Ouch.

Anna Faris = Feminist Masochism. Her life, her work, the article itself. Makes you want to go cold turkey and enter some sort of upstate separatist enclave.

Failing that, spend a moment or two with this amazing new comic from Carolita Johnson, "Oscarina."

Films People Walked Out On Summer 2011

If you're not inclined to see Tree of Life, Anthony Lane's review will bring you up to speed.

David Denby on Meek's Cutoff, "a pleasureless, anti-sensuous aesthetic." !!?? Whose experience does he mean? That of the characters? Or the audience? Or the filmmaker? In each and any case, I don't agree.

Richard Brody is better, but his second take on the film is odd too.

In his review of Kelly Reichardt’s Western “Meek’s Cutoff” in the magazine this week, David Denby refers to the movie’s “new kind of feminist and materialist realism.” I don’t think it’s new, but it is materialist, and it’s a kind of realism that plays into an ongoing cinematic fallacy: the notion that poor people facing physical travails lack inner lives, as if having a life full of stories, dreams beyond survival, religious beliefs, and a thick tangle of social and emotional connections were a sort of luxury—and as if spending too much screen time finding and depicting them would be a form of disrespect or indifference to the characters’ immediate practical and economic difficulties.

Me? I love blankness and don't need a full-fledged 20th c psychological subject from every film I see. Especially if the film is about ye olde pioneer women in the 19th century . . .

He ends up, "The politics and the sympathies of Meek’s Cutoff are liberal; its aesthetics are not just conservative, but reactionary."

Which is funny, right? Because Tree of Life is so ideologically reactionary, but it tries to be aesthetically experimental.

I also read about Osama and Acai.

And you did see this, the funniest thing in The New Yorker ever? "New App on the Kindle 2GO" Directions to T.S. Eliot's house, "Arrive around 7:30. Our phone is 917-555-0133. Much appreciate if you could bring a dessert—keep in mind that I’m lactose-intolerant."

The Trial of St. Joan

Did you really think I was going to let that slide? Denby and "The Case for Joan Crawford."

Denby seems – rightly – rather scared of Joan Crawford. Not because she is all the intimidating and vaguely unflattering things he says she is, but because she is an amazing artist and he is . . . a man with opinions. I feel a conflict of interest here. He should recuse himself from passing judgment on Crawford.

This turn of phrase occurred to me as I was bitching about the article in the car – the magazine was not at hand. Imagine my surprise, then, when I started this post and read the following, from Denby, “Any call for justice to Joan Crawford, however, runs into a dead end . . .” Oh, we’re at dead end alright. I’m not sure evaluating Crawford as a date “the date who raises your blood pressure, not you’re your libido” is going to work out that well.

But he’s right, Crawford did “place herself at the vanguard of current erotic taste”- this is definitely my take on her adorable boyishness in Our Dancing Daughters “in which [according to Denby] she is pleasure-loving and wild yet candid and friendly, a straight shooter who gets the guy.” Well-put. And she develops and changes this basic persona to suit changing erotic tastes, and maintains it.

Also cute: how he describes her early commitment to her own celebrity as “dress-up-to-go-grocery-shopping.”

And I liked, “If you look at pictures of her at any age, the whites of her eyes show not just above the irises but below them, too. Her eyes are so wide open that she seems to be devouring the future.” The first is objectively true, the second is lovely.

Again with the eyes, on her amazing performance as Daisy Kenyon, “with an open-eyed stare and a hardened voice.” I like this wide-eyed image that isn’t innocence. And his take on the brilliant match between her tough elegance and Warner Brothers is easy to agree with.

I wasn’t that taken with his attitude towards the contrast between Crawford “bittersweet” and “melancholy” as the pushover stenographer in Grand Hotel, and Crawford “determined to show the audience how big a bitch a woman faced with few choices can become” in The Women. He’s right about the contrast between the two performances, but that right there is the brilliance of her artistry. Not all femininity is charming in its desperation. And not all desperation is charming. And that’s the difference between performing femininity for women and performing it for men. Yes indeed, “She was always a bigger hit with women than with men.”

I also dislike the idea that there’s “nothing flexible or playful” in her performances and that just doesn’t make sense to me. Denby seems fully aware that Johnny Guitar exists. And what about when she lifts the lid on that canary in What Every Happened to Baby Jane?
That film is every kind of brilliant.

And finally, do we, does Crawford, does anyone, need to be “rescued from camp?” If he's her self-appointed advocate, that's not working either. Thanks, but no thanks.

Understatement of the Week

Denby on Jane Fucking Eyre: "This fervent, angry novel gave a strong impetus to both feminist fiction and romance novels."

Feminist fiction and romance novels. You don't say.

A.O. Scott

Lot of people love him, lots of people mock him. But does he always write with such insistent internal rhymes, I ask you?

On Sitting Down to Read A.O. Scott's Review of The Other Guys,
Once Again

He sings of angry populist satire
Of a British weasel-for-hire

Of topical provocation
Of whatever worldly anger and frustration

we may be harboring.

With the crow of an inflamed bantam rooster,
and the eyes of a combustible milquetoast,

gullible,
irresistible,
less comprehensible
than sensible.

Vixens, lions, tunas, scams,
hedges, bailouts, Ponzi schemes,

A mooning goofball
A spoofing fireball
A going-out-of-business sale at the comic video boutique,
brought to you by the infinitely fungible voice of Will Ferrell.

Not so.
Macho.
After all.

more love for richard brody

He writes, "I’ve been waiting for a while to see a movie in which a woman has an abortion and lives happily ever after." Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/03/being-greenberg.html#ixzz0kT5QGgm4

Hey! Same here! Of course, this movie would be Greenberg, which I wasn't gonna see because it's a romantic comedy and all. Also, Denby, "All credit to Ben Stiller, who gives the best performance of his career." Read more of that: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/greenberg_baumbach#ixzz0kT79XSv8

Gee, it seems like only yesterday . . .

"you laugh, you cry, and you go to the kitchen"

If you are looking for bracing, unadulterated Oscarspleen, go to (of course) The Reverse Shot Blog.

But TNY has some pretty hilarious things to say about last night's Oscars, too. Richard Brody, Judith Thurman and Tad Friend chat with readers at The New Yorker online. Nothing profound, but a funny and slightly mature perspective (they love beards - the kind on the face, they don't love John Hughes).

Thurman disagrees with the Fug Girls, re. Bullock's hair and lipstick. Friend didn't immediately get something obvious to most of the Gawkers who were commenting live, ie. that Bridges was not, so to speak, unprepared. Halfway through the convo it clicks. Maybe someone texted him.

And there's some cute shtick:

"RICHARD BRODY: My favorite performance of the night was Whoopi Goldberg’s, in the commercial for Poise."

On the horror film montage, and The Shining:

"TAD FRIEND: My favorite Kubrick film, that one. Shelley Duvall’s highwater mark.

JUDITH THURMAN: Diane Johnson wrote it, right?

RICHARD BRODY: I thought that Shelley Duvall’s high-water mark was Popeye."

And more Kubrick (these conversations are actually woven together and internet stuttered, time-wise, in a fun way, in the original):

"RICHARD BRODY: My favorite Kubrick film is the last, Eyes Wide Shut; I think it’s deeply personal and it shows.

JUDITH THURMAN: I disagree, Richard. I don’t think it translated to the modern era. It was a fin de siecle story of decadence and Weltschmerz.

RICHARD BRODY: No, it’s just a story of modern marriage.

TAD FRIEND: Judith, we’re conducting the conversation in English.

JUDITH THURMAN: Okay—let’s see—world weariness,

TAD FRIEND: I was kidding."

Maybe not hilarious, but funnier than Martin and Baldwin.

And maybe a bit too much favorite this and favorite that. The three of them don't make a real effort to discuss the politics of Hurt Locker (or Avatar), but an online chat is hardly the time and place for it. Brody basically thinks he's got it pegged on both accounts, but I don't quite agree with him. Brody on Hurt Locker (and on Jim Emerson on Hurt Locker) and Avatar, (again) and on the nominees in general. I might write more about this later.

Also, Honest Movie Posters, via kottke.

more Shutter Island

Richard Brody is apparently trying to make it up to me for all the lousy movie reviews TNY has ever published. Since Kael, he's been the New Yorker film reviewer with whom I've been most simpatico. So, of course, I've only ever written about him once. But check it out. He defends Shutter Island! My favorite line, from a recent blog post, is this: "A critic invoking reality is like a politician invoking God—if insincere, it’s demagogy; if sincere, it’s dogmatism."

Oh. Wait, no. It's this: "A movie isn’t a mere reflection of reality but, more important, an expansion of it, and that’s what lots of viewers are seeking and getting from this one."

Actually, screw it. You have to read the whole thing, and his post on The Prophet as well. Again: "The possibilities of movie-making are more or less boundless; a movie isn’t only what it shows but also what it omits."

All of this sounds like a dismissal of my least favorite masculinist sub-genre: the false-consciousness film. Shutter Island is tricky, but it isn't a false-consciousness film. It doesn't treat its audience like dupes. It makes them skeptics. Along the way, Brody opens up my favorite can of worms (he calls it the, um, "r-bomb"). He also mentions the packed theater, a significant part of my own Shutter Island experience.

Anthony Lane (and others) on Shutter Island

I think the New Yorker film reviews may just get on my nerves until the end of my days.

I loved Shutter Island. Loved it. The horror of watching a moral universe in which we can know and do wrong and right replaced - by force - with a remote island of personal, individual trauma? Noir for now.

But, apparently, no one else likes this movie, and I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is one more of those awful, awful references to Adorno. Anthony Lane, you should be ashamed!

A.O. Scott and Lane seem to agree that the film isn't serious enough to address the horrors of WWII. But it is. Plus Scott writes, "the plot [...] does not so much thicken as clog and coagulate." Just what I want. Actually, to be honest, Scott's who review had me grinning . . . we just didn't agree.

Also good: Gawker and its commentators, on "precious, twee hacks" and a great Thomas Mann/Marty and Leo analogy.

let's pretend it's the week of sept 21

We've all just gotten a new issue of TNY and we're mulling things over. These things might be:

Crain on the culture of the Great Depression, and Depression-era "holidays." This Dickstein book is something I'd like to read. I love 1930s realism.

Denby on Campion's Bright Star.

Campion makes only one serious mistake: when Whishaw recites the lines “Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast, / To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,” he actually rests his head on Cornish’s chest. The literalness borders on the laughable . . .

This made me smile. I had the same reaction during a recent episode of "Mad Men," when Don is confronted by his father's ghost. I think, time-wise, Denby wrote this before I yelled at the TV "No, don't look at your hands!" I give up. We have a deep, spiritual bond, Denby and I.

Though, immediately afterwards, I think he's wrong. The sentence continues . . . and you wonder, disconcertingly, how these two relieve what look like unbearable states of arousal. Maybe Campion is making the joke that you are laughing at Denby? Did you ever think of that? She makes lots of great visual sexual jokes. She's like that. Then again, so do the MM writers.

Paul Simms' "Shouts and Murmurs." A hilarity that exists somewhere between houseguests and colonization.

And Ben Yagoda's letter about Rose Wilder Lane. She is "in fact, the first ghostwriter in history." Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin and Art Smith, "Boy Aviator" owe her.

Thank god my wait at the doctor's office did not allow me to read all of "The Eight Days of the Financial Crisis." I don't even think I made it through day one. But I was impressed with what one might call the (pardon me) "economy" of the writing. Not a lot of superfluous detail. Stewart sets the scene and gets to business. Everything he tells you means something, and soon. I wish more New Yorker pieces were this controlled.

I also laughed out loud at more than one of the cartoons. Including the contests in the back. Fellow patients stared at me in wonderment.

Double Takes

In the November 19th issue. Lauren Collins (twice), Richard Brody, Larry Doyle and, of course, David Denby (twice).

Best line in the whole magazine, in "Why We Strike" - "Management is currently offering us adjusted bubkes of what they are making off Internet sell-through, streaming, ringtones, Webisodes, cellisodes, iPodisodes, celebrity-narrated colonoscosodes, or the psychotic episodes they've been beaming into your brain, brought to you by Clozaril." (51)

My emphasis. When I regained my breath, I realized that that's how you spell bubkes.

I liked Lauren Collins on the restaurant Taim. Not gushing and a little ironic, "You get the feeling she spends a lot of time at the Container Store," but positive. And she nicely manages the contrast between the attempt to "make gourmet food 'street'" and the yummier ambition, to "take street food, and make it gourmet." She sets it up and doesn't belabor it. And maybe it helps that I'd actually like to eat the food she's describing. (19) Or maybe that's the intended effect of a good review.

Apparently Ethan Hawke is playing a "not very bright kid brother" in a Sidney Lumet caper. Excellent. (26) Thank you, David Denby!

Richard Brody says some smart things about Griffith, Murnau and Eisenstein. Except that thing about Eisenstein as the cinema's "first modernist" . . . that's a bit much. (30)

Lauren Collins' "No Seconds" on the famous last meal thing is, fortunately, in extremely bad taste, since it appears while there is a moratorium on executions in the US. And dull into the bargain. And, just for the record, I would never, EVER buy Secret Ingredients, The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink which is advertised, oh-so-conveniently, on the next page.

Skipped Jon Lee Anderson's latest installment in the adventure serial he's working on.

I valiantly read pages and pages of Pierpont's essay on Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier. My favorite part was "Oliver then insures that the film is too unnaturally beautiful ever to be confused with reality."(72) That's Henry V (1944).

John Lahr doesn't love Mel Brooks' Broadway adaptation of "Young Frankenstein" and admits, "These are hard words to write." Really? (88)

But the biggest surprise of the issue has got to be this: Brian De Palma's new film Redacted, set in midst of the violence of the Iraq war, is actually about film critic David Denby's media habits. Check it out.

Dancing About Architecture

I'm all for it.

But there are, it would seem, at least 2 documentary films currently in circulation about Klimt and the twists of fate and history that befell the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. You remember Schjeldahl's essay. And my strange fantasy.

Anyway, the films are Klimt ou le Testament d'Adèle, by Michel Vuillermet, and Stealing Klimt, by Jane Chablani, and you can read more info about the films through the links in the GreenCine Daily review. But I have to say, the descriptions there don't make me want to see the films. It may be the author's interest in the story, but it sounds like both of the films are all history, no art.

Is this so, and if so, why?

The Best Things in Life are Pink

The clothes, the hair, the music, the locations, the editing. One of the few movies I saw before age 10, ridiculously memorable in sound and image, and almost as good as I remembered it. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody.

"Tough shit, Bill"

That's Ms. Kael to William Shawn regarding one Terrence Malick, director of Badlands, translator of Heidegger, commemorator of Martin Luther King, Jr's assassination, etc.

What am I babbling about? Emdashes and the Librarians explain everything. Well, maybe not everything. I've always been baffled because I love Badlands madly but can't even sit through any of Malick's other films. Kael, on the other hand, apparently wasn't taken in to begin with, “The movie can be summed up: mass-culture banality is killing our souls and making everybody affectless. ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ said the same thing without all this draggy art.”

korean film posters (sigh)

It's kind of hard to describe, but in the foyer of Pitt's Hillman Library right now are some really cool Korean film posters from the 1950s-1960s, with informative panels explaining a bit about the production history, a synopsis of the film narrative, this and that.

The posters themselves are in amazing condition, with soft, glowing colors.

The exhibit comes via The Korea Society (the link reveals the merest glimpse of the posters' beauty) in New York, where they will be showing some of the films (and, it looks like, others from the same era) starting Jan 18 and running through June.

There's some useful info in this flyer, including whom to contact if you want to host the exhibit. But before you click, please note that this flyer does not at all do justice to the breathtaking posters themselves.

incoherant and idiosyncratic thoughts on the dec 11 issue

Did I mention that I liked William Finnegan's "Letter from Maine, New in Town, Somali refugees find a home." I think I did. I liked how small the topic was and I don't mean that in a bad way. Do I mean local? Specific? I don't know. It gave more texture to the voices and perspectives used in the piece and kept the folks from becoming too Representative, if you know what I mean.

I also read Tad Friend on the US The Office. And then I watched about 5 minutes of the show myself, what with the hotel room cable TV I had access to. But frankly it didn't do it for me. I know the show isn't actually on cable, but here at home we don't get any kind of TV reception at all. Seriously. I can't even watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is about the only time it's come up. Maybe there was a World Series I wanted to see too, somewhere in the last 5 years.

Speaking of television viewing, you know how I was watching all that well-meaning middle-brow TV? It was all leading up to one event, that is, watching The Constant Gardener. Or, Friends with Money go to Africa and Lose the Irony.

The Constant Gardener came at a bad time too, because I'd been recently getting all antsy about how restricted the color palettes and textures are of big arty movies. It's like every movie now is an over-designed period film in which no stray nothing - face, hand, surface, space, sound - can jar us aesthetically out of a kind of absolute OCD dream. Is all of Kenya really organized into orange and blue-green? It's like everyone has taken Martha Stewart too much to heart.

While this kind of control isn't new (at all, I mean) it's present manifestations are getting on my nerves.

So it was quite refreshing to see, also via cable TV, the intentional opulent-matchy-match-ugliness of War of the Roses and Laura Dern, in Jurassic Park, wearing a pair of long shorts made hideous by the passing of time. I'd never seen Jurassic Park before and I was impressed by the amount of danger the kids were in while inside an SUV. Prescient.