Category Archives: 5 Stars

Choirs of Heavenly Angels

Just Passing Through: Wendy and Lucy

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Wendy and Lucy movie poster

 

Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy is, on its own terms, per­fect. As such, it exposes the silly prac­tice of rat­ing films in num­bers of stars, even if this par­tic­u­lar blog is merely one movie lover’s jour­nal of per­sonal reac­tions, and not pre­tend­ing to be objec­tive crit­i­cism. So please inter­pret these five stars as mean­ing that I was utterly moved by Wendy and Lucy.

Wendy (Michelle Williams) is a young drifter from Indi­ana head­ing nowhere in par­tic­u­lar. Her home is a bat­tered car, shared only with her beloved dog Lucy. She’s wor­ry­ingly skinny, with an unex­plained ban­daged ankle. She keeps a run­ning ledger in her jour­nal, track­ing the rapid decline of the life sav­ings strapped to her waist. We don’t know why Wendy is on her own — whether she’s run­ning from some­thing or some­one, or if she’s sim­ply search­ing for a job. She calls her sis­ter and brother-in-law in Indi­ana, but they evi­dently have prob­lems of their own and quickly dis­miss her. The poor, mis­er­able girl never smiles, but often qui­etly hums a tune to herself.

Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy

One night, Wendy meets a group of young drifters by a bon­fire. Icky (musi­cian Will Old­ham — a.k.a. Bon­nie ‘Prince’ Billy) men­tions an Alaskan fish­ery that pays well and pro­vides hous­ing. This is good enough for Wendy, and pro­vides her with a des­ti­na­tion. But she expe­ri­ences a dis­as­trous day while pass­ing through Port­land (or in terms of her ledger, as least, the most crip­plingly expen­sive). In short order, her car breaks down, she’s caught shoplift­ing, loses Lucy, and is very nearly assaulted.

Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy

The secu­rity guard of the neigh­bor­hood Wal­greens (Wal­ter Dal­ton) becomes a gen­uine friend, whose great­est aid may sim­ply be just talk­ing with her. They briefly bond over the shared mis­eries of those that fall between the tracks: you can’t get a job with­out an address or a phone num­ber, and you can’t get an address or a phone num­ber with­out a job. Peo­ple like her are always “just pass­ing through.” He gives her $7, a gift he hides from his fam­ily, clearly a sac­ri­fice for him.

Wendy and Lucy is spare and eco­nom­i­cal at only 75 min­utes long, but it is heart­break­ing and dev­as­tat­ing. In some ways, Wendy is bet­ter off than the group of drifters she meets at the begin­ning of the film; she has a car, mea­ger sav­ings, and some dis­ci­pline. But the num­ber of steps it would take for her to become like them is few, and may hap­pen in only a sin­gle day. One can only hope that Icky is right, and that Wendy will find some liveli­hood in Alaska.

Offi­cial movie site: www.wendyandlucy.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

The Incredibles

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The Incredibles movie poster

 

Like writer/director Brad Bird’s Rata­touille, The Incred­i­bles is a vir­tu­ally per­fect movie. Bird’s aston­ish­ing one-two punch for Pixar builds on the ani­ma­tion studio’s rep­u­ta­tion for deep emo­tional res­o­nance already earned by Andrew Stanton’s Find­ing Nemo (read The Dork Report review) and later recon­firmed by Wall-E (read The Dork Report review). But Bird’s films add a wel­come matu­rity that proves the medium of ani­ma­tion can be, at its best, truly for all ages.

Although packed with action, spec­ta­cle, and chase sequences, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how lit­tle kids would react to such a rel­a­tively dark movie. Note the middle-aged anx­i­ety, mar­i­tal strife, and sur­pris­ingly high body count (granted, most deaths hap­pen off­screen, but only just!). I can eas­ily imag­ine most kids tun­ing out dur­ing the many long dra­matic sequences obvi­ously pitched at adults. Just to name one scene that might be hard for young­sters to grasp: Mr. Incred­i­ble saves a sui­ci­dal man who doesn’t want to be saved. Guest Dork Reporter Snark­bait asked her two lit­tle boy cousins what they liked best about their movie. They relate most to the char­ac­ter Dash, and prob­a­bly selec­tively ignore the bits they can’t yet under­stand. So per­haps I’m under­es­ti­mat­ing how well the movie works on mul­ti­ple levels.

The IncrediblesThe fam­ily that fights robot drones together stays together

Even the voice cast­ing is so per­fect, it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine any oth­ers in their place. Craig T. Nel­son is as per­fectly suited to Mr. Incredible’s middle-aged anx­i­eties as Tim Allen was to Buzz Lightyear’s inno­cent blus­ter in the Toy Story films. I could go on to praise every sin­gle other voice actor, but spe­cial men­tion must go to Holly Hunter as sassy spit­fire Elasti­girl, Sarah Vowell’s per­fect expres­sion of teen anx­i­eties as (shrink­ing) Vio­let, and Brad Bird’s gut-bustingly hilar­i­ous impres­sion of Hol­ly­wood fash­ion leg­end Edith Head as the super­hero cos­tume designer Edna Mode.

Brad Bird and Holly Hunter in The IncrediblesBrad Bird steals his own movie as the unfor­get­table Edna Mode

If forced to find one thing to cri­tique, I would point to the rel­a­tively minor details of the char­ac­ters’ hair. On the DVD bonus fea­tures, the Pixar ani­ma­tors and soft­ware engi­neers brag about the tech­nolo­gies they invented to sim­u­late real­is­tic hair, but none of the vir­tual coifs sit well upon the delib­er­ately styl­ized car­toony faces. The char­ac­ters have cute lit­tle dim­ples instead of hairy nos­trils and waxy ear canals, so why give them such pho­to­re­al­is­tic hair?

Offi­cial movie site: www.theincredibles.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Synecdoche, New York

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Synecdoche, New York movie poster

 

Whether it actu­ally is or not, Synec­doche, New York has the feel of a very, very per­sonal work of art. I know next to noth­ing about writer/director Char­lie Kauf­man, and don’t even nec­es­sar­ily feel like I do now. Then again, few peo­ple do know Kauf­man, as he has famously man­aged to side­step much pub­lic­ity despite per­pe­trat­ing a suc­cess­ful screen­writ­ing career in an indus­try in which the cult of per­son­al­ity applies to everyone.

Synec­doche, New York is Kaufman’s first film as direc­tor, after a string of play­ful yet brainy screen­plays. The best antecedents I can name would be the sur­real satires of Lind­say Ander­son (like O Lucky Man! — read The Dork Report Review) and the Post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion of Tom Stop­pard (espe­cially Rosen­crantz and Guilden­stern are Dead, which wreaks hilar­i­ous havok with no less a holy relic than Ham­let). Kaufman’s hit parade so far includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature (under­rated! see it!), Con­fes­sions of a Dan­ger­ous Mind, Adap­ta­tion, and Dork Report favorite The Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. Being John Malkovich and Eter­nal Sun­shine are both pure plea­sures to watch, but Adap­ta­tion showed the darker side of Kaufman’s bril­liance. As I under­stood the film, the very life itself of screen­writer “Char­lie Kauf­man” (Nico­las Cage) slowly becomes the vio­lent, sexed-up Hol­ly­wood melo­drama he loathes to write. To describe Synec­doche, New York in short­hand, it’s as if the cyn­i­cal, chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive nature of Adap­ta­tion were crossed with the deep emo­tional impact of Eter­nal Sunshine.

Samantha Morton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New YorkHere’s The Dork Report’s the­ory to explain Hazel’s enig­matic burn­ing house: could it be an allu­sion to the Talk­ing Heads song “Love -> Build­ing on Fire”? I’m being seri­ous here…

But what it’s actu­ally “about” would take a lot of analy­sis to fig­ure out, and my sin­gle view­ing is not enough to unpack it (assum­ing my IQ would be up to the task any­way). Like Adap­ta­tion, it’s actu­ally a lit­tle frus­trat­ing to watch, but in a good sense, in that the audi­ence is con­stantly being chal­lenged. I have to admit that I don’t fully “get” it, but I also think it’s clear there’s no sin­gle key to unlock­ing any one mean­ing of the film. I’m giv­ing it the full five-star Dork Report rat­ing because I have enor­mous respect for any such uncom­pro­mis­ing, chal­leng­ing, affect­ing, and frus­trat­ing work of art in cin­ema. That it was pro­duced as a major motion pic­ture star­ring numer­ous famous faces and released in mul­ti­plexes nation­ally along­side the more typ­i­cal fare Saw V and High School Musi­cal 3 is noth­ing less than a mir­a­cle, and gives one hope for the future of the film indus­try. At least four peo­ple walked out of the screen­ing I attended, some dur­ing an uncom­fort­able nude scene fea­tur­ing Emily Wat­son (not uncom­fort­able in that she isn’t beau­ti­ful, because she is, but because the sex scene is so utterly frank). It’s a pity they did, for they missed one of the most weirdly mov­ing last moments of a film I’ve ever seen (although it did have prece­dent in Peter Weir’s The Tru­man Show, which also sug­gested the voice of God towards his sup­pli­cant is akin to that of a film/theater/television director’s towards his actor).

The clos­est thing I’ve seen to Synec­doche, New York is Spike Jonze’s Michel Gondry’s bril­liant music video for Björk’s Bach­e­lorette (Jonze Gondry is a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor of Kaufman’s, and co-produced Synec­doche, New York). (UPDATE: cor­rec­tions thanks to com­menter Greg. I can’t believe I mixed up two of my favorite direc­tors!) Less a pop music promo than a short film that stands on its own mer­its, Bach­e­lorette recounts the tale of a young coun­try girl who writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and moves to the big city, where she falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, her book spawns a the­atri­cal adap­ta­tion, in which a young coun­try girl writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, moves to the big city, and falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, it too spawns a the­atri­cal play. You get the idea: the tale is infi­nitely recur­sive. But each copy is a copy within a copy, each more dis­torted, flimsy, and sad than its source mate­r­ial. Entropy and decay set in, and the world(s) col­lapse in upon them­selves. Her life basi­cally ends at the point she fin­ishes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and looks only back­wards instead of liv­ing for the future. Watch the video here:

Synec­doche, New York is a pun on the New York city Sch­enec­tady (the loca­tion of Caden’s orig­i­nal the­ater com­pany) and the lit­er­ary term for a fig­ure of speech in which a part stands in for the whole (for exam­ple, “The White House said today…” as used by news­cast­ers rather than spec­i­fy­ing the admin­is­tra­tion, or even more specif­i­cally, the Press Sec­re­tary). The­ater direc­tor Caden Cotard’s (Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man) artist wife Adele (Cather­ine Keener) divorces him and moves to Ger­many with their daugh­ter and Maria (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), who may be her lover (guest Dork Reporter Snark­bait points out that this is Keener’s sec­ond sex­u­ally ambigu­ous role in a Kauf­man film, here and in Being John Malkovich). Caden wor­ries for the rest of his life that Maria is a bet­ter replace­ment for him­self as hus­band and father.

Caden wins a MacArthur Foun­da­tion Genius Grant, and uses the funds to move to Man­hat­tan and craft an epic play housed in a dis­used the­ater illog­i­cally large enough to hold a scale model of New York City as his set. Out­side, the real Man­hat­tan descends into chaos and war­fare. At one point, the char­ac­ters leave the the­ater and walk past mys­te­ri­ous civil rights atroc­i­ties such as clown-costume-clad sol­diers herd­ing cit­i­zens onto armored busses at gunpoint.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Hope Davis in Synecdoche, New YorkHope Davis, as the shrink­est with the mostest, offers to shrink Philip Sey­mour Hoffman’s head

Caden’s can­vas is infi­nite, there is no script, and he hopes to find his story as he goes along. The play is in per­pet­ual rehearsal for decades, and remains for­ever unti­tled. I hate to use this kind of cop-out phrase pop­u­lar in col­lege lit­er­a­ture classes, but it truly is “a metaphor for life.” As Caden tries to find mean­ing for the trau­matic events in his life, and to ratio­nal­ize his deci­sions, he casts actors to play him­self and the sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple in his life. Like mem­o­ries being processed by the human brain, he is now able to replay recent painful events in his life over and over, giv­ing direc­tion to his actors on how to express their (his) pain, all with the emo­tional safety of know­ing that it’s all just playacting.

Soon, he takes even another step back, and casts another set of actors to play the first. Real­ity itself begins to break down as in Björk’s Bach­e­lorette, also fea­tur­ing a play within a play within a play, cast with sev­eral pairs of other actors play­ing her­self and her lover as their affair, and entire world, dis­in­te­grates. A sim­i­lar theme of copies and dou­bles also fig­ures into Adap­ta­tion: writer “Char­lie” may or may not have an iden­ti­cal twin brother, shame­lessly able to make the kinds of com­pro­mises nec­es­sary for suc­cess in the movie biz and life itself that he is too weak or too ashamed to do him­self. Is it sig­nif­i­cant, as Kauf­man moves from writer to writer/director, that the cen­tral char­ac­ter of Adap­ta­tion is a writer, and that of Synec­doche, New York is a director?

Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Noonan in Synecdoche, New YorkA scene from Synec­doche, New York, star­ring Saman­tha Mor­ton as Hazel, Emily Wat­son as Tammy as Hazel, Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as Caden, and Tom Noo­nan as Sammy as Caden. Got that?

Caden is beset through­out with a host of mys­tery ill­nesses that for­ever threaten to kill him but never carry through their promise. I caught at least two hints that he may in fact already be dead: his shrink Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis) makes a seem­ing slip of the tongue and asks why he killed him­self, and later, one of his dop­pel­gängers (Tom Noo­nan) com­mits suicide.

The walls between Caden’s life and his play blur; which is real and which is the play? The dis­pas­sion­ate direc­tor watches from a dis­tance as oth­ers do the dirty work of liv­ing his life for him, such as con­duct his love affairs and breakups with Claire (Michele Williams), Hazel (Saman­tha Mor­ton), and Tammy (Emily Wat­son), that he may not have the emo­tional strength or sex­ual potency to do him­self. Caden even­tu­ally replaces him­self and takes the sim­pler, less demand­ing role of one of the most fleet­ingly minor back­ground fig­ures in his life. Is he an actor in his own play, fol­low­ing the script and direc­tion from some­one else, an invis­i­ble exter­nal force… God? He essen­tially abdi­cates respon­si­bil­ity for his own life, and dies on cue.

Must read: exhaus­tive fan site BeingCharlieKaufman.com

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny

Buy the DVD and Schoot­ing Script from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai)

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Seven Samurai

 

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samu­rai is awe­some and per­fect, and this most recent view­ing has affirmed its place among this Dork Reporter’s all-time favorites. It’s a big movie, by which I mean it makes the best use of its gen­er­ous run­ning time with just the right amount of every­thing: romance, com­edy, drama, sus­pense, and action. Nearly half the film is taken up by a mas­sive, expertly chore­o­graphed bat­tle rival­ing any­thing put to film by famous West­ern direc­tors of vio­lent spec­ta­cle like Michael Mann or Steven Spiel­berg. Long as it is, it’s about 15 min­utes shorter than Gone With the Wind but twice as epic, twice as sub­stan­tial, twice as… well, twice as good.

It is, in some ways, a sim­ple tale broadly told. A rice farm­ing vil­lage in 16th cen­tury Japan is under con­stant siege by a band of par­a­sitic ban­dits that abduct its young women and reg­u­larly steal most of its annual yield. With no gov­ern­ment or mil­i­tary to pro­tect them, the vil­lagers pool their mea­ger resources to hire seven ronin (mas­ter­less samu­rai reduced to sur­viv­ing hand-to-mouth as mer­ce­nar­ies) to fight on their behalf. The arche­typal char­ac­ters seem sim­plis­tic on the sur­face: vil­lains to boo and heroes to cheer. In case the viewer have any doubt as to who the bad guy is, the chief ban­dit wears a black eye­patch, for cry­ing out loud! Kam­bei (Takashi Shimura), the supremely capa­ble and wise leader of the samu­rai, essen­tially lays down a uni­ver­sal def­i­n­i­tion of “hero” with his recruit­ment call: “There’s a tough bat­tle ahead, lead­ing to nei­ther money nor rank. Will you join us?”

Seven SamuraiYou messed with the wrong ronin

And yet, many sub­tleties grad­u­ally unfold. Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) is one of the great plea­sures of the movie, but also one of its great­est mys­ter­ies. He’s clown­ish and child­ishly impul­sive, yet pas­sion­ately moral. He’s a com­moner mas­querad­ing as a samu­rai, his only cer­ti­fi­ca­tion being his ridicu­lously long sword (pre­sum­ably the lib­er­ated for­mer pos­ses­sion of a very tall samu­rai). Kam­bei, whom in another life could have been a good shrink, cor­rectly deduces Kikuchiyo’s moti­va­tions for hav­ing attached him­self to the ven­ture; he him­self is a peas­ant farmer with pre­ten­sions for more. He directly iden­ti­fies with the farm­ers’ plight, yet his deep-seated class inse­cu­ri­ties fuel his a love-hate rela­tion­ship with them. As an essay by Ken­neth Turan in the Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion book­let points out, medieval Japan was a fiercely delin­eated caste soci­ety, and the fact that a for­mer farmer might pre­sume to call him­self a samu­rai is a huge trans­gres­sion. For a very dif­fer­ent, more sub­dued dra­matic per­for­mance by Mifune, see Kurosawa’s Stray Dog.

As we learn more about Kikuchiyo, we like­wise slowly get a more and more com­plex por­trait of the vil­lagers. They are no doubt the vic­tims of a seri­ous crime. Yet they whine all the way and mythol­o­gize them­selves as help­less, saintly, vic­tim­ized salt of the earth that must resort to hir­ing dis­graced samu­rai to pro­tect them. But they har­bor a dark secret; they have robbed many fallen samu­rai of their armor and weapons over the years Their ver­i­ta­ble armory of pil­fered gear of war is use­less to them, and yet they shame­fully hide it from the samu­rai pro­tect­ing them (even though it would bol­ster their com­ing war). The seven samu­rai are deeply offended, and yet nev­er­the­less do the right thing and defend the vil­lage. But the gulf between the two classes, samu­rai and farmer, is reaffirmed.

Seven SamuraiHe’s a wild and crazy samurai

Seven Samu­rai is in the com­pany of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cit­i­zen Kane, and Ver­tigo, a spe­cial class of film so famously influ­en­tial that even first-time view­ers may very well feel they’ve seen it before. Just to name a few of Seven Samurai’s first-generation off­spring: The Mag­nif­i­cent Seven is an unapolo­getic trans­po­si­tion of the orig­i­nal from feu­dal Japan to the Amer­i­can West. The Dirty Dozen and Ocean’s Eleven both bor­row the trope of recruit­ing a gang of mis­fits one-by-one, whom in con­cert become capa­ble of strengths impos­si­ble as indi­vid­u­als. Another American-produced remake is sched­uled for release in 2009, this time set in modern-day Thailand.

The 2006 Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion edi­tion is a required library item, not one to merely rent. A mag­nif­i­cent restora­tion of the film itself is accom­pa­nied by a beau­ti­fully designed sleeve and book­let. A sur­pris­ing amount of dam­age remains in the long bat­tle sequence in the sec­ond half of the film, but Criterion’s rep­u­ta­tion for qual­ity ensures that these are almost cer­tainly the best avail­able mate­ri­als. Per­haps these reels were more fre­quently sub­jected to tor­ture over the years by scholars?

Why you need to read the booklet:

  • Ken­neth Turan on the full year of pro­duc­tion it took to make the film, mir­ror­ing the time that passes in the movie. On a prac­ti­cal level, the extended pro­duc­tion allows for greater real­ism like Kambei’s hair real­is­ti­cally grow­ing back after shav­ing his head in the begin­ning (the top­knot is a prized sym­bol of the samu­rai; not just a fash­ion but a require­ment of their caste). But also on a the­matic level, one year = the farm­ing cycle of life: plant­ing through harvest.
  • Peter Cowie on the mutual admi­ra­tion soci­ety between Kuro­sawa (a fan of the Hol­ly­wood West­ern) and John Ford.
  • Philip Kemp on 16th Cen­tury Japan. The feu­dal soci­ety had lit­tle dis­tinc­tion between ronin and bandits.
  • Peggy Chiao on Kurosawa’s influ­ences. Kuro­sawa was a Marx­ist in his 20s, but later mel­lowed. His older brother turned him on to Dos­toyevsky, but com­mit­ted suicide.
  • Alain Sil­ver on Kurosawa’s stag­ing and composition.
  • Stu­art Gal­braith IV on the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese cin­ema, which was flour­ish­ing at the time.
  • Appre­ci­a­tions by direc­tors Sid­ney Lumet and Arthur Penn.
  • Toshiro Mifune’s quite funny and enter­tain­ing rem­i­nis­cences. Mifune claims he devised his char­ac­ter, as noth­ing had been writ­ten yet when he was cast.

Sup­ple­men­tal fea­tures on the bonus discs:

  • “Akira Kuro­sawa: It is Won­der­ful to Cre­ate” — an almost exces­sively hagio­graphic biog­ra­phy, but with sev­eral amus­ing anec­dotes. Shoot­ing all year meant con­tin­u­ing through February’s freez­ing mud, while Mifune was almost naked. Kuro­sawa duti­fully stood in the mud with his cast and crew, and was lit­er­ally frostbitten.
  • “Seven Samu­rai: Ori­gins & Influ­ences” — “The Story of the 47 Ronin” was a pop­u­lar pup­pet the­ater tale for hun­dreds of years, and was adapted into films sev­eral times a year in early Japan­ese cin­ema. One of those obser­va­tions that sounds obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect, but needs to be pointed out by some­body: Ronin (pro­nounced by some as “roh-ee-nin”) sto­ries are more pop­u­lar than samu­rai sto­ries because they are inher­ently more dra­mat­i­cally interesting.
  • “My Life in Cin­ema: Akira Kuro­sawa” — a long inter­view by fel­low direc­tor Nag­isa Oshima.

Must read: the Cri­te­rion Con­trap­tion review by Matthew Dessem

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Children of Men

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Children of Men

 

Alfonso Cuarón’s Chil­dren of Men is absolutely one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Two view­ings have over­whelmed me with some of the strongest emo­tional reac­tions I’ve ever had to a movie. It is, at the very least, one of the best of 2007 (along with Pan’s Labyrinth and United 93), and every­thing the similarly-themed V for Vendetta could have been.

Children of MenThis cof­fee packs a wallop

The movie opens nearly two decades after the last human birth. Mass infer­til­ity is a ter­ri­fy­ingly plau­si­ble sci-fi trope in 2008, with loom­ing cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe, increased rates of autism and aller­gies, and the immi­nent threat of a globe-spanning con­ta­gious dis­ease out­break like SARS (a fic­tional flu pan­demic is alluded to in the film). As the infer­til­ity remains uncured, so too is it unex­plained for the audi­ence. The best sci­ence fic­tion avoids pedes­trian pseudo-science that tends not to date well (2001: A Space Odyssey being the excep­tion that proves the rule). The most detail we learn is that women are infer­tile, and we can assume that cloning and arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion of frozen eggs have failed. So by the time the film opens, the harsh fact that the human race is doomed to slowly die out is a given, and has reduced the world’s soci­eties into chaos. Only Britain has been able to sur­vive, to a point, using only the harsh­est total­i­tar­ian meth­ods. In pro­pa­ganda com­mer­cials glimpsed through­out the movie, Britain con­grat­u­lates itself for the fas­cism that makes it pos­si­ble to carry on; but is this kind of sur­vival worth the price?

Immi­grants flood the only coun­try with some sem­blance of sta­bil­ity, flee­ing unspec­i­fied atroc­i­ties abroad. All we learn of the United States is of a vague cat­a­stro­phe in New York creep­ily referred to only as “it.” Immi­grants are demo­nized as “fugis” (for “fugi­tives,” per­haps pun­ning on the deroga­tory British slang “paki” for any and all Mid­dle East­ern­ers) and penned in con­cen­tra­tion camps. Many shots explic­itly allude to infa­mous images of cap­tive enemy com­bat­ants in Guan­tanamo Bay. Sev­eral of the fugi­tive voices we hear are Ger­man, caus­ing one to won­der just what exactly may have hap­pened in Ger­many, and if it may have been some­thing we have seen before in human his­tory. My Ger­man is non-existent, but If I’m not mis­taken, we over­hear one cap­tive Ger­man woman bit­terly com­plain to her guard for being locked up in a deten­tion cell with black peo­ple. It’s not a pretty pic­ture of human nature, that at the worst of times, the worst of us comes out.

Children of MenAt gun­point is one way to recon­nect with an ex

The five cred­ited screen­writ­ers, usu­ally a bad sign, have done an extra­or­di­nary job of adapt­ing the orig­i­nal novel by P.D. James (who, accord­ing to IMDB, has an uncred­ited cameo in the café bombed in the open­ing moments of the film). I don’t know if I would go so far as to say the movie is “bet­ter” than its source mate­r­ial, but it is cer­tainly more vis­ceral and emo­tion­ally affect­ing to a post 9/11 audi­ence. As an adap­ta­tion, the many changes are jus­ti­fied and ben­e­fit the trans­la­tion to a dif­fer­ent medium and time. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, the chronol­ogy is con­densed from months to days, and the rel­a­tively polite insur­rec­tion­ist group The Five Fish has become a full-fledged ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion called sim­ply The Fish. Theo (Clive Owen) is younger, and no longer liv­ing a life of wealthy ease. He’s a gam­bler and alco­holic, and his orig­i­nal moti­va­tion to help The Fish is raw money. His cousin Nigel (Danny Hus­ton) is not the all-powerful War­den of Eng­land of the book, but rather merely the effete guardian of the Ark of the Arts. King Crimson’s dra­matic Mel­lotron dirge “In the Court of the Crim­son King” fit­tingly accom­pa­nies Theo as he vis­its Nigel, pass­ing into a walled city that sep­a­rates the priv­i­leged élite from the work­ing masses out­side (Naomi Klein pre­dicts the future dom­i­nance of such places in the DVD bonus fea­tures). The Ark is a point­less quest to archive the world’s great works of art, includ­ing every­thing from Michelangelo’s David, Picasso’s Guer­nica, to Pink Floyd’s inflat­able pig.

Children of MenCry­ing babies don’t usu­ally have this effect on people

Sev­eral mind-bendingly impos­si­ble track­ing shots grace the film, so fluid and jus­ti­fied by the action that the mind barely reg­is­ters a lack of cut­ting. There is an incred­i­ble level of detail in the art direc­tion, but as Cuaron declares in the DVD bonus fea­tures, the goal to was be the “anti-Blade Run­ner.” Two decades hence, tech­nol­ogy has marched on only to a degree. What’s the point of inno­va­tion in fash­ion, auto­mo­biles, and con­sumer elec­tron­ics when the human race is doomed to extinc­tion? Eerie sights include fields of burn­ing cat­tle corpses (pos­si­bly due to mad cow dis­ease, or more likely the sim­ple fact that the farm­ing econ­omy has col­lapsed), aban­doned and crum­bling schools, and the promi­nence of dog rac­ing as the sport of choice in a world with fewer and fewer fit young peo­ple every day.

Children of MenThe Human Project is real

Chil­dren of Men may be a pun­ish­ingly bleak vision of the future, but there is hope to be had. Theo is a bro­ken man resolved to a slow death, both his own and of his species. But there is some­thing spe­cial within him; his for­mer lover Julian (Julianne Moore) trusts him over every­one else to do the right thing when pre­sented with a gift of hope: the first human child in two decades. Even ani­mals are drawn to him, includ­ing dogs, kit­tens, and deer. His friend Jasper (Michael Caine) praises the Hindu Peace Mantra, which also appears as an epi­gram after the cred­its (over the sound of chil­dren play­ing), and bears repeat­ing here:

Shan­tih Shan­tih Shantih

Offi­cial movie site: www.childrenofmen.net

Must view: Daily Film Dose’s Great­est Long Track­ing Shots in Cin­ema, includ­ing Chil­dren of Men.

Must view: a reel of fake adverts made for the film by For­eign Office Design (via Kottke.org)

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

King Crimson live at The Nokia Theater, Times Square, New York City, August 16, 2008

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King Crim­son is my favorite band.

There, I said it. The more music and films I’m exposed to, the more point­less it seems to pick favorites. (Isn’t it kind of absurd to say that King Crim­son is “bet­ter” than, say, The Mahav­ishnu Orches­tra? While I’m on this par­en­thet­i­cal tan­gent, has any­body else ever noticed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between John McLaughlin’s jazz fusion group and the 1972–74 “Larks Tongues” incar­na­tion of King Crim­son?) Time and again on The Dork Report, I feel silly enough try­ing to con­dense my opin­ions about movies and con­certs into a five-star rat­ing tem­plate, and now even more so that I’ve seen Crim­son blow the top off my scale (just like the back cover to the album Red). So, yes, they’ve earned a rare Dork Report 5-star review, an honor I hope the Crims appre­ci­ate (yes, I’m kidding).

I absolutely enjoyed Thursday’s show at The Nokia The­atre in Times Square, New York City, as I hope was clear from my review. I wasn’t there on Fri­day, but Sat­ur­day night’s was some­thing else alto­gether, an extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance that rivalled the best of Crim­son that I’ve heard on record, be it live (with­out ques­tion B’Boom — Live in Argentina) or stu­dio (that would be Thrak — I invite read­ers to counter-argue in the com­ments below). So much so that my reluc­tance to play favorites is tem­porar­ily on hold; King Crim­son is finally, offi­cially, My Favorite Band.

King Crimson live at The Nokia Theater, Times Square, New York City, August 16, 2008Bend­ing the “No Pho­tog­ra­phy” rule, Part II

So who’s going to give cre­dence to the biased opin­ions of an acolyte pre­dis­posed to pos­i­tively rave about his heroes? In defense, I cer­tainly don’t think they can do no wrong; I am pre­pared to declare their 1971 album Lizard an almost unlis­ten­able piece of crap. But I hope that I can con­vey some of what made last night’s show an order of mag­ni­tude “bet­ter” than Thurs­day. The band was incred­i­bly tight, hope­fully putting to rest fans’ often-expressed fears that they have been a bit sloppy across this tour (a gripe I indulged in myself in my Thurs­day review). The crowd seemed more appre­cia­tively rowdy and keyed-up than before; indeed the over­all energy level was high. Per­haps it was just my dif­fer­ent van­tage point (slightly fur­ther back, and almost per­fectly cen­tered), but even the venue’s sound qual­ity seemed bet­ter; I didn’t have the impres­sion that Fripp and Belew were fight­ing to find the few audi­ble fre­quen­cies left untram­meled by Har­ri­son, Mas­telotto, and Levin. The video cam­eras were turned off this time, being some­thing of a trade­off. On one hand, the flat panel TV screens scat­tered about the venue had made it pos­si­ble to see all sorts of details invis­i­ble to the nose­bleed seats on Thurs­day, but on the other hand, the glow­ing screens were dis­tract­ing intru­sions to my periph­eral vision. But more likely, the band prob­a­bly objected to the intru­sion upon their performance.

The show began with a real treat not part of Thursday’s New York debut; when I walked in at about 7:30, Robert Fripp was already on stage per­form­ing Sound­scapes. For the unini­ti­ated, Sound­scap­ing is Fripp’s term for the ambi­ent, loop­ing class of his solo work, orig­i­nally chris­tened (tongue-in-cheek) Frip­pertron­ics dur­ing his orig­i­nal 1970s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Brian Eno. When I saw Fripp live with The League of Crafty Gui­tarists at the New York Soci­ety for Eth­i­cal Cul­ture in Novem­ber 2007, it was clear from the gen­eral audi­ence chat­ter around me that some were unaware that Fripp ever played any­thing other than burn­ing, shred­ding rock gui­tar. So I wasn’t sure how much of this audi­ence would be open to this avenue of Fripp’s work, but there was enough applause at the end of each piece to indi­cate that peo­ple were lis­ten­ing and appre­cia­tive. It helped that these par­tic­u­lar Sound­scapes were of the more beau­ti­ful and melodic vari­ety, as opposed to the dis­so­nant and night­mar­ish sort heard on the album Radio­phon­ics. It was a rather low-key opener, cer­tainly in com­par­i­son to the supremely fun Cal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio that toured with Crim­son in 1995.

For this Dork Reporter’s ears, the high­light of the evening was a shock­ing new arrange­ment of Sleep­less. It was a wild, more omi­nously threat­en­ing rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the slightly poppy orig­i­nal. Mas­telotto and Har­ri­son kicked it off with some utterly insane dum­ming (which I mean as a com­pli­ment), soon joined by Levin rock­ing the famous bassline to roar­ing approval from the crowd. Levin used his famous inven­tion the funk fin­gers instead of the orig­i­nal slap­ping tech­nique I’ve seen on the live DVD Neil and Jack and Me. Does any­one know if he also used the funk fin­gers for it in the 1990s, as heard on the live album B’Boom? It seems they had long since dropped the song from the setlist by the time I saw them in Philadelphia.

I’ve got to devote a least a para­graph to Mastelotto’s shout-outs to his pre­de­ces­sors. Dur­ing Neu­rot­ica, he res­ur­rected a sam­ple of the lit­tle elec­tronic “tink!” sound Bill Bru­ford scat­tered all over the 1982 album Beat. Frankly, I find the omnipresent “tink” sound makes Beat very annoy­ing to lis­ten to, but I nev­er­the­less invol­un­tar­ily laughed and clapped in appre­ci­a­tion when I noticed the sam­ple last night. He also busted out some very Jamie Muir–esque sound effects to add a lit­tle extra sonic color to The Talk­ing Drum / Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II one-two punch. I also really loved the elec­tron­ica drum sounds he added to the (rel­a­tively) quiet bits in Indis­ci­pline. Who could have guessed, but it was exactly what the song needed.

I men­tioned in my review of the Thurs­day show that I con­sider Level Five to be among Crimson’s most “dif­fi­cult” pieces for the audi­ence to lis­ten to, and judg­ing by the furi­ously fly­ing fin­gers, also obvi­ously so for the band to play. But while I’m still try­ing to find my way into the song as a lis­tener, it clearly went over like gang­busters, earn­ing one of the most appre­cia­tive ova­tions of the night. If noth­ing else, hun­dreds of jaws dropped at the insanely rapid runs shared by Fripp & Levin. That kind of play­ing just isn’t human.

King Crimson live at The Nokia Theater, Times Square, New York City, August 16, 2008Worse seat, bet­ter sound?

Which reminds me of another thought I’ve always had about King Crim­son. Need­less to say, most mem­bers have been known as among the best-ever prac­ti­tion­ers of their instru­ments. Fans often gush about how dif­fi­cult the parts are, as if how speed­ily fin­gers move is directly pro­por­tion­ate to how “good” the music is. But I’d like to pro­pose the idea here that that is to miss the point. The high level of musi­cian­ship in Crim­son is not the goal, but rather a pre­req­ui­site to be able to play what­ever is required, be it one note or a thou­sand. I’d argue that some of Fripp’s best play­ing is actu­ally slower than what he is phys­i­cally capa­ble of, when unleashed at max­i­mum veloc­ity. If that’s what fans of tech­nique look­ing for, might I direct you to Level Five or the 900 MPH solo to Sar­tori in Tang­ier. But to my ears, Fripp’s most affect­ing play­ing is in the gut-wrenchingly emo­tional solo in the Sylvian/Fripp song Wave and the slow-motion under­wa­ter solo in the Robert Fripp String Quin­tet piece Blue.

Fur­ther evi­dence the band was more ener­getic and con­nected: dur­ing the drum duet (as yet unti­tled?) at the begin­ning of the first encore, Levin elicited a some laughs by the­atri­cally drum­ming along on the top of his amp with his funk fin­gers. Har­ri­son & Mastelotto’s duet was infec­tious enough to get Belew’s head bob­bing, and, shock of all shocks, I could see even the top of Fripp’s head rock­ing to the beat.

Any­one fol­low­ing the reviews being posted on DGM­Live will be aware that Fripp does not join the band in com­ing to the front of the stage at the end of each show, instead stand­ing off in the shad­ows. He very point­edly chooses to applaud his four band­mates, at once show­ing his appre­ci­a­tion for them and direct­ing the audience’s atten­tion to the play­ers. To indulge in a lit­tle arm­chair psy­cho­analy­sis, per­haps he wants to avoid fans’ wor­ship or rebuke, and instead direct the audience’s pos­i­tive energy towards the band.

I’d like to close with two anec­dotes, past and present. A minor but amus­ing inci­dent from Thursday’s show I for­got to include in my review was an early cameo appear­ance by Adrian Belew. Long before show­time, Belew entered the venue through the crowd, mounted the stage and walked acriss into the wings, all the while tot­ing his dry clean­ing over his shoul­der. When the audi­ence noticed him and applauded, he hammed it up a lit­tle bit, pre­tend­ing to sheep­ishly tip-toe across the stage. True story. Don’t venues have trap­doors and secret pas­sages for the per­form­ers to sneak in and out? Per­haps he got acci­den­tally locked out, and maybe Fripp’s ongo­ing comic book saga blog will tell us the full tale of how Belew was acci­den­tally beamed out­side the Crim moth­er­ship on an extra­plan­e­tary away mis­sion to the space sta­tion dry cleaners.

And also, one telling moment I still recall from a Pro­jekct Two show in 1999 at Irv­ing Plaza, New York. Fripp had been typ­i­cally focussed on his play­ing through­out, out­wardly unemo­tional, until one moment between pieces when he sprung to life, turned to Belew and Trey Gunn and announced “Guys, I want to rock out!” He then turned to face the audi­ence for the first time and repeated “I want to rock out, you guys!” And they did.

Offi­cial site: DGMLive.com

Joseph Arthur — Bowery Ballroom, New York

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Joseph Arthur and Michael Stipe

I hope to post my reac­tions soon (the five stars should give a hint as to the gen­eral tone), but in the mean­time, here’s some cov­er­age of the show on the web: The Tripwire’s review fea­tures excel­lent pho­tographs by Erin Chan­dler. Bill­board also reviews the show and posts a video of Joseph’s duet with Michael Stipe on “In the Sun.”

Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

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Amelie movie poster

 

One of my favorite films of all time. It’s just such a movie, you know? The same is true of vir­tu­ally all of Jeunet’s films; I have such fond mem­o­ries of see­ing Del­i­catessen on a crappy 16mm print at col­lege, City of Lost Chil­dren at the Cam­bridge Film Fes­ti­val, and Amélie and A Very Long Engage­ment at the Paris The­ater in New York City. We won’t men­tion Alien Res­ur­rec­tion, OK?

Although a big hit in France, my under­stand­ing is that there was some­thing of a back­lash against it, due in part to its lit­er­ally candy-colored por­trayal of a sto­ry­book Mon­temartre far removed from real­ity. Also, a reviewer in Sight & Sound (a film jour­nal whose opin­ion I nearly always respect, if not agree with) utterly slammed the film, appar­ently per­son­ally offended by the sex­ual pol­i­tics. But I find Amélie so delight­ful, inven­tive, and so full of feel­ing that I can con­fi­dently state any­body that hates this movie just hates movies period.

2001: A Space Odyssey

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2001 A Space Odyssey movie poster

 

One of the best movies ever made, on one of the biggest screens in New York. What could be better?

It’s taken me many years and many view­ings to real­ize that the movie is actu­ally very, very funny. Per­haps this shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing, com­ing right on the heels Dr. Strangelove, but the som­bre seri­ous air about the film dis­guised some of the com­edy to my young mind watch­ing the movie every year uncut on a Philadel­phia VHF chan­nel. Just a few of the many huge “jokes” packed into the film: the entire human con­di­tion con­densed as chimp pan­tomime, fan­tas­tic visions of the future punc­tured by hilar­i­ously closed-minded humans more inter­ested in sand­wiches, and the most naked human emo­tions shown on screen com­ing from apes and com­put­ers as opposed to sup­pos­edly evolved humans.

2001 On the web: Kubrick 2001 presents an elab­o­rate, though some­times silly, ani­mated expli­ca­tion. Then there’s The Under­view, in valiant oppo­si­tion to the schem­ing dedamned’s auto­guard, help­fully includ­ing the com­plete Zero Grav­ity Toi­let instruc­tions.