tgiff: Volume 6
THE SCOOP: Summer Edition, post-Mamma Mia!
Pacific!: Taking a cue from Pan’s Labyrinth? Longtime childhood friends from Gothenburg, Sweden, Daniel and Björn lost and found each other a few years ago, decided to rent a studio together and make electronic pop for a living. Oh yeah, they toured with Justice for a while.
Think: Beach Boys + PBJ + Royskopp
Latest album: Reveries
Best “every frame can be my silkscreen T-shirt” video:
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PAS/CAL: This Detroit-based band has been scattering their EPs around for years, and lucky attendees of their concerts described them as “all dressed up in deceptively catchy and meticulously arranged tunes with hooks that would make Johnny Marr jealous and turn Serge Gainsbourg’s head.” A perfect recipe for unabashed twee under the cloudy skies of summer in San Francisco.
Think: Of Montreal + The Zombies + Final Fantasy
Latest Album: I Was Raised on Mark, Matthew, Luke, & Laura
PAS/CAL – Summer is Almost Here
PAS/CAL – You Were Too Old for Me
Why pay at all when you’re at Payless?
Emmy Nominations Announced
At the peak of my television obsession (high school when I would record and keep episodes of various shows on VHS), I remember when I would wake up at 5 in the morning to watch the live feed on E! of the announcement of the Emmy nominations. Sadly, time passed and since premium cable never existed in my life and the popularity of TV shows on DVD was still something of the future, watching nominee after nominee from The Sopranos or Six Feet Under didn’t mean anything to me.
However, in most recent years, proven with today’s nomination list for the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, major network and basic cable television shows are making their marks as places to find good television. HBO-style gratuitous sex, bloody murder, and f-bombs are out, cute piemakers are in. Well, perhaps the sex and murder aren’t completely out (re: Cagney of Cagney and Lacey’s guest starring role as the obsessed agent/teddy bear maker on Nip/Tuck).
Highlights of This Year’s Nominations
Complete List of This Year’s Nominations
Since all the nominations for Mad Men and 30 Rock are a given, I’d like to congratulate and highlight some of the surprises:
Lee Pace, Kristen Chenoweth, and Costume Designers Mary Vogt and Stephanie Fox-Kramer for Pushing Daisies – Ms. Vogt and Fox-Kramer, you two deserve that Emmy. I have never wanted a television character’s wardrobe more than Anna Friel’s.
Amy Poehler for Saturday Night Live – I don’t even remember when someone was ever nominated for an emmy for their cast role on the sketch show
Sharon Gless on Nip/Tuck – You scared the beejeezus out of me.
Christina Applegate for Samantha Who? - Yay for first season nominees. You made me actually not hate the guy from 7th Heaven and Jennifer Esposito.
The nominees for lead actress in a miniseries or movie - the lineup looks better than the best actress nominees for the Oscars
And the nominees for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics – Flight of the Conchords’ “The Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room)” and “Inner City Pressure” plus Jimmy Kimmel Live’s “I’m Fucking Matt Damon”
Flight of the Conchords – Inner City Pressure
Flight of the Conchords – The Most Beautiful Girl (in the room)
Sarah Silverman – I’m Fucking Matt Damon
For my Paparazzo
La Dolce Vita is always two things at once: It’s a wallow in decadence disguised as a moral saga, and it’s a moral saga disguised as a wallow in decadence. It’s always both, and that tension is always there, within the film and the filmmaker.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
A series of nights and dawns, descents and ascents. Once again everything collapses in an exhausted dawn.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Nino Rota – Patricia
For a film that is episodic (and lengthy) by nature, it might be wise to poach a single frame from memory and arrange a special menagerie for a future me to decipher. I pity the totality of analysis, I champion my Rorschach in flux.
Don’t look for the Trevi Fountain here.
Before Anna Nicole…
Holly Golightly
Send in the Clowns
Young@Heart
Trinity by fraud
All by Myself
Villa of the Damned
Mein Name ist Nico
You have the gift of foresight, tell me what you see.
Come to Nicky
Hawkman that Ho
Antonioniesque
Sweetness personified
FIN
Diss-orienting: Hello, Hottie!
Crosslinked: This is a new series dedicated to spastic fits of rage and rapture specifically for those equipped with Netflix and extra disposable income to attend the local indieplex. For the rest of the summer (and the year, hopefully), I’ll be recommending a slew of Asian (American) films that played in previous years at SFIAAFF and upcoming projects worthy of a quick look—anticipation guaranteed, satisfaction is another story.
FRO-YO #1:
200 Pounds Beauty (Yong-hwa Kim, Korea, 2006)
No sweat, no tears, just lipo! What I found incredibly daring for a romantic comedy (at least by Korean standards) featuring fatsuits and “inner” beauties is the cut-to-the-chase transformation of the morbidly obese phone sex operator to gorgeous pop princess, albeit with some shrewdly edited montages. Offering her illustrious voice for a Britney-Spears puppet singer, Hanna is the Debbie Reynolds of Singin’ in the Rain minus the already perfect She’s All That body. Realizing her life as a meaningless sham, she blackmails a pathetic plastic surgeon to mold a modern-day Pygmalion out of her shapeless blubber.
Hanna becomes Jenny, the face that launched a thousand traffic accidents. Forget diet and exercise, the film seizes the opportunity to critique a society on the verge of being a clone farm, everyone cannibalizing on the same proportions and personalities. There’s one striking line (paraphasing here) that exemplifies the contradictory attitude of a hush-hush taboo that everyone knows is practiced among neighbors, but a disgrace for wives and girlfriends to admit. Stemming back to male anxieties around perfection and its abject reality, the quote comes from the music producer, the love of Hanna’s life, the reason for her extreme makeover. His personality shifts as sharply and frequently as the plot requires to hurt or heal Hanna, prodding her closer to a blow-out epiphany about discovering one’s identity in a funhouse of mirrors, distorted and truthful, one and the same.
The entire second act is obsessively tinged with talks about naturalism versus artificiality, her talent is real, her body ain’t. What makes a singer? The film wants it both ways and gets it. I don’t want to ruin the ending, but like all films dealing with secret and lies, there is a final reveal, a drawn-out confession, filled with enough glycerin tears and an emotionally gullible public to forgive what Hanna has done to herself and to her past, since a fatlift is never too different from a facelift, and that itself is never too far away from the suspicious eyes of family and friends. Eschewing moral scrutiny, the climax subscribes to what I’d called “redemption by the flesh,” that is, the spectacular display of the final girl (as marketable commodity) ameliorates any residual trauma and emotional turmoil of going under the knife. Miley Cyrus, put back that “Hannah” Montana wig. At least, 200 Pound Beauty never settles for a maudlin reconciliation between beauty and beauty (Jenny and her manager), leaving only a tiny peephole for future happiness attained through stardom as opposed to romance.
Jenny/Hanna singing ‘Maria’ (Korean version)
The Original Blondie Hit circa 1999
More music ripoffs: MISS YOU MUCH (Janet Jackson/Korean Jackson)
STATS: Available now at local Asian video stores or courtesy of Youtube (w/Eng subs).
Coming Ad-tractions
Fellow film blogger, Benjamin Wright, reached an half-baked conclusion in discussing the state of title sequences coming after the 1990s.
Most Hollywood films held the ‘main’ credits for the end, reversing a long history of studio filmmaking that announced up-front who was responsible for the film you were about to see. Some have attributed this move to audience polling during advance screenings. Studios risk losing the audience’s attention during long, cumbersome title sequences. Even Steven Spielberg has noted that he prefers the end credit system, since it enables him to start the film without disruption or pause.
While this observation is true to an extent, it stinks of a moth-ridden jeremiad towards contemporary cinema as a creative wasteland overloaded with razzle-dazzle technology, but lacking in innovative wit. Upon reading several detailed studies on film credits, including their evolution through the 60s with Saul Bass’s revolutionary minimalist design, the “endangered species” label is still more applicable to perishing wildlife than this ever resilient cockroach of the film going experience. Perhaps its duration will be shorter, less of an introductory warmer than an sudden blast of words followed by an already running treadmill of suspense and action (Think LOST). The annoying question of whether a prologue should adhere to the contents of the actual body of the film sometimes hinder the titles sequence as less foreshadowing or an extension of thematic reassurance than a mini-movie in itself…an immediate appetizer before the bloated main course of recognizable edibles. As they change, we change, and there’s an absolute rush of adventure in the air of not knowing how our viewing positions and expectations will twist and turn as the decades rushes by. Regardless of the presence or absence of “elaborate credit sequences,” films will still present the most basic of information in order to situate the viewer in its reception, generally by foregrounding itself as only fiction, part fact, part bricolage of still frames with legible typeface, and lastly, part narcissism on behalf of its ‘valued’ authors and actors. Without a doubt, the spirit of Saul Bass manages to survive among the prematurely called “dying breed” of professions at one of the industry’s most respected firms, Prologue, a Venice(CA)-based cooperative of famous motion graphic artists such as Kyle Cooper (Se7en) and Danny Yount (Spiderman, Ironman).
Just marvel at the company’s impressive resume below.
Iron Man [Favreau, 2008]
Spiderman 2 [Raimi, 2004]
Married Life [Sachs, 2007]
EuroTrip [Schaffer, 2004]
Standard Operating Procedure [Morris, 2008]
Pushing Daisies [Fuller, 2007-Current]
And what a pleasure to witness the art in its most stunning and jazzy incarnation, in Spielberg’s own Catch Me if You Can.
and again in 2005, at the beginning of a brilliant underrated crime thriller, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
We Feel it All
The kids watching Sesame Street these days are already shopping at Urban Outfitters or heaven forbid, H&M, so why shouldn’t PBS join the indie-licious bandwagon and enlist the aid of our favorite Canadian chanteuse?
Best abrupt cut-off ever, Feist doing Laura Dern doing Edward Munch! We don’t know if Patrick Daughters remade his own video, but at least it has now been enshrined in the pantheon of one-take masterworks, readily available for more Youtube remixes and DIY copycats.
IPOD gold aka The Original:
Shoutout to our friends’ blog for digging up the Philip Glass’s contribution.
IN THE WORKS: A family-friendly parody of 30 Rock will be choo-choo-coming to Big Bird’s hood.
Classic flashback:
Shall we dance, my lovely?
The waltz, as originally defined by the wonderful folks at Wikipedia, is “a piece of music in triple meter, most often 3/4 but sometimes 3/8 or 6/8, generally having a 1.2.3. – 1.2.3. count and a slow tempo.” Usually associated with the flight of anxious feet gliding across the floor, the waltz as a dance number offers escapist fantasies for those obeying its hypnotic rhythm, but paranoia is never far behind and its bourgeois origins, an open class secret. Filmic space has stripped off its material weight, but the sonic structure remains, lighting the path for motivations, both virtuous and deceitful, as men and women enter and exit adjacent rooms only to find each other stuck on the same chessboard. The waltz ingrains itself easily into memory precisely because it’s the skeleton of the score, pared down from its excesses, its complexities, its distractions.
The hand of God and the “loom of fate” are too cynically applied to the waltz, for at its best, the choreography of destinies appears only as a byproduct of fruitless agency, a just reward in the service of good deeds and fortunate accidents, but at its worst, the waltz reminds us of the cyclical pounding of mistakes repeated, connections missed, and lives already cranked into motion by the black and white notes fluttering softly and dangerously in the air.
Case studies:
Howl’s Moving Castle (Miyazaki, 2004)
Joe Hisaishi – Sky Stroll
While rescuing the naive Sophie from the blob soldiers of his archnemesis, Howl, the dashing wizard, guides her body into the air, setting off an arduous romance and a whirlwind of tangential subplots, only stumbling towards a ridiculously tacky ending (almost ruined the whole film for me). Hisaishi’s enchanting signature is unmistakable, only Yoko Kanno is said to be his contemporary rival, a colloboration would be better off.
[Starts at 1:50]
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Face of Another (Teshigahara, 1966)
Toru Takemitsu – Waltz from Tanin No Kao
A waltz in the vaudevillian strain, replete with German vocals, and sung during a surreptitious meeting between surgeon and patient after his face-lift, which later mirrors the faceless masses in the final scene. The disillusioned soloist dissolves into the cloud of pedestrian traffic, leaving only the erotic traces of a former life abandoned out of sheer impotence, and the Fascist remnants of a nation too eager for change on the outside.
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Oldboy (Park, 2003)
Yeong-wook Jo – Cries and Whispers
“Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as the same,” an extremely devastating message at the heart of a vengeance-driven grand guignol. Every action has a reaction, in this case, a retroactive backstory reinforced by guilt and helplessness. If madness is the only hope for salvation, then the carousel waltz only makes deeper lacerations without the insurance of resolution, and that’s enough reason for us to invest further.
A Non-Date Date Movie
Love me less, but love me a long time.
- Ismael Benoliel, Les Chansons d’amour
Hey, you got girlfriend Vietnam? Me so horny. Me love you long time.
- Da Nang Hooker, Full Metal Jacket
Louis Garrel & Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet – As-tu déjà aimé ?
For those of you who appreciate French music for its catchy pop melodies and inherent foreignness, Christopher Honoré’s Love Songs (Les Chansons d’amour) might be the perfect film to start off a romantic evening that involves wine tasting and a fondue pot, you know, with all the calculated trimmings of a themed event. The only catch: turn off the monitor and leave the stereo on. The soundtrack, the foreground, the rest is mere background, the illusion of cosmopolitan sophistication is enough to satiate the Starbucks compilation palate. It’s better leaving one’s belief system in the French “tradition of quality” intact rather than shattering it through Honore’s icy milieu of stock characters and tourist locales, not to mention, a preposterous suggestion that damaged grief brings about latent homosexuality, or perhaps mourning demands the “outing” of other bodies and orientations to hold on tight and fuck the pain away, or again, Ismael, the all-inclusive male figure was always a bisexual. Any of these scenarios could have been the case, but who gives a damn when the film squanders its chances to piece together the narrative threads in exchange for impromptu dalliances and nonsensical coincidences. The lyrics would’ve made Shakira cringe and laugh in agony…”Four pubes in the shower.” At least in the heyday of French musicals, Demy was injecting frisky charm and dramatic irony into the Hollywood formula, and Godard broke down those same inane templates to form iconic sequences that are still the epitome of cool (See below). Honoré himself, a dedicated fan of that zeitgeist, took a more serious approach, then realizing his hip meter falling, he followed some needless detours and ended up somewhere between Paris and the land of lost convictions.
A signpost towards gay pride? Or a memorial of Timberlake before “4 Minutes”?
Enjoy the songs and think only of Anna Karina!
Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, & Clothilde Hesme – Je n’aime que toi
Chiara Mastrioanni – Au parc
This is how you make a musical, pedantic lyrics aside.
YouTune Part Three: Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
This week’s edition: Songs and scores made for one film, then used for another film to create an unnerving experience in its new setting.
De Usuahia a la Quiaca/Pajaros – Gustavo Santaolalla
The Motorcycle Diaries (starts at 3:36)
My Blueberry Nights
Save Me – Aimee Mann
Magnolia (music video)
The Jane Austen Book Club ( starts at 6:58 )
A Box and His Oval Friday.
Hello. I’m new.
This is the last post on Wall*E, I promise.
Speaking recently with Joie about a completely unrelated film, I realized that among the mess of cinema that I have experienced in my life, the films that I value most – that remain bubbling about at the top of my mental archive for some time after a first viewing – are films that I have enjoyed on a fairly basic, visceral level. These are films that have a sort of intoxicating affect on me that does not necessarily have anything to do with the work as it exists on an intellectual plane. I remain most attached to films that have gotten under my skin in an abject, immediate fashion; to films that relax me bodily or that imprint themselves in my memory with physically associative tag. I’m not just talking about the ‘Body Genres’. It appears, as its strikes me now, that in spite of my best attempts to assume the stance of a theoretically engaged spectator, I love movies like a child. I think that an attempt to define this sort of love is particularly relevant to our discussion of Andrew Stanton’s new bit of techno-bricolage, a film that flourishes on a spirit of simplicity and is perhaps complicated unnecessarily by its eco-friendly subtext. WALL•E insists on combining real-world relevance to a completely unencumbered kind of storytelling, and accordingly has a few moments of reflexive trouble.
The type of film that WALL•E engages with most historically is the silent comedy. Chaplin, Keaton, and their contemporaries are visible here because the film encourages a drastically simple type of spectating that was default in the purest, formative stages of cinema. One does not necessarily benefit from applying tangential modes of thought, far removed from the gleeful reverie of softshoe choreography and clumsy, infatuated courtship, to CITY LIGHTS or THE GENERAL. These films are definitely complicated creations, but are profoundly rewarding in the immediate event. Their system of comedy was augmented historically by 1930/40s screwball comedy, a group of films that injected a mischievous level of dialogue and social commentary into the mix, but still amount basically to a genre about children falling in love. WALL•E shares this charming quality of relinquishing ambition – just as IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT stays on the brain because of its heady, moonlit reveries in spite of its terrific depth of social commentary. Continuing on my historical tangent, I think the best company WALL•E can claim are the films of Jacques Tati. In his films, Tati crafted a huge architectures of comedy (literally, looking at the production of PLAYTIME), films that contain depths of social commentary but float playfully along without concern for their structural levels of substance. They are biting critiques of the dizziness of modern growth, consumerism, and capitalism, but communicate a tender, profoundly hopeful idea of humanity with their equally dizzy style of humor.
As a genre film, a derivation, a sci-fi adventure, and one in that no uncertain terms hints at homage to everything from 2001, A.I., and ALIEN, to TITANIC (for fucks’ sake) WALL•E complicates its mode of comedy in a blithe Tatian style. It provides what might be considered a bit of bitchy, if humanistic, finger-pointing, but is systematically turned back around by a gleeful love story. A little garbage can crushing on an armed iPod. This formula, squeezed out of a company that still purports to make children’s films, provides a real challenge for Pixar and Andrew Stanton. However, in the end I very much enjoyed their struggle and the charming, joyful, visually lyrical strain that stands out most in the film’s apparatus.
Although I don’t think that it’s necessarily a better movie than my favorites in Pixar’s mini-canon (TOY STORY, INCREDIBLES, RATATOUILLE), WALL•E hints at a spectacular new capacity in this brand of film for complexity and stylistic daring. It’s a purely beautiful movie, full of images that actually challenge the value of live action for depth and texture, preferring a kind of romanticized photoimitation that adds new meaning to the term animation. Despite appearing to struggle a bit with how best to deliver its politicized baggage, I think the film accomplishes a successful mesh of overt satire with pure, earnest romance. Like PLAYTIME, its message is a heavy one, but the film’s heart can still be found kept securely in the body of its blundering tramp. Monsieur Hulot is swapped for a clunking, ‘Hello Dolly’-obsessed trash compactor, but its protagonist and his story are oblivious to the allegories they tread upon. The film is definitely at odds with itself in many ways; it’s literally divided in half and often struggles to reconcile its smudged, boxy, earth-colored protagonist within pristine, Macintosh-inspired ovals and a sterile sci-fi palate – perhaps we’ve found the twin fathers of Pixar, computer technology and boyish distraction, finally coming to physical odds – but in the end its more complicated textual moments do not outlast a spirit of childlike, nose-to-the-glass awe. I was particularly thankful for the film’s central, spacewalking pas-de-deux. When Eve and WALL•E dance around in space, Stanton took time to marvel at the reaching majesty of the stars, just as he contemplated the pleasant blue stretch of NEMO’s ocean. I think, finally, that WALL•E gestures energetically towards an earthly statement, but in spite of its ambition is still, thankfully, a film with its head in the clouds.
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