tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79456139980901589312024-02-02T11:47:40.639-08:00white tank topkirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-28813868081071371372020-02-09T06:57:00.001-08:002020-02-09T06:57:25.916-08:00Best of 20192019 was my first full year living in New York and it was delightful to get the chance to see more or less everything I wanted to see, cinematically speaking. Because I still write a weekly column for the <i>Sonoma Index-Tribune</i>, I also watched plenty of the stuff everyone else saw as well. One weekend I absorbed the bracing contrast of <i>The Aeronauts </i>to review and <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire </i>for my own pleasure. This year it became clearer to me the way my mind works on much different levels depending on whether the film before me has any desire to engage intellectually.<br />
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The key to enjoying the films of 2019 was weathering the nonstop bludgeoning by Disney Corporation (whose portfolio includes Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilms with more to come soon). Our corporate overlord did over 40 percent of the total box office in America and generated very mediocre film products this year. Streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, themselves fighting for market dominance, picked up some of the slack by distributing many excellent films. In spite of Hollywood’s overall lack of bravery, a bumper crop of ethnically and geographically diverse directors did outstanding work outside the realm of boardroom consensus.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b><br />
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Some would say <i>Little Women </i>or <i>The Irishman </i>but what if the best ensemble cast of the year was in <i>Beach Bum</i>? Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Buffet, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill and, especially <b>Zac Efron </b>and <b>Zac Efron's beard </b>made me laugh as hardest in 2019...until <i>Uncut Gems </i>and <b>Kevin Garnett</b>'s smooth turn as himself. My favorite part of <i>Midsommar</i> is the bickering about grad school theses between the useless men, so <b>William Jackson Harper </b>gets a nod. While I was not 100% persuaded by <i>Knives Out</i>, I do declare that I enjoyed <b>Daniel Craig </b>doing Michael Scott's "I do declare" Southern accent for the entire film. The finest performance, particularly when considering the element of surprise of a retired actor returning to screens, is by <b>Joe Pesci</b> in <i>The Irishman</i>. He really knew how to move through a HoJo's kitchen and I appreciated his clarity of mind even immediately after waking up from a nap.</div>
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<b>Best Supporting Actress</b><br />
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While her character was short-lived and quite blood-soaked, it was magical to watch <b>Elisabeth Moss </b>flip to her tethered self in <i>Us</i>. WTT Best Supporting Actress 2018 winner Awkwafina gracefully passes the torch to <b>Zhao Shuzhen</b>,<b> </b>her Nai Nai in <i>The Farewell</i>. <b>Park So-dam</b> gives the funniest and ultimately most affecting performance in the <i>Parasite </i>and we'll long remember the catechism, "Jessica, only child, Illinois Chicago." But the WTT award goes to the mother we all needed—<b>Penelope Cruz </b>in <i>Pain and Glory</i>. Pedro Almodóvar has given us many great matriarchs but Cruz's appearances are as spectacular as discovering a Renaissance Madonna and Child in a museum of contemporary art. </div>
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<b>Best Actor</b><br />
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It's well to remember that <b>Brad Pitt </b>isn't and has never been bad, as he reminded us in both <i>Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood </i>and <i>Ad Astra</i>. <b>Robert Pattinson</b> excels in isolation in <i>High Life</i> (it's possible I'm also still charmed by the Q&A I saw with Pattinson and Claire Denis, in which he clearly adored his director). In <i>Uncut Gems</i>, <b>Adam Sandler </b>gives his once-a-decade reminder of what he can do as an actor (before making four or five straight films with David Spade). Bless Clint Eastwood for finding <b>Paul Walter Hauser</b> to play his <i>Richard Jewell</i>, a wheezing American heart attack waiting to happen. Given the buzz around this film in early 2019, I though we'd see <b>Tom Burke</b> on more year-end lists for <i>The Souvenir</i>—but he's clearly a step forward in the portrayal of devastatingly addicts on screen. </div>
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<b>Best Actress</b><br />
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It was pleasing to see the steely <b>Florence Pugh</b> get a nom for <i>Little Women</i>,<i> </i>but she was even better ensconced in flowers and depression in <i>Midsommar</i>. In my annual nod to a non-professional actress doing better work that 99% of the professionals, there's the quietly electric <b>Mame Bineta Sane</b> in <i>Atlantique</i>. I adored our new Orpheus and Eurydice on flying ointment, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i>. Cynthia Erivo's nomination for the lifeless <i>Harriet </i>reveals the Academy's bottomless taste for boredom. The nom is particularly stupid this year, when <b>Lupita N'yongo </b>was right there in <i>Us</i>. She poured unbelievable amounts of herself into her role and she even did a funny voice—that sort of thing ought to have easily secured her Oscar glory.<br />
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<b>Best Pictures</b><br />
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Before rolling into the Top Ten, some other fiction to see: Carlos Reygadas’ <i>Our Time</i>, Bi Gan’s <i>Long Day’s Journey into the Night</i>, Bong Joon-Ho’s <i>Parasite</i>, Ari Aster’s <i>Midsommar</i>, Quentin Tarantino’s <i>Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood</i>, and Oliver Assayas’ <i>Non-Fiction</i>. And the hottest docs were: Feras Fayyad’s <i>The Cave</i>, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s <i>American Factory</i>, Brett Story’s <i>The Hottest August</i>, Nanfu Wang’s <i>One Child Nation</i>, and Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov's <i>Honeyland</i>.<br />
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10. <i><a href="https://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/9436636-181/film-review-us">Us</a> </i>- If you remember just one sound from a 2019 movie, it is probably the unforgettable snip snip of scissors from Jordan Peele’s thriller. The snippet is trimmed from the “tethered” remix of hip-hop classic “I Got 5 on It,” one of the best deployed songs in recent cinema. The superb music cues, Peele’s stellar story concept and astonishing acting by both Lupita Nyong’o and Elisabeth Moss made <i>Us</i> a great start to the year in film.<br />
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9. <i><a href="https://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/10450404-181/streaming-now-atlantics">Atlantique</a> </i>- This assured debut by filmmaker Mati Diop employs non-actors to present a hypnotic vision of languorous ghosts on the coast of Senegal. At once casually depicted and deeply rigorous, the film offers both insights into the lives of impoverished workers in Dakar and a fantastical vision of reincarnation. Diop’s career will be fascinating to track as she explores little seen places and states of mind.<br />
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8. <i>The Beach Bum </i>- Harmony Korine’s follow-up to the inimitable <i>Spring Breakers </i>heads way down South to the Florida Keys and a mad poet, Moondog, played by Matthew McConaughey as only he can. The supporting cast is as colorful as the lead, with delicious roles for Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence, Jimmy Buffett(!), and a panini-bearded Zac Efron. With some help from real-life poet Richard Brautigan, Moondog delivers one especially fine poem then mic drops on the line, “That’s great poetry.” Damn straight.<br />
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7. <i><a href="https://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/10095554-181/film-review-ad-astra">Ad Astra</a> </i>- It’s wonderful to see James Gray making better and bolder films as he ages. Between this role here and his deeply charming turn in <i>Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood</i>, Brad Pitt spent 2019 reminding us of his excellence. Yes, <i>Ad Astra </i>is another lonesome outer space film, but Pitt offers more than Ryan Gosling’s nearly strangled terseness in <i>First Man</i> or Matt Damon’s uber-chipper performance in <i>The Martian</i>. As he presses on from the Moon to Mars to the unfathomable frontier of Neptune, Gray dares to deliver that rarest commodity in contemporary cinema—earnestness.<br />
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6. <i>High Life </i>- Another of 2019 auteurs in space is Claire Denis, who brought Juliet Binoche and Robert Pattinson with her. For the director, this film is both a leap forward and return to a familiar form. Denis’ first English-language film still has a soundtrack by the Tindersticks but now they’re scoring the journey of prisoners compelled to undertake experiments in deep space. Their spacecraft, designed by artist Olafur Eliasson, is at once prison-like and Edenic. The heroes are shipping out to a black hole, destined to see things those who condemned them are too frightened to contemplate.<br />
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5. <i>Uncut Gems </i>- The Safdie Brothers’ previous adventure <i>Good Time</i> brought relentless and headlong nihilism to the screen and with <i>Uncut Gems</i> they’ve somehow one upped themselves for sheer you-better-breathe-into-a-paper-bag madness. Adam Sandler’s Diamond District hustler is just smart enough to get himself into bigger and bigger trouble with dangerous people—the insanity of his jewel-selling schemes is exceeded only by his pulse pounding proclivity for implausible parlay bets on NBA games. The directors get not only a career-best performance from Sandler but also generate a remarkably good turn from NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett. Plus they seamlessly interweave the real events of 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Finals with the rest of their bonkers story.<br />
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4. <i>Dolor y gloria </i>- Pedro Almodóvar’s films are often a triumph of design but <i>Pain and Glory</i>, in which the master again collaborates with longtime production designer Antxon Gómez, has his most wondrous interiors ever. Antonio Banderas plays a stand-in for Almodóvar himself and his home is furnished with the director’s own belongings. Flashbacks to his youth reveal a whitewashed cave setting that’s filled with a mythical power. Banderas impresses and, in her limited screen time, Penelope Cruz has never been better, nor more beautiful. When the Almodóvar character is asked what he will do after retiring from writing and directing films he replies, “Live, I suppose.” Oh the gorgeous resignation of it all!<br />
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3. <i>The Souvenir </i>- Joanna Hogg, an English director too little known stateside before producing this masterwork, will not fly under the radar again. The film’s smart and stylish love story gives Honor Swinton Byrne a marvelous debut and showcases Tom Burke’s addictive, irresistible performance as her erudite yet heroin-addicted beau (his character stole steals the heart quickly with his praise for the films of Powell and Pressburger). The film has an incredibly fresh feel, thanks to the extraordinary quality of light, costume, and setting. Not to mention Hogg’s flawless deployment of songs as disparate as Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out with Him” and Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.”<br />
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2. <i>Asako I & II </i>- A thought-provoking film that, amongst other things, has the most delightful variation on the “Going out for a pack of smokes” disappearance in any recent film. Three quiet, subtle but still tremendous acting performances make the piece: Masahiro Higashide and Erika Karata are remarkable as the confused and crisscrossed central couple and Jintan the cat proves that pet acting has really gotten stronger in recent years. Director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi infuses the film’s two-part structure with just enough essence of mystery from Hitchcock’s <i>Vertigo </i>while making something totally his own, featuring doppelgangers, recurrences, rhymes, and echoes.<br />
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1. <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire </i>- The most indelible, burned-into-your-memory film of 2019 is Céline Sciamma’s <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i>. This film, about the creation of a painting, boasts dozens of breathtaking shots, carefully composed and brilliantly lit against the gorgeous backdrop of Brittany, France in the late 18th century. The story is simple—a female painter meets and must paint her reluctant subject, who knows the commissioned work will be sent to a fiancée she’s never met and never wishes to meet. So she hides—her hair, her face, her smile—for as long as possible. Each revelation aches with significance and, as the pair’s relationship crescendos, the film becomes a fresh, reimagined twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i> is, wonderfully, almost entirely without men. But its success rests on the incredible chemistry between the lead actors—we feel the thunder in their hearts.<br />
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<br />kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-86456964872149487962019-02-18T10:21:00.004-08:002019-03-04T05:47:44.804-08:00Best of 20182018 was better than 2017 (for films released in America, not for American democracy). It had returns to form from Yorgos Lanthimos and Alfonso Cuarón. It had the same excellent form from Wes Anderson and Barry Jenkins. And it had a total masterpiece from Lucrecia Martel after a too-long wait.<br />
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All it lacked was a new release by Olivier Assayas featuring Kristen Stewart...<br />
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Though the best features came from Latin America, I must admit that the film moment that titillated me the most in 2018 must have been the trailer drop for <i>A Star Is Born</i>. I spent a lot of time streaming hacked together tracks of the isolated audio, waiting for the full reveal of Lady Gaga accompanied by Bradley Cooper as voiced by Sam Elliott.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b><br />
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Flyest use of capes in 2018 is a title shared by <b>Jason Isaacs</b> in <i>The Death of Stalin</i> and <b>Donald Glover</b> in <i>Solo</i>, both of whom were the most irresistible things in their films. As I've said elsewhere, the only interesting five minutes across all 20 Marvel films is the sequence when it appears <b>Michael B. Jordan</b> will be righteous king in <i>Black Panther</i>. <b>Tom Waits</b> was the best bit in the kinda disappointing but kinda what you expected <i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs</i>. But the easy winner in this category is <b>Steve Yuen</b> in <i>Burning</i>, the man who gave us our postmodern Gatsby.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress</b><br />
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Rarely has our inability to communicate with each other been expressed as poignantly as by <b>Regina King</b> in <i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i>. And poignancy is not something you'd expect from a queen vomiting blue cake, but <b>Olivia Colman</b>'s badgery self in <i>The Favourite </i>does it exquisitely. <b>Elizabeth Debicki</b> was excellent in <i>Widows </i>and not just because she stood a head taller than everyone else. <b>Lola Dueñas </b>delighted in keeping the title character at a low boil in <i>Zama </i>but the best laughs and best pajamas belonged to <b>Awkwafina</b> in <i>Crazy Rich Asians</i>.<br />
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<b>Best Actor</b><br />
<b><br /></b>Give me lean <b>Christian Bale</b> in the tasty <i>Hostiles </i>over fat suit Christian Bale in the execrable <i>Vice</i>. Give me <b>Daniel Giménez Cacho</b> in <i>Zama </i>and help me rediscover all of his other roles. The most stirring moments in <i>BlackKklansman </i>occurred when <b>John David Washington</b> sounded exactly like his father. As someone who never tires of insulting <b>Ethan Hawke</b>, it's absurd that he wasn't nominated for <i>First Reformed</i>. <b>Adriano Tardiolo</b> convinced as a time-traveling supernatural Italian peasant in the remarkable <i>Happy as Lazzaro</i>. But in a put up or shut up role, <b>Bradley Cooper</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">—</span>a guy I have not particularly enjoyed since <i>Wedding Crashers</i><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">—</span>gave us a massive gift with <i>A Star Is Born</i>.<br />
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(And, just to go on record, Cooper's goldendoodle Charlie edges Olivia the West Highland White Terrier in <i>Widows </i>for Best Doggo.)<br />
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<b>Best Actress</b><br />
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Charlize Theron</b> is so good in <i>Tully </i>that I'm in the awful position of praising something about a Jason Reitman film. Praising something about a Claire Denis film is less surprising, and <i>Let the Sunshine In </i>benefited from <b>Juliette Binoche</b>, who is wonderful in everything, all the time. Praise also to <b>Viola Davis</b> who, as Michelle Rodriguez tells it, was kissed by Liam Neeson in a non-racist way in <i>Widows</i>. The year, however, belonged to non-actors. <b>Lady Gaga</b> was fabulous, even with that terrible tangerine dream hair color, in <i>A Star Is Born</i>. Late in <i>Madeline's Madeline</i>,<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b><b>Helena Howard</b> had the finest audition since Naomi Watts in <i>Mulholland Dr.</i> But the prize is for <b>Yalitza Aparicio</b> carrying a family of six (and an entire nation) on her back in <i>Roma</i>.<br />
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<b>Best Pictures </b><br />
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Outside the Top 10 you might also consider <i>Annihilation</i>, <i>First Reformed</i>, <i>Hale County This Morning, This Evening</i>, <i>Happy as Lazzaro</i>, <i>Hostiles</i>, <i>Leave No Trace</i>, <i>Madeline's Madeline</i>, <i>Tully</i>, and <i>Widows</i>. And any film not made by a white male director.<br />
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10. <i>The Death of Stalin</i> - Armando Iannucci is the best ever at satire that is not quite satire because he is too right about the grotesque sausage-making of empires. In the same way <i>Veep </i>scripts began to predict Trump's White House, <i>The Death of Stalin </i>doesn't feel at all out of step with the bumbling series of events that would occur in the event of King Trump's longed-for demise. The stacked cast, from Steve Buscemi to Jason Isaacs to Simon Russell Beale to Jeffrey Tambor skillfully convey the endless absurdity of each political power grab. And their clothes are so vile you can almost smell them through the screen.<br />
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9. <i>Let the Sunshine In</i> - Claire Denis will always give you something different. <i>Let the Sunshine In </i>pairs her with Juliette Binoche in a comedic mode, as the legendary actress faces middle age and all manner of insufferable Gallic nincompoops. From the cretin who insists of "gluten-free olives" to the ignorant, Harry Dean Stanton-type drifter, it's all garbage until she hangs out with Alex Descas, one of the classiest figures in contemporary cinema. And, like a gout-inducing glass of port, Gerard Depardieu ends the picture with a fantastic cameo.<br />
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8. <i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i> - With the recent documentary <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> and this film, it's been great to have James Baldwin's words back in the public imagination. Barry Jenkins adapts Baldwin's 1974 novel with tremendous tenderness for his star-crossed leads, KiKi Layne and Stephan James. In a one-sequence but brilliant appearance, Brian Tyree Henry succinctly describes the prison-industrial complex: "This country really does not like n---as." Jenkins's cinematographer James Laxton lights the faces in the film with the unusual radiance he finds in any space, but he makes sure the prisons are never beautiful.<br />
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7. <i>Burning</i> - Lee Chang-dong made good films with <i>Secret Sunshine </i>and <i>Poetry </i>but he has far exceeded those with <i>Burning</i>, a completely engrossing study of three characters full of literary affinities, from <i>The Great Gatsby </i>to <i>Crime and Punishment</i> (the film is based on a Haruki Murakami story). In addition to the scorching work of Steven Yeun, Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo give great, troubled performances as poorer souls. Yoo's slow writer is on the receiving end of the shiver-inducing diss, "What kind of 'writing' are you planning to 'create?'" Even more chilling, as cooly delivered by Yuen, is the line, "I have a habit of burning greenhouses..."<br />
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6. <i>The Favourite</i> - Yorgos Lanthimos is back at his best with <i>The Favourite</i>. Olivia Colman, as the gout-afflicted Queen Anne, vomiting blue cake and surrounded by rabbits, is served by her sharp lady-in-waiting Emma Stone, whose enormous eyes were made to gawk at the goings on, and her even sharper confidante Rachel Weisz, who does some of the strongest work of her career. And then there's the marvelous Nicholas Hoult, whose speech is powdered as prettily as his resplendent wig. The biting insults, vicious repartee, and impromptu breakdancing make for a giddy two hours.<br />
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5. <i><a href="https://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/8213469-181/film-isle-of-dogs-has">Isle of Dogs</a></i> - Moving from one polarizing auteur to another, there's Wes Anderson's <i>Isle of Dogs</i>, in which he again flexes his mastery of stop-motion animation. The canines quarantined on Trash Island are hilarious, especially Jeff Goldblum's mutt, who knows all the rumors. Anderson is seen as an apolitical stylist, but has made a picture very relevant to these times—<i>Isle of Dogs</i> touches on the environmental destruction of the planet and the plight of "aboriginal" dogs born on Trash Island that are unable to gain asylum and enter the wider world.<br />
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4. <i><a href="https://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/8828243-181/film-review-a-star-is">A Star Is Born</a></i> - While his direction would hardly be confused with the ultra-controlled mastery of Anderson, Bradley Cooper acquits himself well as a first-time filmmaker. He gets great performances from Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay and himself (borrowing Sam Elliott's voice). The music is tremendous, real pop and real country, all of it listenable—especially for those of us who found "Shallow" atop our year-end most-played playlists. You really feel the Jason Isbell-penned lyrics of Cooper’s signature tune—it takes a lot to change a man, hell, it takes a lot to try.<br />
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3. <i>Roma</i> - As with Cooper's <i>A Star Is Born</i>, this film is clearly a passion project Alfonso Cuarón, and a beautifully conceived one at that. The household of a well-to-do Mexico City family in the 1970s is seen through the eyes of the incredible non-actor Yalitza Aparicio. She does her daily business against a fabulous city backdrop, full of large-scale, "how’d-he-get-that-shot?!" choreography. There are a dozen memorable sequences, highlighted by a nude shower bar martial arts demonstration and an uproarious, "The Rules of the Game"-style interlude in the country. <i>Roma</i> is mid-career masterpiece full of nods to Cuarón’s former films, especially <i>Y Tu Mamá También</i> and its desperate, breathtaking climax at the beach.<br />
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2. <i>Minding the Gap</i> - Bing Liu's debut film is a riveting look at Rockford, Illinois and the intergenerational damage caused by poverty, abuse and alcoholism. It's also the foremost skateboarding documentary ever, with Liu following skaters Keire, Zack, and himself. The cinematography is tremendous, so skillfully tied together it's almost inconceivable that Liu produced this landmark documentary in only his mid-20s, after filming for a dozen years. <i>Minding the Gap </i>shows the ways in which, to help deal with trauma, you control the minutest actions while you’re on your board skating...or in your editing bay, cutting together a masterpiece.<br />
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1. <i>Zama</i> - As played by the brilliant Daniel Giménez Cacho, protagonist Don Diego de Zama is at the end of the alphabet, the end of the world, and the end of his rope. Lucrecia Martel's adaptation about a Spanish colonial functionary stuck in the South American interior improbably improves upon Antonio di Benedetto’s must-read novel of the same name. As the hero loses track of time, so does the viewer, lost in immersive lushness of Martel's vision. The film ends in the emerald beauty of the countryside, as Zama tries to move out of the fetid ennui of his colonial outpost, even if the quest is sure to be fatal. The most lasting image of the year is the hungry landscape swallowing him whole.<br />
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<br />kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-55586690972701340812018-05-27T12:33:00.000-07:002018-05-27T12:33:06.536-07:00Boggle PoemFound poem from a game of Big Boggle with Mr. Cody W. M. Upton:<br />
<br />
The terns are lost<br />
kept as pets with the rest<br />
they nest with hens have<br />
restless fetes on lots<br />
here and there --<br />
the most gorgeous gets<br />
a penthouse that's hers.kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-45818505354232611062018-04-05T08:20:00.000-07:002018-04-05T08:20:39.667-07:00Best of 2017<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
We put a brave face on things, but 2017 was a bad year at the movies. With nonsense like <i>Dumbkirk </i>and <i>Grinding Nemo </i>pulling down most awards at the Oscars, it made last year's surprise <i>Moonlight </i>win feel like a dream. We're back to the old darkness, with small bits of light provided by (incrementally) more diverse casting, non-actors, Olivier Assayas and, of course, #KSTEW. </div>
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2017 was slightly stronger than I indicated in my earlier <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/7808694-181/sonoma-film-critics-choice-for">Top 10</a> for the <i>Sonoma Index-Tribune</i>. So read on for new entries in the Top 10! As you read through a hierarchy topped with beautiful dresses, listen to this by Marlon Williams. As the artist has said of the tune: "I don't know what this song is about, and I don't want to know."<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b></div>
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We can all only dream to have a boyfriend as delightful as <b>O'Shea Jackson</b> in <i>Ingrid Goes West</i>, his attachment to Batman fanfic not withstanding. <b>Ben Safdie</b> was unbelievably good at absorbing all manner of abuse in <i>Good Times</i>. What a delight it's been watching <b>Timothee Chalamet</b> flit about in <i>Lady Bird</i> and<i> Call Me By Your Name</i>, reading fine literature and flashing those vulpine features softened only by the haircut all the boys had at my middle school. It's incredible that <b>Lil Rel Howery</b> did not even get an Oscar nom for his role as <i>Get Out</i>—he is the truth telling friend we all desperately need before making weekend plans, and the WTT awardee for Best Supporting Actor.</div>
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<b>Best Supporting Actress </b></div>
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In the battle of best supporting moms I'll take <b>Holly Hunter </b>in <i>The Big Sick</i> over <b>Allison Janney</b> in <i>I, Tonya</i> over <b>Laurie Metcalf</b> in <i>Lady Bird</i>. And the better lady movie of the year was <i>Lady Macbeth</i>, which had a great mute performance by <b>Naomi Ackie</b>. The best uses of breakfast foods came from <i>Get Out</i>, where <b>Allison Williams</b> deconstructed Froot Loops and milk, and <i>Girls Trip</i>, where <b>Tiffany Haddish </b>repurposed a grapefruit and banana to uproarious effect. But my award must go to the grand dame of the breakfast table, my old so-and-so, <b>Lesley Manville</b> in <i>Phantom Thread</i>. Please come run my life Cyril!<br />
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<b>Best Actor</b><br />
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In the auto-nominations category, we have WTT's daily inspiration <b>Channing Tatum</b> in<i> Logan Lucky</i>. Of course I have to praise the dual android, poetry-spouting <b>Michael Fassbender </b>in <i>Alien: Covenant</i>, proving that quoting "Ozymandias" makes you sexier than <b>Ryan Gosling</b>'s <i>Blade Runner 2049 </i>replicant. <b>Gael Garcia Bernal </b>was back to his best as a voice in <i>Coco </i>and live action in <i>You're Killing Me Susana</i>. <b>Vin Diesel </b>was so pleased to be starring in <i>xXx: The Return of Xander Cage </i>you couldn't help but grin along. But 2017 had only one acting performance: <span style="background-color: white;"><b>Daniel Day-Lewis</b> in <i>Phantom Thread</i>. What a man, what a man, what a mighty mighty good man. The ultimate expression of WTT motto NO MEDIOCRE. </span></div>
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<b>Best Actress</b></div>
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<b>Vicky Krieps</b> was excellent as Day-Lewis's <i>media naranja</i> in <i>Phantom Thread </i>and in her way kicked as much ass as <b>Charlize Theron</b> in <i>Atomic Blonde </i>(make her the next James Bond, dummies—the world demands more of Charlize beating the everliving shit out of everyone!). As time passes I grow more enamored of <b>Aubrey Plaza</b>'s total investment in her roles—she was fascinating in <i>Dirty Grandpa</i> a couple of years ago and has much stronger material in <i>Ingrid Goes West</i>. Like Plaza, <b>Bria Vianaite</b> of <i>The Florida Project </i>comes out of left field, straight from Instagram to the cinema crackling with intensity that just isn't seen from more mannered actresses. But the award goes to the only thespian who reliably shakes me from my comfort zone (almost nodding off in an overpriced chair on the lefthand aisle of the cinema): <b>Kristen Stewart</b>. I feel her character in <i>Personal Shopper</i> in all my anxious texting, all my late, frustrated days.<br />
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<b>Best Pictures </b></div>
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<i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/7701974-181/film-review-coco?artslide=0">Coco</a></i> - Pixar does its finest world-building ever in <i>Coco</i>—the Land of the Dead is a marigold-drenched wonderland in which the skeletal spirits of your ancestors sing, dance, and make art. It’s also happy news that, even without flesh, the dead can still drink tequila. When you (re)watch the film, remember to bring a box of tissues to the theater with you—as one character says, speaking to the afterlife or the best Pixar films: “This place runs on memories.”</div>
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<i>Lost City of Z</i> - From <i>Aguirre, the Wrath of God </i>to <i>The New World </i>to this film there is something endlessly appealing about pushing upriver into the unknown. The fact that none of these dumb, self-mythologizing white boys would ever return only adds to the romance. Director James Gray adapts the wild excellence of David Grann's book and, especially on the big screen, you can feel the Amazon wrap its arms around you as Percy Fawcett follows the lure of little voices to his destiny. </div>
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<i>Dawson City: Frozen Time</i> - In this superlative documentary, Bill Morrison provides a meditative mélange of photographs, documentary footage, silent films, and early talkies from Dawson City, a turn-of-the-century gold rush town in the Yukon that was the end of the line for thousands of reels of early movies. The doc includes amazing nuggets, like the reason Jack London turned back for home before reaching Dawson City (scurvy) and the origin of the Trump family fortune (brothels). By the end, you almost can’t imagine cinema history without this small town—if not for the future moguls who intersected there, we might never have had the chance to watch <i>Snatched</i>, 2017’s worst film.</div>
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<i>Call Me By Your Name</i> - You try to think of yourself as the kind of person who would never cry while listening to a Sufjan Stevens in public but then you do, and it's Luca Guadagnino fault. <i>CMBYN </i>also deserves credit for spawning the most enjoyable <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/armie-hammer-dances-to-twitter-meme-call-me-by-your-name-1201886748/">meme</a> of the year, moves so cold even those of us who are more rhythmically challenged can't help but try to duplicate them—see, we're just doing the Armie! There's also the outstanding mood of doomed love and wistfulness and regret—all while the romance is still happening!—capped with a great dad talk and an amazing winter lookbook. </div>
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<i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/7363259-181/film-review-wind-river?artslide=0">Wind River</a></i> - Writer/director Taylor Sheridan is among the best at leading us to the dark places in our society and this trip to the Wind River Indian reservation is no different. As a young man (and potential murder suspect) on the rez explains: “I wanna fight the whole world.” Despite the bracing violence in the film, it’s fascinating to watch Jeremy Renner’s tracker Cory as he moves from hunting mountain lions that prey on livestock to hunting death itself.</div>
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<i>Good Time</i> - Josh and Ben Safdie direct what is, for a few minutes at least, a straightforward picture about two brothers, Connie (Robert Pattinson, very good) and Nick (Ben Safdie, extraordinary) bumbling through a bank heist. From there straight through the end, the plot goes spectacularly off the rails—the hilarious, truly inconceivable twists are so uproarious that you run the risk of peeing your pants from the sheer giddiness. Future filmmakers must take notes on how to craft a proper thriller that never comes up for a breath.<br />
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<i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/6724925-181/film-review-get-out?artslide=0">Get Out</a></i> - The film was nominated for a Golden Globe in the “Best Musical or Comedy” category but, crucially, director Jordan Peele has called the film a documentary. The power of the piece is the utter believability of the ills that befall Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris, a black man trapped in the hell of a long weekend with his white girlfriend’s parents. While often very funny, Peele’s film is heavy on bitter truths. A cop car appears twice and both times you immediately fear for our hero—across the country, police have generated a well-earned, gut-level fear from their constituents in minority communities.</div>
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<i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/7338346-181/film-review-logan-lucky?artslide=0">Logan Lucky</a></i> - With little else to recommend it, 2017 can at least be remembered fondly for Steven Soderbergh’s return to filmmaking. Like <i>Good Time</i>, the criminals in this robbery picture are not overly bright but possess a desperate ingenuity. It’s so fun to watch country-fried narrative threads spread in many directions before being tied back together. <i>Logan Lucky</i> boasts a brilliant climax at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which Soderbergh photographs in popping bright colors to capture the rainbowed American glory of all those glittering stock cars.</div>
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<i>The Florida Project</i> - Sean Baker famously shot his debut feature <i>Tangerine</i> on an iPhone and returned to shoot <i>The Florida Project </i>on even more beautiful 35mm. This film, set in the strip mall and cheap motel squalor outside Disney World, is about people pushed too far in an unnatural, lavender-and-fuchsia landscape. Much has been made of performance from seven-year-old spitfire Brooklyn Decker as a free-roaming child but the startling, discomfiting acting by newcomer Bria Vinaite as her mother is indelible. As with Sasha Lane’s Star in last year’s <i>American Honey</i>, the finest recent acting has been done by untrained presences like Vianaite. </div>
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<i>Phantom Thread</i> - Easily the best PTA picture, thanks to the cast—all of which has been lauded above—and the relative restraint of the director. The film is not about wild tracking shots and enormous amounts of acting. The most exciting set pieces are of Daniel Day-Lewis at work—cutting, sewing, staring down the lines. In addition to motivating future breakfast orders, <i>Phantom Thread </i>shows the ways in which idiosyncratic artists, whether the subject or the maker of the film, help show why it's worthwhile to keep fighting through the cruelty and banality of life—think of the couture we'd miss if we died today! </div>
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<i>Personal Shopper</i> - Any film is bound to be excellent when the best French director, Oliver Assayas, works with the best American actress, Kristen Stewart. Assayas wrote the film for Stewart when they were working together on the magisterial <i>Clouds of Sils Maria</i>, and the script addresses fashion, the supernatural, and the burden of being a talented personal assistant. Surrounded by jittering wraiths and glittering couture, Stewart moves through Paris and London with the radical coldness that sets her apart from her contemporaries. The cinematic sound from 2017 that will linger longest in the ears is the skittering of Stewarts’s fingers over her phone as she composes text messages to a ghost.<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-79113577151537683682017-02-26T11:04:00.002-08:002017-02-26T11:04:29.800-08:00Best of 2016I have, for THE paper of record in Sonoma Valley, already given you my <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/6481529-181/2016-a-film-odyssey?artslide=1">top ten</a> wide release films from 2016. But there is an alternate best of list, a superior and updated one, below. And it's not too difficult to separate out the pretty good from the more or less unwatchable in 2016—the real challenge would be to parse the extremely narrow margins amongst the bottom 10 (or 25). I am, however, not brave enough to revisit my thoughts on <i>Warcraft </i>v. <i>Suicide Squad </i>v. <i>Marvel Horseshitiverse: Civil War </i>v. <i>Batman v. Superman </i>v. the sweet sleep of death.<br />
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As the Hollywood productions I watched continued to enervate and enrage with their lack of ideas, I tracked the demographics among the filmmakers of 2016 movies released in Sonoma, CA (where the wine and people are slightly better than those in Napa). To use a horrifying neologism, I briefly <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/817828657787858944">tweetstormed</a> on this topic. I assumed women and people of color would be underrepresented but how can it be this bad? Directors of films released in Sonoma (which I think is a reasonable representation of small town, one-AMC-Theater-only America) are 94% male and 89% white. It's a disgrace. Films and performances by non-white, non-men are, as usual, overrepresented on my year end list but that does little to rinse the bitter taste.<br />
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Here's hoping that 2017 holds more directorial efforts from the Solanges of the world and fewer from the Zack Snyders.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b><br />
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The best idea is probably to copy Manohla Dargis and give all five noms to the supporting actors in <i>Moonlight</i>, but I pretend to use original thought on the WTT. I always appreciate a madman spouting aphorisms, so love to <b>Alessandro Nivola</b> in <i>The Neon Demon</i>: "True beauty is the highest currency we have. Without it, she would be nothing." It pleased me to no end that antagonists on <i>The Office</i>—<b>John Krasinski</b> and <b>David Denman</b>—are superbros in the good(!) Michael Bay film <i>13 Hours</i>. And <b>John Malkovich</b> is a great scenery snacker in <i>Deepwater Horizon</i>. But it all comes back to <b>Mahershala Ali</b> in <i>Moonlight</i>. He is not just the best of the year but one of the best for all time, a role that fills me with wonder. Come back to me Juan!<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress</b><br />
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Chloe Sevigny</b> is a perfect supporting actress for any movie but especially in a Whit Stillman film like <i>Love and Friendship</i>. <b>Scarlett Johansson </b>and <b>Tilda Swinton</b> are marvelously sharp in <i>Hail, Caesar! </i>but slip away too quickly. I'll give a random shout to <b>Aubrey Plaza</b> for embracing exactly how awful <i>Dirty Grandpa</i> is and delivering every leaden line with disgusted gusto. But the most excited I was for a supporting actress in 2016 was <b>Janelle Monáe</b> in <i>Moonlight </i>and <i>Hidden Figures</i>—she vivified the screen with her snap and verve. Hopefully much more to come from her—I suggest a film on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OkB6p_FZAw">yoga</a>.<br />
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<b>Best Actress</b><br />
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Credit to <b>Blake Lively</b> for her excellent use of her jewelry to stitch wounds in <i>The Shallows</i>,<br />
<b>Samantha Robinson</b> for her delirious embrace of Anne Biller's vision in <i>The Love Witch</i>, and <b>Amy Adams</b> for her ultra-linguistic brilliance in <i>Arrival</i>. And, because it's too hard to select between the harrowing continental performances of <b>Sandra Hüller </b>in <i>Toni Erdmann</i> and <b>Isabelle Huppert </b>in <i>Elle</i> (they both seem the only actresses who could play those very difficult parts), my best actress is <b>Sasha Lane</b> in <i>American Honey</i>. My longterm affection for nonactors stems from performances like this, the pleasurable wildness of an actress, a director and an audience seeing something new together. My sense is that Ms. Lane herself wasn't sure what she was selling in certain scenes: magazines, sex, her own charisma.<br />
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<b>Best Actor</b><br />
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First a nod to <b>Christian Bale</b> for putting up with whatever dizzy shit Terrence Malick was doing in <i>Knight of Cups</i>. <b>Michael Shannon</b> (still holding the belt for favorite domestic WTT actor) proves in <i>Midnight Special</i> he's continually awe-inspiring. But the real race is for best facial hair, wherein <b>Vin Diesel</b> in <i>The Last Witch Hunter </i>is a glorious, braided option, <b>Colin Farrell</b>'s <i>Lobster </i>character<i> </i>has the most depressive mustache you'll ever see and <b>Chris Pine</b> in <i>Hell or High Water </i>sports a delicious mustache to beard muddle that recalls, well, Colin Farrell in <i>Miami Vice</i>. But the nod goes to <b>Tom Hanks</b> in <i>Sully</i>—in film after film he is as immaculate as Chesley Sullenberger's neat white pushbroom.<br />
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<b>Best Pictures </b><br />
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See also: <i>Arrival</i>, <i>Loving</i>, <i>Midnight Special</i>, <i>Hell or High Water</i>, <i>Ixcanul</i>,<i> Elle</i>, <i>Zootopia</i>, and, if you're very patient, <i>Knight of Cups</i> and <i>Neon Demon</i>.<br />
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10. <i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/5712316-181/film-review-the-lobster?artslide=0">The Lobster</a></i> - In this highly credible satire, "The City" is patrolled by uniformed men demanding marriage paperwork and, if you don’t have it, you’re sent to "The Hotel," where you’ll find a mate or be turned into a wild animal of your choice. <i>The Lobster</i> is the logical extension of our current mania for the polite emptiness of online dating, where couples are pressed together by algorithms and every dream vacation destination is deadened by the tepid prose of glossy airplane magazines. In the movie at least, those who break free spend an uproarious time on the lam, in woods filled with people they used to know, now in the form of a camel or flamingo.</div>
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9. <i>Cameraperson</i> - We need many more cinematographic memoirs. Kirsten Johnson, who has lensed dozens of documentaries (including motherfucking <i>Citizenfour</i>), here collages footage from many of her projects, much of it absolutely hair-raising. For a somewhat disorienting 20 minutes, the sequences seem unconnected but a pattern emerges as the film marches ahead with incredible storytelling of genocide in Bosnia and Darfur and almost unwatchable scenes from a makeshift maternity ward in Nigeria. It is an excellent film, and a test of even my voyeurism.<br />
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8. <i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/6533472-181/film-review-la-la-land?artslide=0">La La Land</a></i> - I give this more points for sparking so many angry spats amongst jazz people, musical people, people who hate mansplaining in all its forms (so, many of my friend groups). Regardless of where you stand in the standoff between Gosling vs. Legend for the future of jazz, this is the throwback to classic Hollywood we pretended <i>The Artist</i> was in 2011. As with <i>Whiplash</i>, when director Damien Chazelle swings, he swings hard over and over, until his arms get tired. Seeing a Los Angeles where the old movie palaces are shut down and the big band halls have transitioned to samba and tapas places, Chazelle reveals his burning passion for jazz and classic cinema. <i>La La Land</i> is jammed with song and dance, rash technicolor displays and literal flights of fancy. Charming actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone often wear looks that show they can’t help themselves—they've made something special.<br />
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Beyond the words in my review of the film I can report something else as important: the two times I saw <i>La La Land </i>and got to the audition scene, I had chill run straight up my spine. Right or wrong, if I had the chance, I'd stand up right now, walk to the theater and watch it again.<br />
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7. <i>Manchester by the Sea</i> - Casey Affleck proves a thousand times better than his brother at playing a damaged man, featuring in one of the best films of the year while Ben cast his steely gaze at whatever it was in the last <i>Batman</i> flick. Given the brutal plot summary of <i>Manchester by the Sea</i>, it's surprising that it’s also the most laugh-out-loud funny film of the year. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan provides a savagely hilarious script, including a very funny cameo for himself, yelling at the good Affleck. As a bonus, the film doubles as motivation to drink less, despite daily provocations, in 2017.<br />
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6. <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> - This documentary goes well beyond journalism to get to the truth, challenging viewers to wrestle with the deaths of Martin, Malcom and Medgar as written in the unpublished notebooks of James Baldwin. Eschewing talking heads, <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> is all Baldwin footage and prose, with some contemporary clips cut in, from Ferguson and elsewhere in the disintegrating United States of America. The material is strong enough that it forces Samuel L. Jackson, who narrates, to tone down his histrionics and smolder, to be as lucid as Baldwin was eviscerating the iniquities of our nation.<br />
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I remain proud that the place I work made this film happen and that one day Raoul Peck walked in the door and I got to shake his hand and tell him his film is better than <i>O.J.: Made in America</i>. It's a film about genius rather than notoriety (and thus has no chance to win the Best Doc Oscar).<br />
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5. <i>Toni Erdmann</i> - This is a rewarding, very long comedy about work that almost reaches the delightful pain of the British <i>Office </i>or Lars Von Trier's <i>The Boss of It All</i>. The aforepraised Sandra Hüller and magnificent Peter Simonischek are an indelible daughter/father pairing in this film studded with shockingly funny deadpan moments, including a tender shot of semen-spattered petit fours. Directorial marvel Maren Ade accomplishes the astonishing feat of shooting a scene as great as the one in which Hüller bangs out Whitney's "The Greatest Love of All" then somehow <i>tops it </i>later in the film (using a costume as fine as Octave's bear suit in <i>The Rules of the Game</i>).<br />
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(Also: it is an official WTT prediction that the Kristen Wiig/Jack Nicholson Hollywood remake will be one of the ten worst movies ever made.)</div>
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4. <i>American Honey</i> - In making the combustible <i>American Honey</i>, Andrea Arnold (director of WTT-favorite <i>Fish Tank</i>) embedded herself with many nonprofessional actors and one merely unprofessional one (Shia LaBeouf, rocking a most alarming pigtail). The best of her finds, picked off a beach in Miami, is of course Sasha Lane, who brings startling passion to her role. A whole crew of hustlers is shot hazily in vans and cheap motels—this is a meandering road movie lensed across the South and Midwest, places deep in the American twilight full of poverty and grace and bad tattoos. Arnold knows how music can make or break a moment and when Rihanna’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo6BVhjt7ao">"We Found Love"</a> blasts across the Walmart checkout aisles it's a fitting hymn for the film and for our time.<br />
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3. <i>Cemetery of Splendor</i> - This film has recently increased in my estimation after a rewatch, perhaps because it is about soldiers who sleep continuously for months (they are, one character patiently explains, fighting a dream war on behalf long-dead kings in another dimension). If only I could sign up for four years of peaceful slumber in quiet Thailand adjacent a glowing neon tube floating through sherbety colors that ease my nightmares. As one character reads in a journal, "Our problem is that we think too much...at night we call these dreams." Even when the soldiers wake, it is not exactly into the real world, but a space in limbo, where deities step down from their daises and give skin care tips to mortals. I was so moved by a sequence where a nurse walks through a former palace of deceased kings that is now a ramshackle park—where a beautiful stone pillar once held a glittering roof, there is now a tree with an orchid growing on it. Director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is a genius who helps his audience practice stillness—if we open our minds the way his characters do, we can see glittering floors of pink stone instead of dead leaves on the ground.<br />
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2. <i>My Golden Days</i> - Director Arnaud Desplechin is, to borrow a phrase from this film, mon amour adore. Here he's made a madeleine from an adult Paul Dédalus (played by Mathieu Amalric with his usual resplendence) to his younger self (Quentin Dolmaire), who is madly in love with Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). The young actress, faced with the daunting task of becoming Emmanuelle Devos in Desplechin's earlier/later film <i>My Sex Life...or How I Got into an Argument</i>, owns from the moment we see her slow dancing with herself in a crowded party. In ten seconds, we are ready to buy Paul's line to her: "Have you ever been loved more than life? It's how I'll love you." The rest of the film is their passion, mostly told through their letters, which are given as wonderful direct addresses to the camera. And, as the strains from the score to <i>Vertigo</i> float in, I felt an old, melancholy ache—perhaps we are in love in this life just once.<br />
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1. <i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/6337680-181/film-review-moonlight?artslide=0">Moonlight</a></i> - No points for originality here. But it speaks to the brilliance of Barry Jenkins that the critics' choice and the Oscar favorite and the WTT pick are one and the same this season. I hope this remarkable film, eye-catching on the first viewing and rewarding across many more, is the start of a needed response to the whiteness of the Hollywood whale. After most other images from this year are forgotten, there will be the magnificent Mahershala Ali holding that boy in the water—so, so blue.<br />
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I ended last year's column by saying "2016's gonna be great." Jesus Christ. I hope I meant that ironically. In 2017 we're all gonna die. But perhaps the pictures will be pretty.<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-18876119846855967202016-04-27T19:16:00.000-07:002016-04-27T19:16:27.007-07:00Off White[I had to cut a section from an essay for publication but would hate for my love of Brian McKnight to be lost to the world. It is reproduced below.]<br />
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Half an Ativan is not enough—I still think I’m going to die as we rattle down the runway.<br />
Since I last flew, Virgin America has failed to renew their license on Brian McKnight’s “Back at One” so I cannot listen to it during takeoff. I’ve paid the premium to fly Virgin not for the mood lighting but because I can be listening to that song at the moment the wheels leave the runway—I have never yet died while it is playing. <br />
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That the music video for the song involves a plane crash is such a ridiculous coincidence that I must have sublimated the fact when I picked my to-die-to anthem.<br />
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It has an easy chorus to repeat if you picture yourself as a nervous child who has severe issues with memorizing numbers. My right hand holds the armrest as hard as I can without the knuckles whitening and my left hand grips my right forearm. I raise the fingers as I count up, mouthing silently.<br />
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“One, you’re like a dream come true,”<br />
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I listen too carefully for moment it feels to me the engines stop pushing us up and we float out.<br />
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“Two, just want to be with you,”<br />
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I would like to be in the middle seat next to She.<br />
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“Three, girl, it’s plain to see / That you’re the only one for me,”<br />
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When She rides her bike on nights when it’s too cold her fingers go white on the handlebars and for her it’s almost always too cold.<br />
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“And four, repeat steps one through three,”<br />
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Sometimes She gets home and sends me a picture so I see what She means.<br />
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“Five, make you fall in love with me.”<br />
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I write out the reply <i>oh, I want to hold them </i>then erase the line with the last vestiges of will. At least I am not coating my arms and back with cold sweat—thanks for that, half an Ativan. I pick up a copy of <i>White Girls</i> I can’t read and watch the plastic window shade, the color of clouds at 35,000 feet.<br />
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“It’s unbelievable how I used to say that I’d fall never.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.thecommononline.org/dispatches/spring-new-york-pt-i">More</a> <a href="http://www.thecommononline.org/dispatches/spring-new-york-pt-2">here</a>.kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-36315759883358155042016-02-01T20:28:00.000-08:002016-02-01T20:28:06.126-08:00Best of 2015<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
In 2015 I got a gig writing for THE paper of record in Sonoma valley and boy has that established for me that Hollywood is <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2015/08/worse-than-i-thought.html">worse</a> than I thought...and the requirement to watch the biggest releases each week impacted my ability to write on the WTT about other, better films (thankfully, the gig has not impacted my ability to make excuses about not writing). That said, <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/search?q=kirk%20michael&type=news&sort=PUBLISHED&dir=DESC&days=all&pub=">read all my reviews</a>! I'm working up a lather now and getting stronger even if the films aren't--bet on it.<br />
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In paging through WTT "Best of" posts from years past (in a desperate attempt to put off work on this new post), the films sort of reorder themselves around the ones I've had the biggest urge to watch since. For 2015 I tried to rank less on what I consider the best in this moment and more on which films will obsess me moving forward. </div>
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b></div>
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I have more clarity on certain subcategories of this section--the best costumes for a supporting actor goes to <b>Isaach de Bankole</b> in <i>The Last Witch Hunter</i>, the best supporting voice acting is <b>Sam Elliott</b> in <i>The Good Dinosaur</i>, the best ensemble supporting acting is a fierce competition between <b>Michael Sheen</b> and <b>Tom Sturridge</b> in <i>Far from the Madding Crowd </i>and <b>Joe Manganiello</b>, <b>Matt Bomer</b>, <b>Kevin Nash</b> and <b>Adam Rodriguez</b> in <i>Magic Mike XXL</i>. For some reason, <b>Jeff Daniels</b>' "Mark Watney is dead" line from <i>The Martian </i>still kills me, I don't know why. (I do know why. I wish Matt Damon were dead.) But the prize goes to <b>Benicio del Toro</b>, because his character in <i>Sicario</i> plays exquisitely off his <i>Traffic</i> statuette-winner and because he runs off and hides with the narrative in the last half hour of the film.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress</b></div>
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With apologies to Ilsa Faust in <i>M:I5</i>, <b>Lea Seydoux </b>wins for the best supporting actress name--Madeleine Swann--in <i>Spectre</i>. The most surprising supporting actress turn belongs to <b>Monica Bellucci</b> in <i>The Wonders</i>--one cannot imagine the American analog of her fabulous guest appearance in a film about rural Italian beekeepers. Praise be the ensemble of Turkish Coppola virgins in <i>Mustang</i>--<b>Güneş Şensoy</b>, <b>Doğa Doğuşlu</b>, <b>İlayda Akdoğan</b>, <b>Tuğba Sunguroğlu </b>and <b>Elit İşcan</b>--they are charm and wallop together. <b>Lola Kirke</b> is excellent smirks and turns of phrase against Greta Gerwig in <i>Mistress America </i>but really the only performance one sees is <b>Kristen Stewart</b>'s in <i>The Clouds of Sils Maria</i>--her<i> </i>personal assistance to Juliette Binoche dominates the landscape and then recedes in the most affecting retreat of the year. </div>
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<b>Best Actor</b></div>
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2015 was a year of #hottiealerts. I must put order to my objectification, so, with apologies to Chris Hemsworth's faux Moby-Dick pecs <i>In the Heart of the Sea </i>and Jake Gylenhaal's phenomenal <i>Southpaw</i> abdominals, the best topless performances are by <b>Michael B. Jordan </b>in <i>Creed</i> (astonishing, truly astonishing that this film is left on the outside by the Academy) and <b>Channing Tatum</b> with so, so much Magic in his Mike. Shoutouts to the scruffier sex symbols <b>Viggo Mortenson</b> in <i>Jauja</i> and <b>Vin Diesel </b>in <i>The Last Witch Hunter</i> working their way handsomely through various portals. But in <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> <b>Matthias Schoenaerts</b>' Gabriel Oak is that most special heartthrob: women want him, blogging men want to be in (much smaller sizes of) his impeccable shepherd wear. To paraphrase J. Lo to Clooney in <i>Out of Sight</i>: "you really wear that scarf." I'm just thankful that now all theaters have those high-backed seats so I didn't snap my neck swooning when Gabriel sorted all those bloated sheep and got tarps over the haystacks in the rain.<br />
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<b>Best Actress</b></div>
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Salute to <b>Angelina Jolie</b> for<b> </b>directing and starring in <i>By the Sea</i>--her excellent work was dismissed as vacuous and narcissistic with a viciousness that would never apply to male actors/directors--but I'll long remember her face in the film, a gorgeously-photographed mask of pain. Another hat tip to <b>Kristen Stewart </b>in <i>American Ultra</i>, as the straw that stirs Jesse Eisenberg's drink. One wonders how in the world <b>Charlize Theron</b> wasn't nominated for <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i> and if one had any hopes to save #OscarsSoWhite, it would have been noms for the extraordinary cohorts in <i>Tangerine</i>, <b>Kitana Kiki Rodriguez</b> and <b>Mya Taylor</b>--they burn that motherfucker to the ground. I must credit longtime WTT-enemy David O. Russell for wising up and getting everything (Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, plot logistics) out of <b>Jennifer Lawrence</b>'s way in <i><a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/4996920-181/film-review-jumping-for-joy">Joy</a>--</i>her role shares the same electricity as that of the not-be-denied Naomi Watts in <i>Mulholland Dr</i>. </div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Best Pictures</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">20-11</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Spectre</i>, <i>By the Sea</i>, <i>In Jackson Heights</i>, <i>Mistress America</i>, <i>The Wonders</i>, <i>Jauja</i>, <i>Joy</i>, <i>Mustang</i>, <i>Timbuktu</i>, <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i>.</span><br />
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10. <i>Tangerine</i> - The first minutes of the film have a fantastic effect. My mind was full of questions like <i>what am I watching? why is it shot like this? who ARE these people? what is HAPPENING??</i> Sean Baker directs this picture so aggressively it's probably as close as we'll get to a Ryan Trecartin film at a cinema near us. The aforementioned excellence of Kitana Kiki Rodriguez is apparent in a flash--when her friend explains her boyfriend's been cheating on her she clarifies that she's "an upper hoe" and sets the narrative in motion. Rodriguez and her costar Mya Taylor drag the film by the hair through the streets of Los Angeles, which have never looked harsher or more beautiful than they do shot by iPhone, the day turning yellow and blue to orange and pink. Oh, and it's Christmas Eve in a city that's just "a beautifully wrapped lie." </div>
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9. <i>Far from the Madding Crowd </i>- I covered the main points in <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/3990085-181/review-far-from-the-madding?artslide=0">my review</a> but there are many additional things I love about this fast-paced and not-too-stately adaptation of Thomas Hardy. As previously discussed, this is an all-time great film for enthusiasts of scarves and cravats, the best I’ve ever seen in terms of neckwear style and variety (take a bow, costume designer Janet Patterson). In addition to the life-changing style of Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba is not slouch in a sterling blue milkmaid outfit, complete with kerchief, shot against a breathing couture cowhide. I also appreciate that Carey Mulligan sings a folk song that feels about an hour shorter than her “New York, New York” in <i>Shame</i>. As her Bathsheba explains of a most difficult year, “I seem to cry a great deal these days. I never used to cry at all.” Tell me about it lady. </div>
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8. <i>Macbeth</i> - Here's another adaptation of concision--director Justin Kurzel took a lot out of the play but the snatches he left are indelible. "O full of scorpions is my mind!" he says and no contemporary actor has a more scorpion-dense head than Michael Fassbender. He is well on his way to developing the harshest crow's feet in cinema history and his Macbeth dispenses proper, proper violence. His handwash is blood, his war paint is ashes and his crown is tarnished gravestones. Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth matches his intensity, her face essentially a constant death frieze. The witches are hair-raising, the music chills. Kurzel took a green and grey Scottish expanse and turned it defiantly red and black. And as I turned another year older while writing this recap, I appreciated Macbeth's comforting speech about aging:<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I have lived long enough: my way of life</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">And that which should accompany old age,</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I must not look to have; but, in their stead,</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.</span></div>
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7. <i>The Assassin </i>- The black and white opening movements of this film are so perfect I wished for time to stop; I wanted to ask the projectionist for the replay. I gasped and wrote furious notes to myself to look up the cinematographer: Ping Bin Lee (<i>In the Mood for Love</i>, of course). We're introduced to the Assassin in question as she deals death with remarkable naturalness, like a cloud passing across the sun, much more vivid for being so brief. Lee is the longtime lenser for Hou Hsiao-Hsien and, like their work together on <i>The Flowers of Shanghai</i>, this film uses the slightest of camera movements to ratchet the tension of palace intrigues. The set design is gauzy curtains and candlelight--seemingly peaceful, <i>Lyndon</i>-esque<i> </i>compositions interrupted by cuts like the flash of a knife. I often find myself back with the advice of the Assassin's mentor: "your mind is still hostage to human sentiment." </div>
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(The 8 PM screening I attended is also my favorite theatre moment of the year. I was surprised at the relatively full house at the AMC Metreon but the turnout was all based on the title--throughout the two-hour run time, wuxia fanbois with strappy sneakers and ill-coiffed hair paraded out in huffy disgust. An auteur sneak attack!)<br />
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6. <i>Carol </i>- The biggest relief of the year. It was set up to be the one film to save all the shittiness that came before and so it did. Like all red-blooded Americans, I adore Todd Haynes' <i>Far from Heaven</i> and was impressed by how different <i>Carol</i> looks--it's less reminiscent of Douglas Sirk Technicolor than Robert Frank's black and white Americans. The acting is all so fine, with Cate Blanchett lionessing and Rooney Mara Audreying her tiny bangs and Coach Taylor behaving terribly because he had to be named Harge. The smeary interior of the Midwest is exactly the right amount of ugly, just as Highsmith would've wanted it, a slightly unfocused backdrop to the love story. And the formulation of the central relationship is ideal for me: a young artist is drawn resistlessly to an older lover whose art is her life itself. "Take me bed." My only problem with the film is that <i>Carol</i> is such an uninspired title. You know what's a great title? <i>The Price of Salt</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVPDjqPwmSHp__3I_aKA7IhmIz7E7rzRvfOikbXz-53IzLmdtNnJjX5SdeSh3raKRhTKFPQXpzjA6nbDTbnvlOlIlBzuF2sUd0it2UYphLkyB6t0xeO9ms3a7laDdmM_w_joNUBNH3rOov/s1600/magic-mike-xxl-amber-heard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVPDjqPwmSHp__3I_aKA7IhmIz7E7rzRvfOikbXz-53IzLmdtNnJjX5SdeSh3raKRhTKFPQXpzjA6nbDTbnvlOlIlBzuF2sUd0it2UYphLkyB6t0xeO9ms3a7laDdmM_w_joNUBNH3rOov/s400/magic-mike-xxl-amber-heard.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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5. <i>Magic Mike XXL</i> - Some of my feelings are noted <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/4171240-181/film-review-magic-mike-xxl?artslide=0">here</a> but it's nice to revisit the film because the Magic Mike franchise is my favorite argument. How do we live in a culture that insists on taking Avengers films seriously but dismisses Magic Mike as too shallow for serious discussion? People who deny themselves the pleasures of <i>XXL</i> are like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtjhTj7dXXA">this gas station cashier</a> holding off on smiling as long as she can. In part two of what I hope is an endless saga, there are some excellent laugh lines, my favorite being Ken's on the the departed Dallas: "Don't say his name, don't give him that power." As a road picture, a lot of pleasure comes from the casual conversations the guys have, on their plans as they grow up. When not stripping, they work low-level jobs, from running a fro-yo truck to moving furniture--they are American dreamers. The pleasure-center release of the dancing benefits the recipients (who, in <i>XXL</i>, have a <span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">beautiful variety of body shapes and colors) as well as the entertainers. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’d say it’s still their day.</span></div>
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4. <i>Blackhat</i> - I love Michael Mann left to his own devices. As I touched on in my <i>In the Heart of the Sea</i> <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/4936138-181/kirk-michael-reviews-in-the?artslide=0">review</a>, Chris Hemsworth (like Colin Farrell in <i>Miami Vice</i>) is better as an exterior, a vacancy. <i>Blackhat </i>is a film about visions rather than words--characters speak in thick accents and shorthand with the meanings often glitched out. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong, they move through spaces that are like the inside of computers, prisoners tethered to technology, neon chips falling over their faces--even the gold chains on necks come to look like strings of data. Despite the abstraction of much of the film, Mann remains the best composer of gunfights ever, this time surpassing himself with a crosscut sequence where the bad guys retreat down a circular ramp as the good guys make right angle turns in a warren of apartment buildings. Mann features faces and locations no one else could find and set pieces no one else would conceive. I hope his next film bombs too so he can stay small, dirty, digital, violent--he's at his greatest at the edge of coherence. </div>
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3. <i>Sicario</i> - While not a particular Denis Villeneuve fan before this film, I was thrilled with the look of the picture. There's a downright Mannian border crossing sequence and later a deep push into the realm of night goggles and body heat maps. Most of my praise is contained in the <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/entertainment/4615783-181/sicario-opens-in-sonoma?artslide=0">review</a> I wrote at the time so I'll re-emphasize my appreciation for the good films and books that lend a better better understand the ongoing Ciudad Juarez apocalypse. Recently I've read Yuri Herrera's <i>Signs Preceding the End of the World</i>, the <a href="http://blog.longreads.com/2015/12/29/the-story-of-vicente-who-murdered-his-mother-his-father-and-his-sister/">first chapter</a> of <i>The Story of Vincente </i>and listened to <a href="http://homebrave.com/home-of-the-brave//an-introduction-to-charles-bowden">Charles Bowden</a>, all to say I'm more convinced than ever by the pitch blackness into which Villeneuve drops viewers. Critics of his film had similar difficulties with <i>No Country for Old Men</i>, in which many were put off by the surprise death of (the wonderfully resurrected in <i>Sicario</i>) Josh Brolin. But that's cartels, killing the protagonist of any counternarrative with their unslakable thirst for death.</div>
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2. <i>World of Tomorrow </i>- Across the 16 minutes of Don Hertzfeldt's short but capacious animated masterpiece, every frame is screenshot-worthy and every line is quotable. Emily Clone, speaking from the future to her much younger grandmother, Emily Prime, gave me both the hardest laugh ("I drew a snakeboy") and shared the darkest thoughts of 2016 ("I do not have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with his loss but sometimes, I sit in a chair, late at night, and quietly feel very bad"). As we watch <i>World of Tomorrow</i>, much like Emily Prime, we are enjoying ourselves and don't quite sense how serious it is all getting. As carefree 4-year old playing a carefree 4-year-old, the filmmaker's niece Winona Mae gives the best vocal performance...ever? Probably ever. The film is full of ideas, second to second, visual and intellectual and emotional ideas and I want all of it, I want to be it--learn it, love it, <a href="http://www.netflix.com/title/80093162">stream it</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/worldoftomorrow">buy it</a>. "I am very proud of my sadness because it means I am more alive." "Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle."</div>
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(A quick hat tip to David Ehrlich for alerting me that I needed to see this. And, while we're here, his yearly Best of videos are one of the greatest gifts to cineastes--the <a href="https://vimeo.com/148026900">2015</a> version builds to a climax worthy of any film.)</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">1. <i>Clouds of Sils Maria </i>- </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">What I've come to understand is that the films I love best are the ones I must keep watching to try to understand--this is why </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Our Beloved Month of August</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> and </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Certified Copy</i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"> were perhaps underrated in previous years' lists. I saw Olivier Assayas' <i>Clouds of Sils Maria</i> three times in theatres and there's still something just out of reach. </span></div>
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The first act is an introduction to actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) and her assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) who consider whether Maria should take the role of aging Helena in a restaging of the play <i>Maloja Snake</i>--Maria made her name 20 years earlier playing Helena's young foil Sigrid. Of course she must say yes. The second act--an endlessly beguiling affair that takes place in the cabin where <i>Maloja Snake</i> was written--has Maria and Valentine running lines as Helena and Sigrid with no real clarity on where the play ends and their personal conflicts intervene, whether the tensions between them are written. The third act is back in tumult of life with the new Sigrid, Lohanesque paparazzi-magnet Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz), meeting and tormenting Maria/Helena with what is presumably excellent method acting.<br />
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All of this plays off of Moretz and Binoche and Stewart's real life notoriety. They ask themselves why an actress like Maria Enders (like Juliette Binoche!) would take a role in an <i>X-Men</i> film and their conversations about Hollywood compromises are not trivial--it feels like they are addressing the heart of my work, reckoning with the commercial pictures of 2015. More than any action film, these meta games had me on the edge of my seat with excitement. Stewart is so tremendous in this film (and in 2015 as a whole) that I want to watch the <i>Twilight</i> films. I cannot put that in starker terms. Binoche (revelatory as she shifts from slumping in a train car to glamming up for fashion photos) is the best selector of roles and directors alive. Moretz holds her own and even takes the lead in the best <a href="https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/5/23/1400848008130/5acaf4a4-a8d7-4d32-8ecd-6adcd64c12ae-460x276.jpeg">image from Cannes</a>. </div>
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Which role is Binoche? Sigrid or Helena? Helena and Sigrid? Can the present overwrite the past? Assayas makes the<i> Maloja Snake</i> eats its own tail. I will keep watching until I can tell you everything about the play within the play and movie within the movie and the actors within the actors--<i>The Clouds of Sils Maria</i> is my best obsession of the year. </div>
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Remember: "Now is the envy of all of the dead." 2016 is going to be great--so cheer the fuck up.</div>
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-18376979067015766332015-12-20T18:41:00.001-08:002015-12-20T18:41:34.104-08:00Okay Readers<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
To touch upon one of the happier aspects of my unwanted but perhaps inevitable experiment with online dating, I've taken a survey of what women are reading in a five-mile radius of my domicile.<br />
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What is this scientific method? I scroll to an algorithmically-approved woman (whose eyebrows appeal) and click through to her profile. I swoop straight for the books section for close textual analysis and here, all too often, we lose the plot. But, if our tastes in authors are felicitous (and she reaches a height of no more than 5'8"), I message after a period of time between ten minutes and three weeks. </div>
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An aside that emphasizes how much I care about literature: I mistakenly had a picture of my bookcase up as my main profile photo for a weekend, which is too on the nose even for me. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1U-gfcaUPEtWy8bj0hO9PwfEkK3MUjmfkdKyS69r3h8hFAsRmRRMA8kGLXPPkbF4aUD6kLV33ovuzOz8KOVNRVXQGGvGRBxfLhYcpygsui307R2vXusWBM7N-YjVu59d0hCSsiU3heKqb/s1600/books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1U-gfcaUPEtWy8bj0hO9PwfEkK3MUjmfkdKyS69r3h8hFAsRmRRMA8kGLXPPkbF4aUD6kLV33ovuzOz8KOVNRVXQGGvGRBxfLhYcpygsui307R2vXusWBM7N-YjVu59d0hCSsiU3heKqb/s400/books.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">As we say at my place of employment, let's put these issues in different buckets. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Back button and recoil from keyboard cussing out OkC algorithms:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Ayn Rand</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2JOh9YF6Km_cDpppXqhloG6r8WYVzfv5yBGNup_nCIh1jPQS6DGAGLNAJvi1QVKyPUnPuktR6GPh0zQeTQ0O0N2MznmtOqVVWHCIKJDQfpK7UCyk_BLa-35SRnGU0dUNiMZpohLEb3zr/s1600/atlas-shrugged.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2JOh9YF6Km_cDpppXqhloG6r8WYVzfv5yBGNup_nCIh1jPQS6DGAGLNAJvi1QVKyPUnPuktR6GPh0zQeTQ0O0N2MznmtOqVVWHCIKJDQfpK7UCyk_BLa-35SRnGU0dUNiMZpohLEb3zr/s320/atlas-shrugged.jpg" width="217" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">Just no:</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Paulo Coehlo (my Christ, <i>The Alchemist</i> is the OkLady Bible*)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Tom Robbins (I never find a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/12/alien-vs-predator">Michael Robbins</a> fan)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Chuck Palahniuk (this is not just poor taste, it's pass<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , , sans-serif;">é</span> poor taste)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Mary Oliver (poetry for non-poetry readers)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"I enjoy novels and non-fiction"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"I read over 20 books in 2015"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"I'm not used to reading but I love NPR" </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">"Too many to name" (but if you had to try...) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">*Tangentially: my younger cousin's high school English teacher decided her class would read <i>The Alchemist</i> instead of <i>The Great Gatsby</i>....in a generation, we will have the country we deserve.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCURpmLhhp232LJEuVxTpw9tSbv3eEw67tuJcVwP4XQ1BhcKNQ2jMRS7zJeWsCl595VhMRb1aI1dwxGyTl76_VUG0JJQCue066gl6QpzjQXDj8EfqPPHAtIhTk-jniVMEP-Q4GMkCsgY0/s1600/alchemist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipCURpmLhhp232LJEuVxTpw9tSbv3eEw67tuJcVwP4XQ1BhcKNQ2jMRS7zJeWsCl595VhMRb1aI1dwxGyTl76_VUG0JJQCue066gl6QpzjQXDj8EfqPPHAtIhTk-jniVMEP-Q4GMkCsgY0/s320/alchemist.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<b>Deadly combinations:</b></div>
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<i>Eat Pray Love</i> and <i>Lean In</i></div>
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<i>Me Talk Pretty One Day</i> and <i>No One Belongs Here More Than You</i></div>
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Henry David Thoreau and Thich Nhat Hanh<br />
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Say no to hipsters and self-help.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMcat-wiVW5nJlCeuAzV40cJ7O8WlJfQ2knqkzDQq5R0h9YNfgdJDFnpwVqSzkmr9PzkeUuEKXwV9Q8iu3a1Pj7Ff8D53NvSgGoHdsqaGVFjoyTiJ4nkUEqouEl0OKFTu8N4X1xolaIGoU/s1600/lean+in.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMcat-wiVW5nJlCeuAzV40cJ7O8WlJfQ2knqkzDQq5R0h9YNfgdJDFnpwVqSzkmr9PzkeUuEKXwV9Q8iu3a1Pj7Ff8D53NvSgGoHdsqaGVFjoyTiJ4nkUEqouEl0OKFTu8N4X1xolaIGoU/s320/lean+in.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
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<b>I probably ought to be okay with but actually am not:</b></div>
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Jeffrey Eugenides (can Eugenides be the next guy we all agree sucks, now that we've turned viciously on Franzen?)<br />
Haruki Murakami (is Murakami just grown-up <i>Harry Potter</i>? (somehow this is most damaging if they only list <i>1Q84</i>))</div>
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Malcolm Gladwell (especially <i>Outliers</i>--at least read the filet of this overrated muppet)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheRH_94n7LaFg2aKIzbhOUDqNM8qf_5o8jsKpOXt8eBBGoT7vvFX_Zt93Zlw5yaXDjPdw7qxibTipvh5EGciQo26gVlFItRRF84U-CTtBWvXaniyruRujC4CeUOaiHzsWlhx4yJ1OTiWDt/s1600/middlesex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheRH_94n7LaFg2aKIzbhOUDqNM8qf_5o8jsKpOXt8eBBGoT7vvFX_Zt93Zlw5yaXDjPdw7qxibTipvh5EGciQo26gVlFItRRF84U-CTtBWvXaniyruRujC4CeUOaiHzsWlhx4yJ1OTiWDt/s320/middlesex.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<b>Hardest call to make, on OkC as in life:</b><br />
Raymond Carver (he often appears in an otherwise respectable list and I just want to tell her, "let's embrace Lish's other children, the Hannah, the Holland, my god the Hempel--we can do better than old Ray!")<br />
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<b>Regularly occurring combo I almost get judgy about till I realize this is also me:</b></div>
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J.D. Salinger and Wes Anderson (oh aren't you precious with your kittenish <i>Franny and Zooey</i> cuddled up next to your Criterion of <i>The Royal Tenenbaums</i>--wait, shit!)<br />
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<b>If you put an age range down to 25 you have to deal with:</b></div>
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<i>Harry Potter </i>(I can only hope there are fewer than two exclamation points after Potter and it doesn't appear at the exclusion of all other novels...and, anyway, don't the books have individual titles? can I at least get a hot take on how <i>Prisoners of Azkaban</i> is great and <i>Goblet of Fire</i> is trash?)<br />
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<b>You think everyone is talking about this but OkEveryone is not:</b></div>
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Elena Ferrante (two months till I even found someone who listed it...and then she was too tall.)<br />
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<b>For posterity, here's what I list:</b></div>
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<i>In Search of Lost Time</i> to <i>White Girls</i>. <i>Autobiography of Red</i> to <i>Bluets</i>. <i>Sleepless Nights</i> to <i>Light Years</i>. <i>Wuthering Heights</i> to <i>Birds of America</i>.* <i>Another Country</i> to <i>The Emigrants</i>.<br />
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*Combo added because a friend said, "why don't you put something down someone might have actually read?" That's right, <i>Wuthering Heights</i> is the most popular book I could think to list.<br />
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But let's keep it positive! On to the winners' bracket...</div>
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<b>Piqued my interest enough I had to message:</b></div>
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Mary Ruefle </div>
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<i>Tess of the d'Urbervilles</i> (went with the quote about the imperfect perfection of Tess's lips)</div>
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Raymond Chandler<br />
<i>Autobiography of Red </i>(if I can't have at least one awkward cocktail (or--dare to dream--a non-awkward cocktail) with a woman who shares with me same damn obscure favorite book of poetry I'll quit the game) </div>
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Through my astonishing condescension let me say, in the end, that I credit the folks who read anything in 2015. They're more worthwhile than those who list no literature at all.<br />
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Except for the Ayn Rand fans.<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-80529758578318479992015-08-01T14:53:00.000-07:002015-08-01T14:53:26.069-07:00Worse Than I Thought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As #WTTnation already knows, I have been writing less here not merely because of laziness and ennui but because of my exciting role as a film reviewer for the <i>Sonoma Index-Tribune</i>. Or, as I like to call it, THE paper of record for Sonoma county. <br />
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There is much to love about Sonoma, which possesses those beautiful, mustard-colored hills and an editor who is willing to publish my writing. But only two or three movies open there every week, which has resulted in a cinema-going transition from seeing mostly films that appear at Landmark Theatres to almost exclusively films that appear at AMC Theatres. This has been harder than I thought it would be. <br />
<br />
While I'm quite pleased by how often I've been able to write about men not wearing their shirts, the treatment of women in most of these films is troubling. Had I not been to see them, I would have thought that these blockbusters were entertainments I might have enjoyed in the right mood. But to actually sit through these grating, two-hour-plus moneymakers is to see how repellant gender roles are across Hollywood. <br />
<br />
While <i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i> and <i>Spy</i> are duly credited for Charlize Theron and Melissa McCarthy's badassery, the rest of the summer is a string of gendered insults, from the breasts-first roles for Alexandra Daddario and Sofia Vergara in <i>San Andreas</i> and <i>Hot Pursuit</i> to the grim celebration of co-dependent relationships in <i>Insurgent</i> to the head-smacking backstory of Black Widow's sterilization in <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron</i>....And, at the very bottom, beyond repellant and to the point of doing actual harm to viewers, is <i>Jurassic World</i>, which ought to be boycotted by sentient beings for the disgusting, demeaning, entirely unacceptable depiction of the Bryce Dallas Howard character (and her high heels). And I didn't even see <i>Entourage</i>. <br />
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At any rate, here are <a href="http://www.sonomanews.com/search?q=kirk%20michael&type=news&sort=PUBLISHED&dir=DESC&days=360&pub=">all the reviews</a> I've written since early March. After you've read them (they're so short—each one is just like reading 15 tweets in a row!), check out my ranking of the the first 21 reviewed films from best to worst (or, perhaps, least to most alarming portrayals of women). The titles are listed with the corresponding zinger I had the hardest cutting because of word limit restrictions for the column.<br />
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<b>Did Like</b><br />
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1. <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i><br />
Matthias Schoenaerts is the finest shepherd in cinema history—he can mend my fence or cover my haystacks any day <i>ifyouknowwhatImean</i>. And his neckwear, my god in heaven! <br />
<br />
1a. <i>Magic Mike XXL</i><br />
Though Jada Pinkett Smith’s MC is no McConaughey replacement, she does get the line, “We’re gonna see if there’s still some magic in that Mike.” And C-Tates responds as would any great, with a lil headstand bump and grind. <br />
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3. <i>Mad Max: Fury Road </i><br />
In case you’ve wondered what Rose Huntington-Whiteley has been doing since starring in <i>Transformers: Dark of the Moon</i>, the answer is nothing. <br />
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4. <i>Inside Out </i><br />
Riley: Broccoli on pizza is delicious—what is WRONG with you? <br />
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5. <i>Spy</i><br />
Director of Photography Robert Yeoman is alternating between lensing Paul Feig and Wes Anderson pictures, how rad is that job?<br />
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<b>Didn't Make Me Want to Die</b><br />
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6. <i>Wild Tales</i><br />
Pedro Almodóvar produced this but it's more schematic and neatly ironic than he would allow in his best films…despite the manic presence of the Argentine Bradley Cooper channeling bad weddings past. <br />
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7. <i>Furious 7</i><br />
In their series of standoffs, Statham and Diesel develop a very Hamilton-Burr relationship, if the two Alexanders had the good sense to always keep each other alive for potential sequels.<br />
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<b>Did Make Me Want to Die a Little</b><br />
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8. <i>Cinderella</i><br />
Fair criticism is leveled at Cinderella for accepting her fate as an altruistic servant but that role does include an expansive attic space—its monthly rent in the Bay Area would be incalculable, regardless of whether or not you’re locked into it. <br />
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9. <i>The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel</i><br />
Richard Gere is so wooden should have played a memoirist writing about his past adventures as a totem pole. [Fuck, how could I not have included that one? #regrets] <br />
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10. <i>Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation </i><br />
The only truly inspired moment in the film is casting Tom Hollander (the boob politico from the fantastic <i>In the Loop</i>) as the prime minister of England, though I give the filmmakers no credit for this coincidence. <br />
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11. <i>Monkey Kingdom </i><br />
Ah, what might have been if we were allowed to see the macaque polyamory or learn more about their rampant herpes infestations. <br />
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12. <i>Southpaw </i><br />
Despite the screeching melodrama, there are funny moments. A fellow ward of the state looks at the broken man and asks Billy's daughter, “Is that your dad?” and she replies, “I don’t know anymore.” LOLZ!<br />
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<b>Oh God Why</b><br />
<b> </b> <br />
13. <i>Minions </i><br />
[No extra zinger here, all the words I had about this incoherence went into the review...and there eight films below <i>Minions</i> on this list!] <br />
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14. <i>San Andreas</i><br />
Director Brad Peyton (who cut his teeth in the disaster genre with <i>Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore</i>) chooses all cheesy vertical shots of toppling buildings and heaving chests. <br />
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15. <i>Ted 2</i><br />
The level of discourse for this film is “Eff Scott Fitzgerald” jokes though, as with his Oscar hosting fiasco, MacFarlane would probably defend himself by saying, “This is all I ever do, it’s not my fault if people think it’s funny.” <br />
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16. <i>Hot Pursuit</i><br />
It’s the kind of film that makes one reflect, in amazement, “maybe <i>Identity Thief</i> wasn’t THAT bad.” <br />
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17. <i>Insurgent</i><br />
Director Robert Schwentke, who most recently helmed <i>R.I.P.D.</i>, has thrown down a gauntlet of worst two consecutive films (well, there is screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who has chased <i>Winter’s Tale</i> with this dreck). <br />
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18. <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron </i><br />
It’s the latest from schlock auteur Joss Whedon, who alternates Marvel films with Shakespeare adaptations shot in his backyard like a rich, Middle Aged sinner buying indulgences from the church. <br />
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19. <i>Ant-Man</i><br />
The only remotely entertaining part of the film is Michael Peña’s monologues in which his voice inhabits other characters. The one of four screenwriters who came up with that idea gets to feel the least embarrassed about appearing in the credits. <br />
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20. <i>Jurassic World</i><br />
Five screenwriters labored over the script, apparently being paid per insertion of the word “asset” as it relates to dinosaurs or human beings. “Asset out of containment!” shouted ad infinitum. <br />
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21. <i>The Longest Ride</i><br />
Black Mountain College is shown as a place for rich people to look at artists like animals in cages and perhaps buy an abstraction by one of the elephants. As Nicholas Sparks, the Thomas Kinkade of screenwriters, has our plucky protagonist explain, “I love art, the culture it brings...” <br />
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So, I'm looking forward to the fall season I guess? </div>
kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-89064866473909175862015-06-01T08:16:00.001-07:002015-06-01T11:09:27.752-07:00Stupid Fucking Dead Man [White Elephant Blogathon][This year the WTT is participating in the White Elephant blogathon, coordinated by Philip Tatler of the <a href="http://profoundlyrewarding.blogspot.com/">Diary of a Country Pickpocket</a>
blog, wherein film writers exchange cult movies at random and write about whichever film they receive.
Check out links to all the 2015 White Elephant pieces <a href="http://profoundlyrewarding.blogspot.com/2015/06/its-2015-white-elephant-blogathon-people.html">here</a>.]<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i>
was simply a bad draw. I have—let me scan that filmography again—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> liked a Jim Jarmusch picture. Many
people say that this is his finest <span style="font-family: inherit;">film</span> and <span style="font-family: inherit;">I might share that opinion</span>…but from me that’s not
the same thing as praise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> I tried to trade <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i> to a white elephant friend of
mine for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls 2: Penny's from Heaven</i>
but he wouldn’t let me. Perhaps I ought to have tried harder <span style="font-family: inherit;">to acquire something</span>
easily mockable across a thousand or so words.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My disaffection for
Jarmusch bewilders. I like films that are black and white by choice. I like
taking apart genre constructions. I like to laugh (but, perhaps crucially, I
don’t embrace deadpan humor). I would go so far as to say I love much slow cinema of
recent vintage—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Beloved Month of
August</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silent Light</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Norte, the End of History</i> are among my
favorite films <span style="font-family: inherit;">of</span> the past decade. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve done <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Satantango</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shoah</i> across multiple sittings. </span>I wish Assayas’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carlos</i> were longer! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I also wish I’d been assigned Colin
Farrell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man Down</i> or Sean
Penn’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man Walking</i> or 50 Cent’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man Running</i> or Tom Everett Scott’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man on Campus</i>. But plain old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i> has always been waiting for me,
fated, at the end of the line for this stupid fucking white (elephant) man.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By not liking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i>, I find myself in all sorts of
awful positions, like agreeing with Roger Ebert’s <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-man-1996">dismissal</a> instead of
throwing roses at its feet like <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/the-new-cult-canon-idead-mani-2330">many</a>
<a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/acid-western/Content?oid=890861">critics</a>
I <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/dead-man">respect</a>. I'm heating my takes like an <a href="https://twitter.com/AmznMovieRevws">Amazon
Movie Reviewer</a> instead of a serious cineaste. I cannot find a friend who dislikes it and I've grown to believe that the movie is like a Magic Eye </span>autostereogram that remains stubbornly 2-D for me alone.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">J. Hoberman wrote, “This is
the Western Andrei Tarkovsky always wanted to make,” <span style="font-family: inherit;">more praise </span>that chilled
me to the core. Jarmusch himself is quoted as “not liking” Westerns. You don’t
say! The director might as well superimpose his arched white eyebrows onto
every frame of the film.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">I read a couple</span> compare and
contrast pieces tying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i> to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wild Bunch</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, which made </span>me all the bitterer
that my fellow white elephanter did not write down that other off-the-top-of-my-head-cult-Western
that treats gun violence in an opposite (that is to say, entertaining) manner. <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">T</span>o watch <span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Dead Man</i></span><i></i> I sat as straight as I could in a kitchen chair—the futon was too risky, no matter how
assiduously I'd caffeinated<span style="font-family: inherit;">. P</span>erhaps I ought to have burned cigarettes between my
fingers all evening like a long haul truck driver<span style="font-family: inherit;">..</span>. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9j__NVQD7RgP2g1d_kg-Uip438qpJgIKZz2WAz6IL_q4IYyRjC8R0PqGMjtNA46fiiq4LiyCEfoZ5xAiKtm-jOp36MPKMgg8-Byu-I3Xac-wv9X7zGhi7g_8m6rGmMBvAo6mWXQA1N5-/s1600/dead+man+3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix9j__NVQD7RgP2g1d_kg-Uip438qpJgIKZz2WAz6IL_q4IYyRjC8R0PqGMjtNA46fiiq4LiyCEfoZ5xAiKtm-jOp36MPKMgg8-Byu-I3Xac-wv9X7zGhi7g_8m6rGmMBvAo6mWXQA1N5-/s400/dead+man+3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At any rate, this film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Man</i>, which mocks attempts at
introduction. Ohioan Bill Blake (Johnny Depp, who was doing that placid/reactive
shtick long before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pirates</i>) is <span style="font-family: inherit;">heading</span> West in an awful suit and no great hurry. He is or is not an
unwitting reincarnation of William Blake, the poet and painter and Romantic and
alleged early adopter of the free love moment and writer of that one poem you
might have read about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyger">“The Tyger.”</a> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The arch opening sequence has
Blake falling in and out of sleep on <span style="font-family: inherit;">the</span> train from the Erie to a town with the
not-at-all-on-the-nose name of Machine. Jarmusch gives a full fadeout each time
Depp nods off in his seat<span style="font-family: inherit;">, as if </span>the camera is closing its eyes too. And, every time he wakes up,
there is an establishing cut to the gears of the train that, in a television
serial, might increase excitement but here only roused my first tetchiness with
the director’s methods.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Blake is on the <span style="font-family: inherit;">rails</span> for
many days or, if you go by the growth of his beard, no time at all. Because
this is a scare quotes Western and because it is aggressively slow-paced,
Jarmusch helpfully punctuates most sequences with gunshots to help keep you awake. I
tripped over them like <span style="font-family: inherit;">the </span>multiple snooze<span style="font-family: inherit;"> buttons on my </span>alarm clock<span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span> The
first fusillade is from men massacring buffaloes out the window of the train and these offhand gunshots go on throughout the film, every ten minutes or so.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to praise Crispin
Glover, the soot-faced train fireman <span style="font-family: inherit;">who accosts <span style="font-family: inherit;">Blake</span> with</span> the one quote I take
from the film: “Why is it that the landscape is moving,
but the boat is still?” </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYo3arsqZ_e793HeVaLF7w_7QE8gzL6GYn434-hexz5a6uwZLt5OBQ6U8UVArA3d3eYORJiUcyEeunt_yIMXInIFvv88QwzUFJqirTrSRyOjzflwl6mEM1uNwQj946_1-vGNQnow9Nn4H/s1600/dead+man+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOYo3arsqZ_e793HeVaLF7w_7QE8gzL6GYn434-hexz5a6uwZLt5OBQ6U8UVArA3d3eYORJiUcyEeunt_yIMXInIFvv88QwzUFJqirTrSRyOjzflwl6mEM1uNwQj946_1-vGNQnow9Nn4H/s400/dead+man+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The rest of the supporting cast in
the film is mostly familiar faces with longer hair than <span style="font-family: inherit;">usual</span>: Billy Bob Thornton’s like barn hay, John Hurt’s appropriately lank,
Gabriel Byrne’s in dignified waves, Iggy Pop’s hanging under a bonnet, etc. <span style="font-family: inherit;">But none of t</span>hese cameos satisfy as
much as Bill Murray
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EZkIaJcCI">riffing</a> with GZA and RZA </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coffee and Cigarettes</i></span>.
I mean, I also really enjoy Michael Madsen’s performance in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3u22OYqFGo">“Black Widow”</a>
video but I don’t require an entire film of such ham sandwiches.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Allow me to get even fussier:
I hate Robert Mitchum’s presence in <i>Dead Man</i>. He plays the Machine factory
magnate who tells Blake that he won’t be getting the position in the accounting department he</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">’</span>d been promised. <span style="font-family: inherit;">His chewy </span>scene with Depp is the ultimate degradation of beef-it’s-what’s-for-dinner era Mitchum, <span style="font-family: inherit;">who looks</span> much the worse for wear (as they say, your jowls never stop growing as
you age). He spouts sub-Louis L’Amour clunkers<span style="font-family: inherit;"> like</span> “The only job you’re goin’ to
get is pushing up daisies from a pine box,” and parodies the indelible glower
of his youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjptK75GbMCAadBL6tkfuLPv6wA6mIs7rkRkrIlSDi6r-RGQEUZl2no9RSfk55iRgfsBWlqUeFvuvWPUzBdydVItY8nN5bC3aUGGEOf7n13slH_maRjNWE-1GRS8hxPQBFj9D507lpVcL__/s1600/dead+man+4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjptK75GbMCAadBL6tkfuLPv6wA6mIs7rkRkrIlSDi6r-RGQEUZl2no9RSfk55iRgfsBWlqUeFvuvWPUzBdydVItY8nN5bC3aUGGEOf7n13slH_maRjNWE-1GRS8hxPQBFj9D507lpVcL__/s400/dead+man+4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mitchum is one of the best and most important actors in film history. It is simply unacceptable to depict him before an ironic oil portrait of himself with a cigar and a shotgun to bring him down to size. If an artistically irrelevant figure like, say, Johnny Depp wants to appear in a film standing next to an ironic oil portrait of himself, he can do so. <span style="font-family: inherit;">But I </span>repeat: Robert Mitchum should not be brought down to size by Jarmusch or anyone else. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And there are so many
more slow minutes after the Mitchum sequence left me so embittered! Mostly
it’s Depp getting shot in the chest (very gently) and meeting his traveling companion for the <span style="font-family: inherit;">duration </span>of the
film: a man called Exaybachay/“He Who Talks Loud But Says Nothing”/Nobody (Gary
Farmer). Nobody is full of droll lines like, “stupid fucking white man,” which
are accurate if not terribly creative (Blake is out there in the forest
spooning fawns, after all). Watching their sequences is like watching all the
interminable two-characters-walking-together-through-the-woods scenes from a
whole season of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Game of Thrones</i> at
once, without the benefit of interruption by roaring dragons or upmarket
whores.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They are playing a long
game of who said it: William Blake or a Native American sage? It’s sort of fun
but not the same thing as good writing. “The eagle never lost so much time as
when he submitted to learn from the crow,” could be Blake or a Blackfoot or
could be an aimless non sequitur.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another sonic irritant is the jagged s<span style="font-family: inherit;">oundtrack</span> provided by Neil Young, his electric guitar and his
electric guitar’s reverb. <span style="font-family: inherit;">His riffs <span style="font-family: inherit;">are</span> </span>incomplete thoughts, random ten-second
bursts <span style="font-family: inherit;">I Chinged</span> into two hours of film (when put all together, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi-S9lrnLZ8">theme</a> is rather good). </span></span></span> </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPGxu7CXAXGTKdsNDJIU4w6CKzsKh00oBE0LZwwU6sYYUjY7w7B8FxXKZKXEzuC-L9zwxQlrBDchrfbpUOfuhM2Xy8QtqNW2VYdBk49dMR2ycUAnnwE8oe-L_a9ro5C1mb3_rhkRfPxqy/s1600/dead+man+6.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPGxu7CXAXGTKdsNDJIU4w6CKzsKh00oBE0LZwwU6sYYUjY7w7B8FxXKZKXEzuC-L9zwxQlrBDchrfbpUOfuhM2Xy8QtqNW2VYdBk49dMR2ycUAnnwE8oe-L_a9ro5C1mb3_rhkRfPxqy/s400/dead+man+6.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In defense of Jarmusch, I
think the main problem with the dialogue could be William Blake, dead poet. <span style="font-family: inherit;">My</span> second punishment, after
the film, <span style="font-family: inherit;">was</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">reading</span> this guy afterward. </span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Every Night and every
Morn<br />
Some to Misery are born<br />
Every Morn and every Night<br />
Some are born to Sweet Delight,<br />
Some are born to Endless Night.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Digital commons provide thousands of lines of Blake that oscillate between nursery rhyme claptrap and fortune cookie hoo-ha.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I read from <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html">“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”</a>
and got as far as I could before I was too <span style="font-family: inherit;">discouraged</span> to continue. “The crow wish’d
everything was black, the owl that everything was white. / Exuberance is
Beauty. / If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.” Right then.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">If <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/41/356.html">“Auguries of Innocence”</a> is any
indication, Blake might be a most excellent writer AND <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=johnny+depp+oil+portrait&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=KklrVbTwMsbooATC_IKQAg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=952#tbm=isch&q=william+blake+illustrated+poetry">illustrator</a> of Hallmark bereavement
cards. “Joy and woe are woven fine, / A clothing for the soul divine. / Under
every grief and pine / Runs a joy with silken twine.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But back to the film (I
must constantly guard against <span style="font-family: inherit;">calling it</span> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deadpan</i>). More <span style="font-family: inherit;">horseback riding</span>, more crispy Robby Müller
cinematography, more tedium—there is no threat that Blake will be caught by the
bounty hunters sent after him. He <span style="font-family: inherit;">cannot die</span> until he reaches the
sea. At some point he gets face paint and a way cooler coat...passes some totem poles...I <span style="font-family: inherit;">swear I was awake the whole time</span>...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When they arrive at last at the inky, Styxian body of water, Nobody says, “I prepared
your canoe with cedar boughs” and, after that one nice shot of his arm dripping
blood into the water, Blake floats off into eternity under one more staccato
burst of gunfire and jangling guitar. I think I’m supposed to feel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whoa that’s deep man</i> but instead I want
to have Jarmusch to tell me something I don’t already know.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m a dead man. That’s
why I<span style="font-family: inherit;"> spend as much time as I can on writi<span style="font-family: inherit;">ng</span></span>, because my end is as certain as William
Blake’s—the bullet is in my chest already. I just want to die having read
better poetry and seen better films than this one. <span style="font-family: inherit;">I only </span>wish is that, after
the film ended and I finally slept, I had kept better track of my dream world, <span style="font-family: inherit;">its</span> mood and
pictures, taking note of whether the landscape moved while I laid still. </span></div>
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-82882562665002193452015-03-31T08:18:00.001-07:002015-03-31T08:18:39.891-07:00My Life with Stuart Dybek (A Song of Fire and Ice)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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{page:Sectio</style><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I. </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
have problems listening to podcasts. I have problems finding times when I’m
just listening—I don’t drive and I don’t exercise much. I have problems taking
on too many arts-related projects at once and not finishing any of them. I have
bookmarks in too many books, months-deep stacks of magazines and too too too
many open tabs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My
friend F.C.L.P. recommended <a href="https://player.fm/series/new-yorker-fiction/zz-packer-reads-stuart-dybek">a podcast</a> of the Stuart Dybek story
“Paper Lantern” and, after two reminders, I decided one night to listen to it
so I would not be a disappointment to her and so I could click the X and expand
each tab in my browser to greater than half-inch width. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
hesitated in part because it was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
Yorker </i>podcast. And I’m the worst kind of “I don’t read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> fiction” snob (e.g. I’m
delighted that Alice Munro finally decided to give it a rest). This is a
criticism of Deborah Treisman, the magazine’s fiction editor and the first
voice you hear on the podcast in question. I did not know who the reader was—ZZ
Packer—but pictured a flowing beard and rock star voice. The evening I finally
decided to listen I felt dour, that F.C.L.P. had given me a homework assignment.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(For
those who share my podcast aversion, please read <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B65XyEZVJCwkNzMyZDc3ZGYtMTk3NS00MjNhLThiOGMtNjU3ZGEyOGFmNDcy/edit?pli=1">the story</a> I’m going to talk
about. You can tell this link is legit because of the handwritten bibliographic
citation at the bottom.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
pressed play and stood in my kitchen putting together a plate of cheese bread
and hummus, chopping a carrot and thinking that, as an adult, there ought to be
something more. At first “Paper Lantern” seemed sophomoric, a George
Saunders-lite story about some lab coat-wearing science bros working almost
ironically on a time machine. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But
then, as the men walk through the frosty fog and enter a restaurant called
Chinese Laundry (and I sat down for dinner myself), I started to listen at
greater attention. The menu is so vast that it can never be fully explored, an
infinity of characters written by an unknown poet. Swallows nests from the
South China Sea, five fragrance grouper cheeks. It’s chinoiserie so well done I
had to smile. </span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Still,
Dybek uses clanking dialogue for the first big moment of change in the story: “Say,
did anyone turn off the Bunsen burner…” The men pile back into the snow to see
if they’ve set their laboratory ablaze and then the story starts behaving like
a speeding car on a long patch of ice—moving forward but all over the road, with
the constant threat of the back end getting ahead of the front. I started to nibble
my carrots more carefully, to reduce the crunching in my ears. After discovering
the lab is indeed aflame, the narrator locks us into the story for the
duration: “I remember how, later, in another time, if not another life, I
snapped a photograph of a woman I was with as she watched a fire blaze out of
control along a river in Chicago.” </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This
picture is the backdraft into the narrator’s memorable trip from Chicago to
Iowa with the woman in the photo. With her, he experiences an indelible night,
one of the few in our lives we get to keep, one of the stars that makes up the
constellation of our lives. Dybek writes, “Maybe that’s what falling in love
means—the power to create for each other the moments by which we define
ourselves.” I muttered, “fuck off Stuart, that’s too good.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">ZZ
Packer’s voice, which is much better than the voice of anyone in ZZ Top, mirrors
Dybek’s line about the woman riding in the car and “the intimate, almost
compulsive way she seems to be speaking.” The mood turns erotic. I was fairly vibrating
by the time I heard “the elastic sound of her panties rolled past her hips, the
faintly wet, possibly imaginary tock her fingertips are making. ‘Oh, baby,’ she
sighs.” I dropped the cheese bread. And then: “‘Baby, take it out,’ she says.”
My guy Dybek got them to put “Baby, take it out,” in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i>! I lowered my head until it was a centimeter off the
desk, close to the computer speakers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And
then, as we’re all right on the edge, Dybek drops a wonderful, teasing digression
on the syncopated licks of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xo47zs7cLE">Bix Beiderbecke</a> (one advantage of the podcast is that someone has
to pronounce Beiderbecke for you). It’s a portal deeper in time to a way back
sound, where the patchy radio reception is not the only thing causing static. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
couple is further interrupted by a semi-truck swerving past the car,
overexposing her in its high beams—“her hair flares like a halo about to burst
into flame.” The trucker is our voyeur—in the pre-Internet-porn-era, this was
something indelible in the night, burned into his brain. The man and woman
escape long enough to fuck on a checkered tablecloth he kept in the trunk (a
pattern sexualized from my childhood reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All the King’s Men</i>, Jack Burden tearing strips of dishcloth to hold
together Anne Stanton’s pigtails).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46wKCwyEoppARCQduFx1NzFlQ0HpZwW8lgvu3U_y9K_O_fSrzScgkR8y9bEb80VV6ng7jXJCLhqc_BRwfojCCJ0if6p3Gm0W9J1mfRPXZ_ZZBe2YkZ9uqticmHQLeKEV4UT6XXFBTL0dj/s1600/dybek+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46wKCwyEoppARCQduFx1NzFlQ0HpZwW8lgvu3U_y9K_O_fSrzScgkR8y9bEb80VV6ng7jXJCLhqc_BRwfojCCJ0if6p3Gm0W9J1mfRPXZ_ZZBe2YkZ9uqticmHQLeKEV4UT6XXFBTL0dj/s1600/dybek+2.jpg" height="285" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
flashback ends with the scientists back at the office, now lurid with flames. “‘Look
at that seedy old mother go up,’ a white kid in dreadlocks says to his
girlfriend.” “‘Fires get me horny,’” is her gauche reply. The language itself
is super-heated, “gorgeous transvestites of Wharf Street,” “open hydrants gush
into the gutters, the street is seamed with deflated hoses.” As he works a
funnel of sparks into a whirl of snow, I realized Dybek had given us a prose poem
capped with a show-stopping final image: “a paper lantern that once seemed
fragile, almost delicate, but now obliterates the very time and space it once
illuminated.” The fire of memory is raging but, like cold hobos in the snow, we
come toward it, edging closer to the Dybek. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">II.</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After
texting a series of satisfying but insufficient emoticons to F.C.L.P.
(exploding volcanoes, open flames, devil faces) regarding “Paper Lantern,” I
remembered how Dybek came into view at another time, if not another life. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/07/09/if-i-vanished">“If I Vanished”</a> was an obsession of
mine in the summer of 2007. Like “Paper Lantern,” it is a story about an almost
bewildering number of things—it’s the projection into the night made by your <a href="http://emergencyreports.tumblr.com/post/1042202536/david-berman-classic-water">headlights</a>, forming an
ever-receding gate you’ll never reach. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0NH78LAKCQpB8xaq7z67PIr0BHAtiqesjlw2unZXPm-lrFiYkZ3XU_-5ruXh4VtZYGiYRwqFHg9Pc0cGQqyws_NZip9CLb37NahHj-nmQEu9xURabtzF2Lym0esyK9NpRGeIBxctcRxuq/s1600/dybek.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0NH78LAKCQpB8xaq7z67PIr0BHAtiqesjlw2unZXPm-lrFiYkZ3XU_-5ruXh4VtZYGiYRwqFHg9Pc0cGQqyws_NZip9CLb37NahHj-nmQEu9xURabtzF2Lym0esyK9NpRGeIBxctcRxuq/s1600/dybek.jpg" height="390" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With
Gmail’s excellent search functionality, I can start from the beginning of my
relationship to “If I Vanished.” On July 20, I chatted my friend K.: </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">and it occurs to him that sometimes one stops
listening to a beloved masterpiece in order to continue to love it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">-dybek</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">I read Dybek this weekend -- loved the imagined
conversations, and it’s madding to imagine watching a whole boring movie for
another person, for one line that isn't even there. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">And my favorite bits: “The yellow Blockbuster sign
subtracts itself from the night”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">“the gate of snow that retreats before his
headlights” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The next result in my archives reveals that the story was recommended to me by
my friend A., who worked at the university library and used to walk copies of
literary magazines out to me, where I sat at the front desk of the Literature
department. I wrote him: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">Kick ass piece. Your recommendations have
been gold so far. That whole going to Blockbuster sequence was some of the
most beautiful stuff I've ever read. The Blockbuster sign subtracting itself
from the night is great -- no fear of the name brand age in which we
live. Then he caps it with the flake and music note “gossamer arch”
across the avenue. On fire Stuart! And I love this, “and it occurs
to him that sometimes one stops listening to a beloved masterpiece in order to
continue to love it.” So fucking true of any masterpiece, written, musical,
human...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Telling
biographical details emerge—I used to put two periods between sentences. I used
to be quicker to anoint things the greatest. I channeled Hardy and said
“madding” for “maddening.” I did not properly hyphenate or em dash. My first
fixation was on the “beloved masterpiece,” though I did not bother to listen to
the one Dybek references in the story, Mussorgsky’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXy50exHjes">“Pictures at an Exhibition”</a> (back then I was too
busy with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9EGRtVK7PU">similarly-titled
song</a> by Death Cab for Cutie). What I was missing then was a woman I thought
of as a performance artist constructing the troubled masterpiece of her life. This
woman who had vanished, who has gone on vanishing, who reemerged after I read “If
I Vanished” the first time only to vanish again, who is a shadow across the
passenger seat in my waking late night dreams.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Where
“Paper Lantern” might give you a hankering for Chinese food or automotive autoeroticism,
“If I Vanished” is likelier to have you up to the wee hours going down various.
Dybek presents Jack: “Tonight, his missing her has assumed the guise of
curiosity, and curiosity is preferable to feeling her absence.” The
woman—Ciel—is another one of these people, stellar, between which we draw the
lines for the constellation of our life. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At
many author events, I’ve mocked people who ask the writer some variation of the
“how did you write it” question—but I admit this is my main concern about “If I
Vanished.” In what order did the strands of the story occur to Dybek? I guess
it was about vanishing at first, the idea that someone could vanish from your
life in an instant, blow out like a paper lantern, gone in 30 seconds flat. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But
what about the idea of a line of dialogue from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Open Range</i>? Did the film matter at all to Dybek or was it always a
ruse? Did he have a fascination with Kevin Costner, the neo-Western, with the mixed
bag of reviews, the venom and the admiration for this deliberately old-fashioned
picture? And then the nude images possessed by Ciel’s ex, the hidden
sub-folders of them. Was the genesis a fascination with homemade porn? Or did
the story start from the piece of music by Mussorgsky? And I think the doppelganger
Dunkin’ Donuts vignette must have come at the end, the image Dybek knew could
draw all the pieces together. But what if that was actually the beginning of
the whole story, the doughnut girl and the cab driver and their last meeting in
the middle of the night? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPCJl5cDwsq3yAT8BWnFI4HTpwziKvp1tm1Y-8iKAN1nYsEva3_Mi7JdKDzhTgr85othUudBra2qp1J8Q61PitUxFM_GamgVLHHQRnl9bqJlSAyAIwUVFEUWDCpJ4GcttCCMGdGUy6RRj_/s1600/dybek+4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPCJl5cDwsq3yAT8BWnFI4HTpwziKvp1tm1Y-8iKAN1nYsEva3_Mi7JdKDzhTgr85othUudBra2qp1J8Q61PitUxFM_GamgVLHHQRnl9bqJlSAyAIwUVFEUWDCpJ4GcttCCMGdGUy6RRj_/s1600/dybek+4.jpg" height="261" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">An
interesting time capsule aspect of the story is that back in the mid-aughts Blockbusters
were a) open and b) open till midnight. By the time I read “If I Vanished,” I
was already on Netflix, adding films that still languish in the lifelong middle
of the queue. The kid manning the Blockbuster in Dybek’s Chicago shoots Jack a
dirty look from behind the counter—he is a familiar figure from “Paper
Lantern,” the white dude with rusty dreadlocks, probably wishing his
pyrophiliac girlfriend would stop by to while away the closing shift. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
wish I had visited a Blockbuster store in 2007, so perhaps I would have that
memory to tether to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Open Range</i>, which
I rated on Netflix but could not recollect as I reread the story. Did I see the
film and rate it or give it two stars so the site’s algorithm would stop presenting
me with Kevin Costner’s face? Did it vanish from my mind or was it never there?
I felt like Jack—overwhelmed by “an impulse to replay the whole dull film.” So
I did. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
key to Dybek’s story, or perhaps its MacGuffin, is a question supposedly posed
by Annette Bening to Costner, “what would you do if I vanished?” Ciel asks Jack
the same question and it never leaves him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author gives himself completely to the delirium of
connections made when you sink deeper into the past, replaying old times over
and over. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Open Range</i> is at best an amiable
background piece to flit in and out of while searching the internet in other
open windows. It’s a film to which I can never pay full attention. I will cycle
through it again the next time the story comes into my life, listening for that
word, “vanished,” making a winter night of it. Dybek is right—at 2 or 3 AM
there are self-luminous electronics still flickering on the miniblinds of my
apartment building, the one next door, “lit not by the halo of a candle but by
a bluish glow.” All of our eyes squinting, burning—the internet is but a
literalization of the infinite gateways of art. Is this man, Jack, a writer? He
has a schedule like a writer—blue nights, blue lights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But
before he can start there’s the Dunkin’ Donuts, another illuminated sign
subtracting itself from the night. “The trays of frosted doughnuts look like
replicas” is Dybek’s perfect description of the flawless sugared jewels, the
lines of color and shape so gorgeous <a href="http://artplusphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/gursky-99cent.jpg">Andreas Gursky</a> should do a print of
it. Inside the shop, Jack feels “as if he’d stepped into a scene of infinitely
repeated takes,” a sequence in which a cab driver who resembles Jack orders a
Bavarian Crème and chats with the woman who works at the shop before
disintegrating back into the streets. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjks5-pL6KKSUl3b_pI9L1u6faKXlfxOZE4MlQx9sMmDegABV6wJk3ipv2iNAYSZk_vSPfhMNhuQldHQTDxJdd_ciNQy8LhQqjwBSdYhgv0X164sLVaJv5sWJ9d2BEZUoHHR95XZ_NVClU2/s1600/dybek+5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjks5-pL6KKSUl3b_pI9L1u6faKXlfxOZE4MlQx9sMmDegABV6wJk3ipv2iNAYSZk_vSPfhMNhuQldHQTDxJdd_ciNQy8LhQqjwBSdYhgv0X164sLVaJv5sWJ9d2BEZUoHHR95XZ_NVClU2/s1600/dybek+5.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then
there are the copies of a nude Ciel stored in her ex’s hard drive. Jack found
that he could only take her nakedness in glances—he doesn’t have a photo of her
but the ex has many. These pictures appear in flashback within a flashback, her
trip through a door she did not expect to find. When she asks the ex to delete
the photos he protests, “You think erasing a replica will erase reality?” She
tells him to empty the trash too. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For
Jack the imagined conversations between Ciel and her ex are secondary to the
imagined conversations he has with her directly. “These conversations with her
have continued since she vanished. He wishes he could make them stop, but
they’re growing more frequent, as if the lengthening of her absence had made
the phantom dialogue between them more compulsive.” This is what I’m talking to
myself about when I’m walking down the street or standing in the shower at the
end of a long evening. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jack
is sucked back to first question, the homepage of the story: “What would you do
if I vanished?” He riffs some shitty, cowboy-Costner answers but then, “On a
night in winter, I’d pass through the arch of a Great Gate of Snow and on the
other side I’d be back in time in the city when it was ours.” Later, he gives what
I would guess is the real answer to her question, to Dybek’s question: “After a
while, I’d do nothing but go day by day without you. Sometimes I’d remember
something you said, and have another one-way conversation. I’d walk around
secretly talking to you, wondering where you were and what you were doing. I’d
tell myself that wherever you’d gone I wanted you to be happy.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ciel
says, “You need to work on a better answer.” But that is such a good answer,
that answer makes me want to be a better man! For a long time it troubled me
that she would not accept any of his replies but, then, how can mere words
conjure a person who has already vanished?</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">III. </b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My
friend F.C.L.P. is interested in <a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/jaden-and-willow-smith-exclusive-joint-interview/?_r=0">portals</a>—she
is one of the few people I know who could perhaps make it to the other side of
the Great Gate of Snow. She’s told me a little about how Dybek’s writing can be
related to Lacan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Objet petit a</i>, the
untranslatable object cause of desire (at least according to the Wiki page I’ve
consulted). It’s infuriating, the way she has patience for podcasts and reading
Lacan. She even told me something about Derrida as it relates to the stories
but I don’t think even Wikipedia can break him down simply enough for me. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s
also upsetting that in 2015 no one has the decency to properly vanish. You
think they’re gone forever and then, one email match later, Instagram or
LinkedIn suggests that you reconnect with your old friend. Sure, it’s still him
or her but the pictures are always wrong, never the ones from back then, the
ones you took. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I
burned them,” says the man says of the photographs in “Paper Lantern.” And this
is the amazing thing about living 20 years ago—in 1995 you probably only had
hard copies of photos and they could be lost irretrievably if you kept them in
a file cabinet at work and then left the Bunsen burner on while you ate
fish-fragrance-sauced pigeon from the Chinese Laundry. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You
will never have the luck to let go of the photographs you have now—in 2007 you
might have not backed them up but today it’s all in the cloud. We do not have
to create the Time Machine because Apple has done it for us. Nothing is deleted,
just buried slightly deeper. At any rate, you can’t erase what actually
happened, as Ciel’s ex said. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As
I consider the time spent on this essay, the time spent remembering this man’s
remembering, the money spent on this computer, for what is, essentially,
memory, I remember how Lydia Davis breaks it down: “You can’t measure it,
because the pain comes after and it lasts longer.” </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes
on a hike I haven’t taken before, or can’t remember having taken, I step under
a familiar arrangement of trees, three on left side and four on the right, with
their branches meeting over my head. This sets my mind working and after I
cross underneath the boughs I come out somewhere else entirely. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Postscript </b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m
a savorer. As a kid I portioned out my Halloween candy into the new year and
often threw half of it away because it was stale. I’ve only read the two Dybek
stories discussed in this piece. I am like Proust and his madeleine, afraid
that the effect is dissipating with each bite. But my friend J.R. tells me I
must read <a href="http://www.und.edu/org/writers/2007_Dybek.html">“We Didn’t”</a> next. Let’s read it now
and see where it takes us. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3U5ep2xZ9wGg70h2OwlGqqOs-8D_X9M2iE49GP1sYQYQfmvcPVUkXQ_LcNxTbfkT7EswQ_z0YXhs9yhbo5jOr-eLeKd4afgj5gJ0Tx1BEY80ZsEN0gIb_3bpWBtgQBFJobHaZiwy1cpza/s1600/dybek+6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3U5ep2xZ9wGg70h2OwlGqqOs-8D_X9M2iE49GP1sYQYQfmvcPVUkXQ_LcNxTbfkT7EswQ_z0YXhs9yhbo5jOr-eLeKd4afgj5gJ0Tx1BEY80ZsEN0gIb_3bpWBtgQBFJobHaZiwy1cpza/s1600/dybek+6.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a></div>
kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-41589718188405451012015-01-19T15:15:00.002-08:002015-01-26T18:34:42.029-08:00Best of 2014<div>
<div>
<div>
Allow the WTT to quote the WTT this time <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2014/01/best-of-2013.html">last year</a>:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div>
I am comforted by patterns. 2013 confirmed that in even-numbered years the Giants win the World Series and in odd-numbered years
all the best films come out. </div>
</blockquote>
<div>
All I'm saying is don't doubt science or my rectitude. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPw-Om2Xf5I">Madison Bumgarner</a> gave one of only two onscreen performances I couldn't live without in 2014. (Spoiler alert: If I had not spent a stray Sunday afternoon watching a four-hour Filipino film I might not have even had the will to generate my traditional "Best of" post.)<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
In 2014, my rapidly eroding patience with our cinema found words in T.I.'s summer jam "No Mediocre."<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/qdsTUfDTEhQ" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
As is often the case with rappers, you have to see past the T&A, the veneer of misogyny and get to their artistic concerns. T.I. is tired of mediocre shit being praised for greatness and I'm right there with him. As he scans the Billboard Top 40, I scroll down the vista of movie listings, unmoved by the indistinguishable B-average prestige pictures that Rotten Tomatoes encourages one to see (which one is <i>The Imitation Game</i> and which one is <i>The Theory of Everything</i> again?). If what's left for me to
love is <i>American Sniper</i>, <i>Boyhood</i>, <i>Interstellar</i>, <i>Gone Girl</i>, et al, I'm
at sea, I'm Robert Redford last year--all is lost.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Best Supporting Actresses</b><br />
<br />
The finest seven minutes of actressing in a supporting role were lip-synched by <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLBSoC_2IY8">Emma Stone</a></b> on Jimmy Fallon but I suppose I ought to confine myself to film performances. In <i>Listen Up Philip</i>, <b>Elisabeth Moss</b>'s humorous cat ventriloquy is as necessary as oxygen between Jason Schwartzman's wannabe Philip Roth and Jonathan Pryce's Philip Roth. <b>Minnie Driver</b> does some excellent scene-chewing in <i>Beyond the Lights</i>, possibly because her jawline is so pronounced it appears she has mandibles on her like a stag beetle. I'll take a stab at rating the female performances in <i>Inherent Vice</i> which, as far as I can tell, exists only to provide zany supporting roles: 1. <b>Joanna Newsom</b>'s voice, 2. <b>Jena Malone</b>'s teeth, 3. <b>Katherine Waterston</b>'s nipples, 4. <b>Maya Rudolph</b>'s wig, 5. <b>Hong Chau</b>'s eyeliner (though, in the end, Jeremy Renner wore it better in <i>The Immigrant</i>). But the finest performance is in <i>Ida</i>--<b>Agata Kulesza</b> gives us a character of sublime brilliance and self-hatred, an ideal foil for the young nun at the center of the story. Kulesza makes us feel the utter necessity of pushing the self-destruct button. </div>
<div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBSgNeVscKng5V93ct0MrhzeccmaR5hI4LRK25Tn82l5gtqyRcGGY_R-Sa-bWJdkny_AtkhUd5_vKFTi49zBKtbtxPWaICdWJkRZmwKqarm6dmqNfbujlG23Y5Z9kK48RvCnGShV9hDZVl/s1600/ida_still4_agatakulesza__bycourtesyofmusicboxfilms_2013-11-27_03-52-19pm0010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBSgNeVscKng5V93ct0MrhzeccmaR5hI4LRK25Tn82l5gtqyRcGGY_R-Sa-bWJdkny_AtkhUd5_vKFTi49zBKtbtxPWaICdWJkRZmwKqarm6dmqNfbujlG23Y5Z9kK48RvCnGShV9hDZVl/s1600/ida_still4_agatakulesza__bycourtesyofmusicboxfilms_2013-11-27_03-52-19pm0010.jpg" height="253" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Best Supporting Actors</b><br />
<br />
(Best supporting actor is a tough race but worst supporting actor is easy: <b>Christian Slater</b> in <i>Nymphomaniac</i>. Good god, that tree metaphor...)<br />
<br />
<b> </b></div>
<div>
I admire <i>The Lego Movie </i>because, in a film that is otherwise full of absurd cartoon characters, <b>Will Ferrell</b> gives a stunning bit of vérité as President Business, who would stroll to election in 2016 if only he were a real person. Because I like the occasional nod to actual Oscar candidates, I support <b>J.K. Simmons</b> in <i>Whiplash</i>--I found real menace there, remembering my own arrhythmic terror, not knowing whether I'm rushing or dragging. "Not quite my tempo, no worries." Credit has to be given to <b>Neil Patrick Harris</b> in <i>Gone Girl</i>--you really appreciate his throat being slit (though perhaps that was more about my giddy realization that the film was almost over). To return to the sketch comedy drive-bys of <i>Inherent Vice</i>, props to <b>Josh Brolin</b>, who brought actual heft to the film--I guess I'm voting for his haircut and pancake ordering style. The ultimate kudos go to the genuine chills provided by <i>Stranger by the Lake</i> sex panther <b>Christophe Paou</b> and his fine, fine mustache. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGd-OV4OYhphAVW2L2d6CxwGiQQNN0dasP5HuWB9qv6oTHFpgWUnabVrQk-LnrhgNpkUqYh0F9jlAQQVkSyxl0bGlwwna4LkqBIbx2gtUXoPWXyi5GTchYlB7XAyoTQIc3w0xw_iKdopCK/s1600/paou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGd-OV4OYhphAVW2L2d6CxwGiQQNN0dasP5HuWB9qv6oTHFpgWUnabVrQk-LnrhgNpkUqYh0F9jlAQQVkSyxl0bGlwwna4LkqBIbx2gtUXoPWXyi5GTchYlB7XAyoTQIc3w0xw_iKdopCK/s1600/paou.jpg" height="268" width="640" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Best Actresses</b><br />
<br />
As with Suzanne Clément in <i>Laurence Anyways</i> last year, <b>Angeli Bayani</b>'s performance in <i>Norte, the End of History</i> is so immense I can't even deal. Bayani hit that Falconetti level and may now ascend directly to heaven. Prepare yourself by rewatching <i>The Passion of Joan of Arc</i>, then <a href="http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70285700">stream</a> <i>Norte</i>, and then give yourself a couple weeks to recover. Elsewhere, <b>Marion Cotillard</b>'s life is somehow even more fucked up in <i>Two Days, One Night</i> than it was in <i>Rust and Bone</i>, even though she didn't have her legs bitten off by an orca. <b>Gugu Mbatha-Raw</b> and her subtly-metaphored theme song "Blackbird," impressed in <i>Beyond the Lights</i> (even if the film is somewhat undone by the fact that her exploitative, faux-Top-40 single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP7gLPRDojg">"Masterpiece"</a> is a much better song). <b>Charlotte Gainsbourg</b> dragged the second half of <i>Nymphomaniac</i> to some semblance of competence. Congratulations as well to the three young Swedes (<b>Mira Barkhammer</b>, <b>Mira Grosin</b> and <b>Liv LeMoyne</b>) who star in <i>We Are the Best!</i> and elevate what would be a by-the-numbers indie with their closeup camaraderie and hair-based bonding.</div>
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<b>Best Actors</b><br />
<br />
I'll just get it on the record here: I think <b>Miles Teller</b> is going to be a great one and <i>Whiplash</i> will be one of his early landmark roles. <b>Macon Blair</b> looks alarming as a bearded and blood-soaked hobo and somehow even more frightening as a pudgy and clean-shaven junior insurance salesman on the lam in <i>Blue Ruin</i>. Still, Blair is handsomer than <b>Timothy Spall</b>, who made a grabby, smudgy, don't-give-a-fuck-y <i>Mr. Turner</i>. In <i>Cannibal</i>, <b>Antonio de la Torre</b> is an exquisite table manners and savage display of appetite type of a guy. He makes me want to be a better man or at least wear better suits (overall he seems like a chill dude and I wouldn't fear him eating me at all). But I'll give the prize in this tepid year to <b>Ralph Fiennes</b>, who at least takes on a big role like a dang ole movie star in <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel</i>. </div>
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<b>Best Pictures </b></div>
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(But first, a confession of blind spots (I mean, blind spots to films that might have made this list, not blind spots like <i>Into the Woods</i>): <i>Actress</i>, <i>Goodbye to Language</i>, <i>Horse Money</i>, <i>The Tale of Princess Kaguya</i>, <i>Winter Sleep</i>.)<br />
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12. <i>Two Days, One Night </i>- The Dardennes have done it--they've made another film that's exactly as good as all of their other movies. This is praise that is also a criticism. Though perhaps if the directors had selected for Cotillard a white tank top rather than a salmon one this would be a couple of spots higher on the list. I still hold out hope that their next Cannes darling will feature hot Franco-Belgians fucking without consequence and eating decadent snacks.</div>
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<br />
11. <i>Lucy</i> - ScarJo's Lucy is a piece of meat, a human being based on a lecture by Morgan Freeman, conflated via intercuts with an antelope, spattered with blood on her cheetah-patterned coat, intergalactic fireworks before her eyes, following Romy Schneider into <i>L'Enfer </i>
or Gaspar Noe <i>Into the Void</i>, restructured genomes like the finest graffiti, her limbs
disintegrating into frosted doughnut sprinkles, strings of <i>Matrix</i> code tethering us to our cell
phones, the cosmos of Luc Besson, the skin tag spots across Freeman's face. I
got my eleven dollar's worth just for Lucy's excellent, direct summation of her motivation: "Someone put a bag of drugs inside me and I need you to get
it out."<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
10. <i>Citizenfour </i>- On 26 December, 2014, I was politically radicalized because of this film. I'm done voting for presidents from the major political parties in the United States. Conscious Americans are all on a path like Edward Snowden's, where the day comes and we have to tell our loved ones, "I can't really speak out loud here." The documentary is depressing on two levels: we are fine with living in a surveillance state and we can't even be bothered to watch this crucial documentary about living in our surveillance state. As always, holler at your boy if you've got a lead on Norwegian citizenship. </div>
<div>
<br />
(This feels a little too serious for the WTT so I'll add this: the way Snowden's hair stuck up in the back drove me nuts. I know director Laura Poitras felt the same way because she included a scene of Snowden fussing with his 'do before going on the lam, perhaps for the rest of his days.) </div>
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9. <i>Whiplash </i>- Much as this list gives me a chance to allow only one Hollywood film in the top dozen, <i>Whiplash</i> afforded learned critics the ability to reveal themselves as jazz as well as <a href="http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2014/10/the-invented-worlds-of-birdman-and-whiplash.html">film snobs</a> (talking about you, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies">Richard Brody</a>, hilariously eager to expound upon all the things he's heard and you never will). For those of us who don't know any better, the film delivers pithy artist-at-work kicks and a climax as audacious as the last 15 minutes of <i>The Red Shoes</i>. </div>
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8. <i>The Naked Room </i>- This is a documentary film of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXOufEcgbsQ">relentless closeups</a>, shots you'd expect to see in hostage videos, circumstances not unrelated to the children brought before the camera in this anonymous hospital in Mexico. Near the end of the film, one severely depressed teen, Hayde, is asked to promise that she will not hurt herself when she leaves
the office but cannot state the affirmative. When she breaks down, she raises her arm to
brush the tears from her cheeks and we see for the first time her left wrist wrapped in heavy
gauze. It is a heartbreaking moment of grace. She wept, I wept. </div>
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7. <i>Mr. Turner </i>- There have been many great metaphors for what Timothy Spall looks and sounds like in his title role. I'm going to go with a lowland tapir in rutting season at the Brookfield Zoo (indelible childhood memory). A big thank you to Mike Leigh who, across decades of good work, continues to remind the viewing public that people over 40 still have sexual intercourse. The brilliance of this film, as with <i>Topsy-Turvy</i>, is not just in the climax (though shouting "The Sun Is God!" on your deathbed is a solid way to go out) but in the diminuendo that sketches the aftereffects of Turner's death, the shittiness for all of us lesser lights when the master's show is over.</div>
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6. <i>Rich Hill </i>- Tracy Droz Tragos' documentary is full of Malick, great following shots of cartwheeling kids and nighttime photography of fireworks hanging in the air above Rich Hill, MO. And much of the dialogue is as pungent as Kit's <i>Badlands</i> line, "I'll give you a dollar if you eat this collie." The three boys at the center of the story have surprising areas of knowledge. Harley explains that "you can get mango on food stamps." Appachey (that astonishingly American name!) expresses a stunning career plan: "I was thinking of moving to China...and becoming an art teacher." And Andrew says, wiser about his life in deep poverty, "I have no say in what happens; they're the parents, I'm just a kid." After watching this documentary you'll want to <a href="http://www.richhillfilm.com/#about">keep up</a> with these boys as much as I do. </div>
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<div>
5. <i>Ida </i>- Pawel Pawlikowski made the most composed film of the year--without upsetting Wes Anderson I would buy a book of postcards of the shots from this movie first, from the mist on the rural fields to the grill work on dingy hotel windows (note the name of the cinematographer Lukasz Zal). The performances are also excellent: the aforementioned Agata Kulesza's Wanda as the long lost aunt to Anna/Ida, dark of eye, dimpled of chin, the Jewish nun, and the jazz musician (Dawid Ogrodnik) who charms them both, sort of a Polish Pattinson playing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx-TxiBi43c">"Naima"</a> by John Coltrane. It's the music you'll hear for the rest of your life, saving souls in a nunnery or drinking yourself to death in a Lodz apartment. </div>
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4. <i>Stranger by the Lake </i>- Apparently the only sexy movies this decade are from France, far away from the Hollywood's flaccid, anti-dream factory. The death spiral attraction between Christophe Paou and Pierre Deladonchamps emphasizes the lengths to which I need to step up my mustache AND chest hair game. The film revels in the claustrophobia of only ever being at the lake and never indoors. The delirium of lust and cum in the afternoon is slowly replaced by fear in an endless dusk, enough to make the rabbit wish to be caught.<i> Strangers </i>builds to a climax that made my hair stand on end. A voice calls out, "I won't hurt you."<br />
<br />
(Gillian Flynn and David Fincher are assuredly already plotting a ruinous <a href="http://variety.com/2015/film/news/ben-affleck-and-david-fincher-reteam-for-strangers-on-a-train-reboot-1201404001/">Hollywood remake</a>.) </div>
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3. <i>The Grand Budapest Hotel </i>- The seventh best Wes Anderson film is still the third best film of 2014--it was that kind of year. Bu that doesn't mean <i>Grand Budapest</i> isn't excellent. As Ralph Fiennes' M. Gustave knows, the rudeness of Wes Anderson haters is merely an expression of their fear. I can only offer a rueful smile at someone who would take something as sumptuous, as beautiful, as well-crafted as a cake from <a href="http://pursuitist.com/make-courtesan-au-chocolat-wes-andersons-grand-budapest-hotel/">Mendl's</a> and say, "I don't like it, it's too sweet." </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
2. <i>Under the Skin </i>- Scarlett's Johansson's Renaissance year allowed me to revisit a <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2008/03/scarlett-or-scojo.html">WTT post</a> from 2008 (before the tabloids had even settled on ScarJo as a nickname!). It's a time capsule of my early approach: more pictures, more discussion of boobs. What's happened since? A tragic amount of films with colons in their titles. <i>Iron Man 2</i>, <i>The Avengers</i>, <i>Captain America: The Winter Soldier</i> and the impending drivel called, and I don't exaggerate: <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron</i> and <i>Captain America: Civil War</i>. This lucrative dross is interspersed with failed comedy vehicles <i>He's Just Not That Into You</i>, <i>We Bought a Zoo</i>,<i> Chef</i> and <i>Hitchcock</i> (that was supposed to be funny, right?). She's had, for ten years, a distinct inability
to pick auteurs (Jon Favreau does not qualify). </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
In popular conception, actors read scripts (or actors' assistants read scripts) to select their next films but what I'll always wonder is why they don't just choose by director. Juliette Binoche works globally, with the finest directors, and has had the best career of anyone in the past 25 years. How difficult is it? When Johansson finally arrived at Besson and then Jonathan Glazer this year there was a respite from the suck. </div>
<div>
<br />
Like <i>Stranger by the Lake</i>, <i>Under the Skin</i> will discourage you from spending time on rocky beaches.<br />
The best parts of the film are documentary, with non-actors being talked into a van by a very attractive someone they don't know is Scarlett Johansson. The ridiculous, porn setup dialogue shows us the bottom line--a Celtic fan will get into a car with ScarJo for any reason. The sexy voice, the trashy clothes and dull men willing to go to their death after that ass. A gorgeous sadism pervades the piece, as if Frederick Seidel decided to direct a picture. When her 20-film deal with Marvel expires, I hope ScarJo will take a ride with more auteurs.</div>
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1. <i>Norte, the End of History </i>- For director Lav Diaz, a four hour film is <a href="http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/time-regained-the-films-of-lav-diaz">shortform</a>. But this is slow cinema so good that I didn't need to check my cell phone, I didn't need to urinate. <i>Norte </i>is not just the longest film on the list but the most profound and, moment to moment, the most beautiful. Diaz begins with an adaptation of <i>Crime and Punishment</i> but far exceeds Doestoevsky in artistry. <br />
<br />
To quote Fabian (Sid Lucero), the film's protagonist, whose murder of a moneylender is the least of his problems, "How can I be at peace with the world's shallowness?" Joaquin (Archie Alemania) goes to jail for Fabian's crime and leaves his wife (the Falconetti-channeling Angeli Bayani) to survive without him. </div>
<div>
<br />
To select a single sequence to set the mood: a long shot of a window propped open pre-dawn, insects whispering, a cock crowing, the putter of a motorbike that stops and allows a woman out, bags of vegetables piling on a cart, a dog observing, a younger sister appearing, a cooperative effort. A cut: the sky is lighter, bluer but it's still early, we look over the river as the women arrange the vegetables on the cart, trying to work the kinks out of their sore shoulders, a goat wanders by, a young daughter appears to help, they discuss the dawn of another day, their endless work. <br />
<br />
As I wrote in my notebook many times, wow, wow, WOW. The digital camera is so crisp and bold you can't believe there aren't special
effects involved. But it's just the blockbuster of Diaz's imagination. In the last hour you might ask yourself, as Ian Darke has deep into World Cup stoppage time, "how much more of this can their possibly be?" but the payoffs keep coming. This gorgeous suffering, this epic accomplishment.</div>
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Lav Diaz: no mediocre.<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-33323692429750102442014-09-21T16:58:00.001-07:002014-09-21T16:58:40.754-07:00Retreat<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"You are
in Joy."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And so I enter
New Clairvaux Abbey's guest room #2. The most desperately pressing question of
my no technology retreat is answered at a glance: yes I have a private
bathroom. I refrain from fist pumping because monasteries are holy places.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I spent the
Sunday before I got to Joy in Sonoma. I wanted to ease my way in to four nights
of no cell phone/internet/television by going to a place where sometimes I
don't get 4G reception. My aunt brought me to Jack London State Historic Park,
which is a more appropriate but less romantic name for the 47.5 acres than the
original: Jack London Home and Ranch. With apologies to my readers who are big
fans of the WTT and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">White Fang</i>, London
seemed like a real asshole, the sort of socialist with a fascist's emphasis on
physical strength and a racist's unpleasant fixation on "lesser"
peoples. But he had a hell of a nice home and ranch, even if the landscape is
marred by intermittent stands of eucalyptus (a fake cash crop sold to London by
enterprising Australians).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">London wrote
many books (amazing how fast they come when you write 1,000 words a day) in his
cottage as he waited for the great Wolf House to be built. His mansion burned
down a couple of weeks before it was set to open—chemical soaked rags left in a
closed room conspired to build a fire. It would have been beautiful, a
two-story stone horseshow surrounding a reflecting pool, but his insurance
wouldn't cover all the costs of reconstruction ($80,000 in 1913). So he left
the ruins to the woods and went back to his comfortable,
Polynesian-grass-mat-lined cottage and wrote and drank some more and died on
his sun porch in view of a tremendous oak tree in the front yard. This tree is
so goddamn Californian it ought to be on the flag of the republic, somewhere
behind the grizzly. I’m devastated because my aunt say it's dying—it gives off
light like a dead star. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Day One </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On the way
into Vina, CA, the hamlet nearest to New Clairvaux, the landscape changes from
green vines to dust and semi trucks. There are fewer Dean & Delucas.
Stopping in Williams, I hear an unsettling statement in a gas station parking
lot: "I feel like I'm in that movie No Country for Old Men." I pull
back onto the highway past the Liberal Ave. exit decorated with a handcrafted
"Obama Must Go" sign. Closer to New Clairvaux, quarter-sized drops of
rain sprinkle intermittently. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I enter the
abbey through a side gate and a green cloud of oleander, my hand already shaking
from desire to flip my phone back from airplane mode, for one last text, one
more Twitter refresh. In the Welcome Center I find a "Back in 10
Minutes" notice and consider driving home. But I stand and watch
watercolored koi lap around their fountain in front of the guest chapel, shaded
by storm clouds taking turns with bright sunlight. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Guestmistress
Michelle arrives full of dread-lifting friendliness. She chirps
"Kirk!" then leads me to a cheap-Badlands-motel cinderblock structure
(as my aunt remarked when we were browsing the online gallery, "would it
kill them to put up some drywall?"). Perhaps the guesthouse has been made
deliberately drab to enhance the beauty of the mature walnut, pine and Italian
cypress trees dominating the grounds. (I’d name a lot more species if I knew
their names—how does John McPhee know all the damn trees? Does he spend time
outdoors? Ask better questions?) At the end of our tour, Michelle says there's
no option but to stay through Friday and, thanks to her kind, dark-dotted green
eyes, that doesn't even feel like a threat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Beyond the
windbreak of trees outside Joy’s window there's a fallow field of long,
browning grass. This room, with its thin seafoam bedspread and institutional
sheets, makes me nostalgic for my grad school dorm, windows wide open and bad
weather driving over the hills. I could listen to Fleetwood Mac's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qFXdgqCcq8">"Storms"</a> and
have some tears but I'm learning to say no to technology. Also, the lyric
"not all the prayers in the world could save us" is rather
inappropriate for this setting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As I make my
way to a dinner Michelle termed "modest," the oleanders are writhing,
redolent with what Frederick Seidel calls the delicious smell of rain before it
falls. I almost step on a cat called Lucious, who is blind and has white
eyebrows—a cliché of a monastery cat. The lights are off but this must be the
dining hall, St. Luke's (note to self: google St. Luke in four days (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_the_Evangelist">the Patron Saint of Artists!</a>)). The wind rattles
spooky sounds into the dim back kitchen. Dinner tonight is cream of broccoli—I'll
have to tell the maître d tomorrow that I prefer something along the lines of a
bisque.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For Cistercians
like the brothers of New Clairvaux, the large meal is at midday and the rest
are light. I cherrypick clumps I think are potatoes and learn that cocktail
onions are the devil's work. Dessert is listed as "cantaloupe!"
because monks enjoy sick exclamations. Long thunderclaps get tangled in evening
church bells. I seat myself so I face both points of entry, knowing I will jump
out of my skin if anyone enters unnoticed. A robed brother flits by on a
bicycle, completing the horror story motif. I hustle back to my cabin thinking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we have scars on our imagination that come
from joy. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When Michelle
told me she hoped it wouldn't be all thunder and no rain I thought she was
being silly—as Stevie Nicks will tell you, thunder <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> happens when it's raining. I see lightning strikes and trees
bent over in the gale but no precipitation. It sounds like an echoing jet plane
and the undercarriage of a gravel truck and I have no idea when it will pass
because my phone is in airplane mode. Does Lucious feel the rumbling under his
white eyebrows? </span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Day Two</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">After learning
that I’m vacationing in a place with no television, phone or internet friends
have one question: Why would you do that? Beyond the actuality that I am a poor
person who likes to be alone, I’m doing it because of Patrick Leigh Fermor. When
you take your own monastic retreat, don't leave home without his excellent
short book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Time to Keep Silence</i>. He
writes, "I was, in fact, in search of somewhere quiet and cheap to stay
while I continued to work on a book that I was writing." And he had to
have been talking about Twitter when he wrote of "the hundred anxious
trivialities that poison everyday life." With Fermor’s help the question
is easily reversed: Why would I come back to the larger world?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Fermor details
the funny attire of monks but, though I look carefully, I haven't spotted a
single </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilice"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">hairshirt</span></a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">.
Perhaps I can't really tell—the New Clairvauxans’ commodious robes don't show
underwear lines. Rereading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Time to Keep
Silence </i>makes it clear that I have conflated two orders—those with more
intellectual than ascetic bents may leave the Trappists (New Clairvaux is such
a brotherhood) for the Benedictines (who have all the fun).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"Life,
for a monk, is shorter than the flutter of an eyelid in comparison to eternity,
and this fragment of time flits past in the worship of God, the salvation of
his soul, and in humble intercession for the souls of his fellow exiles from
felicity." That's a bit heavy Paddy—it's only breakfast time for me, about
four hours after the monks were up celebrating Vigils at 3:30. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Lucious, like
most felines, is capable of great speed over a short burst. In the shaggy grass,
he pounces amidst the grey squirrels that parade the grounds. They have a
tendency to wear their tails high, dipping them over their sharp faces like
veils. I am joined at breakfast, reluctantly, by two women with a stockinged
nunniness about them. One is tall and glaring, the other short and beatific.
The latter manages a "good morning" but her friend does not speak
beyond a few hissed phrases in Spanish. I think of her henceforth as The Stern
One (La Popa). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The terminology
Fermor uses for the Gothic buildings in monastic France is baffling but I can't
imagine he would be much impressed by the constructions at New Clairvaux. The
guest church out the window is notable for the persistent cinderblock, small
inset windows and roof of red shingle trimmed with Spanish tile. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The only point
of architectural significance I find here is the Sacred Stones. In 1931,
William Randolph Hearst had a Cistercian chapter house in Ovila, Spain dismantled
and shipped back to California on eleven boats. He needed the rocks to rebuild his
mother’s estate, Wyntoon, after a previous iteration burned to the ground. Hearst’s
plans changed and in the end he never even picked up his shit from Golden Gate
Park, were it moldered for decades. Eventually some dignitaries (including
noted insane rich person Dede Wilsey) gifted the stones to New Clairvaux, unmarked,
with no IKEA instruction manuals/allen wrenches. To catch up with all the
goings on, I recommend this terse </span><a href="http://www.sacredstones.org/1931-rarr-1994.html"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">timeline
of woe</span></a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What the
friends of the monks have erected so far is completely open on one end and oddly
finished with iron girders and cinderblock (again!). They probably ought to solve
for the birdshit in the oculus windows. Still, the space is compellingly
Instagrammable, totally empty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In the guest
library I see the name Thomas Merton over and over but never find <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Seven Storey Mountain</i>, a book I
wanted but couldn’t find in time for my trip. There are at least two critical
studies of it. Some of the religious titles are unintentional giggles—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Touched by a Saint</i>—and others generate
derisive snorts—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schindler's List</i>. But
the overall catalog is good: from the illustrated Thucydides to Bill Bryson's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Walk in the Woods</i> and if not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Power and the Glory</i>, at least's
there's Graham Greene's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monsignor Quixote</i>.
Greene begins with a satirical vignette on a bishop entirely occupied with the
matter of imbibing wine. Even surrounded by monk-tended vineyards, I wonder if
such blasphemy is suitable. Perhaps this is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enfer</i>, an area Fermor mentions as the shelving spot for books
banned to the main population of monks. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I'm certain
that my mother would want me to be on the lookout for a future life partner, as
nothing screams single and ready to mingle like vacationing at a donation-only
monastery. Given the rather advanced age of the ladies spotted so far at New
Clairvaux, a veritable sexpot enters the dining hall as I'm about to shove off
after lunch. I pause for a moment but she takes a cell phone call and everyone
else in here surely agrees that she should be ejected from the grounds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A big part of
one's spiritual health is physical labor, so I take the hike Michelle
recommended when I arrived. I walk west down the South Road because the North Road
is off limits, the exclusive provenance of the brother monks. Those fatcats get
all the shade and non-cinderblock buildings on the upper campus. Even though
it’s 90 degrees I'm happy to be out amidst the companionable whistling of the
disrobed farm workers and the jerky circling of turkey vultures. The path goes
from asphalt to broken pavement to gravel and here I am. Deer Creek, 30 feet below
me down a sheer mud bank. The water looks so cool. My friends know me as an
expert bushwhacker but, following the example of the peaceable monks, I didn't
bring my machete. I head north, seeking a clear trail down to the stream. I pick
my way through brambles until I find the path to salvation the way I always
have: by the reflective glare of a beer can. The Bud Light Lime breadcrumbs
lead me to a fetid finger of the creek but I wouldn’t make it to the main body
without getting knee deep in the muck and compromising my only pair of shoes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My sweaty despair
is mitigated by a field full of blue-black butterflies with eyes on their backs
like the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Great Gatsby</i>. In
the understory of walnut groves lope fawn-sized jackrabbits. The big
two-hearted oak in the middle of the guest campus drowses up and down. Smelling
supper from the outside I fear another round of cream of something but the
result is much better: fried potatoes. The Stern One strolls in and gives me
what seems to be, but surely cannot be, a malicious smirk. She waits for her
friend, who enters with a spry septuagenarian. They've weaved some lovely
fabric key chains and I'm furious I wasn't invited to that workshop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But the new,
non-nun arrival offers me half of the pear she’s slicing and tells me she's an
atheist. When she scores a Kraft single from the fridge and offers to split it,
I want to ask her to be my grandma (I could use a replacement). Elizabeth is on
vacation from a husband with Alzheimer's and says her new goal is to get away
every fourth week. This takes planning, as the man does not like to be left
with "young girls." This is not her first monastic rodeo—she’s taken
a nine-month walking trip over southeast Asia with Zen peace monks, drumming rhythms
at victims of genocide and water buffaloes. Furthermore, she explains that
she's composing poems while retreating—she finds it easier to capture stray
thoughts without the demands of prose. Don't I know it—I want to tell her,
"it sounds like you've just grasped the nature of the poetry MFA
student." She says that on her walk today she saw the same huge
jackrabbits I did. When she mentions spying a heron or egret I fear we're
approaching a Mary Oliver moment but blessedly it never comes.</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Day Three</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I begrudgingly
admit that the best-dressed person at New Clairvaux is The Stern One, with a
new habit color every day: crisp white to deer brown to blushing violet. The
wheat bread for breakfast has the heaviness of penance and you could use a loaf
of it to bludgeon a zombie monk if it came to that. I struggle to finish my portion
even after slathering it with monk-approved JIF peanut butter. The Stern One's
contemptuous gaze follows me to the door and I feel like shouting: "I
haven't even masturbated since I got here!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When on
retreat you can read a book a day and today brings me to J.A. Baker's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Peregrine</i>. He belongs to my favorite
species of writer—the wildly talented recluse—and, according to the NYRB introduction,
we are not even sure when or where the man died. But he wrote the best book I
have ever read about the peregrine falcon, and probably the best on any raptor.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Baker’s
impressive, obsessive diary follows a pair of falcons through his native Essex.
October through April, he walks the orchards and fields of his home range like
a current underneath the birds, easily covering a dozen miles a day. A
peregrine weighs between one and a half and two and a half pounds; its eyes are
the same size as ours. As he describes them, the hawks are ideal artists:
"the peregrine sees and remembers patterns we do not know exist."
Baker's language is so unusual and pungent that I'm sometimes unsure if the
words are verbs or nouns or British bird names: "the tiercel raced away to
the east through snaking lariats of starlings."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The writing is
violent and very much like James Salter's flying memoirs—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gods of Tin </i>is also written in diary form—and this makes me ecstatic.
"He stared down at the hand-sized earth that had drifted by beneath him so
slowly every time before. Now he seemed to be crossing it with great speed, as
if running with the current of time. Ribbons of ocher road, highlands and
villages were all floating swiftly out of sight under the wing. He felt an
overwhelming, captive sadness. It was his farewell." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Baker makes
constant use of metaphor but all the comparisons are related to other things he
finds in the wood. Coastal East Anglia is a self-contained universe of meaning.
"Light shines in woodland hollows, like still water. Birch twigs are a
winish haze. A cock brambling calls, a grating nasal 'eez-eet,' bobbing and
flicking his tail. His underparts are orange and white; glowing orange, like a
sunset on silver scales of birch bark. A bounding flight of redpolls ripple out
their harsh and tangy trills, hang upside down, dip deep into birch buds, then
bound away. A redwing flits through the trees. Straw-colored eye-stripes make
its eyes look slanted. Its red wing-patches are like smeared blood." The
color, the assonance, the metaphor: masterful. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I look at the
door to the meditation room and know I need to go in and ruminate over what to
do with my life but I keep putting it off, wishing the monks had felt a stronger
need for a sauna or indoor pool. My aunt told me I could mediate if she could
meditate but I didn't ask follow-up questions as to how one does it. The
chamber is small and looks into the pulpit of the guest chapel. Finally I sit down
in a crossed-up lotus, clasp my hands and close my eyes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At first I
draw inspiration from the green and gold rug underneath me, the decadent crosses
and moths gliding over sparkling water. I breathe birds into motion, my deep
heaves the forward and backward sweep of tide. I am walking the strand as a
curlew, a dunlin, and then I'm metal-legged and digging my beak into the sand,
an oil derrick unaware of any raptors. I want to know what to do with my life.
What I repeat is: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am 31 years old.</i>
I follow it with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I'm unhappy</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I want to know what to do next</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it's</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">May
then June then July then August the September</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I must change my life</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The tide rises,
covers me up to my chest. Because my legs are falling asleep or because of
something else my extremities tingle. I rock in my posture, trying not to
spasm. I am sucked out into the ocean and struck by lightning or a peregrine
falcon, ready to leap back to my feet with a snapped neck but the limbs won't
cooperate. I am in a rush of visions and still calling to the wind <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am 31 years old</i>, my numb hands cupped
before my face. The electrical current continues underneath me—a live wire
touched on a sheet of ice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I leave the
room with my hands shaking too hard to write. I try to compose myself on the
bench beside the door but the cool wind adds to my trembling. To use the proper
religious term, I had "a bad trip."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On my walk to
Deer Creek I follow a great blue heron stalking through the shadows of walnut
trees. He is bothered when I get too near him and flies ahead, but never far
enough to lose me. After a half mile he figures out he can fly back the way I
came and avoid my irritating gait in his periphery. If you can believe it, I
swear there’s a peregrine falcon above me, or some other bird gliding with
greater elegance than the vultures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I'm back at the
shelf over the creek, still stuck up top and bitterly considering the monks
frolicking in the cool waters downstream. This time I walk to the south,
trampling across thick foliage, frightened as ever of stepping on live snakes
or dead hobos. Even though I can hear the water, there's no clear path to it.
Only on the way back up do I spot the skull and crossbones Hazardous Area sign.
Should I beware of pumas? Cottonmouths? Nude friars?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It's the hours
after dinner when I would like to, with all due respect to the simple life,
just watch a damn movie—perhaps a monastery-related favorite, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Into Great Silence </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Narcissus</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf-S5Ll-Kdf0ZmZ8MYKV54GbWgejs-6zM0ZDF3Z7w46T66Zz-EbgFB5-qrWYXZh5P74ja4dR7jNGeltZi9v2sRCGY7pgKqvX6ldI3deL2jAsK-i6JGX8GpOJEloG_GSDtQNJW1qLXW9ro/s1600/Robin+Hood+Disney+Friar+Tuck.jpg">Robin
Hood</a></i>. It amazes the way that, when one strips away the phone, the
internet, the television, the magazines and the books, the best form of entertainment
left is writing. I write two pages of novel-like matter a day instead of one
(or half of one or none) and even compose letters for a lark. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Day Four</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I don't mean
to blaspheme but you can treat Laszlo Krasznahorkai's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seiobo There Below </i>just like a bible, savoring it over and over. It’s
one of the ten books of my life. I came a bit late to Krasznahorkai the writer
(and never realized that he wrote all those Béla Tarr films) but from the </span><a href="http://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/seiobo-there-below/"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">first time</span></a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
I read him I was hooked, addicted to the avian stillness of the Ooshirosagi, and
desperate for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seiobo</i> to come out in
full. Krasznahorkai writes about people with obsessive devotion to their crafts—there
are chapters on monks preserving a Buddha statue, a Noh actor completely given
over to his performances, a dying monk who steps out of his body and circles
his surroundings like a hawk and, most crucially to me, a section called
"He Rises at Dawn." It is </span><a href="http://almostisland.com/monsoon_2013/prose/he_rises_at_dawn.php"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">the story</span></a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
of an artist, a man who spends each day making minute changes to Noh masks he
carves in incredible, supernatural detail...painstaking is not a strong enough
word for it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This morning I
read the chapter "Distant Mandate," about a man driven to vertiginous
collapse by the complicated beauty of the Alhambra. "No, it is not at all
a question of these specific writings but of a language, arranged out of the
so-called girih motif based on the pentagon, but in any event, an inaccessible
language rendered from a geometry sacredly conceived; which at first one
experiences as pure decoration and considers as a form of ornamentation
assembled from tiles or engraved or pressed into the stucco, and at the
beginning it really is possible to be satisfied with the impression that this
decoration and ornament, because the dizzying symmetries, the suggestive
colors—not only the plentiful but simply immeasurable glittering form-ideas—do
not leave behind themselves any questions or uncertainty..." This is masonry
done in parallels so intricate that they were only discovered and mapped by
mathematicians in the 1970s. There is art beyond our understanding in words and
stone, patternwork that is a gigantic unity holding together a world falling
apart into chaos. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My second go
around in the meditation room is better. I begin again as the Ooshirosagi,
gliding a course over field and stream then landing in silence to find fish under
a horizon shimmering with heat, undulant water melting in quilted patches. I step
slowly into the future. I commit to two paths: a 9 to 5 that offers some
meaning and an early morning hour dedicated to real writing work, every day. The
resume and the CV. The Ooshirosagi hunts on land and water, at dusk and dawn, strong
enough to wait out the day with its neck cricked like under-faucet plumbing.
This is the passion of Krasznahorkai and Anne Carson, the ripples in
Fitzgerald's golden bowl, each lifted to my lips. The ennui of regular
employment is enabling my own laziness against greater labors. I put my head
down and pray to the pen crossed over my journal. On the inside of my eyelids strings
of Alhambra script fall like rain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My fascination
with Deer Creek comes to an end. Walking a new route along an irrigation ditch
I'm often startled by the small movements of alligator lizards, stoned in the
sun until goaded by my footsteps. I come to the end of the trench where there’s
not so much as a view of the creek. Just that taunting water sound. As I turn
on my heel I see a snake, poised five feet to my right. I think of Willa
Cather’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Ántonia</i>, the crowning Midwestern
glory of driving a spade straight through the neck of a vicious serpent. I
think of the bravery of my Minnesotan forebears and how I can honor them now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Not really. I
immediately squeal, "Jesus Fucking Christ!" and leap as far as I can
to my left. After a couple wobbly-ankled steps in tall grass, I hop to the
bottom of the ditch and sprint. I know from the nature documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anaconda</i> that the key is to put as much
space as possible between the beast and me. I wish I'd thought to start a
stopwatch to measure my time in the 400-meter dash to the main road
(wind-aided, but with backpack). I’m uncertain about the species of snake—it
did not have a viperous head or rattle but rather a curious expression and
smooth belly: yellow as my own. I'm happy to retreat to the friends of St.
Patrick.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So pleased to
be alive, in face, that I attend Vespers, at the cost of putting on proper
pants and hoofing it to chapel. The building is cross-shaped and
particle-boarded, a less appealing version of a high school gymnasium. About
ten monks file in, one in a motorized wheelchair, one with a walker, all a
little deflated. A Methuselah-bearded old timer makes sure I'm on the right
page in the prayer book. Proudly, I've already found Thursday Vespers. But it
turns out I'm facing the wrong direction in my seat. I have an eye toward an
icon, a candle and a small cross, but the action is on the other end, dominated
by a large Byzantine-looking crucifix. Music pours from a dolorous keyboard,
the prayers are muddled and the singing subdued. I feel a creeping sadness turning
the worn pages of the book. We come to the afternoon reading, some blather
about Sodom. All the things that make me gloss over the capital-B Bible are
present: random destruction, incomprehensible judgments, a weird fixation on
units of measure. Ten percent of Sodom was destroyed in an earthquake and I’m reminded
of the absurdist sci-fi storylines Chow-san concocts in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2046</i>—this is the closest I've come to a blockbuster film all summer.
Why didn't the holy men sit and outline before committing to this mishmash? After
a few more hymns we end on the Lord's Prayer. This one I get—I bow and pray and
don't even recite it as Hemingway did in "A Clean, Well-Lighted
Place."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Anon in the
dining hall we're passing around copies of the book written by New Clairvaux’s Brother
Paul. He went the self-publishing route down Mexico way and the resultant
errata page is impressively long. He says they got all his words between the
covers but not necessarily in the right order. Glancing through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hermit Bird's Song</i> I wonder over my
own self-publishing future, the freedom he felt to mix prose and verse,
quotation and original material.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Elizabeth
tells me that local herons hunt the koi in the sanctuary pond (she pronounces
koi in two syllables, as you might in the East). New Clairvaux has attempted to
mitigate the poaching by employing a scareheron to intimidate the real ones. I
thank her for the hospitality this week and we wish each other the best of
luck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At my new
friend’s suggestion, I step outside to watch night fall, for the </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPVxjFpqhs8"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Silent Light</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> of it all. Or to demand more from the sunset, as the lady
said. It's the best show on tonight. From the plastic chair in front of Joy I
see red roses and a burnt orange pickup and a brick wall in medium to extra
long shot. Under the lone cypress in this stand of pine a white statue turns
grey. The placards on statuary here are for the benefit of the donators, not
the folks who can't recognize their saints. Birds chirp. Dogs have a
disagreement down toward town. A summer evening on Earth. Yellowing sky, the
clouds stretched thinner and thinner. The train. All the monks are asleep. If
not, they'll regret it at 3 AM. Or I mean I would. They've probably gotten past
all that. This is the most pleasant 90-degree day of my life. More orange in
the clouds. A chickenhawk floats overhead. I have wasted my life. Just kidding,
and maybe James Wright was too. The sunset is ending as it does for so many of
us across this great land: listening to a middle-aged woman coo baby talk to a
blind cat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Clouds reduce
to grey, white and indigo—languid dolphins. Those monks with their prunes and
walnuts, regular as all hell. The splash of the fountain and first cicadas. The
sky is violet and piled with snowy peaks. Tomorrow I will be back in San
Francisco, what Fermor calls "the outside world of bounders and sluts and
crooks." Krasznahorkai’s Prison of Complexity. The snake sleeps somewhere
out in the fields (not that I don't check for it under my feet every 30
seconds). The single bulb outside my room casts an amber light that makes me
ache. I know why it does this. I once sat outside the door of a motel next to
Zion National Park. That trip I meant to buy tomahawk turquoise earrings for a
girl I was in love with out of all proportion. <a href="http://www.cmt.com/videos/jason-isbell/855346/jason-isbell-tva-live.jhtml">"I wanted her to want me so bad it hurt."</a> I’m overwhelmed not by God but by beauty. The stillness of
the Ooshirosagi in the shallows of the creek, eternally hungry, waiting for a
fish to rise. </span><br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-27635829359943331612014-08-08T07:54:00.001-07:002014-08-08T07:54:25.586-07:00Continuations on a Caribbean NoteCan I get past the thirty thousand word mark on my novel? Not without
desperate struggle. Can I type five thousand words on my phone on a
seven day Caribbean cruise? Absolutely. I've published the <a href="http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/reliably-fun-thing-ill-do-every-other-year-or-so">heart of my Caribbean tale</a> over at Hazlitt. After you've read that adventure, enjoy the outtakes below. <br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On one's literary influences:</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Armed with Patrick Leigh Fermor's <i>The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands</i> and with the memory of David Foster Wallace's "Shipping Out" never far from my mind, I record my adventures on and around what captain and crew unerringly referred to as "the stunning Crown Princess." If you're pressed for time, you're probably better off reading the DFW because my impressions are nowhere near as well-written and because his cruise ship takedown from the mid-90's, with the references to throwing himself off the top deck, wrist-slitting, etc. was the first piece I thought of when I heard he'd killed himself. It all might have been different had he gone on a luxury cruise with his parents, as I did...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the scene in Port Everglades:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">DFW
has overcooked it a little to compare the baggage claim scenes at FLL to the
fall of the Berlin Wall and Saigon--in the same paragraph!--we proceed without
issue to a fast cab line (fast when compared to the queue outside the Chili's
Too). Though if they're going to call it
Port Everglades it ought to have more orchids and alligators. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Stepping
onto the greenhouse of the ship's gangway, I see a smaller point of entrance underneath
ours. Is there a status beyond Platinum? Yes. Elite is for the people with 16+
cruises under their belts, the people who may have their shoes shined as many
times as they want--until the bootblack's arm falls off<i>--at no additional cost</i>. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Standing
in front of me is a pair of line jumping, non-Elite cruisers who are notable
for a) their youth and b) the two cases of diet soda they are carrying as hand
luggage. The young gentleman, in an elaborate faux hawk overlaid with a brand
new Red Sox hat, tries to step past more patient people while his giggly
girlfriend, though also anxious to "get this party started," holds him back by
his tank top.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On one's dining companions in the Botticelli Dining Room:</i></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Our
fellow traveler Richard is very upset about the narrowness of the roads on the
Isle of Wight. He is, as his delightful wife Barbara says jollily at least once
an evening, "not well." There is some sort of indentation on his
forehead that one suspects is a manifestation of his difficulty. It's quite
rare that I am significantly larger than another adult man and, as such, I want
to kiss Richard right where that kindly English doctor has been perforating his
skull. He has a better hit percentage on witticisms than I, though they are
dispensed more rarely. He has sailed the English Channel in his own boat.
At the Indian restaurant in his town, Poole, he always orders the Meat Madras,
for which he gets a 10% locals discount.</span></span> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
am put off by the incredible length of time it takes for the remaining couple
at the table to say the words "Rio de Janeiro." The husband has
enough money to send his brittle-looking wife to a surgeon who's shaped for
her a little ski nose, it's very 80's. I am
not a gifted conversationalist but it seems an outsized struggle to converse with two people from Rio (where I've been) about Brasil in general (which I
love).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">At
a certain point you look around the table, into the souls of your fellow cruisers, and decide whether they have the intestinal fortitude to do six more
nights of two-star conversation and five-star dining. We murmur to ourselves
that the couple from Brasil will not be back. They are not back. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the scene at Eleuthera:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">As our humid tender putters along, we listen to a man who could only be from South Florida. His tan
is total and he has a built-in armrest over his waistband. He is the hero in his
own story about a previous jaunt to the Bahamas that involved outswimming a rip
current while his indolent wife sipped piña coladas onshore. My mother does
well to press him, earning the admission that he panicked at first, swam in the wrong direction and was 40
lbs. lighter on the day in question. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Later, as I walk through the reef, an
older lifeguard presides over the point of rocks above me, singing to himself
under a grey handlebar mustache. He is in different rhythm than the steel
tinkling of "No Woman, No Cry" ashore. We observe the still gulls on
the rocks, their beaks open and soundless. </span></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On writing at sea:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
desk in my cabin faces opposite the movement of the boat but if I crane my neck
I can see out the window into a blinding sun, the ocean a dazzled tinfoil edged
in gold. When it comes to stateroom accoutrements, I always grab the small notepad
while rejecting the pen (ballpoint, ew). The Princess Cruises logo runs along the top over the motto/exhortation: <i>escape
completely</i>. I think that, if I were to escape my life completely, I would race for a room like this. It is about the size of my apartment, though the
bathroom is smaller. There is a writing surface and six mirrors--me everywhere--the sea inside and the sea outside. I mostly lean back and daydream on the reflection of waves on the ceiling, another quilted coverlet. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the pizzazz of formal night:</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's
not all rose petals and puppy dogs on the couches alongside the Explorer's
Lounge. After a few minutes of pretense that I'm reading <i>The Traveller's Tree</i>, I give myself
wholly to eavesdropping on the conversation of the North Carolinians seated
behind me. Two
well-heeled couples expound at extraordinary length about easements and sump
pumps and property lines and how boring the conversations are with ignorant
builders who don't know diddly about floor covering upgrades. I see that the ladies are, by American cruise
standards, quite slender, in throwback taupe and mauve pantsuits. I'm
transported to a different time, with Virginia Slims and fad diets and <i>Designing Women</i> on the television. Hair
is molded in fine points on top of their heads. One wife makes the kind of
bitter statement you can never take back: "I will never work with him
again--I don't care if I have to side my next house in the cheapest
vinyl." She may or may not have mic dropped her Old Fashioned. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Formal nights are magic and I always camp out to watch the parade of early seating diners. The glitz, the glamor, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6t7gOxr0AI">Reba McEntire</a> of it all. I like to imagine everyone's kept their prom dresses just to re-wear on this occasion. Women and children sport poorly chosen hats and there's enough fuchsia to sustain several tropical isles. One gentleman is in an all-aqua-everything leisure suit ensemble down to the matching boat shoes and another wears a large rhinestone in the center of his orange bow tie.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the less-appealing parts of St. Maarten/St. Martin:</i></span></span></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm
jealous of Fermor's main advantage--arriving at an island (so tempting to call
them "unspoilt") in a group of two or three people instead of a pod
of three to five cruise liners. I feel self-conscious about disgorging ugly
Americanism on the docks but I remind myself that it's for the controlled adventure, especially
when it comes to reptiles in my bed linens, that I love cruises. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">On our tour, we blow by piecemeal estates studded with donkeys and outbuildings of concrete block.
Random red roofs decorate greened-over hills. The Dutch side has many brothels
that are far less dubious-looking than the many Chinese buffets. The French side has no whorehouses but boasts a Domino's, a Church's
Chicken and a Burger King. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Downtown
Marigot lives up to Fermor's description of it as the ugliest capital in the
Caribbean. Disheveled white men who have been in the sun too long wander under
a huge clock face outside a closed jewelry shop. It shows the wrong time. We
find an unoccupied art gallery filled with suboptimal oils but an outstanding
back garden crisscrossed with darting birds and island voices. Everyone else in
town has joined a funeral procession led by a constant European klaxon.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the proper sign off for the inimitable Lissa:</i> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
can't decide the best epigraph to give her: Frank O'Hara's "You just go on
your nerve," or Jay Z's "poverty's a disease / gotta hustle up a
cure." I'm already looking forward to her inauguration as president of a
unified, independent island nation.</span></span></div>
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On early mornings in St. Thomas:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's
not long after dawn when we pile off the ship at the island Fermor found
beautiful but also shockingly commercialized in 1947: St. Thomas. Things have
metastasized far beyond the Coca-Cola billboards the author viewed with alarm
but it's still scenic as all get out. In
the open air bus to the marina, the sun stretches dew drops off the roof and it smells green,
like golf. I think: "Day clean. Gone." in a flashback to <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781429929233"><i>The Sly Company of People Who Care</i></a>, the
fabulous moment when the narrator plays "Thunder Road" for his lover
and the lyric "you ain't a beauty but hey you're all right" gets him
in all kinds of trouble. I need to find a cruise that stops in Guyana. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
soundtrack on the bus does not follow my overarching desire for all Caribbean
public spaces to play only "10 Unknown Reggae Favorites." I
nevertheless enjoy the trip, the complicated honking conventions the drivers
have with each other. There's the same sense of safety one gets from riding a narrow
gauge railway at a children's zoo.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the warm milieu aboard the </i>Adventuress<i>: </i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">As we
settle into our seats for a safety lecture from Capt. Teresa, a teenager cusses out her mother for not bringing a sufficient supply of Dramamine. She
whips off her aviators with Maverickian vigor so her eyes can glint at their
most malevolent. The young lady is still inexpert at mascara application. It's
a standoff reminiscent of the Donners' when the last boiled bootstrap came out
of the pot that winter. The most petulant gets the last pill and turns to face
the sea, revealing a tattoo of two dragonflies forming a heart with their
illustrated contrails.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">While considering how much salt water I swallowed while snorkeling, I look back and
wonder what's the name of those damn trees ashore? No, not the palm trees--the
other, better looking ones. The one's in that Britney Spears <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGoM7atmJJA">video</a>.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Brittany has one and a half
dimples. She tips a can of peanuts directly into her mouth while receiving the attention of
a schoolteaching mother of two who just found out the limits of her brand new
underwater iPhone case. She gushes first about Brittany's eyes (it's true,
they're Icee blue) and continues with a rather intimate discussion of tan line
management that results in Brittany pulling her top down even farther for the
purposes of "evening things up." </span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Megan says tourists always come up to her and ask why she would move to
St. Thomas from San Jose, California, where it's already so sunny. She looks at me
intently and says, "but you know it's not the same up there as it is down
here." I do. </span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the true highlight of the entire trip:</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
bus brings us back to the shipside St. Thomas mall where I must find a
group gift for coworkers. As I wait with a bag of island taffy, I feel
the hair on my arms stand up. From the sundry shop sound system I hear tinkling the
opening strains of LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live." </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
turn to my mother and say the most serious words in my repertoire:
"This. Is. A. Jam." I mean, name a great song that <i>wasn't</i> written by Diane Warren. I tell
everyone within earshot that I will not be leaving the store until the conclusion
of these glorious <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Olo8gzgpC4">four and half minutes</a>.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"If
I had to live without you / what kind of life would that be?" </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The clerk, understanding the gravity of the moment, takes her time in finding the
boxes for my family's exquisite knickknacks (do <i>you</i> have a tape dispenser filled with blue water and floating
dolphins?).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"If
you ever leave / baby you would take away everything real in my
life" </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
cashier is so moved by my gentle swaying and lip-syncing that she plays a reprise as I walk out.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"How
do I go ooonnnnnn..." </span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On being distressed in Grand Turk:</i> </span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The museum on the island's history is not short on conch shells. Photos of the main drag
in the 60's show few improvements in infrastructure (though the Turks did
present a visiting Queen Elizabeth II with a writhing pile of enormous lobsters
that she glances at with long-faced trepidation). The anglophilic exhibits
reveal what Fermor and regular visitors to the Caribbean already know: the
former British possessions are often the worst. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">On
the dusty walk to the "white gold" Salt House visitors center, two
men are having a row outside a four table bar that blasts a song I believe to
be a guy rapping in patois over a banjo. In spite of the romantic idea
you might have, it turns out it was not a lot of fun being a salt breaker and
raker. A promotional DVD playing in a loop speaks in reverent tones about the
quasi-slave labor in the days before the dread refrigerator obviated the need
for salt captured in natural ponds. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The highlight of Grand Turk is a dusty pharmacy in a dust-colored strip
mall. It is as well stocked as a Walgreen's and the Sudafed
is cheaper. The three women working there laugh
continuously while we're inside.</span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On a most entertaining filmic interlude:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
arrive back to my cabin smack dab in the middle of a film I believe to be <i>The Vow.</i> My first and, in the end, most
lasting impression is that it was funded by the Cable-Knit Sweater industry.
There's a tremendous C-Tates montage where he plays 30 plaintive seconds of
acoustic guitar, moves out of his apartment and emerges shirtless and studly in a
back alley where he spontaneously adopts a stray cat. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On British colonialism:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">At
dinner I have the best debate of the cruise with the couple from England. They
loved Grand Turk and thought it a proper Caribbean island, what they had
imagined in their mind's eye (uncrowded beaches, burros still used as a means
of transport, etc.). I scoff at the notion that such poverty and lack of
development is to be applauded. But when I praise St. Thomas, it
occurs to me that I might really mean, "I prefer it because there are
more white people and better shopping." It gets a little tense so we talk instead about
the Brontës--they've visited the family house in Haworth and I'm jealous. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On Dejan:</i><br />Svitlana introduces us to Dejan, her
assistant waiter, a permastubbled Serbian you must trust with your
unfinished wine bottles at the end of the night. Like Chaplin, he moves
in smooth silence around the table, opening his mouth mostly to call the
men "mister" and further confirm his superiority. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">His greatest moment came when a shipboard photog approached me and Lisa and gestured that we should get closer. Dejan's
vaudevillian eyebrows arch just the right amount when he sees the pained look on my face as I lean in. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On an alternate reality with Lisa: </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a stage whisper, my
mother indicates her belief that Lisa uses her time on ship for hookups and I
agree instantly. Lisa claims that she is going to buy the portrait of us and tell her coworkers I'm the "boy toy" she met on vacation. It's some kind of legacy. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On meeting again with old friends:</i></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
too long apart, I pass in the Emerald deck hallway the charming couple from
embarkation just as the young man is shouting, "if the boat's a-rockin'
don't come a-knockin'!" I love this idea, that they are engaged in coitus each
moment the ship is in motion and restoring themselves only with Coke Zero and
pillow mints.</span></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On the occasional melancholy of the sea:</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Reading
<i>The Princess Patter</i>, the shipboard
paper of record, I see a shoutout to a man who has spent 2046 days at sea
(doing the math on my calculator that's five and a half years). He's the kind
of proper gent who owns a black and a white tuxedo jacket. (The record holder
for this voyage might be another man I overheard saying, "we decided to make
our seventy-fifth cruise a Transatlantic.") I scheme a way to rack up more days on
the water: Princess needs to sponsor a writer in residence program, a tasteful
update to <i>Road Rules: Semester at Sea</i>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">My
favorite part of the ship is the stern because from there I can see the massive
wake and be reminded of <a href="http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78464">Matisse's <i>Bather</i></a> again. I think about the
painting all the time. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The way that, in the
Caribbean blue behind the knee of the bather, there are pieces of his flesh, an
undercurrent done in his color. </span></span>I'm trying to finish a poem I drafted while walking around a
different Princess Promenade Deck two years ago but it's hard to capture the power of aquamarine trails </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">cut in navy water </span></span>by the colossus.</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Skywalkers
Night Club has presided over innumerable bad decisions and dance moves aided by
the roll of the ship at midnight but I'm just here to read and watch it storm.
Water pours over the empty pool deck and down the stairwells. </span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Three
laughing teenagers bundle into a hot tub with their sunglasses on. They've
intuited Fermor's method of waiting out the rain: "the Gaudeloupean
stratagem of hiding in the sea, standing with our bodies encased in warmth and
only our hair and cheeks exposed to cold falling arrows."</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
was never that young.</span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On one's reentry into society:</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I didn't have a strong desire to return to Ft. Lauderdale but, as they say, any port in a storm. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">They also say things happen in threes. At the head of the Express Walk Off queue is Zoe. She is ineffectually suggesting that passengers make one line instead of two. We ignore her. A more senior staffperson sends Zoe on her sad little way and makes harsher demands over a microphone.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">All the while there's some hissed xenophobia behind me, a reminder that we're going back to the real world: </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Next month we'll be letting Roma gypsies in like they're indigenous Indians."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Oh my."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"That's why our infrastructure is so poor. The government is stupid. Just stupid."</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Disembarkation seems to last forever but it takes 15 minutes. And the cruise lingers--white sand will pour onto my rug when I unpack my luggage, in my own shower I'll feel the rocking of an imagined boat and in my final thoughts before sleep I'll ponder where Big Twin Lissa's been today, whose lives she's improved, going fast on those narrow Maartenian roads.</span></span><br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-50854598172038407862014-04-23T09:51:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:51:15.886-07:00Out Walking #5Out walking because the Pebble step-counting device on my shoe demands
that I shuffle around as much as possible each day. It's also a way to
remind me that I'm always at work, checking the leader board that
measures me against my colleagues. Unfortunately the standings are
determined by "minutes of activity" rather than "miles traveled," which
means I'm trailing a bent 60-year-old woman who sports a metal cane, a
jet black wig and the tortoise's approach to races.<br />
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<br />
I've come to Land's End, which is not just a <a href="http://www.landsend.com/products/all-hands-on-deck/id_268024?cm_re=tab-mns-_-feature-_-20140409?cm_re=tab-mns-_-handsondeck-_-20140409">catalog</a> I miss getting but also a popular walking spot on the northwestern-most coast of San Francisco. Climbing up the first bluffs, I find street art scripture written into even the driftwood. The taggers favor a metallic grey paint, perhaps because it goes so well with the the sagebrush dullness of the sea. Wood chips pile like discarded styluses on the sand and I take in the dramatic view of Seal Rock, riven with a hole. I wonder what <a href="http://www.cityartsmagazine.com/blog/2010/04/review-banksys-movie-written-poem">Banksy</a> would make of the negative space if we invited him to make an installation here. <br />
<br />
For a moment I'm under a helicoptering, buff-throated hummingbird busily spritzing her excrement in golden clouds--it's like stepping through a spray of Chanel No. 5. Farther out, gulls with that hollow-boned knowingness circle the timeworn, white-winged barometer atop the Cliff House. The Sutro Baths are lousy with children and I can't spot a single otter.
Or is it seals for which I'm supposed to be watching? Sea lions? I don't see a
single pinniped. Fog sits like an island miles out on the horizon and the first indications of salt spray spot my cell phone. I remove my headphones to better hear all the nature happening.<br />
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It's just as I turn my back on the Baths that I am first troubled by the phrase: "And complete acceptance is always bittersweet." I love it, but where's it from exactly? <br />
<br />
I recently reread Norman Maclean's <i>A River Runs Through It</i>. That would be the simplest explanation for how the phrase got stuck in my head but then it seems to me that book ends without complete acceptance. Norman's father makes him repeat the detail that all the bones in Paul's right hand were broken. And Norman tells me that the people he loved and--this is such a great addition--did not understand in his youth are dead. <br />
<br />
But this bittersweet is being dredged from somewhere less recent than that. Women keep giving me beckoning looks and I smile at them and they wave
me over to take their picture with friends in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. I
understand the necessity--I also want to get on Instagram as soon as
possible and improve the light of my snapshots. <br />
<br />
I descend some wooden steps to the shore, skirting pumpkin-sized stones in greys and blues and greens marbled with white lightning. The flawless sky is cut by crows or the rarer Air Korea jet. Waves thump with such force that they spook a Pomeranian prancing over the rocky beach. In the surf there are goldens retrieving tennis balls and moss covered pine cones. My climb back up is delayed by a three-year-old who must walk himself to the top of the grade, abetted by his mother who, for unknown reasons, is pronouncing the principal town of the central coast of California "San <i>Louise</i> Obispo."<br />
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In front of me as I lunch is a young woman in a Stanford hoodie who's arranged herself on a tree stump with a studied, self-conscious gaze at the Golden Gate Bridge. Perhaps she has a friend, an arborist who also attends the Harvard of the West, stashed in a tree, with a fancy camera, who will take her picture looking at the bridge and send it to her phone so she can Instagram it. Behind me, a golfer chases his Shankopotamus down an embankment in the shadow of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. The next time I look up from my peanut butter and jelly sandwich the Cardinal is gone, replaced by a bouncy Frenchman decked out in neon orange shorts of a brevity usually reserved, in this country, for men in their sixties. He has the build and demeanor of a tennis pro with an ATP ranking in the mid-200s, as well as an impossibly attractive blonde companion. They pose for the <i>de rigueur </i>bridge shot but the composition is ruined when he is startled by a dragonfly.<br />
<br />
He scrabbles down the cliff to safety while the girlfriend produces from her purse, and slowly begins to peel, a banana. In spite of the spectacular view she'd traveled thousand of miles to see, she turns to face me as she takes the first bite. She stands 20 feet away, at a slightly lower elevation, and eye contact is inevitable. These Pepperidge Farm goldfish pretzels are making me thirsty. I break away from her gaze and focus on a hawk with a red tail so distinctive that I believe to be a <a href="http://vintageprintable.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Animal%20-%20Bird%20-%20Hawk,%20Audubon,%20red%20tailed.jpg">Red-Tailed Hawk</a>. I go back to my literary research. <br />
<br />
The reason I'm getting Google results about chocolate and pop song lyrics is that I'm not putting quotes around "and complete acceptance is always bittersweet." When I remedy this the answer is obvious: an enjambed line from my old friend Spencer Reece.<br />
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/06/16/030616fi_fiction6" target="_blank">"The Clerk's Tale"</a>
(which you must read now to maximize the value of the rest of this post) was printed on the back page of the <i>New Yorker</i>. And I
am always prepared to harp on the fact that, where you once found "The
Clerk's Tale," you now find a neverending cartoon caption contest. This is my
#1 sign of the end of American culture.
(On the other hand, it's possible to see a short film James Franco made about "The
Clerk's Tale," costarring Tywin Lannister as "the old homosexual." <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toCmeSMaU78" target="_blank">No, really.</a>)<br />
<br />
<div>
Spencer Reece has written many good poems that remind me
of many other good poems from many other good poets in an era that
Stephen Burt will tell you is a good era for poetry. Spencer Reece also wrote "The Clerk's Tale," which is better than good. It occurs to me that I am most often moved by poems that are long (or serial) and use plain speech (see Carson's "The Glass Essay," Bidart's "The Third Hour of the Night," Niedecker's "Paean to Place," Seidel's <i>Cosmos Poems</i>). </div>
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At work, I've been "temporarily" restationed to a coworker's desk. On it
there is a small fan, with fabric strips for blades. This means you
can put your finger to the edge of the blurred circle and hear <i>clipclipclipclip</i>. I've gotten better and better at modulating the sound and can make noise like a helicopter approaching then receding from my
airspace. It's like trying to slow down a very
fast-moving clock.<br />
<br />
I read "The Clerk's Tale" ten years ago. The idea of being in a deadend job at 33, making 30-something-thousand a year was then inconceivable; it is now now. I wonder whether I might not be happier working at Brooks Brothers. I would come to hate it but for a time I would be so satisfied by putting the ties back in color order. <br />
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<br />
I put continental distractions behind me and continue on my way. As a matter of course I text my coworker M. pictures of hiking goldendoodles. I follow Buckles for awhile, a gentleman with a complicated coat, blonde but also brass and silver--the color of his hair must inevitably be compared to a worn belt clasp. His whole world is this walk. He even looks back at me, prancing and panting, to make sure I'm also having a nice time. We need this animal comfort now more than ever--the weather has changed at work and the President's blustery powerpoints on austerity tell me the end is coming. Each Monday to Friday, I keep my bag in M.'s office for safety but also so I have an excuse to come in often, for wallet and mints and umbrella. Now I've started to think about the last time I will do this. We most often end the day with a silent salute in her doorway, and walking out into all these fatigued evenings I think to her <i>we no longer have any need to express ourselves</i>. <br />
<br />
I check into the Pebble steps leader board and think of my life as a Brooks Brothers associate. I doubt I could reach the matched professionalism of the old homosexual: tie stuck with masking tape, the teeth capped, the breath mint always in place. Reece understands what it means to be an artist in the wrong line of work--into the quotidian he adds the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THUKHe6gRsU" target="_blank">"Spanish Dances"</a> by Granados and Hollywood starlets and the English countryside and
the light of cathedrals. If you're like me, you might think it's a stretch that anywhere in the Mall of America there is light like that. But I know why he does this--these
comparisons to eternal beauty are the only things keeping us alive. I did not know, and still do not know, what he means by "St. Paul / who had to be shown," but I still know it is perfect. <br />
<br />
Because poetry is how it is--I guess you have to call it "a small world"--I was face to face with Spencer Reece not long after tearing the back page out of that <i>New Yorker</i>. He was to be my teacher for my last semester at Bennington. When we first met I was disappointed--I'd expected snappier ensembles. That winter in Vermont he wore a comfortable, cabled cardigan (remember back to the mid-aughts, before cardigans had roared back). One must always hesitate to conflate the speaker in a poem with the author of the poem but it is true that Spencer had a receding hairline, going grey at the temples, and horn-rimmed spectacles.<br />
<br />
After the first workshop Spencer and I went out walking to introduce
ourselves. I was guarded and cold and insufficiently shod as we crunched
along in January snow. I railed about my difficulties and he alluded to
ways life <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/06/16/030616on_onlineonly01">could be worse</a>.
Our walk was one of my many failed attempts to see Robert Frost's
grave, which is somewhere near Bennington. I never saw it because the
people I met had already been, or had promised to go with someone else
later or rejected the idea entirely because all of Frost's children hated him. </div>
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I've come to the end of Land's End. It's a terrible place called Sea Cliff, a community where your Range Rover is parked in the driveway and your second Range Rover is parked on the street. Instead of the glitter of broken glass on the curbs, there's actual glitter (in the shape of champagne bottles, no less). The rich live beside spookily quiet roads circled by private police cruisers. I get a dirty look from an overextended jogger who is probably just worried she accidentally purchased the Lululemon that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2489900/Lululemon-boss-blames-womens-bodies-yoga-pants-looking-through.html">shows your ass</a>. A rent-a-cop pulls over to tell me how to get to Baker Beach but he's really giving instructions on how to get the fuck out of this neighborhood. I want to ask him for a ride but that seems unwise.<br />
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<br />
At Bennington, you correspond with your teachers, and Spencer sent me letters on a variety of beautiful stationery, composed on a typewriter and hand-corrected with a pen. I
had other professors who had phoned it in (one was singularly focused on making my lines of verse shorter and another told me
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/street-of-the-iron-poet-henri-cole-paris-dairy.html">Parisian anecdotes</a> that appear unchanged in the <i>New Yorker</i> years later (I suppose in poetry you take what work you can get)). But Spencer actually phoned me. He told me he could not makes heads or tails of my poems so we went through my manuscript line by line, adjectival phrase by adjectival phrase, until we were both sick of my work. Explaining at length what each line meant (two and sometimes three meanings) made me see how none--no more than one
or two--of the poems were any good.</div>
<div>
<br />
At the time of this epistolary exchange I
was working an 8 to 5 in the same university department where I studied as an undergrad and wanted nothing but to run
out the clock on writing school, on the job, on the lease to my apartment. I was done and I wanted the poems to be done too. I thought what I required was a change of scene, a part time job, a lower rent. And after finding each those things all I still lacked was the ability to write publishable poems. Though perhaps I had no idea what I was doing all along--my MFA thesis, archived forever in Crossett Library, is printed in Futura Condensed. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
The best letter I got from Spencer was the last, typed on pages as colorfully dotted as funfetti cake. It was not just a final review of my work--about which he was thoroughly bemused and complimentary--but also of my character. He wrote about my initial display of "barely concealed contempt" (I had at one point sent him a DVD copy of <i>Contempt </i>to clarify my feelings) and noted that our relationship had warmed to a "labored tolerance." And there is my epitaph! "Kirk Michael: He Had a Labored Tolerance for the World."<br />
<br />
I've popped a couple of stitches at the toe of my shoe following the smaller trails to see more of these blue stones shined to semiprecious sheen. I'm wearing myself out. My calves want it to stop, but it is a pleasure to instead walk faster at these moments. I step away from Baker Beach under a sunset in colors almost as gorgeous as <a href="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk9n7kFAQe1qc4dqo.jpg">International Orange</a>. I smile in spite of myself and accept that Spencer was correct about my poems and my
personality and--as you already know--complete acceptance is always
bittersweet.<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-22297016195475098002014-04-01T21:53:00.002-07:002014-04-01T21:53:26.092-07:00VeniceThe water is the dumped perfume of five hundred years, lavender and Chanel, though she smells better. The boy and girl of the story are alone at a Vaporetto stop, the lagoon a muted spectrum of pigeon feathers. The boy’s eyes are the wet blue of back cover cologne advertisements, his ears iced with imitation stones to show how far he plans to be from his current means. His face is sharpening to hardness, lupine teeth charming even leaning in, like the viscous current, his hair black glistening, spiked sideburns, a single drip of aquavit sweat following the line of his jaw. The girl is three-quarters back to me, summer freckles brushed over her nose, hair as dark as his except where it’s folded in with brunette, her tanned legs drawing away from a short black dress, planted on the jetty, what light there is under the smoked glass overhang on the back of her thighs, the careless hairs.<br /><br />She’s leaving; he’s not ready to let her go. Sections of her curls are breezed free, she tucks them behind her left ear, he her right, his watch wide as the bottom of a beer bottle and ringed in rhinestones, a smile working its way towards her ear. He shouts a question at the ferryman. I can’t understand the answer but it’s probably that there’s always another one coming, this dusk of aranciata and blood, the thick ropes connecting boat to dock come undone, the canal is a swirl of gasoline, ciao regazzi, her thumb running where his bicep meets bone, the sunset about to light us on fire, his hand at her cheek as we jerk away, her soft features, shining hair touched now with that red American woman forever fail to duplicate, he’s laughing, she left to meet him in a rush, the blue shampoo bottle balanced on the bathroom windowsill, the lingering wave at her temple catching reflections across the canal, she leans, the shampoo bottle leans, it smells of citrus, her balance is perfect, my wobbling ankles rock on the deck, she lifts one foot and wraps it around the back of his knee he buckles into her, the lap of water, shy bubbles of saliva in her teeth, languid jaguar eyes and the power of her jaws working green mint Vivident, he comes whispering into her neck, she laughs hand to mouth, I bob away, she drops her gum on the rotting wood, a black lizard tattoo stretches from triceps to elbow, to the same razor point as his sideburns, the animal on his other arm lost in the shadows, he has a cut on the inside of the thumb and she’s kissing it.<br /><br />The blades of the motor slice the water and in the eddy I see her first grey hair, her dropped hips in a house dress, the messy bristles of the broom standing on the tiles inside the front door, “It Never Entered My Mind” on the radio, his glass of orange juice and worn cuffs folded up four times, the thick black and white beard down his neck, the faded iguana green ink diffuse over his arm. The proud bridge of his nose, the rheumy water of his eyes as they cast back over Venice.kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-82454184964200242442014-03-03T07:53:00.001-08:002014-03-03T07:53:36.854-08:00Proust Film Questionnaire<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br />
I have wanted for a long while to fill out the FAQ
section of the WTT and it occurred to me that the Proust
Questionnaire might help me on my way (I ought to have learned by now that the answer is always in Proust). How else will a new visitor understand the vicious biases I nurture against certain filmmakers and the directors and actors I consider above reproach?<br />
<br />
Imagine in each question below the invisible phrase "as it applies to cinema," as these answers differ in
places from the "as it applies to your whole life" answers.</div>
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<i>What is your idea of perfect happiness?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Spending an afternoon with Renoir, Ophüls, Powell & Pressburger, Wes Anderson--delights in color, movement and sound. Those filmmakers who don't just make great films, but provide great joy.</div>
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<i>What is your greatest fear?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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As a tot I worried I'd one day run out of good films, but that has passed. Now my fear is everyone else's: early death. </div>
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<i>What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?</i></div>
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<br />
How often I must remind myself that sitting around and writing about film will make me happier than sitting around and not writing. <br />
<br /></div>
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<i>What is the trait you most deplore in others?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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It's
one thing to pay your money and enrich the purveyors of Hollywood
blockbuster nonsense (I've seen all three <i>Transformers</i> in theatres)--it's another
to furiously insist that Nolan's <i>Batman</i> films or Favreau's <i>Iron Man </i>films are artistically worthwhile, on par with directors aiming to provoke thought, not mere wonder. </div>
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<i>Which living person do you most admire?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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For directors, it might be Steven Soderbergh--an explorer of genres, budgets, styles and mediums who defended movie storytelling as best he could before now trying his hand at television. For actors, Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert--relentless workers and international stars who've collaborated with almost every major living director (and several dead ones). </div>
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<i>What is your greatest extravagance?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Purchasing too many Criterion Collection DVDs...not to mention film books I don't have time to read. </div>
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<i>What is your current state of mind?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Happy that there is room for people like Shane Carruth to make films and get them distributed, and curious about whether longform television is really "catching" film behind directors like Assayas, Fukunaga and Soderbergh. </div>
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<i>What do you consider the most overrated virtue?</i></div>
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<br />
Capital "A" acting of the kind most often rewarded with Oscars. Films are made by directors and non-actors are often as great as any star. Start with Hossain Sabzian in <i>Close-Up</i> and move on to hundreds of other examples. <br />
<br /></div>
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<i>On what occasion do you lie?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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When people ask me if I know the films of the Japanese masters--Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa. And when people ask, "won't you come see the new J.J. Abrams picture?" Oh no, busy that day, and the next...</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Which living person do you most despise?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. They gave us the blockbuster and its even more odious cousin, the two hour and fifteen minute, Academy-bait drama. Look at the utter shit to win Best Picture in just the last ten years. </div>
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<i>What is the quality you most like in a man?</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Laconism. As purveyed by noir philosophers like Bogart or Mitchum (or Belmondo in <i>Breathless</i>). Jeff Bailey: "You can never help anything, can you? You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another."</span></span></div>
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<i>What is the quality you most like in a woman?</i></div>
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Maneating. Barbara Stanwyck in <i>Double Indemnity</i>, Jane Greer in <i>Out of the Past</i>, Lars von Trier's <i>Medea</i>, Emmanuelle Devos in <i>Kings & Queen</i>, the grand dame of them all, Martine Carol in <i>Lola Mont</i><i>ès</i>. </div>
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<i>Which words or phrases do you most overuse?</i></div>
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<br />
Hard to pick from all my tic-y parentheticals...maybe "longtime WTT fave"? <br />
<br /></div>
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<i>When and where were you happiest?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Walking out of the film survey class I took at community college while a senior in high school, having just seen <i>Breathless</i>
for the first time--the score pounding in my ears, almost dancing
my way back to the car, knowing film would be a larger influence on my
life than I had previously imagined.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>What is the greatest love of your life?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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I find the greatest romances are Chow-san's in <i>2046</i> and <i>In the Mood for Love</i>. Tony Leung has a great unrequited love with Maggie Cheung, denies himself a real relationship with Ziyi Zhang because of it, and pours all that thwarted passion into writing and tree-whispering. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Which talent would you most like to have?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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To only need four hours of sleep a night, so I could always watch a film before bed. </div>
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<i>If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it
be?</i><br />
<br />
Obviously I ought to have been born independently wealthy. <i> </i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>What do you consider your greatest achievement?</i><br />
<br />
Apparently I once made 50 posts on this blog in a year, which now seems impossible. <i> </i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing,
what would it be?</i><br />
<br />
Casa Malaparte, Capri, Italy. <i> </i></div>
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<i>Where would you most like to live?</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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I need all the great movie houses and programmers in Manhattan to move to San Francisco. Then San Francisco is my answer. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
January-February filmgoing period, when the releases aren't
worthwhile and most of the new trailers are for summer blockbuster season,
which now arrives in early May. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>What is your favorite occupation?</i><br />
<br />
Well, writing. Also my least favorite/most frightening. <i> </i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>What is your most marked characteristic?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Snark! <i> </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>What do you most value in your friends?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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The willingness to trust me again after I take them to terrible films (happened most recently with the disgraceful <i>Liv & Ingmar</i>). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Who are your favorite writers?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ben Hecht, Robert Evans, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, Cormac McCarthy, Arnaud Desplechin.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>Who is your hero of fiction?</i><br />
<br />
Sam the Lion.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>What are your favorite names?</i><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Santino Corleone, "Trashcan" Jack Vincennes, Deckard, John Grady Cole / Madeleine Elster, Camille Javal, Lola Mont</span><span style="font-size: small;">ès, Pinky Rose.</span><i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>What is your greatest regret?</i><br />
<br />
Having had a day job for all these years, when otherwise I might have spent weekday afternoons in near-empty theatres. <br />
<br />
<i>How would you like to die?</i><br />
<br />
Just in time to be woken back up, as in <i>Ordet</i> or <i>Silent Light.</i><br />
<br />
<i>What is your motto?</i><br />
<br />
To pick one from all the Boris Lermontov lines: "Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on." </div>
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-30465149481468535232014-01-31T09:05:00.001-08:002014-01-31T09:05:20.383-08:00Best of 2013<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<div>
I am comforted by patterns. 2013 confirmed that in even-numbered years the Giants win the World Series and in odd-numbered years
all the best films come out. </div>
<div>
<br />
Perhaps as importantly, last year also brought to my attention an anthem for our time:<br />
<br /></div>
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</div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WSeNSzJ2-Jw" width="640"></iframe>
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</div>
<div>
<br />
The year in film was so good there is a countdown before the countdown. <br />
<br />
<div>
Four close-outs that don't make my best baker's dozen: <i>Her>Inside Llewyn Davis>The Wolf of Wall Street>American Hustle</i> (that's the ranking but it's a tight three-and-a-half-stars-y bunch).</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
Three fascinating misses: <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2013/08/13-ways-of-looking-at-only-god-forgives.html"><i>Only God Forgives</i></a> and <i><a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2013/10/the-american-grandmaster.html">The Grandmaster (American Cut)</a> </i>and <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2013/11/three-times-counselor.html"><i>The Counselor</i>.</a></div>
<div>
<br />
Two excellent films from 2012 that I only saw in 2013: <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2013/02/three-times-in-another-country.html"><i>In Another Country</i></a> and <i>Tabu</i>--Hong Sang-Soo and Miguel Gomes tell stories on film the way I'd like them to be told.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
One legend who has lost me: Terrence Malick--after <i>To the Wonder</i> my anticipation for his releases moves from fevered to slightly piqued. </div>
<br />
<div>
<b>Best Supporting Actresses</b></div>
<div>
<br />
If you've read the preceding reviews for <i>The Counselor </i>and <i>Only God Forgives</i> you know it's quite a battle between <b>Cameron Diaz</b> and <b>Kristin Scott Thomas</b> over the Most Scenery Chewing Award. Gun to my head I lean towards Diaz because of eye makeup. <b>Zhang Ziyi</b> is an excellent coiled weapon in <i>The Grandmaster</i>, poised to fight and full of swallowed pain. The best part of <i>American Hustle</i> is <b>Jennifer "I put out the fire" Lawrence</b>. I remember sitting down for <i>Winter's Bone</i>, hearing her say, "bred and buttered," and going full Dick Vitale: "She's a star baby! S-T-A-R, STAR!!" <b>Scarlett Johansson</b> has hopefully learned something from being sexier as a voice in <i>Her</i> than on screen in <i>Don Jon</i>. I thought the idea of nominating someone who never appears in the flesh was just the thing to make Academy voters feel clever (and think of the short term savings in their phone sex charges). But she'll have to settle for the WTT nod. </div>
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</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>Best Supporting Actors</b></div>
<div>
<br />
If
Scarlett is recognized for her voice in <i>Her</i> then <b>Rob Lowe</b> should get it for
his face in <i>Behind the Candelabra</i> ("Will I be able to close my eyes?" "Not entirely.") I begrudge <b>Franco</b> everything but have to give it up for <i>Spring Breaker</i>'s Alien (<b>Gucci Mane</b>'s method acting as Archie deserves further kudos). I enjoyed any number of tiny roles, including <b>Giovanni Arcuri</b>'s Caesar in <i>Caesar Must Die</i>, <b>Michael Shannon</b>'s stern and hilarious avuncular turn in <i>Mud</i>, and <b>Clark Gregg</b>, <b>Nathan Fillion</b> and <b>Fran Kranz</b>'s uproarious collective in <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i>: There's a nice cumulative effect from <b>Bad Coach Taylor</b> as the repetitious alcoholic in <i>The Spectacular Now</i> and <b>Good Coach Taylor</b> shit talking DiCaprio on the yacht in <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>. But perhaps the most memorable supporting acting is <b>Jonah Hill</b> affecting a waspy rasp and hashing out those cousin-humping Punnett squares in <i>Wolf</i>. </div>
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<div>
<br />
<b>Best Actresses</b></div>
<div>
<br />
There
are only two types of people: those who know that <b>Suzanne Clément</b> is
the best actress of the year and those who have not seen <i>Laurence
Anyways</i>. Her window-rattling explosion at a grande dame dinette waitress is hair-raising: "Serve coffee, bring food, take money and shut the fuck up." She steals the film, and with ease, from WTT fave Melvil Poupoud. Her win comes with apologies to <b>Rooney Mara</b> <a href="http://www.thewhitetanktop.com/2013/03/rooney-maras-hair.html">styling</a>, <b>Greta Gerwig</b> <a href="http://vimeo.com/83441453">running,</a> <b>Amy Seimetz</b> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DrCueWjehM">suffering</a> and <b>
Adele Excharpolous</b> and <b>Lea Seydoux</b> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Afiy5Md5k">being great</a> with each other. (And I'm still awaiting the final tallies on the competition between <b>Shailene Woodley</b> in <i>The Spectacular Now </i>and <b>Brie Larson</b> in <i>Short Term 12</i> for Miss Indie Teen 2013.)</div>
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<div>
<b>Best Actors</b></div>
<div>
<br />
First, I give the annual award for Most Acting to Bradley Cooper in <i>American Hustle</i>--he is in illustrious company. Watching <i>Her</i>, it was fun to spot <b>Joaquin Phoenix</b>'s scar under that sad sack mustache. <b>Oscar Isaac </b>certainly made it look cold <i>Inside Llewyn Davis</i>. <b>Toni Servillo</b> stands at the end of culture in <i>The Great Beauty</i>, looking at the great ugliness of Rome, his own unhandsome face so desirable against the distended bodies flexing unsexily around him. <b>Shane Carruth</b> gives a starmaking turn in <i>Upstream Color</i>, though I hope he doesn't go on to act in anything he hasn't also written and directed. I've reserved my highest praise for <b>Chiwetel Ejiofor</b> in <i>12 Years a Slave</i>--he pulls off a most dangerous thing for an actor, using his eyes to speak the most important lines. </div>
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<div>
<b>Best Pictures</b></div>
<div>
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div>
(I've done one of my better jobs of seeing all potential
placeholders--the only caveat is there's a 95% Claire Denis' <i>Bastards</i>
would have made this list because she makes my world go 'round.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The "I Wanna Rob" Section</div>
<div>
13. <i>Spring Breakers </i>- This film tastes like Sour Patch Kids. Harmony Korine's casting choices are fascinating--the aforementioned Franco and Gucci Mane, Jeff Jarrett as an evangelical
preacher, wifey Rachel Korine as the most libidinous reveler and Selena Gomez, with her open revulsion to appearing in the film. St. Pete's beach is the most spiritual place of all, full of lizard brain
GIFing, days
coated in sweat and malt liquor, nights the color of Virgin America
cabins with Gatsby lighting provided by an Outback Steakhouse at the end of a pier. And Britney, good Christ, the Britney. <br />
<br /></div>
<div>
12. <i>Bling Ring </i>- The protagonists of this film might be even dimmer or, anyway, less cunning than their counterparts to the southeast. The blankness of the text: "Let's go to Paris," and the Eiffel Tower key ring they find under Ms. Hilton's mat. For those teenage nitwits, being there is like rolling around in the treasures of the grail. It's a full immersion in reality culture, the way Emma Watson asks, "what did Lindsay say?" in her terrifying accent. Cinematography is not reduced all the way down to GIFs but, for Sofia Coppola, this is more intercut and less studied--intentionally disposable. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
The Soderbergh Section</div>
<div>
11. <i>Side Effects </i>- The characters are lit in a haze, or the poisonous fog that blurs
everything around the depressive Rooney Mara. She gives Channing Tatum the Janet Leigh
MacGuffin treatment and participates in what, back in February, seemed a
likely candidate for the juiciest lesbian hookup of the year (was Catherine Zeta-Jones channeling Laura Prepon in <i>Orange Is the New Black</i> or the other way around?). Soderbergh's willingness to push beyond the limits of a serious drama about our prescription-drug-addicted country into a nasty little potboiler is commendable. <br />
<br />
10. <i>Behind the Candelabra</i> - Here the scene is lit like,
well, a candelabra the size of my apartment, picking out the individual
spots of glitter in Liberace's hair. Michael Douglas was smart to take a
break from his cancer-inducing tonguework to do Lee--he has so many
wonderful lines, about Sonja Henie's thighs and looking like his father
in drag. It's such a fabulous moment when he realizes he can adopt
someone he's fucking. His sequin-tastic ensembles are spot on (I say this a visitor to the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas to see the originals) and the ensemble cast is perfect, down to the rheumy, shitting lapdogs. </div>
<div>
<br />
Steven Soderbergh has retired from film directing at his pithiest, his most playful, when
the maximum amount of people will beg to have him back. As he
finishes work on the miniseries <i>The Knick</i>, I wonder if, 20 years down the line, we'll find this a key moment where longform television passed film.<br />
<br />
The Top 9<br />
9. <i>Something in the Air</i> - Continuing from <i>Summer Hours</i> and <i>Carlos</i>, Olivier Assayas moves his camera through large groups and houses like a better version of Robert Altman. Clement Metayer's Gilles deals with the typical (French) teenage concerns: making love (to Carole Combes' Laure, a real firestarter) and art. But then there's also revolution, in fits in starts "After May," to which his friends say he must be totally committed. As one explains, "Art is solitude." That tension informs the rest of the film, one that further stokes my rage at not growing up in French schools, where communist manifestos are handed out before class and most 17-year-olds are familiar with John Ashbery and Gregory Corso. The floppy-haired cast blows across Europe like it's the only thing in the world. And it is. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
8. <i>Mud</i> - Seems rather a forgotten film this awards season--Jeff Nichols' work might always be too subtle. The young stars never make it past a narrow, riverine range. Ellis and Neckbone's small boat pokes through some lovely landscapes but they are shot unpretentiously, like the jungles in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films. The story is more or less two kids tracing the arc of two fairly stupid adults in a death spiral together. But if the dumb grownups are Reese Witherspoon and Matthew McConaughey, I'd want to keep watching too. Plus Matt says fun things like, "it's tough to make a meal out of pumpkin pie filling" while his skin is a Pantone match to pumpkin pie filling. For bonus points, Nichols takes on the challenge of an extended snake metaphor, running it
from live cottonmouths and water moccasins to McConaughey's
tats to the Bible. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
7. <i>Museum Hours</i> - I spend a fair amount of time wishing for more W.G. Sebald in my life and this is a film for that. Between Johann and Anne there is something fresher than a love story: a film about walking around in the cold and occasionally coming inside to gaze at masterworks. As a security guard, Johann's job is watching--but even when he is not at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum he is out with a birdwatching group or playing online poker. Anne is good match, in that she also has a funny voice and enjoys inexpensive hobbies. I wish I had time for repeated visits to the same masterpieces, to allow for things I've never done, like finding all the easter eggs in a Breughel painting. With such exquisite moments--like Johann describing Rembrandt portraits to help a woman in a coma, or a young museum guard's theory that Dutch and Flemish still lives were depictions of burghers' bling, the equivalent of piling diamonds and flat screens on a canvas now--I wish it had gone on longer, or will pick up in another volume soon. </div>
<br />
6. <i>Like Someone in Love</i> - A possible formulation: <br />
<br />
Sebald : walking :: Kiarostami : shots in cars<br />
<br />
This film is the observation a young call girl, Akiko, being shepherded from one glass enclosure to another over the course of 16 or so hours. It begins with a tense negotiation between Akiko and her pimp in a glassy, Murakami-short-story jazz bar. From there she's shuttled via cab to Professor Watanabe's apartment and its large bay window. Finally, in the professor's car, she is forced to meet with her unhinged boyfriend, Noriaki, who knows her as a student without evening employment. Akiko never laughs but does sort of smile, speaking like a ventriloquist's dummy even when shouting. She's shocked by the
sound of her own voice, the dexterity with which she can sharpen and
soften her eyes. </div>
<div>
<br />
There is a definitive Abbas Kiarostami situation in the car where Watanabe--moving seamlessly from role of john to grandfather--tells young Noriaki all he needs to know about being married: "If you know she's going to lie, best to not ask." When Akiko joins them, Watanabe shifts again, to a kind of couples counselor--it's all for naught, but the effort is lovely. The first night in his apartment, Akiko talks charmingly to Professor Watanabe about how she resembles the young woman in his print of Chiyoji Yazaki's painting <a href="http://encn.blouinartinfo.com/sites/default/files/20130213_likesomeoneinlove-4.png"><i>Training a Parrot</i></a>--but she is always treated like the bird. </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
5. <i>12 Years a Slave</i> - Wesley Morris wrote the only <a href="http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9870721/the-cultural-crater-12-years-slave" target="_blank">column</a> you need on the film--it makes clear that every movie featuring slavery before this one was insufficient. I would make an additional compliment to Steve McQueen: I greatly admire the tension he creates by holding an establishing shot for an extra beat before the characters go in motion, making a beautiful tableau that shatters at the next threat. The shot that kills me occurs late in the film,
when Chiwetel Ejiofor's eyes pass through stages of terror and sorrow and unwanted hope against the ever-humming lushness of the bayou. This is where my tears started rolling in
earnest--at the potency of his performance and the power of wordless
cinema. I will
have an active interest in a potential Oscar winner for the first time since <i>No
Country for Old Men</i>. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
4. <i>Leviathan</i> - I always complain about the boring presentation of documentaries, the way they are graded on a curve, without proper criticism of their flat visuals. <i>Leviathan</i> does that have that problem. Cameras make seamless moves into the underwater litter of fish guts or closeups on the Peckinpah red of gasping gills. The wings of the gulls seem to beat nighttime stars into existence. Obviously, I spent much of my time making metaphors of the action on screen. There are men working of course, and the deep fatigue in the captain's eyes as he tries to stay awake while watching shark week on TV is a wonderful contrast to the inhuman speed of the guy who sorts the clam shells on deck. I
have never been more shocked at the quick passage of 90 minutes--I was locked in to my notetaking and I thought the film was perhaps halfway over when the
credits rolled. Director Lucien Castaing-Taylor has attained "must-see" status.</div>
<div>
<br />
3. <i>Blue Is the Warmest Color</i> - I swear to you--with full awareness of the checkered, horndog archives of this website--that this film does not rank so high because of its explicitness, its NC-17 titillation. It's not
even erotic at the highest level, nothing like Bibi Andersson's description of sex on
the beach in <i>Persona</i> or Michelle Jenneke's pre-hurdles warmup routine. Plus, the hardest thing for me to admit is loving a film that Steven Spielberg also loved.<br />
<br />
And <i>Blue</i> requires so much defending. As a straight white male, of course I find critiques about
"the male gaze" annoying (though <i>The Male Gaze</i> would be a pretty good title for a book about the history of cinema). If you can read just one takedown, check out Eileen Myles' bile spewing in the <a href="http://jamiatt.tumblr.com/post/67419583547/eileen-myles-realllly-hated-blue-is-the-warmest">Twitter rant of the year.</a> She says it's a hate crime, that they don't even fuck. I think the former assertion is laughable and the second is more a condemnation of a porn film than a film film (see also: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIjJ_VtU9PA">real lesbians reacting to the sex scenes</a>). Then there's the backlash to Abdellatif Kechiche's hard-driving direction of stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux...all I can say is you have no right to complain about mistreatment unless Lars von Trier won't unlock the giant wheel chained to your neck.<br />
<br />
<div>
<i>Blue </i>fetishizes, endlessly, a young girl's hair and lips--you have to get over that, the same way you get over the fact that the most influential love story in the Western canon is about two 14-year-olds fucking. Adèle (Exarchopoulos) lusts after Emma (Seydoux) and that lust is returned. There are 30 minutes of sex in a three hour movie, and they're not the best parts. You can read glib comments like, "OMG, even when they go to the museum they just look statues' butts!" But then they look at a work by Jean-Léon Gérôme, who does <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Jean+Leon+Gerome+blue&hl=en&authuser=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=giHpUruxFtDCoASqmIDwBQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=710">blue</a> better, and perhaps warmer, than anyone else (not to mention Emma's surprising defense of Klimt over Schiele). </div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
I agree with Myles that the sexiest thing about Adèle is her appetite at the table--her family's spaghetti is my favorite food I've never tasted. The strongest sequence in the film might be when Adèle cooks dinner for a party of Emma's artist friends, is a wonderful hostess, does all the dishes and, upon arriving in bed, receives instructions from her beloved on how she should also write, and be an artist herself. Kechiche captures the devastating reproach in the kind suggestion, the heartrending moments in life when you need your partner to say she loves you, she loves you just as you are and the words don't come.<br />
<br />
Adèle and Emma break up and it's terrible. The
film's rawness is not the sex, it's the ground giving way underneath Adèle's
feet when Emma ends it and the horrendous bar scene where she tries to get her back. "I can pay in flesh and blood...I want you. All the time. And no one else." To have earned that. I saw <i>Blue </i>twice in theatres and would go again tomorrow. In France, this film is called <span class="title-extra" itemprop="name"><i>La vie d'Adèle - Chapitres 1 et 2</i>--I want to put the rent money into a Kickstarter for chapters 3 and 4 (after taking care of Zach Braff, obviously). </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2. <i>Post Tenebras Lux</i> - Carlos Reygadas is switching places with Terrence Malick in my constellation of directors. In this film, all the scenes might not be in chronological order, but they work (and I say that as someone who generally doesn't like glowing red demons carrying toolboxes or Neil Young). If we are to take this as a self-portrait of Reygadas, it is self-lacerating. The protagonist's villa is isolated in violent countryside, filled with oddly-named and dangerous addicts. Juan himself engages in the
unacceptable treatment of pets, explaining, "I always hurt the ones I love the
most." His children, Rut and Eleazar, are charming, especially in the scene where the young man greets his parents by lobbing a used diaper at them like a hand grenade. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Lux </i>is less explicitly religious than <i>Silent Light</i> but still fills me with awe. There's the opening, where Rut toddles through the magic hour, speaking animals into existence, and the sweaty sauna Pieta, where Juan's wife is comforted under the ample bosom of a fellow sex tourist. The grandest scene of the year is an audacious pivot of memory at the beach--Rut and Eleazar stare out to rosy-fingered sea as teenagers and, by the time the camera pans back around to them, they have become children again. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
1. <i>Upstream Color</i> - I saw this film under an auspicious star. I have a tradition of taking a redeye to NYC and powering through the first day, capping it with a film in the evening with my best friends in the world (among other notables, this series has included my first viewing of <i>Silent Light</i>). This April, Scott and I selected <i>Upstream Color</i> and it happened that we saw Kenneth Lonergan walking his dog on the way to the theatre in which Shane Carruth would be speaking after the screening. My sleeplessness, the La-Z-Boy reclinability of my seat and incredible film on screen gave me a rare sense of physical immersion in the picture. Was I watching sci-fi or horror or noir or romance or what? <br />
<br />
I was first impressed with
the complexity of the editing and sound design, the sharp starring role by the
director and his willingness to respect a viewer's intelligence. Carruth acquitted himself well in responding to asinine <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/320689480849838080">audience questions</a> and moved even further into my good graces by announcing that he picked <i>Walden</i> as a touchstone because he thought the book was dumb. </div>
<div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/320689480849838080" target="_blank"><br /></a></div>
The gift and the curse of Carruth's films is not knowing exactly what you've just seen (<i>Primer</i>-watching supergeniuses excepted). But on the second and third and fourth viewings, <i>Upstream Color </i>moves higher and higher in my estimation. I'm still not certain of its genre but the film is like a thousand-year-old basket, handmade and still watertight. For now, the sequence that sticks with me starts with Carruth and costar Amy Seimetz, who are recovering from the same mysterious hypnotic violation, wondering whether the birds in the tree are grackles or starlings. Every time, the next two minutes make my scalp tingle. They chatter in circles, the idea of a shared past leading to confusion over whose childhood it is they're remembering. Just as I'm about to come unglued, a whistle blows and they stop talking. I pant together with them for a minute. </div>
<div>
<br />
It's important to note that the best special effects of 2013 are mealworms and blue food coloring and the budget for this masterpiece was $100k. Allow me to make an overstatement for which I might very well be mocked--Shane Carruth can be our Orson Welles: inventive, fearless, iconoclastic. And Carruth was born at a better time--writing, directing and distributing the films himself. Long may he live on the outside. </div>
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-25514743545768563142013-11-21T08:35:00.000-08:002013-11-21T08:35:36.373-08:00Three Times: The Counselor <b><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</b><b></b><br />
<b> Three reasons Malkina will be legendary </b><br />
<br />
1. I thought about listing three candidates for the "most over the top" performance in <i>The Counselor</i> but that would be silly. Most over-the-top-ness, thy name is Malkina. The character is introduced as the cheetah-wrangling girlfriend of Javier Bardem's Reiner and object of wonder to Michael Fassbender's Counselor but she proves much more crucial to plot developments than either of them as we move along. As I tweeted immediately after my screening: I want desperately for Cameron Diaz to mount a simultaneous campaign to win both the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress and the Oscar for Best. I found myself asking, "Did she <i>really</i> just..." at a rate usually reserved for John Waters films. Diaz finds a lascivious strut not seen since her padded bra debut in <i>The Mask</i>. I have more affection for Ms. Diaz than many (due to my uncritical love for her 90's roles in WTT faves <i>She's the One</i> and <i>My Best Friend's Wedding</i>) but it's been a minute and I definitely had a sustained <i>hmmmm</i> when I heard she was to play Malkina. With each off the shoulder dress, however, she owns the character for better or worse or amazing. <br />
<br />
The animal print tattooing isn't new to fans of SuicideGirls but Malkina's asymmetrical haircut and intentionally dark roots are more inspired, as is her investment in waterproof mascara to achieve those cheetah tears. Penelope Cruz, whose Laura is a significant character in the screenplay Cormac McCarthy wrote but not so much in this film, is batted around mouse in her cage. <br />
<br />
2. Diaz' line recitation so random that I wondered whether she had developed a speech impediment as a coping mechanism for her participation in <i>Knight and Day</i>. Or perhaps she had collagened her lips as part of her method, to get that unnatural rhythm, with those abrupt sentence endings. But no--the oddness can be attributed to her post-dubbing over a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2492931/Cameron-Diaz-forced-dub-accent-The-Counselor-sounded-like-Rihanna.html">Rihanna-style accent</a>! The next generation of film scholars will clamor for the "restored" Malkina voice, per the artist's original intent. Hopefully even now those precious recordings have been secreted away to a Scandinavian mental institution for safekeeping. <br />
<br />
3. Okay, let's cut the bullshit preambles and talk about "The Car Scene." If you know nothing else about <i>The Counselor</i>, you know that Cameron Diaz humps the windshield of a convertible. For me, the most shocking element is that director Ridley Scott made this sequence the only flashback in the film, adding to its bizarre power. <br />
<br />
Something must be said though: we were 180 degree pan away from a real cultural moment. In his retelling, Reiner uses a catfish metaphor--that's a start but those of us who aren't regular <i>Hillbilly Handfishin'</i> watchers might need a visual aid....Also, was there ever an impulse from Reiner to use windshield wiper fluid? Throughout the film the only thing that seems to scare tough guys is female sexuality (see also Edger
Ramirez's priest, who does not care to hear the rest of Malkina's
confession).<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxuUJ4ZgeIRA1gRU0_D_MyZ4i9SzhUbKPFXK9D7C_lOLVmsCOuZKvFbyxgjxG7mKec0mPCByKOscGV2Acl51fLtFp8Vv_hs9B3XJ-1hV5JeMn51CbocMzJA8PHXe_rBf8Mc8UoZ-9hbhLz/s1600/counselor+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxuUJ4ZgeIRA1gRU0_D_MyZ4i9SzhUbKPFXK9D7C_lOLVmsCOuZKvFbyxgjxG7mKec0mPCByKOscGV2Acl51fLtFp8Vv_hs9B3XJ-1hV5JeMn51CbocMzJA8PHXe_rBf8Mc8UoZ-9hbhLz/s400/counselor+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>Three answers to the question "what was Cormac McCarthy thinking?"</b><br />
<br />
1. My answer is "I don't know." But that's not just an admission of ignorance--it must be the most common line of dialogue in this film. The two most frequent I-don't-know-ers are Reiner and Brad Pitt's Westray, but there are also some Spanish language quien sabes. Given that Reiner and Westray are the men who are supposed to counsel the Counselor on his drug deal, "I don't know" is an unsettling answer to hear so often. <br />
<br />
Reiner, who rolls around in the phrase as gleefully as Shere Kahn, is like most guys hooked into the cartel--pressured to enjoy as
much life as possible in a compressed timeline (he wears rose-colored
glasses and a shirt printed with butterflies and double cherries as charms). But one of the things he finds out he didn't know is what would make a good location for his new club. Reiner's grim end is an excellent call back to the gutshot man in <i>No Country for Old Men</i>, who is
worried about, of all things, the lobos coming to get him. Well, would you rather be eaten
by a rogue cheetah? <br />
<br />
Pitt is the best at enlivening the abstractions of the script in his western suit and silver jewelry--Westray even has a Michael Mann "don't have anything in your life you can't walk out on in 30 seconds" ethos. But he still doesn't know. The people who have the answers in this film aren't often onscreen. <br />
<br />
2. However unpleasant, <i>The Counselor</i> is the natural continuation of <i>No Country for Old Men,</i> the jackpot these people have gotten into and from which only death can extricate them. (Aside: one thing I don't know is why everyone keeps saying this is McCarthy's
first screenplay. Have you
picked up the book <i>No Country for Old Men</i>? That's a screenplay.) Remember in the third act when Llewellyn Moss doesn't get away (like Westray he
takes his eyes off the prize (though at least Westray can blame it on that Natalie Dormer's irresistible Tyrellian smirk we know from <i>Game of Thrones</i>)). Remember the godless violence, the way Chigurh was not brought to justice, the cops too late or already retired?<i> The Counselor </i>is where we've arrived 30 years later--as Devin Faraci suggested <a href="http://badassdigest.com/2013/10/28/in-defense-of-the-counselor/">his defense</a>, it is Scott's (and McCarthy's) <i>Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia</i>. <br />
<br />
Audiences had a much easier time with <i>No Country</i> because it was much funnier and benefited from the Coen Bros.' exquisite sense of costume and set design. It's rather amusing when Tommy Lee Jones' Ed Tom Bell is moaning
sonorously about the end of civilization but he is not incorrect. The American audience for this film does not wish to admit any relation to the narco cultura flourishing in Mexico (El Paso always boasts of its low murder rate) but that doesn't not make it unreal or even exaggerated. If you doubt that, check out the third part of <i>Whore's Glory</i>. <br />
<br />
3. Cormac McCarthy does not tease. He shows cracks where people will break and then watches them break. There is an excellent metaphor at the beginning of the film (delivered excellently by Bruno Ganz) about a perfect diamond. Such a stone would be made only of light--only because of the flaws in the gem that we can see it at all. Small fissures emerge everywhere after that, from the crow's feet in the corners of actors' eyes to the spines of the desert cacti. <br />
<br />
McCarthy may or may not be an awful misogynist, but this film is
about the misogyny (a sexually violent ruthlessness) of cartels. The grotesque peccadilloes of, say, <i>Blood Meridian</i> are outdone by a standard Thursday of business for the Zetas. McCarthy asks the Counselor: Have you ever seen a snuff film? Do you know what a bolito is? You don't know about that? Well you will. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8G8Rhh5WjOxAZN6WBvcAAuW6h609UDzaRUIwKm7aI0vpv6ErqQb64Ytxt7IeCN0EhTOrTgMfXhQd2M4HsahKz57jEB6ccz5J5qpZ9jmsoWBpE_lmO6WUEIWD9OnGJB9-OMrFI61Xes6k4/s1600/counselor+3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8G8Rhh5WjOxAZN6WBvcAAuW6h609UDzaRUIwKm7aI0vpv6ErqQb64Ytxt7IeCN0EhTOrTgMfXhQd2M4HsahKz57jEB6ccz5J5qpZ9jmsoWBpE_lmO6WUEIWD9OnGJB9-OMrFI61Xes6k4/s400/counselor+3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>Three guesses at the protagonist of this film</b><br />
<br />
1. The Counselor. Obvious choice, the title of the film, etc. etc. But, then, I've hardly mentioned him. I'm a Fassbender fan but he recedes to peripheral interest in his own film, denied expression of his usual perversions and struggling with a blank slate character (he also has his own, if less pronounced, accent troubles). His odd, dirty-talking relationship with Laura makes zero impression. <br />
<br />
2. Malkina. The <a href="http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/71/b7/22584f5c4b9999f559b8d997456d/the-counselor-poster.jpg">poster</a> hints at her centrality. She makes it alive to the last scene of the film and does some reptilian skin-shedding, trading her back-piece-revealing dresses for a king cobra/grim reaper hood. She's on her way to Hong Kong, presumably to exchange her pet
cheetahs for dragons and get her tongue forked. I look forward to Diaz going full Kristin-Scott-Thomas-in-Bangkok and trying on a Cantonese accent in the sequel (this movie was box office catnip, right?). <br />
<br />
3. The septic truck full of drugs. Or what the septic truck full of drugs represents: the cartel. The truck full of drugs might change hands a couple of times, it might get decorated with some fresh bullet holes, but it is always getting to its destination.<br />
<br />
True power <i>The Counselor</i> is represented by Rubén Blades' Jefe, the unnamed head of the unnamed cartel. Blades' purr is especially well-suited for delivering McCarthyisms (and besides, he deserves all his glory because his house is so much better decorated than the Counselor's or Reiner's). He asks the spent quasi-protagonist about his doomed fiancee: "Would you exchange places with her on the wheel?" The Counselor's affirmative answer is ridiculous, the reason he is so fucked in the first place.<br />
<br />
In the end, I can only thank Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy and 20th Century Fox for this fucking weird movie. I wait for the films that score 100/100 AND 0/100 on Metacritic and so this is one of the most fun to consider since <i>Melancholia</i>. The enemy of the WTT is the Hollywood drama that scores 78/100 on 40 critics' scorecards. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
For the all or nothing drug lords, the point is the same. There are no coincidences. The
drugs always get through and everyone who takes their eyes off the prize
for a moment is dead. The living drink and snort and laugh and pass around a man decomposing in an oil barrel
like a Christmas fruitcake. Malkina's cheetah lives in the desert,
killing jackrabbits with incomprehensible elegance. It will go on killing until it dies. <br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-64965256433943939412013-11-10T21:38:00.000-08:002013-11-10T21:38:50.199-08:00Out of Sight: A Personal Remembrance<div>
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Here is the first movie poster I ever coveted.<br />
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I would like to claim that when I stepped into the Showcase Cinemas in Grand Rapids, MI the weekend of June 26th, 1998, I wanted to see <i>Out of Sight</i> because of Elmore
Leonard (RIP) but at that time I preferred James Ellroy and Walter
Mosley and even John D. MacDonald. I would like to say I wanted to see
it because of Steven Soderbergh but I had never watched one of his films. I
would like to say I wanted to see it because I knew how fabulous all
the actors were in its ensemble cast but the gifts of Viola Davis and
Don Cheadle and Steve Zahn and Luis Guzman and Isaiah Washington and
Albert Brooks and Dennis Farina (RIP again!) were unknown to me.<br />
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I wanted to see this movie because of Jennifer Lopez. </div>
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The preceding summer I'd had the privilege of watching (twice!) the interesting-for-exactly-one-reason
film <i>Selena</i>, which gave a generation of Puerto Ricans the belief that they could one day play Mexican songstresses in endless biopics. Later, I spent a good deal of time rewinding and pausing a specific sequence of <i>U Turn</i>, showing even then the eye for detail that makes me such a
thoroughgoing cineaste today (I refer that Oliver Stone bloodbath as "My <i>Basic Instinct</i>"). My thoughtful father even showed me Lopez' back page
spread in <i>Vanity Fair</i> explaining, "I feel like I'm showing you pornography."
And it did feel that way, though I did not yet have the vocabulary to cope with the image--today I could leave the simplest of Instagram comments: dat ass tho.<br />
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While she
remains an inspiration to all women with baby hairs along their brows,
it would seem that Lopez has never made another good film (full disclosure: I have not seen <i>Jersey Girl</i> or <i>El Cantante</i> or <i>Gigli</i>). Watching <i>Parker</i> earlier this
year, it seems all her nerve is gone as well, if not her physics-defying figure. (But I think of the great beauties and
how hard it is to be in anything decent. Brigitte Bardot's career after
<i>Contempt</i> is a similar wasteland and I would take <i>Out of Sight</i> over anything
Ava Gardner or Hedy Lamarr ever did.)<br />
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I cannot over-exaggerate my affection for Jennifer Lopez as a teenager--the highest
anticipation I have had for any film in my life was Tarsem Singh's <i>The Cell</i> (the only rival might have been <i>The Tree of Life</i>...neither of these opening nights ended happily for me). And so I spent the spring of my freshman year in high school talking about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GOrRyhABg">this trailer</a> I'd seen
(I could not send a link to my friends, I had to describe it using words!). I explained how great it was when Clooney says, "we'll make it an island..." while wiling away the hour in the back row of a math class whose main purpose was to teach you
responsibility: how to not damage and/or lose the very expensive
calculator your parents bought you.<i> Out of Sight</i> promised a delicious escape to the <i>Real World: Miami</i> era: rollerblades and Dan Marino jerseys (and the exact same cordless phone I had at my house).<br />
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But the film was also enticing because it had scenes in Detroit, where I took occasional trips as a lad. It would show the sexiness and grit and danger I was anxious to embrace from a safe distance across the state. The name of George Clooney's character--Jack Foley--even reminded one of Axel. I still think the Welcome to Detroit montage Soderbergh sets to the Isley Bros.' "It's Your Thing" was the best thing to happen to civic pride until those Chrysler commercials. </div>
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Sitting in the middle left of the theatre enjoying the frigid air-conditioning, I quickly discovered that this film was great not just because Lopez looked amazing but because Clooney was so thoroughly charming--starting with their scene in the trunk you can see that he just makes her laugh. She's mad at Clooney for ruining her nine hundred dollar suit (COME ON!) but she can't help batting her eyes, shadowed to match the new <a href="http://gamedayr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/new-jacksonville-jaguars-football-helmets.jpeg">Jaguar helmets</a>. I happen to agree with her, that it never made sense how fast Dunaway and Redford got together in <i>Three Days of the Condor</i>.</div>
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After they go on their separate ways from that steamy trunk, the film proceeds with messily brilliant interplay between other couples, the draggy Guzman and pre-Holofcentered Catherine Keener, the unhinged Cheadle and Mr. I-wear-my-sunglasses-at-night Zahn, instantly compelling thanks to Leonard's genius dialogue.<br />
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But the stars of the show are finally brought back together on a winter night in the D for what is simply one of my favorite five minutes in American cinema (you can tell I feel this way by searching for <i>Out of Sight</i> on this website...there are no fewer than four non sequitur references to that chemistry). Apparently Soderbergh based the sequence on the infamous <i>Don't Look Now</i> love scene which--after I try and fail to push the nightmare fuel of Donald Sutherland's naked body out of my brain--begs the question: does that mean before-she-was-J Lo and Clooney also had on set intercourse?? And forget whichever Venetian hotel held the Christie-Sutherland sheet wrestling--Lopez and Clooney got the Detroit Metro Westin! They're yellow silhouettes inside a snow globe...Frederick Seidel, please describe this for me:</div>
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If there is<br />
Something else as beautiful<br />
As this snow softly falling outside, say. </blockquote>
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Lopez does a brilliant job of deflecting unwanted male attention throughout the film, whether it's the overzealous tussling of Isaiah Washington's light heavyweight or the unctuous sales bros at the hotel bar and their affection for all things "Hisapanic." When Clooney appears in reflection at the cityscaped window he is all classic tropes: the lighter (he could have smoked indoors!) and the bourbon (pre-hipsterization!) and the cocksure smile (it's a <i>To Have and Have Not</i> for our times!)<br />
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At some point--I'm imagining the maturation of a filmgoer--my excitement for potential nudity was replaced with wonder at the editing. By intercutting flash forwards (timed to David Holmes' perfect score), Soderbergh plays with the inevitability of the hookup, of the two leads taking a "time out." Just as Clark Gable practically bankrupted the undershirt industry
when it was revealed he didn't wear one, Clooney made me reconsider the
potential stylishness of boxy white boxers. I wanted to see them get in bed but just as badly wanted to know what Clooney said to get her back to the room in the first place. It's an excellent surprise when Lopez insists: "Let's get out of here." Yes, let's. To my mind there's nothing more satisfying than a well-earned freeze frame. </div>
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All of this came to me later--on the way out to the car my father and I had a bitter argument about whether that was actually Samuel L. Jackson in the final scene--but a nascent understanding of Soderbergh's brilliance in exceeding genre limitations started that afternoon. Of all my favorite films as a 15-year-old, this one has stayed with me the longest. </div>
kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-89356713893665274982013-10-10T07:38:00.000-07:002013-10-10T07:38:15.457-07:00The American Grandmaster <div class="im">
I'm not interested in kung fu. I am interested in Wong Kar-Wai and,
until Terrence Malick makes his own kung fu movie (not inconceivable!),
WKW might be my only entree into martial arts films.<br />
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I
thought my newbie status would make the spectacle fresher but I was
not terribly impressed with the opening fight sequence of <i>The Grandmaster</i>--the
most charming thing about it is that it was reshot in its entirety
because WKW thought Tony Leung's Ip Man ought to be in a white hat (it makes the slow-mo raindrops really pop). <br />
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As an out-and-out WKW cheerleader it saddens me to report that the film is not great, though I might have seen a <a href="http://www.film.com/movies/wong-kar-wai-the-grandmaster-ruined-by-american-cut" target="_blank">lesser masterpiece</a>.
David Ehrlich does god's work cataloging the changes between the Chinese and American releases of the film--in short, there was no Chinese Harvey Weinstein to ruin everything on the overseas cut. As an ardent
maximalist I was startled by all the scenes trimmed for American version, including this:<br />
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<b>REMOVED: </b>Everything involving Gong Er’s marriage,
including a wonderful Wong Kar-Wai touchstone in which she whispers her
most personal secrets into a hole in a wall.</blockquote>
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Are you
kidding me!? The WTT is enraged. This <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-wong-kar-wai" target="_blank"><i>Slant</i> interview</a> is also dispiriting--WKW says that he felt obligated to cut the American version of <i>The Grandmaster</i> to under two hours...if only every action blockbuster and Oscar drama filmmaker were under the same set of orders we'd save so much time this fall. <br />
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To add my own bit of bile: the title cards are a
disgrace. The most hilariously explicit statement comes at the end of the film, where the preternaturally talented boy Ip Man begins training turns out to be Bruce Lee. Who, having read even a two-sentence capsule of <i>The Grandmaster</i>, would be unaware that the kid would go on to star in <i>Enter the Dragon</i>? WKW's wink was not terribly subtle in the first place. <br />
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The volume of title cards is astonishing, laying out a
North-South history of Chinese martial arts conflict that is never narratively relevant. Their consistently misguided narrative is dwarfed in memory by a single, intentional WKW intertitle following a
signature pen-over-the-page freeze frame: "I dream of seeing 64 Hands
again in the snow." Man writes these words to Ziyi Zhang's Gong Er, a woman from a rival school of kung fu with whom he has a bitter feud that covers for his intense attraction.<br />
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The touchstone in this film is a button from the heavy winter coat Man planned to wear on a visit to Er. <br />
When war intervenes and Man is forced to sell the coat, he keeps a single black button as a talisman of what could have been. While he does not whisper any secrets in its small concavity (at least not in the American version!), when it hangs a mouth-level from a nail on the wall, it's a distant cousin to the aperture in an Angkor Wat tree trunk. <br />
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It is well to focus on Leung and Zhang. I found their individual fight scenes far less inspiring than the idea that the two masters might get together and "merge their two styles," if you know what I mean. The
slo-mo stylization of their combat only engages me at the level of Leung
and Zhang posing for each other, just as ritualized as their arch movements playing the rake and the whore
in rooms 2046 and 2047.<br />
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WKW casually inserts actors he's used in previous films as practitioners of different martial arts. The Razor (Chen Chang) is recognizable as the metaphorical bird who
could not land in <i>2046</i> and <i>Happy Together</i>. The director's personal cosmos is extended when Ziyi battles a Japanese collaborator, Ma San (Jin Zhang wearing a pencil mustache that makes him look evil where Leung would look dapper). He is dispatched alongside a very long train that seems to stretch far into the future...<br />
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Although it fails to establish any rhythm in the first hour, the American <i>Grandmaster</i> is redeemed by the closing movements where the not-exactly romance between Gong Er and Ip Man is not-exactly consummated. The overexplained historical
background falls away and it's Ziyi Zhang and Tony Leung across from each other at a table, not on the successive Christmases of <i>2046</i>
but on New Year's.<br />
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The war has left them exiles in Hong Kong--Zhang is
wrenching as a doctor who has given up the fights, Leung placid but also hugely emotional as an estranged father sending money back home to children he hardly knows. They share the feeling between
Bergman and Grant in <i>Notorious</i>, the wide damp eyes and the subtlest
quiver in the corner of the mouth.<br />
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The pair agree that "life without regrets is boring." It's a classic piece of WKW dialogue, somewhat unartful, completely true. Zhang is slightly shaken, a Richter photoportrait. She has turned to opium--her mouth is unfocused, a blood vessel mars the roundness of her iris. Her picture
will be in the paper, a speia-tinted freeze frame.<br />
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The button goes back across the table, another concave vessel in which Man may speak to her across time. For me, it also represents a relationship that continues between the actors, stretched across films in fevered imagination of WKW. We see Zhang wending through the snow a final time along with the words: "The tiger never quits the mountain." <br />
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At the end of the night, there's only one thing I wish they had done: found a cab together. <br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-13612446288529291562013-08-01T08:03:00.001-07:002013-08-01T08:03:07.205-07:0013 Ways of Looking at Only God ForgivesIt was difficult to to even hear the sounds of <i>Only God Forgives</i> under the din of mainstream critics retreating from their praise of <i>Drive</i>. To make a analogy that is inappropriately Sheenian: the nose wrinkling of the critical consensus resembles a man who's enthusiastically fucked a whore but kicks her out of bed because he's disgusted by her line of work. The distaste has dripped down to an acquaintance of mine who said he'd never thought <i>Drive</i> was that good, to which I replied, "wait, you saw the film twice in theatres!" (It's curious that one of the only entirely positive <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/only-god-forgives/critic-reviews">reviews</a> comes from a guy who saw <i>OGF</i> in Cannes, before the backlash crested.)<br />
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To find my thesis I'll tell a story. When I was a lad I liked to make refreshing beverages from <a href="http://www.welchs.com/products/concentrates">concentrate</a>. Like all amateur juiceologists, I eventually had the thought <i>it's delicious with the recommended amount of water but it would taste even better with half as much!</i> And I wound up with something that hurt my teeth (more so). So it is with Nicholas Winding Refn. The color saturation, the ultraviolence, the impotence, the terseness is always there--and in <i>Pusher 2</i> or <i>Bronson</i> or <i>Drive</i> the mix is critically delicious, but there's not enough water in <i>Valhalla Rising</i> and <i>Only God Forgives</i>. Perhaps my biggest criticism of his latest film is that Refn sure condensed out all the hot electronica tracks.<br />
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Over on Twitter I've had some fun cataloging <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/358010199879057409">how</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/358245057519820801">often</a> reviewers have been compelled to point out that Refn is DEFINITELY NOT IN ANY WAY as good as the <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/358010553886707713">bulletproof</a> David Lynch (for another post: David Lynch is the John Ashbery of filmmakers?). I'm here to provide further below replacement level comparisons.<br />
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1. <i>OGF</i> loses out to <i>Apocalypse Now</i> when it comes to overall atmospherics but has the same nuanced portrayal of southeast Asia--where men are men, women are cum dumpsters and the dogs still have their testicles.</div>
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2. <i>OGF</i> isn't as well-decorated as <i>The</i> <i>Shining</i> but the hallways are almost as terrifying, with worse floorcoverings but better wallpaper. And all illumination provided by police lights. <br />
<br />
3. <i>OGF</i> can't match James Dean swag in <i>Rebel Without a Cause</i> though our protagonist Julian (Ryan Gosling) shares with Jimmy a proclivity for white t-shirts and spinelessness. And Julian's father definitely wore the frilly apron in the relationship with his mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas). <br />
<br />
4. <i>OGF</i> is no <i>Irreversible</i> in the blunt head trauma department but even without improperly-deployed fire extinguishers there's still stomach-churning gore, as when Julian's brother meets his end (Tom Burke's "I want to fuck a 14-year-old" Billy is even more
repulsive than your average Garret Dillahunt slitherer). Julian responds
to the brain-splattered abstraction as you do--by watching a prostitute masturbate.<br />
<br />
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<br />
5. <i>OGF</i> will never be confused with <i>Archer</i>, but when it comes to mother-son affection Julian and Crystal's contentiousness resembles Sterling and Mallory Archer's. Though with fewer jokes and less-admiring references to the size of his penis. <br />
<br />
6. <i>OGF</i> lacks the couture appeal of Maggie Cheung's <i>In the Mood for Love</i> dresses but Crystal does her best. She drops her Juicy sweatsuit after arriving in Bangkok and sheaths herself in animal and floral prints (including one number with an unfolding rose just below her waist). Crystal also adapts the heavy eye makeup and bloodred nails of a courtesan to such a dragon lady effect that I can't believe she never blow smoke out of her nose. <br />
<br />
7. <i>OGF</i>'s meter of justice, <span style="font-size: small;">Chang (</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">Vithaya Pansringarm</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">)</span>, doesn't rack up a body count as extensive as Anton Chigurh's in <i>No Country for Old Men</i> and does it with less hair and sense of humanity. When it comes to weapons, Anton has the awesome air gun but Chang has a sword that he pulls straight out of his spine.<br />
<br />
8. <i>OGF</i> doesn't have an oily Brits as lobster-colored or linguistically alluring as Ray Winstone in <i>Sexy Beast</i>. Crystal's lackey, Byron, possesses less expat charm and meets his maker after an excruciating interval with an unlicensed oculist employing some flower-arranging sticks that should really be subject to a safety recall.<br />
<br />
9. <i>OGF</i> is too quiet to make room for any grandstanding speeches and that's a shame, because Kristin Scott Thomas seemed to be in the same delicious mood as was Lena Headley in that <i>Game of Thrones</i> episode when Cersei thinks everyone is gonna get raped and killed. Crystal is the only possible match for Chang in the film and I would have liked to see her win him over with soliloquy. <br />
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<br />
10. <i>OGF</i> fight scenes just don't kick as much ass those in <i>Rocky III</i>. But the Julian-Chang matchup works out just about as well for the white dude as Rocky-Lang I. Kudos to Refn's makeup people though--they did an excellent job of adding another bend to Julian's nose. <br />
<br />
11. <i>OGF</i>'s Bangkok isn't as hot as Tom McGuane's Key West in <i>Ninety-Two in the Shade</i> but shares with the book a vertiginous sense of mutually assured destruction. Early in the film I hoped Julian and Chang would have rival Muay Thai clubs that would function like Skelton and Dance's competing skiff boat operations. It wasn't to be but, as in the book, it's the humidity that gets you in the end. <br />
<br />
12. <i>OGF</i>'s inclusion of Chang isn't quite as audacious as the physical presence of Death in <i>The Seventh Seal</i>, though the retired police officer has his own surprising talent. Instead of a chess ace, Chang's a great karaoke'r with an affectless Tammy Wynette vibe--all voice and no movement.<br />
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13. <i>OGF</i> can't work a clothing metaphor as tight as the increasingly filthy scorpion jacket in <i>Drive</i>. I always figured Gosling's Driver didn't want to change his ensemble because he was so beautiful in white plush (just as Tom Hardy's Bronson preferred not to wear clothes since he looked best without them). Gosling's Julian had more reason to change after his face was Picassoed--there's nothing special about his three-piece boxing suit except the red and blue jacket and vest lining.<br />
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It's somewhat embarrassing that a film everyone called awful and terrible and indulgent and stupid generated so many fun notes. All I really know is this: if you leave the theater--in any weather--you'll want to put your hands in your pockets after securing a scarf around your neck.</div>
kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-44189763250422416942013-07-21T10:58:00.000-07:002013-07-21T10:58:10.975-07:00Out Walking #4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Out walking because the chickens of straight male responsibility are
coming home to roost. I'm to be a groomsman twice over. Before being
fitted for tuxedos (one shawl collar, one standard lapel), I'm trying to
get that 28 inch waist back. The measuring tape at Men's Wearhouse shows no mercy. <br />
<br />
I step off the N Judah when
the drowsing hobo's urine has made its way to my left foot--Irving and something
way out there. The sea feels near on these short, descending blocks--grey-green and
hazy like Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series.
When I take my sunglasses off it's still not brilliant.<br />
<br />
A Sunday afternoon ghost town of ghost-colored homes. The only sound a pickaxe on concrete, a laborer I can only pick out by the glinting arc of his tool, swinging like an oil pump metronome. A mailman dressed like confederate soldier blows by toting an actual satchel. I refrain from calling out "Saturday delivery!" not because I'm a decent person but because you never know which mailpeople might be ex-military. <br />
<br />
The Outer Sunset is less metropolitan than downtown San Francisco but more Californian--a neutral stucco rainbow and 80s Volvos from cream to mustard, rusted around the wheel wells. The neighborhood is the color of a <span class="st">weimaraner</span> and I expect to see one. Even the surf shop is brown.<br />
<br />
The blocks between me and sea are wonderfully short--I sail through the 30s. I pass, not without regret, an old couple tottering towards the ocean in teal and royal blue sports clothes. They pause and share a smile as if in amazement that the other is still there beside them. <br />
<br />
Walking for the train in SOMA, I'd heard through the Frank Ocean on my headphones the hectoring of a Jesus enthusiast, t-shirt patriot and suspected itinerant. He was screaming at two handsomely-stubbled men in Levi's that fit so well I suspected they were not off the shelf. To his harangues they merely clasped hands and strode away on their longer legs. <br />
<br />
It's a tough time for bigots in San Francisco but I hope the man demanding repentance in stained sweatpants could take some solace in the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. <br />
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I take the headphones off in case the sound of the waves is soon to join the smell of salt. A couple of blocks from the Great Highway, there's a housepainter on break. He'll go back to turning a house from taupe to cream when he's done smoking his cigarette. The tobacco he picks from his tongue is shaped like the flecks just visible on his white jumpsuit. I wonder if he's considered that his Thermos is the perfect green--the color of hipster Tiffany's.<br />
<br />
A paradox of Ocean Beach is that approaching it always makes me want to
put on more clothes. It's not San Diego or L.A. or the swelter
downtown today. This is the place William Finnegan surfed, not so far from Mavericks, the latest species of
word being co-opted to irrelevance by Apple. <br />
<br />
The Pacific high on the horizon brings me back to Richard Diebenkorn (a friend, who was just married, tied in twine, once helped me be saying, "I've heard it pronounced DEE-benkorn"). <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=diebenkorn+ocean+park&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=kx3cUY-0BsK0iwKXmID4Bg&biw=1440&bih=710&sei=oR_cUdjaHeOrjAKgnoCQDQ">Ocean Park</a> sounds less redundant than Ocean Beach and has that pleasant contradiction in the name, even if it is Santa
Monican. The quiet splash of the paintings glimpsed together is like undone Prufrock poems and long strolls down the seaside, eyes weak from the sun. I'm sure what draws me to the paintings is the correctness of the colors together with a more organized landscape. There are fewer right angles at the real beach and I prefer to look at my portrait-style magnet. <br />
<br />
Another of my friends getting married this fall described
running over the sand to ask for his future bride's hand. I thought it
would be
a bad plan for speed but a good one for the kneeling. I like that kind
of effort--sprinting
over an obstacle course into the future--but worry about my heart rate. Shocking that someone could find such consolation in another person instead of art.<br />
<br />
At the first sidewinders of sand today the accoutrements of California beach life begin to gather: Winnebagos, ice plants, inexpertly
controlled kites, women whose legs aren't what they once were. The
sun's been sucked in hazy whirlpool, twists of #cloudporn over a
sea like lichen. On clear days Ocean Beach has an austerity that
lends itself to greater, #grassporn photo ops.<br />
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After one such afternoon at the end of America I went back into the city with my friend and the woman who is going to be his bride. Strolling from their hotel down through Chinatown the street was suddenly ruined by some feral children spitting firecrackers (possibly, but not probably, to celebrate the fact that firecracker is such a wonderful word). <br />
<br />
As an inveterate flincher at all loud noises, this made my walk unpleasant and no amount of crossing the street and doleful looks shook the kids from our periphery. And then they started rolling smoke bombs at us--it was like a living nightmare or, worse, a Christopher Nolan film.<br />
<br />
My friend stepped into the middle of Stockton, cocked his fist at them and dispensed with a very baleful: "HEY!" The urchins scurried back across the street. Such unvarnished masculinity made me want to shape up, to fly right. <br />
<br />
Sometimes I worry that there are crucial inaccuracies in my factual writing. But then I think of James Salter: "Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely
discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit.
Most of the details, though, have long since been transformed or
rearranged to bring others of them forward. Some, in fact, are obviously
counterfeit; they are no less important. One alters the past to form
the future."<br />
<br />
The pennies out here have a green cast, matching the ghostly quality of the fingers that hold them. Or so I assume--who carries change any more? <br />
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<br />
I follow a hawk away from the shore toward a bus stop, wishing that raptors were better breeders. They could terrorize San Franciscan skies, ripping the throats from <a href="http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9495231/san-francisco-giants-dealing-worsening-sea-gull-issue">sea gulls</a> and pigeons till the gutters ran red with the blood of lesser birds. <br />
<br />
The Safeway across the street has the unlit sign and peeling siding familiar to me as a retired courtesy clerk. Do today's sullen teens still ruin their cuticles opening bales of
paper bags? I remember that I made $5.25 an hour, worked mostly 3 PM to midnight and that my time in the eucalyptus and ennui at the <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/ralphs-grocery-company-store-644-santa-barbara">Ralph's grocery</a> on de la Vina is already half a life ago. It tastes like a mouthful of salt
water.<br />
<br />
After a school year of bagging and cart corralling, I took a senior trip to San Francisco for a flurry of consumerism capped by the $77 I spent on a double lobster tail dinner at Scoma's. I've never paid for an entree as expensive again--two days work for dinner--but it was the turn of the century and Fisherman's Wharf...I think of it as my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A"><i>Wolf of Wall Street</i></a> period. As I strain to complete this circle, it's time to reveal that the two friends with whom I broke sourdough that night are soon to be married (though not to each other). <br />
<br />
Stepping aboard an inexplicably crowded bus makes me think this is only a six-mile walk home. Alongside Golden Gate Park the stops are clotted with small children struggling to hold ice cream and plant seedlings and stuffed white alligators. I feel our excitement turning to crankiness all down the throbbing hull of the 5 Fulton.<br />
<br />
30 minutes toward forever later, I step off in a humid huff and sit for a moment in Yerba Buena Park. From nowhere, a hummingbird jerks forward and steadies itself at arms-length, eye level. There's no color at her throat. My first thought is that it's a government drone. America in 2013.kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-90876232605508328562013-06-22T17:59:00.000-07:002013-06-22T17:59:21.417-07:00Close to the Sea<div>
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<br />
James Salter put out a book called <i>All That Is</i>. He was profiled in <i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/15/130415fa_fact_paumgarten">The New Yorker</a></i>, reviewed in <i><a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2013/04/times-current/?single=1">Harper's</a></i> and, better than all that, <a href="http://audio.theguardian.tv/audio/kip/books/series/books/1369151565984/1148/gdn.book.130523.tm.Lydia-Davis-short-story-James-Salter.mp3">he made me cry</a> (with a little help from Lydia Davis).<br />
<br />
His sales figures are the final proof that the American reading public is imbecilic. Nick Paumgarten gives the hard numbers: 3,000 copies of <i>A Sport and a Pastime</i> (and a $3,000 advance!) and 8,000 copies of <i>Light Years</i>. Partially out of disgust that two of the best books of the century were so overlooked, Salter says he wanted to get away from the "great-writer-of-sentences" thing. Outside of James Franco's continued existence it's hard to think of a more depressing facet of the literary world. Perhaps Salter will break through with a makeup Pulitzer or National Book Award and I'll be able to pretend it's been given for his earlier work (much the same way I pretend Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for <i>Winter's Bone</i> and Cary Grant received statues for any of a dozen films).<br />
<br />
More than <i>A Sport and a Pastime</i> or <i>Light Years</i>, <i>All That Is</i> is chapters, self-contained and often timestamped (in his work written in the 60s you have to guess the year by the make of the cars, in the new book he tells us when Kennedy was shot). With a more fragmented approach, Salter has joined his contemporaries in the novel form--even in the best new books, I'm reading flashing chapters of greatness. There's Jonathan Dee's opening to <i>The Privileges</i> or Jennifer Egan's "Safari" chapter in <i>A Visit from the Goon Squad</i>.<br />
<br />
So <i>All That Is</i> resembles the stories in <i>Dusk</i> and <i>Last Night</i> more than his other novels but it's okay--Salter has written some of his most gorgeous things in short fiction. He's written <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/4246/am-strande-von-tanger-james-salter">"Am Strande von Tanger"</a> (how is it that I can read whatever I want from <i>The Paris Review</i> without logging in and nothing from <i>The New Yorker</i>?). The closing paragraph is as good as it gets, the audacious description of Nico is fresh each time:<br />
<br />
"She has small breasts and large nipples. Also, as she herself says, a rather large behind. Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea."<br />
<br />
Like Dee in the <i>Harper's</i> review, I have a tendency to laugh at Salter's audacity. This paragraph makes me exhale a single "hah!" like a small dog's bark. It's the end of a long run from the third sentence of the story, the great avenues pointing towards the sea. It is a brilliant away goal at the Camp Nou that Cristiano Ronaldo does not care to have scored (he's a little sad). It gives me the pleasure you get from seeing a cliff diver jump from 50 feet in the air and barely ripple the water.<br />
<br />
People talk about all the sex in Salter but the movement of the prose is most erotic. In <i>All That Is</i> Salter's great sentences are more measured--at 87 his speech is more breathless than his writing (listen to the quaver in <a href="http://audio.theguardian.tv/audio/kip/books/series/books/1369151565984/1148/gdn.book.130523.tm.Lydia-Davis-short-story-James-Salter.mp3">"Break It Down"</a>). The book is mostly Philip Bowman's adventures in publishing and attractive women, with more and less successful chapter-long detours into the lives of secondary characters (I would put the tawdry tales of his co-editor Eddins at the low end and the drunken dinner of Mrs. Armour at the high).<br />
<br />
It's a blessing that Salter returns to "España" for a chapter. Bowman's countrywide mistressing begins in Madrid under bright skies, severe shadows and "sun dark workers" (his English lover, Enid, is blessed with one of Salter's classic (by which I mean terrible) character names). He finds more darkness in the Prado and in Lorca, whose banned book must be pulled from the back of a bookstore. </div>
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The writing is like black and white photography, sharp even in low light. The couple steps into a cobbled alley of policemen and ominous guitars--ominous for how much you'll love them--and gypsy handclaps like gunshots. </div>
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"The woman was singing with even greater intensity amid the relentless chords, the savage, tight beat of the heels, the silver, the black, the man's lean body bent like an S, the dogs trotting in darkness near the houses, the water running, the sound of trees."<br />
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Definitive Salter: the whole story--the whole country--in a sentence.</div>
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And, of course, a couple of paragraphs later Bowman fucks Enid like one of those running dogs. He says she is not breathing in her sleep, just as Nico wasn't breathing that morning in Barcelona 45 years earlier. "The word for naked in Spanish was <i>desnudo</i>. It was the same in any language, she remarked." </div>
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They make their way to Sevilla, Granada, following the paths of bullfighters and landing finally on a house where he might live with her, deeply shadowed under the total sun. But "with some women you are never sure," and a moment later Bowman's on a airplane back to New York, gliding over the white statuary and empty gravel paths of the Retiro. </div>
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In much the same way I ran out of pages in <i>All That Is</i>. I fear James Salter's death, as so many people are here to bury him now. And then: "The destruction of the finest is natural, it confirms them."<br />
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kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7945613998090158931.post-27219282608759391912013-05-21T07:15:00.003-07:002013-05-21T07:44:49.317-07:00Where Are You Going?<div>
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Terrence Malick has exhausted me. It's been
difficult watching his last two films, hoping to see a masterpiece then
trying to understand why I haven't.<br />
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Perhaps it is a lack of thrust. In his first four films--all great--consider this: in <i>Badlands</i> Kit and Holly go rampaging west; in <i>Days of Heaven</i> Bill and Abby and Linda flee west (and south); in <i>The Thin Red Line</i> Charlie Company steams so far west they reach the east, Guadalcanal; in <i>The New World</i> John Smith sails west until he finds this country.<br />
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Indeed, Kit and Bill and Pvt. Witt push on until they
find death, and John Smith enters a void from which he could hardly
expect to return. This reminds me of the fatalism in Liam Rector's "Song Years," they're "Going
out west for, I suppose, hope."<i> </i><br />
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<i>The Tree of Life</i>'s Jack (Sean Penn) and <i>To the Wonder</i>'s
Neil (Ben Affleck), on the other hand, sit in their empty homes and
workspaces and brood. The camera circles them; the camera circles their
cyclical memories. They are not really named (who can forget the way Sissy Spacek says "Kit"?). I'm almost sure Affleck's character is never called Neil on
screen. As I said about <i>The Tree of Life</i>, I'm starting to see only the gestures, however breathless.<br />
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I've read that the last two films come from Malick's own
life--his childhood in Waco, his first marriage to a Frenchwoman. With
my writing I've always found autobiographical stories seem easier to
tell but are harder to write. Malick used other texts and historical
records to untangle and remake the Western, the Great War Film, the
Historical Epic--but <i>The Tree of Life</i> and <i>To the Wonder</i> orbit around Texas and Oklahoma, with occasional excursions to outer space or Mont St. Michel. <br />
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I've stopped being awestruck and started wondering what films were left on the editing table. His cuts are <i>Fast and Furious</i> even if his regular audience doesn't suffer from <i>Battleship</i> ADHD. I think back to the fluttering shot of a butterfly
landing on Jessica Chastain's hand in <i>The Tree of Life</i>: five seconds of gorgeousness and then we snap back down the street, into the trees. I believe Matt Zoller Seitz tweeted something about Malick
just rolling around in several hundred hours of film, from four or five different projects, and cutting
together things he likes. I think it was a joke but a plausible one now
(the credits indicate he used pieces of <i>The Tree of Life</i> in <i>To the
Wonder</i>).<br />
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Malick's talent can still overwhelm--he's the greatest maker
of match cuts. In <i>To the Wonder</i> I'm thinking of the quick transition from the thin rose in the trodden snow at the castle to the
divoted,
trampolining sand in the rising tide outside. I could make you scroll for minutes
through stunning hi res images from this film and tell you how well they
work together but the wisecracks come easily: "In his next film, will
the characters be allowed to look at each other?"<br />
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We look at Olga Kurylenko even if Ben Affleck
won't. Malick infuses her with a Parisian Pocahontas essence and
releases her in suburbia, twirling down grocery store aisles composed by
<a href="http://kamilszajaphotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/gursky99cent-1.jpg">Gursky</a>. She has some English but is so remote from Affleck that she
fingerwrites her thoughts on his back, an invisible ink. She brings her daughter to live with Gentle Ben for unknown reasons--there's no backstory because it's inconceivable that these two people are together. Things are
not perfect in her new, distressingly empty McMansion though we feel
that everything could have been prevented if she'd been a better home
decorator (in her defense: she is a highly skilled hair braider).<br />
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One of my favorite moments in the film is when a Kurylenko
voiceover introduces us to Rachel McAdams. Malick has made the latter
handsomely blonde for the film--her eyes are cornflower, her attire Carhartt. McAdams is allegedly a childhood friend of Affleck's (of the two she's
held up significantly better) and they have a great first date in the buffalo, like a tease for Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. McAdams says sexy things to Affleck like, "I want to be your wife," but she's picked up and discarded with attention you might pay to your weekly living room bouquet.<br />
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When Mr. Affleck looks back at this role (shielding his eyes from a mantelfull of Best Director Oscars, no doubt) he might wonder if it would have been better to be cut
completely (as Michael Shannon was). Ben could have been the second unit
cameraman he got to play in the smart phone photography of the opening
section. His role is analogous to Sean Penn's in <i>The Tree of Life</i>,
just watching along with us. Affleck is at his most noticeable during a
love scene with Kurylenko--he wears a bicep tattoo so bad it distracts from her nudity. The longest statement he makes aloud is something pedantic about
the
shadow of the earth coloring the sunset, spoken to a 10-year-old French girl
who doesn't understand him.<br />
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I was pleased that Malick did shoot
at a Sonic Drive-In (twice!) and unsurprisingly Affleck doesn't quite
know what to order--he's probably torn between <a href="http://www.sonicdrivein.com/MenuItem/sonic-favorites/entrees/allamericandog" target="_blank">All-American Dog </a>or <a href="http://www.sonicdrivein.com/MenuItem/breakfast/french-toast-sticks" target="_blank">French Toast Sticks</a>.<br />
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About Javier Bardem's small town priest (who might as
well have been from Mars) I can hardly comment...he is beautifully ugly
as always, and looks at ugly people shot beautifully.<br />
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Kit
wants to see the end of the road, Bill wants to see farmland far away
from a steel mill, Pvt. Witt wants to see a Melanesian utopia, Pocahontas and John Smith want to see rituals and landscapes no one in their culture have ever conceived. Affleck and Kurylenko and McAdams and Bardem want to seem themselves in a Terrence Malick film.</div>
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This is a phenomenon I've thought about more and more...I <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/316200003817316352" target="_blank">recently</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/thewhitetanktop/status/316200639849967617" target="_blank">tweeted </a>about
Anne Carson's personal happiness leading to a precipitous dive in my
engagement with her writing. And there's the case of Thomas McGuane,
whose out-of-control youth gave us the wild and woolly novels <i>The Sporting Club</i>, <i>The Bushwhacked Piano</i>, <i>Ninety-Two in the Shade</i> and <i>Panama</i>. His sobriety has given us complacent novels and stories about the fishing and fucking of middle-aged Montana cattlemen.<br />
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And so Malick leaves us at the exterior steps to an Oklahoma motel instead of outside Mont Saint Michel. Oh well.<br />
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All this whingeing aside...I'm glad Malick is working. It is far
more important that a legendary artist continue working than it is for
me to like what he does. I hope that after this series of films he has one
more new direction.</div>
kirk michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07974947538877737968noreply@blogger.com1