of hipster “art” (cf. Xavier Dolan); to appreciate Paul Morrissey’s film requires the effort of putting it into context and ignoring the 21st century “free radical,” whom I hate.

Husbands And Wives

HUSBANDS & WIVES (1992) 

Le Cercle Rouge

LE CERCLE ROUGE / JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE / 1970

Blast Of Silence

BLAST OF SILENCE is a comic-book film made in 1961, predating the hard-boiled grit of Allan Moore and Frank Miller by almost 30 years. The visual composition, the psychotic narrator and the general plot, are all elements taken from old Hollywood film noirs, and comic books, a medium actor/director/writer Allen Baron worked had worked in previous to this, his debut film. Classic elements are exagerrated and taken to cartoonish levels of violence and psychopathy, paralleling in a distinctly American way, the trends being developed in France’s cinema by, most notably, Godard, with BREATHLESS (1960). These two films share much in common, though Baron says it wasn’t for at least two more years that he had the opportunity to see it.

Im Not There

How hard can it be to make a Bob Dylan biopic? Todd Haynes doesn’t try with I’M NOT THERE (2007): it’s fiction, with six separately-named characters representing “the various moods of Bob Dylan,” set in a world coloured by the same sort of subtle fantasy as Terry Gilliam’s BIG FISH (2003); but more absurd, in fitting with the stream-of-consciousness poems that are Dylan’s lyrics. It’s an inspired tribute to the man, but the blend of real details spoken of in song and memoir, with fiction, makes me uncomfortable. Is it not disrespectful to the man to show his accomplishments as celebrity and artist, as fiction? Does it not devalue the greatest claim a man can make – that he was real?

The Sting

It’s incredible to me that films as magically, charmingly perfect as THE STING exist. Incredible as it is, it makes absolute sense that Hollywood was the exporter of films that concentrate on mass public appeal through the highest standard of quality, made real by the American film industry’s boundless coffers. While the international and independent cinema was defined by auteurs, talented individuals assembling crews to create their vision, the studio system was about the “production.” It was about producers assembling all-star crews to work together to create a vision. THE STING does not approach perfection because it is confidently, professionally directed by George Roy Hill; or because it has an exceptionally plotted, lyrical script by David S. Ward; or because its actors created archetypes exploited almost 40 years later; or because of its score, or the beauty of its sets: THE STING approaches perfection because it has all of these things: each aspect of the film, from the beautifully painted title cards to the theme (Scott Joplin’s classic piano rag “The Entertainer”) to the editing, are all produced with an attention to quality born of a multi-million dollar film industry, the biggest the world has seen since the beginning of the film industry.

The Wild Bunch

Peckinpah’s existence is a mysterious one: how did he come to make films? Is he considered a laughing stock, or an embarrassment? I’m inclined to guess the latter, since many of his films are large period-pieces, obviously expensive to produce. So far I haven’t seen anything from Peckinpah that can be considered entertaining. His films have their place in history, certainly, but it is a entirely academic, and not altogether meritable. He was an undeniable innovator of the craft: key elements of his style have been adopted as standard in Hollywood action-suspense-thrillers (and television!) of the past 20 years. This will be seen as a good thing by fans, and maybe for these fans Peckinpah will entertain, but it is my opinion that Peckinpah and all those who imitate his style, are the jocks of the film world. Peckinpah is particularly crude, and, I’m fairly certain, stupid. Despite the banal, utterly insipid movement he spawned, the worst of these film-jocks has a producer to, presumably, keep him from embarrassing himself and the studio. THE WILD BUNCH was released by Warner Bros, and in it Peckinpah gives us a moronic, brutish view of the world that the worst of his imitators can not begin to rival. Where, I ask, was the producer on this film? It was shot on location – a prudent necessity taken by Peckinpah to get away from the studio’s watchful eye? Was there no-one around with enough aesthetic sense to realize that they were participating in a travesty?

The French Connection

William Friedkin started out as an art-house filmmaker in the mid-60s, and was inspired to make THE FRENCH CONNECTION after Howard Hawks expressed dislike for his work, telling him to “[M]ake a good chase. Make one better than anyone’s done.” Coming out of art cinema, Friedkin had doubtless been exposed to European films, and the influence of the New Wave in France shows as a gritty realism typical of America, an influence manifesting itself in the style more and more films of the day were being made in as the America’s “new wave” took hold.

The Bellboy

Jerry Lewis’ directorial debut THE BELLBOY predates Woody Allen’s first “real” film TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (1969); both comedies draw influence from the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin and silent comedy, and both make well-crafted films with intelligent undertones. THE BELLBOY is the only thing I’ve seen from Lewis: I don’t know about his career before, or after 1960: I can only draw parallels, and there are many.

Fahrenheit 451

Its science-fiction look may have aged badly, but Truffaut’s first film in English is interesting, even though it fails in many ways. The story, taken from Ray Bradury’s 1953 novel, is well-suited to Truffaut’s general style. Science fiction stories, speculative in nature, are well suited to bold aesthetics, and FAHRENHEIT 451 delivers: the colours are bright, the costumes and set-pieces remind us that in the ’50s and ’60s the Nazi jackboots must have still been a fresh memory, influencing the speculative genre further towards symbolic, exaggerated imagery.

Sawdust And Tinsel

I just watched CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972) recently, another Bergman film, but from 20 years later. There isn’t any real change between the two, besides maybe a loss of optimism, but the primary difference is development. Every film I’ve seen from him reminds me of the theatre in the way the drama is structured. SAWDUST AND TINSEL does not fail in this respect, even going further and reminding me of the theatre literally, with its characters.

Mishima A Life In Four Chapters

Once, a year or so ago, a friend of mine lent me a book called “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea,” written in 1963 by Yukio Mishima, the subject of Paul Schrader’s opulent Lucas/Coppola-produced extravaganza. I never read it, but now feel compelled to seek it out amidst my teeming stacks.

Days Of Heaven

DAYS OF HEAVEN is another film touted by many as brilliant, evidence of genius, a masterpiece, that I can’t seem to get. It’s not that I hate the thing – it undeniably has its moments, and its style certainly has presence, but it is overbearing: this is the key factor that keeps superstar director Terrence Malick from true greatness (to my mind, at least). Despite its image’s beauty, DAYS OF HEAVEN has no hold, no hooks; it is unaffecting.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

Previously in this series, I spoke about how fantastic George Roy Hill’s THE STING was. Prior to this marvellous example of Hollywood production, the director worked with the acting duo of Paul Newman and Robert Redford on this film. While not quite reaching THE STING’s perfect standards of excellence, BUTCH CASSIDY excels in all aspects, just like THE STING. It is an artfully created, deceptively charming film, written and directed with the same amount of sly intelligence THE STING would be four years later.

Traffic

TRAFFIC is not a bad film, although the only immediately apparent topic to discuss is its production – and any film that rests entirely on its production is hardly a film at all. TRAFFIC has three stories, each filmed with its own distinctive colour filter (though if you watch the bonus features on your Criterion Edition DVD, you will learn that there is much more to its colours than simple camera filters): the parts in Mexico are in overexposed, burnt-looking sepia, and Michael Douglas is filmed in blue. This sounds a lot more impressive than it really is: the effects are relatively subtle – too subtle, even. Soderbergh could really have benefited from watching Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU. The decision is a radical one, but its execution is not.

Music

Return to Drones

I went to a rave at The Silver Door (Torn Curtain / Drones Club / Cyberia) last Saturday, the first time I’ve been there in a long time. The event was called Bubble Bath x Service de Garde. The listed DJs include Ma Sha (NYC) and Martyn Bootyspoon. I recall Mr. Bootyspoon as a mainstay of the Montréal underground.