Stumbling Toward Cinema Since 2006…
- Profit motive and the whispering wind / New Left Note
John Gianvito’s Profit motive and the whispering wind is that rare lumbering giant of experimental cinema that through force of good will manages to boil to the edge of consciousness in the film world, gifted a week-long run at Anthology Film Archives. It has not been an overwhelming financial success, as one I suppose can expect: at tonight’s 7pm screening, I counted nine viewers. One left five minutes in.It is, as you’ve been told, a 58 minute meditation on an alternative history of the United States, following the gravestones, monuments, and sites, humble, large, neglected, and venerated, that memorialize figures and events in the history of American leftist causes. Drawing on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Gianvito cuts beautiful images of the American landscape, trees constantly swaying in the forceful breeze (Gianvito could teach M. Night Shyamalan a thing or two about how to make shots of the wind coursing through greenery seem exciting) between images of these monuments, with occasional punctuations of crude line rotoscoping of traders on the NYSE floor, and a crazed, hyperactive final five minutes that gives illustration of the boisterous life behind the tranquility of these half-forgotten monuments to mostly forgotten pioneers for human rights and draws a direct line between direct action of the past and anti-corporate and anti-war protests today.
I greatly admired the film - I found it incredibly moving in its use of still landscape shots and tight, rhythmic editing. Its use of found sounds - both recorded on site and a handful of recordings from pioneers of American leftism like Paul Robeson - was stirring without easy manipulation. It may seem overly schematic in its formal simplicity and unwavering emphasis on chronology, but this simplicity reveals both the decisiveness of Gianvito’s vision of American history and the notion that various ideological movements which have been made fractional by the last few decades’ worth of discourse - the women’s movement, environmentalism, the labor movement, gay rights, the movements toward racial and ethnic equality - are worth considering as a whole, as many parts of the same history.
On the other hand, I cannot say I’m a huge admirer of the film Anthology has coprogrammed with it, a leaden bit of hippie self-mythologizing called New Left Note by radical filmmaker and journalist Saul Levine. Levine’s film is an amalgam of once-vogue techniques, splicing hand-processed, chemically degraded and dyed 8mm images of television screens of Moments in American Hegemony (Nixon, Johnson, Neil Armstrong on the moon), campus protests, and images of the filmmaker’s friends and his girlfriend’s ass into a sub-Brakhage subliminal clusterfuck of visual noise. Where Gianvito’s film allows room for breath, Levine’s is stunted and adolescent, paying no mind to its audience, droning doctrinally for 29 minutes, and insisting dogmatically on its mode of address in a way that matches perfectly with the stubborn New Left of the late 70s and early 80s that produced it. As a formal contraption, it’s undeniably considered; it’s entirely of a piece, but a piece of what I dare not say.
It’s a quote I pull out a lot, but I think it’s useful here again:
“If I show you an audio-visual object that deafens you or blinds you under the pretext of convincing you of a beautiful or good idea, I can’t even convey the idea to you because it must be perceived by the senses I have just diminished. So I will only succeed in making you more unconscious.” - Jean-Marie StraubIn case you want to know whether or not Gianvito’s movie is for you, these are the opening 3.5 minutes of the piece, which give a good sense of what you’re in store for:
- Greatest American Dog - Episodes 3 + 4
Our fallen dogtestants:
With Episode 3, it becomes clear that Greatest American Dog is almost a Zen koan: in order to find the greatest American dog, one must find the greatest American dog owner. As with the first two episodes, our eliminated dog is chosen not for any grievances on his part - many compliment Elvis on his improved petiquette over the course of the episode - but on David’s stultifying, and painfully misinformed decision to lead his dog by a leash during the elimination challenge.
Have faith in your dog, David. You spent thousands of dollars on giving Elvis a Bark Mitzvah, but you deprive him the dignity of competition, instead dragging your poor pup through his part of the relay obstacle course by a too-tight leash. And just when you were starting to become the best thing about the show, too. Ways in which David, in one episode, became the Tobias Funke of Greatest American Dog:
(on how he keeps Elvis in line) “I’ve got four pounds of meat in my pocket.”
(to a fellow contestant) “I’ve tasted the bottom … it’s like I have a target on my back.”Sad, but let’s be honest: David and Elvis were never going to win this show. There was, however, an outside chance for Internet phenomenon Tillman to win America’s heart, but that was before the judges stupidly eliminated him in the modeling challenge in Episode Four, claiming that this is not a good photo of a bulldog exhibiting laziness:
(Okay, I couldn’t actually find it on CBS’s website, but it’s a bulldog for Christ’s sake - do you really need to see a picture to understand that bulldog = laziness, especially one with a massive underbite and lots of drool? I’ll just include this instead:)
The judges accused Tillman’s surf-frat owner Ron of committing laziness himself in his aesthetic decisions. Pish posh: I would’ve eliminated the heretofore unseen Molly Shannon clone Teresa and her dog Leroy, for her infuriating decision to use rubber bands to force her dog’s mouth into a snarl to make him look ‘angry’ instead of doing something more creative. British judge Victoria Stilwell - whose crazed, off-the-wall outbursts make her style of judging less Simon Cowell and more a speed-addicted Carrie Fisher - rightly declaimed her for this but then let her stick around for another episode because Tillman’s adorable picture was ‘boring.’
Seriously, though. Check this awesomeness from Our Favorite Dogtestant Presley:
And our other favorite, America’s favorite Brittany, Star (SHE SAVED A LIFE):
- The Sadist at Not Coming
Hey guys,
The wonderful folks at Not Coming to a Theater Near You have posted a write-up I did on one of the films I wrote about for my thesis, James Landis’ underseen horror gem The Sadist. Check it out!
- Meticulous Research
The Mad Men Season 2 premiere happened on Sunday night. There’s little for me to add, except I wanted to point out again just how incomparably researched Matthew Weiner’s dissection of 1960s Americana is:
In Season One, Episode Eight, “The Hobo Code” : A devastating moment in the relationship between Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) as Peggy twists over to Pete at an after-hours party at P.J. Clarke’s. Upset about an argument with his wife Trudy and seeing the intoxicated, goofily sultry Peggy for the first time not as the passive doe he seduced, Pete cruelly leans toward her and says, “I don’t like you like this.” Series chronology would place this at about August or September of 1960.
The first time “The Twist” hit number one on the Billboard rock charts: September 19, 1960.
Season Two, Episode One, “For Those Who Think Young”: Begins with a montage of the main characters getting prepared for their day set to “The Twist.” Series chronology places this episode at February 1962.
The second time “The Twist” hit number one on the Billboard rock charts: January 13, 1962.
- Morning in Treetown
Dinotopia was very important to me growing up.
I could never decide if I’d rather live in Treetown or Waterfall City.
- Greatest American Dog
Lie-la-lie! Lie-la-lie-la-lie-la-lie!
Meet Presley. Presley’s one of the two breakout stars of CBS’s Greatest American Dog, this year’s second-most bizarre dog-centric reality series. Greatest American Dog is a fascinatingly strange show, emblematic of CBS’s high reality-tv production values and strong dedication toward constructing dynamic characters. What differs here, of course, from earlier CBS series - Kid Nation, Survivor - is that the characters focused on, more often than not, are dogs. There is some focus on the dog’s owners, but these owners are mostly boring, and I am yet to discern much about them from what I’ve seen so far.
Greatest American Dog is a lot of different reality series in one - it’s a bit Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show: when, in Episode 2, Beth Joy dressed up her disgusting mutt Bella Starlet for the obedience show elimination challenge, the judges scolded her for not allowing them to observe the dog’s body language, grooming. It’s a bit Big Brother, with all dogs and owners living in the same house, and with the Golden Bone Room and a Dog House for whoever is on the shitlist of the Golden Boner. It’s got a touch of the American Idol formula, with a panel of three judges, one of whom, a scary Brit named Victoria, has a bit of a mean streak like Simon Cowell’s and a tendency to demonstrate - at length - the dogs’ trainers’ faults.
All this from R.J. Cutler, the Academy Award nominee and Peabody and Emmy winner better known for fare like The War Room and the amazing, forgotten series American High (cancelled halfway through its Emmy-winning run, I had to follow this indelible document of suburban Chicago teens from Fox to late-night PBS showings). It seems a bit of an odd fit, and it shows in the series’ awkward rhythms and inability to paint its human characters as compellingly as its canine ones (who are suitably treated with terrific reaction shots, lingering closeups, and fun dog-at-play montages).
What the show has yet to do, and what could separate it from the pack of reality noise and put it in the rarefied air of a series like Kid Nation, is come to terms with the complexities of what we expect from dogs. Thus far the series has judged the dogs on obedience and the ability to do simple tricks, but has not acknowledged that these dogs do not care about the fact that they’re on the series, are unaware of the entertainment they provide us. Canine obedience as ideal is simply a cultural construct - so the ability of these dogs to conform to our idea of dogness is the show’s competitive criteria, but will the show ever probe deeper issues of dogness, the nature of canine identity, in the way that Kid Nation’s explorations of politics and role-playing interrogated the question of childhood and adulthood as separate patterns of behavior?
So far, a rundown of the dogtestants, starting with the first two eliminated pooches (I haven’t seen episode 3 yet) and then in ascending order from worst to best:
Ezzie (ELIMINATED) - A Boston terrier owned by aspiring actor Michael, Ezzie actually demonstrated some dogtential, but her owner was simply so irritating that no one could stand for him to be on the show any longer. I was, to be sure, surprised - the first challenge was designed as a demonstration of the dogs’ abilities to perform tricks, and Ezzie wasn’t nearly as awful as the other Bottom-Three dogs, Bella Starlet and Beacon. Ezzie, we hardly knew ye. B-.
Kenji (ELIMINATED) - Behaviorally, this giant schnauzer is a dogtrocity! In the first episode, he attacked one of the littler competitors. And then he did so in the second episode! Kenji’s owner, Elan, is not a very good trainer, using lots of physical manipulation and yelling, and as with Ezzie’s elimination, it appeared as though the judges based their decision as much on Elan’s inability to conform to traditions of dog training as to her dog’s inability to follow her lead. I want this dog to hug me, but I do not want to see it win reality competitions. C.
Okay, now for the remaining contestants, starting with the worst:
Bella Starlet - Woof! This thing is a nightmare, a mutt that combines the worst of an assortment of breeds (Yorkie? Pomeranian? All the heavy-hitters in horrible seem present here…). Bella Starlet is apparently an acting dog, and has been in independent films. Her owner, Beth Joy, is a former Elaine Benes impersonator and aspiring actress. This pair is undoubtably, inextricably New York, but in the most annoying way possible, and I hate hate hate them. I hate the American Girl Place dresses Beth Joy puts on Bella Starlet, I hate the camera’s lingering close-ups on that tattoo on Beth Joy’s calf, and I hate the stupid look on Bella Starlet’s face. When Beth Joy, attacked by the judges for clothing her dog for a grooming demonstration, fought back by announcing that her dog, as a mutt, cannot conform to any standards, and that she should be judged by her face and tail, I became momentarily enraged, dizzy, and I needed water. D- (because no dog deserves an F, ever).
Preston - Another dog whose owner decided that their dog was a doll to be played with, Preston is a white Pomeranian who comes with a shock of Manic Panic on his head. We’re yet to see much of this dog - he performs well in pre-elimination Golden Bone competitions but is seen little elsewhere on the show. Perhaps here, and with Bella Starlet (and, to be truthful, the next dog), my biases toward larger dogs are visible; yes, I prefer a large dog, someone you can be friends with and play with, and I think this is part of where the series might go as far as exploring the biases and preferences of American dog owners: what does it mean to be an American dog? Is there a sexist bias in this sort of inquiry? Can a poofy white Pomeranian - a canine culturally feminized by its form - ever fulfill the second adjective in the show’s title, or is there a tendency toward larger, traditionally ‘masculine’ dogs in American society? It is unclear. But if this is the case, it will not be with this dog. This dog does not possess the power to captivate the American soul. D+
Beacon - Thus far featureless as a character, all we have to go on so far with Beacon is his poor showing in the first episode’s elimination challenge, and his inability to perform tricks. I have no bias against the miniature schnauzer as a breed, but simply with respect to his demonstrated abilities thus far, I am giving Beacon a C-.
Elvis - Elvis is a Jack Russell Terrier. Despite Eddie, America’s favorite TV dog for a solid decade, the Jack Russell is a mean, spiteful breed, filled with enough bile for you and your loved ones to develop a lifetime’s worth of ulcers. A recent study, linked to in my friend Amanda’s AIM status, indicates the Jack Russell as the third most vicious commonly certified dog breed, following the chihuahua and the dachshund. Elvis has shown the more vicious tendencies of a Jack Russell already, biting superior dogtestant Tillman below the eye, and failing to heel suitably in the obedience challenge. His ineffectual puppet David, who indulged Elvis with a $10,000 ‘Bark Mitzvah,’ should be advised that he, not Elvis, is the owner. C-
Galaxy - Galaxy’s owner J.D. identifies himself as a ‘Dog Entertainer.’ While I have just spent three minute contemplating joyfully the notion of maintaining a living entertaining dogs, I take it to mean that this guy puts on a show with his backflipping, frisbee-catching stunt-dog Galaxy. In which case he is not the dog entertainer. He merely facilitates dog entertainment. Dog Entertainment Facilitator would be a better title for what J.D. does. Galaxy is the dog entertainer. She is the entertaining dog. J.D. is not. J.D. is annoying, cocky, and thinks he will easily walk away with the title. He is receiving what has to be termed the CBS Snake editing - CBS is good at alerting viewers that a contestant, seemingly likable now, will turn into a snake later in the season. I like Galaxy, enough to give her a B+. But J.D. gets a C, which evens them out as a team to a B-. This seems fair.
Leroy - I know nothing - nothing! - about this dog. Nothing! But I like it. Stealth editing tells me to expect good things from this dog later in the season. B.
Andrew - Here’s the small dog that breaks the rule: I have a tremendous admiration for trainer Laurie’s ability to maintain order with her dog Andrew. I would never want to deal with this dog - having once lived with an impossibly matted and seemingly abused Maltese picked up as a runaway, I know that this is not a breed for me, but given the parameters of the species, I am very impressed by the dog’s heeling ability, his attentiveness when instructed by Laurie not to eat his favorite meal, presented during the elimination challenge, and his grooming. B+.
Tillman - Tillman is a bit of a two-trick dog: but what tricks! He can skateboard and he can surf, and moreover, he can be an English Bulldog, which is enough to earn him points in my book. This is an ugly dog, and I want to hug him a lot and have my face licked by his big-ol tongue. He’s friendly, perhaps too much so (he seems shocked when bitten by Elvis in Episode 2, his owner’s consoling behind-the-ear stroke the only thing able to calm him). A gentle soul trapped in a brutish body. The single-greatest moment on this series thus far was watching Tillman nervously eyeing a steak right in front of his face, unable to touch it. He did it admirably. What a trooper. I’m a fan. A-.
Star - Star saved a life. STAR SAVED A LIFE. This is an awesome dog, who can sense when owner Bill’s diabetic wife has a low sugar count. This is a hero dog. Dogs who are heroes are one of my greatest obsessions, and so I’m a definite fan of this dog. Also, it’s clear that Bill and Star love each other, and that Bill and Star are well suited for one another, as when Bill affixed a neatly washed bandanna around Star’s neck for the obedience show. And when Star was attacked by some mysterious object (feral cat? barbed wire? ELVIS?), Bill’s rush to the Emergency Pet Care center was the show’s most gripping emotional moment. I really like this dog. Enough to give her an A. But not enough to beat…
Presley - Let’s be honest. What we look for in a dog is a friend, someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to hug, someone to nurture and love and Presley’s a great friend. He’s so expressive in the way boxers can be - a slight head cock leads to a wealth of emotional readings - that you can’t help but want to shake paws with this guy. Not to mention the fact that he’s obedient, capable, maintains excellent dog-posture, and inspires tears from his nice-guy owner Travis. This dog is a winner. A.
One more issue I’d like to touch on: the way CBS’s website for Greatest American Dog, and specifically the images on the site, construct certain ideas about America that don’t necessarily play out on the show: specifically, all the dogtestants and owners are posed in an idyllic Southern California suburban landscape, as if to comment that this is the natural environment of dog-lovers, when in fact most of the owners appear from their biographies to be urban dwellers. As someone who recognizes that high-density urban neighborhoods are among the leading Important Dog Areas in America, I am dramatically opposed to this dogscriminating portrait of America’s love affair for all things canine.
- Starting Out in the Evening
This man appears nude. Come and get it, ladies.
I just watched this. It’s not very good, but Frank Langella is. If I were the director, I would murder the sound guy, because this is some of the worst sound recording I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture. Just the murkiest damn dialogue, and all sorts of horrible live effects - did no one on set decide to pick up some room tone?
And then I noticed that it’s rated PG-13, despite having a solid three seconds of Frank Langella’s dick.
Can someone possibly explain this one to me? Not that I’m a big fan of the MPAA and its puritanical qualification system, but is old man dick less dicky than young man dick, because I’ve never seen dick in a PG-13 movie before.
- The Dark Knight and Fandom
Vroom Vroom, I’mma superhero!
I like The Dark Knight. It’s a fun action movie, with some interesting nods toward Bush-era anti-terrorist policy, a pair of great performances from Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger, lots of cool gadgets, some cool action. Yeah, it’s got troubling elements: Batman’s silly growly voice, the inability to determine what’s going on in the action sequences (this was a problem with Batman Begins too), some typical superhero fascism (though the film draws enough from the last 20 years of comics to know not to treat this sort of thing as uncomplicated). Basically, it’s everything I look for in a Batman movie: fun escapism.
But don’t tell that to the fanboys - they’re going batshit(!) over this movie! They voted it the #1 film of all time on IMDb (the people’s AFI list) and they’re attacking mob-style any blog or reviewer who DARES to pronounce that the film is not a masterpiece (it isn’t) and that it has troubling implications (it does) and some murky, almost incomprehensible action (yes).
The level of vitriol over these posts is ridiculous - people calling for the head of Keith Uhlich, accusing him of willful contrarianism and over-intellectual ‘nitpicking’ (it’s called close textual analysis, and it’s the bread-and-butter of film criticism, rather than nodding your head at monologues discussing the film’s ‘themes,’ Johnny Fanboy), claiming that Stephanie Zacharek (who is, to be sure, a critic I often disagree with) doesn’t like movies.
So why the ANGER, fanboys? What do you have riding on this film?
Here’s my thought: much like how I get infuriated when I read an asinine IMDb review of a great movie, fanboys are invested in making sure that people understand them and their obsession: it’s not simply a review of a movie. The fan community wants the reviewer to communicate that yes, their obsession is worthwhile, that there is a deep, important meaning to their stories about men in tights fighting bad people, which is why the phrases “modern mythology” and “like the gods of the Greek pantheon” get tossed around so much. The rehabilitation of comics’ image sees critics like Uhlich and Zacharek - who have very open-minded but rigorous understandings of how movies convey meaning, intentionally or not - as elitist anti-comics enemies. They simultaneously clamor for the critics to not take the films so seriously - don’t review Batman like it’s Bergman, even if the Critical Mass is saying Batman is like Bergman, and so that sort of silliness needs to be dispelled - and to take it very, very seriously - repeating thematic phrases like ‘Manicheanism’ as though these mantras will convince critics that, oh, yes, indeed, the film is a masterpiece - it interrogates Manicheanism! (I’d actually claim that the film rebukes dualistic notions of mankind, but that’s just one man’s opinion). They want critics to take the film seriously, but not to take it seriously enough to call it on its failures.
Related phenomenon: when did Watchmen become ‘the most acclaimed graphic novel of all time’, as seen in the trailer for it before The Dark Knight? Did we forget Maus (a Pulitzer winner!), Jimmy Corrigan, and David Boring when anointing the film to the top of the heap, or is it simply because it’s a comic about superheros that legitimately produces a complex discussion of superheroism? Inquiring minds would like to know.
- Kon Podcast at The House Next Door
Hey guys,
Ever wanted to hear the sound of my voice? No? Well, that’s too bad because now you can match my nasal honk to my overwritten reviews, courtesy of my friends at The House Next Door. I was recently invited to take part in a podcast on the subject of Japanese filmmaker Satoshi Kon, and I had a great deal of fun talking about Kon’s work and reception in the west. Thankfully, the transcript, which you can choose to read instead, leaves out all my ‘um’s ‘uh’s and (…)s.
