Published 1/24/14
Foster the People Mural Release
DTLA/Santa Fe Condos Building
When I go to these major label type events it's as a social guest. I don't know anyone besides who I'm introduced to. I don't have any business with the people there, but these events, whether they be radio show season jamborees, album release parties or tumblr parties (wait for it), I find them super interesting, just to see the audience and how they act. I'll go anywhere for an interesting, attentive, down-with-it audience, whether they are listening to a top 40 country act or a band whose record I've released.
This event, which I believe was sort of a launch event for the new Foster the People record, SUPERMODEL (March 18th, Columbia Records.) took place in a parking lot on the back side of the Santa Fe building in Downtown Los Angeles(hereinafter "DTLA"). Foster the People commissioned an artist to do a seven story high mural, and then the band played in the parking lot. Tickets were free, and handed out to fans who showed up at MOCA earlier that afternoon, prompted by a tweet from the band.
The crowd was about 1,000 people, with another 50-100 who only got in for the last three songs of the 45 minute set. The mix was about 75% hardcore Foster the People fans and 25% harder core music industry people: All of Columbia Records, in town for the Grammys, William Morris agents, ASSORTED ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY VETERANS, the guy from Sigur Ros(.?!?) The event was well managed, the space wasn't overcrowded. Sound was excellent but of course echoey (unavoidably so.)
I watched the set trying to figure out if I'd ever seen Foster the People life before. I wanted to say yes but settled on no. I think they've added two back-up singers and maybe a band member or two in an effort to shake a (I'm not saying it's justified because I haven't seen them) "boring life" tag that has emerged in response to their top line billing at the 2014 Coachella festival.
So are they boring live? Nope. Mark Foster isn't exactly Prince up there but who among us can match that master showman. The drummer was pushed up to the front of the stage in a move that seems designed to create more kinetic energy with the audience, and the two female back up singers will be also moved up stage for the summer festival circuit (they were positioned towards the back of the stage for this set.)
The real audience was super into it- so many videos and photographs from the now ubiquitous pose of a concert goer with his or her hands placed together in rectangular fashion to accommodate a side ways oriented Iphone or Galaxy. For a good number of these devices (1) The screens of many of these devices are so big that you OFTEN get the visual impression of watching a live sporting event from the concession stand while the television mounted on the interior stadium wall plays said sporting event.
The industry audience was politely attentive and respectful, thought I wouldn't go so far to say that Foster the People is so rapturous in a life setting that hardened industry professionals go fan boy for them. And they certainly don't need to be, anchoring the set in the middle with a smash like Pumped Up Kicks. There are other hits in there two, and at least three legit radio singles on the new record, so yeah, I think Foster the People is going to be ok on the summer concert circuit. Not holding Pumped Up Kids till the end of the set is a class act and they should keep it that way.
After the show Foster made a nice (if slightly surreal) speech about the meaning of art and the importance of doing stuff like painting murals on the side of condo buildings. There might have been some irony in the juxtaposition of that sentiment with the actual residents of skid row looking on from across the street, but I fully agree with the sentiment, and I think it's better to bring people into economically mixed neighborhoods instead of "cleansing" them of low income people first.
Neighborhoods like DTLA are places where establishing a community faces challenges, but it is also where community building can be at it's finest. For whatever reason, Mark Foster appears to genuinely support that idea, and good for him- that's awesome. If its a market ploy to create sympathy for Foster the People among the minds of critical/internet elites who might otherwise be inclined to dismiss the radio friendly alt pop of Foster the People, then it is a clever ploy and one that deserves to be singled out for applause. Good for Columbia Records, good for Foster the People.
After the show the band invited the fans to add their own painted hand prints to the wall. Almost all of them stayed to do so, lining up in a queue that curled all the ways around the parking lot and patiently waiting as the band laboriously painted their band name at the foot of the mural.
NOTES
(1) "Devices" is my early nomination for the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year prize. I'm using it in a sense that accommodates everything from an Iphone to a Roku and generally includes all contemporary cell phones, items of the "smart internet," game systems, stream boxes, etc.
Published 1/29/14
Show Review:
Dum Dum Girls Record Release @ The Echo
I feel like the current album promotion cycle for the Too True (Sub Pop LP) is going well. I don't think it breaks any kind of rule to say that I heard second hand they re upped with Sub Pop for another record, which is a strong vote of confidence in the future of Dum Dum Girls. That happening on the eve of the album release is the equivalent of an NFL head coach getting a contract extension before the first game of the season.
With Coachella booked and a full touring slate on the horizon, my gut, and the analytics I can track both tell me Dum Dum Girls will be around for as long as they want to be, which is a nice spot to be in for an Artist. The crowd last night was straight "Ghost World": equal parts Steven Buscemi and Thora Birch. It was crowded but mostly with fans, I couldn't spot any obvious industry types, which is probably due to the fact that Dum Dum Girls aren't part of any major label shit fest.
The band has added another guitarist, none other than ex-The Prayers member "Handsome" Andrew Miller. The show last night was a success, with plenty of hard core fans in evidence. I'd say everything is go.
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| The "pink lady" at the Broken Bells record release/Tumlr IRL party. |
Published 2/5/14
Broken Bells Record Release Party
@ Baby's All Right (Brooklyn NYC)
No show review for last Thursday's Dum Dum Girls record release show at Mercury Lounge- could not get in ha ha. As far as I'm concerned it's a good sign because it means there is demand among fans and press. Plus, Dum Dum Girls were playing two shows that day (Mercury Lounge + Letterman) and they had just flown cross country, and I had seen the record release show at the Echo so I was like, ok. I was staying around the corner however.
The next night was the Tumblr IRL part at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn. I believe this was the Broken Bells record release show, though no one actually called it that, nor did anyone seem to acknowledge the possibility that it could be construed that way. The show, free for fans who RSVPed (or anyone who showed up after the initial pre show line subsided) was a smash success, with photographs by Danger Mouse (from the video production for the first single,) a girl dressed up in the Space Girl suit from said video (see above) and a custom made Juke Box stocked by the band and decked out in album art matching colors.
Broken Bells came out and did three songs in duo fashion. There was an open bar sponsored by Red Bull. I drank too much and ate no dinner. I think the new Broken Bells record is a hit and if ever there was an indie record that didn't need Pitchfork support, this is the one. For what it's worth, having met both principals of the band, I would cordially disagree with almost everything that Larry Fitzmaurice said in this 5.4 review of the LP. His main inaccuracy is pegging Mercer as the primary songwriter on the record, in fact, it was Danger Mouse who wrote many of the lyrics. I don't think knowing that would have changed the record review one iota.
The Pitchfork enmity for Danger Mouse is well established at this point- I'm not sure why but it seems to be manifested in multiple generations of the upper echelon of Pitchfork editorial staff. Perhaps it was an interview he gave? or refused to grant? Maybe if they just got to know him? It seems like they would have a lot in common, since Danger Mouse is really just kinda a nerdy bro type underneath the international jet set super producer tag.
To be totally clear, I'm not angry or upset about the review. Honestly, post Drifters/LITD, post Crocodiles LP, it's become pretty clear that whether Pfork likes or hates your band doesn't really matter once the initial flush of interest ebbs away. After that it's more about whether you actually produce music that normal people like, and what kind of label/management/press constellation you can bring to bear on the situation. Certainly dating an artist manager has alerted me to some of the benefits of having someone capable in your corner. The larger an audience for an artist, the important issues like "Who manages you?" and "What label are you on?" become. For the newer artist, label and management are more or less irrelevant, but when you get to a Broken Bells/Dum Dum Girls level these choices become important indeed.
Spiritualized
Performing Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space at
The Theatre at the Ace Hotel in DTLA
Valentine's Day 2014
I am for sure a late-comer on the Spiritualized train. I missed the initial release in 1997- probably because I was in the night clubs and listening to Dischord style hardcore. After I moved down here and fell in with the Art Fag/Crocodiles/Dum Dum Girls crowd I got up to snuff pretty quick, and developed a firm appreciation for the Spiritualized/Spaceman 3/Spectrum catalog, with a particular affinity for Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, which is an AMAZING record- start to finish.
So when I read that they would be performing said record, in its entirety, backed by a gospel choir, a string section and horn section, and that the performance would take place at the Grand Opening at the brand new Theatre at the Ace Hotel in DTLA, I was in. It helped that my boo got us free (and great) tickets through her incredible connections.
I was highly impressed by the venue, though it is a bit smaller in r.l than I was led to expect by the photographs. Intimacy isn't a bad thing, and it means something different in the world of retrofitted early 20th century movie palaces then it does for indie/diy venues. The Theatre was crowded with hipsters and scenesters alike, many of whom seemed positively giddy to be present.
The show started on time and was as billed, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, played in its entirety. It was an epic experience- perhaps the move fully enjoyed live show I've seen since that Daft Punk show at the LA Coliseum back in 2007. I highly recommend you check out the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in DTLA at your first available opportunity.
Published 2/19/14
The Huntington Library, Art Collection & Botanical Gardens
San Marino, CA.
Talk about a birthday present for me: I've been trying to "make it" to the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens for more than a decade without success; even as a I conquered other proximate sites like the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA. San Marino is like a super-wealthy enclave within already wealthy Pasadena. The Huntington Library, Art Collection & Botanical Gardens is best described as a "grounds." What started as the private residence of Henry Huntington (nephew of "the" Huntington, Collis Potter Huntington, who was one of the principals in the railroad linking California to the rest of America.) eventually grew to a two structure art museum (European stuff housed in the original manor house, American stuff in a more recently built museum structure) and library display housed in what I believe was/is the library itself.
My interest lay specifically in the library, which is one of THE best libraries in private hands in the world. The one room display demonstrates that to spectacular effect, with a copy of the first bound edition of Shakespeare's works, a Gutenberg Bible, a Declaration of Independence and so on and so forth.
The art museums are a mixed back- with the bulk of the collection consisting of pre-Modern 18th century English portraiture and landscape. They DO have The Boy Blue by Thomas Gainsborough, which is arguably the most famous 18th century painting. The high light of the modern museum is their collection of Craftsman furniture and fixtures, including significant example by the Greene Brothers, Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The botanical gardens are also well put together, though the Chinese Garden rather paled in comparison to the one I saw in Portland, and the Japanese garden was so inundated with screaming children that it made quiet rest and contemplation impossible. Note for the wary/cheap: Entrance is 20 bucks!!!
Published 3/3/14
Agnès Varda in Californialand
@ LACMA in the BROAD Museum
November 13th, 2013- June 22nd, 2014
French filmmaker Agnès Varda is best known for two films she made decades apart: Cleo From 5 to 7(1962) and Vagabond(1985). During her career she made dozens of other films, and spent two "brief but intense" spells in Southern California/California, to which this exhibit is devoted. During her time here she made at least one important documentary (on the Black Power/Black Panther party in Oakland, CA.) She also made at least two unsuccessful features.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is an installation of a house made out of film stock from one of her California era bombs. Called, My Shack of Cinema, it is literally a small house made out of shot film stock. The walls have a collage from a "summer of love" type movie she shot, a collection of photos from her trips to Oakland to hang out with the Black Panthers, the hippies of Sausalito and street musicians of Los Angeles.
Varda, as one of those film makers whose proximity to the epicenter of the French New Wave often results in her being lumped into that category incorrectly, has an interesting perspective on the recent history of cinema. Because she has a perspective somewhat different then her better known peers, a museum exhibit makes more sense in the context of her better known films then I expected.
At the same time, the level of studio art expertise brought to bear is just "ok." It's nice to see a house made out of film stock, and a collage of photos from one of her movies, but they mostly shed light on Varda as an Artist vs. making some larger statement. I would have gladly looked at several more walls worth of California photos, but limiting the size of the exhibit also makes sense.
While I was there I also had a chance to check out the Fútbol: The Beautiful Game exhibit, also at the LACMA/Broad Museum (same floor as Varda in Californialand exhibit.) It's a museum exhibit about Soccer- interesting for sure- highlight is the video work Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, by the artists Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon. Zidane consists of footage from 17 different cameras which remained trained on Zidane throughout the duration of a single game. The long periods where he is simply standing around make for an interesting video/installation piece and make a trip to the exhibit worth while.
It was also my first visit to the Broad Museum itself. The outside stairway/escalator set up inevitably remind the viewer of the Centre Pomidou in central Paris- it's almost like a quotation of that building. The interior is spacious- as you would exhibit from a museum whose "Permanent Collection" consists of a Richard Serra sculpture, a Chris Burden item and a Bruce Nauman video piece- AND END OF LIST.
Published 3/8/14
Dum Dum Girls, Blouse & Lube
@ The Casbah
I was surprised as I walked up to the Casbah at 915 PM that there was a) a line, down the block to get in- never seen that before. B) A 94/9 FLAG flying out front- I didn't know they had one of those and other then the usual Tim Pyles level support I am frankly unaware of 94/9 EVER taking an interest in Dum Dum Girls. 91x music director Robin Roth was perhaps less of a surprise given her legitimate roots in the San Diego local music scene but personally I think it is time for some major league alt rock stations to take up the gauntlet and start playing some Dum Dum Girls in regular rotation. Sorry if I'm obsessed with commercial alt rock radio but I think I've got it figured out- you need to get to the point where you have a record that MIGHT reasonably be played on alt rock radio AND you need to be ready to come to town and play at cost for one of their radio shows (and sell tickets and be amenable.) Is there something I'm missing here? So who is it going to be then?
Local opener LUBE are straight up the most exciting local San Diego band since the come up of Dum Dum Girls themselves, Crocodiles and Wavves. I can't think of another act I've seen since then where I've felt they had a legitimate shot at getting out of San Diego. True they are young- but they seem to have the proper level of commitment. Last night they had a bassist- a competent to excellent basis and generally seemed to be channeling "early Sonic Youth" with brief appearances by Factory records/Bauhaus-y post-punk. I mean they are so young, and have so much time, the mere fact that they aren't terrible and unwatchable is enough to get me excited, but they are a quality live act with above average songwriting and quality influences.
Blouse played competent to excellent synthy rock. They've got enough songwriting chops and a broad enough appeal so that some kind of breakthrough to a broader Audience seems in the cards. The live show is far from their electronic roots- they now present like a rock band with a keyboard player vs. a synth act playing rock songs. It's to their credit- the crowd was deffo into the sound.
Dum Dum Girls took the stage in front of a heart illuminated with neon blue lights. The tour outfits are going to draw attention for real....not here though. The crowd was pretty much strangers- other than the local alt rock radio luminaries and the full Casbah hierarchy there weren't more then 5-10 people who were around when the Dum Dum Girls WERE a local San Diego band (for about six months to be fair.) I have 100% no problem with that- in fact it is a sure sign that Dum Dum Girls are making progress. I mean not to be cynical about the underground and the core scene and DIY glory and all that stuff, but you either move on, fail to move on or never get the chance to move on at all- so...moving on is a key part of all three formulations.
I'm just going to put out there that I think Dum Dum Girls are ready to the west coast alt rock radio show circuit. Middle of the bill for one of the late Summer radio jams? I promise that this blog will go 100% in the tank for whichever local radio station makes the jump- I know, I know, that blog is but a tiny speck in the great whirl of infinity but I thought I would just put it out there.
Anyway, from where I sit, Dum Dum Girls have clearly made the leap from "maybe" to "yes" in terms of securing themselves a viable future. Sold out weeks in advance shows don't lie.
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| Don't fuck with Meredith Graves, Perfect Pussy. |
Published 3/19/14
Perfect Pussy
and the Fascist Hardcore Aesthetic
Che Cafe, San Diego, CA.
First of all, I thought the Perfect Pussy show was great! So many enthusiastic young people experiencing the hardcore rite of passage, with pogoing, people hanging from the rafters and of course the band itself, combining note perfect post hard core with a pixie cut sporting front woman who is channeling the performance vibe of an early Fugazi era Ian MacKaye and the look of a manic pixie dream girl. After speaking to their publicist (who I also use for my label) it sounds like she is more of the former than the latter. The band is elevated from the terrain of a "regular" hardcore band through the subtle use of electronics to fill in the sound. This puts them more in the category of "post-hardcore" typified by Nation of Ulysses, the Refused and their noisier compatriots.
It is hard to write about Perfect Pussy without writing about the Syracuse straight edge hard core scene. Syracuse is famously home to Earth Crisis, the most militant and one of the most long running straight edge hard core bands of all time. Straight Edge was a variety of hardcore that melded the shaved head, jack booted proto-fascist look of English OI punk with left/liberal political positions of eschewing drugs or alcohol, veganism and larger issues related to animal rights. Straight Edge hard core bands were often sonically and stylistically indistinguishable from their non-straight edge hard core brethren.
Minor Threat(1980-1983), for all intents and purposes invented straight edge in Washington DC. By the early 90s, straight edge had piggy backed onto the growth of non-straightedge hardcore and bands began to emerge from secondary markets. In 1989, Earth Crisis, which proved to be one of the most durable and articulate proponents of straight edge ideology emerged out of Syracuse. It's important to understand that Earth Crisis emerged from an already existing non-straight edge hardcore scene.
Straight Edge culture directly influenced Riot Grrl- there were long standing links between Riot Grrl bands based in the North West and the straight edge scene on the east coast, particularly in Washington DC. The most concrete example is in the area of DIY touring, where hardcore, straight edge hardcore and non denominated diy punk acts were able to criss cross the country throughout the 80s and 90s. This touring circuit proved to be a breeding ground for a generation of indie fans and artists.
Thus, the emergence of Meredith Graves and Perfect Pussy in 2014 makes a great deal of sense. While not actually espousing the politics of straight edge hard core, Graves' no nonsense public demeanor and the general sound and look of the band reference that era. The straight edge hey day of the mid to late 80s/early 90s is far enough in the distance so that the less pleasant secondary aspects of straight edge hardcore culture don't inhibit acceptance by a larger audience.
Judging from the enthusiastic response last night, Perfect Pussy have stuck a court with their contemporary spin on a decades old DIY culture staple. And more power to them is what I say. They hit the jack pot, they should ride the wave.
Published 3/24/14
The Eulenspiegel Society &
Prometheus Magazine
The Eulenspiegel Society is the oldest and largest BDSM support group in the United States, founded in 1971 as a society specifically for Masochists. Named after a character derived from German Folklore, Till Eulenspiegel.
Their "house organ" is Prometheus Magazine. I was in a friends apartment in New York City last Winter (2013), killing some time on the Upper East Side between a museum visit and dinner, when I saw some Prometheus magazines sitting on the coffee table of my host. Post 50 Shades of Grey it is perhaps difficult to conceive of the BDSM community as something that is in any way transgressive or "underground" but the 70s roots of The Eulenspiegel society and their literature reflects a subculture that struggles to be fully embraced by mainstream culture.
At the same time I think it's clear that BDSM is increasing in popularity as a result of the increase in interest in the underlying concepts of sexuality and "alternative" conceptions of sexuality. You can see the growth of interest in sexuality and pornography from the N-gram below:
If you narrow the same chart down to the 20th century, you can see an explosive rise in interest in sexually related terms like pornography, homosexuality and sexuality itself that largely dates from the 1970s. If you narrow the N gram down to compare Sadism and Masochism, it is clear that the two terms basically didn't exist until the 20th century (though their roots go back to the 18th century and beyond) and then peaked in the early 1950s:
If you were to continue the chart into the next two decades, there can be no doubt of a rebound. Thus, I think the subjects of S&M are pretty fertile artistic terrain- if only because they were at such a low point at the turn of the 21st century.
Published 5/21/14
Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum
in Nashville, Tenn.
It's common to meet cosmopolitan, sophisticated avant garde types all over the globe will say something like "I like every kind of music, except Country." Usually if pressed, they will qualify their answer by defining Country as "Top 40 Country" with exceptions for sub-genre's like Outlaw Country (Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard) or Country Roots music (the soundtrack for O Brother Were Art Thou and Bluegrass) or even Alt-Country (Wilco, Gram Parsons.) I've come to the conclusion that such willful ignorance (of which I myself am guilty of as much as anyone) is wrong-headed.
Country music, or Country and Western or Hillbilly- whatever you want to call it- is a uniquely American musical idiom both in terms of artistry, culture and commerce. Country music should hold particular interest for anyone who is interested in "Indie culture" since it is the original independent music. The existence of Nashville today is a testament to the intersection of a few major 20th century trends intersecting in a specific place to create a "third coast" for the popular music industry, and the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville masterfully relates that story.
Word to the wise, the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum is NOT cheap- 25 bucks for a "regular" admission, more if you want an upgrade. It's not only "worth it" in terms of the value, but also because there are not a whole bunch of A-level tourist attractions in Nashville, so it's either this or.... You take the elevator up to the third floor and start with a typical museum type stroll through the roots/history of country music. Almost every single item on display is a hit, and the use of sound is way above what you typically get in most museums. To me, the pre-history of Nashville is almost more interesting than Nashville itself, but I'd hardly expect the Country Music Hall of Fame to feel the same way. The exhibits really get going in the rock/rockabilly era: Carl Perkins blue suede shoes, Elvis' gold Cadillac, etc. It's clear that the official line from Country music is that 50s era rock is either part of or an outgrowth of Nashville country, which may be hard to square with anyone who knows anything about the actual history of rock and roll, but the viewer is inclined to forgive the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum its foibles in light of the majesty that it brings to bear on the subject.
After ending with an exhibit heavy on the roll of television and radio in the rise of Nashville, the second floor is anchored by an excellent exhibit on The Bakersfield Sound, a Country scene that is most typically identified as being part of the "Outlaw Country" movement. The main players are Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, and one of the revelations of the exhibit is that one woman, Bonnie Owens, married them both in succession. I wasn't surprised to learn that many of the exhibits were supplied by Buck Owens' own Crystal Palace, a combination steak house/museum that is devoted to Buck Owens (who is the creator of the Bakersfield sound.)
From there it's a hallway through to the present day, with various of waves of "neo-traditionalists" (which seems to be EVERY trend in Country music since the peak of Outlaw Country) competing with a risible Miranda Lambert exhibition (she's only 30 years old, the artifacts are "illustrated" by her tweets. Sample: OMG so happy to here today smarturl30459.com...)
The book shop was actually a disappointing, I expected something more ambitious and instead it was strictly garden variety stuff. More interesting is the Hatch Print shop that is down the hall of the lobby. That is an interesting visit independent of the Hatch Prints displayed in the third floor hallway.
There's not much going on in the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum neighborhood: It's literally sandwiched between the Bridgestone Arena (hockey) and a convention center. The "Broadway" strip is a couple blocks away, but that is more of a night time destination. While perhaps not a reason to come to Nashville by itself, the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum is a must if you are here for more than a night.
Published 4/8/14
The Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale, CA.
& the Production of Leisure Time
April, 2014
April is festival season in Southern California, with Coachella running two weeks and Stagecoach running the week after that. It's a good idea for anyone partaking in a specific festival season to "warm-up" for the main events by going to some prior festival. Thus I found myself for the first time at THE Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale, CA. The Renaissance Pleasure Faire is the SPECIFIC name for the ORIGINAL dual location annual event held in Southern and Northern California. The Renaissance Pleasure Faire was founded by a couple, Ron and Phyllis Patterson. In his 2011 obituary, The New York Times noted that the larger concept had spread to 200 annual locations, some "well established" and others "dubious."
I went to the Northern California version, held in Novato, CA. as a child growing up in the East Bay in the 1980s and 90s. I've also been to the Southern Ohio Renaissance Festvial. The Renaissance Faire/Festival is a very interesting phenomenon/institution in the area of the organization and production of leisure time. The first Renaissance Faire was held in 1963, and the increase in interest and participation has led from the field of "dressing up in costumes and role playing in the real world" being a rarefied atmosphere limited to Civil War Rein-actors and costumed characters at theme parks to the varied modern landscape ranging from: Anime themed Cos-Play conventions, Live Action Role Playing, Sexually themed "Furrie" parties, the varied Cos Play set up around Comicon, the Medieval Times restaurant chain, and it's ilk. These subcultures have themselves risen to rival or more likely surpass the leisure production complex surrounding the Renaissance Pleasure Faire itself, but the mingling of historically minded costumery and organized production of leisure time is best observed at the original point, and that origin point, more or less, is the Southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale, CA.
The Renaissance Pleasure Faire is organized in the shape of a figure 8, with the entrance at the meeting point of the two conjoining circles. The main draw is the Jousting Aren which lays at the farthest point along one of the two circles. Prior to reaching the Jousting Arena, there is a large open space housing a Food Court, and again prior to the Jousting Arena but further along the path there is a second large open space.
The timing of the Faire is organized around the twice daily Jousting tournament at 2 and 5- both last approximately a half hour. The trick is to not show up too early (long lines at the front gate) or too late (miss one jousting exhibition, get tired before the second one. While the Renaissance Pleasure Faire delivers a high energy leisure experience, the surroundings (reservoir views, many trees, shade canopies) can only do so much to disguise the fact that this shit is happening in Riverside County, that is 85 degrees plus the first weekend in August, and there are 20 mile an hour winds.
There are clearly multiple levels of participation ranging from the actual performers and employees of the Faire, who work and play in a weird nexus of leisure and "work" time, then there are the regular folks who happen to like to come dressed in costumes, ranging from the expensive looking bourgeois in period accurate Elizabethan garb, to "Jack Sparrow" influenced pirates, to people dressed like the Middle-Agey hero of Assassin's creed, to World of Warcraft characters, to one chick dressed like the Travelocity Gnome.
It is, at times, overwhelming, a sensory overload situation in the manner of organized Leisure events like theme parks, which is what the Renaissance Faire most clearly resembles: A cross between a theme park and a carnival with a strong element of "crafts fair" added in. In many ways, the Renaissance Faire of 1963 accurately forecasted a half century of fairs, faires and festivals, whether they be of the musical (converts) or economic variety (Comicon.)
As for me, the take away was "wear sun screen and drink water" and avoiding sunburn and dehydration was sufficient for me to call this trip a win.
Show Review:
Coachella Arts & Music Festival 2014
It very much seems to me that whether you like or dislikes Coachella Arts & Music Festival and what it "has become" it simply needs to be acknowledged that Coachella is incredibly successful as an enterprise, that it has become a southern California cultural institution in its first 15 years of existence, that it stands at the beginning of the "festival season" which is particularly vibrant and healthy part of the post internet music industry and that it is the primary music festival for people Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, California Desert and arguably Las Vegas/Phoenix AND Tucson. Those markets comprise something like 10% of the total population of the United States.
Another simple fact that must be acknowledged is that Coachella is an instant sell out BEFORE THE LINE UP IS ANNOUNCED. In other words, the vase majority of the people who attend Coachella would have purchased tickets for any combination of Artists. The Audience for Coachella is people who are fans of Coachella itself, not any particular Artist or Genre.
The "official attendance" for each weekend of Coachella is 90,000 per weekend. According to multiple sources, the number of "tickets sold" is 75,000, meaning there are additional 15,000 attendees who do not purchase tickets. I have been to enough Coachella's to remember a time when VIP tickets were not actually available for purchase, in 2014, what appears to have happened is that there is a three class system- general audience, VIP and then the Artist/Crew/Press/Hangers On community, which is like a festival within the festival at this point.
This year I was fortunate to be a part of that third group- a good thing because my forays into the VIP section were enough to make me of the firm opinion that VIP status is not worth having at this point. My experience in General Population this year was limited to Sunday afternoon, when I strolled the terrace, had a Stumptown iced coffee and chilled in the brand new Beer Garden which has been built between the Do Lab and the Yuma Tent.
The main arena for the Artist/Crew/Press/Hangers-On is the Artist Village, located in a corner between the main stage and the VIP area. Here, each of the major-ish acts have their own "Star Waggons" trailer (or segment of trailer) arranged in a court yard fashion. Part of the fun of the Artist Village scene is the hierarchy of trailers given to each act. More privacy is good. The older and more established acts were located off "the main drag" with the smaller acts placed in the main walk way. Some acts stayed on their bus, and Main Stage acts had special trailers behind the main stage.
All weekend celebrities, music industry types and significant others comprised a majority of the traffic, while actual Artists tended to limit their time milling about. Periodically free water and beer (Heineken light) would be dispensed in large plastic tubs around the grounds. Each stage now has a VIP area at the front of the stage, and there is a walkway/track around the back so that people with VIP and Artist/Press/Crew level access can navigate without walking onto the festival grounds. The VIP area was alternatly a god send (any time you wanted to watch a main stage act), a disaster (you couldn't even get in during Pharell's set on the second stage) and irrelevant (for Courtney Barnett it was a better view from the sparsely populated general population area, with the gobi tent vip viewing area shunted off to stage left in front of a screen and wall of speakers.)
As someone who naturally gravitates towards the least crowded part of any space for watching a show, I found myself in the unusual position of standing in the back of a sometimes sparsely inhabited VIP viewing area looking at people who had been uncomfortably pressed up against metal railing for hours at a stretch.
On Friday I arrived to see Broken Bells play the coveted "magic hour" set on the second stage. That set on the second stage at sunset typically kills, and Broken Bells was no exception to the rule. I'm a fan of the new record and it was a bit of a thrill to see the songs performed live for the first time. I was surprised to see that the entire band is only four people, James Mercer, Danger Mouse and two additional people. James Mercer gave particularly memorable performance "he was swiveling his hips!" other people observed after the show.
After Broken Bells is was back to the Artist Village area for a discreet and sophisticated celebration, largely industry people. Then I walked to the second tent to see Bryan Ferry, who was resplendent in the kind of multi colored dinner jacket that only looks right on aging British rockstars. The crowd for Ferry was largely comprised of older dudes and their younger girlfriends, and I actually physically saw several examples of that combination who I'd met at prior music industry type events. Ferry was backed by an excellent band- including two energetic african american back up singers in the classic mold. Everything was very tight and on the money, leading me to the conclusion that Ferry keeps in practice and has pride in his work.
After Bryan Ferry there was more agreeable socializing in the Artist village, listening to but not watching Girl Talk (missed all the guest stars), followed by an attempt to watch Outkast's headlining set from the VIP section- which was mistake and let to my departure after half of the first song. Back in the hotel room, I watched the stream and was not impressed. The next day I spoke to someone who watched from the main stage vip area and said it was great. Observers who criticized the crowd for failing to respond are stupid. I think Outkast was disappointing as a main stage head liner, even compared to recent hip hop headliners like Dre and Snoop or Kanye West.
Saturday was a late start. I sat pool side at the Renaissance Esmerelda, bemused from behind my used copy of Slaves of New York as some basic bitches and Coachella bros organized, I shit you not, a race in the hotel wading pool. How bro ish can one possibly get? The same group also brought a regulation size football which they threw around in the pool at rapid velocity, splashing strangers like assholes. Any argument that the normal general admission folks who go to Coachella in 2014 are in any way cool or fun was dashed by my observations of the non industry festival goers pool side. They seem a loutish bunch, the equivalent of the British term "punters." Well heeled punters, because that hotel was four hundo a night, but loutish.
I arrived early Saturday night for the second major highlight of my festival experience, Lorde's set on the second stage. I arrived puzzled at the discrepancy between laudatory reviews of her touring show vs. my own experience watching her perform "live" on tv where she typically stands still and declaims at the audience with hand gestured. Quickly I learned that Lorde does in fact have moves, that put her somewhere between a Lily Allen/M.I.A./17 year old who watches 80s rap videos on youtube. It certainly works. She has a solid voice and the Audience (myself included) ate it up.
Left after she played Royals (towards the end of her set) to catch the main stage show of Foster the People. I really have a deeper appreciation for this band after a couple of live viewings, and I'm attempting to be complimentary when I observed that Mark Foster is like the platonic ideal of the Bro. The Archetype, if you will. He is also a cutie pie, and his biggest fans in the VIP area seemed to be super hot girls in their 20s, so it is hard to say he's doing anything wrong. I don't believe they've really won over the fellas, but I'm certain they are not going for a hard edge.
After Foster The People I watched Queens of the Stone Age deliver a deadening, hit filled set, then walked over and watched most of Mogwai, who were great but had a small crowd. Their dramatic compositions played well against the Coachella night sky, and the idea that they might be "boring" live was outweighed by the joy of simply seeing Mogwai live. After that, tried to go see Pharell but was warned off the VIP viewing area, so went to see Darkside instead. Darkside was good, very much reminding me of Michael Mayer's Sahara room set a few years back, but it was clear that the Coachella likes its EDM like it likes its hip hop, big and dumb.
Closed out the night with twenty minutes of Pet Shop Boys- who were also not particularly popular but it was a thrill to see them in the flesh. They wore giant black porcupine style rubber suits and had a splendid video back drop.
Sunday had to go early (Noon!) to watch Ratking, who were the discovery for me of the festival. With a throw back style of hip hop and interesting IDM/EDM-y type beats, they were a real fresh voice in the Coachella crowds, and the new record on XL is excellent. Later I had a chance to chat with lead rapper Wiki back stage and found him to be an interesting and well informed young man, far from any stereotype about rappers.
After Ratking, I wandered around the Terrace area- which holds the double EDM barrels of the Yuma tent and the Do Lab (and the Heinkein Lounge which I didn't even want to look at.) Goldenvoice built an actual craft beer bar back there in "Craftsman" style wood- it was a great place to pass an hour Sunday. Then I watched Courtney Barnett- who is a real discovery! You need to check out her new record- she's like a cross between Bob Dylan and Best Coast, with a sharp band that gives everything a very Nirvana vibe (she plays guitar left handed.)
Left the festival grounds for a couple hours to hang at the Beerhunter-which is an amazing Coachella convenient sports bar/restaurant. Then came back for a terrible Calvin Harris and an even worse Lana Del Rey. Even after watching four songs live I'm not sure if she is a drugged up train wreck or PLAYING a drugged up train wreck, but that was def. the vibe. It could also be both or neither. The fawning coverage I've read of the performance is baffling and I honestly wouldn't trust anyone who said she was "great"- she was terrible- fascinating all the same- but objectively it was a terrible, obviously lip synced performance. Bear in mind Lana Del Rey has sold a million records, so any criticism of the live show is meaningless and shouldn't be taken as anything other then objective facts.
I am 100% spoiled for regular VIP after the Artist level access- thank you to my hosts at Goldenvoice! And I am very excited about Stagecoach Festival in two weeks- which I will also be writing about on this blog!
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| Luke Bryan is totally straight you guys. |
Published 4/28/14
Stagecoach 2014:
Of beer, trucks & cut-offs and the sublime
The concept of aesthetics is essentially "philosophical" in nature. The modern discussion of philosophy began in the mid 18th century, and one of the key texts is Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published in 1757. Philosophical Enquiry defined the "sublime" as follows:
"terror is in all cases whatsoever . . . the ruling principle of the sublime" and, in keeping with his conception of a violently emotional sublime, his idea of astonishment, the effect which almost all theorists mentioned, was more violent than that of his predecessors: "The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other." [Burke, On the Sublime, ed. J. T. Bolton. 58]
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| Tyler Farr |
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| Jason Aldean |
The Tupac Amaru Rebellion by Charles F. Walker (8/25/14)
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| Depiction of Tupac Amaru II from Peruvian currency |
Book Review
The Tupac Amaru Rebellion
by Charles F. Walker
Oxford University Press
Published April 8th, 2014
(BUY IT)
Tupac Amaru is known to most people today via his namesake, murdered rapper and counter-culture icon Tupac Shakur. A fewer number of people know him as the namesake of the Shining Path splinter group/Marxist guerrilla's from the Peruvian troubles of the late 20th century. The original Tupac Amaru was the last leader of the Inca Empire, murdered by the Spanish in the 16th century.
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| The area involved in the Tupac Amaru II rebellion of 1780-1781. |
The Tupac Amaru Rebellion involved none of these- but rather was instigated by José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, a mixed-race merchant from the area south of Cuzco. Jose Gabriel claimed to be the last descendant of the first Tupac Amaru- a claim which was vigorously contested by a rival. Jose Gabriel went so far as to litigate the matter, spending a year before the rebellion in Lima. He lost his lawsuit, and retreated to his home province, where he and his wife, Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua, plotted their remarkable rebellion against the Spanish.
One of Walker's major themes is elevating the role that Bastidas played in organizing and implementing the revolution. Another is continuing the story of the Tupac Amaru Rebellion beyond his execution in 1781 and including related rebellions in modern-day Bolivia and around Lake Titcaca. Thus, the complete story of the Tupac Amaru Rebellion neither begins nor ends with Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru II, but rather extends beyond him both in the start (with his wife as an important co conspirator) and end.
Walker is a careful scholar, and he gives ample attention both to the varied Spanish response to the initial rebellion and the complexities in the attitude of Amaru II towards the Spanish Church and state. A surprising theme that emerges is how very Catholic Amaru and his wife were- they refrained from harming priests, and continued to represent themselves as good Catholics. Walker also does a good job of describing the complexity of 18th century Colonial culture, with fragmentations along both racial and class lines.
The picture which emerges is contrary to his present-day status as a counter cultural, revolutionary figure. Yes, he led an important rebellion against Spanish rule, but he was also a deeply conservative figure who represented himself as acting on behalf of the King (a common position of rebels in pre-democratic societies.)
Local Natives, Lucinda Williams, Houndmouth, Bootstraps, Moses Sumney
Show Review:
Way Over Yonder Fest, Day 1:
Local Natives, Lucinda Williams, Houndmouth, Bootstraps, Moses Sumney
Santa Monica Pier
Loyal readers will have certainly noticed a precipitous decline in the amount of writing about music here. This is a result of the combination of a number of factors: Having said everything I have to say about "local music" (true for a number of years), some undisclosed changes in my participation in the record business, and an objective decline in the amount of shows attended. It is a sad reality of this blog that the often exciting events in my life, as a criminal defense lawyer and record label owner must go undisclosed on this blog, leaving a steady diet of old book reviews in their stead.
Yesterday I found myself on the Santa Monica pier for the first night of the two night Way Over Yonder Festival, a collaboration between the Echo and the Newport Folk Festival. This was the second year for this festival- last year I saw Calexico, Justin Townes Earle and Jessica Pratt. This year the main attraction was Lucinda Williams.
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| Bootstraps, played the Way Over Yonder festival- handsome lads indeed. |
Arrived at 430 PM sharp to see Bootstraps, a mainstream ready indie act, with radio friendly hits on tap, a professional stage presence and male model looks (literally) that is somehow label-less and playing the opening slot. They had a Top 40 rock sound that reminded me of other Top 40 Adult Contemporary acts like The Script or The Fray. The scuttlebutt among industry types in the crowd was that they had parted ways with indie leaning Capitol Records sub-label Harvest, which, if true, makes me wonder what the fucking fuck they are even doing at Harvest if they don't know what to do with Bootstraps. I mean, they aren't in my income bracket, but if I had a spare hundred grand I wouldn't hesitate to try to get their song California on commercial rock/adult contemporary radio.
Second act was Houndmouth (not Houndsmouth, apparently) which I took in from the back of the pier while scarfing down an excellent fried chicken sandwich from the "Peaches" food truck. During this episode it was clear that once again a show at the Santa Monica pier had delivered A plus people watching- which is nowadays my primary criterion for whether or not I attend a show. Houndmouth also had a highly professional stage presence, male and female vocals, and an accessible rock/country/americana sound.
Moses Sumney was a bit of head scratcher as the sunset set pick- solo for much of the set with some accompaniment on acoustic guitar, he mixed singer songwriter material with more esoteric drone and electronic influenced music, none of which seemed to particularly impress the mellow crowd.
The highlight was the set by Lucinda Williams. I'm not a fan, but I know a priceless opportunity when I hear about one, and seeing Lucinda Williams play the Santa Monica pier is a priceless opportunity. She opened strong with a couple of older hits, then veered into newer material that featured a heavy blues-rocks influence, and many, many, many lengthy guitar solos. She also read her lyrics off of a lectern just to her right. God bless her. I have never seen so many middle aged white ladies dance with abandon as I did last night.
Headliners, and Pitchfork approved, alt rock bros Local Natives took the stage to billowing clouds of pot smoke. I've managed to totally avoid their rise to prominence. I'm not saying I hate Ian Cohen and everything he stands for, but his seal of approval was critical to me deciding to avoid them for the last few years. But what can you say- they do know how to put on a show, they have an unpretentious stage presence and despite struggles with the sound mix, it was easy to see why people are into them. If they are ever looking for a new band name, might I humbly suggest "Arcade Weekend?" Good for them though, they have seemingly earned their success, and appear poised to become a top rank touring rock band.
Again, the Santa Monica Pier earned high marks for people watching and just generally being an amazing place to see a live show. I highly recommend it, and if you are so inclined, get down there today to see Jackson Browne play his hits. 18 million records sold IN THE US ALONE. Running On Empty- it should be dope.
The Invention of Tradition (1983) Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (10/15/14)
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| The modern kilt was an early 18th century invention, by an Englishman no less. |
Published 10/15/14
The Invention of Tradition
Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger
Canto Edition 1992
Cambridge University Press
I watched the recent independence vote in Scotland with interest (I was pro-Union, anti-Independence) and it was a good cue to revisit my Amazon Wish List Titles and read The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hosbawm and Terence Ranger, which contains a key chapter on the explicit English involvement of many of the trappings of so-called Scottish Nationhood in the 18th century. The chapter in question is called The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland, and it concerns the integration of a previously Irish/Celtic highland ethnicity into the greater Scottish nation. And although I don't normally take the approach on this blog of presenting lengthy recapitulations/descriptions of the material I've read, I think it is worth abandoning that habit where The Invention of Tradition is concerned, since the Scottish vote is so recent in memory, and since the "Yes" votes are like an echo of the 18th century creation of the Scottish national tradition, which itself intimately involved the English, also involved the relegation of a brother Celtic culture in favor of the Scottish identity, and, I would argue, would tend to show up the very idea of an independent Scotland as an example of "false consciousness," or at the very least a manipulation of the sentiments of the less educated by a local elite with much at stake in terms of personal gain.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, the author of the Highland Tradition of Scotland chapter starts with the state of play before the invention of a highland culture,
"Before the later years of the seventeenth century, the Highlanders of Scotland did not form a distinct people. They were simply the overflow of Ireland. On that broken and inhospitable coast, in that archipelago of islands large and small, the sea unites rather than divides and from the late fifth century, when the Scots of Ulster landed in Argyll, until the mid-eighteenth century, when it was 'opened up' after the Jacobite revolts, the West of Scotland, cut off by mountains from the East, was always linked rather to Ireland than to the Saxon Lowlands. Racially and culturally, it was a colony of Ireland."
You can't get more explicit than that. Further:
"Being a cultural dependency of Ireland under the 'foreign', and somewhat ineffective, rule of the Scottish crown, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland were culturally depressed. Their literature, such as it was, was a crude echo of Irish literature."
Trevor-Roper describes a three step process: the cultural revolt against Ireland, the artificial creation of new Highland tradition and finally, the offering to and adoption of these new traditions by the people concerned. This first part is very much part of the story of the Novel and 18th century British literature, specifically the famous Ossian forgery that created a fake epic poetic history of native Highland Scots. The fact that the Ossian epic was eventually exposed was no matter, for it got the ball rolling and eventually led to the pioneering work of Sir Walter Scott, a Scot with strong English ties, who blew the door wide open on the so-called Scottish highland tradition and essentially created a national mythology out of whole-cloth.
This literary invention was matched by the creation of the Highland tartan by Thomas Rawlinson, a member of well established English Quaker family. In 1727, he made an agreement with a local Scottish chieftain to lease a wooded area and operate a furnace to create charcoal for industrial operations on the north of England. While he was there, he became interested in the Scottish costume as it related to the efficiency of his own workers, who wore a "belted plaid" that was inconvenient for work in and around the furnace. He used an English tailor to create the "felid beg," phlbeg, or "small kilt", which was achieved by separating the skirt from the plaid and converting it into a distinct garment, with pleats already sewn. Rawlinison himself wore this new garment, and his example was followed by his Scottish associate, Ian MacDonnell of Glengarry. After that, the clansmen, as always, obediently followed their chief and was promptly adopted by the rest of Highland Scotland.
This transmission of an invented tradition from top of the social scale to bottom is repeated in many of the others chapters in this book. Everywhere, the motivation is to inspire nationalist fervor in populations who previously lacked such an attitude. Considering the detrimental impact of Nationalism on the course of history in the last several hundred years, it is important to understand the role tradition plays in supporting the acts of political and economic elites, and the way such traditions are consciously created by those elites for a variety of purposes, benign and otherwise.
The Nuraghe of Sardinia (10/20/14)
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| This is an example of a Nuraghe, a Bronze age building found only on Sardinia, constructed by an unknown civilization in the 18th century B.C. |
Nuragic civilization is from 18th Century BC Sardinia. They made the impressive Nuraghe buildings on Sardinia during this period. Nuraghes are pretty impressive considering they were made in an "off the map" location in terms of ancient civilizations.
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| The interior of a Nuraghe, a bronze age building from an unknown civilization on Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea. |
The central Mediterranean and Iberian peninsula are typically discounted in any discussion of Ancient Civilizations (before Greece and Rome) but the Nuraghe would seem to indicate that central Mediterranean was perhaps not the cultural backwater that it was considered to be a half century ago.
Published 10/27/14 The Age of the Vikings by Anders Winroth Princeton University Press Published September 7th, 2014 This is a slim (320 pages including footnotes, index and bibliography) that gives an overview of "The Age of the Vikings" that incorporates recent discoveries in the fields of archeology and linguistics. In archaeological terms this means incorporating what scholars in the field have learned about the health and causes of death of long dead Vikings. In linguistic terms it means incorporating the advances in reading Scandinavian runes. Winroths works fits within the decades long project to rehabilitate the so-called "Dark Ages" in favor of a more balanced view that takes the positives with the negatives. In this case, the negatives are well known. The Vikings are typically the darkest part of the dark ages, known for their violent depredations against Europeans and residents of the British Isles alike. At the close of the Vikings age, they had spread colonies from North America in the West to Russia in the East, and archeological digs have long established that the Vikings played an active role in trading with the Arab Caliphate, Central Asia and the Byzantine Empire. In defense of the Vikings, Winroth makes the valid point that the people who wrote about the Vikings were their most frequent victims: Christian Churches and Monasteries. Obviously, literate monks and church men had a huge axe to grind with Vikings. Winroth points out that the Vikings were not spectacularly violent when compared to their European contemporaries, their main difference is that they attacked using stealth tactics, and that they were unafraid to plunder churches. The newer translations of the long undeciphered Runes demonstrate a poetic tradition that tracks with larger trends in Indo European poetics, with internal rhyme schemes and complicated structures within individual stanzas. Winroth's main theme is that The Age of The Vikings began with Scandinavia being outside of "Europe" and ended with it becoming an acknowledged part of Europe with similar structures in government, religion and culture. This included adopting central Monarchs in charge of proto-national states, and of course the Christian religion. Winroth also debunks at least one common misunderstanding- something that was actually prominently featured in the Vikings television show on the History Channel. The notorious "Blood Eagle" punishment, which theoretically involved punching holes in the back of the victim and drawing out their lungs as "wings," is based on a long corrected mistranslation, and never existed in reality. Too bad this book didn't come about before the first season, they could have edited that bit out or re-written it for greater accuracy.
Published 11/4/14 Makers of Modern Asia Edited by Ramachandra Guha Published August 29th, 2014 Belknap Press of Harvard University (BUY IT)
Biography dominates the field of popular history- pick any three top sellers off the non-fiction list that can be categorized as "history" and all three are likely to be biographies, likely of American Presidents or Jesus. This despite the fact that biography has very much fallen out of favor in academic circles concerned with historical matters. Perhaps because of this disparity between popular tastes and academic tastes, there are often gaps in newer areas of historical inquiry when it comes newly popular historical subjects, and 20th century Asian history- one of THE hottest topics in World History, is no exception. Thank god, Makers of Modern Asia is here to rectify the lack of short, well written, biographical sketches of 20th century Asian leaders with its presence. Published at the end of August by the excellent Belknap Press at Harvard University, Makers of Modern Asia has biographical sketches of 11 twentieth century Asian leaders: Gandhi (India), Chiang Kai-shek(China), Ho Chi Minh(Vietnam), Mao Zedong(China), Jawaharlal Nehru(India), Zhou Enlai(China), Sukarno(Indonesia), Deng Xiaoping(China), Indira Gandhi(India), Lee Kuan Yew(Singapore) and Zulifkar Ali Bhutto(Pakistan).
Like all of the other titles I've read published by Belknap/Harvard University, Makers of Modern Asia is designed to satisfy both scholars of the field (ample footnotes and indexing) and general readers with a vague interest in learning more about the big leaders of 20th century Asian history. The amount of time one saves vs. reading individual biographies of some or all of these leaders is monumental- Makers of Modern Asia packs into 300 pages the important facts concerning all 11 leaders, and despite featuring 11 different authors, manages to keep an even tone throughout. All of the biographical sketches contain positives and negatives and appear to be written by actual people from those countries judging by the sensitivities displayed. The very idea of Westerners writing Asian history is clearly controversial even in more Western friendly places like India, witness the brou-ha-ha over Wendy Doinger's book, The Hindus, as recently as last year. It is impossible not to look for commonalities between the leaders as a way to link the sketches together, and the clear common denominator appears to be educational experiences abroad, either in Japan, Paris, Russia, London or Berkeley(Bhutto.) The great irony that the West by and large educated the leaders who would lead the struggle against Western Imperialism is something the reader will have ample time to contemplate within the pages of Makers of Modern Asia. I'm assuming that most readers, like myself, will possess general knowledge about Mao and Gandhi, and maybe recognize the names of leaders like Indira Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping, Lee Kuan Yew and draw blanks on the others. For me, it was the lesser known leaders who proved the most revelatory. How often do you have the opportunity to contemplate the back story of Sukharno, the Indonesian leader who helmed the fourth largest country in the world with a relative lack of extravagant human misery. All of those profiled "come alive" in the pages of Makers of Modern Asia. Any reader looking for a jumping off point into the sea of recent Asian history would be well advised to start here rather than a nation/country specific/focused titles. So much of 20th century Asian nation-state history was directly influenced by these personalities that neglecting them in favor of more esoteric theories about roots and causes seems a bit, as they in England, potty. I do strongly recommend picking this title up if you have an interest in the subject, or in not being an ignorant American the next time you are asked to opine on some Asia centered current event Published 11/6/14 The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World by Cyprian Broodbank Published November 1st, 2013 Oxford University Press 673 pages 387 illustrations, 49 in color 4.9 pounds (BUY IT)
Braudel's opus was the first book to write a history of an area, rather than a nation, people or personage, and his method was coined the Annales school, which can be loosely described as both a bottom/up historical technique, with greater attention paid to the lives of average people than rulers AND as an integrative technique where knowledge from other social science disciplines: notably archeology and climatology, were broad in to shed light on previously little known places and times. Braudel set off the equivalent of an enormous earthquake with his history of the Mediterranean and subsequent five volume history of private life, but he was limited in what he could draw from other disciplines, which were themselves limited by two World Wars and various discipline specific methodological issues. Broodbank, an archaeologist by training, confidently presents The Making of the Middle Sea as an up to date successor to The Mediterranean, and he has in his favor more than a half century of advances in archeology, climate studies, genetics, carbon dating to assist him in fulfilling his broad promise of presenting, "A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World." Broodbank proceeds in chronological order, literally starting before the Mediterranean existed to the initial population of the the entire basin by Modern humans. Within each chapter he moves in a loosely clockwise fashion, usually starting in North Africa, which has the least amount of available information, then the Iberian peninsula, the Balearics and southern France, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, the Middle East and Egypt. In the opening couple chapters, these areas really do function separate and independently, and one of the major narrative themes of The Making of the Middle Sea is the process by which the various discrete regions expanded and integrated, leading up to the "explosion" of the Greek/Roman era. Another major narrative theme is an attempt to shed light on the pre-Classical indigenous populations of Iberia, Sardinia and the super-islands of Crete and Cyprus. The conventional narrative for describing the pre-Classical history of the Mediterranean is a movement of civilization from East (Mesopotamia and Egypt via the Levant and Anatolia) to West (Greece,) and Broodbank does everything to can to show- often literally- with photographs of little known ruin sites in places like modern day Spain, Malta and Sardinia to argue that the central and western Mediterranean were advanced as anything in the early and middle parts of the second millenium BC, they just weren't hooked up with the "winning" civilizations. In several places Broodbank makes comparisons between these pre-Classical indigenous Mediterranean groups and the Native American civilizations of the Maya, Aztec and Incans, and the idea of analogizing the relationship between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean to the relationship between the discoverers of the New World and the Natives has some appeal. Another important narrative theme in The Making of the Middle Sea is the integration of climate sciences. In several places he is able to authoritatively answer specific questions about the historical climate of certain areas by referring to pollen cores pulled out of lake bottoms, which accurately record the type of plants present during each time period. For me, the takeaway from the climate science material is that whether human activity causes climate change or not, climate change happens, and humans are often dramatically and for the worse. The way I see it, as long as we can agree that climate change is actually happening, the cause don't matter, because the effect will be the same whether the change is from a long term "super drought," a cooling of the atmosphere, a warming of the atmosphere, ec. The visuals of The Making of the Middle Sea are also worth singling out for acclaim. Maps are sufficently large to be readable and contain the right amount of information. Photographs are up to date and make use of everything available. Diagrams and drawings are likewise excellent, and draw uniformly from recent sources. The Making of the Middle Sea is not perfect, and generally lags anywhere there is an established field of interest: Egypt, Mesopotamia are mere summaries of up to date but hardly revelatory material. His marshalling of archeological work in the service of Annales style bottom-up history is admirable, and it may be this technique that is just as notable as the updating of Braudel's epic history from a half century ago. The bibliography is remarkable, 40 pages of four point script with something like 35 abbreviated periodicals and presses that show up multiple times. You can make the argument that anyone interested in this period of history should own The Making of the Middle Sea just for the bibliography, which must contain enough recent academic examples to fuel a years worth of JSTOR based research. The Making of the Middle Sea does succeed in the stated attempt to provide a new Braudel like work. The Myth of Telipinu, The Vanishing God (11/17/14) .
Book Review Life and Society in the Hittite World by Tevor Bryce Oxford University Press p. 2002 The idea of "real" Indo European folklore is confused. This is largely because it is hard to tell where any particular Indo European myth is authentic vs. being imported from a near by culture with an independent mythological tradition. This is best attested in the classical era of Greece and Rome when Greek and then Roman mythology carried a heavy "Eastern" influence, including such "classical" Greek Gods like Aphrodite and Dionysus, both of whom were said to have come "from the East." Most independent Indo European myths come either late in the day- Celtic and Viking myths are two examples, or are poorly or not attested to in writing. The oldest written Indo European mythos come the Eastern wing of the family, with the early Vedic writings in Indian and the Iranian Avesta long considered to be the "purest" Indo European mythology. The Hittite corpus of mythos face both the problem of being heavily influenced by the pre-existing myths of Mesopotamia AND being poorly attested. However, they hold great interest for the reader, because the Hittite/Anatolian Indo European language is typically deemed to be from a whole earlier off shoot of "Proto Indo European" than ALL the other languages, making a third, earlier branch than either the Western languages or the Indo-Iranian Eastern branch of languages. The most interesting of the "native" Hittite myths is that of Telipinu, the vanishing God. Here is how the myth appears in the text of Life and Society in the Hittite World by Trevor Bryce: The god Telipinu has flown into a rage. He puts on his shoes and departs the land. Crops wither and die, sheep and cattle reject their young and become barren, men and gods starve. In great alarm the Storm God, father of Telipinu, dispatches and eagle to search for his wayward son. The search is in vain. The Storm God himself attempts to seek him out. Again to no avail. No god, great or small, can determine his whereabouts. In desperation the Storm God sends a bee to look for him. The bee searches on high mountains, in deep valleys, in the blue deep. Finally in a meadow it discovers Telipinu. It strings his hands and feet, bringing him smartly upright, and then soothes the pain of his stings by smearing wax on the affected parts. But the god's anger remains unabated. Indeed his fury is increased by his rude and painful awakening. In an orgy of destruction, he unleashes thunder and lighting and great floods, knocking down houses and wreaking havoc on human beings, livestock an crops. Then Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, is sent to pacify him and bring him back. She conducts a ritual for this purpose. By the process of ritual analogy Telipinu's body is cleansed of anger. The god's way home is made smooth by spreading oil and honey upon it. Telipinu returns and once more cares for his land. All is restored to normal. There is precious little discussion of this myth in English. Both sources that Bryce cites in his recounting of the actual text of the myth are German academic journals. This idea of a God leaving and returning is not something you get out of the Judeo-Christian ethic. Quite the opposite, there, despite all the questioning that goes on in the Old Testament (which is the oldest text of the Judeo-Christian corpus.) The idea of an important god simply leaving (Telipinu was the Hittite god of agriculture) also echoes the later quasi-Judeo-Christian religion of Manichaeism. His departure reflects a world where survival was very much in doubt, and people had to live with the distinct possibility that they would die, be enslaved or lose everything more or less in the blink of the eye. Perhaps some of the genius in the Judeo-Christian era comes from the idea of not just one god, but one god who was ALWAYS there, even if unresponsive. A vanished god is just that- absent- and it is this disappearance that may very well be the most Indo European thing about him. Aside from the myth of Telipinu, Life and Society in the Hittite World is very much THE single book you would want to read on the Hittites, an Anatolian based bronze age empire that lasted in various forms for close to a thousand years before petering out in the face of the neo-Assyrian conquests during the 8th century. The reader will learn that the Hittites were not a fantastically innovative Empire and that their domain constituted the Northern fringe of the pre-Classical Bronze Age world. The Hittites were constantly pushing south into the wealthier regions of Mesopotamia and Syria, with a great interest in Egypt as an equal/superior culture. They were active in Western Anatolia, where pre-classical Greek sites like Troy were active at the same time. They never really figured out their northern border, and although their eventual extinction was at the hands of the "Great Power" of Assyria, they lost momentum several times at the hands of northern barbarians, who raided without maintaining a central authority that could be conquered.
Bryce is strong on the ritual cleanliness material, and I think that is an area of special interest to comparative historians of religion. Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World (12/1/14)
Book Review Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World by Michael Scott Princeton University Press, published March 10th, 2014 (BUY IT) I think all things being equal I'd rather blog about subjects in World History. World History is interesting, and it simply doesn't attract the kind of readers who are an embarrassment to humanity. World History subjects are also popular with the Audience. There are 8 tagged World History posts with greater than one thousand page views, and an additional 26 posts with more than 100 page views, meaning that over a third of the tagged World History posts (34/103.) Almost every single post has more than 50 page views, meaning that the average for the category is something like 125 views per tagged post. Since my average readership for a new post is 20-40, this makes these posts 6 to 3 times more popular than non World History tagged posts. As a new release, Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World, was a priority, but I was also genuinely interested in the subject matter, being a fan of "single subject" Greco/Roman/Ancient World history books. These are the kind of subjects where one title can stay current for a half century, so I read Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World with the idea that I would never, ever have to read another book about an ancient Greek shrine. The main trend in books about the archeology of ancient Greece and the larger Mediterranean world is an increase in going deeper and looking farther afield for new material. The bias of interest towards the "classic" period has corresponded to a surfeit of knowledge about that time and a deficit both before and after. Delphi, in it's hey day, a period which started well before the dawn of classical Greek civilization and ended after the Christian era, was forgotten by the inhabitants by 1400 AD, when the first classical scholar arrived seeking the Delphi he had read about in Greek and Latin texts. After that, it was basically another 400 years before anyone came back, and archeological excavation has preceded fitfully through the 20th century. This means that "what we know" is a combination of classic text largely from hundreds of years AFTER the periods described therein, and archeology. I'm mentioning this because many of the customer reviews on Amazon.com libel Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World as either being too simple or not simple enough. Neither assessment is correct, Delphi is simply a work of synthesis with up to date sourcing from available material. Thus, it reflects the strengths and weaknesses of that material. This book is resolutely anti-hocum-pocum, so that we get enough discussion of the proto-ritual, a virgin Sybil sitting in some kind of tripod type arrangement over a vent in a mountain cave where gas issues forth and inspires prophecy. Later, this ritual would be mimicked but within the later constructed temple of Apollo. The original cave mountain prophesying was supplanted by the later shrine shown above. The later history of Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World is likely to be interesting to readers only to the degree that they are interested by the "late classical period" prior to the fall of the Western Empire. Under Roman rule, Delphi maintained some relevance in the way that Old World religious sites are appealing to New World followers, but innovation had long since ended. New Release: The Struggle for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (12/8/14) Published 12/8/14 The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics by Ayesha Jalal Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Published September 16th, 2014 (BUY IT) Educated Americans probably know a few things about Pakistan: that it's a Muslim state, located in Asia, next to India, Bin Laden was hiding there. If you are one of the few Americans who takes an active interest in South Asia, you might know a name or too: Bhutto, Musharraf, Zia. You might know that they have nuclear weapons or that they've been engaged in a protracted border dispute with India over Kashmir for the past half century plus. Beyond that...maybe some of the history behind the British partition of the sub-continent that led to the creation of Pakistan itself. Beyond that, I'd bet nothing, unless you either trace your ancestry back to south Asia or have some kind of formal education about the region in your background. Considering the amount of tax dollars that we spend on Pakistan, and of course taking into account the proximity of Pakistan to Afghanistan, it seems like a succinct and critical history of Pakistan would be easy to find, but not so. The Struggle for Pakistan is a readable 300 page history of Pakistan, written by a tenured American professor of history of Pakistani origin. I'm assuming from her source material that she speaks Urdu. And while The Struggle for Pakistan isn't a magisterial thousand page opus, it is readable and comprehensible to anyone with an interest and familiarity with the field of twentieth century history. It's clear that Ayesha Jalal has the perspective of a Western trained history professor but the background of someone who comes from Pakistan (and perhaps has ties to the liberal/intelligentsia class of the urban areas of Pakistan via friends and family?) The main irony of Pakistan's existence, as Jalal renders perfectly clear (without being over judgmental) is that Pakistan was created as an explicitly Muslim state by liberal internationalists who were both Western educated and less religiously Muslim than culturally Muslim. For these founders, Islam was a tool to be utilized to control an ill-educated, unruly, divided country with no other national tradition. The weakness of Islam as the organizing principle for a state that originally comprised today's Pakistan (West Pakistan) and Bangladesh (East Pakistan) is best illustrated by the succession of East Pakistan from West Pakistan in 1971. This humiliating episode saw the Bengali speaking Muslims of East Pakistan simply walk away from West Pakistan with hardly a shot fired in anger. As told by Jalal, the period between 1947 and 1971 was anything but a nation of united Muslims singing kum ba ya around the campfire, rather the elites of Western Pakistan saw East Pakistan as a region of 'blacks' who needed to be controlled and brought to heel (despite East Pakistan having a larger population than West Pakistan.) Jalal is not a disciple of "bottom up" history and The Struggle for Pakistan is classic high political history. With its roughly alternating periods of military dictatorship and civilian rule (with the Bhutto family making multiple and multi-generational appearances in the narrative) the history of Pakistan is admirably suited for this type of history, and by the end you will have a familiarity with all the leaders of Pakistan.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah plays the role of George Washington. He was Western oriented, a secularist, but totally instrumental in the creation of Pakistan itself. Jalal makes the point that the decision to pursue a separate state meant that Jinnah strategically abandoned the close to half a billion Muslims who would be living inside the partitioned India. This choice led to a great deal of heartache (and murder) in the days, weeks and months after the partition.
The first military coup in Pakistan was in 1958 with Ayub Khan assuming control until 1969. Ayub was succeeded by Yahya Khan, a Shia Muslim in a Sunni country, and Yahya Khan was deposed in 1971 after the dramatic military collapse in Eastern Pakistan. He was succeeded by Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, a civilian, and a Western educated, socialist/liberal who also saw the political benefit in espousing adherence to Islamic principles as a way of generating popularity among the electorate. Bhutto was deposed in 1977 by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. "Zia" as he was known, ruled until he died in a plane crash in 1988. Like Bhutto, he was Western leaning and cognizant of the importance of using Sunni Islam as a unifying force in a fractious country. Unlike Bhutto he was not a socialist, and more firmly oriented towards the West and used the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to cement Pakistan's status as a staunch Cold War ally of the United States. During the 70s and 80s, the Saudis exported their strict Wahhabi brand of Islam. Strapped for cash, and welcoming foreign investment (and foreign aid), the Pakistani military allowed Saudi sponsored schools to take root inside Pakistan. These schools trained the core of what would, in time, become both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Jalal emphasizes points of continuity between the alternating civilian and military governments: Whichever elite that is in control has benefited financially from their time at the top. There has been a near constant solicitation of foreign favor, whether it be from the West, the Middle East or China because of high expenditures of defense and low rates of effective tax collection. Constantly being a position of weakness has the effect of creating a culture of belligerence within Pakistan, and this belligerence is cultivated by whichever elite is in power to distract people from its own incompetence. After Zia died, Pakistan flipped back to civilian control, with Nawar Sharif running the country as Prime Minister until 2001, when Pervez Musharraf led another military coup and stayed in power until 2008. Since then it has been all democratic. I was left with the distinct impression that the Government- military and civilian has done little but maintain a world class-ish military and enrich itself through graft for the last half century. If they have done anything besides that, Jalal did not bring it up. There is no discussion of infrastructure projects or economic development schemes. I couldn't tell you what Pakistan's largest important is, or what the second largest sector of their economy is after agriculture. I know that they have one port city- Karachi- which sounds like a fun place to hang out. The main provinces are Punjab and Sindh, with Baluchistan and Khyber as the hinterland and the North West territories being a lawless badlands. The internal dynamic of Pakistan is Punjab as the "center" in terms of population and influence, Sindh as a junior partner and the rest of the territory as populations to be managed. Baluchistan has been in a more or less constant state of rebellion since the beginning of Pakistan itself, and it is the case today. And the Northwest territories are probably the part that most Americans are familiar with because of the presence of the Taliban. Thus, Jalal's book will give you the central narrative of Pakistan's political history, but not much of a take on the people or culture- the bottom so to speak. Still, the omission of that material is what makes The Struggle for Pakistan interesting to a general audience, so it's hard to quibble. The Muslim Conquest of Central Asia (12/11/14)
Published 12/11/14 The Arab Conquests of Central Asia by H.A.R. Gibb originally published 1923 reprint by AMS Press 1970 The Muslim invasion of Central Asia basically lasted from 645 A.D to 711 A.D. The invading armies were led by Arabs from the Saudi peninsula but used officers and regular soldiers from Persia. The situation in Central Asia prior to the invasion was muddled: basically a set of independent city state/oasis type polities who were being invaded and conquered by Turks prior to the invasion. Some of the city states had maintained their Iranian leadership, but may have used Turkish mercenaries. To the East, the Chinese were pressing north of the Central Asian city states, but they effectively cut off any potential help from Turks from the North. The invading Muslim armies gave people the basic, "Submit or die" pitch. The various city states resisted with various degrees of success. The first phase of invasion was led by Qutayba, the Arab general from Medina. Qutayba's conquests are summarized by Gibb: 1. 705 AD: The recovery o Lower Turkestan(Tukharistan in the text) 2. From 706 AD- 709 AD: The conquest of Bukhara. 3. From 710 to 712: Consolidation of Arab authority in the Oxus valley and its extension into Sughd. 4. From 713 to 715: Expeditions into the Jaxarates provinces. Qutayba was killed by his own troops after he had an overly confident reaction to a change in power at the heart of Umayyad Empire. It's fair to say that due to his roots in the movement (he was there at Medina) he thought he was bigger than the Empire at the End, and that was his downfall. After his death there was a twenty five year period of retrenchment and counter attack from the Turkish princes of the area. The Turks went down eventually, then China lost interest in funding rebellion against the Arabs, and the situation settled down to the status quo that would be encountered by Genghis Khan and his invading armies almost 500 years later. Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Past by Daniel Richter (12/18/14)
Published 12/18/14 Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Past by Daniel Richter p. 2011 The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press Any attempt to write the pre-European history is faced with three major problems: 1. Historical anti-Native bias by European scholars 2. Lack of written records by pre-European North American civilizations. 3. Decline of the major civilization centers prior to European "discovery" and the European induced epidemics that wiped out 9/10ths of Native populations prior to extensive contact. Which is different than saying that there were no pre-European major North American civilizations. In Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Past, Daniel Richter draws together archaeological records, mythology and advances in understanding of non-European native culture to make a compelling case that there was really not much separating the Native power centers of Pueblo Bonito(four corners region) or Cahokia(Missouri) from their contemporary European counterparts of the late Middle Ages. He does this largely to make the case that there was not as much difference between Europeans and Native Americans in the period prior to contact as is typically supposed. This is a thesis which flies in the face of popular "historians" like Jared Diamond, whose "Guns, Germs and Steel" does much to advance the opposite interpretation: That European civilizations were "destined to win." Instead Richter advances a much more nuances thesis that relies heavy on the Early centuries of contact (1500-1700) and the numerous failure by Europeans to secure a place in North America. This is a major difference between the history of Central and South America, which it's central theme of European conquest of existing Native American civilizations like the Aztecs and Incans. The Aztecs and Inca's may have "lost;" but we sure do know a lot about both of them. I think it's commensical to presume that there were North American analogue civilizations, especially since the history of both Aztecs AND Inca's conclusively links to prior civilizations who were extinguished prior to contact. A common theme of "New World" history is the fragility of complex culture in the face of environmental factors, and in that way the more unknown sites of North America may have MORE to teach us about current events. Richter describes a Native North America that was familiar with the concepts of agricultural, government and trade, but also familiar with the "European" ideas of slavery and genocide. The picture that Richter paints of the less known North American civilization centers that died out prior to European contact is not a hippy-peace lovefest. The Chaco Canyon site in the four corners area of the Western United States of America sounds very much like a place that had much in common with the Aztecs and their predecessors in Tenochtitlan. Additionally the myths of North and South "match" in that the Aztecs speak of coming from the North and the present day Natives of the four corners region speak of post-dissolution groups heading to the south to "forget" the presumably hard times at the end of Chaco Canyon. Richter makes the case that Chaco Canyon was a multi-ethnic accumulation with a distinct elite who managed to subjugate surrounding tribes and bring them into the geographic orbit of Chaco Canyon, while the center accumulated tribute. It resembles the scenario in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament/Ancient Near Eastern history with "subject peoples" being enslaved by military conqueror civilizations. Similarly, Richter described a well settled Mississippi river valley with it's own power centers and subject peoples. With both civilizations it seems like the "subject peoples" were just as happy to go out on their own, and winners and losers dispersed over the continent. You can really see it if you look at the distribution of languages across North America PRIOR to European contact:
Before the Revolution contines forward into the European contact period, but I found those portions less valuable since there have been many authors re-visiting the Colonial American period in recent decade. Whereas his treatment of pre-Contact North American civilizations is an able synthesis of the available scholarly material. The Maya of the Yucatan (12/18/14)
An upcoming trip to the Yucatan has me all excited about the Maya ruins there. I would say, quite honestly, that the odds of me hitting the Mexican state of Tabasco are about the same as the chances of me hitting the Guatemalan Highlands, so the Yucatan Maya are likely to be it. The Yucatan Maya are a post-Classic civilization, with a heavy influence by the Mexica/Toltec. Settlement of the area by pyramid building ambitious types started in the 8th-9th century AD. Of the three major sites in the Yucatan: Chichen Itza, Mayapan and Uxmal, Mayapan is the most recent with abandonment taking place in the early 15th century, only a hundred years before contact. Uxmal on the other hand flourished only briefly in the 1000's AD. The direct influence of Toltec immigrants seems mostly limited to the Chichen Itza site/polity. Uxmal is in the style of the Chontal Maya who provided initial settlement of the Yucatan and Mayapan is the product of the existing culture of the Maya after the Toltec arrival. Additionally, the Chontal Maya themselves came from a place where there were a mixture of settlements by Maya and Mexica. The fact that the Yucatan Maya are not a "pure" Mayan civilization is far outweighed by their accessibility. There's nothing wrong with late period ruins if you are just a casual tourist. The earlier ruins are, the less impressive and interesting they tend to be for a general audience member. Both Uxmal and Mayapan have an advantage over Chichen Itza and Tulum in terms of not being totally overrun by tourists already. The Eastern part of the Yucatan is the tourist nightmare of Cancun, a place I have no intention of visiting. The western side is centered on the city of Merida, which is experiencing an increase of international awareness due to the efforts of a small group of wealth expatriates to attract attention. My experience with the situation vis a vis the Inca sights in the Sacred Valley is that the lesser known sites give as much OR more bang for the buck. The only thing the better known sites have going for them is more assholes. If you want to experience an ancient civilization, the less modernity you have surrounding you the better. Here are some of my other posts about the Mayans from the past of this blog: Mayans, Toltecs and Aztecs (10/25/10) What The Hell Happened To the Maya? (1/26/11) Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule (9/29/11) The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom (10/9/11) 2nd Take: Maya History and Religion (2/13/12) I think I'm ready to see the ruins! Published 12/22/14 The History of Archeology: An Introduction Edited by Paul Bahn published February 10th, 2014 Routledge Press BUY IT The History of Archeology: An Introduction is a succinct college textbook meant to give an undergraduate a brief introduction to the personalities and issues in world archeology. Broadly speaking, there are three main periods of archeology- the pre scientific heroic/amateur period, where excavations were undertaken in the pursuit of glorious, striking artifacts that were typically exported from their area of discovery to western museums and private collections. This period started, basically, in the late 19th century and continued into the mid 20th century. The second period was the spread of archeology as an academic discipline leading up to advances in radiocarbon dating of objects that destroyed the central archeological task of deciding when objects they found in the ground were actually used. The third period, roughly dating from the 60s, is a reaction to many of the "assumptions" of scientific archeology by scholars familiar with critical theory, leading to a cross-pollination between archeology and other disciplines, like climate studies and systems theory, to create a more "theoretical" archeology that looked beyond digging up villages and figuring out when people lived there. After a couple chapters detailing the origins of the first period of Archeology, The History of Archeology: An Introduction is composed of a series of chapters discussing archeology in each separate part of the world, with a distinct emphasis towards notable local archeologists and an explanation of their issues and concerns. Each chapter concludes with a brief "Bringing It Up To Date" which mentions contemporary issues for each geographical area, and a chapter ending bibliography. Personally, I found the bibliography disappointing, with many of the listed sources being untranslated books from the chapter subject location. I understand why the authors would do that, but it limits the ability of English language students to actually follow up on many of these subjects. Several of the authors explicitly point out the works for a given area that HAVE been translated into English, which would seem to make this the exception rather than the rule. The World of the Scythians by Renate Rolle (12/26/14)
Published 12/26/14 The World of the Scythians by Renate Rolle p. 1980/English translation 1989 University of California Press The World of Scythians is translated from the German, and approximately 80% of the cited texts are in Russian, and that is an accurate description of what is like to get good information about the Scythian people in English. The Scythians inhabited what is today Ukraine- the southern portion, running down to the Black Sea. During the pre-Classical and Classical period, they interacted with Greeks who set up colonies on the shore of the Black sea. Lacking a written language, we only know about the Scythians from three sources: Greek sources, Persian sources and archeology. It is unknown what language the Scythians spoke and what their ethnic characteristics were, though Persian sources and a certain amount of common sense that the Scythians came from the Iranian branch of the Indo European family, and recent genetic studies point to a mixture of European and Asian populations. The archeology points firmly to Indo European roots, with the common characteristics of horse rearing and nomadic travelling in ample evidence. Similarities between Scythians and "primitive" western Indo European groups like the Germanic and Celtic peoples abound in terms of artistic motifs and burial rites. The Scythians are also notable for being the source of the Amazon women legend, which Rolle backs up with archeological finds, and being the earliest known users of Marijuana.\ |
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| Aziz Ansari and his girlfriend, Courtney McBroom. McBroom is a chef and published Author, also journalist and writer. If you are at all a fan of Aziz Ansari, the fact that he has a girlfriend is the most important thing to know. |
Published 10/6/14
Aziz Ansari & Joe Mande
at the Orpheum Theater
Los Angeles, CA.
On Friday night I saw Aziz Ansari do what was essentially a series of smaller, LA area warm ups for the big show at Madison Square Garden this coming Thursday. I'm a huge fan of Aziz, and I'm sure that some of this review would constitute a "spoiler," so if you have tickets to the show this week don't read past the photograph until after the show. No excuses.
So I'm a big Aziz Ansari fan- I remember watching his videos on the internet before he was on television. I've certainly seen all the stand-up specials upon debut or ckoe thse to it: Comedy Central, Netflix, etc. One thing you have to say straight up about Aziz as an Artist is that he is a hard working guy, I feel like the last Netflix special was not more than a few months back, and I chatted with my date about whether this would be "100% new material." (we both thought it would be because of the Madison Square Gaden show.
I'm certain that the Madison Square Garden will have stuff added- some bits maybe, and you would have to imagine that we will call in ALL his favors with his celebrity buddies for the MSG two night stand. The main bits revolved around factory farming and feminism- which to me seemed like an attempt by Ansari to have a couple signature bits that have some social consciousness element. The back end was largely his relationship stuff but interestingly including his new relationship with Courtney McBroom, a chef at Momofuku and Milk Bar in New York city. I'm only putting her name in because she's a published author and does press and obviously wouldn't object to having her mentioned in a totally neutral fashion.
I don't know Aziz, but the long time fandom and solid "one degree" of separation between the two of us make me feel like I do. Because this blog specifically deals with the relationship between Artist and Audience, I think I can convincingly argue both that stand up is an Art form worthy of serious aesthetic consideration, and that Ansari is a serious Artist in this feel, and that you can tell this by his combination of technique and theme, and his obvious success in connecting with a significant audience.
It's a very obvious thing to talk about Aziz Ansari's technique, whether one wants to appreciate it or criticize it. I think it's just a simple fact that it "works" and that people love it, and people who criticize it are either ignorant, or haters or both. The influence of hip hop on Ansari's delivery is well commented upon. I personally believe that the primary influence on Ansari is Chris Rock, and that Rock is essentially the career path that Aziz Ansari. I say that as a fan of Rock, but as someone who lost interest with his "serious" projects, including a remake of some french relationship drama that I really should have been into.
I would imagine that he is looking past stand up, since Madison Square Garden is basically "it" in that area. Given that he originally worked in video/online, and that he has balanced the stand up with a long-time role on cult classic and still on NBC comedy Parks & Rec., I'm sure the goal is to have his own production company and do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
I'm not sure that this show was any kind of a "go out on a high note" career transition, typically stand ups get to do marriage material, kid material, or they can drop out of the stand up game and move on to flim and television. So, the fact that he's "doing" relationship material- which is DEFINITELY the high light for any long time Ansari fan.
Ansari has risen on his "single guy" relationship material, and his television character is a perpetually frustrated would-be lothario. His extended discussion of one night stands as "Skittles" and relationships as a "healthy salad" had the ring of something that will inspire t-shirts and catch phrases. That ending bit with the factory farming/feminism bits are the three "hits" that one would expect to hear on a hit record, and I will be interested to see if I'm right about that as these bits permeate outward from the Artist.
Long time fans won't be disappointed, people coming because of the television show won't be disappointed either. It isn't raw, but we're talking Chris Rock not Eddie Murphy. I think something that happens to all Artists is that they are radical at the beginning, to draw attention, and then generally mellow and leaven commensurate with obtaining a larger, and more general audience. I think this is probably as close as a "rule" as you can get when discussing the relationship between artist and audience, and I think Ansari has figured this out in terms of his own career, and has done a good job coming up with a work that can please both the smaller audience of core fans and a larger audience of new ones.
If I could make one humble suggestion it would to have him do something about his family back in India, I think that would be amazing and interesting.
Opener Joe Mande had a solid opening set- including a spectacular peace about smoking pot in the form of "dabs" that I found very amusing.
Step and Repeat 2014 at MOCA Geffen Los Angeles
w/ Stephen Malkamus,
Neil Hamburger,
Geneva Jacuzzi,
Tim Hecker,
Heather Lawless,
Dub Club DJ's
This past Saturday I went to the last edition of the MOCA Geffen Los Angeles' month long cross-disciplinary be-in/event (theme "performance art") where I saw Stephen Malkamus & The Jicks, Neil Hamburger, Heather Lawless, Geneva Jacuzzi and (missed Tim Hecker's thing) inside the empty MOCA Geffen space in DTLA. I am always down for a well curated Museum attempt that attempts to integrate pop culture, and I feel like the MOCA Geffen is certainly headed in that direction, and generally has a downtown type of vibe.
MOCA Geffen takes advantage of the useable space out in front of the museum to make their evening events work. Of course, inclement weather would fuck everything up, but this is Los Angeles, so evening weather is essentially perfect 100% of the time. Also, this space is surrounded by parking lots and pedestrian public space, so there is zero traffic or even people walking by who aren't involved with the event. It makes for a comfy, cozy environment. The bar set up is a bit of a small nightmare, but I would say that is to be expected when you go to one of these here museum events.
The night started off with Geneva Jacuzzi. They sounded vaguely familiar, and a quick check of my Facebook app revealed that 15 of my Facebook friends already like the, including tastemakers like Mario Orduno (Art Fag Recordings) and Mike Sniper (Captured Tracks.) They started their performance with a video-toaster looking edited video piece that featured the two of them as pitch women for "MOCA Lotion" and a series of other typical tv sold products, in a style that seemed to draw from Tim & Eric's aesthetic and earlier parodies of tele-sales. After that, one of them got into a plastic inflatable skull, dressed in a witch costume, and then she crawled around inside it. I made it about 10 minutes after the 10 minute video, what I heard was interesting but the performance was static. When I returned afterward, the plastic inflatable skull she was inside had collapsed, so there may have been a dynamic visual there to close the piece- I don't know.
Heather Lawless opened for Neil Hamburger. I recognized her from the Patton Oswalt starring life action "The Heart She Holler" where she plays Hamrbosia, sister of Hurshe (Kristen Schall.) Her stand up was super duper awkward, by design, I am quite sure. It very much fit with the Neil Hamburger vibe but was otherwise an awkward surprise. I would watch her again.
Hamburger took the stage to weak applause. The audience, as one would expect, seemed to consist more of people who'd heard OF Hamburger but perhaps never seen him or watched any of this online, clips, than of long time fans. I would put myself somewhere in between, but I was excited to see him, and I've seen him before (in San Diego in July 2013). Hamburger/Greg Turkington appears to have grown closer to the Tim & Eric matrix, in particular his online video series with Heidecker, On Cinema and the attendant cross over with Heidecker's other online offering, Decker. Hamburger's act doesn't vary much, but the audience reaction sure does. When you watch Neil Hamburger perform you are really watching the reaction of the audience to Hamburger and responding to that, more than any particular joke. Neil Hamburger is certainly closer to a long running performing art piece than an "act" performed by Turkington.
I was unable to watch or hear the Tim Hecker piece, which seemingly required waiting in two separate lines, having your id scanned, and wearing a pair of headphones. There was no explanation of what was going on other than the description of the piece itself in the program for the night, so I would call that an organizational fail.
Headliners Stephen Malkamus & The Jicks sounded terrible because they were playing inside of a museum. I would have thought playing outside would have sounded better outside but I can well imagine issues with that happening. I haven't followed Malkamus post-Pavement career, but I would have liked to have heard him. The poor sound quality made that impossible, but it's impossible to blame anyone, it is, after all, a museum, and can hardly be expected to have gentle rock acoustics.
On the whole I would judge the entire project worthwhile, and would recommend Step and Repeat to anyone contemplating going in the future. Thank you to MOCA for having me!
Kasabian
@ The House of Blues
San Diego, CA
Of course I'm not a Kasabian fan, but seeing a band that headlined Glastonbury THIS YEAR headline an 1100 capacity club in San Diego was an obvious choice. If you read about Kasabian on the internet, you will learn that they are despised by critics and loved by normal people. They are huge everywhere BUT the United States. They draw comparisons to Oasis and Primal Scream, don't consider themselves indie, and main man Segio Pizzorno likes to pal around with English comedian Noel Fielding, and the two of them have the same hair cut.
I say more power to them. The crowd last night was super enthusiastic, almost entirely dudes, singing along to all the cuts and even going up on each others shoulders. The live show is exactly what you would expect from a band that headlined Glastonbury, broad, with lots of crowd interaction/appreciation. Almost every Kasabian song has an amazing opening 30 seconds, with lyrics that.... well they are broadly written lyrics designed to appeal to a large swath of the public.
The lighting was amazing- easily the best lighting display I've seen in San Diego ever at any venue. Kasabian played a ninety minute set, and I recognized all the songs that have made it to the radio. Backstage Sergio explained why he was wearing a t shirt that had "Corn" written on it in black. "My mate made up a ton of them, like 400 different words, so I wear a different one every night, I'm going to wear "Holiday" in Mexico City this weekend."
The band was charming and good natured backstage, and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about playing to an 1100 sized crowd in a second tier American market. It's more than I can say for other, much smaller bands who I have seen cop an attitude at House of Blues. Robin Roth stopped by with what I presume were either contest winners, staff winners or both. I never know whether to just say hi to her or introduce myself or neither, I feel like at one point we were introduced...anyway- Robin if you are reading this- I always say nice things about 91x and yourself when people ask me about the San Diego radio scene, and talked up 91x to Kasabian's manager over drinks after the show last night.
In conclusion, fun show, adoring crowd, fuck the haters. If you are a band in 2014 that has fans and sells records, that is an accomplishment itself.
Published 10/14/14
Newcastle Bartender Gigs
w/ Real Estate
The Casbah San Diego, CA.
If you deal with marketing types, you may be aware of the term "activation event." To my understanding, an activation event is something where an advertiser provides some form of entertainment, often a band, for free, in exchange for consumer information, typically an email address, with the ancillary goals of engaging the participants in social media activities on platforms like Facebook (page likes), Twitter and Instagram. I have gone to events where I have been provided with the correct hashtag in advance, along with confirmation of the RSVP.
The show at the Casbah last night was a good example of an activation event, with Real Estate as the free entertainment AND, most importantly, free Newcastle Brown Ale AND Newcastle Werewolf Red AND swag type stuff such as high quality bottle openers and easily liftable Newcastle branded goblets- sorry if I wasn't supposed to take those but my girlfriend is a big Newcastle fan!
In a sense, I'm on the front lines of this activity, albeit without being directly involved in throwing any such events. I hear about them a lot- proposals mostly, and I attend a fair amount of them. I say all this as preamble just as a way of introducing my opinion that Newcastle Bartender Gigs are a good example of the species, and that I enjoyed going to the San Diego version of this event. My online research revealed that other editions have featured Bleached in Los Angeles and Titus Andronicus in New York City. So clearly, whoever is booking these events knows their shit around indie bands in the United States.
The venue branding was intense- there was a full size banner on the wall of the venue facing the smoking patio. In the back bar, every available surface of the area behind the bar was covered with Newcastle Brown Ale towels. Newcastle set up a third bar inside the Courtyard itself, all the more to dispense free Newcastle Brown ale and Red (Ale?) Newcastle was also giving away large bags of chocolate covered caramel corn, which was delicious but not a good combination with Newcastle Brown Ale, so there was some tension there.
Personally, I would have liked to see some high quality t-shirts for the ladies- seems like that if you just make a bunch of small and medium women's shirts, you will be getting some good "word of mouth" out of that shirt, if you know what I mean. What I mean is that guys stare at pretty girls.
It seems impossible that this would have been the first time I'd seen Real Estate, though I can't find a prior show review nor actually remember seeing them at... Soda Bar? I want to say I've seen Real Estate before. I knew going in that they aren't dynamic live and they are really not- just some guys with a bookishly cute lead singer banging out swirly psychedelic guitars and emotionally astute lyrics like there is no tomorrow. I say this with the very utmost respect, but it must be said that Real Estate are boring life. Not that it matters to a band that is so eminently listenable. This is precisely the kind of music that people want to hear: Mild, mellow, virtuosic, non-threatening. Maybe there was a time when I resented such music and its fans, but clearly bands like Real Estate are the winners, and it is the bands that try challenging their Audience that fail in the long run (there are exceptions of course.)
Real Estate have done an excellent job of building their Audience size without compromising their image as a band routed in the legitimate DIY indie world. Merely reviewing their number of average weekly listeners on Last.FM is sufficient to confirm their status as a top tier indie rock band. No cross over yet, but surely commercial radio airplay and major festival action is on the horizon for the next LP. I don't believe Real Estate will ever wow fans with the life show, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter for them because the songs and execution is so strong.
Didn't recognize anyone in the crowd except the people I was there with and SD Dialed In Rosey. I guess I don't go out much in San Diego these days, but it wasn't a real scene type San Diego show. Good job Newcastle Bartender Gigs- it was a fun event!
Published 10/16/14
Broken Bells @ The Orpheum Theater
Presented by Goldenvoice
in Los Angeles, CA.
Currently slotted at #304 in the list of top 500 artists on Last.fm, Broken Bells pulled into LA for a two night stand at the Orpheum Theater near the end of their promotional cycle for their recent LP, After the Disco. After a year of observation, I can safely say that the overriding value that characterizes Broken Bells and their art is dignity. Dignity is in notably short supply within the music industry, whether you are a multi-platinum artist forced to clown and caper for the cameras on a reality television show, an artist selling hundreds or thousands of records forced to abandon any hope of making money actually selling their music to people other than Fortune 500 corporations for advertising jingles, or an unknown artist being asked to sign a five record deal with no advance from a label with no track record of market success.
The impulse to essentially abandon ones moral and ethical compass in the face of the current conditions of the music industry seems almost irresistible, at least from my perspective of someone at the lower rungs of the ladder. Compromises are inevitable, and utter abandonment is perhaps the most seductively attractive position to take in 2014. For if a multi national beer or soda company wants to pay an artist a half million dollars (or a hundred thousand) to use a recording in a national advertising campaign, how many are in a position to refuse?
I'm sure if you asked Brian Burton or James Mercer directly, they would agree that they do not want to appear undignified. Ultimately, this may be the reason that Broken Bells is the 300th biggest act in the world right now on Last.fm instead of say, being the 150th biggest band. A steadfast refusal to pander to the basest elements of popular culture is in effect a limitation on growth, since the largest artists all seem to have that dynamic of engagement with the celebrity-industrial complex on lock.
Refusal to engage in clownish buffoonery aside, the actual music is memorable. I think Broken Bells are under engaged by music critics because of their (the music critics) bias towards ideas derived from romanticism and obsession with novelty derived from 20th century modernist precepts. One could plausibly make a comparison with the music of Broken Bells and the work of an Author like Charles Dickens, a popular success whose critical acclaim lagged multiple generations, only becoming fully canonized well into the 20th century.
Certainly, seeing Broken Bells in a theater setting, with outstanding backing visuals and lighting, four piece backing vocals and horns, horns, horns is something of a best case scenario. Also, the setting of the Orpheum Theater was memorable. I've now been to the Orpheum three times, and the similar Ace Theater two blocks away. Both theaters are great if you are sitting on the lower level, but the experience fades as you get into the middle and back of the balcony. At the same time, it seems like the crowd is better in the balcony, and the people who sit on the lower level tend to be older and less enthusiastic.
It was a successful conclusion to a well-exectued album promotional cycle, and I think it is fair to observe that there will be additional Broken Bells LPs in the future.
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| Handsome Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Last.Fm's 72nd biggest act in the world. |
Published 11/4/14
Queens of The Stone Age & The Kills
@ The Forum in Los Angeles, CA.
Halloween 2014
Three reasons I went to this show: Halloween is a holy nightmare of a night to go out, Free, The Forum, storied home of the Los Angeles Lakers, has been refurbished and is hosting shows. It has about 13,000 capacity, the lower tier is general admission, and then the "arena" seats are refurbished and PLUSH AS FUCK.
First the venue, because I'd talked to someone who attended the re-opening Eagles concerts earlier this year (late last year?) and I've been wanting to go to check it out. The Forum hosted the Lakers and the Kings between 1967 and 1988, and then I think it's been kinda semi closed for the last several years before the Eagles played there. The Forum, also known as The Great Western Forum for a period, is located in scenic South Central Los Angeles. Let me make it clear I see this location as a plus, like going to see a show in a vintage Ice Cube LP record. Originally the forum was The Inglewood Forum, which is name checked (Inglewood) approximately every other ten seconds in most LA rap in the 80s and 90s. I got there by driving down Manchester, past several awesome looking Louisiana/Southern Fried Chicken restaurants and at least two substantial street taco operations cooking full blast coming and going.
I will say, the parking was not cheap (25 USD) and don't enter off of Manchester if you are smart. The Forum Club, which I believe has also been refurbished, was amazing, with a wide selection of free food and beer and mixed drinks for "arena" price levels (9 usd beer, 12 usd and up for mixed drinks.) The food in the Forum Club included turkey and beef sliders, a cheese steak "stand", fresh fruit, ice cream sundae bar, etc, etc, etc. It wasn't particularly amazing, just that it existed AT ALL. Arena shows are usually so nightmarish and this was civilized. I can't speak for the general admission area, but I highly recommend the seated portion.
Openers The Kills were the reason I had free tickets, and I thought they were great. Their usual two piece line up was supplemented with four Druid-drummers. I was postively enraptured by Alison Mossheart's stage presence- she has really credible arena rock level moves. I think they are at the point of getting ready to demo their next record, which they should put out next year if you ask me!
Queens of the Stone Age was wrapping up a nearly two year promotional cycle built around their May 31st, 2013 LP release ...Like Clockwork. "Queens" or QOTSA (pronounced "Quote saw") as I like to call them, is currently the #72 biggest artist on the Last.fm site. I've seen them at least three times in the last two years, including seeing them headline the San Diego Sports Arena last December, so, it was similar. The singer for Scissor Sisters joined them for the first song, and he actually added a good deal to the cut. The crowd was diverse and enthusiastic, with many costumes and a ton of dedicated fans singing and dancing along to each and every song. There should be no doubt that Queens of the Stone Age are a top 10 rock act in the United States, and top 20 in the world.
If you are going to a show at The Forum in Inglewood, enter from a side street, buy seats and try to get access to the Forum club if your can. Worth it.
Published 12/2/14
The Orange County Museum of Art
Exhibit runs through January 4th, 2015
(OFFICIAL SITE)
I didn't have high expectations for the Orange County Museum of Art, which is figuratively if not literally in the parking lot of the Orange County Mega Mall Fashion Island. I was pleasantly surprised by the content if not the theme of their current exhibition, The Avant-Garde Collection, which runs through January 4th 2015. I don't typically get into issuing serious criticisms of the underlying logic behind the content of a museum exhibition, but calling a collection of modern art "the avant-garde collection" is akin to calling it "the art collection;" in other words, superfluous and obvious.
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| This is a photograph of Chris Burden's Metropolis, which is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
However the actual works on display were tip top, with my personal favorite being Chris Burden's 1981 room sized installation, A Tale of Two Cities. Like his somewhat similar work at LACMA, Metropolis, A Tale of Two Cities can not fail to enchant the viewer with the scope and detail both equally pleasing to the eye and mind.
Other highlights from this exhibit include a video of John Baldessari intoning Sol LeWitt's "rules for making art," a 8 panel Andy Warhol piece featuring Chairman Mao and a couple of very creepy doll centered works. Does any museum goer in 2014 need to have the concept of "avant-garde" explained? Hopefully not, but the works included make a short detour from the mall worth the trip. It's an exhibit arguably worth a trip up from LA, probably not from San Diego.
There was no permanent collection in site, so if you go the Orange County Museum of Art you are going to see the current exhibit. They also have a nice looking space for performances. No museum cafe or restaurant. Parking was free and easy.
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| Ryan Adams |
Published 12/19/14
Show Review: Ryan Adams
@ The Wiltern Los Angeles, CA.
It is a stereotype of Southern California life that any discussion between two people there begins with a biblical style recounting of the driving route taken to get there, "I got on Fountain, then took the 101 South to the 10 West to the 405 and got off on Santa Monica Blvd.") That experience is slowly being eclipsed by the Uber/Waze narrative, with the narrator discussing particulars of the driver (in the Uber scenario) or particular details of the route (for Waze) instead of just giving a blow-by-blow detailing of the route itself. I'm more of a Waze guy than Uber, since I don't typically drink when I'm out, and driving to The Wiltern, located in the center of Los Angeles, from Silver Lake, located on the East side of Los Angeles, is kind of Waze proving ground because it's all surface streets.
Since I started using Waze to drive to the area around the Wiltern (Koreatown.) I've notice improvements. For example, Waze used to have a nasty habit of popping you out onto an unregulated intersection from a side street- forcing perilous crossings and turns without the protection of a signal or stop sign. I've noticed a firm decrease in this kind of behavior from Waze, now you tend to top out of side streets with signals regulating the intersection.
By no means a fan of Ryan Adams, or even vaguely familiar with his catalog, I was none the less interested in seeing his live show. He has an eccentric, unpredictable reputation particularly in the department of his live show and generally seems to embody the character of a capital R romantic artist down to his inner ear issues that give him problems with flash photography and stage lighting, to his Hollywood actress wife Mandy Moore who he won't talk about in interviews, to his robust lack of radio hits since the post 9/11 success of New York, New York. He's positively a modern day Lord Byron or Percy Shelly.
For all the drama, last nights show sounded about as unpredictable as a Beach Boys concert, with Adams reliably delivering a mix or classics and new jams with the cold blood of someone trying to demonstrate reliability to a larger audience of music industry and Hollywood types. His new songs (identified to me by my girlfriend) were pleasing jammy country rock numbers and then the old songs featured new arrangements that typically included steel guitar and/or extended guitar solos.
Mostly, it sounds like Ryan Adams has been smoking weed in the Hollywood hills and listening to Tom Petty and Eagles records, and it is hard to imagine that he has crafted a sound like that in any way other than it being a simple mirror of his inner life, so songs about heartbreak aside, it seems like Ryan Adams must be in a pretty good place emotionally.
Currently ranking #389 on the Last.fm top 500 artist chart (without the plays attributable to Whiskeytown or Ryan Adams and the Cardinals), it isn't hard to contemplate a Ryan Adams renaissance: sunset set times at major American and European festivals, tv appearances, etc.) The new record did debut at #4 on the Billboard chart when it was released late this year.
On the other hand, Ryan Adams has also been doing things like producing the last Fall Out Boy record and of course, Jenny Lewis' Voyager LP. Lewis came out for a single song last night, but last week they did a joint show together, so that is firm evidence of Adams being invested in Lewis' career beyond making the record. Producing a Fall Out Boy record is not something undertaken unless one has a clear sense of professionalism and presumably desire for a pay check. Last nights workmanlike performance can perhaps be further interpreted of Adams desire to establish a reliable persona within the music industry, and undo his top line biography as a willfully eccentric and somewhat self destructive capital A artist.
2014 Criterion Collection Review
Movie Review
Night and Fog (1955)
d. Alain Resnais
Criterion Collection #197
Just clearing out my Hulu Plus Criterion Collection queue here at the end of the year while everyone is off on holiday! Night and Fog positive: It's only 30 minutes long! Night and Fog negative: It is super about the Holocaust and has much contemporaneous newsreel footage (including, I think pro-Nazi German and French footage) depicting the actual Holocaust: Jews being loaded onto trains, arriving at the camps, their suffering at the camps and of course a bunch of emaciated corpses. I don't have any Holocaust survivors or victims in my family but I grew up going to Sunday school and at my Reform synagogue in Northern California Holocaust education was maybe the most important component. Holocaust and Israel. I've been to Holocaust museums in Washington and Berlin. I've been to the Anne Frank house. I've done everything BUT go to a concentration camp, but Night and Fog seems to be a sufficient replacement for the actual experience.
Personally, I don't find "the" Holocaust to be particularly unique, Genocide seems to be endemic to the human species, it just so happens that the Germans chose a target and a means that left them holding the moral bag.
Stray Dog (1949)
d. Akira Kurosawa
Criterion Collection #233
Stray Dog is a police procedural Kurosawa released the year before his 1950 break-out Rashomon. His other major contemporary crime films were from the 1960s: High and Low (1960) and The Bad Sleep Well (1963). I think you can make the case that Kurosawa's crime films are easier to watch than the period/Samurai stuff that he is famous for. One of the major achievements of the Criterion Collection period is to keep almost Akira Kurosawa's entire output "in print" and available to stream on Hulu Plus.
I think the argument that you make for Kurosawa is that he is the Japanese equivalent to Shakespeare: the single Artist the reader must understand to understand the art of the Artists nation. In this way, the crime thrillers are significant since they show Kurosawa working in the present. The present is very close to the surface in Stray Dog, set in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Rice ration cards are used as currency, and Police Detective Murakami (played by a young Toshiro Mifune) is a solder freshly returned from the end of World War II.
The story is set in motion when Murakami has his gun lifted from his jacket pocket on the bus coming home from target practice. Its loss sets off a frenzied search by the distraught Detective to find his missing weapon. Murakami is paired up with the older sage Sato (Takashi Shimura). The pairing of Shimura with Mifune was a delight, but the real star of the movie is Tokyo in a pre-boom state that provides an unfamiliar perspective on Japan's largest city.
The scene most often referenced comes when Murakami goes undercover to try and find his gun. The panoply of misery approaches anything in Italian neo-realism. The Criterion Collection essay by critic Terrence Rafferty calls Stray Dog Kurosawa's "neo realist" crime drama and that is largely true.
Movie Review
The Golden Coach (1953)
d. Jean Renoir
Criterion Collection #242
Sometimes I'm watching a Criterion Collection title and I'm like, "OK, I guess so." Such is the case with Jean Renoir's "Spectacle Trilogy;" it's not really a trilogy, but the designation of The Golden Coach, Elena and Her Men and French Cancan as such makes sense, since all three are colorful comedies with quality female leads and not much plot. This films- all three of them- are comedies in the Shakespearean/ Elizabeathan/Classical sense in that they are stories that have a happy ending, they are comedies not tragedies, but they are not "comedies" in the sense that we use the term today.
For The Golden Coach, based on a French play which debuted in 1829, this classical, theatrical source material is key to understanding the film. If you watch this movie applying film genre standards of the 1950s and 60s, you will be disappointed and likely think The Golden Coach artistically worthless. On the other hand, if you regard The Golden Coach as kind of a meta-fictional take on performance, taking into account the play-like mise en scene and glorious technicolor costumes and locales, you might pass an agreeable hour and forty five minutes on the couch.
Originally produced simultaneously in three different languages, the Criterion Collection version is in English, so you don't have to read it. The underlying play and this film is set in colonial Peru. A touring troupe of actors plays for the Viceroy, who becomes enraptured by Camilla (played by Anna Magnani) the lead singer/actress in the troupe. He decides to gift her a solid gold coach he's had imported from Europe to Peru, but he is not alone in his affections, having to compete with a local bullfighter and one of the other troupe members. This competition for Camilla's attention sets the plot in motion, and your enjoyment of the machinations will likely be tied to your appreciation of 19th century theater pieces.
Movie Review
La commare secca (1962)
d. Bernardo Bertolucci
Criterion Collection #272
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film maker better known for this work within the Hollywood system. His best known films are the multiple Academy Award winning epic, The Last Emperor (1987) and the racy Last Tango in Paris (1972). He's also had a host of box office duds: Stealing Beauty, Little Buddha, The Dreamers (from 2012?) His later success and foreign citizenship makes him a virtual lock for the early, lesser known films, of major directors category within The Criterion Collection, at La commare secca is especially worthy because the story is by another giant of Italian cinema, Pier Pasolini.
What stands out about La commare secca compared to other Italian films of the same time is the vivaciousness of the camera work. Unlike other early 60s directors from Italy, the viewer is not bored to tears sitting through tedious, carefully framed scenes of existentialist dialogue. Although Bertolucci and Pasolini denied ever seeing it, you can't watch La commare secca and not thing of Rashomon, by Akira Kurosawa.
In Rashomon, the story of a murder is told through the varying viewpoints of several witnesses, all of whom tell a different story about the same sequence of events. So to in La commare secca, the strangulation murder of a prostitute is told from the varying viewpoints of several witnesses, all of whom, it seems, have something to hide or a reason not to be forthcoming. Unlike Rashomon, La commare secca ends with the audience seeing what really happened and the apprehension of the murderer, putting this movie more in the category of police procedural.
Movie Review
Boudo Saved from Drowning (1932)
d. Jean Renoir
Criterion Collection #305
This is the third Jean Renoir film from the Criterion Collection I've watched. The other two: The Grand Illusion (1937) and Elena and Her Men (1956) are "classic" Renoir and "late" Renoir respectively, so that would make Boudo Saved from Drowning "early" Renoir. Renoir is one of those Artist who is known but not watched, a denizen of film studies courses and one night revivals at repertory theaters in places like New York, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Jean Renoir is not riding a recent wave of interest for any reason, there are no A-list Hollywood actresses set to star in reboots of his old films, he's not a particularly cool guy beloved by cineastes.
Jean Renoir's light touch is fully on display in Boudo, shot in 1931, when film cameras, sound equipment and principles of films creation made keeping a light touch difficult. If you look at Boudo's immediate contemporaries in The Criterion Collection, all you see is German Expressionism and silent American comedies by Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Perhaps the most appropriate comparison is Chaplin, since Boudo, played by Michel Simon is a quasi-lovable tramp who turns the staid and predictable world of bourgeois book seller Lestingois up-side down with his irascible behavior.
The central incident of Boudo Saved from Drowning is in the title of the film. Lestingois, looking at the river through his telescope, sees Boudo try to kill himself by jumping off a bridge. He runs across the street, saves Boudo, and brings him back to his book shop for an attempt at rehabilitation. In its original version as a play in Paris, Boudo was perceived as a kind of satire on the comedy of manners that would have been well familiar to early 20th century audiences. Boudo is a wacky outsider written to stir the pot (and plot.)
The Sword of Doom (1966)
d. Kihachi Okamato
Criterion Collection #280
I took about a month off of the Criterion Collection project because I was roughly half way through the 400ish titles that they make available to Hulu Plus subscribers. One of my insights from this off period is that you can't seriously watch the Criterion Collection without appreciating each constituent element, Japanese cinema and Italian cinema to name two constituent elements that give me trouble. In the past, I've deluded myself into thinking that readers don't care, but when I actually go back and check the page views for the Japanese Literature and Italian Literature (which both includes films) I see that there multiple posts between the two with more than 100 page views, and a few with 500 or more.
For example, Yojimbo (1961), directed by Akira Kurosawa, has 506 page views. Amarcord (1973), directed by Federico Fellini has 516 page views. Salo/120 Days of Sodom (1975) by Pier Pasolini isn't far behind, with 461 page views. The multiple posts with 100-200 pages views include L'Avventura(I), Kwaidan(J), Boy(J), The Night Porter(I), L'eclisse(I, Branded to Kill, Double Suicide, Samurai III: Duel at Granyju Island and In the Realm of the Senses (400 page views). The average number of page views for a run of the mill Criterion Collection review is between 15 and 40, so all of these films are at least twice as interesting to the Audience for this blog as a normal post.
The Sword of Doom is a Jidaigeki film, one of two genres in mid 20th century Japanese film. A loose translation of Jidaigeki is "period drama" or "historical drama" and it is a genre that precedes the medium of film, with antecedents in theater. Most of the classic Japanese films familiar to Western viewers are from this genre, and they include the entire sub-genre of Samurai films. The Sword of Doom is set at the very end of the timer period typically covered by a Jidaigeki film, with action between 1860 and 1865. It is late enough in history that a handgun plays a part in the story, and the Samurais it depicts seem to just be barely hanging on to relevance.
The lead in The Sword of Doom is the masterless Samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue(played by Tatsuya Nakadai.) Ryunosuke is a bad dude, the first scene has him killing an elderly man for little or no reason. The first major incident involves him banging the wife of an opponent he is facing in a fencing match. He finds out about it, divorces the wife, then kills the dude. It gets darker from there, and ends up with Ryunosuke going mad, plagued by the spirits of all the people he's killed.
Did I mention The Sword of Doom is two hours long? Yeah. The Criterion Collection product page description emphasizes the role of director Kihachi Okamato as the Sam Fuller to Kurosawa's John Ford. I haven't seen enough of the films of any of the directors involved that comparison except Kurosawa, but I would agree that the composition/mise en scene is extraordinary and agree with the observation that Okamato makes the most of the extra wide 2.35/1 aspect ratio used in Japanese film at the time.
Movie Review
Scanners (1981)
d. David Cronenberg
Criterion Collection #712
CLASSIC Cronenberg movie, came out in July 0n the Criterion Collection, fucking LOVE IT. I've seen Scanners maybe a half dozen times at this point. I am a BIG David Cronenberg fan, and I've seen many of his other films multiple times. I've seen: Eastern Promises, in Cincinnati, eXistenz, in Washington DC, Crash I watched on the Left Bank in Paris, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, Videodrome, The Fly. They are all more or less great movies, and any characterization of Cronenberg as a "horror" or genre director really misses the genius of his films.
For any serious Cronenberg watcher the early work of The Brood, Videodrome and Scanners is vital. All three are independent films with "B-movie" type descriptions, but all three transcend their budgetary limitations to create enduring works of art, which bear multiple re-watchings. Scanners is, in terms of plot mechanics, a kind of espionage thriller with an overlay of the now familiar mixture of psychology and horror that now defines much of his work.
The wooden performance of Stephen Lack as Cameron Lake, the main "Scanner" of the film, might at first be taken as a poor performance, but is later explained by plot details. The plot involving a nefarious conspiracy between a quasi-governmental private corporation and evil Scanners is classic Cronenberg- even at the earliest stages.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
d. Nagisa Oshima
Criterion Collection #466
Another film watched from the last slot of my queue on Hulu Plus, In the Realm of the Senses is a perennial favorite on the Criterion Collection Hulu Plus channel most likely because it is chock-a-block full of enough explicit sex to make a hardened viewer of internet pornography blush. How full of explicit sex is this 1976(!) Japanese film about the sexually obsessive relationship between the owner of a tavern and his ex-prostitute (but still horny) lover? Well, in the first 30 minutes there is a blow job that is shot matter of factly and ends with him coming in her mouth. The main couple is shown having explicit sex for over half of the film. The main male character also more or less explicitly rapes 3 other women, employees of the various inns where they shack up. By "explicit" I mean we watch him rape the other women. I mean I don't know if what happens is rape in the context of 1930s Japan, where In the Realm of the Senses takes place, but that's what I saw.
It's useful as we all wait for Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac to hit the streets to contemplate that Nymphomaniac is not the first film to use pornographic techniques to produce something other than pornography. And although In the Realm of the Senses is shot without any preachy moral overtones, the super-dark ending, with the girl strangling the guy with a ligature and then chopping off his penis with a knife, makes it clear (if it wasn't totally clear already) that the relationship is not healthy.
By the end, the sex has become deadening, and her obsession with sex comes off as the product of a deeply disturbed mind. There is a scene near the end where we watch her try to have sex with his clearly flaccid penis that can't help but leave a distinct impression in the mind of the viewer. Not an easy film to shake off, In the Realm of the Senses will stay with you over time.
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| Catherine Deneuvre as Severine Serizy AKA Belle de jour in the 1967 film. She is hot in her Yves St Laurent designed outfits for sure. |
Published 2/5/14
Belle de jour (1967)
d. Luis Buñuel
Criterion Collection #593
How did Belle de jour make it until 2012 without a Criterion Collection edition? Certainly Catherine Deneuvre's most iconic performance, and a top flight Luis Buñuel picture, and, let's face it, a gorgeous film despite the dark beginning, middle and end; you would think that the Criterion Collection spine number for Belle du jour would be in the 100s or 200s, not #593. Presumably it was a rights issue.
I'm a big fan of Luis Buñuel, although this is the first of his films I've watched as part of this particular Criterion Collection review, I've already watched: The Exterminating Angel, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois and That Obscure Object of Desire. While I wouldn't say Belle du jour is Bunuel's best film straight up, Deneuvre's Severine is maybe his best character. Also, I think it fair to say that Belle de jour is Bunuel's most popular film.
It's funny, but I recall starting to watch this film during the period when I was married and turning it off because it made me so uncomfortable. At the time I probably should have taken that discomfort as a sign that there were problems with my marriage. Now, I breezed through it. I've packed in so many emotionally good wrenching films and novels that Belle de jour didn't make me blink, EVEN WHEN HER HUSBAND IS SHOT AT THE END BY WHERE GANGSTER JOHN.
Germany Year Zero (1948)
d. Roberto Rossellini
Criterion Collection #499
Part of the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy Box Set, which is Criterion Collection #500
Watching the canon of films grouped under the "Italian Neo Realism" banner requires a grim kind of intellectual fortitude. First of all, the films themselves are bleak as hell- as one might well expect from a aesthetic movement that blossomed among the ruins of World War II Western Europe. The Roberto Rossellini war trilogy contains three titles, Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero. When I watched Rome Open city last fall, I was more focused on the way the film "invented" Italian Neo Realism, with Germany Year Zero I was more focused on the story inside the movie, which concerns the plight of every day Berliners in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Germany after World War II.
The focus of the narrative is the young Edmund Koehler, who is supposed to be 13 but looks about 8. He is desperately trying to help his sickly father survive under impossible conditions. The conditions are made worse by his older brother Karl-Heinz, a former soldier who refuses to emerge from hiding despite assurance that he has 'nothing to feat.' Koehler tries to help by variously selling goods on the black market (a scale, a phonograph of one of Hitler's speeches) and stealing potatoes with a gang of slightly older boys and one parent-less young girl. His only support is provided by his "old Teacher" who is also very much a Nazi and likely a pedophile to boot (though the pedophilia is only hinted at through the caressing touch of the teacher to young Edmund and another boy.)
The dark ending of Germany Year Zero (a murder suicide scenario between the boy and his sickly father) leaves you gasping for breath. It's a strong ending from a genre not known for such conventional melodramatic, and perhaps that's why I like Germany Year Zero more than other early Italian Neo Realism films.
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| Toshiro Mifune played Red Beard, benevolent clinic Doctor in Akira Kurosawa's film. |
Movie Review
Red Beard (1965)
d. Akira Kurosawa
Criterion Collection #159
Oh shhhitttttt it's another Akira Kurosawa joint y'all.... I'll be honest. At times... I find the sheer number of Akira Kurosawa films in the Criterion Collection to be, shall we say, daunting. Kurosawa has 26 films in the Criterion Collection. I have seen... seven of them: Red Beard, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and High and Low. You look at that list- all of the films except High and Low and this one are basically Samurai pictures. High and Low is a detective/crime/noir type film, and Red Beard, god bless it, is a three hour film about life in a 19th century free clinic
Toshiro Mifune, in his last role in a Kurosawa picture, plays the clinic head Red Beard, so called because he has a reddish beard. Yuzo Kayama plays Noburo Yasmuto, a hot shot young doctor (he's studied "Dutch medicine.") who is consigned to an internship at the clinic based on a secret agreement between his Dad and Red Beard. As the story unspools it turns out that Kayama was jilted by his fiance in Edo, and the decision to get him out of there was initiated by Red Beard himself.
Red Beard is packed with narrative incident. After the initial childish rebellion, Kayama settles down and comes of age after learning, you know, about feelings and junk. Red Beard was based on a novel and you can tell because of the diversity of narrative incident: death bed confessions, love affairs, a psycho sexual nymphomaniac, an entire family poisoning themselves; I could go on.
The Criterion Collection essay emphasizes the look of the film- apparently everything they used in terms of wood and scenery etc was actually old so that the film is "realistic" in the depiction of late 19th century Japan. I won't say that the richness of detail is lost on me exactly, but I kind of feel like that Japan basically looked the exact same between 1000 AD and the 20th century, so that part of Red Beard didn't strike me.
Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)
d. Robert Bresson
Criterion Collection #183
UM... yeah- when you see a film set in the mid 20th century but adapted from a play by Diderot, even if it's directed by Robert Bresson AND written by Jean Cocteau....run. Thatbe, is because Diderot, member of the enlightenment though he may, wrote plays about court life, and when you transpose that setting into the 20th century come across like manipulative monsters. See, for example, the teenspoiltation 90s classic Cruel Intentions.
The plot of Les dames do Bois de Boulogne revolves around the desire of spurned socialite Helene (Maria Casares) and her inexplicable desire for revenge on her younger lover, who she dumps in the opening scene. He responds to the dumping by saying he also doesn't like her, and I guess that is why she undertakes her insane quest for revenge. She tracks down the beautiful Agnes(Elina Labourdette) and her mom Madame D. The mother/daughter pair have recently come down in the world, and Agnes is literally a prostitute, when Helene offers to settle all their debts and get them an apartment in exchange for.... being her pawn in a twisted game she is playing with her unwitting ex.
So of course the ex falls for Agnes, and Agnes figures out what's going on, and her Mom tells her "tough shit, Helene owns us." And, I think Agnes dies in the end, but only after Helene has told her secret to the ex. I think that is how it ends.
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| The gold penis from Sweet Movie (1974) d. Dusan Makavejev |
Movie Review
Sweet Movie (1974)
d. Dušan Makavejev
Criterion Collection #390
Sweet Movie is another entrant in the genre I like to call "Cinema WTF": transgressive/outre/surreal cinema, often from the margins of the cinematic world, that frequently involves "shocking" sexual/horror/violent footage and frequently lacks plot or a comprehensible narrative. Criterion Collection Hulu Plus movie recommending algorithm has me pegged as a fan as the genre, because Sweet Movie was at the top of my recommended list for about a week before I gave in.
Dušan Makavejev, the film maker, is Yugoslavian but he was actually kicked out/left Yugoslavia prior to shooting Sweet Movie because he was just that outrageous, so it was shot in the west- Amsterdam mostly. It's hard to really describe Sweet Movie- no plot to speak of- and a series of somewhat "sketch comedy" like scenes that range from disturbing (20 minute long food orgy with real vomiting and simulated penis eating) to borderline criminal (grown woman dressed in erotic "wedding gown" seducing 10 year old boys.)
In the end you've got a movie that still possesses considerable shock value and maintains a transgressive quality. Oh- and don't miss the dude with the gold penis- see above.
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| Monica Vitti all day ery day |
Movie Review
L'eclisse (1962)
d. Michelangelo Antonioni
Criterion Collection #278
If you are keeping count that is FOUR Antonioni films I've tackled via the Criterion Collection. Let's see you've got Red Desert (1964), Identification of a Woman (1982), L'Avventura (1960) and this one. I've basically learned two things: First, Monica Vitti is super hot and stylish. Second, Antonioni was the first feature film maker who made boring movies by design. You can call him Modernist or whatever you want but all of this movies are slow and that is the intent and what makes them Antonioni films. Static composition, long takes, lengthy silences- Antonioni in a nutshell.
In L'eclisse, Vitti stars opposite Alain Delon, the (handsome) French actor as a bored something-or-other who falls out of love with one man and in love with another against the backdrop of a financial panic (Delon is a stock broker.)
Like all of Antonioni's films, the plot is almost besides the point, what counts if the atmosphere. There is plenty of atmosphere
Masculin féminin (1966)
d. Jean-Luc Godard
Criterion Collection #308
Masculin féminin is close to what I thought I'd be watching when I decided to watch all the films in the Criterion Collection. Now that Godard's films have finally started popping up on the recommended list in Hulu Plus Criterion Collection channel, I'm finally actually watching Masculin féminin and some of the non-hits out of Godard's work. Masculin féminin finds Godard recently infatuated with Socialist/Maoist politics but still with a film style anchoring him in the narrative mainstream and lacking the experimental, shall we say... excesses; which characterize his mid period and later work.
The most unusual part of Masculin feminin is the casting of actor Jean-Pierre Leaud in the lead role, as the frustrated suitor of aspiring ye-ye girl Madeline (played by a darling Chantal Goya.) Leaud is best known as Antoine Doinel from Francois Truffaut's series "Adventures of Antoine Doinel," where he plays the Truffaut-like character is five films.
Seeing Leaud act the lead in a Godard film is intriguing- Godard's Paul is not Doinel, but he shares some "everyman" traits with the Doinel character. For example, like Doinel at the beginning of the adult films (400 Blows portrays Doinel as a child) Doinel is recently released from his Army service. Same for Paul. Unlike Doinel, Paul is avowedly political in his own diffident, uniquely French way. He scrawls anti-Vietnam graffiti on cars owned by the US embassy, in chalk on the door of theatre restroom after he sees two men in a same-sex embrace.
The glimpses you get of the ye-ye recording scene in Paris at the time of the film is of interest in its own right. At one point towards the end of Masculin feminin, Madeline and Paul are together in the recording studio as she attempts to record her second record. On the way out, she is interviewed by a member of the popular music press.
Of course, there are also more experimental/documentary style techniques employed, in particular interviews between male and female characters, echoing the title of the film and perhaps creating a kind of duality that was central to Godard's concerns in making this particular film.
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
(1971)
d. Dušan Makavejev
Criterion Collection #389
Oh shit ANOTHER joint from my man Dušan Makavejev, director of Sweet Movie? Hells to the yeah. Before WR starts, a title informs you that WR won the "Luis Bunuel Price" at Cannes in 1971 and that the Luis Bunuel Prize at Cannes is something that exists. WR: Mysteries of the Organism is not as, um, scatological as Sweet Movie- not quite the gross-out sketch humor style of Sweet Movie but, WR: Mysteries of the Organism has something resembling a coherent plot: A mixture of documentary and narrative focused on the story of Orgasm enthusiast William Reich.
Reich was essentially hounded to death by the United States government: He died serving time in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary on a contempt of court charge, and his books were publicly burned. Reich's enthusiasm for the Orgasm was embraced by heroes of the 60s like William Burroughs. He was well known for his Orgone accumulator a kind of box that you would sit in. Not clear if you were supposed to masturbate in the box or what.
About half of the movie is a documentary type movie about Reich, the other half is a narrative about Milena, a fiery red head living in Communist Yugoslavia and is a big fan of Reich. Perhaps not suprisingly her voyage towards sexual self discovery ends with her head severed (by a pair of figure skates no less) by an object of her affection.
The journey taken by left leaning women towards sexual self-discovery in European 70s art-house cinema is so prevalent that it is practically a genre unto itself. The simple fact that 100% of these films were made by men ABOUT women makes them troubling from a contemporary feminist perspective but they are all good faith efforts whose endurance is ironically due to the inclusion of sexually explicit subject matter, novel at the time.
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| Nadine Nortier plays the title role in Mouchette (1967) d. Robert Bresson |
Movie Review
Mouchette (1967)
d. Robert Bresson
Criterion Collection #363
I'm certain that you can't have a deep and far ranging conversation about French cinema without referencing Bresson- at least in passing. It's a fact that he was the main model for the "auteur" theory developed by the critic-filmmakers of the French New Wave, and you REALLY can't talk about French cinema without an intimate familiarity with the principal film makers of the French New Wave, so by extension Bresson gets in there.
Bresson's big run of hits went from 1956, when A Man Escaped was released and includes Pickpocket (1962), Au hazard Balthazar (1966) and this film. Bresson's classics share a spare, melancholy style, with none of the stylistic flash and pop that would come to define French New Wave. This style is typified in Mouchette, the story of a young girl living in rural France- with a dying mother, an absentee-ish father and a new born baby sister. Her house is a one room shack at the side of a busy road. During her few restful moments Bresson reminds us of the location by having trucks rumble by outside, their lights flashing across the face of Mouchette as she tries to sleep.
Like Au hazard Balthazar the rape and subsequent suicide of the main character play a defining role in the film. Mouchette, played by Nadine Nortier, is not a talker nor a complainer but the despair of her life is written on her face, and when things take a turn for the worse it is easy for the viewer to emathize with her decision to check out.
At an hour and twenty minutes, Mouchette is an easy watch despite the grim subject matter, mostly because Bresson doesn't fill the screen time with characters complaining, rather he leaves it for the viewer to make the leap of empathy. If you are looking to get caught up on Bresson I would recommend A Man Escaped to start, and then Au hazard Balthazar and Mouchette back-to-back. Be ready for the rapey bits though.
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| John Doe in Border Radio (1987) |
Movie Review
Border Radio (1987)
d. Alison Anders, Dean Lent, Kurt Voss
Criterion Collection #362
The idea of "punk cinema" is fraught with issues, mostly because punk was primarily a musical phenmenon. The adoption of "punk" ideas into cinema butted up against the conflicting values of punk and film. Punk was supposedly rough and spontaneous. Film, with some very limited exceptions during the late 70s early 80s punk era, was not. Additionally, the relatively high costs of shooting films and limited possibility of obtaining wide spread distribution militated against any kind of widespread punk cinema.
Punk did at least help to inspire many of the American and English independent/experimental film community of the mid 1980s. In England, Derek Jarman released the punk influenced, non-narrative Jubilee as early as 1978. In America, Jim Jarmusch was treading in punk water in Stranger Than Paradise (1984.) Scorcese did Taxi Driver in 1976 (with Robert DeNiro sporting a mohawk.) Repo Man by Alex Cox came in 1984 as well. So, Border Radio, which didn't even get a theatrical release, was not the first movie to use a punk scene as a backdrop.
But at the same time, Border Radio, which is essentially a student film done well, shows actual LA punk musicians in lead roles- namely John Doe of X and Chris D. of Flesh Eaters. Many punk scensters also appear in minor roles throughout Border Radio. The plot is a thin film noir type thing but it isn't the main attraction. It's more about the atmosphere.
The Kings of Kings (1927)
d. Cecil B. Demille
Criterion Collection #266
Um heads up- this movie is practically three hours long. It's also a "silent" film- albeit one with a banging, restored/new(?) soundtrack courtesy of the Criterion Collection re-issue. The 1920s are the first decade where you can really compare movies to printed literature, or argue that movies really are literature (reading required before the advent of sound) but the Criterion Collection's FIRST film was released in 1922. There are, in fact, only 17 films from the 1920s in the entire Criterion Collection, and hardly more than that if you include the Eclipse. Meanwhile, 70 of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die are from the 1920s. And, you know, I'll watch the films of the 1920s if Criterion Collection deems worthy, but I'm not going to be seeking out silent movies to watch in my spare time, because watching silent films is a chore.
Although DeMille had a brief career as a would-be "artistic" film director early in his career, he will forever be associated with epic silent era Hollywood era event films. This makes him a somewhat uncomfortable subject to film scholars who would rather dwell on the art films made in Scandinavia during the same period that DeMille was dominating the marketplace in America. You can see the Criterion Collection being cognizant of the deficit- they've released two 20s comedies from Harold Lloyd in the past year or so.
Luckily for me I am actually unfamiliar with "the story" of the life of Jesus, so this three hour silent epic was the first time I actually saw the episodes that I understand to be integral to the Christian faith: ejecting money lenders from the temple, Judas betraying him, Jesus performing miracles and of course, the crucifixion, which is the stylish money shot of the entire epic. If you want the 10 minute version of this lengthy, silent film, watch the ten minutes prior to the final ten minutes of the film, the Crucifixion/suicide of Judas scene, holeee shit it is crazay.
There is not much (any?) camera movement, so what you get is posed scene/title card/posed scene. There is very little action, though often huge numbers of people in the frame of the film- it's more like a series of pose tableaux's then what we consider modern film making. Demille was presumably the most successful exponent of a style which has largely been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Trigger Alert: This movie depicts Jesus being crucified and is not very kind to Jews.
Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
d. Pietro Germi
Criterion Collection #350
Italian film maker Pietro Germi is best known state-side for Divorce Italian Style (1961), which actually won an Academy Award in 1962 for best original screen play. Both Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned are scathing satires of the male chauvinism of Sicily circa early 1960. This is a world where marrying the 16 year old you rape and impregnated is a get out of jail free card. The satire is mean and pointed, the characters almost universally unsympathetic.
Like Luis Bunuel, Germi is not portraying his particular social milieu with affection. A major plot point of Seduced and Abandoned is that Peppino Califano, the seducer, doesn't want to marry Agnese, the 16 year old he seduced and impregnated because he has a right to marry a virgin. After the initial discovery that Agnese is not only NOT a virgin but also pregnant, family patriarch Vincenzo (Don Vincenzo) swings into action, taking a number of comical steps to ensure the honor of his family.
Over the two hours of the film, Vincenzo slaps his pregnant teenage daughter around, repeatedly, calls her a whore, locks her in a spare bedroom and refuses to let her out of the house, etc. etc. etc. After initially bullying Peppino's family into agreeing to marry Agnese, there are a serious of set-backs largely centered around Peppino's unwillingness to marry "that whore." He is abetted by his parents. One critical scene features Peppino asking his Dad whether he would have married his mother if she had fucked him before marriage. His response is the summary of the attitude of the characters of the film, "A man has a right to ask, a woman has a duty to refuse."
It's clear that Germi despises the attitudes on display as much as a film maker like Bunuel, or for someone closer to home, John Waters. The idea of this film as a comedy may sound strange to those more comfortable with the American comedy-industrial complex, but if you enjoy Noah Baumbach or Woody Allen you should be basically on comfortable ground.
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| Anais Reboux and Roxane Mesquida in Fat Girl, directed by Catherine Breillat |
Published 9/23/14
Fat Girl (2001)
d. Catherine Breillat
Criterion Collection #259
Fat Girl is a film that retains the capacity to shock a viewer nearly fifteen years after the initial showing. Like many films, Fat Girl was, and continues to be, controversial because of the frank depiction of what we would call "underage" girls having sex. Anais, the Fat Girl of the title, and played by Anais Reboux, is the 13 year old younger sister (by two years) of the thinner, more attractive Elena (played by Roxane Mesquida.) On vacation, the two engage in some frankly sexual banter, before Elena promptly hooks up with Fernando, an older law student. Elena and Fernando start out with a little light anal sex when Elena balks at going "all the way," "It's a proof of your love." he whispers to her as a horrified Anais listens to her sister howl.
Things escalate from there, with Fernando giving Elena an antique ring and promise of engagement in exchange for her virginity. Fernando's Mom shows up to reclaim the heirloom, Anais and Elena's Mother is furious and drives them home. They stop for the night at a rest stop, and an axe murderer kills Elena and their Mom, and drags Anais into the woods where he rapes her. The next morning, she is pulled stumbling out of the woods, and denies being raped. ROLL CREDITS.
Breillat moves the story along at a brisk pace, more sitcom than elegiac French feature. Anais is simply a witness to her sister's immolation, she is alternately loved and abused by the more attractive Elena, and in an intimate moment she says that the parents play them off against one another. The ambiguity of the rape/not rape at the hands of the crazed axe murderer inevitably leads someone watching to go back and reconsider the rest of the film. Perhaps what at first seemed like a moderately harmless sexual adventure is meant to represent something much deeper and darker. Or perhaps it's just a crazy ass ending!
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| Francine Berge is striking as the criminal Diana Motti in Judex (1963) d. George Franju |
Movie Review
Judex (1963)
d. Georges Franju
Criterion Collection #710
Criterion Collection edition released June 17th, 2014.
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| Francine Berge is striking in her cat suit in Judex (1963) d. George Franju |
This recent Criterion Collection release is also a point of intersection between the Criterion Collection and the 1001 Books Project, as well as an intersection between 19th century pulp fiction, 20th century film and surrealism. Judex is a kind of remake of a much longer, rarely seen serial of the same name, both of them based on the French pulp fiction character from the early 20th century. That original pulp fiction character Judex is part of a group of French proto-super heroes whose best known member is Fantomas , and they are both stylish, amoralistic anti-heroes masked avenger types whose closest New World avators would be Zorro and the Lone Ranger.
The accompanying essay to the Criterion Collection edition of Judex points out that director Franju would have preferred to have done a remake of Fantomas, but the rights lay with another party. Fantomas (1911) is part of the 1001 Books Project, so if you read that book and watch this movie you could good insight into a kind of alternate pop culture where the masked superheroes kidnap corporate executives, and ruthlessly murder the innocent
The Pornographers (1966)
d. Shohei Imamura
Criterion Collection #207
The Pornographers was controversial upon original release in Japan, and it is very, very easy to see why. I must confess that I was personally shocked to see the scenario of a father raping his own retarded teen daughter- and filming it- being used in the service of light comedy/social satire. That was not what I expected when the film was described as "controversial." Such a scenario in this day and age is more likely to appear in a court room, where said father would be sentenced to life in prison.
It's important to make clear that while the narrative summary makes it sound like something by Lars Von Trier, The Pornographers IS a comedy, and treats all these subjects with a minimum of emotion. There is no actual depiction of sex or pornography, no nudity even, which makes the subjects even more shocking. I'd have no trouble vouching for the stream of transgressive 1960s Japanese film as being a high point of interest within the larger field of Japanese Literature and Cinema. Looking at the similarities and differences between their culture and ours- these films, by directors like Shohei Imamura and Nagisa Oshima.
These filmmakers are also of most interest to the Audience for this blog, people seeking information about Japanese film, mostly. There is no doubt in mind that the interest in these counter-cultural filmmakers from Japan is on the up tick due to more people being exposed to the films through streaming movie services.
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| French Cancan (1954) doesn't really score until the last ten minutes when Renoir gives up the full Cancan, in all its glorious 19th century bawdiness. Splits! Garters! Underwear! |
d. Jean Renoir
Criterion Collection #243
This film could just as easily be called "The Moulin Rouge" because it is the story of the founding of that club, with impresario Henri Danglard as the roguish hero. Unlike the recent version, there is little singing, thought plenty of dancing. Renoir doesn't give up the full French Cancan till the last scene, but when it comes, it is a DOOZY. I might well suggest skipping the entire film and just watching the last 15 minutes for the resolution and triumphant dance scene. The rest of the picture is above average melodrama with eye popping (for 1954) color visuals.
The Tin Drum (1979)
d. Volker Schlöndorff
Criterion Collection #234
The Tin Drum (1979) was German director Volker Schlöndorff biggest hit in America, where it won the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The Criterion Collection/Academy Award for Best Foreign Film is a good way to focus in on which films were really enjoyed by audiences upon initial release, vs. what the Criterion Collection Editorial board thinks is worthwhile (and available to them for release.) Schlondorff was notable because all of his films were literary adaptations. Unlike his movie version of Musil's Confusions of Young Torless, The Tin Drum was a relatively recent book, released in 1959.
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| Gunter Grass was a member of the Polish ethnic minority of Kashubians, whose "territory" within present day Poland is marked on the map above. The Tin Drum takes place in Danzig, east of Kashubia. |
The book The Tin Drum was controversial because it had a "light" treatment of the Nazi theme (while being critical/dismissive of the Nazi's themselves.) The complicated history that underlays the book and its reception by contemporary German language audiences is also informed by the recent episode where Grass revealed that he was "briefly" a member of the Waffen SS in his youth. Even this fact is not as straight forward as it might appear. Grass was a member of the Kushubian/Polish ethnic minority that is centered around the city of present day Gdansk in present day Poland. The Tin Drum is mostly set in Danzig, which was a "German" city cut off from the rest of Germany, and with a population of Germans, Poles and Kashubians.
The Kashubians have a history of being looked down upon by "Poles" and it isn't impossible to see why Kashubians would look towards Germany during the time when Grass was young. In a sense though, it makes his membership in the SS worse, since he was basically a "foreign enlister" and the Nazis had no kindness for Slavs of whatever ethnicity.
The Tin Drum was also controversial upon initial release as a book because of the sexual content. By the standards of foreign cinema of 1979, that material is not nearly as bold or transgressive, but it still packs a startling punch, and would be enough to send any child watching with family out of the room.
I delayed watching The Tin Drum because I thought it might be (at two hours and forty five minutes) a slog, but I was pleasantly surprised. Scholondorff's film moves along at an engaging clip, with plenty of sex and violence, making the selection by the Academy as Best Foreign Film understandable.
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| Yasujirō Ozu, prolific Japanese film maker and master of Japanese "comedy." |
Movie Review
Good Morning (1959)
d. Yasujirō Ozu
Criterion Collection #84
Before I started seriously watching the Criterion Collection I was good for two Japanese auteurs: Akira Kurosawa and this guy, Yasujirō Ozu, testament to the simpatico tastes of me and my ex, we both enjoyed watching Ozu movies on Netflix. I'm not 100% solid on the basis for my opinion, but I'm relatively certain that Ozu is who you would call "Japan's Greatest Comic Filmmaker." I'm not sure that there are any others, but Ozu is known for his prolific run of quiet domestic dramedy's which are, to my mind, the Japanese equivalent of Anthony Trollope's main stretch of novels in the 1870s. Ozu is funnier then Trollope, but I couldn't watch Good Morning without thinking about the form of the Victorian multi-plot novel.
Here, the story concerns four families living in 50s suburban Tokyo. Each family is decidely nuclear in composition: Working husband, stay at home wife and one or two kids, plus one family has a grandma. One of the four families has a television, and the children of one of the other families wants a television, so the children decide to remain silent until the television is purchased.
Criterion Collection itself describes Good Morning as "hilarious" and it almost sent me to dictionary.com to see if there was some other meaning of hilarious besides "really funny" because that is one thing this movie is not. It certainly possesses a wry sense of humor, and there are a few jokes but there is also domestic tension, unemployment and a kid who craps himself A LOT.
You can't be serious about the Criterion Collection and ignore Yazujiro Ozu and his quiet Japanese domestic comedies.
Movie Review
The 400 Blows (1959)
d. François Truffaut
Criterion Collection #5
The story I heard about the origin of The 400 Blows by François Truffaut is that Truffaut was a critic writing for the Parisian film criticism journal Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s, when a film maker essentially challenged him in print by saying, "If you are so smart, why don't you make a movie." And Truffaut made The 400 Blows in response, which many argue is the greatest movie of all time.
That's enough to make you the top Artist/Critic cross-over of all time, especially if you include the fact that as a critic, Truffaut was part of the highly influential avant garde French New Wave, and then he became a leading film maker in the movement which followed the criticism... that he wrote. Godard and Truffaut play an out-size role in the minds of 21st century avant gardes of all nations because they worked in the international medium of film. The 400 Blows may require sub-titles for a non French teacher, but the cutting edge grammar/composition requires no translation, and The 400 Blows remains as fresh and dynamic today as it must have been in 1959.
The 400 Blows is the first in a series of films Truffaut made about Antoine Doniel, played here by Jean Pierre Leaud. Doniel would serve as Truffaut's filmic alter ego, and he figured prominently in a whole series of films which reportedly were inspired by Truffaut's actual life story. In The 400 Blows it is Doniel as a child, going to school, embarking on a life of petty crime and eventually getting sent away to juvie and having his Mom tell him that she does't love him anymore.
Movie Review
For All Mankind (1989)
d. Al Reinert
Criterion Collection #54
For All Mankind was JUST added to Criterion Collection on Hulu Plus- it must have been within the month of July- so there is some relevance for this review because it's essentially a "new release" as far as streaming goes. When I hear the "space beep" sound that echoes through this documentary about NASA's trips to the moon, I can think of nothing else but Spiritualized Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (see Youtube video embedded above.) As it turns out, that beep is like the click of a two way radio/walkie talkie type device- it's funny because I just think of it as this percussive sound- as it's used in the song above, and had no idea that it played this functional role in space communication.
For All Mankind is chock a block with such revelations as well as packed with simple beauty and majesty. They also uploaded a making of documentary that really explains how the film was put together as a compilation of all the flights to the moon (but they don't tell you that.) Also, the audio and visual are edited so that sometimes the voice you hear talking is different then the Astronaut pictured.
If you can watch For All Mankind and not be profoundly moved you are not human.
The Fiend Without a Face (1958)
d. Arthur Cabtree
Criterion Collection #92
I think it's a mistake to just assume that the current situation with streaming films and ebooks represents some kind of end state from which there is no advance or retreat. Already since I've been writing this blog, Ebooks that I "purchased" for free on my Amazon Kindle now cost a dollar. I've only been watching Criterion Collection titles on Hulu Plus for a little over a month, but I've already been through one major app. update that brought additional titles online and created sub-collections (Chaplin, Bergman, Cult Classics, Samurai Movies.)
When it comes to payment for music, movies and books we are clearly in a Wild West type of ecosystem: You can grab whatever you want but consuming it all takes effort and discipline. The main ways that people seem to have adopted to this new reality of cultural consumption is the "binge" typified by watching 20 tv show episodes in a row on Netflix, and becoming a cultural grazer- flitting from artist to artist and work to work without a concern for deep and lasting attachment.
It occurs to me that there is a third route which is what I'm trying to do, essentially being an auto didact without regard to assembling a like minded community. All you have to do is have the minimum level of financial stability and aptitude to do something like read all 1001 Books Before You Die or watch all the films of the Criterion Collection, and I'm sure this is something more people will begin to do over time.
Fiend Without a Face is actually a UK production, adapted from a Novella that appeared in an American horror/sci fi pulp magazine in 1930. It's about these crazy Mental Vampires that consist of a pulsing brain and spinal cord. What they do is eat your brain and spinal cord. Oh and they are powered by Nuclear energy. Fiend Without a Face is really about enduring an hour of passable horror/sci fi B Movie set up for 13 minutes at the end when the monsters become visible and you get an "Oh shit" moment as you realize that yes, this movie does belong in the Criterion Collection because the monsters are so off the chain.
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| The Element of Crime by Lars Von Trier |
Movie Review
The Element of Crime (1984)
d. Lars Von Trier
Criterion Collection #80
This movie is another "win" out of the first hundred Criterion Collection titles. Lars Von Trier is a director who I literally hate because his movies make me uncomfortable but yet I've seen all of them except Antichrist and Melancholia. I watched Dancer in the Dark with my Mom in Berkeley and it was THE most uncomfortable experience in my entire life.
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| All Sepia All Day All Night 24/7 |
Luckily, The Element of Crime lacks all of the characteristics of Von Trier's more well known work, except for being kind of impossible to watch. The Element of Crime is a "sci fi detective" movie that reminded me most of Alphaville, in the way that Von Trier worked with a limited budget and contemporary scenery to conjure up a spooky and other-worldly dystopia.
The "story" of The Element of Crime is that of exiled Police Detective Fisher being called back to Europe for one last case. The narrative is framed by a dialogue with an unnamed Egyptian therapist who is using hypnosis to help Fisher reconstruct what happened. In flashback sequences, the viewer is brought up to date on Fisher's quest to bring a serial killer of young lottery ticket girls to justice.
From a "film art" the single most notable feature of The Element of Crime is that Von Trier shot it in Sepia colored film, which, to me, makes all of The Element of Crime look like an instagram photo. #theinternet #modernlife.
Movie Review
Le million(1931)
d. Rene Clair
Criterion Collection #72
Rene Clair is best known for his other Criterion Collection featured film, A nous la liberte- a movie that Charlie Chaplin ripped off for his classic, Modern Times. A nous la liberte ALSO came out in 1931. Made at the beginning of the "talky" era, Clair stretched the capabilities of sound in a film in ways that still come across as fresh and inventive today.
Le million is about a guy who wins the lottery but can't find the jacket that has the lottery ticket inside. His girlfriend, lends it to a hobo, and he sells to it an opera singer who wears it during his performance and HI JINKS ENSUE. FRENCH HI JINKS FROM THE 1930s.
It occurs to me while watching older movies that there are tips and tricks that would make shooting a movie today on a limited budget earlier. For example, setting up the camera and then have the actor move a long distance within the frame- that's easy enough to do, and seems to be a technique that filmmakers with limited budget/technology and big artistic vision cope with the limitations imposed by budget.
You could just shoot it silently and do the sound separately. The past has tons of ideas like this to plunder.
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| Joan of Arc |
Movie Review
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
d. Carl Th. Dreyer
Criterion Collection #62
Oh yeah so this is a silent film. And by silent I mean totally silent- no score- nothing. Just sitting in my living room in silence for the 82 minute run time. The story behind this Criterion Collection edition is more interesting then the film. The Passion of Joan of Arc was thought to be "lost" until in intact copy was found in, of all places, a Norwegian insane asylum because OF COURSE IT WAS.
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| This guy. |
Criterion then paid to have the movie restored frame by frame, no mean feat considering it was shot on Nitrate film- the kind that Tarantino used in Inglorious Basterds to blow up Hitler.
The result is... an 82 minute silent film. Wooo woooooo. Basically it's the actress above making that face for the entire movie, interspersed with shots of the inquisitors. I can see why you wouldn't want to watch this movie.
Lord of the Flies (film)(1963)
d. Peter Brook
Criterion Collection #43
Lord of the Flies by William Golding is one of the few books I've continuously possessed since high school. I'm fairly certain that the copy I have actually is the copy I read in my freshman English class. The book was published in 1954. According to Wikipedia, Lord of the Flies was not a great success initially "selling less then 3000 copies in the US before going out of print...but later became a best seller." (WIKIPEDIA)
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| Lord of the Flies (film) 1963 |
Certainly it continues to be required reading across the globe today, and has inspired multiple filmed adaptations. (and influenced countless artists and cultural products.) Criterial Collection #43 is the 1963 adaption by English theater director Peter Brook. Brook was well known for his explorations on the experimental fringe of theater, and he carries a radical sensibility into the film of Lord of the Flies. Shot largely in verite/documentary style, Brook successfully translates the book into his cinematic vision with a minimum of ostentation and fuss. It's actually kind of the opposite of what you'd expect from an avant-garde theater director, but it reflects well on Brook in addition to serving the excellent source material.
Movie Review
Z (1969)
d. Costa-Garvas
Criterion Collection #491
Oh the great joy of being able to take in top shelf cinema and literature without having to endlessly plan the books and films one is going to watch. I thank my lucky stars every day that I live in a world where all books and movies (but especially the older ones) are available for free, essentially. I couldn't even tell you how much money I've saved, but just using my "Categories" as a rough estimate- I've watched 98 Criterion Collection films. Those cost 30 dollars a piece- so that is three thousand dollars in just the last six months or so. And then books- I've got at least one hundred free books read on my Kindle- so let's say seven dollars a book (shipping a used book from Amazon costs four bucks typically, so even a book that costs a penny ends up costing you a few dollars)- that's another 700.
Z is a political thriller about the assassination of a charismatic left-wing political leader and the subsequent investigation/cover-up. Z won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film when it was released, and it's easy enough to see why. Costa-Garvas apparently based Z on the real-life assassination of Greek leftist leader Gregoris Lambrakis, but sets the film in a nameless French speaking country that merely resembles Greece. Costa-Garvas has technique and pacing aplenty, you feel like you are watching a Hollywood film, rather than a "foreign" picture.
There really isn't a dull moment in Z, it's essentially an action movie/thriller/police procedural overlap and I had no trouble making it through. Z isn't high art exactly, but it is fun and worth watching.
Movie Review
La promesse (1996)
d. Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Criterion Collection #620
The first feature film of the Freres Dardenne, La promesse is a self assured debut about the experiences son of an alien smuggler in the post-industrial landscape of Belgium. Igor is a good looking young kid, in noted contrast to his bespectacled, moderately over weight father, who physically resembles Donal Logue's freaky cab driver from the MTV promos of the 1990s.
The Dardennes came from a documentary background, and their narrative style is decidedly in media res, with no exposition or supplementary characters who provide expository type dialogue. Instead the viewer is simply dropped into the soup. Thirty minutes in it is unclear if a plot is even in the offing, and then an African immigrant dies accidentally at a house where the boys father is having the illegal immigrants work, and Igor is left to cope with a very unknowing, recently arrived widow.
The relationship between Igor and Assita (the widow) occupies the rest of the film, as Igor comes to feel a moral responsibility for her well being. In terms of films from the same area, it is hard not to think both of Agnes Varda's Vagabond as a similar in media res depiction of the underbelly of Francophone life. In terms of the landscape, The Vanishing comes to mind: simply because it is set in the same general region. For those looking for an American equivalent is the work of Gus Van Sant, and further back, the short fiction of Raymond Carver.
While La promesse isn't exactly fun, it's not boring either, and worth the hour and a half time investment.
Movie Review
Rome Open City (1945)
d. Roberto Rossellini
Criterion Collection #497
I'm sure scholars, critics and the filmmaker himself would take issue with the statement that Rome Open City in any way "invented" Italian Neorealism, but it certainly was a breakout international success as an example of that style of film making. Criterion Collection is thick with the Italian Neorealist, Rossellini in particular, who has 12 films in the collection. Neorealism is an interesting film genre because it has a concern with both authenticity and immediacy. Those are two qualities which, since the advent of Neorealism, have been present in the international film community, but were formerly not so much.
Neorealism brought more of the documentary style to the cinema, and none were better than Rossellini himself. Rome Open City as an early/first effort is more like a typical melodrama with stylistic flourishes that mark it as being different from other melodamas. The actors were professionals, not amateurs, and Rossellini used music and conventional plot points to depict the vagaries of existence in occupied Rome.
Half a century plus on, it is easy to take for granted the innovations that Rossellini brought to cinema with Rome Open City and his other films of the 40s and 50s. The composition/mise en scene ideas of Neorealism have been embraced to the point where even big budget action movies use its techniques. At the same time Rome Open City holds up in 2013 as an eminently watchable film. Inexplicably divided into two parts despite a run time of under two hours, Rome Open City fairly races by till a bloody denouement which is predictable but still packs an emotional wallop.
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| Lee Eun Shim plays the Housemaid in the 1960 Korean film directed by Kim Ki-young |
The Housemaid (1960)
d. Kim Ki-young
Criterion Collection #690
Criterion Collection/World Cinema Foundation edition released December 10th, 2013.
This is the last of the initial batch of World Cinema Foundation titles that are being released via the Criterion Collection on December 10th. The Housemaid is a dark, dark, dark Korean picture about a Housemaid who seduces the piano teacher husband. And as IMDB says, "Dark consequences ensue." As luck would have it I'd actually already seen the 2010 remake of this film, directed by Sang So.
The Housemaid can fairly be described as a "twisted tale of love and obsession" and out of all of the World Cinema Foundation/Criterion Collection titles it is the film that most neatly fits into a "Hollywood Perspective," what with a focus on sex and death. The Housemaid is a good deal darker than any film noir I can think of. Forced abortions, child murder, suicide, attempts at poisoning; The Housemaid has all that. Any fan of American of French Noir will enjoy The Housemaid and it is BY FAR the most watchable of the newly released World Cinema Foundation titles.
Movie Review
A River Called Titas/
Titash Ekti Nadir Naam 1973
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| Marcello Mastroianni plays the Organizer of the title. |
Movie Review
The Organizer (1963)
d. Mario Monicelli
Criterion Collection #610
Yet another Criterion Collection title where I'm like, "Really, a 1963 Italian movie about the travails of garment factory workers in Turin in the early 20th century?" Apparently my reaction was shared by contemporary American critics. The accompanying critical essay at the Criterion Collection site mentions that Stanley Kauffman, reviewing The Organizer in the New Republic, asked why anyone would make a movie about a labor movement in 1963.
Of course, Kauffman was unaware of the labor unrest plaguing the Fiat Factory in Turin in 1962, making The Organizer a clear reminder to domestic Italian audiences that the fight of labor against capital was a fight that always needed to be renewed. Vacationing in Turin in 2010, I stayed at a Hotel in that same Fiat factory that had been the subject of dispute around the time this film came out.
It had been redeveloped for the Turin area winter Olympics, and now had two luxuryish hotels and a huge-ass shopping mall. One of the pleasures for me watching The Organizer is that it was actually shot in Turin, and I recognized many of the locales (Turin is not a particularly large city, and the downtown is distinctive with large squares and overhanging Arcades.)
At the same time it was a melancholy memory for me, of a relationship past. It makes me want to go back to all those places with someone new to replace the old, saddish memories with new happy memories, but I'm not sure Turin would make the cut for a second visit in this lifetime.
The Organizer has a black and white, retro look, but at the same time it is very clear that this is not an Italian neo-realist picture, rather it is in the style of a Hollywood melodrama, with dollies, tracking shots, and maudlin sentiment for days. It's not an unpleasant film, easy to watch, but hardly what I would call a "classic."
Movie Review
Gray's Anatomy (1997)
d. Steven Soderbergh
Criterion Collection #618
During the first season of Mad Men, my ex and I picked up a copy of "The Buttoned Down Mind of Bob Newhart" on vinyl at the swap meet because there had been a reference to it on Mad Men. We both were vaguely familiar with the 80s sitcom Bob Newhart and whatever, but not fans. We listened, in horror, to the Buttoned Down Mind of Bob Newhart, both wondering the entire time what the fuck was supposed to even be funny about it.
I kind of got a similar vibe from Gray's Anatomy, which is a filmed version of a show by monologist Spalding Gray. For those who may be unfamiliar, Gray was a tall, thin white haired dude of staunch WASP blood, and he specialized in the monologue. His most notable success was the show/film Swimming to Cambodia, which made him a star of the 80s art film circuit.
Gray died in 2004, the apparent victim of a suicide (found floating in the East River.) Death and suicide permeate his work, Gray's Anatomy being no exception. He discusses his mothers suicide repeatedly, and makes reference to a history of family members not surviving past their early 50s.
Gray's Anatomy is about an eye condition Spalding Gray had, and the attendant anxiety that he felt and alternative health type measures he took in the hopes of avoiding surgery. The monologue is interspersed with documentary style interviews with 4-5 regular people who have dealt with 'eye issues.'
I've purposely avoided watching Swimming to Cambodia simply because of the monologue format, so I give myself high marks for sitting through this night mare fest. Monologues, I mean really. What the fuck, Criterion Collection?
Movie Review
City Lights (1931)
d. Charlie Chaplin
Criterion Collection #680
Criterion Collection edition released November 12th, 2013
Watching silent films can be a bit of a chore. Charlie Chaplin is probably the first silent film maker who really connects with a contemporary audience. If you look at other Criterion Collection titles from the silent era they are super arty and dull. Important, sure. But dull. Chaplin on the other hand makes films that connect across time and space.
You compare Chaplin to, say, D.W. Griffith, and equally "important' silent era film maker, and Griffith's films are essentially unwatched, and Chaplin is still being watched, essentially, on the level of a current release. There's also the fact that Chaplin wrote/directed/acted and produced his own films. I think you can make the case that a significant portion of what we today call "movie magic" was essentially invented by Charlie Chaplin in his classic films.
Take City Lights, soon to be given the Criterion Collection treatment (took them long enough? rights issues?) Chaplin is seen as being a fairly innocent filmmaker, but City Light features attempted suicide, drunken misery, prison and of course, centers around the relationship between Chaplin's Little Tramp character and a blind flower girl. Kinddda dark.
Chaplin is a genius, bottom line. His movies are so watchable- and enduring- just the very definition of the word "classic."
Movie Review
¡Alambrista! (1977)
d. Robert M. Young
Criterion Collection #609
This title is an excellent example of the Criterion Collection "resdiscovering" a film that was either lost or close to it. Alambrista is a narrative film about the experience of an illegal Mexican immigrant coming to the United States and working in the fields. Robert Young had a background in news/documentary film and this experience informs the look and feel of Alambrista.
It isn't hard to see both how ¡Alambrista! almost came to be forgotten and why it is a great Criterion Collection discovery: the narrative of the illegal Mexican immigrant is an issue that has grown in importance since the film was made, and the "downer" subject matter and style make it a good example of a film that wasn't appreciated by the general Audience at the initial time of publication/release.
The accompanying essay by Charles Ramirez Berg does an excellent job of giving a straight forward explanation of the genesis of Alambrista (funded by PBS, for one thing.) and the circumstances of the principal photography (skeleton crew of two plus actors.) It's worth reading before you watch the film
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| Nina Pens Rode plays Gertrud |
Movie Review
Gertrud (1964)
d. Carl Th. Dreyer
Criterion Collection #127
Gertrud spoke to me more profoundly then any other film in the Criterion Collection to this point. That is probably because Getrud is the story of a woman who leaves her husband in a quest for love. She fails. I relate to that because I recently experienced the end of my own 12 year relationship/marriage, and almost every line in Gertrud rang pure and true to my own experience. I'm sure I'll be reflecting on this film for months, if not years to come.
Gertrud is married to a cold, lawyer/politician husband in what I believe to be 1950s Denmark. In the first 15 minutes, she announces that she's leaving, and when he asks why she tells him straight up it's because he is too cold. She falls for a young musicians, but he mistreats her and eventually discloses that he has another woman, and that the other woman is pregnant, and their affair ends even before she is divorced for her husband. An old flame of her makes a play, but she tells him, in no uncertain terms, that she doesn't love him either because he understands nothing of love.
At the end of the film she is alone, 40 years later, and still refuses to compromise on her believe that "love is all" even though her time actually being in love seems limited to about two and a half years out of the 80 or so years that she exists. Gertrud raises alot of issues about love, and specifically about the loss of love, and I found it to be utterly profound and moving. I would have wept if I was the weeping type.
Honestly I don't know if you can really understand love until you've had it and lost it. If you haven't lost love, how can you know it was there in the first place? There are so many types of human relationships- sexual and otherwise that can exist without love it seems like it is entirely possible to live an entire lifetime without experiencing it- unless you have it and then lose it, so you can know that it was there.
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| Modern Times Charlie Chaplin |
Modern Times (1936)
d. Charlie Chaplin
Criterion Collection #543
Modern Times was the last appearance of the Little Tramp, the character Chaplin rode to everlasting fame. By 1936 sound had been a part of cinema for a decade, and while Chaplin made use of sound in the form of music and sound effects, Modern Times was the last film in which Chaplin didn't speak dialogue (he does, however, sing near the end of the film.)
Modern Times is like four separate shorts strung together and given a feature-type heft by virtue of his relationship with Paulette Goddard, playing the role of "a gamine." Most people associate the first segment of the film which takes place in a factory where Chaplin works tightening a pair of bolts on an assembly line. After the famous scene where he gets sucked into the interior of gear intensive piece of machinery, he gets fired, caught up in a street rally and mistaken for a Communist leader.
The Tramp is imprisoned, but released after getting a pardon for preventing a jail break. He gets out, meets Goddard- literally shoe less so gamine is she. Goddard is the original manic pixie dream girl, and the first female lead who would match Chaplin's intensely physical performances.
Modern Times was the first movie where Chaplin's socialist/communist ideology was visible. He would follow with The Great Dictator and follow that with being hounded from America by anti-Communist crusaders. Another proud moment in American history there. Chaplin continued to make movies- good movies- for decades, but his critical/popular zenith was reached in this film. It would only be in later decades that his reputation would be restored and amplified.
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| Charlie Chaplin is Monsieur Verdoux |
d. Charlie Chaplin
Criterion Collection #652
OMG late period Charlie Chaplin is KILLING ME. SO...FUCKING....DARK. In Monsieur Verdoux, the film Chaplin made AFTER he played Hitler in The Great Dictator, he plays a serial killer. Sooooooo dark. Chaplin is fully acting in the modern style in Monsieur Verdoux, he plays a character who is as far from "the little tramp" that led him to fame and fortune as the difference between silent and sound film itself.
Monsieur Verdoux is what you call a "Bluebeard" a man or woman who marries and murders his conquests. In Verdoux is motivated by a desire to support his wheel chair bound wife and child, but the body count is in the teens. Chaplin is cool as a cucumber as the murderer. Before he is carted off to the guillotine at the end of the film, he refuses to accept responsibility and compares himself to the approaching mass murder of World War II, favorably.
The dark humor of Monsieur Verdoux almost anticipates the tone of Coen brothers films, I feel like he must have been an influence on them.
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| Toshiro Mifune in Seven Samurai |
Movie Review
Seven Samurai (1954)
d. Akira Kurosawa
Criterion Collection #2
I realized the other night that I was essentially lying to myself about having seen Seven Samurai before. I think it was just one of those movies I'd maybe caught a glimpse of on PBS one time as a teen and then never had to watch again, and then felt like I had to SAY that I'd seen it before, and just created this web of self deception and lies to avoid having to watch a three hour plus movie about Samurais in 16th century Japan.
Although I objectively knew that Seven Samurai is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, that didn't make me want to watch it. Well no more, I've have cured myself and I can now say that Seven Samurai was just as difficult to watch as I expected it to be. Luckily the Hulu Plus version included the very excellent hour long documentary, Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences which I actually watched interspersed with the movie itself to give myself little breaks during the run time.
Japanese cinema in the 1950s and 1960s had tremendous vitality, and as the documentary points out, Kurosawa set out with a self conscious aim to elevate what had previously been considered a light entertainment genre in Japanese film- similar to what John Ford accomplished with the Western in America a decade earlier. One of the talking heads in the accompanying documentary points out that Kurosawa both satisfies genre requirements, and creates a work that is impossible to talk about strictly in terms of genre- the ultimate in artistic achievement.
Seven Samurai also represents a step forward in terms of Kurosawa's film technique, with the addition of multiple cameras being shot at the same time, and the use of long distance telephoto shooting during the action sequences.
Of course, Seven Samurai was a huge international art house hit and it is another of the corner stone/foundational films without which the Criterion Collection wouldn't exist, so best to pay ones respects at least once in your life.
Movie Review
Gate of Hell (1953)
d. Teinosuke Kinugasa
Criterion Collection #653
The first three films to make it out of Japan were Kurosawa's Rashoman, Mizoguchi's Ugetsu and this film all in 1952/1953. The Seven Samurai followed in 1954. That's as solid an example of a specific art scene making an international breakout within a defined time period as you are likely to see in any era. In 1952, nobody knew shit about Japanese cinema, by the end of 1954 it was a thing that people liked.
The significance of Gate of Hell is that it is in color- the first internationally distributed Japanese film in color. Seen in color, the attention to mise en scene/cinematography which defined the first wave of exported Japanese films is in high relief, so to speak. The color in Gate of Hell is eye popping- the purples and reds in particular and the color really overwhelms the film itself, which is a retelling of a tale of obsessive love told against the backdrop of 12th century Japan. 12th century Japan looks almost exactly like 15th and 16th century Japans that I've seen in other films. I love how the Japanese used blocks of wood for pillows! Did that ever stop?
Besides being visually breathtaking, Gate of Hell is a typical "jidai-geki" or historical film- one of the two genres of Japanese cinema (the other being gendai-geki, or contemporary film.) An unrequited love between a warrior and a married women leads to tragedy, the end. Director Kinugasa is a one hit wonder in the Criterion Collection, so there is nothing else by him to watch.
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| Babette, of Babette's Feast fame |
Movie Review
Babette's Feast (1987)
d. Gabriel Axel
Criterion Collection #665
Release Date:: July 23rd, 2013
Babette's Feast exists at the edge of my memory, likely because I watched Siskel & Ebert review it on their PBS show "At the Movies." In 1987 I was 9 years old, so I know I didn't watch Babette's Feast in the theater or on television. But I know I saw their review of it. So many of the Criterion Collection titles were old before I was born it is interesting to watch a film that came out within my lifetime (and isn't part of their curious obsession with Michael Bay)
Like other Danish films that I've watched but yet to review here, Babette's Feast takes places in a rural village where all the people are stoked on God. It's set in the mid to late 19th century, with a flash back that takes us back to 1850, and a major episode that happens 15 years before the titular feast of Babette.
Like the films of the Don of Danish cinema, Carl Th. Dreyer, Babette's Feast has a lot to say about the austere, puritanical Christianity of rural Danes in the 19th century, but it Babette's Feast is more fun then any of Dreyers' films...by a wide margin. There are moments of humor and frivolity, and a bonafide happy ending- so rare in Danish literature.
Babette's Feast also turned me onto Jutland- which looks like a fun place for a visit, if you are into rural areas by the sea that are super quiet and depopulated. The accouterments Criterion has already uploaded to the title page at their website already have a ton of resources if you intrigued. Couples- this would be a good movie to watch together on a Friday night. And of course fans of Danish cinema. Which is everyone, I'm sure.
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| Future space man from Things To Come |
Movie Review
Things To Come (1936)
d. William Cameron Menzies
Criterion Collection #660
Release Date: June 18th, 2013
Things To Come, a collaboration between H.G. Wells and producer Alexander Korda, had every advantage. It was the 1936 version of a sci-fi blockbuster, based on the Wells book, with a huge-for-its-day budget. Unfortunately, to call the script "stilted and terrible" is to offend both those words. Well maybe not terrible.
The movie has its moments- both the montage sequences of the decades long World War (this movie was written and released BEFORE World War II, and in the book this war starts when Germany invades Poland !); similarly the montage closer to the end where the global super state constructs the shiny, gleaming world of the future have a wondrous quality that leave you in awe of the prescience of all involved.
The acting,,,is terrible. The story... non existent. For those who watch contemporary films it is similar to what they did in World War Z with a book that was an homage to Studs Terkel's "Working" ( a collection of interview with people about working. In other words it is an attempt to create a dramatic narrative from a printed source with no dramatic narrative.
Let Things To Come be a lesson to us all! Also, H.G. Wells was kinda a fascist, though he died too early to really appreciate how badly that could turn out. His gleaming super state of the future looks like something out of a Nazi propaganda film.
I probably would not recommend Things To Come to anyone unless they said something like, "Oh yeah, HUGE H.G. Wells fan." or "God I love big budget sci fi films from the 1930s that totally bombed." or I suppose people who dig interesting artistic failures. Because Things To Come is def. a fail.
Movie Review
Shoot The Piano Player (1960)
d. François Truffaut
Criterion Collection #315
One of the problems with watching the major works of the French New Wave is simply how familiar they have all become by virtue of their absorption by a half century of filmmakers in the rest of the world. The techniques pioneered by Truffaut et. al. are now utilized by art film makers and television commercials alike. Those films with an intensely personal approach, such as Truffaut's own 400 Blows, maintain their emotional intensity, but genre experiments like Shoot The Piano Player, while intriguing as an example of film history, have less power by comparison.
Which is not to take anything away from the enduring popularity of Shoot The Piano Player, Truffaut's second feature and the 3rd most popular Truffaut product on Amazon.com and appears to rise and fall in virtual lock step with 400 Blows in terms of overall popularity in the English language:
Personally, I didn't really enjoy Shoot The Piano Player and I find the French New Wave a bit of a chore thus far. Probably because it all feels so familiar, and the endless reading of subtitles can be tiresome. I'm not inclined to to rush through the films, certainly.
Movie Review
Le Beau Serge (1958)
p. Claude Chabrol
Criterion Collection #580
And so the French New Wave arrived in 1958, heralded by this particular film, Le Beau Serge by Cahiers du Cinema critic/founder(?) Claude Chabrol. Chabrol would have to the third in the trinity of French New Wave film makers alongside Truffaut and Godard. But, importantly, Chabrol was first, with his first film, Le Beau Savage rising to prominence a year prior to Godard, who released Breathless in 1960. You can see that illustrated in the Ngram below:
It's interesting to note that in the period betwen 1958 and 1965, Truffaut actually ran a distant third to Chabrol and Godard, just after that time period Truffaut would surpass Chabrol in popularity and it remained that way forever after.
Understanding that Breathless was released well after Le Beau Serge helps pull both films and the French New Wave itself into focus. The French New Wave is the central episode in any broad history of the relationship of the Arts to criticism. It was a time period where critics became artists and obtained a world-wide Audience. So prominent is the example of the French New Wave as an Artistic trend that it dominates the naming of non-French national/regional trends: the Eastern European New Wave, but demonstrably through the type of films which were actually made during the 1960's in countries all over the world.
The primary non-Native artistic influences on the French New Wave, examples, if you will, were the northern European examples of Dreyer and Bergman and the Italian neo-realism of Rossellini and others. On the other side of the art/commercial divide, there was a definite familiarity and fondness for the conventions of American genre film, gangster and detective movies specifically, but also comedy and musical examples.
The main critique of the Cahiers du Cinema crowd was directed at the French filmmakers of the 1920s-through-1940s, the critique being that the films were impersonal and failed to properly communicate emotionally with the Audience. All three major "first" films of the Chabrol/Godard/Truffaut/Le Beau Serge/400 Blows/Breathless French New Wave break out on 1958-1960 were sharp, emotionally intense affairs based on the human experience of the creator. Intensely "personal" films, the critic/auteurs of the French New Wave sought to stamp their Art with a uniquely personal vision, aided by craft and technique learned from a steady diet of viewing films, mostly in Paris.
Aside from properly crediting Le Beau Serge as the first film of the French New Wave it is also fair to say that it is the third best of the three major films. 400 Blows is often called the best film of all time, with a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Breathless only has a 96%; Le Beau Serge also has a 100% but with only 8 critical opinions tabulated, vs. 50+ for both 400 Blows and Breathless.) Part of that is maybe because of how incredibly DARK Le Beau Serge is, with a plot that revolves around a dead "Mongoloid" baby, intense alcoholism and an incest/rape subplot(!) that shocks in 2013, perhaps more today than then in 1958.
Movie Review
The Double Life of Véronique (1991)
d. Krzysztof Kieślowski
Criterion Collection #359
Some of these movies are getting watched simply because they are the oldest film on my Hulu Plus movie queue. Kieślowski is best known for his "Colors" trilogy: Blue, Red & White, also part of the Criterion Collection. I've seen the Colors trilogy, and the films share a common style: abstracted and elegiac, they echo work that Wim Wenders did in the same general time period and it's an influence that is clear in the films of Michel Gondry.
Almost anything you read about The Double Life of Veronique, including laudatory critical reviews, will mention that the film makes little or no sense when you try to describe it 'in print,' and who am I to disagree with that assessment. There is something about a film that you both want to watch enough to put on a queue AND not want to watch so much that it becomes the very last film on that same queue over a period of weeks.
Watching the last film on a digital queue is both satisfying and exasperating at the same time. The ability of this act to elicit both emotions simultaneously is perhaps its most distinctive feature. At the same time, it is hard to really connect with such a film, on a personal level.
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| Lars Von Trier: Too old and fat to be considered an Enfant Terrible in 2013. |
Movie Review
Europa (1991)
d. Lars Von Trier
Criterion Collection #454
I'm hesitant to say too much about Von Trier because I have a deep belief that talking about Von Trier like you enjoy his movies makes you sound like pretentious fuck. I will say that having now watched a fair amount of Ingmar Bergman and Theodor Dryer I have a better feel for Von Trier's influences.
Europa is a pretty straight forward film noir type film about an American who gets a job working as a train conductor in Germany immediately after World War II. He immediately gets involved in a plot to sabotage his train line, while simultaneously dealing with the vagaries of being a probationary employee in a foreign land.
Fair to say that if you just add "as imagined by Lars Von Trier" to the above paragraph you should be able to get a clear picture of what Europa is like. It is a coherent, narrative film that actually looks like a film from the 50s post war period of European Art cinema. Quite an achievement considering the 1991 release date.
Europa is easily Von Trier's most watchable film- with only one graphic suicide and no genital mutilation. Can't wait for Nymphomaniac LOL.
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Movie Review Smiles of Summer Night (1955) d. Ingmar Bergman Important to understand about Ingmar Bergman's pre break-out work is that he spent 7 months a year as the director of the Malmo Community Theater. Then, in the summer months, he would make a movie using the same actors. The concept of "summer" dominates the titles of Bergman's 50s works: Summer with Monika (1953), Summer Interlude (1951) and of course, Smiles of a Summer Night. Smiles of a Summer Night came out just before the Seventh Seal (1957) so it was fairly easy for newly turned on Bergman fans to go back and take in Smiles of a Summer Night, thus it obtained a kind of retroactive/revival style popularity. This phenomenon is discussed in the included DVD extra, a conversation between familiar Bergman scholar Peter Cowrie and producer Jorn Dunner. Cowrie points out that while Smiles of a Summer Night achieved European notoriety by winning a prize at Cannes, it didn't happen in North America. Smiles is essentially a sex farce- with clear references to Shakespeare and the larger Scandinavian concept of the passionate, brief summer. The parlor drama scenery is very much something that Bergman would eventually leave behind, but he wasn't bad at the quasi-Victorian style. Movie Review Eating Raoul (1982) d. Paul Bartel If you are as unfamiliar with the films of Paul Bartel as I was going into watching Eating Raoul, the best way to think of him is as the lesser known cousin of John Waters. Eating Raoul is essentially the hit out of his entire career. It's an early 80s satire that brings to mind, of course, John Waters, but also Repo Man era Alex Cox as well as later filmmakers like Gregg Araki. The transgressive premise of the film is that married couple Mary and Paul Bland (played by Bartel and his frequent co-star and ex Warhol girl Mary Woronov conspire with Latino hustler Raoul Mendoza to lure "swingers and perverts" to their house through a personal ad, and then to murder the respondees and steal their money. I think though the most enduring quality of the film is its indieness. Released in 1982, Eating Raoul was a precursor to the indie comedies that flooded the market a decade later, and it probably bears some credit/responsibility for the larger genre of gross comedy typified by classic period Farrelly Brothers films, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, etc. Movie Review Kuroneko (1968) d. Kaneto Shinedo Unlike some of the more esoteric categories within the Criterion Collection, "Japanese Horro" is a genre where I feel like there is at least a realistic possibility I will encounter someone who is "into" these films and be able to carry on a conversation with them prior to my death. Another positive about Japanese horror movies is that "cool" people often feel vaguely guilty if they are NOT familiar with the genre and will act like they are interested in these films our of a sense of duty to be versed. Japanese horror traces roots back to Japanese folk tales tracing back to what we would call "the Middle Ages" and beyond. Many of the ghosts are vengeful spirits of wronged women, putting the story of Kuroneko (Woman and her daughter and law are raped and murdered by a bunch of samurai and become demons who kill and eat samurai.) Similar to a tale in one of the other early Japanese films, Kwaidan, the resolution of the tale involves a family twist, when the long lost son in law returns as a samurai and is tasked with the job of killing the demon spirits of his wife and mother in law. IRONY ALERT!!!! The wife takes herself out of the picture by trading her demon immortality for "seven days of heaven" with her living husband, but the mother-in-law doesn't go down so early. There is also a demon cat involved. If you are familiar with more recent iterations of Japanese horror films, you can see some of the visual motifs already formed in Kuroneko, particularly the agile skittering of female ghosts, which I realize now must be related to the cats that are constantly popping up in these tales (for example the Demon Cat in House.) Like Kwaidan, Kuroneko is not scary so much as spooky and kind of melancholy. There isn't a lot of zest for mayhem like you see in American horror, and the contemplative tone is more in line with the rest of Japanese cinema vs. representing a departure from national cinema conventions. Movie Review The Four Feathers (1939) d Zoltán Korda The point of watching all the Criterion Collection movies is to learn about the Criterion Collection itself, more than seeing all the movies. Criterion Collection clearly obtains the rights to a group of films controlled by the same rights holder- a studio or trust of the filmmaker, and then has limited resources and will release titles from the group of films acquired over time. Some of these acquisitions give them the right to stream the titles online and others do not. This is clear in their releases of more recent American directors like Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, where the right to distribute the title online/streaming is held by a different rights holder. I mention this for The Four Feathers because it is a film from the United Kingdom, and I've noticed that many of the Criterion Collection releases from the UK are NOT available streaming, making the catalog of Hungarian/English film maker/producer Alexander Korda particularly important. The Four Feathers is an almost breath taking early example of action adventure film making, shot in color, from 1939. I'm hard pressed to think of an American counterpart from this early in the 20th century but it could be ignorance. I'm fairly certain that a casual viewer could be told that The Four Feathers was made in the late 1960s and not even question the assertion. The story of The Four Feathers is basic English colonial empire action-adventure stuff, with a plot based on the so-called "Anglo-Sudan" war of the late 19th century. John Clements plays Harry Faversham, an English military officer who up and quits on the eve of his squad being shipped to Sudan for the upcoming war. Shamed by his fiance, he disguises himself as an "Arab trader" and infiltrates the Sudanese rebellion, providing assistance to several of his old chums (in disguise) along the way. It's good old fashioned, pre-political correctness English empire fun, which means that the baddies come off as little more than one dimensional "others"; but really, when you think about it... not much has changed in Hollywood or England since when it comes to big budget action adventure pictures
Movie Review Scenes From a Marriage (1973) d. Ingmar Bergman OK yeah maybe too much Bergman. Fanny and Alexander AND Scenes From a Marriage are both three hours long- in their short versions- making for six hours of Bergman in the last few weeks. Add in the other Bergman films- like 20 hours of Bergman in the last couple months? Too much Bergman. I find myself wandering the empty streets of Malmo in my dreams. I don't know if any of my regular readers have been divorced, but certainly if you've been through it like me there is A LOT to make you cringe in Scenes From a Marriage- Bergman makes Noah Baumbach look like a fuck wit by comparison. After three hours of emotional hell you do get something resembling a happy ending, but man what an ordeal. Scenes From a Marriage does make you think but man. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Movie Review Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman; The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)(Zatoichi 1) d. Kenji Misumi OMG I want to call shenanigans on the Criterion Collection for releasing a 27 film boxed set as a SINGLE Criterion Collection number (679.) Who the fuck does Criterion Collection think they are fucking with? The Tale of Zatoichi is the first number in this 27 disc monster set and if you think I'm going to review all 27 films and give each film a page you are sadly fucking mistaken. I will do no. such. thing. If I EVER watch the second film in this series, and I'm by NO MEANS making a promise to do that, it will be posted on THIS review page. Criterion Collection has some archival issues that result from their variations in numbering practices. For some boxed sets, each title has its OWN number. And then for other boxed sets, like the Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman series, all of the boxed titles have ONE number. That is CONFUSING. The figure of "Zatoichi, the blind swordsman" lies somewhere between a midevial knight errant and a modern day gunslinger in terms of his combination of personal characteristics: gruff but endearing, kind but deadly. These deep roote character traits are an essential part of what makes Zatoichi and other Samurai/Ronin characters so endearing: They strike clearly cross cultural notes. The very fact that Zatoichi shot 27 titles in the series speaks to the influence of the Western genre of Western films/Cowboy and Indian films, as well as that of serial television shows. It's an obvious East/West fusion though I can't for the life of me think of a single human being, not even myself, who would be interested in watching all 27 films. Perhaps when I get down to the Eclipse titles I will reconsider it.
Movie Review Three Colors: Blue (1993) d. Krzysztof Kieślowski You don't get more "90s Art House Cinema" than the Three Colors trilogy by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Watching Blue on Hulu Plus, I tried to remember the circumstances under which I watched this film for the first time around the year of release. Parents rented it from a video store? Maybe Blockbuster I'm guessing? I would have been a senior in high school the year So I've seen Blue before, but I wasn't adverse to watching it again. Kieslowski is really at the top of his game in Blue: It's like an amalgamation of a half century of art film styles in a single film. Juliette Binoche is impeccable as Julie, the woman who loses both her husband and young daughter in a car crash, and then struggles to distance herself from human relationships, only to discover that such a state of affairs is impossible. Blue is a potent film, a milestone made all the more remarkable by the fact that it is but the first of a trilogy of masterworks.
Movie Review Three Colors: White (1993) d. Krzysztof Kieślowski The last conversation I had about the Three Colors trilogy, my partner said her favorite film in the trilogy was Red, but after White I'm having trouble imagining how Red can top it. I certainly like White more than Blue. Blue is well... blue. White is like a revenge movie, and a crime caper movie and is actually funny but it still packs an emotional punch and has something to say about life and love. The two films overlap at a point in Blue where Julie is discovering the identity of her husbands mistress, who is a young lawyer in the civil courts of Paris. White begins in that same scene- we see Julie entering and being escorted out of the court room as Polish hairdresser Karol Karol is being divorced by his cruel French wife Dominque (played by a SMOKING HOT Julie Delphy. JE SUS IS SHE HOT IN THIS MOVIE.) Dominque divorces him on grounds of impotence, kicks him into the street without a dime to his name, and frames him for an abortive arson. Karol retreats to Poland, literally escaping inside a large piece of luggage, and drifts into a quasi criminal career in land speculation and stolen goods fencing. Successful, he hatches a plot to revenge himself on his ex-wife. White is watchable to the point where you might even call it "fun." Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol Karol has a likeable everyman quality that comes across in any language, and the sub-plot involving Karol and his business partner/friend Mikolaj is as interesting and more touching emotionally than the main revenge plot between Karol and his ex.
Three Colors: Red (1994) directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski This was Kieślowski's last movie, and it makes sense, as kind of a capstone to a career- I'm talking about all three films in the Colors trilogy: Blue, White and Red. Even though they are separate stand-alone plots there are enough inter-linkages to consider them like a single film in three parts. Particularly when you compare it to a 3 or 5 hour career capstone like Fanny and Alexander by Ingmar Bergman- all three films clock in at under five hours of watching time total, and all three are entertaining. Red is about Valentine, a fashion model, played by Irene Jacob (The Double Life of Veronique.) Valentine is doing her fashion model thing in Geneva when she runs over the dog of embittered former Judge Joseph Kern, a recluse living in a suburban neighborhood and getting his jollies from listening into the phone calls of his neighbors. Valentine is attracted and repelled at the same time. Events spool out in a typically Kieslowskian way with many ringing telephones and breathless conversation in phone booths, all drawing to an epic conclusion that ties the characters of all three films together in a single horrifying accident at the hands of mother nature. Movie Review Identification of a Woman (1982) d. Michelangelo Antonioni I had assumed that Michelangelo Antonioni stopped making films after Blow Up (1966) but incorrectly as it turns out. Aside from being a rehashing of themes that are familiar to any repeat viewer of Antonioni's oeuvre: ambiguous relationships, people getting lost in the fog and long shots of people not doing or saying anything, Identification of a Woman is mostly notable because of the various explicit sex scenes that are included. Like X rated level sex scenes. Identification of a Woman is also interesting because it is the story of a recently divorced film director who bangs a number of hot young chicks. Considering the ubiquity of the older man/younger woman theme in literature- be it novels, films or what have you, it is hard not to consider where you stand in that relationship. It's even harder to realize that you yourself are closer to the "old man" category than any other. It seems like there is a little lee way between the ages of 35-50 (I am 37) but the clock is ticking. Clearly though it is ok if you either looking for a young wife to bear your children (and you are a wealthy older dude) OR if you are someone with business in the cultural industries. For example the "plot" (such a vague concept for Antonioni) involves the director/Antonioni stand in (Niccolo) struggling to case the lead in his next film. He picks up on Mavi, played by a short-haired Daniela Silverio, who may or may not roll with a crypto-fascist group of rich Italians. Niccolo is promptly threatened in an appropriately (for an Antonioni film) vague manner. Niccolo takes Mavi away to the country, there is an argument, I looked down at my Samsung galaxy to play a quick game of Candy Crush, and when I looked up again, Mavi has vanished. Niccolo then hooks up with actress Ida (played by Christine Boisson) who helps him track down Mavi. The whole film has the feel of a noir without any of the action or murder. In fact, in the end you have a fairly conventional but stylized bourgeois love story with an ambiguous ending. Worth mentioning is the sound track to this film. The inclusion of several early 80s synth anthems gives Identification of a Woman a retro-future vibe and increases the style level by a factor of 2 or 3.
Movie Review Zazie dans le metro (1960) d. Louis Malle No matter how deep I get into the Criterion Collection there is always yet another filmmaker with a dozen plus films with whom I'm utterly unfamiliar. Today it's Louis Malle- he's got 17 titles in the Criterion Collection and I've seen... one. This one. It's impossible to characterize Malle's career in terms of a preference for genre or a distinctive style. Rather, Malle passes through film history like a kind of Zelig, making New Wavey type films during the French New Wave (this film) and helping to define a generation of American art house films two decades later (My Dinner With Andre.) Documentaries, dramas, and whatever- Malle has done it all. Released during he first flush of the French New Wave, Zacie Dans le metro has an anarchic feel that resembles a Loony Toon in terms of energy. The story of Zazie dans le metro: A young girl spends the weeekend with her female impersonator cousin in Paris while her Mom is having a romantic rendevous, is merely a clothes hanger for a variety of slap stick gags and editing tricks. Like other French comedies of the 1960s Zazie dans le metro has a distinctly slapstick feel, with little of the "deep" meaning of contemporary films like 400 Blows or Breathless. It's an enjoyable ride and maybe worth a watch for big Wes Anderson fans. Les cousins (1959) d. Claude Chabrol Les cousins has the distinction of being the second best French New Wave film released in 1959 (400 Blows.) There's something to be said about an Artist who puts out a pretty good work of Art the same year that the best example of the Art form ever gets released in the same country, as was the case here. Les cousins is Chabrol's second feature, and he went ahead and cast the same two men in the lead roles, reversing the good/bad axis. In Les cousins, Jean-Claude Brialy, the hero of his first form, plays Paul, the lecherous, debauched law student who welcomes his naive cousin Charles, played by Gerard Blain, to university study. While living with Paul, Charles falls in love with Florence, who is, unfortunately, a slut. When Florence gets the time and location of a date with Charles wrong, Paul takes the opportunity to seduce her, ably assisted by his major domo Clovis. Cut to: Paul shoots Charles with one of the many pistols scattered about the apartment but only Charles fails his initial examination after Paul keeps him up with his partying. Les cousins, with its university setting, jazz soundtrack and American gangster influenced dialogue is closer to what would become the signature style of the French New Wave than was Chabrol's first picture, Le Beau Serge. Of course Breathless, which would be released in 1960, would define that style, but Les cousins is verrrrry close. Movie Review Fanny Och Alexander (Three Hour Theatrical Version) (1982) d. Ingmar Bergman Fanny and Alexander exists both in a three hour theatrical version and a five hour "television miniseries" version. I watched the three hour version because that is what they had on Hulu Plus. I would probably watch the five hour version if I could get it for free. This film is the capstone to Bergman's career, and is supposedly the most (and only) autobiographical film among his works. At the same time it is the most avowedly populist of all his works- made for television, for Pete's sake. And while the "populist" element of Fanny och Alexander is best summarized as resembling Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy, it is present. I think contemporary viewers often assume that Bergman has been universally lauded as a genius for his entire career, but in fact his work has always drawn a split reaction- from the beginning. Both inside and outside Sweden, many people "didn't like" Bergman from the start. I think it is fair to say that since he has stopped making new movies the "Nay" faction has disappeared or simply moved on to more contemporary targets, but personally, I love Bergman movies. That's a question of taste, with no "right" or "wrong" answer, but I am on the side of light. So I can understand both how someone could not like Bergman and not like Fanny and Alexander, and I can understand how someone who likes Bergman WOULDN'T like Fanny and Alexander (too commercial, so to speak.) but I like Bergman and this movie, for a variety of reasons. First, there is the way that Bergman crafts what is essentially the flimic adaption of a non-existent early 20th century Swedish epic novel- an analog to the Galsworthy Saga or The Old Wives Tale. The length of Fanny & Alexander isn't a reflection of some complicated plot, merely it the insistence by Bergman that he take the time to properly tell this multi-generational family saga. Second, there is the timing of the period- 1907-1909- a fascinating period where Swedes had the telephone but not automobiles, phonographs but not radios. Movie Review Louie Bluie (1985) d. Terry Zwigoff Like other reviews being published in this between Xmas/end of the year time slot, Louie Bluie was lurking at the bottom of my queue for half a year. The seasons flew by and Louie Bluie sat unwatched, spending a total of 8 months on or near the bottom of my Hulu Plus movie queue. It wasn't until it actually became the LAST movie on my queue that I managed to watch it, and so I thought it was appropriate for Louie Bluie to be the last movie reviewed in 2013. What have I learned from watching 100+ titles of the Criterion Collection this year? I've learned they have a lot of titles by Kurosawa and Bergman, and that they excel in the areas of 50s and 60s European art cinema and have a fondness for eccentric American indie films. It has been an odyssey.
Movie Review The Emperor Jones (1933) d. Dudley Murphy Although The Emperor Jones is part of the Paul Robeson: Portrait of An Artist box set, The Emperor Jones is also noteworthy because it is so early in time. Only a small fraction of the Criterion Collection films take place before World War II. The explosion in Post World War II cinema seems to be roughly equivalent to the take-off in the production of novels prior to World War I. Thus, watching any film made before 1945ish is an event, but often exasperating, since the limitations of the first generation of "talkies" makes for an antiquated viewing experience. Also, The Emperor Jones is hella racist, down to the minstelry dialect that Paul Robeson uses. It sounds like the rough equivalent of an English actor doing a hick southern accent: He gets the message across but it's obviously "acting." I don't know alot about Robeson except his wikipedia biography, but I'm sure he had mixed feeling about the role. The use of the "N" word is frequent to ubiquitous, mostly by Robeson himself when referring to the islanders that he "conquers" by convincing them he is impervious to all but silver bullets. The racism is most galling in the portrayal of Emperor Norton's "subjects." I'm not a big advocate of political correctness, but I'm pretty sure the racism that permeates The Emperor Jones would shock most if not all contemporary viewers.
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