Okay, so here are some photos that i took a while back. I used photoshop on most of them.
http://dizzy-dizzy-dizzy.blogspot.com/
All my other photos are currently being kept on a computer or disk somewhere where I can't get to them at them moment. It makes me sad that my old computer is apparently broken. It sounds as though there are a thousand angry bees trying to escape from within the machine! Bees scare me, if you weren't previously aware of that fact. It was sad at SCA when all of them chose our courtyard to die in. and Sebastian killed that one with his shoe. Also, it is sad that my cell phone ran away last night... off a bridge and directly downward into a river running half way between NJ and PA. I'm working on fixing that though. It was silly of me in the first place, and what was I trying to do? take a picture! goodness gracious.
Anyway on a completely new topic, I am happy that I managed to put all of my songs onto my ipod tonight. If anything, I now at least know that all of my (what, 3?) horrible recordings are safe from the bees... As long as I stay away from bridges. We should work on recording music (or just playing it) while everyone is home for thanksgiving! It would be fun! Or maybe not so much... It's fair to say that the plan has the potential to fall in either direction. Anyway, it would be a lot easier to plan if people, (cough -Sebastian- cough) would quit blowing us off to hang out with his loser friends! Like he did ALL SUMMER!
My family returned from Canada today. It was nice to see them again. I still had to make my own dinner though. Also, today I visited a castle, drank apple cider, (and coffee) read Twilight, saw some of my friends (and some of my enemies) played my guitar, (and saw it in a movie) and learned to play bass. (kind of...)
Isabel Malone is sleeping over at my house tonight. Apparently her foot hurts or something. I really liked seeing Rachel Getting Married, though it was very emotional. Tunde has the most beautiful voice! Not to mention the COOLEST glasses ever! Oh and Anne Hathaway was decent in it too, I guess.
Nick is home from NY tonight. Everyone should prank call him.
It's alright! It's alright! It's all been approved! I'm an American!
My Favourite Film Number 7
Occasionally you’ll know right off the bat that what you’re looking at is a work of art; sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it’s during a backward glance appraisal. Let The Right One In, a Swedish vampire film I read a tiny review of in some magazine or other, was quite clearly an overwhelming artistic achievement from the word go. With all the mishigas being raised over Twilight and the disappointing sting of 30 Days of Night still fresh in my mind, I’d like to choose my words carefully so that readers will understand that this movie is special in ways few horror films ever manage to be; I’d also like to sit the makers of both films down and make them watch this one and then smack their noses with a newspaper. I will say though that rather than read my analysis and take my word for it, you should stop now, drive the two hours to the nearest arthouse that’s showing it and see for yourself that there are still brilliant movies being made, and for the most part, if this and Joachim Von Trier's Reprise are any indication, they're being made in Scandinavia. Would you believe me if I told you it was about a cute 12 year old girl who was also a vampire?
Let The Right One In
by Tomas Alfredson
Open on a hopelessly beautiful, hopelessly middle class tenement building in a village outside Stockholm, Sweden. As 12-year-old child of divorce Oskar stands in his underwear practices his tough guy speech to a window, an old man and his young daughter unpack their belongings from a taxi cab and move into the apartment next door. Oskar is the victim of bullying and it’s not hard to see what makes him easy prey: he is pale, gangly even for a 12 year old, has long blonde hair his mother has clearly not looked at in sometime, he walks as if one leg were longer than the other, and his social weirdness manifests itself whenever he’s called on to talk in class. Clean cut bully Conny and his two not-so-brave cohorts Martin and Andreas make Oskar’s life as miserable as possible whenever they can fit it in. It isn’t until Oskar meets his new neighbor that things start to turn around for our young hero.
We know things aren’t right when, in what might be the most beautifully composed evisceration ever filmed, the elder of Oskar’s two neighbors drugs a passerby, strings him up on a lamppost and cuts his throat. This might be an ordinary killing save for one thing; he catches the blood in a plastic jug. The old man’s plan, whatever it may be, is ruined when a runaway dog brings its owners to the scene forcing him to flee. This doesn’t make his ‘daughter’ too happy, who after a stern talking to issues what sounds like a hypothetical warning “Do I have to do this myself?” Shortly after this botched incident, Oskar is outside after dark threatening a tree at knife point when he catches the young girl spying on him. It will take a lot of coaxing before he learns her name (Eli), but she wants to make one thing clear; she may be the same age as Oskar, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be friends. This changes after they meet a few times and Eli develops a soft spot for Oskar; perhaps because she has a very adult secret that youthful playtime helps her forget. One night one of the neighborhood drunks stumbles home and Eli lures him under a bridge and savagely murders him with her teeth. Two significant developments then unfold; firstly is that after Eli does her victim in fully, she cries, clearly unhappy about her fate; secondly an old eccentric with a house full of cats happens to witness the murder. Eli’s father hides the body, but clearly things are about to change for the family.
Oskar starts seeing more and more of Eli; she teaches him to stand up for himself and soon he has a crush on her that takes up most of his attention whenever they’re apart. Eli is initially reluctant until the night her dad slips up and gets himself caught while trying to milk a neighborhood boy of his life essence; the old man chooses an incredibly painful method of concealing his identity and covering his tracks so that Eli is left unmolested by authorities. When she visits him in the hospital that night, he says farewell to her and gives her what he was unable to provide while they lived together. Eli visits Oskar that night and agrees to ‘go steady’ as he puts it. Because Eli has to do her own hunting and as she isn’t be as careful as her dad was, she leaves behind a calling card one night when she doesn’t finish off one of her victims; the poor woman’s drunkard boyfriend is understandably a little shocked when she becomes sensitive to daylight, is nearly eaten alive by cats and won’t shut up about a little girl infecting her with something. Time to do some investigating, eh? This guy isn’t any Van Helsing, but he has a pretty good idea who’s behind the whole mess. As if that weren’t enough problems for our heroes, Oskar manages to make yet another enemy. When Oskar takes Eli’s advice about not letting kids bully him anymore and lashes out at Conny with a stick at recess, the little terror’s older brother gets involved; I guess exceedingly stupid and violent behavior runs in the family.
If this movie has one clear precedent, it wouldn’t be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, either excellent Nosferatu movie, any of Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee’s takes on the subject, nor that oft-referenced teenage vampire trainwreck The Lost Boys. It wouldn’t even be some of the more recent child-horror films: your 6th Senses, The Rings, or any of Guillermo Del Toro’s three elegiac fairy tales, The Devil’s Backbone, Cronos, or Pan’s Labyrinth. No, if I could point to one film most likely to have been an influence on this film, I’d guess it would be Lasse Hallström’s My Life As A Dog. Another famous Swedish export (in fact perhaps the most famous non-Bergman Swedish film yet made; notice I didn’t say infamous; that honor would go to Alf Sjoberg’s I Am Curious) My Life As A Dog has many thematic similarities including a weak-willed boy infatuated with a much stronger female, pubescent growing pains, a lovely romantic story between two youths of starkly different types, a town full of characters on the fringe of the lead's lives who play important roles in the story proper, parents incapable of understanding their children, and adults in general being powerless to put themselves in the mindset of that thing they’re now least like and most afraid of in the world – a child. The film's theme of childhood being as mysterious as supernatural behavior reminds one of Robert Wise's great Curse of the Cat People, only with roles reversed and modernized. The same shimmering innocence pervades both films and Alfredson has Wise's respect for the extraordinary power of the imagination.
Let me digress for a moment and say that if I had an inner child, she would look and act something like Lina Leandersson does here; this 12 year old first-time actress is my hero. Her Eli, on top of scoring points for being an unrelentingly cute murderer, is one of the greatest characters in film history. Oskar and Eli spend most of their time together asking questions typical of 12 year olds, and its clear that they both suffer from arrested development, albeit for two different reasons. Oskar has his absent parents to thank for his naivete (Oskar has ten times more fun with his dad, but dad still hasn’t come clean about his homosexuality and is clearly ashamed of it, which puts a strain on their relationship), Eli has the fact that her life stopped being that of 12 year old years ago. Between Eli’s lack of friends her own age or any other relationships beyond her male caregiver, she is just as clueless about socialization as Oskar. This is most whimsically demonstrated when Oskar buys Eli a bag of candy in a misguided attempt to be kind. Eli, not wanting to seem rude, eats one and promptly vomits behind the vender’s stand; Oskar panics and hugs Eli, something, I gather from her ridged posture, that no one has done in quite some time. Both Oskar's frightened expectations and Eli's confused detachment ring as true as anything I've ever seen on film. Moments like this are what separates Let The Right One In from all of its contemporaries. Alfredson proves himself capable of providing every facet of John Ajvide Lindqvist‘s source novel and screenplay with equal amounts of care and grace. Incidentally, Lindqvist should receive accolade for both staying remarkably true to vampire lore, while still delivering a unique scenario in which to play with it (for every Martin there's a Dracula 2000 waiting to make it irrelevant). I knew that this movie was not simply good but transcendent just after Eli says goodbye to her father. She comes back to Oskar’s room, her mouth still coated in her guardian’s dried blood, disrobes and climbs into bed with him (Maria Strid's costumes really make Eli's malaise and confusion all the more palpable). She has never known loss before and thus her turning to Oskar for comfort in her time of greatest need is beyond touching. They never face each other and Oskar is clearly out of his depth, but the two are completely in the moment and this scene’s tenderness is nearly unparalleled; rarely have child actors seemed so unapologetically, wonderfully childish. When Eli slowly takes Oskar’s hand, I nearly wept at the power of this movie and of cinema as an art.
Oh, and those of you who’re reading this going “it’s a love story, pfft! I’ll just see Saw V, thank you very much. We don’t need another Twilight!” shame on you. Please don’t misunderstand me, the movie works just as well as a horror film; Alfredson is just as at home melting a heart as he ripping one out. And oh, the horror! Let The Right One In is like the There Will Be Blood of horror films. It is quiet, unpredictable, wildly visual, gut-wrenchingly tense, and absolutely mesmerizing. So little actually happens, and what does is so masterfully understated that you can’t help but wait with bated breath from scene to scene. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography makes for one of the moodiest portrayals of cold weather in recent memory. As enthralled as I was by the awesomely beautiful story of pre-adolescent love and the search for understanding, I was absolutely spellbound by the scenes where the horror elements come into play. Watching Conny observe Oskar and plan his downfall internally is ten times as frightening because this is a film completely unafraid to put its heroes in danger. His classmates put Oskar in very real peril and it almost rivals the gruesome murders committed by his sunlight-fearing dream girl. Another point Let has in common with There Will Be Blood is it’s truly awesome and orgasmically violent climax. This and 28 Days Later now share the prize for greatest conclusion in any film. No other filmmaker has yet been brave enough to make its romantic peak coincide with the murder of children under 12 without losing any of his or the movie's integrity.
It’s funny to note how effortlessly a country enters a discourse and makes the homogenized major players seem like the big, monomaniacal teenagers they truly are. Go to netflix and look at their foreign horror; they have two categories: Italian and Japanese. You’ll find a French film and the odd Spanish production, but the point is that America’s scope is so narrow that it’s a wonder Let The Right One In got…well, let in (to use [rec] as an example, that film’s remake is currently making the rounds of multiplexes across the country, but it’s superior source film has yet to find an American distributor). Seeing as how Let The Right One In has exactly one historical precedent (Ingmar Bergman’s haunting and hallucinogenic Hour Of The Wolf), it could have been anything less than perfect and I would have been satisfied. In fact I probably would have sung its praises anyway seeing as how America’s idea of a good independent horror film is Teeth and it’s idea of a revisionist vampire movie ranges from the bad (Underworld, Interview With A Vampire, Lost Boys) to the absolutely unwatchable (Van Helsing, Bordello of Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn). However, not since Near Dark has there been so brilliant a vampire film; not ever has there been a better film about childhood. Let The Right One In is nothing short of perfect and will remain one of my favorite films for a long time.
Let The Right One In
by Tomas Alfredson
Open on a hopelessly beautiful, hopelessly middle class tenement building in a village outside Stockholm, Sweden. As 12-year-old child of divorce Oskar stands in his underwear practices his tough guy speech to a window, an old man and his young daughter unpack their belongings from a taxi cab and move into the apartment next door. Oskar is the victim of bullying and it’s not hard to see what makes him easy prey: he is pale, gangly even for a 12 year old, has long blonde hair his mother has clearly not looked at in sometime, he walks as if one leg were longer than the other, and his social weirdness manifests itself whenever he’s called on to talk in class. Clean cut bully Conny and his two not-so-brave cohorts Martin and Andreas make Oskar’s life as miserable as possible whenever they can fit it in. It isn’t until Oskar meets his new neighbor that things start to turn around for our young hero.We know things aren’t right when, in what might be the most beautifully composed evisceration ever filmed, the elder of Oskar’s two neighbors drugs a passerby, strings him up on a lamppost and cuts his throat. This might be an ordinary killing save for one thing; he catches the blood in a plastic jug. The old man’s plan, whatever it may be, is ruined when a runaway dog brings its owners to the scene forcing him to flee. This doesn’t make his ‘daughter’ too happy, who after a stern talking to issues what sounds like a hypothetical warning “Do I have to do this myself?” Shortly after this botched incident, Oskar is outside after dark threatening a tree at knife point when he catches the young girl spying on him. It will take a lot of coaxing before he learns her name (Eli), but she wants to make one thing clear; she may be the same age as Oskar, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be friends. This changes after they meet a few times and Eli develops a soft spot for Oskar; perhaps because she has a very adult secret that youthful playtime helps her forget. One night one of the neighborhood drunks stumbles home and Eli lures him under a bridge and savagely murders him with her teeth. Two significant developments then unfold; firstly is that after Eli does her victim in fully, she cries, clearly unhappy about her fate; secondly an old eccentric with a house full of cats happens to witness the murder. Eli’s father hides the body, but clearly things are about to change for the family.
Oskar starts seeing more and more of Eli; she teaches him to stand up for himself and soon he has a crush on her that takes up most of his attention whenever they’re apart. Eli is initially reluctant until the night her dad slips up and gets himself caught while trying to milk a neighborhood boy of his life essence; the old man chooses an incredibly painful method of concealing his identity and covering his tracks so that Eli is left unmolested by authorities. When she visits him in the hospital that night, he says farewell to her and gives her what he was unable to provide while they lived together. Eli visits Oskar that night and agrees to ‘go steady’ as he puts it. Because Eli has to do her own hunting and as she isn’t be as careful as her dad was, she leaves behind a calling card one night when she doesn’t finish off one of her victims; the poor woman’s drunkard boyfriend is understandably a little shocked when she becomes sensitive to daylight, is nearly eaten alive by cats and won’t shut up about a little girl infecting her with something. Time to do some investigating, eh? This guy isn’t any Van Helsing, but he has a pretty good idea who’s behind the whole mess. As if that weren’t enough problems for our heroes, Oskar manages to make yet another enemy. When Oskar takes Eli’s advice about not letting kids bully him anymore and lashes out at Conny with a stick at recess, the little terror’s older brother gets involved; I guess exceedingly stupid and violent behavior runs in the family.
If this movie has one clear precedent, it wouldn’t be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, either excellent Nosferatu movie, any of Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee’s takes on the subject, nor that oft-referenced teenage vampire trainwreck The Lost Boys. It wouldn’t even be some of the more recent child-horror films: your 6th Senses, The Rings, or any of Guillermo Del Toro’s three elegiac fairy tales, The Devil’s Backbone, Cronos, or Pan’s Labyrinth. No, if I could point to one film most likely to have been an influence on this film, I’d guess it would be Lasse Hallström’s My Life As A Dog. Another famous Swedish export (in fact perhaps the most famous non-Bergman Swedish film yet made; notice I didn’t say infamous; that honor would go to Alf Sjoberg’s I Am Curious) My Life As A Dog has many thematic similarities including a weak-willed boy infatuated with a much stronger female, pubescent growing pains, a lovely romantic story between two youths of starkly different types, a town full of characters on the fringe of the lead's lives who play important roles in the story proper, parents incapable of understanding their children, and adults in general being powerless to put themselves in the mindset of that thing they’re now least like and most afraid of in the world – a child. The film's theme of childhood being as mysterious as supernatural behavior reminds one of Robert Wise's great Curse of the Cat People, only with roles reversed and modernized. The same shimmering innocence pervades both films and Alfredson has Wise's respect for the extraordinary power of the imagination.
Let me digress for a moment and say that if I had an inner child, she would look and act something like Lina Leandersson does here; this 12 year old first-time actress is my hero. Her Eli, on top of scoring points for being an unrelentingly cute murderer, is one of the greatest characters in film history. Oskar and Eli spend most of their time together asking questions typical of 12 year olds, and its clear that they both suffer from arrested development, albeit for two different reasons. Oskar has his absent parents to thank for his naivete (Oskar has ten times more fun with his dad, but dad still hasn’t come clean about his homosexuality and is clearly ashamed of it, which puts a strain on their relationship), Eli has the fact that her life stopped being that of 12 year old years ago. Between Eli’s lack of friends her own age or any other relationships beyond her male caregiver, she is just as clueless about socialization as Oskar. This is most whimsically demonstrated when Oskar buys Eli a bag of candy in a misguided attempt to be kind. Eli, not wanting to seem rude, eats one and promptly vomits behind the vender’s stand; Oskar panics and hugs Eli, something, I gather from her ridged posture, that no one has done in quite some time. Both Oskar's frightened expectations and Eli's confused detachment ring as true as anything I've ever seen on film. Moments like this are what separates Let The Right One In from all of its contemporaries. Alfredson proves himself capable of providing every facet of John Ajvide Lindqvist‘s source novel and screenplay with equal amounts of care and grace. Incidentally, Lindqvist should receive accolade for both staying remarkably true to vampire lore, while still delivering a unique scenario in which to play with it (for every Martin there's a Dracula 2000 waiting to make it irrelevant). I knew that this movie was not simply good but transcendent just after Eli says goodbye to her father. She comes back to Oskar’s room, her mouth still coated in her guardian’s dried blood, disrobes and climbs into bed with him (Maria Strid's costumes really make Eli's malaise and confusion all the more palpable). She has never known loss before and thus her turning to Oskar for comfort in her time of greatest need is beyond touching. They never face each other and Oskar is clearly out of his depth, but the two are completely in the moment and this scene’s tenderness is nearly unparalleled; rarely have child actors seemed so unapologetically, wonderfully childish. When Eli slowly takes Oskar’s hand, I nearly wept at the power of this movie and of cinema as an art.
Oh, and those of you who’re reading this going “it’s a love story, pfft! I’ll just see Saw V, thank you very much. We don’t need another Twilight!” shame on you. Please don’t misunderstand me, the movie works just as well as a horror film; Alfredson is just as at home melting a heart as he ripping one out. And oh, the horror! Let The Right One In is like the There Will Be Blood of horror films. It is quiet, unpredictable, wildly visual, gut-wrenchingly tense, and absolutely mesmerizing. So little actually happens, and what does is so masterfully understated that you can’t help but wait with bated breath from scene to scene. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography makes for one of the moodiest portrayals of cold weather in recent memory. As enthralled as I was by the awesomely beautiful story of pre-adolescent love and the search for understanding, I was absolutely spellbound by the scenes where the horror elements come into play. Watching Conny observe Oskar and plan his downfall internally is ten times as frightening because this is a film completely unafraid to put its heroes in danger. His classmates put Oskar in very real peril and it almost rivals the gruesome murders committed by his sunlight-fearing dream girl. Another point Let has in common with There Will Be Blood is it’s truly awesome and orgasmically violent climax. This and 28 Days Later now share the prize for greatest conclusion in any film. No other filmmaker has yet been brave enough to make its romantic peak coincide with the murder of children under 12 without losing any of his or the movie's integrity.
It’s funny to note how effortlessly a country enters a discourse and makes the homogenized major players seem like the big, monomaniacal teenagers they truly are. Go to netflix and look at their foreign horror; they have two categories: Italian and Japanese. You’ll find a French film and the odd Spanish production, but the point is that America’s scope is so narrow that it’s a wonder Let The Right One In got…well, let in (to use [rec] as an example, that film’s remake is currently making the rounds of multiplexes across the country, but it’s superior source film has yet to find an American distributor). Seeing as how Let The Right One In has exactly one historical precedent (Ingmar Bergman’s haunting and hallucinogenic Hour Of The Wolf), it could have been anything less than perfect and I would have been satisfied. In fact I probably would have sung its praises anyway seeing as how America’s idea of a good independent horror film is Teeth and it’s idea of a revisionist vampire movie ranges from the bad (Underworld, Interview With A Vampire, Lost Boys) to the absolutely unwatchable (Van Helsing, Bordello of Blood, From Dusk Till Dawn). However, not since Near Dark has there been so brilliant a vampire film; not ever has there been a better film about childhood. Let The Right One In is nothing short of perfect and will remain one of my favorite films for a long time.
Beksinski
Zdzislaw Beksinski is a polish artist. He has, for many years created art that is haunting and timeless.
Beksinski's themes and images of whirring, boney apendages and of solitary figures in landscapes enormous, ancient and foreboding, have long been the stuff of nightmares as they appear in the works of other artists such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Weine, Stephen King, Aleksandr Ptushko, Dante Alighieri, Stanley Kubrick, HR Giger, and the makers of countless video games. His work is a testament to the transcendent quality of certain shapes and figures and illustrates that some things will never lose their ability to arrest. His website I found when looking at Guillermo Del Toro's favorite things on the director's fan page. Visiting www.beksinski.pl was one of the more rewarding experiences I've yet had on the internet.
Filled with endless chasms of dawn's colors and nameless forms moving through a limitless-yet-claustrophobic environment, Beksinski's paintings are just the tip of the iceberg. The website itself moves and breathes like plant life and the haunting music, done by none other than brilliant Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner (The Double Life of Veronique, Blue) carries you on this journey of skeletons and canines like a guiding wind. Beksinski's photographs, digital art, and black & white drawings are all beautiful and terrible and will all be just as alarming in 100 years.
Run, don't walk. See the colours. See the life.
Beksinski's themes and images of whirring, boney apendages and of solitary figures in landscapes enormous, ancient and foreboding, have long been the stuff of nightmares as they appear in the works of other artists such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Weine, Stephen King, Aleksandr Ptushko, Dante Alighieri, Stanley Kubrick, HR Giger, and the makers of countless video games. His work is a testament to the transcendent quality of certain shapes and figures and illustrates that some things will never lose their ability to arrest. His website I found when looking at Guillermo Del Toro's favorite things on the director's fan page. Visiting www.beksinski.pl was one of the more rewarding experiences I've yet had on the internet.
Filled with endless chasms of dawn's colors and nameless forms moving through a limitless-yet-claustrophobic environment, Beksinski's paintings are just the tip of the iceberg. The website itself moves and breathes like plant life and the haunting music, done by none other than brilliant Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner (The Double Life of Veronique, Blue) carries you on this journey of skeletons and canines like a guiding wind. Beksinski's photographs, digital art, and black & white drawings are all beautiful and terrible and will all be just as alarming in 100 years.
Run, don't walk. See the colours. See the life.
Bráhman
There are a number of illusory, iridescent elephants dancing about in my brain.
There was an older woman screaming at me, because she wanted me to vacate a room that she had reserved the day before. Were she not screaming about my incompetence as a human, I may have done just that.
Eventually, I returned to my room. A tall boy was there, he was of a dark complexion and exhibited highly feminine mannerisms. Venting, I explained to him that the woman was completely out of her right to ridicule me as she did.
The boy did not entirely understand. He acted apart from himself, like an ideal not often reached by man.
"It is your fault for dwelling on her actions. It is your burden to bear, choose you to bear it."
There was an older woman screaming at me, because she wanted me to vacate a room that she had reserved the day before. Were she not screaming about my incompetence as a human, I may have done just that.
Eventually, I returned to my room. A tall boy was there, he was of a dark complexion and exhibited highly feminine mannerisms. Venting, I explained to him that the woman was completely out of her right to ridicule me as she did.
The boy did not entirely understand. He acted apart from himself, like an ideal not often reached by man.
"It is your fault for dwelling on her actions. It is your burden to bear, choose you to bear it."
Lit-Rock from another Blog
More on John Cale to follow
Lit Rock is the phenomenon by which Bands or musicians will base a good deal of their music around themes, situations, and characters found in their favorite books. Today's reigning champion is undisputedly the Decemberists, who have based entire albums on books they've read. The Crane Wife, their fourth album released in 2006 was based on a Japanese fable frontman Colin Meloy found in a children's storybook. He and his other bandmates have at times worked in bookstores and so they understand the importance of the book in music and other arts. Meloy's lyrics read like a reworked Dickens or Orwell novel or possibly some lugubrious Irish play written while famine was at every door. He sings about love lost in tragic storms, giant whales, soldiers, priories, revenge at sea, jolly boats, wanton sailors, women of ill-repute haunting cobble stone streets, and cannibals. Indeed his work is all the more exciting for his picaresque (the name of the bands third album) tales of cowardice, love, and loss and his bandmates are able to spin utterly convincing sonic renderings of these scenes for him.
During concerts to support Picaresque, the band covered Wuthering Heights, a song by Kate Bush whom Meloy routinely described as the mother of 'lit rock' as they know it. Bush certainly was the master of reinterpreting classic novels to timeless pop songs, but she has one predecessor who doesn't regularly get his due. Aside from the countless singers who referenced that classic that never goes out of print, The Bible, there is one singer who routinely name checked his favorite authors in his sublime pop songs. John Cale, one-time bass and viola player for The Velvet Underground, embarked on his solo career in 1970 and two albums in let the world know the joy of reading. Paris 1919, his sophomore record, is filled with layered literary references and splendidly written tributes to the great works that inspired him to put pen to paper. In the grooves of Paris, you'll find an homage to Dylan Thomas' great and ageless poem A Child's Christmas in Wales, a song named for that great spinner of intriguing yarns Graham Greene, and a rocker named for Shakespeare's Danish prince.
Lit Rock today is a slightly different species than it once was. It, for example, now knows no genre. Bands like White Rabbits wear their bookshelves on their sleeves and their music is fittingly sensitive and listenable, yet on the other end of the spectrum lies something equally as pleasing. Metal band Mastodon based their second record Leviathan on Moby Dick at the suggestion of drummer Brann Dailor. It's now not uncommon to find screamo bands with names like Gatsby's American Dream. There are other bands that take a subtler approach, but the literary influence is there - its nearly impossible to picture Tokyo Police Club without the writings of William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick to place it next to; ditto Cold War Kids with Robert Louis Stevenson and Allen Ginsberg. Canadian dream-pop band Stars took their love of the written word to a whole new level when they asked Daniel Handler (alias Lemony Snickett, the writer of Children's fiction) to write a short story to correspond with the lyrical themes of their album In Our Bedroom After The War so that they could include it in the liner notes. In Our Bedroom is itself a cohesive story with arc and recurring themes. And on the converse side of this is the Gothic Archies, a band who composed a soundtrack to be heard along with each of the books Handler wrote under his Snickett moniker.
Books are a gift that will never stop giving and continue to reach audiences well beyond the literary world. The greatest compliment I've ever received with regard to my music came when a singer I'd never met told me that my music struck him like a classic novel. In the words of my friend and fellow song-writer John Howell "always read to your children, because it makes all the difference".
Lit Rock is the phenomenon by which Bands or musicians will base a good deal of their music around themes, situations, and characters found in their favorite books. Today's reigning champion is undisputedly the Decemberists, who have based entire albums on books they've read. The Crane Wife, their fourth album released in 2006 was based on a Japanese fable frontman Colin Meloy found in a children's storybook. He and his other bandmates have at times worked in bookstores and so they understand the importance of the book in music and other arts. Meloy's lyrics read like a reworked Dickens or Orwell novel or possibly some lugubrious Irish play written while famine was at every door. He sings about love lost in tragic storms, giant whales, soldiers, priories, revenge at sea, jolly boats, wanton sailors, women of ill-repute haunting cobble stone streets, and cannibals. Indeed his work is all the more exciting for his picaresque (the name of the bands third album) tales of cowardice, love, and loss and his bandmates are able to spin utterly convincing sonic renderings of these scenes for him.
During concerts to support Picaresque, the band covered Wuthering Heights, a song by Kate Bush whom Meloy routinely described as the mother of 'lit rock' as they know it. Bush certainly was the master of reinterpreting classic novels to timeless pop songs, but she has one predecessor who doesn't regularly get his due. Aside from the countless singers who referenced that classic that never goes out of print, The Bible, there is one singer who routinely name checked his favorite authors in his sublime pop songs. John Cale, one-time bass and viola player for The Velvet Underground, embarked on his solo career in 1970 and two albums in let the world know the joy of reading. Paris 1919, his sophomore record, is filled with layered literary references and splendidly written tributes to the great works that inspired him to put pen to paper. In the grooves of Paris, you'll find an homage to Dylan Thomas' great and ageless poem A Child's Christmas in Wales, a song named for that great spinner of intriguing yarns Graham Greene, and a rocker named for Shakespeare's Danish prince.
Lit Rock today is a slightly different species than it once was. It, for example, now knows no genre. Bands like White Rabbits wear their bookshelves on their sleeves and their music is fittingly sensitive and listenable, yet on the other end of the spectrum lies something equally as pleasing. Metal band Mastodon based their second record Leviathan on Moby Dick at the suggestion of drummer Brann Dailor. It's now not uncommon to find screamo bands with names like Gatsby's American Dream. There are other bands that take a subtler approach, but the literary influence is there - its nearly impossible to picture Tokyo Police Club without the writings of William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick to place it next to; ditto Cold War Kids with Robert Louis Stevenson and Allen Ginsberg. Canadian dream-pop band Stars took their love of the written word to a whole new level when they asked Daniel Handler (alias Lemony Snickett, the writer of Children's fiction) to write a short story to correspond with the lyrical themes of their album In Our Bedroom After The War so that they could include it in the liner notes. In Our Bedroom is itself a cohesive story with arc and recurring themes. And on the converse side of this is the Gothic Archies, a band who composed a soundtrack to be heard along with each of the books Handler wrote under his Snickett moniker.
Books are a gift that will never stop giving and continue to reach audiences well beyond the literary world. The greatest compliment I've ever received with regard to my music came when a singer I'd never met told me that my music struck him like a classic novel. In the words of my friend and fellow song-writer John Howell "always read to your children, because it makes all the difference".
The Newman-Os Tarot Spread
The positions are fourfold, existing in two divisions of two:
Demeanour. This is the analytical basis for the reading's subject. It represents the conclusion to which most people would rationalise.
The cards are positioned thus:
Demeanour. This is the analytical basis for the reading's subject. It represents the conclusion to which most people would rationalise.
Simulacra. The apparent, false reality of the reading subject. It is revealed by Jung's endopsych.Anima Mundi. This is the mystical basis for the reading's subject. It represents an overarching truth grounded outside of intellectualism.
Objectivity. The true, factual circumstance regarding the reading subject. It is revealed by Jung's ectopsych.
Pattern. A uniting element which all aspects of the reading subject have in common.
Bráhman. Where the pattern only united the reading subject's multifarious facets, Bráhman is the ultimate fundament upon which all these are based.
The cards are positioned thus:
- First, simulacra is placed in the low position. It is the most vulgar state of understanding, a mask worn upon a farce.
- Second, objectivity is placed immediately about the simulacra, in the high position. This represents a "rising up" from a dissociation with reality.
- Thirdly, pattern is placed immediately to the left of the seam created by the separation of the low and high positions, in the secondary position. It represents an encompassing of the demeanour cards, they exist only within patterns which define their composition.
- Finally, Bráhman is placed opposition pattern, in the primary (or final) position. It represents a linear progression, both chronological and intellectual, from left to right; and a condensation of both demeanour and pattern. The completed arrangement is that of a cross, symbolising Christ.
My Favourite Film Number 6
This is part of my effort to write about my 100 favorite films in two pages or less. The new Format looks stellar, no? Shelly did a remarkable job.
The Wild Bunch
by Sam Peckinpah
“I believe in the innocence of Children,” said Sam Peckinpah, one of the most exciting men who ever lived. He was a womanizer, tyrant, alcoholic, bastard, and a film director. His films featured grit, violence and sex to a degree few commercial filmmakers have ever dared. His movies feature true vulgarity and bacchanalia, whether in the form of one of the most narrow-minded depictions of rape ever filmed, or of two men bathing in a vat of wine with three whores, or of Warren Oates pouring tequila on his penis to kill the crabs his prostitute girlfriend has just given him. He was a difficult man, but one with vision and guts. While others moved in progressive directions, leaving ordinary themes behind for more complex ones, some opted to ignore the change in the times and keep making the same manner of film they always had. Peckinpah decided to breathe life into a genre that nearly everyone had forgotten about. The biggest difference between his and most other westerns is simply in the way he fills the background. Shot on location with real Mexican people, magnificent costume and production design, his films brim with vitality even when nothing happens. His films have a naturalistic quality in their backgrounds that even the greatest of westerns lack. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography helped, of course, in bringing a new Mise-en-scene to a dying breed of film. Things move freely and wildly in Peckinpah films and Ballard’s camera caught it all magnificently (though it is impressive to watch the Director’s cut that has been shown in theatres in recent years, it hasn’t been digitally remastered and so the genius of Ballard’s cinematography goes somewhat unnoticed). His attitude toward children played a crucial role in this, his crowning moment as an artist, and it differs greatly from that of his many heroes and predecessors – Rene Clement, Vittorio De Sica, Carol Reed, Frank Capra, Robert Wise – in that he sees their innocence as something that allows them the greatest potential. They do not see their behavior as wrong and so they do what they feel is right, what gives them greatest pleasure. They act violently toward nature, respect what they please and act out of this sense of respect. Now who they respect is another matter entirely, as they get to choose who they feel responsibility towards; themselves or those with the power to reward them. The only film that really captures every facet of Sam Peckinpah’s beliefs, the one that changed his life, gave his career it’s direction and altered the lives of many, many people is The Wild Bunch.
Sam Peckinpah was an outsider to the world of film; his views on plot structure and his steadfast refusal to compromise had nearly succeeded in taking his one creative output away from him. When Hollywood recognized once again the magnitude of Peckinpah’s creative genius, the first shot they gave him was all he needed and it fit him like a glove. Westerns until the mid 1960s had always basically followed certain archetypes (Anthony Mann’s films obviously prove the exception, ditto Johnny Guitar). The element of westerns which had yet to be rewritten was that the lead characters always apostrophize about their ideals and what it is they’d be willing to die for; Peckinpah’s triumphant return to the big screen unflinchingly shows what it looks like when men decide to walk the walk. They do so in one of the screen’s most electrifying gun battles ever filmed. The scene, famous for it’s behind-the-scenes stores of limited extras and uniforms, makes perfect use of Sam’s feverish editing and his love of the squib (fake blood spurting from bullet-sized pockets hidden in clothing). The opening and closing orgy of gun violence will always be as exciting to me as the first time I saw it. On the big screen, it’s the stuff of dreams; so perfect is the montage of both gunfights that you’re unknowingly on the edge of your seat when they’re through.
The story concerns a gang of aging criminals around the time of the Mexican Revolution in 1913, led by Pike Bishop (William Holden in what has to be the finest performance of his career). The bunch, Dutch (Ernest Borgnine, his finest hour), Brother’s Lyle (Warren Oates, who steals many of his scenes with his demented anger) & Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson, who despite being covered in filth can’t help but look elegant), feisty new recruit Angel (Jaime Sanchez, who must be one of the first Mexicans to portray a heroic figure in an American produced film), and horse watcher Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien, who should have won an Oscar for his Walter Huston act) drifts around Mexico contemplating their next move; they’re wanted by the law and by a posse of inept bounty hunters hired by the railroad headed by Pike’s former partner Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan in one of his best roles). It was Pike’s arrogance that landed Deke in Prison and now the railroad has bribed him with freedom into tracking his old friend down. Thornton and Pike understand that things can’t change between the two of them, and that they’ll never stop their game of cat and mouse. This dynamic is not uncommon in many westerns, but excluding Sam Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James, the feeling of romantic tension between these two men is unique to the genre. Indeed it is the shock in William Holden’s face when he thinks Thornton has been killed in the demolition of a bridge and the hangdog look on Robert Ryan’s face after the final showdown has claimed his erstwhile accomplice’s life that cements the other half of the story’s dynamism. If these men didn’t care, neither would we. Lawmen chase bad guys because they have to; Thornton and Bishop have reason enough to get quit of the whole business, but it would almost certainly mean abandoning the other, which neither can face.
The two men share the same haunted flashbacks, but it’s the memory of the past that keeps them going. In fact it’s the memory of the past that keeps everyone in the film’s universe going. The story takes Pike and his men from a botched railroad heist into Mexico where they agree to steal guns for a General combating Pancho Villa. During a brief stop in Angel’s village before meeting the General, Pike and Sykes talk to an old man who helps the revolutionaries fight local oppressors who wish to steal their land. Watching Tector & Lyle dancing and acting foolishly, Pike says how funny it is that grown men can act like children when they want to. The old man tells him that even the worst men pine for their childhood. The end of the road is not too far for Pike and he knows it, so even if it isn’t childhood he wants, he’d take his earlier years, when he could get on his horse without stumbling that he wishes to relive. He could act as ruthlessly as the children who torment scorpions with fire ants that they pass on their way to rob the railroad. Sykes, Deke, Pike, and Dutch all see that their tenure as gunmen is coming to a rapid close, the only question is “how’s it going to end?” In a traditional western, the ending would look something like the departure from Angel’s village (a scene Peckinpah improvised): everyone gathered in the main drag to see these men off.
In Peckinpah’s world of absolution, they must give their lives for the one thing they have left to believe them. Interestingly, it wasn’t until seeing this movie on the big screen that I thought about what gunfighters must think of death. When each member of the gang is laid down, they seem to come to rest more than being torn asunder. Is death so unyielding a possibility that when it finally arrives is it simply the anticipated arrival of an inevitable step (is it welcome?). These men don’t seem too bothered about their own deaths; it’s the falling of their brothers in arms that gets them.
When Angel decides to steal a box of the General’s guns so his people can defend themselves, he is caught and punished by the general. With Thornton and the army waiting for them, they have little reason to leave town, but with Angel being towed behind the General’s car through the town square, staying feels just as bad. The scriptwriter Waylon Green commented that Pike’s last words to his men before they stroll, bold as brass through town, their guns in their arms, to go meet the General, were not enough. Pike simply barks as he has throughout the entire film “Let’s go,” and the message is clear; everything he says is completely unambiguous whether his words are makes no difference. Peckinpah, as his daughter Sharon has noted, clearly modeled Pike Bishop on himself, mannerisms and all. So what we have is a man searching for a time when he could be as bold and free as he could be, as a child is. The Wild Bunch was simply a movie with great dialogue and two of the best gunfights in history until very recently. There’s a recording of Peckinpah where he talks about something he used to do as a child. He was infatuated with Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” and so memorized it and then started acting it out. Soon he had as many as 50 kids involved in helping him recreate the scene from Tennyson’s work. On this recording beautifully sums up his filmmaking career in so concise and pure a way that I was floored by his simplicity: “I guess I’m still doing that.” Never before had The Wild Bunch or it’s creator seemed so human. I was reminded of Arthur Lee of the band Love who received a premonition that he would die at age 26 and so strove to make his next (and presumably last) record show the contents of his soul; the result, Forever Changes, is one of the greatest records of all time, but it’s not without it’s dark and strange moments. Sam Peckinpah was, unbeknownst to audiences, baring his soul to the world. Pike’s dilemma was his dilemma: where do you go when the world has refused you? When all you want is to be able to be free again? He was a monster and mad scientist on the set because he needed the movie to be perfect, he needed the world to see what lay within him and could not be hemmed in by a script. When The Wild Bunch wrapped, Sam left his technicians, found an empty corner in the shooting space and wept like a child. This was it, his one chance and it’s perfect. It says everything Sam Peckinpah could not. He drank himself to death in 1984 leaving a lot of friends, a lot of enemies, a host of memories good and bad, and at least one legendary film behind.
The Wild Bunch
by Sam Peckinpah
“I believe in the innocence of Children,” said Sam Peckinpah, one of the most exciting men who ever lived. He was a womanizer, tyrant, alcoholic, bastard, and a film director. His films featured grit, violence and sex to a degree few commercial filmmakers have ever dared. His movies feature true vulgarity and bacchanalia, whether in the form of one of the most narrow-minded depictions of rape ever filmed, or of two men bathing in a vat of wine with three whores, or of Warren Oates pouring tequila on his penis to kill the crabs his prostitute girlfriend has just given him. He was a difficult man, but one with vision and guts. While others moved in progressive directions, leaving ordinary themes behind for more complex ones, some opted to ignore the change in the times and keep making the same manner of film they always had. Peckinpah decided to breathe life into a genre that nearly everyone had forgotten about. The biggest difference between his and most other westerns is simply in the way he fills the background. Shot on location with real Mexican people, magnificent costume and production design, his films brim with vitality even when nothing happens. His films have a naturalistic quality in their backgrounds that even the greatest of westerns lack. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography helped, of course, in bringing a new Mise-en-scene to a dying breed of film. Things move freely and wildly in Peckinpah films and Ballard’s camera caught it all magnificently (though it is impressive to watch the Director’s cut that has been shown in theatres in recent years, it hasn’t been digitally remastered and so the genius of Ballard’s cinematography goes somewhat unnoticed). His attitude toward children played a crucial role in this, his crowning moment as an artist, and it differs greatly from that of his many heroes and predecessors – Rene Clement, Vittorio De Sica, Carol Reed, Frank Capra, Robert Wise – in that he sees their innocence as something that allows them the greatest potential. They do not see their behavior as wrong and so they do what they feel is right, what gives them greatest pleasure. They act violently toward nature, respect what they please and act out of this sense of respect. Now who they respect is another matter entirely, as they get to choose who they feel responsibility towards; themselves or those with the power to reward them. The only film that really captures every facet of Sam Peckinpah’s beliefs, the one that changed his life, gave his career it’s direction and altered the lives of many, many people is The Wild Bunch.
Sam Peckinpah was an outsider to the world of film; his views on plot structure and his steadfast refusal to compromise had nearly succeeded in taking his one creative output away from him. When Hollywood recognized once again the magnitude of Peckinpah’s creative genius, the first shot they gave him was all he needed and it fit him like a glove. Westerns until the mid 1960s had always basically followed certain archetypes (Anthony Mann’s films obviously prove the exception, ditto Johnny Guitar). The element of westerns which had yet to be rewritten was that the lead characters always apostrophize about their ideals and what it is they’d be willing to die for; Peckinpah’s triumphant return to the big screen unflinchingly shows what it looks like when men decide to walk the walk. They do so in one of the screen’s most electrifying gun battles ever filmed. The scene, famous for it’s behind-the-scenes stores of limited extras and uniforms, makes perfect use of Sam’s feverish editing and his love of the squib (fake blood spurting from bullet-sized pockets hidden in clothing). The opening and closing orgy of gun violence will always be as exciting to me as the first time I saw it. On the big screen, it’s the stuff of dreams; so perfect is the montage of both gunfights that you’re unknowingly on the edge of your seat when they’re through.
The story concerns a gang of aging criminals around the time of the Mexican Revolution in 1913, led by Pike Bishop (William Holden in what has to be the finest performance of his career). The bunch, Dutch (Ernest Borgnine, his finest hour), Brother’s Lyle (Warren Oates, who steals many of his scenes with his demented anger) & Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson, who despite being covered in filth can’t help but look elegant), feisty new recruit Angel (Jaime Sanchez, who must be one of the first Mexicans to portray a heroic figure in an American produced film), and horse watcher Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien, who should have won an Oscar for his Walter Huston act) drifts around Mexico contemplating their next move; they’re wanted by the law and by a posse of inept bounty hunters hired by the railroad headed by Pike’s former partner Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan in one of his best roles). It was Pike’s arrogance that landed Deke in Prison and now the railroad has bribed him with freedom into tracking his old friend down. Thornton and Pike understand that things can’t change between the two of them, and that they’ll never stop their game of cat and mouse. This dynamic is not uncommon in many westerns, but excluding Sam Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James, the feeling of romantic tension between these two men is unique to the genre. Indeed it is the shock in William Holden’s face when he thinks Thornton has been killed in the demolition of a bridge and the hangdog look on Robert Ryan’s face after the final showdown has claimed his erstwhile accomplice’s life that cements the other half of the story’s dynamism. If these men didn’t care, neither would we. Lawmen chase bad guys because they have to; Thornton and Bishop have reason enough to get quit of the whole business, but it would almost certainly mean abandoning the other, which neither can face.
The two men share the same haunted flashbacks, but it’s the memory of the past that keeps them going. In fact it’s the memory of the past that keeps everyone in the film’s universe going. The story takes Pike and his men from a botched railroad heist into Mexico where they agree to steal guns for a General combating Pancho Villa. During a brief stop in Angel’s village before meeting the General, Pike and Sykes talk to an old man who helps the revolutionaries fight local oppressors who wish to steal their land. Watching Tector & Lyle dancing and acting foolishly, Pike says how funny it is that grown men can act like children when they want to. The old man tells him that even the worst men pine for their childhood. The end of the road is not too far for Pike and he knows it, so even if it isn’t childhood he wants, he’d take his earlier years, when he could get on his horse without stumbling that he wishes to relive. He could act as ruthlessly as the children who torment scorpions with fire ants that they pass on their way to rob the railroad. Sykes, Deke, Pike, and Dutch all see that their tenure as gunmen is coming to a rapid close, the only question is “how’s it going to end?” In a traditional western, the ending would look something like the departure from Angel’s village (a scene Peckinpah improvised): everyone gathered in the main drag to see these men off.
In Peckinpah’s world of absolution, they must give their lives for the one thing they have left to believe them. Interestingly, it wasn’t until seeing this movie on the big screen that I thought about what gunfighters must think of death. When each member of the gang is laid down, they seem to come to rest more than being torn asunder. Is death so unyielding a possibility that when it finally arrives is it simply the anticipated arrival of an inevitable step (is it welcome?). These men don’t seem too bothered about their own deaths; it’s the falling of their brothers in arms that gets them.
When Angel decides to steal a box of the General’s guns so his people can defend themselves, he is caught and punished by the general. With Thornton and the army waiting for them, they have little reason to leave town, but with Angel being towed behind the General’s car through the town square, staying feels just as bad. The scriptwriter Waylon Green commented that Pike’s last words to his men before they stroll, bold as brass through town, their guns in their arms, to go meet the General, were not enough. Pike simply barks as he has throughout the entire film “Let’s go,” and the message is clear; everything he says is completely unambiguous whether his words are makes no difference. Peckinpah, as his daughter Sharon has noted, clearly modeled Pike Bishop on himself, mannerisms and all. So what we have is a man searching for a time when he could be as bold and free as he could be, as a child is. The Wild Bunch was simply a movie with great dialogue and two of the best gunfights in history until very recently. There’s a recording of Peckinpah where he talks about something he used to do as a child. He was infatuated with Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” and so memorized it and then started acting it out. Soon he had as many as 50 kids involved in helping him recreate the scene from Tennyson’s work. On this recording beautifully sums up his filmmaking career in so concise and pure a way that I was floored by his simplicity: “I guess I’m still doing that.” Never before had The Wild Bunch or it’s creator seemed so human. I was reminded of Arthur Lee of the band Love who received a premonition that he would die at age 26 and so strove to make his next (and presumably last) record show the contents of his soul; the result, Forever Changes, is one of the greatest records of all time, but it’s not without it’s dark and strange moments. Sam Peckinpah was, unbeknownst to audiences, baring his soul to the world. Pike’s dilemma was his dilemma: where do you go when the world has refused you? When all you want is to be able to be free again? He was a monster and mad scientist on the set because he needed the movie to be perfect, he needed the world to see what lay within him and could not be hemmed in by a script. When The Wild Bunch wrapped, Sam left his technicians, found an empty corner in the shooting space and wept like a child. This was it, his one chance and it’s perfect. It says everything Sam Peckinpah could not. He drank himself to death in 1984 leaving a lot of friends, a lot of enemies, a host of memories good and bad, and at least one legendary film behind.
Von Trier And Women
Lars Von Trier fits into cinematic history in a way that few other personalities do. His view of the world, of film, and of the human condition are perhaps the most cynical and opaque a director of such a reputation has ever had. With the possible exception of Pier Paolo Pasolini, his punishment of characters is unrivaled in the world of film, even in the notoriously bleak world of Scandinavian cinema. His films have shown the death of children and perhaps most famously unflinchingly showed the last ten minutes of a woman’s life before she is hanged. It makes perfect sense then that one of his first feature length films would be a take on the infanticidal revenge tale, Medea.
Medea is the story of a woman’s revenge on her husband, Jason, after he abandons her and their two children in favor of marrying a princess. Jason’s motives are never entirely clear (they’ve long been the topic of scholarly debate and literary criticism), but what is completely unambiguous is the way in which Medea responds to her misfortune. Von Trier, working from a script by the late Danish auteur Carl Theodor Dreyer, takes one angle of the myth, that because Medea is part-god, her inhuman actions are made all the easier, and pulls it out of context to construct a myth in line with his cinematic ethos. Von Trier believes in showing punishment on screen, one can assume, because art imitates life. His movies are especially hard on women; it is easy to write his motives in choosing the project as misogynistic, but that would be to ignore the other half of the story. To say that Medea is misogynistic is to agree that Medea has but one side to her character. It is the duality of characters in excruciatingly adverse situations that makes Von Trier’s film’s both fascinating and almost impossible to sit through without squirming.
Medea’s first act establishes the abandonment felt by its heroine by showing her alone in desolate sea-side fields, and boggy marshes. Her clothes are plain, she is tired and drawn; She drags her two children behind her as if they were luggage, clearly worn down, but she never forgets them. The focus is on sympathizing with this poor woman as her situation goes from bad to worse. She is effectively humiliated, abused mentally and physically and made to feel old and unattractive, first by Jason and then by his bride. Jason’s gesture of leaving her would have been enough were it not for the uncertainty about their children. Medea wants Jason to have them because they will have a healthier life with him, but Jason is unsure whether he wants them, and is certain his new bride will resent their presence and deny their place in his life. What follows is a series of games the adults play with one another, the children being only a tool by which to achieve their ends, though they often take a backseat to sex.
Jason’s bride will not let him touch her until he divorces Medea; Jason lords the fate of their children over Medea’s head; in return Medea tries to warn him about what becomes of his breed of louse. It isn’t until the last act that she too uses earthly desires to feebly attempt to meet her needs. Sex, it seems is the weapon of the mortal, Medea only resorts to it when she sees no other way of communicating with her emotionally vacant nemesis. When the undeniably human approach she takes (using her children to secure her family’s safety), she resorts to awakening Jason to the consequences of his action by making him believe she will sleep with him once more. During this failed seduction, Von Trier places his characters in a decidedly unreal landscape (a very primitive blue screen effect, purposely jarring), reinforcing their separation from each other and ordinary emotions. Their thoughts and actions place them so far from humanity, that the world they once walked through cannot support them; their humanity has left them. The only difference between them now is the actions they have left to take. Jason agrees to take the children off of Medea’s hands after his bride meets them and agrees to act as their surrogate. This is the final straw for Medea, who then wounds Jason in a god-like fashion.
If we take Jason and Medea’s back story into consideration, that he had braved the harpies, war, and the seven-heads of the Hydra to save his people, a few things become clear. The first is that he is a man of no small constitution, the second is that he is no stranger to hard times. It is both easy and difficult to comprehend his decision to abandon his family, but Von Trier and Dreyer make it clearer that his id rather than his conscious is at work. Try as he might to explain to Medea that his decision is made out of love, his groping at his luscious new bride is about as clear as possible. How then do you wound a man with little feeling and brute strength? Medea discovers that the only way to harm such a man who has outlived the god’s estimation of him by fighting mythical beasts is to punish him on a purely human level. By framing him for wife’s murder and killing his children, not only has Medea finally done what no god could do (hurt him), but she has sealed his fate. Societal norms are his undoing, not his inability to conquer beasts and legions of men. Von Trier keeps the dramatic action on a human level, even if the devices by which the plot is set in motion are slightly mythic (the poison crown Medea uses to slay Jason’s bride, for example). The murders she commits are something so simple only a human could do it, and watching it is as painful as anything we could experience life. The pain of being a human is a recurring motif in Von Trier’s work, and he often has to go to absurd lengths to paint what he believes to be both faithful and artistic. How are we to take the villains who go unpunished in his debut Element of Crime or his television mini-series Kingdom Hospital? Or the tragic heroines of Dogville or Dancer In The Dark? Their suffering is so complete that it transcends its maudlin nature and achieves a level of tragedy that seems almost sublime. Medea is the first film he made where the female perspective is the only one we are given. The grey, marshy landscape Medea trudges into and leaves empty-handed are the mires of femininity and the uphill battle of dealing with societal pressures. In the accompanying myth, Medea abandons her male family to be with Jason, another strong male figure.
She is then cyclically discarded and left to bear the fruits of her marriage on her own. In a precursor to many stories of contraception, she wounds Jason’s pride by taking his male heir from him, and castrates him by murdering his healthy young bride. Her actions are so definitive that we needn’t see the end result; the murder of her children is more important than Jason’s or her own fate. Von Trier, as is his wont, doesn’t concern himself with the fate of his hero, he needs only to show the course they are on. If the cycle will be broken, he will break it himself; if it remains the same, he will leave it open-ended. In Dogville and again in Manderlay he sets his heroine Grace on a course of failed self-discovery, hemmed in on all sides by the darker regions of human nature. Selma in Dancer In The Dark has done all that her good nature will allow her to, and so the end of her life is a necessity. There is no ambiguity of the cycle of life, and there can be only one outcome; Von Trier wants to act only as an observer, but cannot hide his sympathy for the damned.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for winter.
Medea is the story of a woman’s revenge on her husband, Jason, after he abandons her and their two children in favor of marrying a princess. Jason’s motives are never entirely clear (they’ve long been the topic of scholarly debate and literary criticism), but what is completely unambiguous is the way in which Medea responds to her misfortune. Von Trier, working from a script by the late Danish auteur Carl Theodor Dreyer, takes one angle of the myth, that because Medea is part-god, her inhuman actions are made all the easier, and pulls it out of context to construct a myth in line with his cinematic ethos. Von Trier believes in showing punishment on screen, one can assume, because art imitates life. His movies are especially hard on women; it is easy to write his motives in choosing the project as misogynistic, but that would be to ignore the other half of the story. To say that Medea is misogynistic is to agree that Medea has but one side to her character. It is the duality of characters in excruciatingly adverse situations that makes Von Trier’s film’s both fascinating and almost impossible to sit through without squirming.
Medea’s first act establishes the abandonment felt by its heroine by showing her alone in desolate sea-side fields, and boggy marshes. Her clothes are plain, she is tired and drawn; She drags her two children behind her as if they were luggage, clearly worn down, but she never forgets them. The focus is on sympathizing with this poor woman as her situation goes from bad to worse. She is effectively humiliated, abused mentally and physically and made to feel old and unattractive, first by Jason and then by his bride. Jason’s gesture of leaving her would have been enough were it not for the uncertainty about their children. Medea wants Jason to have them because they will have a healthier life with him, but Jason is unsure whether he wants them, and is certain his new bride will resent their presence and deny their place in his life. What follows is a series of games the adults play with one another, the children being only a tool by which to achieve their ends, though they often take a backseat to sex.
Jason’s bride will not let him touch her until he divorces Medea; Jason lords the fate of their children over Medea’s head; in return Medea tries to warn him about what becomes of his breed of louse. It isn’t until the last act that she too uses earthly desires to feebly attempt to meet her needs. Sex, it seems is the weapon of the mortal, Medea only resorts to it when she sees no other way of communicating with her emotionally vacant nemesis. When the undeniably human approach she takes (using her children to secure her family’s safety), she resorts to awakening Jason to the consequences of his action by making him believe she will sleep with him once more. During this failed seduction, Von Trier places his characters in a decidedly unreal landscape (a very primitive blue screen effect, purposely jarring), reinforcing their separation from each other and ordinary emotions. Their thoughts and actions place them so far from humanity, that the world they once walked through cannot support them; their humanity has left them. The only difference between them now is the actions they have left to take. Jason agrees to take the children off of Medea’s hands after his bride meets them and agrees to act as their surrogate. This is the final straw for Medea, who then wounds Jason in a god-like fashion.
If we take Jason and Medea’s back story into consideration, that he had braved the harpies, war, and the seven-heads of the Hydra to save his people, a few things become clear. The first is that he is a man of no small constitution, the second is that he is no stranger to hard times. It is both easy and difficult to comprehend his decision to abandon his family, but Von Trier and Dreyer make it clearer that his id rather than his conscious is at work. Try as he might to explain to Medea that his decision is made out of love, his groping at his luscious new bride is about as clear as possible. How then do you wound a man with little feeling and brute strength? Medea discovers that the only way to harm such a man who has outlived the god’s estimation of him by fighting mythical beasts is to punish him on a purely human level. By framing him for wife’s murder and killing his children, not only has Medea finally done what no god could do (hurt him), but she has sealed his fate. Societal norms are his undoing, not his inability to conquer beasts and legions of men. Von Trier keeps the dramatic action on a human level, even if the devices by which the plot is set in motion are slightly mythic (the poison crown Medea uses to slay Jason’s bride, for example). The murders she commits are something so simple only a human could do it, and watching it is as painful as anything we could experience life. The pain of being a human is a recurring motif in Von Trier’s work, and he often has to go to absurd lengths to paint what he believes to be both faithful and artistic. How are we to take the villains who go unpunished in his debut Element of Crime or his television mini-series Kingdom Hospital? Or the tragic heroines of Dogville or Dancer In The Dark? Their suffering is so complete that it transcends its maudlin nature and achieves a level of tragedy that seems almost sublime. Medea is the first film he made where the female perspective is the only one we are given. The grey, marshy landscape Medea trudges into and leaves empty-handed are the mires of femininity and the uphill battle of dealing with societal pressures. In the accompanying myth, Medea abandons her male family to be with Jason, another strong male figure.
She is then cyclically discarded and left to bear the fruits of her marriage on her own. In a precursor to many stories of contraception, she wounds Jason’s pride by taking his male heir from him, and castrates him by murdering his healthy young bride. Her actions are so definitive that we needn’t see the end result; the murder of her children is more important than Jason’s or her own fate. Von Trier, as is his wont, doesn’t concern himself with the fate of his hero, he needs only to show the course they are on. If the cycle will be broken, he will break it himself; if it remains the same, he will leave it open-ended. In Dogville and again in Manderlay he sets his heroine Grace on a course of failed self-discovery, hemmed in on all sides by the darker regions of human nature. Selma in Dancer In The Dark has done all that her good nature will allow her to, and so the end of her life is a necessity. There is no ambiguity of the cycle of life, and there can be only one outcome; Von Trier wants to act only as an observer, but cannot hide his sympathy for the damned.
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for winter.
New Music
Ok, something brief for fans of music you wouldn't find just by looking or listening.
Nat Baldwin - Nat Baldwin is an upright bass player who also happens to write incredibly beautiful not-quite-pop songs. He's basically a one-man Kronos Quartet playing Philip Glass, but with a voice like Halfway between Jeff Buckley and Joey Burns of Calexico. He also injects his songs with momentary John Cage style avant garde freakouts and blips. His arrangements and instrument choices are left-field in the best possible way. Surprise after Surprise confronts the listener. He is a genius, friends. No two ways.
Tulsa - Pastoral, soulful foursome from Cambridge who have that great country sound, even if their music is made in a city. Like some of my other favorite new-wave country influenced bands like Honeychurch and Fleet Foxes they have that sweet, amber-tinted soundscape down and can pull off a timeless musical happening whether in a full band setting or a Carter Tanton solo sitting. Real ageless type stuff. Their on Park the Van and their getting huge, so listen now so you can tell everyone you did it before it was cool.
Thomas Francis Takes His Chances - This wonderfully weird New Jersey band just opened for Sunset Rubdown at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia and they assure me that their going to start taking themselves seriously. I hope they do because they are an exciting musical feast. Jarring dystopian lyrics and a lot of really interesting production design make them a unique offering indeed. A little early Modest Mouse, a little Devendra Banhart, a little Captain Beefheart, a lot of fun
Nat Baldwin - Nat Baldwin is an upright bass player who also happens to write incredibly beautiful not-quite-pop songs. He's basically a one-man Kronos Quartet playing Philip Glass, but with a voice like Halfway between Jeff Buckley and Joey Burns of Calexico. He also injects his songs with momentary John Cage style avant garde freakouts and blips. His arrangements and instrument choices are left-field in the best possible way. Surprise after Surprise confronts the listener. He is a genius, friends. No two ways.
Tulsa - Pastoral, soulful foursome from Cambridge who have that great country sound, even if their music is made in a city. Like some of my other favorite new-wave country influenced bands like Honeychurch and Fleet Foxes they have that sweet, amber-tinted soundscape down and can pull off a timeless musical happening whether in a full band setting or a Carter Tanton solo sitting. Real ageless type stuff. Their on Park the Van and their getting huge, so listen now so you can tell everyone you did it before it was cool.
Thomas Francis Takes His Chances - This wonderfully weird New Jersey band just opened for Sunset Rubdown at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia and they assure me that their going to start taking themselves seriously. I hope they do because they are an exciting musical feast. Jarring dystopian lyrics and a lot of really interesting production design make them a unique offering indeed. A little early Modest Mouse, a little Devendra Banhart, a little Captain Beefheart, a lot of fun
The Election
No one's brought up politics for a good long while on these here pages, and so I thought a decent approach to this election season would be to draw everyone's attention to two things; one is a humourous anecdote about one of my favorite songwriters, and the other is something our good friend Nick Smerkanich pointed out to me.
First and foremost I'd like to start with a brief plea. To concert goers everywhere: stop being such a bunch of mean, noisy fuckheads. You people seem to come to concerts simply to muscle your way to the front and then spit beer at people. You don't care about anyone but yourselves, you're rude, you smell horrible, and everyone who likes music hates you. Get a fucking clue and never go outside again unless you can handle it. Humanity is innate, and so being around people isn't a right, it's a privilege. If you can't understand that you're hulking frames and unfathomable ignorance make people uncomfortable, including but not limited to the band, you don't deserve to be out among people.
I've seen Spencer Krug in concert twice in as many months. First with his collaborative project Wolf Parade, then with his own songwriting vessel Sunset Rubdown. Both times the seriously inconsiderate behavior of concert goers have made him too uncomfortable for words. At the Wolf Parade show, a group of Philadelphia-area yahoos rushed the front row and started slam dancing and pummeling each other and strangers. At first guitarist/vocalist Dan Broeckner and Krug, the keyboard player and one half of the vocals took a calm approach. "I don't mean to get all Ian McKay on you guys, but you should love each other", came Broeckner's mellow warning. Krug too uttered non-threatening advice a few times until the encore came about. When the reprehensible behavior of the boys in the frontrow would not let up, Krug looked at them from the corner of his eye and spat with as much seething contempt as could fit in his words "I don't know why you have to fucking hit each other." Being Canadians, I have to guess they aren't used to American views on concert going. I sympathize with Krug and his bandmates and I apologize on behalf of the rest of us; those who feel embarrassed to share concerts with these people.
The next time I saw Krug, he was clearly worn down by America. Tired, irritable, and a little red in the face, his Sunset Rubdown delivered a stellar performance. The energy and passion was there and I can't help but feel it was Krug's claustrophobic reaction to America that made him perform so well. This time the drunks were not in as full force as before, but that didn't stop a scene from breaking out. About 3/4 of the way into their set, a large man and his large girlfriend, beer in hand, waltz to the front row and begin making everyone uncomfortable with their obnoxious dancing and drunken logic. During songs they would shout and swear and dance and make out, "sometimes you just gotta dance." Krug made to apologize for his set starting later than anticipated when his animosity was provoked; Hyde stepped out.
"I'm sorry we took so long, guys."
"I'm sorry no one's dancing. I'm going to fix that!"
"That's not your responsibility."
Now, I go to concerts for moments like the wordless verse after the first chorus of
'Shine a Light' that I witnessed at the Electric Factory. That moment was for me the reason to see live music, when the band is so in tune with each other, and the groove so solid and undeniable that one has little choice but to bask in the power of music. This was a perfect 15 or so seconds in an evening filled with truly awesome performance. I go to experience moments of true artistic transcendence and to share these precious moments with like-minded individuals and close friends. Why, then, do drunken barbarians go to concerts? I cringe everytime I think about the fact that nothing will change the fact that I'm an American and so are all these fuckheads. Sorry for all the profanity, but understand that i don't take this lightly.
The real reason I bring up this Sunset Rubdown song is to illustrate that clearly everyone has an interest in how our election turns out.
Not quite verbatim Krug quotes from Sunset Rubdown's show at the Middle East in Cambridge:
"The name of that song is 'Don't elect Sarah Palin'"
"The real title of that song is 'Please don't elect Sarah Palin'"
"The long title of that, as it appeared originally was 'I don't neccesarily agree with all of Barack Obama's policies, but I'd vote for him just so that Sarah Palin doesn't get elected'"
Even Canadians hate American Republicans. I hope the first time John Johnson leaves the country, he has to explain to a group of Afghan refuges why America blew the shit out of their country and killed their relatives. I'm not taking this lightly. Party affiliation is one thing, but guess what doesn't mean shit if you don't have personal politics that extend beyond intangible concepts like 'the economy' and 'patriotism'.
Part 2 of this litany of liberal screaming:
It's no small secret that I'm an enormous fan of the critically acclaimed television series The West Wing. It's combination of perfect aesthetics and brilliant political dialogue were unrivaled during it's run, and Aaron Sorkin's writing was so forward-thinking and furious during a time when nightmares guided news cycles and wars were being fought on our behalf (oh, wait, nothing's changed). So here is a piece of Sorkin's writing, his two cents on the upcoming election. It is a trifle silly, but if you've been paying attention, we seem to all be living in a particularly frightening room of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, so I find it comforting that Sorkin has taken the low road, as it were.
Here Sorkin reaches a hand into his bag of tricks and removes one final liberal cry of hope
If you're out there, are over 18 and think for a second that your vote doesn't matter, or worse that voting for Barack Obama is the same as voting for Mccain, you're wrong. This time, you're dead wrong. Please don't let Fascists win. Not again. I'm so tired of living in a Philip K. Dick novel.
First and foremost I'd like to start with a brief plea. To concert goers everywhere: stop being such a bunch of mean, noisy fuckheads. You people seem to come to concerts simply to muscle your way to the front and then spit beer at people. You don't care about anyone but yourselves, you're rude, you smell horrible, and everyone who likes music hates you. Get a fucking clue and never go outside again unless you can handle it. Humanity is innate, and so being around people isn't a right, it's a privilege. If you can't understand that you're hulking frames and unfathomable ignorance make people uncomfortable, including but not limited to the band, you don't deserve to be out among people.
I've seen Spencer Krug in concert twice in as many months. First with his collaborative project Wolf Parade, then with his own songwriting vessel Sunset Rubdown. Both times the seriously inconsiderate behavior of concert goers have made him too uncomfortable for words. At the Wolf Parade show, a group of Philadelphia-area yahoos rushed the front row and started slam dancing and pummeling each other and strangers. At first guitarist/vocalist Dan Broeckner and Krug, the keyboard player and one half of the vocals took a calm approach. "I don't mean to get all Ian McKay on you guys, but you should love each other", came Broeckner's mellow warning. Krug too uttered non-threatening advice a few times until the encore came about. When the reprehensible behavior of the boys in the frontrow would not let up, Krug looked at them from the corner of his eye and spat with as much seething contempt as could fit in his words "I don't know why you have to fucking hit each other." Being Canadians, I have to guess they aren't used to American views on concert going. I sympathize with Krug and his bandmates and I apologize on behalf of the rest of us; those who feel embarrassed to share concerts with these people.
The next time I saw Krug, he was clearly worn down by America. Tired, irritable, and a little red in the face, his Sunset Rubdown delivered a stellar performance. The energy and passion was there and I can't help but feel it was Krug's claustrophobic reaction to America that made him perform so well. This time the drunks were not in as full force as before, but that didn't stop a scene from breaking out. About 3/4 of the way into their set, a large man and his large girlfriend, beer in hand, waltz to the front row and begin making everyone uncomfortable with their obnoxious dancing and drunken logic. During songs they would shout and swear and dance and make out, "sometimes you just gotta dance." Krug made to apologize for his set starting later than anticipated when his animosity was provoked; Hyde stepped out.
"I'm sorry we took so long, guys."
"I'm sorry no one's dancing. I'm going to fix that!"
"That's not your responsibility."
Now, I go to concerts for moments like the wordless verse after the first chorus of
'Shine a Light' that I witnessed at the Electric Factory. That moment was for me the reason to see live music, when the band is so in tune with each other, and the groove so solid and undeniable that one has little choice but to bask in the power of music. This was a perfect 15 or so seconds in an evening filled with truly awesome performance. I go to experience moments of true artistic transcendence and to share these precious moments with like-minded individuals and close friends. Why, then, do drunken barbarians go to concerts? I cringe everytime I think about the fact that nothing will change the fact that I'm an American and so are all these fuckheads. Sorry for all the profanity, but understand that i don't take this lightly.
The real reason I bring up this Sunset Rubdown song is to illustrate that clearly everyone has an interest in how our election turns out.
Not quite verbatim Krug quotes from Sunset Rubdown's show at the Middle East in Cambridge:
"The name of that song is 'Don't elect Sarah Palin'"
"The real title of that song is 'Please don't elect Sarah Palin'"
"The long title of that, as it appeared originally was 'I don't neccesarily agree with all of Barack Obama's policies, but I'd vote for him just so that Sarah Palin doesn't get elected'"
Even Canadians hate American Republicans. I hope the first time John Johnson leaves the country, he has to explain to a group of Afghan refuges why America blew the shit out of their country and killed their relatives. I'm not taking this lightly. Party affiliation is one thing, but guess what doesn't mean shit if you don't have personal politics that extend beyond intangible concepts like 'the economy' and 'patriotism'.
Part 2 of this litany of liberal screaming:
It's no small secret that I'm an enormous fan of the critically acclaimed television series The West Wing. It's combination of perfect aesthetics and brilliant political dialogue were unrivaled during it's run, and Aaron Sorkin's writing was so forward-thinking and furious during a time when nightmares guided news cycles and wars were being fought on our behalf (oh, wait, nothing's changed). So here is a piece of Sorkin's writing, his two cents on the upcoming election. It is a trifle silly, but if you've been paying attention, we seem to all be living in a particularly frightening room of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, so I find it comforting that Sorkin has taken the low road, as it were.
Here Sorkin reaches a hand into his bag of tricks and removes one final liberal cry of hope
If you're out there, are over 18 and think for a second that your vote doesn't matter, or worse that voting for Barack Obama is the same as voting for Mccain, you're wrong. This time, you're dead wrong. Please don't let Fascists win. Not again. I'm so tired of living in a Philip K. Dick novel.
Note
In mentioning the films with my favorite examples of cinematography, I realize now I forgot to mention my favorite technicolor film of all time (in photographic terms. All That Heaven Allows might be a better movie, but Korda's Thief of Bagdad is just so majestic).
Directed in part by (small wonder) Michael Powell, master of outlandish colour schemes and pointy facial features, this film is one cinema's great fairy tales (from a time when they could still be done innocently and beautifully a la La Belle et la Bete and les Enfants du Paradis). George Perinal's photography honed by Natalie Kalmus's color direction brought out the best in Vincent Korda's production design. The many, many matte artists who went to work on this film really did a hell of a job. The blues in particular are tremendous.
Directed in part by (small wonder) Michael Powell, master of outlandish colour schemes and pointy facial features, this film is one cinema's great fairy tales (from a time when they could still be done innocently and beautifully a la La Belle et la Bete and les Enfants du Paradis). George Perinal's photography honed by Natalie Kalmus's color direction brought out the best in Vincent Korda's production design. The many, many matte artists who went to work on this film really did a hell of a job. The blues in particular are tremendous.
The Best Cinematographic Achievements in Film, dated 9/5/08
A while back I began noticing that I stopped viewing the natural world around me as I once did. I started looking at things, really looking at things - trees, ditches, fields, snow-covered flora - and began imagining them in different ways. Slowly my appreciation became deeper, in a twister sort of way it's no longer a simple matter of "this is nice looking", it's now "this is beautiful, it would look gorgeous on film. How might I film this?" An occupational hazard, I suppose. I'm not really a cinematographer - technically speaking of the three short films I've taken part in in the last year, I only photographed two of them, and only one of them I can say I really had a sense of what I was filming - it's more the sense I've been given since giving myself an education in cinematography slightly more in depth than the one I've been given twice in two different schools. I like my own self-imposed knowledge better because it meant watching all the movies that get roped in together as the best. I'm not saying that these estimations are incorrect, I just happen to think looking beyond the same five films in every summation is always a good idea. For example, in looking at the humbling work of master photographer Nestor Almendros, the film he gets most credit for is undoubtedly Days of Heaven. While I agree that the work is unrivaled in it's technique, I think more can be gained watching his first feature film La Collectioneusse, a film done without a single electrician or industrial light. I think the greatest feature of cinematography is that a film needn't be good to have rich photography. For example I greatly admire Roger Deakins work (on every one of his films, but especially) on The Village and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, two films greatly wanting in other areas. I will say that I have favorites, those who have honed their craft into the purest of art forms, but the other redeeming feature of the field is that a novice can do just as beautiful work as a seasoned professional. Look at Mihai Malaimare Jr., who cut his teeth on three short films in his native Romania before taking on the dubious Youth Without Youth, a film that couldn't look more beautiful if the cast were all greek nudes. I think it's probably all the more impressive when Cinematographers can make as splendid use of shadow in Black and White film as shades and hues in color film. The Third Man (nay, the whole Noir genre) would be nothing without the work of it's light and shadow men. Imagine Detour, M, The Lady From Shanghai, or Kiss Me Deadly without their notorious shadowplay. Cinematography is often responsible for a film's most striking aspects. Picture a less competent man than Frederick Elmes behind the lens of David Lynch's flooring Blue Velvet, or someone with less experience in the expressionist movement than wunderkind Fritz Arno Wagner filming the famous stair sequence in Nosferatu, or most terrifying, imagine if David Lean had hired anyone other than cinematographer Freddie Young when filming Lawrence of Arabia, someone who wouldn't have had the resources to get ahold of a 482mm lens to film Omar Sharif's awe-inspiring entrance. I shudder to think. Below are my fifty favorite instances of cinematography in feature length films and their accompanying cinematographers, or really what I think are the most technically accomplished/beautifully filmed movies of all time. I've given descriptions of the top ten, as reading descriptions of fifty films might get as repetitive as writing them. How many synonyms are there for gorgeous, anyway?
1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Roger Deakins
This film has something of a mixed reputation. I personally think it a bit heavy-handed and melodramatic at times and I think it could have done without the prosaic voice over narration, but one thing is absolutely without question: the movie is stunning to watch. Right from the start when we see the James Gang knocking over a train, while Brad Pitt strides past the steam of the locomotive, while the light from the passenger cars douses the bandits in gold, while the dark wood of the cars clashes with the shining metal of firearms, while the silhouettes of every member of the gang closes in on the brightly lit train cars. It's amazing and Roger Deakins made sure to fill every frame of the film with otherworldly beauty. While director Andrew Dominik's tribute to the westerns of Anthony Mann and Samuel Fuller lingers in the past, Deakins makes a showing for the age of technology. The leads in their eccentric costumes standing like pillars of marble in the blazing scenery Deakins photographs. The blue-hued snowy landscapes, the dusky fields and farms of James' hometown, the exquisite dinner scenes we're drawn into. The film's screenplay may lack subtlety, but Deakin's photography needs none.
2. The Double Life Of Veronique – Slawomir Idziak
3. La Collectioneusse – Nestor Almendros
Almendros will forever be immortalized as one of cinema's greatest eyes, but he'll rarely get the credit he deserves for his best work. His work with Barbet Schroeder and Eric Rohmer far outshines his work in America in almost every case. With the aforementioned exception of Days of Heaven, his best work was done in France. This film, his first, is the deceptively simple tale of one man's struggle to conquer his feelings for a promiscuous girl as she learns to settle down. I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit that I was a little too preoccupied with Almendros' camera work to pay close attention to the story (the ending's happy, if memory serves). At times Almendros had ony two pieces of equipment while working on La Collectioneusse, a 35mm camera and a particularly bright bedside light (the bulb was intentionally replaced with something industrial grade). The rest of the time he had natural light and reflective surfaces. Any given still from this movie could easily be mistaken for some lofty Renoir-esque painting. He'd may have gotten cleverer, but his work never got more flawless than it did on his first feature.4. Children of Men – Emmanuel Lubezki
Ok, so it's no secret in the film world that this movie is brilliant. As my friend Lizzy said after her first viewing "I wasn't expecting much, but...". The movie really didn't scream "genius" when it made it's pitiful rounds of American multiplexes and so expectations were all but erased by the time it hit DVD, but it was cinephiles who had the last laugh. This movie is, and I don't mean to hyperbolize, the most technically exceptional movie ever made, where live film is concerned. Emmanuel Lubezki, hands down my favorite cinematographer, manages to revolutionize the real-time tracking shot while still doing wonders with he and director Alfonso Cuarón's trademark green hues. His active lens makes sick situations frighteningly real and all the more nauseating; his camera seems to trigger the release of endorphins, like a rollercoaster, because when the ending titles began flashing, I couldn't help but feel both mildly ill and like I needed to see it again; it was all I could talk about for days. Lubezki's greens are a favorite of mine (you'll notice his name five times more on the list) and they're subdued just enough here not to take center stage like they do in Cuarón's earlier work, but they still manage to catch the eye despite the chaos that consumes the frame. Lubezki and his crew should have been given nobel prizes for their work on this film; not just because they manage to stay on a battle for 6:18 without ever making it obvious that cuts are being snuck in, but for making the most horrific things in the world look so vivid and unforgettable. If viewers never forget what they see, they may just act accordingly later in life.5. Autumn Sonata – Sven Nykvist
I'd seen a few of Nykvist's collaborations with Ingmar Bergman before I saw Autumn Sonata, but I had no idea just how well the two men understood each other. I don't know that there's a team that had such insight into the world of the other anywhere else in the annals of film history. I suppose Greg Tolland and Orson Welles came close, as do Cuarón and Lubezki, but the difference between any other teaming and this one, Bergman's entire life came out of Nykvist's camera. So when Bergman makes a film with an Autumnal motif, Nykvist came through beautifully. The movie looks effectively like the fall has come to life in Liv Ullmann's house. The faded pastel colors and rich outdoor scenery are truly remarkable and as someone who admires Autumn more than any other season, this is a wonderful thing.
6. The New World – Emmanuel Lubezki
If you paused any given second of The New World and squinted, you'd think you were staring at an oil painting. Lubezki outdoes himself at his better-than-reality camera work, and easily steps into Nestor Almendros' shoes as the undisputed master of natural light photography. There's one scene in particular that comes to mind when I consider Lubezki's work in this movie; it's the last one in the film. Thanks to director Terrence Malick's set-up and romantic reverence for (almost deification of thanks to the camera work) of death, what we have is a scene that easily qualifies as transcendence, if we adhere to Paul Schraeder's definition. Lubezki manages to craft a convincing picture of heaven without ever leaving the realm of the living, which I call a job well done. He and Malick understand that death is not an end, so much as it is a celebration of the middle. With a good camera man, it's not hard to do so.7. Last Of The Mohicans – Dante Spinotti
This movie is probably responsible for my appreciation of nature. It's why while riding in trains or cars I'm constantly tempted to get out and become part of my surroundings. Michael Mann's tribute to the ways of the Native American (as some kind of bastard Native American myself, I get to relate on more than one level to this movie), namely their constant graciousness toward the kind earth they live on. All you really need to understand the genius of this movie and of Dante Spinotti's lens; Hawkeye, Uncas, and Chingachgook run through the woods chasing after a buck. Their surroundings whir past them, occasionally giving us glimpses of the deep greens, browns, and blues of the woods. Finally they settle on a good spot to take the animal down. In a clearing, with water running through a small brook, rich foliage both living and dying, the sun nearly down, providing minimal light. There they claim their prey and then they give thanks, while all around returns to it's usual stillness and the beauty of the natural world is restored. These men do not top the food chain, they are merely one rung; nor do they stand out against their background, they are merely one piece of a sensational picture.
8. Sweet Movie - Pierre Lhomme
This movie is little known in the United States outside of the ravenous cineastes who hunger for each new Criterion release. This, friends, is a damn shame. The movie, a madcap fusion of political theory and sexual politics in the extreme, is made all the more poignant because the beauty of its most puzzling and challenging images is identical to that of its most serene. Take for example that a scene of two people copulating in a vat of sugar is just as clear and breath-taking as that of a long shot of a boat made out trinkets and political artifacts with Karl Marx as the figurehead tooling down a crowded canal. The movie's incendiary nature wouldn't be half as effective without Pierre Lhomme's beautification of every dirty detail, and this movie gets pretty dirty.
9. I Fidanzati - Lamberto Caimi
Black and White photography is easy to make look good, easy to look sloppy and incoherent, and hard to make perfect. Would you believe that one of the most mesmerizing sequences in the history of black and white film was shot by a first-time cinematographer. I guess technically I Fidanzati was Lamberto Caimi's third film, but his work on his first movie, Il Posto, was essentially identical to his work here. Ermanno Olmi's films, which were Caimi's first gigs, evolved out of work-place documentaries their factory produced, which were amazingly well-realized and insightful. Even more impressive was that the photography was just as impressive as anything that showed up in any of Fellini's films of the same period. The sequence I described earlier takes place about midway through the film. The protagonist walks from a beach to a tired-looking derrick nearby. It looks like a precursor to the kind of work Robert Elswitt would do in There Will Be Blood. The textural capabilities of black and white film are as pronounced as I've ever seen them.
10. Apocalypse Now – Vittorio Storaro
I once tried to explain to someone why I loved cinematography so much, using Apocalypse Now as a sort of exhibit A (my actual wording was fairly juvenile, but it was only to get my point across). I've often thought of the film as DP Vittorio Storaro's as much as director Francis Ford Coppola's because he's half the reason this movie is so outstanding. When Martin Sheen reads over Kurtz' dossier while "Satisfaction" blares on Clean's radio, there's nothing better. The contrast between Sheen's tanned, hairy skin, and the crystal blue waters below him have long symbolized the genius of the film; light vs. dark, American men vs. the natural world. The point becomes clearer minutes later when Robert Duvall's Air Mobile unit shreds the bejesus out of VC target zone so that he can surf a six foot peak. The overwhelming violence stood out to my friend, which is of course the point of an anti-war film. Another viewing or a little more knowledge of cinematography and she'd see that the reason anti-war films of this caliber work is because, like Children of Men, the violence is shrouded in so glorious a light, because that's how it appears to the men who make war and because that is how a clear picture is crafted. How do you make someone remember your anti-war message? You give them images they'll never forget - they can be violent, they can be troubling, but they can also be beautiful.
11. A Very Long Engagement - Bruno Delbonnel
12. Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World: Russel Boyd
13. Birth - Harris Savides
14. The Thin Red Line – John Toll
15. Maitresse – Nestor Almendros
16. Down by Law – Robby Müller
17. Au Revoir Les Enfants - Renato Berta
18. The Third Man - Robert Krasker
19. Gate Of Flesh - Shigeyoshi Mine
20. Broken Flowers – Frederick Elmes
21. The Village – Roger Deakins
22. Lawrence Of Arabia – Freddie Young
23. Y Tu Mama Tambien – Emmanuel Lubezki
24. The Straight Story – Freddie Francis
25. Manhattan - Gordon Willis
26. Days Of Heaven – Nestor Almendros
27. Great Expectations – Emmannuel Lubezki
28. The Conformist – Vittorio Storaro
29. Sleepy Hollow – Emmannuel Lubezki
30. Contempt – Raoul Coutard
31. Cries & Whispers – Sven Nykvist
32. George Washington – Tim Orr
33. Youth Without Youth - Mihai Malaimare Jr.
34. Fargo – Roger Deakins
35. Brief Encounter - Robert Krasker
36. Blowup - Carlo Di Palma
37. Pierrot Le Fou – Raoul Coutard
38. McCabe & Mrs. Miller – Vilmos Zgismond
39. Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix – Slawomir Idziak
40. A Little Princess – Emmanuel Lubezki
41. Gosford Park – Andrew Dunn
42. There Will Be Blood – Robert Elswitt
43. Interiors - Gordon Willis
44. Port of Shadows - Eugen Schüfftan
45. Ivan's Childhood - Vadim Yusov
46. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie - Francisco Sempere
47. Blood For Dracula - Luigi Kuveiller
48. 28 Days Later – Anthony Dod Mantle
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Peter Pau
50. The Mission - Chris Menges
Honey in the Pot
Well, I have a few pieces of exciting news to relay. First, a few months back I wrote a piece about one of my favorite bands, Honeychurch, and their album Makes Me Feel Better. Well Shilough Hopwood, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist for the band, read it and liked it and enlightened me. Shilough and I spoke about a favorite song of mine off the Makes Me Feel Better record called "From The Sky", which I recently covered as part of a Covers EP The Congregation put together. He made me feel much better than I am with his words. First off Shilough explained that he basically played every instrument on the song when they recorded it. The drums were his, the guitars both his (a Fender Telecaster and a 12 string electric dueling for a heart-warming few moments). He is a genius on the highest order. Not because these parts are virtuosic or especially difficult. In fact, it's just the opposite. By taking incredibly simple elements and essentially supercharging them in that reverb soaked way of his, he took something small and made it huge and timeless. I'll never tire of that song and I thank him immensely for his kindness.
Second, I wrote and recorded an album. Well, wrote's a bit of a stretch. I took a lot of musical cues from other artists, friends, and movie scores. Anyway, the ideas are hardly all mine and I wouldn't have done it without my friends. Anyway, I hear Shelly's recording music too and it blows mine away effortlessly, so there. Anyway, it's about how much I love my friends and don't want to leave them for college. or prison.
Recently I've gotten the chance to meet a few very charming musicians in Doylestown. The first is Bethany Walk-Spiers of the band Feverfew. Having sharpened her chops in hardcore bands, Bethany moved on to playing complex and dizzying pop blues. She's a terribly nice person and has a whole bag full of stories to tell. Their the kind I love, stuff about Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance vomiting back when he had integrity. Lovely. The second is area musician Paul Fugozzoto. Now i'd actually seen Paul once without knowing it when he opened for Honeychurch under his nom de plume Ponieheart. Paul, a good and gentle soul writes folky pop tunes that melt you like butter. His voice has that natural echo that some people are just born with. Paul and Bethany have at least one thing in common, they'd both like to play in King Crimson tribute bands. I, for one, would love to be a part of that little collaboration. I've also gotten to know a fellow named Matt Rhodes, guitarist/singer/bassist for NY-sound-influenced rockers The Lone Pine Cones. The Lone Pine Cones played at the World Cafe recently and I've loved their music ever since I first heard it all those months ago. Matt and I met through non-musical channels (my little sister and his better half are childhood friends), and he's a terrific guy. He, like me, is an unabashed fanboy with a love for all things indie rock. He and I have traded concert stories, battle scars and guitar licks, and he can hold his own like few others can. Having seen the Lone Pine Cones play a few times now, watching his bass-laden trances are a real treat for anyone who likes brash rock music. Now, I don't like to devote too much of time to overtly fantasizing, but I'm just saying, playing In The Court Of The Crimson King with Paul, Bethany, and Matt would be unmitigated insanity.
Second, I wrote and recorded an album. Well, wrote's a bit of a stretch. I took a lot of musical cues from other artists, friends, and movie scores. Anyway, the ideas are hardly all mine and I wouldn't have done it without my friends. Anyway, I hear Shelly's recording music too and it blows mine away effortlessly, so there. Anyway, it's about how much I love my friends and don't want to leave them for college. or prison.
Recently I've gotten the chance to meet a few very charming musicians in Doylestown. The first is Bethany Walk-Spiers of the band Feverfew. Having sharpened her chops in hardcore bands, Bethany moved on to playing complex and dizzying pop blues. She's a terribly nice person and has a whole bag full of stories to tell. Their the kind I love, stuff about Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance vomiting back when he had integrity. Lovely. The second is area musician Paul Fugozzoto. Now i'd actually seen Paul once without knowing it when he opened for Honeychurch under his nom de plume Ponieheart. Paul, a good and gentle soul writes folky pop tunes that melt you like butter. His voice has that natural echo that some people are just born with. Paul and Bethany have at least one thing in common, they'd both like to play in King Crimson tribute bands. I, for one, would love to be a part of that little collaboration. I've also gotten to know a fellow named Matt Rhodes, guitarist/singer/bassist for NY-sound-influenced rockers The Lone Pine Cones. The Lone Pine Cones played at the World Cafe recently and I've loved their music ever since I first heard it all those months ago. Matt and I met through non-musical channels (my little sister and his better half are childhood friends), and he's a terrific guy. He, like me, is an unabashed fanboy with a love for all things indie rock. He and I have traded concert stories, battle scars and guitar licks, and he can hold his own like few others can. Having seen the Lone Pine Cones play a few times now, watching his bass-laden trances are a real treat for anyone who likes brash rock music. Now, I don't like to devote too much of time to overtly fantasizing, but I'm just saying, playing In The Court Of The Crimson King with Paul, Bethany, and Matt would be unmitigated insanity.
Thank god almighty
4/26/08 a date I didn't realize dave put up that post for me. THANKS DAVE. happy earth day to you as well. sorry I didn't notice earlier.
I would also like to say that I created a wikispace called eyecreate.wikispaces.com that I want everyone just to glance at. It would be awesome if you came apart of it though. For anyone who has congregation recordings it would be awesome if you uploaded it onto my wiki. All you have to do is go under audio and upload the file, the genre, and the name of the band! Also, look at the rest and see if you want to include anything else!
I would also like to say that I created a wikispace called eyecreate.wikispaces.com that I want everyone just to glance at. It would be awesome if you came apart of it though. For anyone who has congregation recordings it would be awesome if you uploaded it onto my wiki. All you have to do is go under audio and upload the file, the genre, and the name of the band! Also, look at the rest and see if you want to include anything else!
Radio Man
because I love Radiohead, and because I believe they would agree with my streaming their work for free, and because I don't particularly care after they shitchanged my employer out of record sales to stick it to the man (something I remain conflicted about. I think I love Blair Elliott and his family more than I love Radiohead, so there EMI), and because if someone doesn't like it they can just come and sue these videos right off the internet and because i know my friends love Radiohead as much as I do and deserve to see this without buying it, and because the quality isn't great anyway, and because it originally aired on VH1, I'm going to post this free studio concert on Film Punk. A first if I'm not mistaken. I'd like to thank my TiVo. I've also uploaded the few videos I didn't have a few days ago. Thanks, America! Watch, Watch!
And here, because I'm in a particularly anarchical mood, and because I'm writing a speech about this band for a class, is their 2007 masterpiece In Rainbows Side A in it's entirety. Absolutely Free
15 Step
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
All I Need
Faust Arp
Reckoner
House of Cards
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Videotape
I love this band like a member of my family.
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Myxamatosis
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Optimistic
House of Cards
15 Step
Reckoner
Where I End And You Begin
Bangers 'n Mash
Go Slowly
All I Need
Videotape
The Gloaming
Bonus: Radiohead on SNL in 2000. Kate Hudson was the host, so I'd marry this episode if I could. I'd like every episode of every television show to feature both of these guests. Brief Note, Recently on Elvis Mitchell: Under The Influence, Laurence Fishburn likened the work of his favorite actors to Thelonious Monk's dancing when his band would swing just right. When he felt he no longer had to aid the band, he could simply enjoy his creation, thus Fishburn's talk of an actor's Swing. When Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet act in Maltese Falcon or whenever Peter O'Toole walks in front of a camera, we have Swinging. I'd like to submit a modern take on his example. When he speaks of Thelonious Monk dancing to his own music, I was immediately reminded of the wild dance I'd seen Thom Yorke do when I saw Radiohead perform a few years ago and in the many filmed performances I've watched. This, friends, is swinging.
Nude
Myxamatosis
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Optimistic
House of Cards
15 Step
Reckoner
Where I End And You Begin
Bangers 'n Mash
Go Slowly
All I Need
Videotape
The Gloaming
Bonus: Radiohead on SNL in 2000. Kate Hudson was the host, so I'd marry this episode if I could. I'd like every episode of every television show to feature both of these guests. Brief Note, Recently on Elvis Mitchell: Under The Influence, Laurence Fishburn likened the work of his favorite actors to Thelonious Monk's dancing when his band would swing just right. When he felt he no longer had to aid the band, he could simply enjoy his creation, thus Fishburn's talk of an actor's Swing. When Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet act in Maltese Falcon or whenever Peter O'Toole walks in front of a camera, we have Swinging. I'd like to submit a modern take on his example. When he speaks of Thelonious Monk dancing to his own music, I was immediately reminded of the wild dance I'd seen Thom Yorke do when I saw Radiohead perform a few years ago and in the many filmed performances I've watched. This, friends, is swinging.
Idioteque
Here they are on the Late Show in 2003, rocking as hard as they ever have. There's something truly heart-warming about seeing all of them in suits, Jonny especially. Three guitars, wonderful attire, blistering noise, a delightful time had by all. I should point out that this was from the first DVD I ever burned consisting of performances from live TV. This was when I was first getting into Radiohead and seeing this was like being given the combination to a vault.
2+2=5
Here they are on the Late Show in 2003, rocking as hard as they ever have. There's something truly heart-warming about seeing all of them in suits, Jonny especially. Three guitars, wonderful attire, blistering noise, a delightful time had by all. I should point out that this was from the first DVD I ever burned consisting of performances from live TV. This was when I was first getting into Radiohead and seeing this was like being given the combination to a vault.
2+2=5
And here, because I'm in a particularly anarchical mood, and because I'm writing a speech about this band for a class, is their 2007 masterpiece In Rainbows Side A in it's entirety. Absolutely Free
15 Step
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
All I Need
Faust Arp
Reckoner
House of Cards
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Videotape
I love this band like a member of my family.
"Do Angels Exist?" "Do You Believe in Aliens?" "Is Global Warming Real?"
I stumbled across a website where people take surveys, and apparently their input is appreciated by some greater power. I thought I'd share some results. I don't spend hours on the Internet, so I can't tell you who these people are that vote on websites, but I can tell you that these results from "popular" surveys are the same people voting.
So, when asked: Is Al Gore right when he states that humans are responsible for Global Warming?
46.81% said yes and 53.19% said no.
Next question: Do angels, in whatever form they my take, truly exist?
70.46% said yes and 29.54% said no.
It gets better: Are we being visited by aliens from outside this solar system?
62.21% said yes and 37.79% said no.
Lastly: Do Ghosts really exist? Are we experiencing visitors from beyond the grave?
86.79% said yes and 13.21% said no.
So, in summary, the average Internet-site-goer-who-votes-on-surveys-and-possibly-votes-for-the-president-of-the-United-States believes that ghosts, aliens, and angels are real, but that there is no way in hell that humans are destroying the earth. Maybe the aliens are responsible.
So, when asked: Is Al Gore right when he states that humans are responsible for Global Warming?
46.81% said yes and 53.19% said no.
Next question: Do angels, in whatever form they my take, truly exist?
70.46% said yes and 29.54% said no.
It gets better: Are we being visited by aliens from outside this solar system?
62.21% said yes and 37.79% said no.
Lastly: Do Ghosts really exist? Are we experiencing visitors from beyond the grave?
86.79% said yes and 13.21% said no.
So, in summary, the average Internet-site-goer-who-votes-on-surveys-and-possibly-votes-for-the-president-of-the-United-States believes that ghosts, aliens, and angels are real, but that there is no way in hell that humans are destroying the earth. Maybe the aliens are responsible.
Genius
There is one piece of music and film that shines above all others of the type. It transcends time, trends, and taste. Fans of film and music will know exactly what I'm talking about and will be unsurprised to hear me say that it is one of the greatest achievements by any artist.
Stop Making Sense
by Jonathan Demme & Talking Heads
Now this defies easy classification and so cannot fall under many of my series headings. It is a documentary/performance and so cannot fit in with my 100 favorite fiction films. It is a live performance and so cannot be grouped with studio albums. It is not unknown and so I can't claim to be doing anyone a service by harping on it's genius here on this lonely website. It isn't under-rated, per se, but it's genius on a level that maybe seven people in a given generation will achieve. I'll frame this little opinion piece with some perspective. When some artistic things catch on, music, film, what have you, a lot of time the fans of that movement will have a dilemma. When the White Stripes starting getting huge and again when their Icky Thump record sold like weed at Hampshire, fans were perplexed. Many of my friends, Siren Records owner Blair Elliott, and my talented friend (she was in 10th grade when we spoke on the subject) Caitlin Mcginnis were equally stumped, though they were both fans of a kind, who don't give their favor to bands easily. Their point is well-received; this was art that wasn't supposed to catch on. It wasn't music for the masses, it wasn't created in a lab for people to enjoy, they didn't labor over the melodies or instrumentations to make sure they had a commercially viable sound. No, they did it, and will continue to do it because it's what they believe in. So, do fans trust the new affection for the weirdness, or do they rebel against it, citing selling out as the cause. The same I believe can be said of Talking Heads. Talking Heads are...well, I'll say this, I don't know who anyone whose opinion I respect who doesn't like them. They are not as abrasive or brash as the White Stripes, but that they caught on was a triumph for artists everywhere. The product of three RISD students and a guitarist/keyboardiest whose only demand was that he be allowed to finish his year at Harvard, they cannot be said to be commercial (At the very least, they're commercial appeal is completely incidental). They went from making mild psych-pop to blissfully weird idiosyncratic funk-rock in the span of three years and in the process recorded three of the greatest albums of all time. All the while of course, their artistic egos flared like gas ranges. Artists being what they are, these were strange people with big, big dreams. And as is only natural, with those dreams, comes conflict. Their conflicts are rumoured to have persisted up until the moment of their ultimate concerts' start. The concerts in question? Three nights at a theatre in Los Angeles that would be crafted into the ultimate concert experience.
Thanks in part to Jonathan Demme's minimalist style and the elaborate stage show meticulously mapped out by head Head David Byrne and his bandmates Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison, Stop Making Sense makes for just as entertaining a film as it does a kick-ass live record. I hesitate to praise Stop Making Sense so unabashedly because I have some pretty strong things to say in its favor. Live records are often roped in with studio albums in estimations of popular music. James Brown's groundbreaking Apollo concert or Aretha Franklin's many live performances are usually given rank amongst Let It Be or London Calling (not that there's anyway to distinguish a superior record, mind you), and so it is clear that many people aren't interested in making the distinction. And there are cases like The MC5's Kick Out The Jams, which was both their debut and a live record. Here we have what could have been taken as a live record, a film, and/or a soundtrack to a motion picture, which is how the record is listed in the credits. On the IMDB, Frantz, Weymouth, Byrne, Harrison and their five session players are listed next to their instruments. Alex Weir is his guitar; Weymouth is her bass, Bernie Worell is his keyboard. They aren't playing the parts of musicians, they are playing the parts of their instruments, cogs in the machine of the experience of the band. They are aware of their roles, and fulfill them as good as any troupe of actors has ever. But let us take this strictly as a live record for a moment. If we take the opinion that live shows and/or concert recordings are a much more accurate showing of a bands capabilities, and Stop Making Sense is almost certainly the greatest rock concert ever released, what we have by the transitive power is the greatest performance by any band ever recorded. Though I'm speaking entirely in theoretical terms, I stand by my claim fiercely and gladly stack Stop Making Sense next to Hendrix at Monterey, Live At Leeds, Wilco's Kicking Television, Kick Out The Jams, The Last Waltz, or the televised James Brown performance that prevented riots from breaking out all across America. The real difference between those performances and the Talking Heads' farewell to obscurity was that the Heads were artists and cared as much about aesthetics as they did attitude. They most certainly had the sound to back up their stage presence, but they also had a live show the likes of which had never been seen. I guess it's fitting that former Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell joined them on stage because the only band who'd ever come close to this sort of hypnotic stage presence was George Clinton's Parliament and their mothership landings.
Where else in rock history can a band's sound be seen to expand as well as heard? We start with David Byrne playing his Martin acoustic guitar next to a ghetto blaster with a drum program on tape. Towards the end of the song a riser is wheeled out by men in black uniforms. This sense of progress, a machine being assembled for enhanced performance, is crucial to the success of the piece. From there Tina Weymouth, the greatest white bass player, joins him with her beautiful blue instrument and her molasses-thick tone, and so do the unseen voices of Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. When they've completed "Heaven", Chris Frantz and his military precision start "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel". The machine grows. Jerry Harrison and his black Stratocaster match Byrne's sunburst, the first electric guitars of the evening. Then the band grows to its full size to realize its potential. Worrell and his enormous hands, Alex Weir and his proto-mustang guitar and high-energy bouncing about, Steve Scales and every hand drum imaginable, and Ednah and Lynn who perform the greatest two-person backing performance I've ever seen. Doing the work of the Supremes or the Vandellas, these two girls sound like a choir and have the stage presence of Little Richard, James Brown or Prince. Byrne is something to behold, as well. Alternately marching in time to his own music, writhing on the floor, running laps around the stage, and rocking elastic guitar solos, it's a small miracle he never passed out from exhaustion (I suppose we can thank cocaine). Concerts like this aren't merely art installations, they're marathons and contact sports. Musicians will experience the adrenaline of scoring a touch-down and winning the super-bowl, athletes may never know the sensation of their visions feeding the hungry minds of their fans. Have you ever made ten thousand people dance? People who may never dance again? No other film brings you inside that feeling, of complete artistic success, like Stop Making Sense. The footage of the David Byrne song "What A Day That Was" is particularly compelling. We see Bryne's bulging eyes, Weymouth's nervous glances, Alex Weir chugging away at his guitar, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt's bright faces all glaring from above the intense low-lighting. Their shadows dance against the vast walls like tribal gods in wide shots. The band, though seemingly miles apart judging from Demme's close-ups, are so in tune with one another. One moment always gets me, of the consescutive guitar solos on "Crosseyed and Painless" the last song on the record. After watching Weir play rhythm for most of the evening, to see him lose control and deliver a screaming lead that primes Byrne's burning and whirling finishing blows has force enough to wake the dead. Some songs, like "What A Day" only appear on Stop Making Sense in these particular forms. "Psycho Killer" never sounded so clear, "Crosseyed" so high-octane. Some songs, like "Girlfriend is Better" and "Life During Wartime" simply come to life in ways they don't on their respective records. My favorite example of this is the non-single "Making Flippy Floppy" which sounds like instructions from the almighty here; it's absolutely flawless. I've never been so excited by a keyboard.
Stop Making sense is something of an anomaly, because though it is much easier to listen to MP3s today, I've found myself just as compelled to watch the film as I have to listen to the record. To see the movie is to see the world's most progressive rock band in action. It is to witness the melding of art and rock in heaven. It is to understand what all bands have since been striving to achieve, consciously or not. Talking Heads are as essential to today's musical climate as Giorgio Moroder, Michael Jackson, Phil Spector, Paul Simon, David Bowie, John Lennon, or Keith Richards. They don't get the credit of many of these figures, but, they are crucial to the development of an artists' reception in the 21st century. What other event would allow squares to get behind a man on cocaine dancing in an enormous suit to post-punk disco written by three other dorky white people. (The difference between say The Sex Pistols and Talking Heads: unprecedented talent of all of its members) Stop Making Sense is a testament to the world of the artist combining with the lives of all other people and shall continue to inspire as long as humans can perceive it.
Stop Making Sense
by Jonathan Demme & Talking Heads
Now this defies easy classification and so cannot fall under many of my series headings. It is a documentary/performance and so cannot fit in with my 100 favorite fiction films. It is a live performance and so cannot be grouped with studio albums. It is not unknown and so I can't claim to be doing anyone a service by harping on it's genius here on this lonely website. It isn't under-rated, per se, but it's genius on a level that maybe seven people in a given generation will achieve. I'll frame this little opinion piece with some perspective. When some artistic things catch on, music, film, what have you, a lot of time the fans of that movement will have a dilemma. When the White Stripes starting getting huge and again when their Icky Thump record sold like weed at Hampshire, fans were perplexed. Many of my friends, Siren Records owner Blair Elliott, and my talented friend (she was in 10th grade when we spoke on the subject) Caitlin Mcginnis were equally stumped, though they were both fans of a kind, who don't give their favor to bands easily. Their point is well-received; this was art that wasn't supposed to catch on. It wasn't music for the masses, it wasn't created in a lab for people to enjoy, they didn't labor over the melodies or instrumentations to make sure they had a commercially viable sound. No, they did it, and will continue to do it because it's what they believe in. So, do fans trust the new affection for the weirdness, or do they rebel against it, citing selling out as the cause. The same I believe can be said of Talking Heads. Talking Heads are...well, I'll say this, I don't know who anyone whose opinion I respect who doesn't like them. They are not as abrasive or brash as the White Stripes, but that they caught on was a triumph for artists everywhere. The product of three RISD students and a guitarist/keyboardiest whose only demand was that he be allowed to finish his year at Harvard, they cannot be said to be commercial (At the very least, they're commercial appeal is completely incidental). They went from making mild psych-pop to blissfully weird idiosyncratic funk-rock in the span of three years and in the process recorded three of the greatest albums of all time. All the while of course, their artistic egos flared like gas ranges. Artists being what they are, these were strange people with big, big dreams. And as is only natural, with those dreams, comes conflict. Their conflicts are rumoured to have persisted up until the moment of their ultimate concerts' start. The concerts in question? Three nights at a theatre in Los Angeles that would be crafted into the ultimate concert experience.
Thanks in part to Jonathan Demme's minimalist style and the elaborate stage show meticulously mapped out by head Head David Byrne and his bandmates Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison, Stop Making Sense makes for just as entertaining a film as it does a kick-ass live record. I hesitate to praise Stop Making Sense so unabashedly because I have some pretty strong things to say in its favor. Live records are often roped in with studio albums in estimations of popular music. James Brown's groundbreaking Apollo concert or Aretha Franklin's many live performances are usually given rank amongst Let It Be or London Calling (not that there's anyway to distinguish a superior record, mind you), and so it is clear that many people aren't interested in making the distinction. And there are cases like The MC5's Kick Out The Jams, which was both their debut and a live record. Here we have what could have been taken as a live record, a film, and/or a soundtrack to a motion picture, which is how the record is listed in the credits. On the IMDB, Frantz, Weymouth, Byrne, Harrison and their five session players are listed next to their instruments. Alex Weir is his guitar; Weymouth is her bass, Bernie Worell is his keyboard. They aren't playing the parts of musicians, they are playing the parts of their instruments, cogs in the machine of the experience of the band. They are aware of their roles, and fulfill them as good as any troupe of actors has ever. But let us take this strictly as a live record for a moment. If we take the opinion that live shows and/or concert recordings are a much more accurate showing of a bands capabilities, and Stop Making Sense is almost certainly the greatest rock concert ever released, what we have by the transitive power is the greatest performance by any band ever recorded. Though I'm speaking entirely in theoretical terms, I stand by my claim fiercely and gladly stack Stop Making Sense next to Hendrix at Monterey, Live At Leeds, Wilco's Kicking Television, Kick Out The Jams, The Last Waltz, or the televised James Brown performance that prevented riots from breaking out all across America. The real difference between those performances and the Talking Heads' farewell to obscurity was that the Heads were artists and cared as much about aesthetics as they did attitude. They most certainly had the sound to back up their stage presence, but they also had a live show the likes of which had never been seen. I guess it's fitting that former Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell joined them on stage because the only band who'd ever come close to this sort of hypnotic stage presence was George Clinton's Parliament and their mothership landings.
Where else in rock history can a band's sound be seen to expand as well as heard? We start with David Byrne playing his Martin acoustic guitar next to a ghetto blaster with a drum program on tape. Towards the end of the song a riser is wheeled out by men in black uniforms. This sense of progress, a machine being assembled for enhanced performance, is crucial to the success of the piece. From there Tina Weymouth, the greatest white bass player, joins him with her beautiful blue instrument and her molasses-thick tone, and so do the unseen voices of Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. When they've completed "Heaven", Chris Frantz and his military precision start "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel". The machine grows. Jerry Harrison and his black Stratocaster match Byrne's sunburst, the first electric guitars of the evening. Then the band grows to its full size to realize its potential. Worrell and his enormous hands, Alex Weir and his proto-mustang guitar and high-energy bouncing about, Steve Scales and every hand drum imaginable, and Ednah and Lynn who perform the greatest two-person backing performance I've ever seen. Doing the work of the Supremes or the Vandellas, these two girls sound like a choir and have the stage presence of Little Richard, James Brown or Prince. Byrne is something to behold, as well. Alternately marching in time to his own music, writhing on the floor, running laps around the stage, and rocking elastic guitar solos, it's a small miracle he never passed out from exhaustion (I suppose we can thank cocaine). Concerts like this aren't merely art installations, they're marathons and contact sports. Musicians will experience the adrenaline of scoring a touch-down and winning the super-bowl, athletes may never know the sensation of their visions feeding the hungry minds of their fans. Have you ever made ten thousand people dance? People who may never dance again? No other film brings you inside that feeling, of complete artistic success, like Stop Making Sense. The footage of the David Byrne song "What A Day That Was" is particularly compelling. We see Bryne's bulging eyes, Weymouth's nervous glances, Alex Weir chugging away at his guitar, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt's bright faces all glaring from above the intense low-lighting. Their shadows dance against the vast walls like tribal gods in wide shots. The band, though seemingly miles apart judging from Demme's close-ups, are so in tune with one another. One moment always gets me, of the consescutive guitar solos on "Crosseyed and Painless" the last song on the record. After watching Weir play rhythm for most of the evening, to see him lose control and deliver a screaming lead that primes Byrne's burning and whirling finishing blows has force enough to wake the dead. Some songs, like "What A Day" only appear on Stop Making Sense in these particular forms. "Psycho Killer" never sounded so clear, "Crosseyed" so high-octane. Some songs, like "Girlfriend is Better" and "Life During Wartime" simply come to life in ways they don't on their respective records. My favorite example of this is the non-single "Making Flippy Floppy" which sounds like instructions from the almighty here; it's absolutely flawless. I've never been so excited by a keyboard.
Stop Making sense is something of an anomaly, because though it is much easier to listen to MP3s today, I've found myself just as compelled to watch the film as I have to listen to the record. To see the movie is to see the world's most progressive rock band in action. It is to witness the melding of art and rock in heaven. It is to understand what all bands have since been striving to achieve, consciously or not. Talking Heads are as essential to today's musical climate as Giorgio Moroder, Michael Jackson, Phil Spector, Paul Simon, David Bowie, John Lennon, or Keith Richards. They don't get the credit of many of these figures, but, they are crucial to the development of an artists' reception in the 21st century. What other event would allow squares to get behind a man on cocaine dancing in an enormous suit to post-punk disco written by three other dorky white people. (The difference between say The Sex Pistols and Talking Heads: unprecedented talent of all of its members) Stop Making Sense is a testament to the world of the artist combining with the lives of all other people and shall continue to inspire as long as humans can perceive it.
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