the bottom of the ocean: where things can’t see or be seen

remember the past?  i do.  sometimes.  misremember, that is.   specifically, i (mis)remember that i use to watch a lot more movies than i currently do.  there was this one winter, maybe two years ago, where i was watching 7(0) to 10(0) movies a week.  it was winter.  i didnt want to leave the house.  or even move away from my space heater.  so i watched movie after movie.

that january i made a new years resolution: keep a log of all the movies i watch.  the resolution lasted a month and a half.

during a week and a half period, i watched a bunch of jon waters movies (in reverse chronological order — i wanted to work my way backwards to pink flamingos; a kind of inverted trajectory of shock from all the tongue-kissing in cry-baby to the incestual blow-jobs and dog-shit eating in pink flamingos) and all the preston sturges movies.  because i was watching so many movies (and often watching movies back to back to back), i lost the ability to tell when one movie started and the other began and now see waters as a kind of perverse continuation of sturges screw-ball comedies.

the last movie i watched and recorded on my new-years-resolution-movie-watching-note-card was inland empire — the best movie i’ve ever seen (with the passion of joan of arc being a close second).  after that, a movie-watching-note-card seemed pointless.

the preceding paragraphs are another way of saying that i haven’t been watching many movies lately so i dont have any recently seen movies to write about.  i have, however, been watching a lot of tv.  specifically, i’ve been watching the nba playoffs, fox news and jeopardy.

in my opinion, the 80s were the best decade for (american) movies.  and the best part about 80s movies is how tv becomes the star like in videodrome or ladies and gentlemen, the fabulous stains.

but if there is a movie from the 80s that foresaw the future of tv (specifically, cable news) it was robocop.  but the converse may be true: if there is a movie from the 80s that foxnews most patterns itself after, it’s robocop.  or, since time only appears linear, maybe they’re actually the same.  except robocop is funnier.  but just barely.  mostly because the commercials in robocop are funnier.

note: this isn’t a dis on robocop.  robocop is fantastic in a million ways.  i’m also not saying that foxnews is fantastic.  i mean, i am but with qualifiers to fantastic.  obviously foxnews has nothing to do with news or journalism in any traditional sense.  like the newscasts in robocop, foxnews is a tv pretending to be news but without the pretensions of cnn.  it’s like a patishce or double parody of a news show.  i would go as far as saying that while the colbert show started off as a parody of the o’reilly show, the oreilly show has now become a parody of the colbert show making it a double-parody of itself.  this all makes for some very surreal and confusing tv watching.

also: sean hannity will pull out a nerf football once per show, usually when making some point about how torture is not only necessary, but possibly commendable.

Panic!!!

So it turns out that swine flu is bullshit. No big surprise there. We have a tendency to assume the worst (and then kill all our pigs). But you know what wasn’t bullshit? What actually requires a little panic? Pneumonic plague. Transmitted easily from person to person, that stuff is scary. But if it’s so serious and contagious, why doesn’t anyone take Lieutenant Commander Clinton ‘Clint’ Reed, M.D. seriously when he announces that the dead Armenian no one seems to care much about is a carrier of this deadly disease?

Panic in the Streets would more accurately be called One Guy Panics in the Streets While Everyone Else Takes it Easy. Pretty much the opposite of what would – and does – happen these days if someone so much as whispers “pandemic.” Lt. Reed practically screams it at everyone he meets, and no one even bothers to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough, much less cancel their trips to Cancun. 

While pretty much ignoring the open threat of plague in the U.S. is pretty unbelievable and annoying, Panic in the Streets was otherwise a very entertaining and unconventional film noir. The dark streets and wallowing in the gutter is consistent to the style, but the long, playful conversations between Lt. Reed and his wife seems delightfully out of place. This is definitely an Elia Kazan film, full of melodramatic and sweaty acting. In the best way. He always pays so much attention to human details. The careful curl of the wife’s hair seems completely deliberate. While another director might take this story and make a straight-forward thriller, Kazan turns to the intricate relations between power structures. Man and wife in the fifties. Chief detective and Lieutenant. Politicians and criminals. Crime boss and Armenian gamblers. Each line of dialogue is used to further these relationships and not just the fairly weak plot.

I see Kazan pulling the same trick in films like A Face in the Crowd and Gentleman’s Agreement. Two films whose plots are a little less than compelling these days, but they still hold up. These melodramas may have been really exciting when they were released. A musician bio-pic like A Face in the Crowd has been done a million times, but watching Sheriff Andy Griffith scream and yell and beat up on women is great in a totally different way than it would be back then. Now, with a sense of irony, A Face in the Crowd holds up because of its humanity. The slight tics of character that Kazan chooses to focus on really make the movie. Likewise, Gentleman’s Agreement, a film that seems completely racist these days is somehow still worth watching because these human qualities feel so sincere. In melodrama that’s rare.

how’s that for civilization?

tarzan and his mate (or tarzan finds a mate) is incredible.  to quote a friend, “it’s the best jungle movie ever made.”  i couldnt agree more.

tarzan and his mate is a lot like herzog’s jungle movies — fitzcarraldo, cobra verde, etc.  it’s a bunch of europeans heading off into the middle of the jungle to make a movie.   they employ indigenous people(s) as actors and extras (and, like in cobra verde, stage a huge battle between warring tribes), film all sorts of wild animals (and wild animal attacks), (inadvertently?) kill (a few) people and (a ton) of animals, edit the footage and release a movie unlike most movies you’ll ever see.

like the herzog jungle movies and the heart of darkness, tarzan and his mate may function as a kind of (post)colonial criticism.  here’s how the exploiter’s ethical concerns breakdown from most important to least important:

-ivory (as in elephant tusks)
-jane
-tarzan (mostly because he knows the way to the elephant -graveyard where more tusks than they could hope to transport can be found)
-elephants
-other non-threatening animals (including chimps)
-threatening animals (including hippos, tigers, cheetahs, rhinos, snakes and crocodiles)
-the african tribe they employ to transport the ivory

so the movie is pretty racist.  but guess what?  we’re still exploiting africa.  what else do you think africom is about?  and all this fuss over somolian pirates?  an excuse to extend our sphere of influence (read: exploitation) in the african continent.  so, if you watch this movie (and you should), dont be fooled thinking how enlightened we’ve become because out tax dollars and our multi-national corporations are committing way worse crimes than jane’s old boyfriend (and his new boyfriend) could ever imagine.

did i mention all the animal attacks in this movie?  there are dozens.  tarzan is always saving jane from some animal or another — he wrestles  crocodiles, kills lions with his bare hands, stabs rhinos (while he’s riding them) and tames hippos.

most importantly, tarzan and his mate features a chimp smoking cigarettes!

so this chimp, cheeta, basically pioneered chimp-acting.  and he’s 76 and still alive.  jane goodall sent him a birthday video for his 75th birthday, which, according to the internet, featured goodall singing happy birthday in chimp calls.

or that’s what cheeta’s autobiography (me cheeta by cheeta) lead me to believe.

but it’s not true.  i found this great article by rd rosen.  he was working on an authorized biography on cheeta when he discovered that cheeta (seen above) is actually only 48 and never acted in any tarzan movies and possibly never acted in any movie ever.

cheeta, however, is an accomplished painter.

(for anyone interested in ape art, check out this site.  they can be a little hard on animal artists (they have sections under there why artist don’t get paid tab that feature other ape, dolphin, cat and turtle artists) because the site is ran by artists and they might be a little insecure seeing these animals paint (and get paid for) these incredible pieces of art.)

the real chimp-actor pioneer is jiggs.  he was featured in a number of early tarzan films (including tarzan and his mate).  he may have been the first chimp to ever smoke and/or dress in drag in a movie.

I Think She was a Lady Stripper

Someone recently found our little blog here by google searching “Diablo Cody” “hung like.” I don’t know what post that could possibly be. I think I used the phrase “hung like a brontosaurus” in my thesis…but I can’t really imagine Brian and I writing about Diablo Cody. That said, I would like to inform this curious researcher that a couple months ago I was put up in the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose to cover Cinequest and when I left for home a little early, Diablo Cody was given my room. That means we – sort of – shared a bed! How’s that for a boring great story?? But this was after I left. So I have no idea how, exactly, she is hung.

Christian Bale’s Beard Doesn’t Put Out

Here is an important lesson I learned from the movie The Fabulous Stains: music is better when no one really knows what they’re doing. Diane Lane doesn’t have to know how to sing, Laura Dern doesn’t even have to know a chord on the guitar (she makes up her own), and that other girl…doesn’t really interest me.

Not knowing how to play their instruments doesn’t mean they don’t know exactly what they’re doing. At least Diane Lane does. Her image and persona act alongside the music  to create the entire product – yes it’s an image that is subsequently co-opted for commercial gain, and then parodied until the original is obsolete, but initially punk rock seems to be far more about pseudo-politics than anything else.

So what I’m getting at is: I should be a rock star. I have no musical ability, but I could definitely come up with a crazy outfit and get mad about gender politics. I would call my band Christian Bale’s Beard.

My first album:

Tracks:
1. Snake Charming can be Dangerous
2. Tell the Truth, Do I Look Like a Polygamist in this Outfit?
3. The Pedophile’s Pigeons
4. Fat Girls are Notoriously Bad Dancers (Part 1)
5. But We’re Great in the Sack (Part 2) (Radio Edit)
6. Ted Williams
7.  No One Shot Kennedy
8. Puppy Street

That last one is tricky, because just like The Stains, Christian Bale’s Beard will steal a much-loved song from a lesser-known band and claim it as their own. With the combination of our enormous sex appeal and our important political messages, a song like  Puppy Street will make us millions (of dollars). Suck it, We’re Petrified!

So if someone with minimal musical talent, gumption, and energy would just go ahead and make this album for me, that’d be great. Also, teach me the keyboard parts (or drums or guitar or tambourine). That way I can stand on stage and get a lot of attention. I think I’d like that.

first (hu)man into (outer)space

navy test pilot lt dan prescott, in the experimental rocket-plane y-12, breaks through the ionosphere, the controlability zone and out to the edge of the atmosphere before returning to the terrestrial.  the rocket is badly damaged, but the controls are salvageable.  prescott, after the experience, is described by local cops as funny.  lt prescott’s commanding officer (who also happens to be his brother) asks for a definition of funny.  “like high,” the cop reports.  lt prescott has disappeared after the crash.  com prescott finally finds lt prescott (remember: they’re brothers) making out on the couch at his girlfriend’s apartment.

the paper the next day leads with lt prescott’s picture and reads “the highest man in the world”.

the pentagon sees the headlines and fast-tracks y-13’s test launch which will put lt prescott just barely into space — (the) first man in space, as the movie is titled.  but first lt prescott will need to spend some time at the scientific section of the navy’s division of space medicine in mew mexico.  they need to test the effects of zero gravity, extreme altitude and space on lt prescott’s mental and physical health.  it turns out there are some serious negative side-effects to near space travel.

like the next time lt prescott gets to the edge of space (in rocket-plane y-13), he freaks out.  the problem: lt prescott is addicted to space.  it’s exhilarating (especially the way the sequence is shot) — a rush of adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine , etc (i’m guessing).  lt prescott just wants more of it; he refuses to listen to commands, employs his back up  boosters and blasts 250 miles into outerspace.  then this alien cloud engulfs y-13 and lt prescott (”it was like 50,000 machine guns going off at once”) sending them crashing back to earth.  the alien cloud has now solidified around lt prescott which also makes him a blood-thirsty maniac because (for some reason) he’s lost all his blood in space and needs to drink fresh blood to stay alive.

i think the movie is about early military development and testing of psychedelic drugs.

also, there were at least two dozen telephone conversations in this movie.  as well as numerous intercom systems.

my eyes are like telescopes

no one likes to be typecasted.

take  james cagney — warner brothers just wanted to give him gangster roles and all he wanted to do was dance.  luckily, his wish came through in footlight parade.

as chester kent.  (the film starts with a series of these kind of freeze frames introducing all the characters.)

immediately following the credits, the film declares, in text: “hollywood will only make talking pictures in the future — silent film is finished!”

which turned out to be true.

sound movies radically change the way films are produced and consumed.  so what’s a live musical comedy director supposed to do when all theaters are turning into sound movie theaters?  start making live musical prologues to go on in between the the movies.

most of the movie focus on the production of these prologues (or units, as chester calls them) — it’s all rehearsals and chester staying up all night coming up with ideas for future prologues.   and, just like about every movie from the 30s i’ve seen, chester spends a lot of time on the telephone.

anyway, it turns out someone has been stealing chester’s ideas and selling them to competitors.  not only that, chester’s business partners have been stealing his money.  this all leads to the need to produce three brand new prologues for shows at three different theaters in all in one night.  so chester locks everyone and writes and rehearses three new prologues (so no one can sell the ideas to competitors).

the movie ends with the three prologue performances.  what’s great about them is that even though they’re are supposed to be live performances featured in between movies, they’re shot as movies.  it’s not a static shot of the stage from the film audiences point of view, but rather the camera interacts with the dancers in sets that would be physically impossible to have on a stage (like that giant swimming pool).

even better is when the dancers stop being humans and become geometrical shapes shot from above.  these sequences are incredible and pretty much invent most of the features that make movie musicals great.  these are dance sequences that are only possible in movies.  further, these are dance sequences only possible in self-conscious movies.

p.o.e.

i read about this study where the fluoridation of water may lead to an increase in violent crime.  supposedly fluoride in the water enhances the body’s uptake in lead which is a “neurotoxin that lowers dopaminergic function in the inhibitory circuits of the basal ganglia.”

so maybe col ripper was right about the communist plot of fluoridation.  he was just wrong about it’s effects — instead of a decrease in sexual essence, it just leads to more violence.

but if there’s one thing that i’ve learned from movies, it’s that sex and violence are often related.

it’s tough to bring a king to trial for treason, unless you’re cromwell

hollywood in the early 30s was an interesting time/place for movies. i’m no film historian, but it seems to me that you’ve got the end of the silent era, the replacement of silent era stars, the mass production of studio movies, pre-code subject matter and it’s all taking place in the midst of the great depression.  i get that it’s not the way singin in the rain makes it out to be (since they dont even acknowledge that there was a time in hollywood before the code or give any hint that the movie is supposed to be taking place during the great depression), but what i imagine they got right is how the shift from away from silent movie coupled with the fact that movies, at this point, had only existed for a few decades created a kind of convention-less period where movies didnt know what they were supposed to look/sound like.  pretty soon they established conventions and began to apply ford’s assembly line to the production of movies.  but for a brief period in the early sound era, you get these hollywood movies with such unusual and shocking styles, themes and characters.

like female.

while credited to director micheal curtiz (from casablanca fame),  most of the movie was actually directed by william wellman (from a star is born fame).  at least that’s what i read on the internet.  this movie features ms allison drake as the head of an major automobile company.  essentially, she treats men the way men treat women with some hilarious results.  she’s all business at work, but occasionally invites male subordinates over for dinner (and a little more) at her awesome house which features a pipe organ suspended 15 feet above the ground in her living room.  she also got a great pool with some of the funniest sculptures i’ve seen featured in a movie.  (there’s this great joke where one of the guys she invites over for dinner compares ms drake to a statue and she quickly responds that she hopes it’s not that one as the movie cuts to an abstract female sculpture.)  when her subordinate employees fall in love with her (usually after one evening together), she tells them to not get sentimental and even transfers them to montreal if they keep pressuring her into marriage.

later on she falls for this guy who invented an automatic shifter.  he, however, doesnt fall for ms drake precisely because she’s a business woman.  ms drake’s secretary (a mr pettigrew) explains to her that men like mr thorne (who invented the automatic gear-shifter) is a primitive sort of man that needs to feel like his woman needs protection.  so ms drake sets up a fake picnic where she gets mr thorne to start a fire and look for sources of food.  then he falls for her (in this great scene where they keep describing each other as very cool).

the ending of the film, like the divorcee, has the assertive woman submitting to traditional roles of womanhood.  while this is probably a kind of backlash movie against the flappers in the 20s, the ending proves to be hollow and tacked on.  like you have this awesome, smart woman controlling the entire film until she fits back into traditional, conservative roles for the last 30 seconds of the film.

anyway, the film is super funny and only an hour long.  and the rest of the movie in the forbidden hollywood set are great too.

Suddenly, Last Summer

I love that Montgomery Clift would star in Suddenly, Last Summer. Just like the main characters of the film, Clift’s sexuality seemed to be very fluid, plus he traveled through Europe with his mother as a child. To star in a movie where the main character fits this profile and then is ripped apart by Greek savages by the end of the movie was probably a little hard. 

Suddenly, Last Summer is a really weird movie. On the surface it seems to be trying to make a positive statement about classism, and prejudice based on sexuality. Like, “don’t beat up gay guys” and “sometimes rich people are really selfish.” But underneath those overt meanings, there is a weird, Fruedian ideology behind the whole thing that I couldn’t quite make out.

Sebastian is the gay (unstated), poet son of a wealthy widow named Katherine Hepburn. They do everything together, including going on elaborate trips all over Europe. When his mother isn’t well and Sebastian is accompanied by his cousin Elizabeth Taylor, he dies a brutal death that sends her to the mental hospital. Here is an Oepidal complex gone horribly wrong. Sebastian’s attachment to his mother, his mother’s devotion to him, and the absence of a father in his life has led him to have no desire for his mother as a sexual object. He has no reason to be jealous of his father, because his father’s out of the picture. Instead, Sebastian has his mother fully to himself, no need to mimic his father in order to be near her (and women like her). Instead, the forbidden object that Sebastian is kept from – in his insulated family life – is a man. Thus: homo. 

And I know the film ran up against censorship problems and could never actually say that Sebastian was gay (could only imply that he was getting blow jobs from young boys in the bathroom. much more appropriate for American audiences) but the exclusion of Sebastian’s explicit homosexuality makes his sexuality seem dirtier, something to be ashamed of, more closeted than the film implies Sebastian actually was. Because while Katherine Hepburn never tells anyone that Sebastian is gay, he clearly puts himself out there on his travels. 

Which brings up another problem. Sebastian has no control over his sexuality. He forces his mother and his cousin to attract men for him (men that would be, I guess, equally attracted to him as they are to scantily clad, hott ladies). This contributes to Elizabeth Taylor’s madness: Not only is he a gay; he’s a selfish gay!

As for class, the rich seem to be secretive, closeted, selfish, and elitist…but they are also way more bearable than the middle class. Elizabeth Taylor’s mom and brother are said middle class and they’re just as selfish as the rich, but whiney about it since they don’t have anything to show for it. It seems like the only way to be classy in this film is by being the adorable beneficiary of a gay cousin and an overbearing aunt. 

And the movie is completely racist. He’s torn apart by a bunch of Poor Savage Greeks. (who may or may not like giving him blow jobs.)

What sucks is that Suddenly, Last Summer is awesome. I don’t quite know how to evaluate it based on implicit pscyhoanalysis. I know that it’s entertaining, the acting is really really great, and each monologue is riveting. I don’t know what to do with that.