stranger than paradise

This film, or rather, Ezster--the hot hungarian emigrant who spends 10 days in cousin Eddie's Clinton St. apartment--put a spell on me. Jarmusch's new wave addiction surfaces in a Band of Outsiders bubble up, a Jules et Jim reimagining--with all the sexual tension and none of the sex. Like In the Soup, the black and white photography brings the film an echo of nostalgia prodded by the retro wardrobes of the actors themselves, who play solitaire in suspenders, count their money in dim halls, and tilt their hats when they don't want to be seen. The only technology here--besdies the lonesome, shadow-casting television which broadcasts only "Twilight Zone" reruns--is runaway Eszter's tape player, which plays only "I put a Spell on You," and...does. For she's the Scarlett o'Hara of this hush, whispering roadtrip threesome, the vortex, its center; She's the eye of the storm, she plays the loudest music and goddamn it if she's not the quietest part.

failure alert:

how have i only seen 42 movies? i'd like to blame:

1. arrested development, on dvd
2. catherine brobeck, rachel khong, my family, my so called friends
3. pete and pete
4. the al franken show, on sundance
5. aol instant messanger
6. tanner on tanner marathon
7. music, concerts, shows, outdoor festivals, social gatherings
8. beaches, parks
9. ann lane rick
10. geography; distance of kim's, blockbuster.
11. my job, the fax machine
12. my lack of whimsy

la place de republique

The greek chorus here of Louis Malle's realpolitik greek tragedy has to be the woman who sells lottery tickets; who refuses to be filmed; who says in a quick frame, thinking she's speaking off camera, that she is the only happy person in the world, that there are no winners, that everyone is unhappy. Everyone, but not her. We speak from experience. We are all the only ones.

in the soup

Seymour Cassell and Steve Buscemi in a bed together. Is a scene. In this movie.

chasing liberty

When the Rumpus was issued a seize and destroy from the Executive Branch of the US Government, it was for some 7,000 copies the folks had printed with a cover story on Babs evading her Escalade Entourage in a toll booth, to drive into New York City without the National Guard. To publish such acts of evasion was to endanger the life of the first daughter, and despite the coverup, the leak...well, leaked, to the bigwigs at USA, who thought--hey, lets make a movie with the pull quote on IMDB:
Ben: So, you have a little thing for me?
Anna: No. A big thing."

and, because I know we all assume the general public is psycho, let's hope to get reviews on IMDB that are like:
5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful:-
Best film, 2 March 2005
Author: leftyguns2 from Woodbridge Twp NJ
Of all of the films that I have seen recently"Chasing Liberty" has to have been the best.

and, let's make it have the same plot of that Rumpus story, but, you know, instead she's chasing this guy, who it turns out, is in the Secret Service, and we'll throw in the whole, "I thought you really liked me" part right at the end, but "the whole thing was just a lie?" and then the guy has to say that remarkable line, which is lifted from She's all That, or, the taming of the shrew, or something, where the guy is all:
Ben: It started out as a job, but then I messed up. I fell for her.

Let me start over. This film gets teens right on! Mandy wants desperately to go to Berlin for the "love parade," where seedy rastafarians and ravers make out on a studio backlot, but her parents won't allow her to go alone, even if she is accompanied by princess nicoletta or what the fuck. So Mandy sneaks out at a concert, trading clothes with a chic in the bathroom, and does the whole thing herself. I can't keep typing. Yawn. The budget of this film could have saved Africa.

lady of shanghai

Though I somehow neglected to mention that my own personal heroine, Marlene Dietrich, starred in Song of Songs, I'm fronting with it here. Dietrichs' "Shanghai Lily," a caucasian prostitute hopping from rich ex-pat lilypad to rich ex-pat lilypad in turn-of-the-century China, is a very different "Lily" than the virgin smashed between men in Song of Songs. While Songs described Lily as enduring a cruel process of disillusionment along with her sexual awareness, the film finally showed its heroine as a Sultan of Sultry, and Dietrich ends the film as a much more glamorous hottie than she began it. Sort of like how I feel about Frau Angelica , who's way better twenty years later. Basically, Dietrich's a much better woman here, and the final film's mantra is that which Olsen admirers have spouted for decades: Fuck the Virgins. I mean...Ignore Them. What I'm trying to say is, Fuck the high end prostitutes.

Lady has everything. Struggles with the dark side of communism, train voyages, opium dens, and men in safari hats. I want a hatbox. I want a soldier on my sleeve. I want i want i want. Every woman wants to be Marlene Dietrich. That dame's got class. Ingenues are overrated. Katie Holmes sucks.

song of songs

Stereotype an aunt:
Doting and protective? Or cruel and flirty with the customers. A drunk? A sourpuss?

Stereotype a virgin heroine:
Blonde and christian? Moral and lost? Aching to get out?

Lily and the aunt under whose eaves she has been marooned by the death of her last parent, are all of these things together. Though she's chided for talking to the handsome artist who wants her as his model, she's encouraged to date the commandante--in exchange for his imported Jamaican rum. Though she fears the phallis, Lily sneaks out every night to...model. For a man. Here, even before the code, a striptease is a hilariously dated litany of pans between Lily's clothed parts and the nude sculptures of those parts, studding the studio. All prodding pokes the question; what is art? What can be shown? What medium can show it? Still, it's back-to-basics hilarity when she's afraid to remove her last garment, and we see her, nakedly, for what she really is: a good girl, gone wild.

But her beautiful artist sneaks off with a deal after bedding her, and Lily beds the commandant, as well as his horse trainer--well, not really, that was a fire and blah blah blah. The plot sneaks around as much as she does, and basically--this is one of those oldies that's as laugh out loud then, as it is today. Though some of the laughs are unguarded, unthought--we laugh so hard, because we cannot imagine this ribaldrous a film could have been made this long ago. We know now not to trust our grandmothers, whose "In My Day..." sentences are a life awash in dreams. Song of Songs hangs those, and all dreams, to dry.

never been kissed

Something I forgot about this film: Drew Barrymore plays a reporter—a copy editor turned investigative reporter—which is Cinderella-story enough for this unpaid fact checker! The scoop? Investigate high schoolers! Find out what those gosh darn kids are really up to! (The most realistic moment of the film is the editor-in-chief assigning stories based on meaningless daily events—in this case, his son lying during dinner).

If that’s actually the goal of this film—to investigate those chickadees—this is a laughing failure. Stereotypes are the meat of this shit sandwich, and Barrymoore simply climbs the popular ladder through each caricature. Whereas Mean Girls and Heathers explored more groups than just the Nerds (math team, The Denominators) and the Pops (Jessica Alba and friends in Barbie prom outfits), NBK is content to go no further—it’s as if thirty kids populated the entire school, attending all of the same classes. The heartthrob here is doubly a problem: he’s a gay twenty-five year old actor, who’s a little too pleased to wear a codpiece in the prom scene. My biggest cringe wore itself across my face during the requisite English Class “what we’re reading is meaningful to the plot of the film as a whole” Scene. “We feel freer when we’re wearing a mask.” Doy.

Still—the love interest is totally hot, although his straight-boy hockey thing goes a bit too far. And the great jewel of this film is Barrymoore’s character: a very believable copy editor who plays her life by the letter keys, enjoys coating her loveless bed with needlepoint pillows, and traipses around the house in an argyle sweater dress. Brother Rob (that dude who dates Courtney Cox) enjoys the film’s brightest moments: either when he’s stomaching cole slaw (he plays her brother and requite Cool Kid Who Turns Out To Be Nice) or making out with gymnasts (she’s blonde).

Perhaps the trials and successes of this film are best summed up in a brief spurt of dialogue at Rob’s work:

Rob: Are those pants, or a skirt?
Josie: I got it on sale.

YES. The film flits between pants (feminist liberation, a good hard-hitting newspaper movie) and a skirt (stereotypical teen drivel). And YES, I got it on sale—I only watched it because my friends wanted to. But they made cookies, too.

bonfire of the vanities

I like Bruce Willis when he's about to retch and he's wearing a white tux and he's hoisting a bottle of scotch above his head, or, in another moment, when he traps a young princess in a service elevator and faceplants her with a fistful of baked salmon. "That's salmon," she says. "That's for eating!" All of this comes to you in one cut, a la The Player in the Tom Wolfe adaptation Bonfire of the Vanities. The film swings in much the same arc as the fish in Willis' fist: it is luxury, raped by extravagance; it is nature, overtaken by greed; it is pink, squirming wealth—and it is deliciously awful.

Willis plays the Wolfe stand-in: a partying reporter who's feted by society when his nonfiction book gleans scores of meaningless prizes. The subject of this tour de force is Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks), a wealthy sheep in a herd of wealthy men, who lives his life by the rules until an affair with the "awfully delicious" Maria (Melanie Griffiths) leads him to commit a hit and run in the south bronx. Slander by the press, a racial boil up, and a lying mistress lead McCoy to trial by jury. There to see the whole thing through is Willis, whose plotline of a measly reporter hunting for scraps arcs him to an accomplished genius, toasted by Kempners. Weaving this thread through Hanks' lovable rich boy McCoy is not an easy task: the film falls into grueling narration that socks the wind out of 80s driving instruction videotapes with lines like "McCoy didn't know what was coming to him." Please.

Still, I enjoyed the film as a "New Yorker" recognizing sites as much as I enjoyed the film as a "reporter" scrounging around for scraps. It's the kind of thing like Arthur that makes you long for a private jet, even though the whole "message/moral" thing is that you're not supposed to care.

eat drink man woman

Perhaps the quickest way to describe Eat Drink Man Woman is to point out that the sixth discussion thread on IMDB concerns the laserdisc version of the film. Yes, this came out in 1994. Yes, it was the type of film our parents thought was a charming comedy, yes it was the My Big Fat Greek Wedding of the ‘90s. Ugh.

Basically, I thought The Wedding Banquet was a really good movie. I thought, hey, Ang Lee, another movie about cooking and love or something, this could be good. It was, I mean, I laughed, etc. But I’m a pretentious fuckwad: why should others be happy when I celebrate my own self loathing? This move-eeeee is stereotypical drivel which is as heartwarming as it is predictable. I can’t even talk about this anymore, it’s upsetting me. All the daughters find happiness only when they find male companions, all the little kids are happy only when their grandparents prepare them box lunches, the father is only happy if his daughters are all safe. Basically, the only people who hate this movie are communists, and they probably totally love it! I bet the Nazis love this movie! Fine, that was a completely unfair comparison. I bet the Bushes love this. I bet George Bush’s knowledge of Chinese culture is principally founded on his 1994 viewing of a laserdisc of Eat Drink Man Woman.

happy together

What I love about New Wave surfaces in Wong Kar-Wai, a Chinese director whose dialogue approaches documentary realism, whose camera panders to the aesthetic of Cartier-Bresson compositions, who stops at nothing to show a muddy moment to be utterly beautiful. It’s all about mood: when the characters whisper, the scene mutes. When a cigarette is lit, the film is dodged to gain its own illumination. In this breathy world, two male Chinese lovers voyage to Argentina to be “happy together” (like that American pop song) but instead, together they are distant. They come close only when things are not fair: when they spar or when they love. Still, their silence is lush and monumental, their voiceovers acquire the weight of newsreel announcers. (This is not the obnoxious silence of Garden State, where disillusionment is shown only as what is quiet.)

The feeling here recalls the moment in Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou, where the lovers drive their car into the ocean, and end up somehow (I don’t remember) on an island, following our culture’s romantic dream of being happy only on love, needing nothing else but to be apart from the crowd. Yet, as the heroine whines to Pierrot after a few lonesome sunsets, “I’m sick of playing Jules Verne. Can we go back to our gangster movie now?” Yes. We will go back to the cities. To the Hong Kongs from whence we came. Yes, the song is a lie. Yes, together we cannot be.