After catching up with The Happiness of the Katakuris I feel I have a good handle on Takashi Miike, and even if I suspect he's going to rarely make films I love, I've definitely come around from my position on him from, say, a year ago.
The way I see it, the horror of Audition is part and parcel with the glee of a film like Katakuris, in that Miike's cinema is essentially an affirmation of life: lived life, a sensuous process rather than a concept. And I think only someone intimately comfortable with depictions of death and abjection could pull off the affirmative ending of this genre-bender. I really need to revisit Audition now, but I wonder if a lot of its impact (and I don't deny it has a certain special impact, even if I didn't like the film when I saw it several years ago) has less to do with the avenues horror films usually take, and more with the sort of oblique Miikean closeness to the fragility and transience of happiness, to have one's "dream" attack one mercilessly. (To resurrect a line of thought from a little while back: in a way very different from Romero, Miike too seems to be a fine posthumanist, something echoed by the little girl's narration at the end of this film when she asserts without terror or grief that humans will sooner or later fall victim to natural selection.) In The Happiness of the Katakuris (as with Dead or Alive 2) the characters learn to live with their violent demons, both figurative and literal, and achieve a certain transcendence while negotiating their way through the imperfect, beautiful, demon-filled immanent world. The ambiguous appearances of heavenly existence (or non-existence?) in Katakuris and Dead or Alive 2 makes for an interesting path to go down, but I'm not well-versed enough in the spiritual philosophies that might influence and inspire Miike to comment much on this.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Turning Back Time
I sometimes wonder what I would have studied as an undergrad if I had to go back in time and could not pursue cinema studies or art history. I might have gone with the social sciences: anthropology or sociology. I may have done English, but then again, that seems so ... typical. Pass on that. If I definitely went to NYU and couldn't do film studies, I certainly would have wanted to end up in Gallatin to individualize my major.
But more and more I think that history would have been a wise choice. What era? Too many to choose from. What part of the world? Same thing. But to synthesize the tedious research into something big and meaningful, that's one kind of work I'd find rewarding, and there's a certain escapist pleasure to studying history that, of course, can be easily rooted back into serving and understanding the immanent, material world. Anyway if someone gave me a bunch of money and told me I had to somehow pursue graduate work in history, here would be broad areas I would consider:
1) Christian and Islamic Europe/North Africa/Near East, from roughly 1100-1650 (or from roughly high medieval to early modern era).
2) The cultures of the Indian Ocean. While taking a course on Islamic art I learned about this huge site of cultural cross-pollination, and I find it interesting. My first encounter with V.S. Naipaul some time ago, A Bend in the River, took place in this milieu, East Africa with an Indian narrator of Muslim merchant ancestry (albeit in a modern historical setting).
3) Japan up to the premodern era.
---
I'll definitely peter out before long, as I always do, but once more I've initiated a close, heavily-noted reading of Deleuze's Cinema 1. If I had money I'd buy Bergson's books (I've read substantial portions of Matter and Memory), knowledge of which would no doubt make the process a little easier. But each time I gain a slightly better understanding of Deleuze through oblique means, and I think I'm really inspired by some potential in his argument for what the movement-image is and does. Sorry to be terse about it here: more on that later, hopefully.
But more and more I think that history would have been a wise choice. What era? Too many to choose from. What part of the world? Same thing. But to synthesize the tedious research into something big and meaningful, that's one kind of work I'd find rewarding, and there's a certain escapist pleasure to studying history that, of course, can be easily rooted back into serving and understanding the immanent, material world. Anyway if someone gave me a bunch of money and told me I had to somehow pursue graduate work in history, here would be broad areas I would consider:
1) Christian and Islamic Europe/North Africa/Near East, from roughly 1100-1650 (or from roughly high medieval to early modern era).
2) The cultures of the Indian Ocean. While taking a course on Islamic art I learned about this huge site of cultural cross-pollination, and I find it interesting. My first encounter with V.S. Naipaul some time ago, A Bend in the River, took place in this milieu, East Africa with an Indian narrator of Muslim merchant ancestry (albeit in a modern historical setting).
3) Japan up to the premodern era.
---
I'll definitely peter out before long, as I always do, but once more I've initiated a close, heavily-noted reading of Deleuze's Cinema 1. If I had money I'd buy Bergson's books (I've read substantial portions of Matter and Memory), knowledge of which would no doubt make the process a little easier. But each time I gain a slightly better understanding of Deleuze through oblique means, and I think I'm really inspired by some potential in his argument for what the movement-image is and does. Sorry to be terse about it here: more on that later, hopefully.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Ramblings
So, at my home videotheque, I am pondering hosting directorial retrospectives for myself. Seeing a lot of a single filmmaker's work in a short period of time has always been something that has intimidated me a little, as if I feel uncomfortable seeing these works out of all context but that of their maker's progression, which can concentrate and intensify some internal values, diluting and eliding some external ones. But I feel I should go ahead and "get it over with" when it comes to certain filmmakers, and see as much as I can (on video) of their work. I've avoided doing this already with some filmmakers whom I love because I've told myself to wait for 35mm ... but Tati and Mizoguchi (for example) make films that work wonders, still, on VHS and 19" television screens. Waiting out for the big experience is a bit masochistic, especially given that some of these filmmakers are for the most part unavailable, even, on DVD.
There remains an increasingly small handful of directors who by any fair "objective" assessment are major names whose work I've never seen (or never seen an entire film by). No need to embarrass myself and shock you readers by revealing these luminaries, and anyway in the next several weeks I'll likely have remedied this so I can say that I've seen at least one film by every director widely and highly regarded by American or Western cinephiles.
But that's the dilemma of renting movies, isn't it? It would all be easier if I had lived in a modest town with, say, a single rep house that managed to show one or two or five decent 16mm prints of older films from across the country and globe each week, in the evenings. (A fantasy, I know.) One of the reasons I've still not seen any number of classics (or "classics") is because I've tried to keep my finger on alternative pulses. I could have dutifully watched the major Oscar winners and such by the age of 16 or so, spent my last two years in high school seeing certain foreign and American independent commercial films, maybe a few avant-garde works, and left my college years to discovering the oddities, the B-films, the underground milestones, the unheralded masterpieces, etc., and seeing things like A Woman Under the Influence and My Darling Clementine in college as revisitations rather than late revelations. It's largely because I spent those "early" years taking chances (some paid off well) on films most cinephiles don't come to until later, if at all--things like Sogo Ishii's Angel Dust, Roy Del Ruth's The Little Giant, Frank Borzage's The Spanish Main, Nancy Savoca's True Love--and even then, usually only in passing.
Oh, well.
In preparing myself mentally for a hoped-for career in academia (read: daydreaming...) I've started to think regularly about what I want my 'beats' to be, and I simply can't feel totally comfortable with any formulation by director/country/era/theory. I suppose this amorphous flexibility is a good thing--it means I've a hungry appetite not to be quickly sated--but I'm also a bit panicked. When I go through my MA/PhD (assuming that I do ever go through with the process: it's not a guaranteed thing) I want to know my shit better than anyone's expectations of me would demand. And I don't want to lose valuable time for viewing, reading, discussing, and thinking on simply playing "catch-up" with the classics.
At any rate, tonight I will watch (it's a toss-up) either Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuris or Bertrand Tavernier's Let Joy Reign Supreme. This weekend will be a cinephiliac feast (albeit on all video formats: I'm impoverished as usual!), as well.
There remains an increasingly small handful of directors who by any fair "objective" assessment are major names whose work I've never seen (or never seen an entire film by). No need to embarrass myself and shock you readers by revealing these luminaries, and anyway in the next several weeks I'll likely have remedied this so I can say that I've seen at least one film by every director widely and highly regarded by American or Western cinephiles.
But that's the dilemma of renting movies, isn't it? It would all be easier if I had lived in a modest town with, say, a single rep house that managed to show one or two or five decent 16mm prints of older films from across the country and globe each week, in the evenings. (A fantasy, I know.) One of the reasons I've still not seen any number of classics (or "classics") is because I've tried to keep my finger on alternative pulses. I could have dutifully watched the major Oscar winners and such by the age of 16 or so, spent my last two years in high school seeing certain foreign and American independent commercial films, maybe a few avant-garde works, and left my college years to discovering the oddities, the B-films, the underground milestones, the unheralded masterpieces, etc., and seeing things like A Woman Under the Influence and My Darling Clementine in college as revisitations rather than late revelations. It's largely because I spent those "early" years taking chances (some paid off well) on films most cinephiles don't come to until later, if at all--things like Sogo Ishii's Angel Dust, Roy Del Ruth's The Little Giant, Frank Borzage's The Spanish Main, Nancy Savoca's True Love--and even then, usually only in passing.
Oh, well.
In preparing myself mentally for a hoped-for career in academia (read: daydreaming...) I've started to think regularly about what I want my 'beats' to be, and I simply can't feel totally comfortable with any formulation by director/country/era/theory. I suppose this amorphous flexibility is a good thing--it means I've a hungry appetite not to be quickly sated--but I'm also a bit panicked. When I go through my MA/PhD (assuming that I do ever go through with the process: it's not a guaranteed thing) I want to know my shit better than anyone's expectations of me would demand. And I don't want to lose valuable time for viewing, reading, discussing, and thinking on simply playing "catch-up" with the classics.
At any rate, tonight I will watch (it's a toss-up) either Takashi Miike's The Happiness of the Katakuris or Bertrand Tavernier's Let Joy Reign Supreme. This weekend will be a cinephiliac feast (albeit on all video formats: I'm impoverished as usual!), as well.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Monkey Shines (1988)
George A. Romero is American genre cinema's most thorough "posthumanist," the one most deeply and least conflictedly interested in showing the collapse of all social order and the survival of a very few. (Off the top of my head, the American mainstream hasn't offered a vision in the same bleak vein, save the last reel or so in A.I.) What interests Romero are not acting or plotting: he's a grand-vision artist, and happy to let his materials roam within the confines of budget and genre, so long as he can shape to his will the needed portrait of a series of philosophical crises. Sometimes he can "suffer" narratively, as a result. Day of the Dead and Monkey Shines both take quite a while to build up to the payoffs the genre requires (the zombie movie's first hour is dreadful). But the breakdown of state, community, even individual--in the Dead movies and in The Crazies--makes for a biting dismissal of these institutions' importance, and for our willingness to both depend on them and not be able to defend them.
Whereas in those contagion movies the most intelligent people are often the ones to die at the hands of stupidity, in Monkey Shines the intelligent people are confronted not with a pervasive collapse but with the burgeoning threat. (Had the characters failed in the film, Romero could have then made Night of the Monkeys, where the capuchin villain Ella engineers her monkey friends to violently overtake an unsuspecting public.) The impending and surprising threat of a more powerful Other is at the root of much Romero. The difference between his work and a lot of horror cinema is that he's practically neutral about the outcome. He's not particularly sentimental about most of his characters, and he doesn't play his thrills against the monstrosity of the villains so much as in the empathic threat against the heroes.
In short Romero is interested in dismantling the facades we've put up for ourselves: consider too the consequence of physical helplessness on the protagonist, an athlete. ("Ooh, ooh," chimes the budding psychoanalyst in the front of the classroom, "that's castration!")
I'm getting really intrigued to see how Land of Dead shapes up.
Whereas in those contagion movies the most intelligent people are often the ones to die at the hands of stupidity, in Monkey Shines the intelligent people are confronted not with a pervasive collapse but with the burgeoning threat. (Had the characters failed in the film, Romero could have then made Night of the Monkeys, where the capuchin villain Ella engineers her monkey friends to violently overtake an unsuspecting public.) The impending and surprising threat of a more powerful Other is at the root of much Romero. The difference between his work and a lot of horror cinema is that he's practically neutral about the outcome. He's not particularly sentimental about most of his characters, and he doesn't play his thrills against the monstrosity of the villains so much as in the empathic threat against the heroes.
In short Romero is interested in dismantling the facades we've put up for ourselves: consider too the consequence of physical helplessness on the protagonist, an athlete. ("Ooh, ooh," chimes the budding psychoanalyst in the front of the classroom, "that's castration!")
I'm getting really intrigued to see how Land of Dead shapes up.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Back in Action
So I had to take a break from writing or updating the blog or website because I had to finish papers, graduate, move in with my girlfriend to a place in Astoria (that's in Queens for those uninitiated with NYC), and go for a few more weeks without Internet access. But now that the Web is available again I hope to get more writing online soon.
I'm in the middle of a handful of writing projects, we'll see which ones pan out into substantial and, probably more important, finished works. One of them would be a series of related essays that I'd put up on my website, maybe in .doc format. I don't know. But I'm also toying with a few other articles that I'd like to shop around ... if they ever get to the final stages.
I'm in the middle of a handful of writing projects, we'll see which ones pan out into substantial and, probably more important, finished works. One of them would be a series of related essays that I'd put up on my website, maybe in .doc format. I don't know. But I'm also toying with a few other articles that I'd like to shop around ... if they ever get to the final stages.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Short Takes on a Few Directors
- Vittorio De Seta. MoMA retrospective in February. If his other films are as good as Bandits of Orgosolo and Almost a Man ... this will be a momentous "discovery" for American (or at least New York) cinephiles. Mark my words.
- Richard Fleischer. Only a little bit into my research and I've already got 1500 words on him (for the Film Journal's upcoming feature). The preliminary verbosity mostly comes from a discussion of auteur politics and theories that I'm trying to get a definitive opinion on.
- Chris Marker. He's not Ozu or Ford, so I don't think I can claim him as my "favorite" filmmaker ever. But it's quite possible that he's the most important one. I'll be writing a paper on his work this weekend. Something on the economy and discourse of images (hey, you in the back, don't roll your eyes!), and I haven't decided for sure if I want to most deeply examine his work on cinema (Vertigo in Sans soleil; Tarkovsky; Medvedkin) or his work on political events (Grin Without a Cat). More on that soon, probably.
- Tunde Kelani. Is Agogo Eewo (at BAM in a few weeks) worthwhile? Apparently it's a sequel (to a film I definitely have not seen).
- Rogério Sganzerla. I may get to finally see a film of his soon. Will definitely report back on that, if and when it works out.
- Richard Fleischer. Only a little bit into my research and I've already got 1500 words on him (for the Film Journal's upcoming feature). The preliminary verbosity mostly comes from a discussion of auteur politics and theories that I'm trying to get a definitive opinion on.
- Chris Marker. He's not Ozu or Ford, so I don't think I can claim him as my "favorite" filmmaker ever. But it's quite possible that he's the most important one. I'll be writing a paper on his work this weekend. Something on the economy and discourse of images (hey, you in the back, don't roll your eyes!), and I haven't decided for sure if I want to most deeply examine his work on cinema (Vertigo in Sans soleil; Tarkovsky; Medvedkin) or his work on political events (Grin Without a Cat). More on that soon, probably.
- Tunde Kelani. Is Agogo Eewo (at BAM in a few weeks) worthwhile? Apparently it's a sequel (to a film I definitely have not seen).
- Rogério Sganzerla. I may get to finally see a film of his soon. Will definitely report back on that, if and when it works out.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Seijun Suzuki, et al.
I've been thinking a lot about Japanese genre films lately, in part because I have recently watched the first Takashi Miike film I've really liked (Dead or Alive 2: Birds--thanks Steve and Gabe, for the recommendation many months ago!), as well as a minor Seijun Suzuki effort, 1963's Kanto Wanderer, which is notable in my opinion almost totally for the climactic 10-15 minutes--absolutely heart-stopping colors, a sense of whimsy and spatial inventiveness, as if the aesthetic of Pistol Opera (a film I must revisit) were stuck, a bit muted, into the fabric of an otherwise innocuous genre film.
(By the way, does Kanto Wanderer technically count as a yakuza-eiga movie, is it an early example before the genre rigidified by the mid-1960s, or is it a variant? I know barely anything about this genre and am just curious.)
I have several viewing (not to mention reading) projects for this, my first post-graduation summer. One of them will be to explore further the works of Suzuki and Miike, not to mention Kinji Fukasaku's early stuff, and Koji Wakamatsu and Yasuzo Masamura, more Kitano, etc. (Actually one might say Japanese film in general. It's been a long time since I've seen anything by Mizoguchi, Oshima, or Kurosawa. I am keen to revisit a number of Ozu favorites. It'd be interesting to glimpse a few "pink films." You get the picture.) Those who read this and want to point me in the direction of really good lesser-known stuff in these veins that is accessible via video or maybe Japan Society screenings should feel free to do so. I'm interested.
(By the way, does Kanto Wanderer technically count as a yakuza-eiga movie, is it an early example before the genre rigidified by the mid-1960s, or is it a variant? I know barely anything about this genre and am just curious.)
I have several viewing (not to mention reading) projects for this, my first post-graduation summer. One of them will be to explore further the works of Suzuki and Miike, not to mention Kinji Fukasaku's early stuff, and Koji Wakamatsu and Yasuzo Masamura, more Kitano, etc. (Actually one might say Japanese film in general. It's been a long time since I've seen anything by Mizoguchi, Oshima, or Kurosawa. I am keen to revisit a number of Ozu favorites. It'd be interesting to glimpse a few "pink films." You get the picture.) Those who read this and want to point me in the direction of really good lesser-known stuff in these veins that is accessible via video or maybe Japan Society screenings should feel free to do so. I'm interested.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Restaurants I Must Try in Queens
So ... this post isn't at all movie-related, but I'll be settling in Astoria post-graduation (and being on the G/R/V I'll be within 45 minutes of pretty much any theater I'd want to go to--and just a nice walk from AMMI). But I am so psyched about the food in NYC's best dining borough. Here are some must-try restaurants for me in Queens:
La Pollada de Laura (Peruvian)
Mombar (Egyptian)
Kebab Cafe (Middle Eastern - Lebanese? can't recall)
La Flor (mix/bakery)
Viko's (Mexican)
Pio Pio (Peruvian)
... and a particular Greek place whose name escapes me (out of the dozens in Astoria)
Also: frequent return visits to Tangra Masala and Sripraphai are in order. Bring the heat. Bring it.
I'll be back sooner or later with something substantial to post.
La Pollada de Laura (Peruvian)
Mombar (Egyptian)
Kebab Cafe (Middle Eastern - Lebanese? can't recall)
La Flor (mix/bakery)
Viko's (Mexican)
Pio Pio (Peruvian)
... and a particular Greek place whose name escapes me (out of the dozens in Astoria)
Also: frequent return visits to Tangra Masala and Sripraphai are in order. Bring the heat. Bring it.
I'll be back sooner or later with something substantial to post.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
MoMA
So several months after its premiere, I finally went to the new MoMA space--the galleries, not for any movies. (Such a stereotypical cinephile, I guess.) I thought the new layout was OK; the periodic "openness" was cool but I also found the floor plans a bit confusing.
What did I learn?
Gilles Peress and Yayoi Kusama are contemporary photographers whose work I like, although I've just confirmed to myself again that I generally prefer photography from the first part of the twentieth century (Cartier-Bresson, Strand, Sheeler, Rodchenko, Stieglitz, etc.).
Marco Breuer: very interesting works up in one of the Painting & Sculpture galleries. Click here and scroll down for a little commentary that echoes my sentiments.
The first time I've been knocked off my feet (figuratively) by a Schiele: Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909.
The biggest impression made on me was Barnett Newman's work, which I found surprisingly and deeply affecting. (The paintings hung near Rothko works that just seemed inadequate by comparison.) I "felt" Newman's paintings in a way that I hadn't ever before, whether seeing them in person or reproduced in slides/plates. It's pointless to say it, but the paintings felt really ... honest.
And the big Monet Water Lilies was the most comforting thing to see.
(Is it clear that my interests--for this trip at least--were definitely geared towards photography and painting at the expense of sculpture, video--though Warhol screen tests were fascinating, architecture, or design?)
What did I learn?
Gilles Peress and Yayoi Kusama are contemporary photographers whose work I like, although I've just confirmed to myself again that I generally prefer photography from the first part of the twentieth century (Cartier-Bresson, Strand, Sheeler, Rodchenko, Stieglitz, etc.).
Marco Breuer: very interesting works up in one of the Painting & Sculpture galleries. Click here and scroll down for a little commentary that echoes my sentiments.
The first time I've been knocked off my feet (figuratively) by a Schiele: Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909.
The biggest impression made on me was Barnett Newman's work, which I found surprisingly and deeply affecting. (The paintings hung near Rothko works that just seemed inadequate by comparison.) I "felt" Newman's paintings in a way that I hadn't ever before, whether seeing them in person or reproduced in slides/plates. It's pointless to say it, but the paintings felt really ... honest.
And the big Monet Water Lilies was the most comforting thing to see.
(Is it clear that my interests--for this trip at least--were definitely geared towards photography and painting at the expense of sculpture, video--though Warhol screen tests were fascinating, architecture, or design?)
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Cinephile Bonanza
I saw eleven films (a lot of them short films) and bought two film books yesterday and the day before. It was a feast. The rundown:
Ride the High Country: I kept thinking, 'What is organizing this film?' Didn't like it much, though McCrea and Scott are fine.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: The last canonical Ford Western (and close to the last Ford sound Western) I needed to see. I'd been waiting years for a chance to see it on 35mm, and the wait was worth it.
Light and World: Jordan Belson, didn't strike me as that impressive.
Joan of Arc: Piero Heliczer. I didn't think this was particularly good either, but its cast (Malanga, Warhol, I think also La Monte Young, et al) is enough for me to give it the benefit of a doubt. I'll give Heliczer more chances in the future.
NY, NY: Francis Thompson's high-energy kaleidoscopic vision of a New York day, using elements of Art Deco and Expressionism, with some sequences in which the cutting (and music) are Hitchcockian or Tashlinesque. Quite good.
Epileptic Seizure Comparison: I've waited to see this film for a long time, ever since Nicole Brenez (in Movie Mutations) cited it as a film 'for which one must become much stronger' or something to that effect. She's certainly right. But after Liberty Valance it's probably the most impressive and important film I saw these two days.
Threnody and Alaya and The Visitation: Nathaniel Dorsky. The Visitation is the first of Dorsky's two recent "devotional songs," the second of which was Threnody (finished last year). Alaya was wind and sand and film grain (pace Dorsky's own description). I thought that The Visitation was the most interesting (and most mysterious), but Threnody's colors were heart-stopping.
DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story: Can we say "complete opposite of Nathaniel Dorsky"?
The two books I got were the Martin/Rosenbaum edited Movie Mutations (about time I finally owned the book, right?) and Patricia Zimmerman's Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (on sale at Kim's).
Also, here is another reason why Olaf Möller is a hero of mine. (A dozen languages? I'm still struggling with French and Spanish, and making verrrry slow progress.) One of the reasons I regret not buying or subscribing to Film Comment anymore is Möller's current column (though I've been able to get permanent access to most of them online thru NYU), and also Kent Jones and various other contributors. But there's no excuse for my not having issues of Cinema-Scope sitting around. (Well OK, I do have some, but a good English-speaking cinephile should support this magazine and have all of them.) I'm going to run out and buy the current issue today, I think. Anyway, Möller gets a bad rap because of his didactic streak and his ease with esoterica. But for me he fulfills some of the most useful and important functions of a critic, that is, he contextualizes all that he writes on (because he sees and reads a lot), he highlights things that get almost no press (and which he thinks deserve it), and he's always overloading my list of films, filmmakers, and film books to catch up with. I've never heard of Japanese yakuza-movie director Makino Masahiro or Syrian documentary "master" Omar Amiralay, but that's because the J-genre isn't even close to a specialty of mine and I know almost nothing about documentary films from the Near/Middle East (although a Google search turns up at least as many hits in non-English languages as English--and the English ones at least all seem to treat Amiralay with respect similar to what Möller pays him). Anyway Amiralay has a film playing at Tribeca this year, as I find out here--guess I've got to get a ticket.
Ride the High Country: I kept thinking, 'What is organizing this film?' Didn't like it much, though McCrea and Scott are fine.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: The last canonical Ford Western (and close to the last Ford sound Western) I needed to see. I'd been waiting years for a chance to see it on 35mm, and the wait was worth it.
Light and World: Jordan Belson, didn't strike me as that impressive.
Joan of Arc: Piero Heliczer. I didn't think this was particularly good either, but its cast (Malanga, Warhol, I think also La Monte Young, et al) is enough for me to give it the benefit of a doubt. I'll give Heliczer more chances in the future.
NY, NY: Francis Thompson's high-energy kaleidoscopic vision of a New York day, using elements of Art Deco and Expressionism, with some sequences in which the cutting (and music) are Hitchcockian or Tashlinesque. Quite good.
Epileptic Seizure Comparison: I've waited to see this film for a long time, ever since Nicole Brenez (in Movie Mutations) cited it as a film 'for which one must become much stronger' or something to that effect. She's certainly right. But after Liberty Valance it's probably the most impressive and important film I saw these two days.
Threnody and Alaya and The Visitation: Nathaniel Dorsky. The Visitation is the first of Dorsky's two recent "devotional songs," the second of which was Threnody (finished last year). Alaya was wind and sand and film grain (pace Dorsky's own description). I thought that The Visitation was the most interesting (and most mysterious), but Threnody's colors were heart-stopping.
DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story: Can we say "complete opposite of Nathaniel Dorsky"?
The two books I got were the Martin/Rosenbaum edited Movie Mutations (about time I finally owned the book, right?) and Patricia Zimmerman's Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (on sale at Kim's).
Also, here is another reason why Olaf Möller is a hero of mine. (A dozen languages? I'm still struggling with French and Spanish, and making verrrry slow progress.) One of the reasons I regret not buying or subscribing to Film Comment anymore is Möller's current column (though I've been able to get permanent access to most of them online thru NYU), and also Kent Jones and various other contributors. But there's no excuse for my not having issues of Cinema-Scope sitting around. (Well OK, I do have some, but a good English-speaking cinephile should support this magazine and have all of them.) I'm going to run out and buy the current issue today, I think. Anyway, Möller gets a bad rap because of his didactic streak and his ease with esoterica. But for me he fulfills some of the most useful and important functions of a critic, that is, he contextualizes all that he writes on (because he sees and reads a lot), he highlights things that get almost no press (and which he thinks deserve it), and he's always overloading my list of films, filmmakers, and film books to catch up with. I've never heard of Japanese yakuza-movie director Makino Masahiro or Syrian documentary "master" Omar Amiralay, but that's because the J-genre isn't even close to a specialty of mine and I know almost nothing about documentary films from the Near/Middle East (although a Google search turns up at least as many hits in non-English languages as English--and the English ones at least all seem to treat Amiralay with respect similar to what Möller pays him). Anyway Amiralay has a film playing at Tribeca this year, as I find out here--guess I've got to get a ticket.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Snatched ...
So as I'm getting close to having seen all of Abel Ferrara's feature films, Body Snatchers ranks low in the oeuvre, but it's an interesting film nevertheless. The confluence of sensibilities doesn't serve the film--Dennis Paoli and Stuart Gordon (of Re-Animator fame), Nicholas St. John (stalwart screenwriter for early Ferrara), and Larry Cohen (B-level mad genius at large) don't necessarily cohere, and given that this project is a pretty schlocky "job of work" to begin with, even a monstrous talent like Ferrara can't resurrect it. So we've got a weird Frankenstein monster, cobbled together of varying parts, some of them more impressive than others, and appealing to various levels of viewer interest. Some spoilers below.
The Body (Of Course): This film is about the vulnerability of flesh. When a pod person is killed, the "horror" comes less from the fact that they decompose gruesomely than from the fact that they decompose so rapidly. The processes of decay are fast-forwarded. The Cronenbergian process in which one is "drained" into a pod person is a direct and palpable appeal to the sensation of nocturnal helplessness. These body snatchers are nightmares you don't know you have.
Family Matters: Here is also an adolescent fantasy about shunning one's family, and yet that fantasy is disavowed--she's only able to shun each family member successfully, guiltlessly when they have become pod people.
Military Intelligence?: The film's distrust of authority is a fractured, incomplete political stance that informs elements but not the whole of the narrative. Still, the horror is of a highly regimented society. Whereas Don Siegel's The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a parable of McCarthyism, this is a much vaguer expression of fear at a police state: residues of a Reagan America in which little "went wrong" like this on home soil.
The Tragically Ludicrous / The Ludicrously Tragic: When the little brother is thrown from the helicopter below he sounds the pod alarm (heard three times previously in the film) as he falls to his death. Here is a young child emitting a sirenlike scream, the diligent frenzied emission of concern for the colony's mission, as he plummets to his death. Who could react to this image with anything other than humor?
I'm presenting on New Rose Hotel in just a few days, and I'm terrified.
The Body (Of Course): This film is about the vulnerability of flesh. When a pod person is killed, the "horror" comes less from the fact that they decompose gruesomely than from the fact that they decompose so rapidly. The processes of decay are fast-forwarded. The Cronenbergian process in which one is "drained" into a pod person is a direct and palpable appeal to the sensation of nocturnal helplessness. These body snatchers are nightmares you don't know you have.
Family Matters: Here is also an adolescent fantasy about shunning one's family, and yet that fantasy is disavowed--she's only able to shun each family member successfully, guiltlessly when they have become pod people.
Military Intelligence?: The film's distrust of authority is a fractured, incomplete political stance that informs elements but not the whole of the narrative. Still, the horror is of a highly regimented society. Whereas Don Siegel's The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a parable of McCarthyism, this is a much vaguer expression of fear at a police state: residues of a Reagan America in which little "went wrong" like this on home soil.
The Tragically Ludicrous / The Ludicrously Tragic: When the little brother is thrown from the helicopter below he sounds the pod alarm (heard three times previously in the film) as he falls to his death. Here is a young child emitting a sirenlike scream, the diligent frenzied emission of concern for the colony's mission, as he plummets to his death. Who could react to this image with anything other than humor?
I'm presenting on New Rose Hotel in just a few days, and I'm terrified.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Cassavetes
Adrian Martin wrote an article called Diary for My Loves in which he detailed some of his lifetime "reel pleasures." These included genres (e.g., comedy of varieties both "profound" and "gagological"), filmmakers (e.g., Godard, Ruiz), and other categorizations (e.g., "1915-1936"). But first on his list was John Cassavetes, on whom he wrote the following few words: "I discovered Cassavetes 'late' - in my mid-twenties - and no experience of cinema before or since has even approached the profundity and force of this revelation. For me there are almost no words that can be spoken, even in the most deferential and intimate homage, about this angel: quite simply, I believe (with Thierry Jousse) that "it is through him that life entered the cinema"." I think this is a very appealing sentiment.
So it had been about five years since the last time I saw Cassavetes films, but in recent weeks I've been revisiting his work and seeing some of it for the first time. In the past few days I saw two films I should have seen long, long ago. Opening Night is a film of horror of discovering that part of oneself is always dangling desperately "behind" other parts of oneself; it's the only film I can think of that deserves to be mentioned in the same breathe as Esther Kahn for being not only so concerned with similar things, but also for being so good.
The other film, which I watched just last night (I had been so embarrassed at never having seen it that it made me put it off even longer), was A Woman Under the Influence. This is one of the very greatest films I've ever seen. The experience of engaging with Cassavetes again, in this film in particular, is too raw, too disorienting for me to even try to be eloquent. So I'll have to not really say much of anything right now, and hope that I can do better in the future, after time and future (re)viewings have sunken in.
... I also took another look at a little bit of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which I have always previously mentioned as my Cassavetes-of-choice, and it still looks incredibly impressive. If I didn't have many other things to take care of today, I would have sat down for the 2+ hours to watch the film again. It was hard enough as it was to pull myself away. Stunning work ...
So it had been about five years since the last time I saw Cassavetes films, but in recent weeks I've been revisiting his work and seeing some of it for the first time. In the past few days I saw two films I should have seen long, long ago. Opening Night is a film of horror of discovering that part of oneself is always dangling desperately "behind" other parts of oneself; it's the only film I can think of that deserves to be mentioned in the same breathe as Esther Kahn for being not only so concerned with similar things, but also for being so good.
The other film, which I watched just last night (I had been so embarrassed at never having seen it that it made me put it off even longer), was A Woman Under the Influence. This is one of the very greatest films I've ever seen. The experience of engaging with Cassavetes again, in this film in particular, is too raw, too disorienting for me to even try to be eloquent. So I'll have to not really say much of anything right now, and hope that I can do better in the future, after time and future (re)viewings have sunken in.
... I also took another look at a little bit of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which I have always previously mentioned as my Cassavetes-of-choice, and it still looks incredibly impressive. If I didn't have many other things to take care of today, I would have sat down for the 2+ hours to watch the film again. It was hard enough as it was to pull myself away. Stunning work ...
Friday, March 04, 2005
Papers, Commitments, Everywhere
Here's what I've got on my agenda, to get done soon:
Midterm papers for "History/Memory/Authorship" (I'll probably write on Hiroshima, mon amour but might opt for a comparison between Night and Fog and Brutality in Stone), "American Youth Spaces" (I'm proceeding as if I'm writing on The Fury but I just might switch to another film if I decide by tomorrow), and my classical British cinema independent study (currently working on a Powell & Pressburger paper).
Review of Le Crime de M. Lange.
Review of Martha Nochimson's book Screen Couples Chemistry: The Power of 2.
This is not to mention a slide ID midterm for my "Art of the Early Middle Ages" course (which I just wrote a short paper for) or independent research I'm doing into various subjects, and purely for my own edification.
Films (or rather, videos of films) that I want to try to watch at Bobst Library in the next few weeks that have no ties to coursework or writing obligations: The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Flora Gomes, Guinnea-Bissau, 1992), The Eye Above the Well (Johan van der Keuken), Chronicle of a Lonely Boy (Leonardo Favio, Argentina, 1965), The Virgin Spring (Bergman), and Up to a Certain Point (TGA, Cuba, 1983). If anyone feels a desire to cheerlead me and say "Yeah, see that one RIGHT AWAY!" I would be glad to hear it. I can always use motivation.
Think I can get it all done in the next 2-3 weeks? We'll see, we'll see.
Midterm papers for "History/Memory/Authorship" (I'll probably write on Hiroshima, mon amour but might opt for a comparison between Night and Fog and Brutality in Stone), "American Youth Spaces" (I'm proceeding as if I'm writing on The Fury but I just might switch to another film if I decide by tomorrow), and my classical British cinema independent study (currently working on a Powell & Pressburger paper).
Review of Le Crime de M. Lange.
Review of Martha Nochimson's book Screen Couples Chemistry: The Power of 2.
This is not to mention a slide ID midterm for my "Art of the Early Middle Ages" course (which I just wrote a short paper for) or independent research I'm doing into various subjects, and purely for my own edification.
Films (or rather, videos of films) that I want to try to watch at Bobst Library in the next few weeks that have no ties to coursework or writing obligations: The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Flora Gomes, Guinnea-Bissau, 1992), The Eye Above the Well (Johan van der Keuken), Chronicle of a Lonely Boy (Leonardo Favio, Argentina, 1965), The Virgin Spring (Bergman), and Up to a Certain Point (TGA, Cuba, 1983). If anyone feels a desire to cheerlead me and say "Yeah, see that one RIGHT AWAY!" I would be glad to hear it. I can always use motivation.
Think I can get it all done in the next 2-3 weeks? We'll see, we'll see.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
What If ... ?
If Rossellini had made Germany Year Zero as a commercial comedy, he could have done no better than the Charles Crichton-helmed Ealing comedy Hue and Cry (1947), where many boys and one girl wiggle and run through the lots of wreckage adjacent to the very buildings in which they live and work.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
It Would Be Much Appreciated ...
I am in search of various videos and texts and it would be incredibly helpful if anyone out there were to point me in their direction (or, say, lend a VHS dub). Some of these things include:
- Jorge Sanjinés' Yawar mallku (Blood of the Condor) - 1969 Bolivian guerrilla film
- The Raúl Ruiz films that aren't on commercial VHS/DVD; that is, most of them, especially Three Sad Tigers, In the Penal Colony, Mammame, City of Pirates, Treasure Island, and any of the films he's done in the past few years like Love Torn in a Dream or Ce-jour la.
- The work of Harun Farocki, and in a related query, good English translations of Filmkritik criticism, which Olaf Möller has me itching for after re-reading his essay (available first in a volume on Farocki, but available on Senses of Cinema here.) Any and all film/video works by the Filmkritik grouop is of interest to me, a neophyte, though. So that also means Thome, Bitomsky, Bühler, et al. And in fact, now that I've mentioned Möller, I would love to get my hands on some of the things he recommends off-the-cuff that I've never even heard of. Check his Senses of Cinema year-end lists to see what I mean.
- Alain Guiraudie's That Old Dream That Moves (2001)
- Abel Ferrara's 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1977)
- Jorge Sanjinés' Yawar mallku (Blood of the Condor) - 1969 Bolivian guerrilla film
- The Raúl Ruiz films that aren't on commercial VHS/DVD; that is, most of them, especially Three Sad Tigers, In the Penal Colony, Mammame, City of Pirates, Treasure Island, and any of the films he's done in the past few years like Love Torn in a Dream or Ce-jour la.
- The work of Harun Farocki, and in a related query, good English translations of Filmkritik criticism, which Olaf Möller has me itching for after re-reading his essay (available first in a volume on Farocki, but available on Senses of Cinema here.) Any and all film/video works by the Filmkritik grouop is of interest to me, a neophyte, though. So that also means Thome, Bitomsky, Bühler, et al. And in fact, now that I've mentioned Möller, I would love to get my hands on some of the things he recommends off-the-cuff that I've never even heard of. Check his Senses of Cinema year-end lists to see what I mean.
- Alain Guiraudie's That Old Dream That Moves (2001)
- Abel Ferrara's 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1977)
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Invigorating Viewing
Today I watched three films, two of which were second viewings, and the last of which was a very impressive title from out of nowhere. Raúl Ruiz's On Top of the Whale: A Film About Survival is a masterpiece that I didn't appreciate so much on my first encounter with it; but the film certainly stuck with me, and when I sat down in Bobst Library's a/v center to give it another go, I was convinced that I had totally underestimated and misunderstood this film (which, to be fair, is practically daring to be misunderstood).
One thing I think I can latch onto a little bit is the discourse of the mirror here. The concept of the mirror here is closely linked the principle of production. In one scene near the end the anthropologist's daughter, Anita, talked to the mother, Eva, about how she looks at the mirror and thus "has a child"--always the reverse sex of the viewer, so thus she sees her son in the mirror. I think Ruiz is allowing for an immature elaboration of a certain childlike discovery of Self and Other here, not too unlike (but not quite the same as) the Lacanian notion of the mirror stage as I understand--one of the major differences being of course that Anita is far too old for the "mirror stage." But there is additional material about the mirror, a shot with dozens of splintered mirror images of Ewa as well as a few of Narcisso (think Lady from Shanghai on crack), intercut with more straightforward shots of mirrors and dazzling unclear perspectives. These shots link the mirror to production but not also to childhood or to Self/Other distinctions, but rather, to the idea of multiplicity, continual reproduction, the rise of the reproduction and the extermination of origins--I'm bowdlerizing it, of course, but the moment of mirror recognition entails a bifurcation of our perception of a single conception (e.g., me) into two phenomena (myself-the-observer and myself-in-the-mirror). And if the scene with Anita recalls Lacan ever so slightly, the great Wellesian multi-mirror shot must then recall Deleuze. I kind of enjoy this, being rather anti-psychoanalytic in temperament, and I wonder if Ruiz was thinking at all along these same lines as he was making the films. (And did Deleuze, with or without Guattari, ever put forth extensively commentary on mirrors that was not a critique of, say, psychoanalysis?) What we see in the mirror is a representation of a moment, an approximation of another's view of ourselves, and to represent reality in an omniscient way might be to represent it multiply--and the multi-mirror shot literalizes this principle, comically and profoundly!
Brian De Palma is a ferociously skilled and funny director, and revisiting Carrie confirmed that. The only thing he takes seriously in most of his films seems to be his own critical attitude toward society, which on paper no doubt makes De Palma seem one-note and containable. But with such an incredible eye and sense of rhythm, he's able to pull off pretty banal material, and what's more, I think he's smart enough to inject his screenplays with fascinating ideas, so the material is rarely banal. Carrie is a film that never offers any advantage to a particular social or ethical position: we're all guilty in our own ways, and instead of indicting humanity, De Palma takes a cue from Buñuel and smiles generously at us, too. That's why the final scene (spoilers!) is so important--it becomes clear that Amy Irving is the implicit sensibility behind the Carrie-narrative, if not the film's totality, because she feels guilty--and in fact is guilty to an extent--for her own relatively minor part in mocking Carrie. The fear that her own penance is insufficient is no less Christian-puritanical than is Carrie's mother; the final horror of Carrie's bloody hand trying to drag Sue below the surface (and into hell) simply brings to the surface the pervasive guilt embedded into our culture, and into the horror narrative. In some sense we deserve to be frightened and punished. Nobody is quite intelligent enough to realize this all the way, though, and De Palma is pretty cold toward all of his characters here, even Carrie herself (on whom Lars Von Trier would heap obscene amounts of sympathy). The scene where Tommy Ross and his friends get tuxedoes is clearly a jab; the locker room and exercise scenes are clearly meant to underscore the pettiness and feeble rebelliousness of these girls. (And De Palma shoots these scenes with obvious humor, even as he's partaking in a certain celebration of young female flesh that, without the comic excess, would be too leering: it works too, because the likes of Nancy Allen, PJ Soles, and especially Amy Irving are easy on these eyes.) What's interesting to is the gradual force of Carrie's split-screen images. Early on they employ a technique wherein De Palma can get a close-up on one side of the screen while he has an in-focus long shot on the other side--it's a single shot with a lens that allows for two focii. But the prom night debacle, which is the calcification of Carrie's telekinetic rage, sees a switch from this relatively subtle technique to the incredibly overt split-screen with a black line dividing the center. The violence to the rectangular cinema image that was suggestive for the first hour of the film becomes literal in the prom scene.
Finally, Allan Moyle's Times Square (1980) stars two young women, Trini Alvarado (Pamela) and Robin Johnson (Nicky), who give probably the greatest pair of teenage performances I've ever seen. The line these two walk is amazing. The adventure begins when a destrucive, streetwise punk (Nicky) meets the quiet, bookwormish commissioner's daughter (Pamela), and the two run off and cause havoc in NYC, becoming underground heroes with the help of an "amoral" late night DJ (Tim Curry) and much to the chagrin of Pamela's father. A lot of conventional pathways are set up in this film, only to be judiciously avoided. ("If you ever need me, just scream my name!" Guess what? The big dramatic name-screaming never comes, at least not in the obvious way you'd expect.) According to a comment on the IMDB, there was more lesbian-themed material filmed that remained on the cutting room floor; as it is, the idea of teenage lesbianism is only subtext (though not taboo). The frankness with which these girls encounter certain aspects of X-rated NYC is refreshing. This is not to say there's not a slight fairy-tale component informing the whole film; one gawks at how easily these two seem to elude violence, including rape. But I think Moyle is more honest with himself and with the issues that confront his characters and their actions in this film than in the two others of his I've seen, Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, which have enough things on their own to recommend them--but Times Square tops them as far as I'm concerned. See the film for Alvarado and Johnson, especially though. The fact that they didn't have illustrious careers resulting from this is nothing short of scandalous. (And if they happen to give bad performances in later work--quite possible, I haven't seen them in anything else that I can recall--it only means a director didn't work with them well enough!)
One thing I think I can latch onto a little bit is the discourse of the mirror here. The concept of the mirror here is closely linked the principle of production. In one scene near the end the anthropologist's daughter, Anita, talked to the mother, Eva, about how she looks at the mirror and thus "has a child"--always the reverse sex of the viewer, so thus she sees her son in the mirror. I think Ruiz is allowing for an immature elaboration of a certain childlike discovery of Self and Other here, not too unlike (but not quite the same as) the Lacanian notion of the mirror stage as I understand--one of the major differences being of course that Anita is far too old for the "mirror stage." But there is additional material about the mirror, a shot with dozens of splintered mirror images of Ewa as well as a few of Narcisso (think Lady from Shanghai on crack), intercut with more straightforward shots of mirrors and dazzling unclear perspectives. These shots link the mirror to production but not also to childhood or to Self/Other distinctions, but rather, to the idea of multiplicity, continual reproduction, the rise of the reproduction and the extermination of origins--I'm bowdlerizing it, of course, but the moment of mirror recognition entails a bifurcation of our perception of a single conception (e.g., me) into two phenomena (myself-the-observer and myself-in-the-mirror). And if the scene with Anita recalls Lacan ever so slightly, the great Wellesian multi-mirror shot must then recall Deleuze. I kind of enjoy this, being rather anti-psychoanalytic in temperament, and I wonder if Ruiz was thinking at all along these same lines as he was making the films. (And did Deleuze, with or without Guattari, ever put forth extensively commentary on mirrors that was not a critique of, say, psychoanalysis?) What we see in the mirror is a representation of a moment, an approximation of another's view of ourselves, and to represent reality in an omniscient way might be to represent it multiply--and the multi-mirror shot literalizes this principle, comically and profoundly!
Brian De Palma is a ferociously skilled and funny director, and revisiting Carrie confirmed that. The only thing he takes seriously in most of his films seems to be his own critical attitude toward society, which on paper no doubt makes De Palma seem one-note and containable. But with such an incredible eye and sense of rhythm, he's able to pull off pretty banal material, and what's more, I think he's smart enough to inject his screenplays with fascinating ideas, so the material is rarely banal. Carrie is a film that never offers any advantage to a particular social or ethical position: we're all guilty in our own ways, and instead of indicting humanity, De Palma takes a cue from Buñuel and smiles generously at us, too. That's why the final scene (spoilers!) is so important--it becomes clear that Amy Irving is the implicit sensibility behind the Carrie-narrative, if not the film's totality, because she feels guilty--and in fact is guilty to an extent--for her own relatively minor part in mocking Carrie. The fear that her own penance is insufficient is no less Christian-puritanical than is Carrie's mother; the final horror of Carrie's bloody hand trying to drag Sue below the surface (and into hell) simply brings to the surface the pervasive guilt embedded into our culture, and into the horror narrative. In some sense we deserve to be frightened and punished. Nobody is quite intelligent enough to realize this all the way, though, and De Palma is pretty cold toward all of his characters here, even Carrie herself (on whom Lars Von Trier would heap obscene amounts of sympathy). The scene where Tommy Ross and his friends get tuxedoes is clearly a jab; the locker room and exercise scenes are clearly meant to underscore the pettiness and feeble rebelliousness of these girls. (And De Palma shoots these scenes with obvious humor, even as he's partaking in a certain celebration of young female flesh that, without the comic excess, would be too leering: it works too, because the likes of Nancy Allen, PJ Soles, and especially Amy Irving are easy on these eyes.) What's interesting to is the gradual force of Carrie's split-screen images. Early on they employ a technique wherein De Palma can get a close-up on one side of the screen while he has an in-focus long shot on the other side--it's a single shot with a lens that allows for two focii. But the prom night debacle, which is the calcification of Carrie's telekinetic rage, sees a switch from this relatively subtle technique to the incredibly overt split-screen with a black line dividing the center. The violence to the rectangular cinema image that was suggestive for the first hour of the film becomes literal in the prom scene.
Finally, Allan Moyle's Times Square (1980) stars two young women, Trini Alvarado (Pamela) and Robin Johnson (Nicky), who give probably the greatest pair of teenage performances I've ever seen. The line these two walk is amazing. The adventure begins when a destrucive, streetwise punk (Nicky) meets the quiet, bookwormish commissioner's daughter (Pamela), and the two run off and cause havoc in NYC, becoming underground heroes with the help of an "amoral" late night DJ (Tim Curry) and much to the chagrin of Pamela's father. A lot of conventional pathways are set up in this film, only to be judiciously avoided. ("If you ever need me, just scream my name!" Guess what? The big dramatic name-screaming never comes, at least not in the obvious way you'd expect.) According to a comment on the IMDB, there was more lesbian-themed material filmed that remained on the cutting room floor; as it is, the idea of teenage lesbianism is only subtext (though not taboo). The frankness with which these girls encounter certain aspects of X-rated NYC is refreshing. This is not to say there's not a slight fairy-tale component informing the whole film; one gawks at how easily these two seem to elude violence, including rape. But I think Moyle is more honest with himself and with the issues that confront his characters and their actions in this film than in the two others of his I've seen, Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records, which have enough things on their own to recommend them--but Times Square tops them as far as I'm concerned. See the film for Alvarado and Johnson, especially though. The fact that they didn't have illustrious careers resulting from this is nothing short of scandalous. (And if they happen to give bad performances in later work--quite possible, I haven't seen them in anything else that I can recall--it only means a director didn't work with them well enough!)
Friday, January 14, 2005
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