Collected Movie Reviews: 2010-2013
It's very clear to me that this blog needs to be smaller in terms of the volume, and also that older posts need to be recycled and combined. It makes sense to me that a blog like this one would have about 1000 posts and no more.
Movie Review: Pandora's Box d. GW Pabst *1929* (6/30/10)
PANDORA'S BOX directed by G.W. Pabst *1929*
Inspired by Netflix streaming service, I've decided to make a move into film writing. I'm not going to review contemporary releases, nor am I going to bitch about Hollywood. I don't see the point in telling the world about crappy Hollywood movies. I do see a strong link between film/cinemas/movies and other subjects I write about on this blog: the production of cultural objects, the relationship of artists and audiences and the nature of creativity in the world of mass media. As a forum for discussing those subjects, film actually surpasses music in that the film industry both proceeded AND directly inspired the music industry. For example, the practice of calling a cultural product a "hit" was INVENTED by film and ADOPTED by music decades later. Thus, movies are relevant to the project of this blog, and Netflix streaming service is the break through I need to carry out my project.
I wanted to start by discussing how I watched Pandora's Box- I started at my office, watching it in two twenty minute increments while I waited for people to arrive for their free consultations. Netflix actually keeps track of where you start and stop the film. I noticed right away that the prospect of not having to sit in front of the television to watch a two hour plus silent film cheered me immensely. When I went home, I had dinner, then my wife had a business meeting, so I watched the remaining hour and forty five minutes in two more blocks, interspersing the watching with reading a book. This was so revolutionary for me that I wanted to write about it, even though it is 'boring' material.
If you are going to address film in a comprehensive manner, you need to understand the pre-talkies era. Perhaps the most important fact to understand about the era is how the commonly used "SILENT FILM" term is hugely inaccurate. Films where never "silent." The introduction of characters talking on screen was a technical innovation, but films were accompanied by sound from almost the very beginning. Popular films were typically presented with a live orchestra.
The technical achievements in this era were in no way primitive, but the preservation of the master films was primitive, and that impacts the ability of the audience to appreciate the merit of "silent" movies. I can personally attest to having seen multiple silent era films that were so poorly preserved as to make them literally unwatchable- and these were commercially available dvd's put out by major film studios. Also, when watching a silent movie you need to have some concern for the audio soundtrack which accompanies the film. Silent movies worked because you saw them in a live setting, with people playing instruments. The "quiet theater" aesthetic of the talkies era was not shared with the silent film aesthetic, which more resembles a circus or vaudevillian show.
Might I suggest watching silent era films released by Criterion Collection? Whatever the film, you know Criterion Collection is going to do a bang up job on the re-release. Pandora's Box (Criterion Collections Spine #358) was released in 1929, directed by G.W. Pabst. The first talkie was released in 1927. The thing to understand is that Pandora's Box represents the end of the silent era, and thus the techniques used and themes are as sophisticated as any in silent film. The film looks beautiful- no small task for a 1929 movie produced in Germany and Criterion has provided four separate sound tracks. I believe the track that Netflix uses is track one, an "orchestral score similar to what was heard at the big European music palaces of the day."
It was the first time I had ever been blown away by the sound accompanying a silent film and it made quite an impression. How can you be fair to these films without considering the impact of a live orchestra on the audience? It makes for a significantly different product.
The second fact to understand about Pandora's Box is that Pabst made it in the pre-code era. It has a frankness and openness about sexual relationships that is in many ways more insightful then the pablum one gets in contemporary rom-coms.
The third and final fact to know is that Pandora's Box made Louise Brooks a fucking star. The story of Pabst "discovering" Brooks playing a circus acrobat in a Howard Hawkes film is the ur-Hollywood Starlet story. I'm not going to lie: I found parts of Pandora's Box extremely tedious. I could NOT have watched it on DVD- ever- ever- I would have turned it off after twenty minutes. However, given the opportunity to cut it up into smaller segments over the course of a whole day, I found the viewing experience to be close to exhilarating. As I watched Pandora's Box, I had plenty of time to think about silent films, Louise Brooks and G.W. Pabst. All those topics are worth some quiet contemplation. Louise Brooks: one of the first Hollywood starlet/it girls; G.W. Pabst- a filmmaker sophisticated beyond his place and time; Silent movies- not that annoying if they have a kick ass sound track and you break them up a little.
Movie Review: Rivers and Tides *Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time* (7/5/10)
Rivers and Tides:
Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
d. Thomas Ridelsheimer
p. 2002
Streaming Netflix continues to rock my existence, though I've noticed some limits. For example, the aspect ratio of older black and white films makes them look terrible when streaming onto my home television using the Wii system, whereas the same films look perfectly fine streaming on my computer. Also, I continue to be perplexed by the display system of Netflix itself, which seems to conspire against a user trying to get a full list of what, exactly is available, be it streaming or otherwise.
One of the issues I've been thinking about recently is the systems theory/cybernetics/biofeedback complexity. Basically, that's three different ways of looking at the way that systems interact. Systems theory uses the vocabulary of technology, cybernetics the vocabulary of western philosophy, and biofeedback the vocabulary of new age hippie bullshit, but my hunch is that they are essentially correct in that in order to understand ourselves we need to understand the way that our biological systems interrelate within ourselves and the way that humans interact with the various systems that compose our environment.
Rivers and Tides is a documentary about the British landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy designs sculptures in specific landscapes. Sometimes he replicates those structures in museums, other times he takes photographs of those sculptures in natural environments. Prior to this film, the only artist I was really familiar with who fit into this category of art was Christo and his wife- and I only know about them because they are so ubiquitous in our popular culture (ATT ads, for example.) However, it seems to me that there is something profoundly interesting about landscape art/sculpture in that it specifically places art in the path of the environment, and then takes note of the impact on one on the other and both on the viewer.
I found Rivers and Tides to be deeply interesting- it pushed me to think about the role of sculpture in the 21st century, as well as the thoughts I mentioned in prior paragraphs. Goldsworthy comes off as a deeply cool guy- doing his thing without regard to what the public thinks. He works outside of a studio environment, which is also very cool. Also, his work combines a traditionally fine art medium (sculpture) with a medium that is less traditional (photography) to create an impact in the viewer that is greater then the impact that either approach would have by itself.
Rivers and Tides is worth seeking out on streaming netlfix- I think my readers would agree that watching it is a rewarding use of time.
Marina Abramovic & Francesca Woodsman Documentaries: Artists and Audiences (7/12/12)
MOVIE REVIEW
I'm very interested in the biographies of "serious" Artists to learn about their relationship to their Audience. Even if I'm not a huge fan of the work of the Artist in question, it's interesting whenever someone muses on the relationship between a successful Artist and their relationship, how that relationship is understood by the Artist, etc.
Two recent, easily available documentary films that address the Artist/Audience relationship in interesting detail are Marina Abramovich: The Artist is Present and The Woodmans, about Francesca Woodman, the young photographer/Artist who committed suicide in 1981 in her mid-20s. Both films are excellent and well worth watching for anyone who actually reads this post.
Prior to watching Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (HBO In Demand) the only fact I knew about her is that she had recently had a career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and the retrospective shared a title with the film, "The Artist is Present," and that she is a performance artist.
I was eager enough about the prospect of learning more that I actually went into the On Demand section of my Cable Provider and watched it after missing the initial showing. Marina Abramovic is a celebrated performance Artist, a pioneer in her field of Artistic endeavor and she's notable for several reasons within the realm of contemporary art.
As The Artist is Present discusses in some detail, Marina Abramovic was active in the field when performance art was beginning to exist, one interviewee describes it as "a reaction to painting." Given the time of her early performances, the early 1970s, this would place her initial efforts roughly after the Warholian factory epoch.
Watching footage of Abramovic's early performances, where she did things like cut herself with a razor and allowed audience members to assault her, I was reminded of California performance artist Chris Burden, who was doing the same kind of activities in the very early 1970s in the Los Angeles area. She is obviously highly influential on contemporary Artist/Celebrity Matthew Barney.
The details of Abramovic's career are fascinating, the critical moment being a split with her long time partner/husband in 1988. After that, it basically sounds like she decided to get paid- she hooked up with Parisian fashion houses, moved to New York, got a business manager (who provides several key interviews in the film.) From a Art/Market perspective the film claims that Abramovic was the first performance Artist to sell still photographs from her pieces. The fact that this film was made, and it centers around a career retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art- is a testament to her status as a successful Artist.
Of course, the most interesting part of The Artist is Present is the documentation of the piece that Abramovic performed FOR the exhibit, her sitting in a room for eight hours a day, for six weeks, and making eye contact with all comers. It is totally fascinating to watch this artistic activity unfold over a six week period, and you come away from the film with a deep respect for the Artist in question.
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| Francesca Woodman photograph: This should be the cover of the Yohuna LP |
Any appreciation of the photography of Francesca Woodman, a young photographer who committed suicide in her mid 20s after compiling an impressive "ahead of its time" body of work, is complicated by the fact of her suicide. This film deals with this difficult subject in a matter-of-fact way, exploding myths about the romantic Artist and not shying away from asking tough questions while maintaining a respectful tone.
Again, I didn't know anything about Francesca Woodman other then a vague idea of her existence, and the existence of this film, but I was interested in knowing why a young Artist would do something like that. Certainly, the young Artist committing suicide is literally the most classically "Romantic" thing that an Artist CAN do.
Although the film suggests that the post-death appreciation of her work was an example of the general Audience "catching up" with an avant garde Artist, it also made clear that Francesca Woodman, herself, was
(1) A savvy, ambitious, calculated young Artist who sought the acceptance of critics and a wide Audience
(2) who failed to obtain that goal at the time of her death,
(3) and whose failure to obtain that goal played some role in the decision to kill herself.
I think one of the most cinematic scenes in a film that recalls a Sorrows of Young Werther-esque lead character is the description of Francesca Woodman, post RISD-y, living in New York City, working as "third photographers" assistant at a fashion shoot captained by an Italian fashion photographer. That is as pure an instance of "unrecognized genius" as you can get outside of a Vincent Van Gogh biography.
Francesca Woodman's parents were/are both Artists of some note and both have thoughtful and trenchant observations to make about the death of a child. The father, in particular, notes that the reasons she killed herself are some of the same reasons he loved her so much, and if she didn't have those traits, he wouldn't have cared as much when she died.
The father also observes that in the years immediately prior to her suicide- a time when he was also in New York City trying to jump start his career as a painter, he had lunch with her and she sternly told him "You have to make one career related phone call" every day- which sounds like something out of a "get rich/positive thinking" book- and certainly indicates that Francesca Woodman was anything but the model of a non-commercially motivated Romantic Artist with a capital A.
The documentary points out that Woodman had an interest in being regarded as a "Capital A Artist." This observation is made by one of her college friends, and considering the early date of her suicide it's fair to say that her thought did not evolve significantly from that point on the subject.
She obviously was not considered so by the New York City Art community. It sounds like she didn't even merit a show at a gallery during her life time.
What I took away from the film is that Francesca Woodman was a talented young photographer who began to manifest depression in her early 20s and for whatever reason, she quickly succumbed to that depression in a way similar to many people, Artists and non-Artist alike. However, the fact of her suicide has perversely upped the value of her work in terms of both critical and general audience response, and today she is a highly influential female Artist on current Artists working in and out of photography.
Where is the Sofia Coppola directed biopic of Francesca Woodman?
Keira Knightley is Anna Karenina (10/15/12)
I just about squealed with delight when I saw this preview- Keira Knightley playing Anna Karenina in a forthcoming adaptation of that Leo Tolstoy authored classic.
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| Keira Knightley playing Anna Karenina |
Not to mention the screenplay is written by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Joe Wright (Atonement & 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice that also starred Keira Knightley.
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (11/14/12)
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| 30 st Mary Axe or Swiss Re Building in London UK- designed by Norman Foster. |
Movie Review
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster
(2011 documentary about architect Norman Foster)
currently streaming on Netflix
(PURCHASE)
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| Buckminster Fuller and Norman Foster hangin' out. |
SPOILER ALERT: The title is a comment that American philosopher/crazy person Buckminster Fuller made to architect Norman Foster when they were palling around.
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| This is an example of Gothic Architecture. |
As anyone who wants to write art criticism, or for that matter, read it- needs to understand that architectural criticism provides much of the vocabulary and ideas about Art that are used by critics of other art forms besides architecture. To give two well know examples, the phrase "Gothic" was used by John Ruskin to describe certain designs that characterize medieval buildings and directly inspired the Gothic revival of the mid to late 19th century. The other example is the phrase "post-modern" which is commonly used to describe art works from all sorts of artists in every discipline. Originally, if you called something "post-modern" you were talking about a building, not a book or a record.
Thus, the movie How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster, is a biographical film about an Artist, the architect Norman Foster. Norman Foster has to be among the most famous and prolific of all active architets in the entire world. His rise has been highlighted by structures he has built in places like China, Hong Kong and the Gulf States of the Middle East. Perhaps the tone of self-satisfied triumphalism that pervades How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? can be excused on the grounds of the massive scale of Foster's success on a planet-wide scale.
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| John Spoor Broome Library, California State University Channel Islands, designed by Norman Foster |
If you are looking for critical engagement about the wisdom of building the "largest building in the world" (Bejing Airport Terminal) for a repressive dictatorship or the likelihood of success for a project that involves constructing a self-contained eco paradise for 80,000 people in one of the Persian Gulf statelets, this is not the movie for you.
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| Commerzbank Tower vom Rathenauplatz designed by Norman Foster |
A movie about Norman Foster could do in a whole other direction in the sense that his work can be seen as a harbinger of the kind of soulless corporate modernism familiar from books like 1984 or Brave New World.
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| The redesigned German Reichstag by Norman Foster. |
However, Norman Foster does not operate wholly above politics. As an example, when Germany asked him to redesign the Reichstag(!) in the aftermath of the reunification of Germany, he rejected the idea of restoring what was there before, and left hateful Russian graffiti where it lay- choosing to keep the vandalism as a reminder of the past.
That is just how Norman Foster rolls, OK?
Movie Review: In Search of Beethoven on Netflix (11/16/12)
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| Ludwig van Beethoven |
Movie Review
In Search of Beethoven (documentary)
2009
d. Phil Grabsky
currently streaming on Netflix
There should be a word for things that are both interesting and boring at the same time. If that word existed, it would describe In Search of Beethoven, a comprehensive and very no-nonsense documentary about the life, times and music of the immortal composer and pianist, Ludwig van Beethoven. In Search of Beethoven, currently streaming on Netflix is two hours and twenty minutes long. It actually took me a week and five separate viewing sessions before I completed In Search of Beethoven.
The entirety of In Search of Beethoven is some pictures of Ludwig van Beethoven, interviews with scholars and musicians about Ludwig van Beethoven and performances of his works. Over the two hours and twenty minutes there is quite alot of all three things.
There is so much useful and interesting information about Beethoven in this documentary that I wanted to see a written down version of what all the talking heads were saying. One of the keys to understanding Beethoven that I extracted in between my lengthy sighs upon realizing just how long In Search of Beethoven is, was that he was very, very, very unlucky in love. He was forever pining after teenaged Aristocratic girls and in early 19th centuy Vienna that shit was not going to happen.
The two songs I've written about here so far- Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata, were love notes to two different girls. Both are sonatas, or as we would call them today, songs. Ludwig van Beethoven's works can be broken down into three categories: sonatas, concertos & symphonies. He also did one opera and a very famous mass, but the main categories are the sonata (one instrument- piano), concerto (one lead instrument and backing instruments) and symphonies (full orchestra + chorused vox.)
The symphonies were his big statement pieces. Beethoven never really left Vienna and never toured, but he did play a couple of big live shows- the first when he debuted his immortal Fifth Symphony:
Several years later he also did a live performance of the Ninth symphony:
Beethoven's achievements were measured next to those of Haydn and Mozart by his contemporaries. This despite the facts that Haydn had long stopped composing and Mozart was actually dead. The "three geniuses" of early 19th century Vienna were Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Compared to those two, Beethoven did a couple of things differently. First, he abandoned the classical symmetry that characterizes much of pre-Beethoven classical music in favor of a more tension inducing, unbalanced style of music. Second, Beethoven went big. When the Audience heard the Fifth Symphony for the first time the reaction must have been something like a big crowd getting wowed at an arena rock show- no one had ever written symphonies on such a grand scale.
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| Ludwig van Beethoven |
In fact, at least one interviewee on In Search of Beethoven credits him with the creation of the grand, classical symphony as we know it today. Beethoven's deafness, which is the kind of biographical detail that has ensured his immortality in the Romantic artistic canon, certainly limited his ability to perform live (he played the Piano in the live setting), but didn't stop him from composing. In fact, several people argue that his deafness probably liberated his music from the conventions of the time.
Despite his general unhappiness with his material circumstances, Beethoven was acclaimed as a genius by his Audience during his life and immediately upon his death. It was clear to contemporaries the extent of his talent, and Beethoven, composed in such a way so that people would damn well understand how great he was- if only because his songs were often impossible for lesser skilled musicians to play.
Spring Breakers & Mythic Descent into the Underworld (4/3/13)
Movie Review
Spring Breakers
p. 2013
d. Harmony Korine
It seems impossible to me that someone could go to Spring Breakers and actually write a review where they make statements like "I didn't like it." or "Spring Breakers is a bad movie." If you didn't like Spring Breakers, you are an idiot, and if you can even contemplate saying "Spring Breakers is a bad movie." You have bad taste in art.
In fact, Spring Breaker is an amazing movie. As should be clear to anyone who sees the film, Harmony Korine has created a contemporary retelling of the classic "Hero's Descent into the Underwold" one of the most long-standing enduring myth's of world culture. The oldest telling is the pan-Ancient Near East myth of Tammuz and his mother/love Aphrodite/Ishta/Inanna:
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| Inanna Goddess of Heaven and Earth, Akkadian |
According to the myth of Inanna's descent to the underworld, represented in parallel Sumerian and Akkadian tablets, Inanna (Ishtar in the Akkadian texts) set off for the netherworld, or Kur, which was ruled by her sister Ereshkigal, perhaps to take it as her own. Ereshkigal is in mourning at the death of her consort, Gugalanna (The Wild Bull of Heaven Sumerian Gu = Bull, Gal = Great, An = Heaven). She passed through seven gates and at each one was required to leave a garment or an ornament so that when she had passed through the seventh gate she was a simple woman, entirely naked. Despite warnings about her presumption, she did not turn back but dared to sit herself down on Ereshkigal's throne. Immediately the Anunnaki of the underworld judged her, gazed at her with the eyes of death, and she became a corpse, hung up on a meathook. (WIKIPEDIA)
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| Spring Breakers: Ashley Benson as Brit, the Ereshkigal of Korine's retelling of Inanna's descent into the underworld. |
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| Keira Knightley hanging out at a Russian train station in the 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
I love the classic remake industry in Hollywood. I am just a huge fan because I feel like it is the most Hollywood thing that Hollywood does that isn't a total embarrassment to world culture (vs. the Hollywood blockbuster, which is a totally Hollywood thing that IS a total embarrassment to world culture or vs. the indie film which isn't a very Hollywood thing that ISN'T a total embarrassment to world culture.)
With classic film remakes you've got a little good (the source material), a little bad (inevitable involvement of A-list Hollywood actress to "get the film made.") and a perpetual wild card (the treatment by the production team.) which often makes these films an interesting target for Arts criticism.
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| Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina in the 2012 film version of the Leo Tolstoy novel |
Often criticism of these remakes tries to relate the resulting film to the source material, which is ridiculous. That's an especially ridiculous path when it comes to Anna Karenina. It took me close to 20 hours to read the book- and I'm a fast reader- and the film is only 2 hours long, so you are talking about an act of condensation equivalent to reducing the bulk of an object by 90%. There is no comparison. Rather, you are talking about an abstraction/conceptualization of the story and themes of Anna Karenina. Those are: Adultery, Russian Society in the Mid-Late 19th century & the lives of the wealthy in Russia during this period.
Putting that narrative and thematic content into a film produces something different then a translation of the book into the film. Much in the same way that early 19th century "translators" of literature would simply rewrite the source material into a new language, Hollywood film adapters "translate" classic literature into another story that shares the same name with the original.
Specific to this adaptation you've got Keira Knightley- who is sublime i.e. both great and terrible at the same time- in her performance as the titular Anna- a feckless wife with an irrestible attraction to the handsome County Vronsky. As a bonus you've also got Jude Law- essentially wasted- as her feckless husband Alexei 1. You've got a script by Tom Stoppard- which is obviously a "plus" and he is paired with director Joe Wright, who has an established track record in directing filmed adaptations of classic works of literature starring Keira Knightley: 2005's Pride & Prejudice and Atonement in 2007. (1)
Perhaps though the best thing Anna Karenina has going is the set design and costumes- which are sumptuous and mean that the viewer is never actually bored during the somewhat tedious and protracted examples of Keira Knightley trying to be "deep." Or shallow and vain- it's still not clear, after reading both the book and watching this movie, whether Anna Karenina is supposed to be sympathetic or a villainess- maybe that is a reason why this book is such an incredibly enduring classic- the ambiguity.
The novel essentially oscillates between drawing room conversations or their Russian equivalents and big set pieces at balls, train stations & horse races. The drawing room sequences are elegantly depicted but lack spark, and the set pieces are shot with care but without flair.
Overall it's a worthwhile viewing- if only for the negative aspects of Keira Knightley once again hamming it up in period costume- which are hilarious.
NOTES
(1) I know Atonement is not a classic work of literature but rather a book published in 2001 that might arguably be a classic someday. The adaptation still starred Keira Knightley, took place in the past and was directed by Joe Wright so close enough I say.
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| Isabell Huppert plays The Piano Teacher in the 2001 film by Michael Haneke |
Just saw the film The Piano Teacher for the first time and was smitten.
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| The Piano Teacher is a twisted tale of love and obsession. And crazy ass fetish shit. |
Director Michael Haneke most recently directed Amore which I think won the Oscar for best foreign film this year?
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| There are a lot of shots in The Piano Teacher where you see Huppert's character isolated in the middle of the frame in a static shot. It's a recurring stylistic motif in the film. |
The Piano Teacher is based on the German language novel by Elfriede Jelinek, originally published in 1983. (WIKIPEDIA ENTRY THE PIANO TEACHER THE NOVEL) The Piano Teacher is available on Netflix streaming.
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