I AM A MEDIA MAXI-PAD ABSORBING THE CONTINUAL FLOW OF POP CULTURE.
THIS JOURNAL DOCUMENTS MY INTAKE OF ONE BOOK, ZINE, CD OR DVD A DAY. RATINGS ARE: ***** = Godhead, **** = Great, *** = Good, ** = Fair, * = Why Bother?
I picked this up at the Pratt Library's new Southeast Anchor Library the other day while perusing their impressive music DVDs section. This interesting program, which looks to be a lo-fi bootleg, has an unnamed interviewer digging deep into the minds of songwriters Morrissey and Johnny Marr like James Lipton on The Actor's Studio. In probing their work, THE SMITHS - STILL ILL presents three unedited interviews with a young Morrissey and Marr during the band's heights of fame. The first interview with Morrissey seems to be from early on in the band's career, and the later Morrissey and Marr interviews are during the recording and release of the last Smiths album, Strangeways Here We Come.
I like the bootleg quality. There's much noise and bleed on the original (PAL?) videotape - you can see in parts where the video has been recorded over another tape and you can hear audio "ghosts." Still, it's fascinating to see a surprisingly open young Morrisey talk at length and at relative ease about his life and career with with the Smiths. Boy he licks his lips a lot - very reptilian! And the Marr interview seems to have lots of stops and edits in it - no doubt a reflection of Marr's pilled-up restless energy. You can just imagine the chain-smoking Marr taking a break to buy a pack of fags or take an off-camera snort. Anyway, I found the Morrissey interviews to be fascinatingly intimate, as they are conducted in seeming "real time," like a ordinary conversation and not a bell-s-and-whistles BH1 or MTV packaged presentation.
Chalk USA, 2006, 85 minutes Directed by Mike Akel Cast: Troy Schremmer, Janelle Schremmer, Shannon Haragan, Chris Mass, Jeff Guerrero, Jerry Jarmon, Kaytea Brock, Dan Eggleston, Glen Lewis, Wendy Campbell, Jacqueline Seaborn.
Picked this up from my library today and gave it a look when I got home, mainly because I was intrigued by its connection with Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) - Chalk is the debut release of his new distribution company venture with Hart-Sharp Productions aimed at releasing films with "social relevance" - as well as its subject matter: it's about beleaguered teachers, a demographic I deal with on a daily basis at my library gig. Chalk boasts a good cast and some good ideas, but I could never get over its derivative feel. There's nothing new here in terms of filmmaking that isn't either tried-or-true. Specifically, it's shot in the exact mockumentary style as The Office (both versions - UK original and current American counterpart). And that's hard for me to get past. I was just reading a quote by Arthur Koestler about how "the measure of an artist's originality...is the extent to which his selective emphasis deviates from the conventional norm and establishes new standards of relevance." In other words, there are leaders and there are followers. And Chalk follows some very well-trod ground - the "played out" mockumentary genre. It merely fills the footsteps of those that went before; it doesn't create a new path. Or, as A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin put it:
Thanks largely to the enduring popularity and influence of the British Office and its American counterpart, the past few years have produced a bevy of shows with a visual and comic vocabulary heavy on handheld camera, jittery editing, nervous laughter, awkward social interaction, and low-key character comedy. Unsurprisingly, this style of comedy is rapidly becoming nearly as clichéd as the staid, conventionally shot laughers that preceded it. Chalk is the latest heavily improvised mockumentary proudly traversing the tradition of The Office and Christopher Guest. It'd feel much fresher if it had been released even five years ago.
Young & Restless in China directed by Sue Williams Frontline, PBS Television, 120 minutes Air date: 9-11 p.m., June 17, 2008
Synopsis: "FRONTLINE explores the generation coming of age in China today. Shot over four years, the film follows a group of nine young Chinese from across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any in history. Their stories of ambition and desire, exuberance, crime and corruption are interwoven with moments of heartache and despair. Together they paint an intimate portrait of the generation that is remaking China."
This intimate look into the lives of nine young people living in the midst of the "new" China's economic boom was on Frontline tonight and it was great, reminding me of Michael Apted's 7 UP series in the way it followed the personal lives and careers of a particular generation in a particular culture over the course of several years. It's not available on DVD as of yet, but you can watch it online at Frontline's website. I was particularly amused by the segment on Chinese rapper Wang Xiaolei (aka MC Sir), who looks a little like a young Jet Li dressed in FUBA gear. Everything Xiaolei knows about the West comes from our Pop Culture, mainly urban hip-hop fashion and music. In fact, he's criticized in China for using "too much" English in his raps, though his subject matter is decidedly Chinese. You can hear some of Xiaolei's songs, as well as other Chinese pop music, on the Modern Sky Records website.
The other principles are migrant worker Wei Zhanyan, rural housewife Yang Haiyan, Christian Internet-based tailoring company owner Lu Dong, Internet cafe entrepreneur/consultant Ben Wu, public interest lawyer Zhang Jingjing, hotel owner Xu Weiman, marketing executive Miranda Hong and medical resident Zhang Yao.
Sand and Sorrow Director: Paul Freedman USA, 2007, 92 minutes Plot: A George Clooney-narrated documentary about the events that led to the rise of Darfur's Arab-dominated government and the international community's "legacy of failure" to respond to the genocide carried out in the country. Interviewees include Holocaust author/survivor Elie Weisel, author Samantha Powers, NY Times columnist Nicolas Kristof and US Senators Barack Obama and Sam Brownson.
Talk about black on black crime. The worst example in the world is taking place in Darfur, where the Sudanese government's ethnic cleansing continues unabated thanks to China's dependence on Sudan's oil, the United States' dependence on Sudanese intelligence (like Pakistan, Sudan is another dubious "ally" in our the War on Terror - supplying us with info on the terrorists they once harbored - mainly to avoid being attacked by us) and world indifference. As one commentator says, the world doesn't care much about people unless they represent either "a threat or a benefit." For the US and other world powers, Darfur simply doesn't show up on our radar. We call what's happening there genocide, but (like Rwanda) don't do anything about it because, ultimately, Sudan is just a place of sand and sorrow. And all our resources and military are in Iraq and Afghanistan, anyway.
Invisible People, unheard pleas
All Sudanese are black of skin and Muslim of faith, but the Sudanese goverment and its Janjaweed militia henchmen ignore these similarities and consider only those of Arabic descent to be human. It's a belief in ethnic purity the likes of which haven't been seen since the Aryan theories of Hitler's Third Reich.
This doc was good, but it didn't wow me. It concentrates a lot of the groundbreaking columns of Nicolas Kristof who brought the genocide to America's attention on the front pages of the New York Times, and to a lesser extent on the words of Elie Weisel and Harvard prof Samantha Powers (who is shown getting face time with Barack Obama). It also spent a lot of time developing a parallel "Home Front" narrative showing how young people at USC and a Midwest high school create awareness and promote activism at the grassroots level.
But it's ultimately not as good Frontline's "On Our Watch" special, which went into more detail about Chinese involvement in stymying United Nations efforts to do anything of significance in Darfur and Sudan. (Only recently, in the lead-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, has the UN been successful in getting any concessions from the veto-wielding Chinese, who want to avoid being embarassed by protesters during their moment in the spotlight.) Frontline's doc features many of the principles seen in Sand and Sorrow, especially Samantha Powers, John Pendergast, and Nicolas Kristof, but adds the advocacy work of the still-active, still-beautiful Mia Farrow, as well.
Roman de Gare (aka "Crossed Tracks") France, 2007, 105 minutes Director: Claude Lelouch. Cast: Dominique Pinon, Fanny Ardant, Audrey Dana, Michèle Bernier, Myriam Boyer, Zinedine Soualem, Boris Ventura Diaz, Marc Rioufol, Thomas Le Douarec. Tagline: "Everyone has a secret. Every mystery has a twist."
It's difficult to say much about this film's narrative without giving away its red herring plot, so here are some broad capsule reviews:
Charles Theater Plot Capsule: "In the still of the night, three lives are about to cross…a woman abandoned, a stranger awaiting his chance and a best-selling author who imagines the thriller of the year. Deceptively layered and intriguingly misleading, this highly anticipated new feature from writer/director Claude Lelouch (Oscar winner for A Man and a Woman) stars Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant as an unlikely couple caught up in a game with high stakes—and deadly consequences."
Rotten Tomatoes Capsule: "As the film opens, popular crime novelist Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) finds herself at the receiving end of a police interrogation for two murders. We then learn about the escape of an actual serial killer known as "The Magician," who may already be lurking on the roads leading out of Paris. The road is where we find Huguette (Audrey Dana), a high-strung hairdresser who is soon abandoned by her enraged fiancé at a highway service station. Huguette is rescued by the unassuming Pierre (Dominique Pinon), who may or may not actually be the ghost writer responsible for Judith Ralitzer's success..." - or the serial killer. "Taking advantage of a superb cast and gorgeous French locations, Lelouch's veteran touch deftly manages ROMAN DE GARE's multiple layers of mystery and romance. The result is a pleasingly chic thriller grounded in a very human belief in the surprising possibilities that come from love."
It's been a long time since Claude Lelouch was in the spotlight. One would have to go back to 1966, in fact, when his Un Homme et une Femme (A Man and a Woman) won the Palme d'Or, Golden Globe and Oscar as Best Foreign Film. But with Roman de Gare, his 49th film in a 50-year career, the 70-year-old director proves he still has game in a stylish tale of ghost writers and the mysteries of authorship. Appropriately enough, when Roman de Gare screened for Cannes consideration last year, Lelouch submitted it under a pseudonym, because he wanted people to judge Roman de Gare on its own merits and not as "a Lelouch" - a real-life mishievous take on the plot twists of his new film.
About the title: "Roman de gare" (literally "station novel") is French slang for the type of trashy books - typically cheap crime mysteries and thrillers - that one buys in train stations (or drugstores, airports, subways, etc.) for a quick read while commuting or on vacation. In other words, not great literature, but brisk, easily disposable entertainment. This is similar to the Italian pulp crime novel genre known as giallos and our own "beach best-sellers." Thus, Lelouche's title seems to be hinting that while his story may be slight, it's guaranteed to be entertaining and full of enjoyable twists. And that it is.
In a rare starring turn, veteran French actor Dominique Pinon - you've seen him before (he was in Amelie and Delicatessen and made his first screen appearance in 1981's Diva) - shines in a career-defining performance. My friend Marc Sober referred to him as "that ugly guy - the French Michael J. Pollard," and that thespian analogy stuck with me throughout the film (I sure hope Marc wasn't hoping to get his autograph some day, because I've blown it for him in that case!)
Dominique Pinon: The French Michael J. Pollard
Truffaut's old flame Fanny Ardant plays the Jet-set celebrity author Judith Ralitzer and is the biggest name in the cast, but somehow I didn't find her all that engaging.
No, the real discovery here is newcomer Audrey Dana as hair-brained hair stylist Huguette whose rants agaist men always seem to start with the line "I let him come in my mouth" (even in front of her parents and total strangers!). She has many outstanding scenes - her tearful desperation after being abandoned on the roadside by her fiancee, her tense/awkward/protective scenes with her daughter - but I most enjoyed her faux orgasm scene when pretending to have sex with her fiancee so as to reassure her eavesdropping mother that all was ca va! with Mr. Right in the romance department. Of course, no one did it better than Shirley Maclaine in Being There, but this was quite an impressive - and humorous - scene for Ms. Dana.
Ooo-la-la: Was it good for you, too?
Mam'selle Dana also looks rather stunning in boots, as the photo below attests.
These boots were made for street walking
Dana's background seems to be in French TV, though in an interesting twist, she played Claude Lelouch's mother in his "Cinema de Boulevard" segment of Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007) - a collective film comprised of 33 short films by various directors revealing their feelings about cinema. (Hopefully she wasn't as irresponsible a mother to Lelouch as her Huguette character in Roman a Gare.)
But back to the film...
Along the way, Lelouche's direction is clever and confident. The use of dissolves is impressive: as a car drives down the highway in a point-of-view shot, we hear a radio report about an escaped serial killer that dissolves into the feet of the killer on the run.
Lelouch's use of sounds and music to comment on and offer contrast to scenes is inspired as well. When you think a child rapist has disappeared into the woods with a young girl, he fills the soundtrack with the ominous sound of pigs being slaughtered. Meanwhile, at the gas station where Huguette is having a fight with her boorish fiancee, we view the scene from the point of view of Dominique Pinon, who calmly watches the heated exchange from inside the rest stop, where soothing E-Z Listening musak offsets the tension brewing outside. Needless to say Lelouch's old friend Jacques Brel is on the soundtrack, as well.
And now a slight digression...
Rendezvous Deja Vu
Certain stylistic flourishes in this film are distinctly Lelouch. For example, the point-of-view driving scenes in Roman de gare are almost certainly a nod to Lelouche's controversial 1976 short C'était un rendez-vous (literally "It Was an Appointment"), aka Rendezvous, a 9-minute film steeped in urban legend. According to the legend, on an August morning in 1976, Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a professional Formula 1 racer drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.
The camera used only had a ten minute film magazine, hence the mad dash to the steps of the Basilique du Sacre Coer in Montmatre to rendezvous with the beautiful blonde waiting there (Mrs. Lelouch, for the record). No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. Thus the film is admired for being cinema verite in the strictest sense. Fans continue to debate whether it was really Lelouch himself driving and whether it was a Ferrari, Lelouch's own Mercedes, or a motorcycle being raced. On first showing, Lelouch was supposedly arrested. In his defence, he proclaimed he had taken all possible precautions - including the use of that Formula 1 driver to helm the car.
Subsequently the film went underground, occasionally to be shown in front of a Lelouch full-length feature on theatrical release. Charm City cineastes can rejoice because a 16mm print of Rendezvous is available for checkout at Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library. But if you don't live in Baltimore or have a 16mm projector, this joy ride is only as far away as an Internet connection, thanks to someone uploading it to YouTube.
C'était un rendez-vous (1976)
This short was also used as the music video for Snow Patrol's song, "Open Your Eyes" (though it sounds lame without that roaring Ferrari engine!).
In the wake of films like Ronin, Death Proof and Speed Racer and advances in CGI technology, Rendezvous may seemed somewhat dated. But don't forget, this was 1976 and it was shot live without special effects, sped-up film or blocked-off streets. This is what separates Rendezvous from all other films: it's "verite" not virtual - or in Budweiser terminology: "True."
A favorite of the editors of Car & Driver magazine, (“better than any chase ever filmed, because it’s real”) it is definitely NOT recommended for driver’s ed students.
I've been slowly making my way through this enjoyable - but challenging - read. It's Alan Moore, so while it's guaranteed to be great, but it also means it's far from being just a picture book that can be dusted off in one sitting. Like Chris Ware's Acme comics, Moore's graphic novels are rewarding but require some effort on the reader's part. For like his masterpiece Watchman, The Black Dossier has lots of "books-within-the-book" - meaning that every time a character reads a paper, magazine or scrapbook, it affords Moore the opportunity to reproduce the referenced item in toto and thus riff on various literary genres. Thus, while Black Dossier the graphic novel is ostensibly concerned with spies-and-intrigue in a post-war England where the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been disbanded and disavowed and the country is under the control of an Orwellian-totalitarian regime, that just lays the groundwork for Moore to jump off into spoofs of Aleister Crowley, Jack Kerouac, Shakespeare (love the characters Master Shytte and Master Pysse!), Jules Verne, Virginia Woolf, P.G. Wodehouse, Fanny Hill, classical mythology, faeries, and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?. There's even a 3-D section near the end (though they were missing from my library copy - natch)!
In between his imaginative digressions into these various literary and pop cultural spoofs, Moore tells the story of youthful Mina Murray and a "rejuvenated" Allan Quatermain looking for clues about the hidden history of the League throughout the ages. The Black Dossier, a book they found buried deep in the vaults of their old headquarters, provides the answer to their questions, but first they have to avoid getting killed by mysterious pursuers trying to recapture the lost manuscript.
But that's just the sideshow in this ambitious work. As one fan wrote on Facebook (yes, I was bored and logged in!): "Virgina Woolf's Orlando is raped by a teenage Merlin. Prospero from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' is revealed to be the world's first ever superhero. Alan Quatermain meets Jack Kerouac. And Billy Bunter. The story where Jeeves and Wooster meet the Elder Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos has to be seen to be believed! You need this like you need oxygen."
Fan Boy's right, of course. To paraphrase The Sweet, Moore is like oxygen: you get too much, it makes you high; not enough and you're gonna die. Moore gets you high. So take a deep breath and pace yourself!
I never knew much about Leslie Caron beyond the obvious - you know, classically trained ballet dancer turned Hollywood star who was discovered at age 19 by Gene Kelly and cast in An American In Paris (1951), leading the way to more fame and acclaim stateside in Lili (1953), Gigi (1958) and Father Goose (1964). Mam'selle Caron had that classic French look, her sunken cheeks and pouty lips suggesting reticence bordering on sadness.
Born in Paris of a French father and an American mother, Caron was spotted in Roland Petit's 1946 Ballet "Orpheus" by Gene Kelly and later came to the USA to partner up with such legendary hoofers as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly before chucking her dancing shoes at age 25 to take on more dramatic roles - and the occasional romantic-comedy like Father Goose. The world was better for Caron deciding to stretch as an actress, as her work her in the early '60s proves. Her craft was exemplified in the three films I watched last night on Turner Classic Movies: Fanny (1961), Father Goose (1964) and The L-Shaped Room (1962).
First up, the best of the batch.
The L-Shaped Room (1962) (*****) Directed by Bryan Forbes (UK, 126 minutes) Cast: Leslie Caron, Tom Bell, Brock Peters, Avis Bunnage, Cicely Courtneidge
Why-oh-why is this out-of-print?
Leslie Caron reached her dramatic pinnacle playing Jane Fosset, an unwed pregnant woman who gathers strength from her odd roommates in a seedy Notting Hill tenant house, in Bryan Forbes' The L-Shaped Room (based on a novel by Lynne Reid Banks), for which she received a British Academy Award. (The Brits loved Caron, as she also won BAFTA's Best Foreign Actress award for 1953's Lili.) Like Fanny (the non-musical adaptation of the play based on Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles/Fanny Trilogy) and Lili (despite an Oscar nomination for Best Actress), this film remains criminally out-of-print.
This is a veddy British kitchen sink drama. Particulary striking is its frank depiction of hypocritical attitudes about sex, abortion and class; Jane Fosset is an innocent who is initially blamed for her condition, then blamed for not "taking care of it" in a sensible manner. She briefly considers getting rid of her child, but is so repulsed by the quack she visits (who sees only marriage or termination as options) that she resolves to have the baby alone.
It also boasts a stellar Limey cast. Tom Bell (H.M.S. Defiant, Prime Suspect, The Krays) plays Toby, a struggling writer that falls in love with new tenant Jane Fosset.
Tom Bell
Bell had the classic Angry Young Man look of this era - a thick pompadour of hair and a chiseled face like Tom Courtenay crossed with Laurence Harvey (but without Harvey's posh accent) - which apparently mirrored his real-life Angry Young Man persona as well. Bell famously insulted Prince Philip at an awards event and subsequently found himself virtually blacklisted in films, despite his dashing looks and status as one of England's finest and most promising actors. He would go on to have steady work in British television, however, though I didn't immediately recognize him as the same actor who 30 years later would portray Helen Mirren's backstabbing detective Bill Otley in Prime Suspect (1991). Bell passed away in 2006.
The great American actor Brock Peters, fresh off of his star turn as Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, is next-door-neighbor Johnny, a West Indies jazz trumpet player (not exactly a stretch for Peters, whose parents were from Africa and the West Indies) and good soul who secretly loves Jane. As an actor, Peters had one of the most intense and expressive faces of his time; no one was better at showing angst and inner turmoil.
Brock Peters in "To Kill a Mockingbird"
The quintessentially coarse working-class landlady is Doris, played by veteran character actress Avis Bunnage (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Sparrows Can't Sing, Coronation Street), who routinely got cast in "blousy woman" roles. She's not in a lot of scenes, but when she is on camera, she steals the picture. She's exactly the kind of source material Monty Python would later skewer in their working-class shrew caricatures.
Another standout is Cicely Courtneidge, who plays middle-aged lesbian tenant Mavis - we only learn Mavis' orientation late in the film in a great scene in which Leslie Caron asks about Courtneidge's great love and looks at a framed picture; we never see the picture, just Caron's knowing look and Courtneidge's reply of "It takes all sorts, dear." She also does a wonderful version of "Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty" in British army fatigues that's worth the price of admission. The Smiths opened their 1986 album The Queen Is Dead with a sound bite of Courtneidge's rendition taken from this scene.
Mavis loans Joan her book of Sapphic poetry
Director Bryan Forbes also uses music very effectively to augment his settings and actors. I loved the beatnik club scenes, where Jane and Toby go to see Johnny perform. Everybody drinks coffee, dances the Twist to beat jazz and makes out in smoky corners. Made me think of Expresso Bongo. Elsewhere in the film, Brahms' First Movement is used to suggest tension - first when a lost Jane desperately explores London's seediest neighborhoods in search of a flat, and later when she anxiously watches the clock in the cafe where she works, waiting for her estranged lover to show up. He doesn't.
This is a sad film about loneliness and making connections with others that offers no simplistic happy ending. In that regard, it's like life itself, in which there are no easy answers, only countless perplexing questions. The ending is subtle and dramatic - and rather open-ended. After having her baby and making plans to return home to France, Jane stops by the flat one last time to pick up her belongings and to return Toby's manuscript about their relationship, which is entitled "The L-Shaped Room." Toby is out of his flat, so Jane leaves a note on his typewriter. The note is filmed in a medium-shot and is very hard to make out, but it's something to the effect of "Your story is lovely, but it has no ending. It would be a marvelous story with an ending. - Jane." Cryptic, yes. Perfectly so.
Fanny (1961) (***) directed by Joshua Logan (USA, 134 minutes) Cast: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, Horst Bucholtz, Georgette Anys
Why-oh-why is this out-of-print??
Though it boasts a Who's Who cast of French stars in Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer and Georgette Anys, the real star of this old school tearjerker is the port of Marseilles and the cinematography of DP Jack Cardiff, who captures the beauty and romance of this seaside city in a way no one else has since. When I came across this film on TCM, I thought it looked hokey - I mean, a French cast in berets-and-cafes dubbed into English for Hollywood consumption of Gallic cliches, but it was so gorgeous to look at with its breezy blue skies and the characters set against the azure hues of the Mediterranean Sea, I stayed with it. It seemed so different from drab, humid Baltimore with its pollution and weekend heat advisory. Then, when I saw Caron's face against that backdrop, I was hooked.
Here's imdb's summary of the plotline (based on the plays and films of Marcel Pagnol - Marius, Fanny, Cesar), which borders on the mythic in its simplicity: "Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want."
There are really no surprises there, but we continue to watch because the scenery is pretty, Boyer and Chevalier are engaging and Leslie Caron is captivating.
Father Goose (1964) (***) directed by Ralph Nelson (USA, 118 minutes) Cast: Leslie Caron, Cary Grant, Trevor Howard
Don't have much to say about this film except that I've always liked it. Cary Grant was nearing the end of his career and only made one more movie, 1966's Walk Don't Run. This was a change of pace for Grant, as he played against type as a gruff and grizzly boozer instead of Mr. Suave. This was about the time Cary protested that he found it silly to be 60 and still doing romantic scenes with women half his age (co-star Leslie Caron was roughly 32 at the time). Caron has a great drunk scene and the film also boasts a nice title song, "Pass Me By," made famous in a Frank Sinatra cover version.
