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The Criterion Collection Experiment #2

Monday, February 11, 2008

Having spent last year watching most of the spine titles 1-101 (‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ and ‘Carnival of Souls’ still pending), I am now ready to start with the next batch. First a few remarks on discoveries from the first 100:

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s ‘Diabolique’: I enjoyed the hell out of this film, and how much so was a bit of a surprise for me. Perhaps I am ageist but I just didn’t think a film this old would have this much of a punch in the suspense and horror departments. Clouzot’s ‘Diabolique’ is well-crafted murder mystery (so mysterious it is not about who did it but how) that is as admirable from a technical standpoint as it is rewarding as suspense/horror fare. The dvd case mentions that this was influential in Hitchcock making ‘Psycho’ and one can instantly see the same loving appreciation for pure cinema and archtechtonic control of mis-en-scene. The bulk of the story is situated in and around a boarding school in France and I love the way the environment is used to give the impression of a dimensional plane where the drama unfolds… windows overlook other key scene sites, and you feel properly situated in the space. This seems like a minor thing to bring up but I have a real fondness for this sort of … well archtechtonic control of mis-en-scene (I don’t know how else to say it). Kurosawa is a master of creating space, and Clouzot is working nearly on this level. I know Hitchcock gets a lot of praise for his pure cinema but I find something lacking more often then not in his films… the big exception being Psycho… which does have the spectre of Diabolique. Paul Meurisse as the bastard husband is stellar, he is the french Bogart and every scene is elevated by his presence. The film is true showmanship, the placard at the end of the movie demonstrating just how much of a showman Clouzot was, and like I said, I am surprised how well this film aged, because there are very few Hitchcock films working in the same genre that I feel carry the same punch in present day.

Ingmar Bergamn’s ‘Autumn Sonata’: It is cumbersome, lumbering, clunky, naive, contrived, exhaustive, but it is also ‘Russian’ in the way all good Dostoevsky stories are. It has that feverish pitch of expression, the hyper-catharsis, like everyone has taken a truth serum and can now emote free of all inhibition… Somehow I can tolerate this now in a way I never could before, I have bought into the conceit and let it carry me part way into the drama. I still see the caricature in the style, the Woody Allen ‘Love and Death’ flavour, but at least in this Bergman film I didn’t care. The mother daughter relationship was harrowing despite the contrivances… due in large part to performances of Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman which are revelatory. The first half of the film was Ingrid, the second all Liv… with a kind of bravado that left me mesmerized. I couldn’t shake the performance aspect, but still what performances! I admire this film more then I love it, certainly one of the best Bergman films I have seen, second only to Seventh Seal.

Al Reinhart’s ‘For All Mankind‘: This is an utter joy to watch on every level: the surprisingly crisp footage taken from the Apollo missions to the moon, interspersed with the astronauts own words about the events, underscored by their selection of music which they took on the voyages makes for a complete firsthand glimpse into what truly is the event of the 20th century. It is also a well-crafted documentary, a piece of art which went beyond my expectations. Those who watched the first steps of Neil Armstrong on the moon in real-time must have felt something akin to the awe I felt in Reinhart’s assemblage, probably less so seeing as this is an artistic enhancement by the manipulation of music and dialogue, but then I will never know. There was a commercial on last month about the new Windows Vista which collects a series of events which make you stop and go ‘wow’... and they use the Armstrong footage as an example… so it has become a cliche… but seeing it in the context of this documentary/historical document I cannot but utter the same kind of ‘wow’ ... it does make everything else look insignificant in comparison… it does unify all mankind in a way, it transcends all petty differences in its profundity. Very cool: Kubrick’s 2001 preceded the first misson to the moon, and the theme music was taken on the first mission where the astronauts got to watch the panorama of space with that soundtrack climaxing in the background… how cool is that.

Hyperlinked full reviews to other gems of this batch: David Lean’s ‘Summertime’ and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s ‘Wages of Fear’

Others I thoroughly enjoyed but did not get around to writing about: ‘The Third Man’, ‘The Lady Vanishes‘, ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock‘, ‘Grand Illusion‘, and ‘All That Heaven Allows’

Now, to the future: (Continued)

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Blindness

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Rating: ★★★★☆

Tonight I had the opportunity to catch a first glimpse of Fernando Meirelles’ rough cut of ‘Blindness’, a film adapted from the best-selling novel of Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago, and starring such heavies as Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal and Danny Glover. It is a film whose pedigree clearly precedes it, a perfect storm of talent that bodes perilously high expectations. Having not read the book, my interest was quelled by the high-concept premise: imagine a dystopic scenario where all of a sudden and quite inexplicably the people around you start going blind and, like a virus, this blindness spreads in every direction leaving a society crippled and in frantic want of quarantine; yet you alone retain your vision and must bear witness to that theatre of the absurd which occurs in the absence of that so vital sense in others.

The premise is rich in philosophical implications: how much of our identity, moral code, and civil decency is dependent upon the reaffirmed belief that there is a visible world in which we all inhabit? When the familiar fabric of that world is denied the characters which populate ‘Blindness’, a reorientation takes place both individually and socially whereby the vestiges of the old world are undone and, as is poignantly noted in voice-over, people assume a kind of invisibility in their blindness, regressing to a supreme egoism and undaunted exhibitionism they would not have participated in otherwise. Julianne Moore plays a doctor’s wife, a stowaway to the quarantine where her husband has been sent, and the only person untouched by the disease. Through her eyes we watch the escalation of violence that manifests as the quarantined victims come to terms with what entirely is lost along with their sight. (Continued)

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Top Ten Films of 2007

Sunday, December 23, 2007

My best of list for 2007, taking into consideration that it was within this calendar year that I saw these films (some may have opened outside of this time frame) and that I select according to the degree with which I was personally affected by the work, factoring in secondarily the particular ‘cinematic’ significance of the film. Those films I reviewed are hyperlinked below.

1) Inland Empire

2) Silent Light

3) Once

4) No Country for Old Men

5) I’m Not There

6) Zodiac

7) Gone Baby Gone

8) Control

9) Alexandra

10) A Mighty Heart

(Continued)
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Bible! The Playlist

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Behold I give unto you a playlist two millennia in the making…

In this latest bout of the literary playlist challenge, Perc and I employ our mad skills towards an inevitable act of hubris: the mixtaping of the Holy Bible. Here you shall find no hymns, nor celestial choirs, but rather the artful repurposing of the popular towards some relevant theme therein writ. Perc has so graciously offered to mix the Old Testament leaving myself the sole arbiter of the New. With no lack of irony the Pagan evokes his Christ. My original intent was to make a playlist so devastatingly profound that it would make non-believers convert, but I soon reconciled the fact that this was not to be. The final product is a mixed bag of tones and musical styles which lean somewhat precariously towards the whimsical. Go figure. Despite the shifts, there is, I think, a coherent narrative running through the lyrics… Jesus came down, fought the injustice of the world, made an impact, died and was reborn. The apocalypse is captured in the final song, and everything past, present and future comes to a close.

The playlist is streamed here:

or as individual songs below.

1. Here’s Your Future – The Thermals

2. Indefinable – Essie Jain

(The Nativity)

3. The Body’s Only Rental – Katie Dill

(Sermon on the Mount)

4. Eraser (XXXchange mix) – Thom Yorke

(Temptation of Jesus by Satan)

5. 4 Minute Warning – Radiohead

(Agony in the Garden)

6. Boogie Street – Leonard Cohen

(Judas Kiss)

7. Love your Enemies – William Burroughs

8. Gotta Work – Amerie

(The Passions)

9. Singing to the Thieves – Lazarus

(Jesus Crucified with Two Thieves)

10. Heathen (The Rays) – David Bowie

(The Ascension)

11. Sisters of Mercy – Beth Orton

(The Spreading of the Word)

12. The Past is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal

(The Apocalypse)

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Control

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Rating: ★★★★☆

2007 is quickly becoming the year when filmmakers got musician narratives right. My list of top ten films for the year is punctuated by three solid testaments to this fact: Once, I’m Not There, and now Control. The hype surrounding Anton Corbijn’s ‘Control’, a biopic on the life and all-too-early death of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, has steadily rose since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it was one of the great word-of-mouth recommendations circulating the line-ups. It has since made a believer out of me with its brooding trailer in stark black and white depicting a very convincing Ian Curtis slowly imploding on himself. Despite my recent biopic fatigue with the formulaic Ray Charles and Johnny Cash varieties, a film like ‘Control’ has the power to enchant me with its promises of real human insight. (Continued)

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Up Yours, 2007!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Welcome to my annual send-off wherein I spot a tenner of songs, those which captured my imagination during this ever-deficiting state of academiotosis. Despite some laxity in my cultivation of aural accompaniment this year, I have at least took the dignified route this time, no longer scouring the net and vulturing about end-of-the-year best-of lists to pad my own. No sir. These are my genuine finds, a year in the making. As per my whimsy, the following ten songs are ontologically bound to the year 2007 in that they came into being in my mind between january and decembre of this year – if objectivity exists (which I am still skeptical about), then perhaps a case could be made that some of these songs originate outside this time frame. Being the center of the universe, I don’t find a problem with this liberty, and neither should you.

So here they be, a strange lot. The abundance of cover songs are purely coincidental and should not reflect poorly on the originality of the moderator of this list.

1) Intervention (Acoustic) – Arcade Fire

fond memories of listening to this song over and over while peering out the van window at the monument valleys of Arizona.

2) Goin to Acapulco – Jim James and Calexico

A cover of a Bob Dylan song displayed prominently in the biopic ‘I’m Not There’. At the time I did not know this was by Dylan, and when the ghostly hillbilly starts singing this at the midpoint of the movie I thought it was a bizarre departure.

3) Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

The signature song of the superb indie film ‘Once’. Immediately bought the album and listened to it over and over and over again… competing with Radiohead’s Reckoner as the most airplay on my ipod.

4) Will is my Friend – Devendra Banhart

Thanks to Ryan’s Smashing Life for this great find. Never fully warmed to the work of Devendra but the acoustic set I picked off of Ryan’s site blew me away. I used this song prominently in my Dharma Bums playlist (which fits like a mutha by the way) and it is pure summer to me.

5) Reckoner – Radiohead

‘In Rainbows’ was/is/forever the best album of this and many years. I cannot express the big love I got for the album as a whole, and had I not restrained myself I would have flooded this list just with these tracks. This is my favorite from the album.

6) I’m Not There – Sonic Youth

Yet another Dylan cover song, a damn fine one at that!

7) Rain (Demo) – Bishop Allen

Listen to this and you will have the melody in your head for the rest of the day.

8) Goodbye, My Friend – Guido & Maurizio De Angelis

This song is definately not from 2007 but I happened across on a music blog and boy is it a find, this kicks all sorts of ass.

9) Sisters of Mercy – Beth Orton

A cover of the Leonard Cohen song. I never gave the original much of a listen until I came across this performance from the ‘Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man’ documentary. So so so lovely.

10) The Past is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal

Perhaps the finest song of the year.

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Wherein Our Hero Reflects

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Here is what I recall.

My dreams are nightmares, and the waking moments are filtered through these experiences. I forget how to dissociate, and it makes me wonder at what point and in what way does a child learn the important lesson: sanity is preserved through the periodic dissociation of reality. I do not want to say definitively that the world is brutal and ugly but these qualities tend to reveal themselves if you focus on something long enough. I wish I could cry and that would be the end of it, a mutual adjustment, a certain output to befit a certain input. Alas the world does not conform to my clever syntax.

Long ago I knew what depression was, and then I forgot it, and now I remember it. There is a huge difference between the nominal and actual understanding of something like an emotion, it really is absurd to talk of them in any sterilized sense, as components of a clock. Perhaps there is something like emotional intelligence, if so, I feel properly versed having taken the emotions to the brink in the past and returned with some key piece of knowledge still intact in me. I can ‘understand’ this existential pang as just that, rather than causally link it to some outward plausible source. A doctor will probe your body and ask what hurts and perhaps there will be a localized pain that you can point to; doing the same introspectively, I localize this pain around the faintest of things: a person eating alone in a restaurant, the false-start uncertainty of a person struggling to communicate, a drunk watching 300 in a Future Shop. I try my best to let the feeling pass, to dissociate, and I realize the fault in others when they rush to worship the sadness, to make a drama of one’s life until the drama envelops them. Who am I kidding, that was me. But I am wiser now, and I know the stakes this time, and so what I want more than anything when I feel the sadness overwhelm me is to find a way out.

A healthy mind can do this effortlessly, it anticipates the problems and changes gear, thus keeping perspective to thwart all fanatical impressions. When healthy, I take a certain pride in my ability to adjust to the circumstances and resist the autocracy of emotion. When that capacity is suddenly gone, and the well fills up and overflows, and the pang sets in, I feel vulnerable to whatever the world wants to present to me. I am Alex from A Clockwork Orange with my glazzies held open. I feel very afraid of what is coming next. This is me before real tragedy strikes.

For anyone who is undergoing some form of depression during this holiday season, I feel for you. It is almost unfathomable what human beings are capable of living with, and of the variety of ways they cope. I think we all live multiple lives, each traumatic event shifting us to some new perspective. Perhaps your depression is a means to an end that without which you would never achieve. Not consoling in the least, I know.

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Defining Moment

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

I have been listening studiously to the aforementioned Berkeley podcasts and one of the many gems I have discovered from its analysis of Dostoevsky’s ‘Brothers Karamazov’ is that many of the characters come predisposed with their own defining childhood memory that shapes the manner in which they relate to the world. For example, Alyosha has the memory of his mother carrying him over to the crucifix while slanted sunlight shone through the window; Dmitry has the memory of the stranger buying him a bag of peanuts; for Father Zosima it is obviously his last conversation with his dying brother. While it is typical of clinical psychology to seek out the negative influences of childhood memories and then interpret symptomatic adult behavior, Dostoevsky’s characterization in ‘The Brothers’ is notable for its tendency to emphasize the positive influence of such memories.

As I have said before I do not share Freud’s pessimism for mankind, which is not to say that I am an optimist. There is a common view – a derivative of Hobbes perhaps – which presupposes that dark selfish ambitions lurk in the heart of every man and if not restrained through force these ambitions would inevitably manifest into unspeakable evils. Undoubtedly man is selfish but I hardly believe that selfishness is a purely dark and destructive attribute. It would seem from ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ that Dostoevsky shares my appreciation for the positive aspects of self-involvement, that being a Karamazov is not a bad thing afterall, but necessary for the real spiritual experiences to happen.

Some point to the state of what passes as entertainment in modern society as evidence that we want suffering and share in a sadistic pleasure of watching others suffer. At nineteen I would have heartily agreed with that sentiment, and probably most people at nineteen would have also, but this pessimism no longer feels accurate to me. Yes, there is fascination in the suffering of others, but that seems to be a natural curiosity considering we are all going to undergo some profound suffering due to our mortality. When fascination becomes pleasure, that is, extending beyond the merely curious aspect of witnessing suffering than it becomes something altogether different and sadistic. I like to think I have a grasp of my thought processes and if I am to be absolutely honest with myself, insofar as I can be, I feel no particular titillation from the thought of people suffering. And outside of the sexual context of wanting to dominate another person that seems encoded in my biology I feel no impulse towards violence. Am I the exception to the rule, deluded, or one of many misrepresented individuals that make their way through life too dull to be defined? (Continued)

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Best Damn Lyrics Playlist

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Occassionaly a lyricist is able to pen in a sparse collection of words something so profoundly moving that it rivals the narrative punch of drawn-out novels and scripts. Something immediately compelling is parcelled into a few choice words and a sudden clarity of understanding overwhelms. The universe for that moment is resting on each verse, the music accentuating every pause and intonation. Part wonder at the craftmanship of each phrase, part immersion in the storytelling, the following songs are testaments to the range of great lyrics I consider worth commemorating in this playlist. A song like Nick Cave’s Darker with the Day is a baroque feast of words that teeter into sublimely evocative storytelling vignettes, whereas a song like Cat Steven’s Father and Son rests at the other end of the spectrum, succinct and composed in its competing voices. And, of course, there is my favorite song lyrical or otherwise, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, which includes these sorrowful verses:

I hear that your building your little house deep in the desert, your living for nothing now, hope you are keeping some kind of record… and you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day (the last song of the phenomenal achievement ‘No More Shall We Part’... ‘a gilled jesus shivering on a fisherman’s hook’)

2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat (crystalline perfection, to shatter and reassemble and shatter again, the eternal ache)

3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son (ah youth, ain’t it the truth)

4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad (ok, this should be by Bruce Springsteen, but as I do not own that version in mp3 format, this stunning cover will suffice. ‘welcome to the new world order’)

5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (the song that made Allen Ginsberg tear up reminiscing about in Scorsese’s ‘No Direction Home’ documentary. I normally do not approve of ‘list’ songs, but this is truly the distillation of something bigger than us all, a damn near way of life)

6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness (Johnny Cash does a haunting cover of this that you can listen to on my Don Quixote playlist, but Oldham gives the right chill factor to these perfectly chosen words)

7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren (‘long floatin’ on shipless oceans/ I did all my best to smile/ til your singin eyes and fingers/ drew me loving to your isle’ ‘nuf said)

8) Tom Waits – Time (very hard to choose one example of Tom Waits talents, but this is a favorite of mine from Rain Dogs, even though the more obvious choice would be Ol’ 55)

9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around (best end song to a playlist ever, in addition to the great lyrics. Vic kicks your ass around with his verbiage, such a brilliant little song and it captures so much of my personality in the process I had to include it)

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Wuthering Heights: The Playlist

Friday, November 9, 2007

Now becoming an annual event, Madpercolator and I have been swapping playlists confined to literary themes. Last year we did Don Quixote, and this year Wuthering Heights. Below is my contribution. Anyone wanting to share their own playlists or songs of interest please feel free.

Listen as one continuous playlist here:

01 Wonderwall – Ryan Adams

02 Who by Fire – Leonard Cohen

03 Thirteen – Johnny Cash

04 You are a Runner – Wolf Parade

05 Deeper – Eric’s Trip

06 The Pull – The Microphones

07 Gazebo Tree – Kristin Hersh

08 It’s a Curse – Wolf Parade

09 Death to Birth – Michael Pitt

10 Leaving Green Sleeves – Leonard Cohen

11 Insomniacs of the World – Gord Downie

In response to MadPerc’s request I am going to include liner notes for the selections below:

1) Wonderwall – Ryan Adams – This was a late selection, for the longest time I had set Lambchop’s ‘I’m Glad I Never’ as the opening track. It’s terse 1:24 duration and narrative cue “In the beginning there was nothing… [ending with] I’m glad I never owned a gun” was the right sort of beginning, or so I thought for over a month. Then I heard Wonderwall on BBC and it just perfectly sums up the emotional dynamic of the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy, and also has just the right tone musically which became a better signal than the Lampchop track of what was to come. I also experimented with starting with ‘Rain’ by Ryuichi Sakamoto as a tongue-in-cheek play on the whole melodrama angle of the book.

2) Who by Fire – Leonard Cohen – Very early on the list, Cohen’s ballads of love are perfect fits for this sort of playlist, I seriously could of used five or six if I was not restrained by a desire to bring variety. This song took a while to grow on me, it was only after hearing it almost daily in the coffee shop at work that I began to register it from amongst my favorite Cohen tracks to appreciate it’s singular beauty. The songs relates to the moment Heathcliff rebukes Cathy after her first return from the Lintons. Here I am going more from the film then the book, as I read the book so long ago. But there is this moment in the film where Cathy comes home and there is an awkwardness between the two, which the chorus of ‘Who By Fire’ seems to capture.

3) Thirteen – Johnny Cash – One of two musicians I have carried over from my last literary playlist. I know very little Johnny Cash but I was noticing very early on that the playlist was going to have a country feel to it, that there would be a lot of guitar and gravely voices, and Cash was an obvious choice in the matter. The song refers to an orphaned child who has a lot of misery, and that seemed perfect for Heathcliff.

4) You are a Runner and I am my Father’s Son – Wolf Parade – The last track to be added to the playlist but strangely one of the first I had thought to add, only it took me a hell of a time to get a hold of it. Wolf Parade became an essential tonal valve to exist in juxtaposition to the quiet country ballads, and represent some of the anger of Heathcliff in the first person. Also lyrically the segueway between this and ‘Thirteen’ was better than I could have hoped, the first line carrying on the association that the character is just a number. Obviously the runner is Cathy, and the father’s son is Heathcliff who once again makes an association to his family lineage as something distressing.

5) Deeper – Eric’s Trip – I really liked a track MadPerc sent me some time ago by Lockgroove ‘Payin’ the Price’, and when I heard this song it felt like it was almost by the same group, very quiet and soothing. This is an ‘on the moors’ peaceful track, with some nice references to snow at the end which again segues nicely into the next song where similiar landscape references are made.

6) The Pull – The Microphones – Again, there are dozens of songs by this group that could also have been chosen to fit this playlist, but I choose only one to keep variety. This is a song I had for a long time and never fully listened to until much later, the song has to be listened to in its entirety; it is the crescendo of the playlist, the death of Cathy.

7) Gazebo Tree – Kristin Hersh – Late entry, but worked perfectly with that same grungy country feel that was being carried through. I see it as Isabella’s song, in response to her loveless marriage to the abusive Heathcliff.

8) It’s a Curse – Wolf Parade – the least relevant song on the list, it just sounds good, and can stand in for Heathcliff.

9) Death to Birth – Michael Pitt – from the Gus Van Sant film ‘Last Days’ where Pitt does such a scary impersonation of Kurt Cobain that even his sound is note perfect. This is a great song, an original song that could have been by Cobain. The chorus of ‘death to birth’ works well with the whole death of Cathy and the birth of Catherine.

10) Leaving Green Sleeves – Leonard Cohen – I really want someone to do a cover of this song, because while I really like it I think Cohen goes a bit too burlesque in the end. And I have no idea what leaving green sleeves means, but it is another sour love ballad by Cohen that fits anywhere in the book.

11) Insomniacs of the World Goodnight – Gord Downie – The one true gem off of his solo work from The Tragically Hip. The imagery of the neverstar and the wantoness in some of the lyrics seemed to be a perfect end to this love story which was only going to end in death. This going to sleep seems to be a promise of something more, of love on the otherside.

I suggest you take a look at MadPerc’s selections for this competition here.

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