I love Johnny Cash. Name me a musician who doesn't. If they exist, I've never met 'em, and I've met a lot of musicians, both in playing and in running a guitar shop during my formative years. When Rick Rubin put out the call for songs because he was producing a new Johnny Cash album, even Glen Danzig sent one in. Every musician knows a Johnny Cash song, and not just the ringers like "Walk the Line" or "Ring of Fire". Usually they whip some strange, creaky number from one of his early singles, or a number from the American recordings sessions that you've forgotten about until they start singing. Johnny Cash songs, unlike so many artists, belong to you the moment you hear them. You can take them and sing them and they are yours.
And then there's the Carter family, who--as every reviewer in the world has pointed out--are country music royalty. What is lost in that descriptor is how much they deserved the crown. In country music circles, it's a test of a guitar player's ability if they can nail the tricky syncopation of "You Are My Flower", which sounds so deceptively simple. I've never gotten it right, despite years of trying, and I know plenty of other people who attempt it again and again in a sealed room so that they can debut it as a stripe on their uniform. But besides that, there is the legend of this family keeping the Southern poor entertained during the depression. When life was despicable, the Carter family brought to you the thought that things won't always be so bad. Either you're gonna fall in love, or you're gonna die and go to your heavenly host and get your eternal reward for your struggles. If you're barely surviving the day through your toils, neither sounded too bad. Johnny Cash wasn't the only one in love with the Carters as a kid--he was just one of the most famous.
I avoided this movie for quite awhile because, quite simply, I don't necessarily want to color my own associations of the Carter-Cash dynasty. But, since it showed up at the best theater in Seattle, we went to go check it out. Also, despite it's good reviews elsewhere, it was handily lambasted and mocked by my own friends who obviously thought lowly of it.
To put it bluntly, my expectations were low. I was expecting a cookie-cutter paint-by-the-numbers biopic, along the lines of the Buddy Holly Story. Sure, the story might be fine, but the portrayal is less than filmic. It would be like a made-for-tv movie with an overly simplified plot, and a pedantic re-telling of the story that Sarah Vowell has kept fresh in the ears of National Public Hipsters.
I knew that despite some mediocre performances--the kind of illusory over-acting tear-jerkers that tend to get the actor nod--the movie would just barrel along, telling the story in the text of the movie, as opposed to the subtext or the relationships or in the cut.
That's everything I knew going in. Going out, I knew a whole lot more, and it was all different than my preconceptions. The movie is remarkably well made--told in the medium. This is no made-for-tv movie. The shots were carefully considered, the story was told in the cut and in long consideration of the actors. It has an immediate feeling, taking its lesson from documentaries, that didn't idealize the times they lived in, but represented them honestly--take the scene in the drug store, for example. That's no Hollywood glam set they were on.
There are looping metaphors throughout the film, subtly played, that ring in perfect parallel with the idea of the song cycle--the idea of a melody coming back on itself again, which was the Carter families greatest talent in their music.
But its greatest device--one that I found effective--was how the camera started smooth and controlled, and the more fucked up that Johnny became, the more hand-held and out-of-focus the shots became. The scene of him trashing his backstage room shows us a camera that compellingly pushes in on him during moments of rest, and then pulling back suddenly when he electrifies, as if the camera man himself were scared of getting hurt. It's immediate feeling. The image blurs and focuses, putting us in that room reacting to his violence.
The movie gives great nods to history, without beating you over the head with it. One line about Bob Dylan to give context, and the next concert is in a huge hall where the audience is remarkably subdued. The filmmakers are giving a wink to those who know that the shift in venue had to do with the folk revival that happened because of (or in parallel to, anyway) Dylan. Suddenly performers who were limited to a section of the American South were playing on college campuses and big cities throughout the States.
The acting was dead on, and believable, although, of course, our actor's are a whole hell of a lot prettier than the real people they portray. Still, the voices were close enough for me to forget that it wasn't the real McCoy, and the portrayals were nuanced and true.
And, despite knowing how things might turn out, I found myself tearing up a few times during the movie. I may be judged harshly by my friends for saying so, but I'll use Johnny as my example and stand alone. That's what I learn when I ask myself WWJ(C)D?
I've announced it here, but for those of you who read this movies blog, and not my other occasionally populated blog, I would like to announce the debut of Spitball! the first screenplay being written by blog. S! for Screenplays, S! for Scripts. S! for Spitball!
I don't buy the allegory. I mean, we have a resurrected hero, but is he really a Christ figure? It seems more that Aslan took advantage of a loophole in the ancient magic, and just outsmarted the White Witch. There was no communing with a higher power, no sweep of the world's sins, just a self sacrifice and resurrection. Is that all you need for allegory anymore?
Which also leads to the question of the four rulers of Narnia--if humans are so scarce there, how will they produce heirs? Will they be crossing-breeding with the more humanistic creatures? Really, how does that work with the allegory?
But, these questions are questions about the book, so superfluous to the film itself. The film was fun to watch, plenty of great visual trickery and well handled computer graphics. The battle scenes obviously took heavy influence from Peter Jackson (and seemingly stole some shots from him as well), but that's appropriate since C.S. Lewis took heavy influence from Tolkien.
Tilda Swinton is perfectly cold and evil. She's on my list of actresses that I will watch any film that they are in. Icily regal and uncaring, and downright wicked when she having her way with the lion.
Now, the question: should I re-read the books that I haven't since I was a child, or should I just wait for the movies to come out?
A movie about choosing your own identity, and then being tested on just how stubborn you are about it. Our hero, the cross-dressing, ambiguously gendered Kitten is certainly tougher about it than I might be. If being threatened to be shot by the I.R.A., beaten by cops for a week in a holding cell, firebombed at least twice and generally threatened for just being different without changing can be called tough. I'm sure some people would never allow that word to be used unless you were more muscled and manly.
Cillian Murphy is fantastic, and reads more like a woman in some scenes than the star of the Crying Game. Ironic, since he is very much unambiguously male in most of his roles. But it was important at some times in this film for you to momentarily forget his past and think that he is a she, and then correct yourself. While mostly hovering on the edge of ambiguity, there were moments when he would slide into gender certainty--whether male or female. Those moments of the film are best, when you give up your suspension of disbelief to identify with a character who is, in all likelihood, not like most of us.
Kitten floats through his landscape like a fairy-tale--the connecting tissue of the story, as well as some of the grittier truths of his life, were left out so that we see a surface reality that certainly feels like we are hovering somewhere in his own disbelief and fantasy. This ads a certain distance to the drama that, for me at least, works just fine. I'd imagine the audiences imagination is strong enough without having to witness what happens in the cars after they pick up our erstwhile hero. Jordan has been grittier in other of his films, but it's somewhat of a statement that none of the violence directed at his hero is sexual.
This was not a film about glam rock, but in some ways it captured the excited dystopian fantasy of it better than the more serious, and more ernest Velvet Goldmine, especially as we travel with a group of fantasy-dressing minor rock-stars who can't hack it when confronted when a true gender-bender comes into their midst. Despite their long hair and less-than-masculine costumes, at the end, they were still just the blokes in the band.
And mostly in the end, it's a movie about identity and acceptance, slightly couched in a movie about moving away from home and learning hard lessons of life. Ironic that the lessons that Kitten learns followed him explosively from his homeland. Some might go away to college and come back politicized, and some might move to the city and come home broken from the hard life on the streets. Of course, with Kitten here it's a little different. He went away a boy in ladies clothes, and came home a woman.
I always hated those after school specials with the inevitable bad thing that happens to the kids. I would shirk away from them, like in horror movies when that person in theater involuntarily cries out to tell the teenager not to to walking in the swamp on a moonlit night.
So, a similar feeling pursued me through this film, in the pit of my stomach--a grinding, nauseous unease, which played into sympathy for Maria and her plight. But, if I were a prosecutor I'd say "I'm sorry--her story may be sad, but she still chose to smuggle the drugs. She still chose her path."
So she did, but not as a job, but as a gamble. The idea that this long shot might pay off and elevate her to a different life. A life of living in America and working jobs just as menial as those in Columbia, but at a much higher wage. Welcome to America, Maria. You'll be safe so long as the politicians that hire you don't suddenly feel a need to show they're tough on immigration.
IMDB (1933)
IMDB (1976)
IMDB (2005)
t'wasn't beauty that killed the beast...
It was SFX. If there is one moral to be taken from back-to-back watchings of these three Kongs, it's that a man in a monkey suit (I'm talking to YOU 1976) is never as good as stop motion and computerized animals. Kong76 was just weak. He felt like a man in a monkey suit, looked like a man in a monkey suit, and walked like a man in a monkey suit shot in slow motion. Even at his most pathetic, in the hold of the cargo ship being brought home, he was monkey-suitish. If a man in a monkey suit falls off a tree in the forest, will anybody cry? Not this time, buddy. Even juxtaposed on the tragic towers, Kong76 was more hackneyed than hankied. Die, Kong76! Die!
Kong33 moved like a dream Kong. He was monkey like, curious, and pounded like an angry 5 year old boy in a room full of miniature toys. Brilliant animation, and FX that looked better than the seventies version. He didn't try to seduce his blonde, he just grabbed her and ran. Although, his eardrums must have pierced with the pitch of her peril, he was manly--er, apely, throughout. Great moments: flexing the jaw of the Tyran. Rex after killing him. Breaking out of the chains on stage, because of those wicked, wicked flash bulbs; Climbing the Empire State, and the finale, a truly emotional powerhouse of a confused and angry and sad ape brought down by the planes. Tears were choked back. Kong33 mesmerizes.
Kong05 is a new kind of Kong. He's shiny! Looks good in close up! Has the stamina to go on for hours and hours! He also is capable of being coy and communicative, something he has over his brethren. He actually forms a relationship with the blonde, who will do anything for him. And I mean, climbing to the top of a radio tower in designer heels to stop the damn planes. This Kong--boy, did I mention he goes on forever. And ever. Man, is he done fighting all of those things yet? This island is fucking vicious! How does anything survive for more than a day or so? How many creatures fall into that valley so that those insects can eat them? Do the insects have total turf wars and eat each other? Sorry--didn't mean to digress. So, they're on top of the Empire State (Tris McCall sings: "Just know that this tangle of tickertape is the price for our Empire State"), and the blonde is weeping. Did I? Well, I confess, no. But it wasn't for lack of emotion, but for the splitting headache our late dinner and movie did to me. I think I need to see this one again. (Movie was screened, incidentally, at the best theater in Seattle. Some people ignorantly think this is the best theater in Seattle. They are wrong. This is the best theater in Seattle).
But, before that, let's talk about blondes: Fay Wray set the stage for all the others, after all. She was coy and sweet, a bit tough and tender, but never really related to her Kong. She was a bit more of a stereotypical screamer. She was meant for one man, and that man was the man on the boat, not the beast on the dry land. In her, we saw both the bitterness of her captor dying, and the sweetness of being free of him forever. Talk about Stockholm Syndrome, 40 years before the term was coined.
To Ms. Introducing Jessica Lange: I hope you gave a big fat endowment to Ms. Magazine after making this stinker, where you not only played the embodiment of every stereotypical seventies men's fantasy, but you actually appeared to enjoy it. The lithe airhead who actually, literally tries to find out what sign Kong was. Okay, so maybe it's not your fault--maybe you're at the hand of directors whose idea of the ideal woman was a giggling moronic beauty, but maybe that was the very poorly done subtext, eh? That you finally met a man who really treated you like a Barbie Doll, and you kind of fall for him? No, wait--that makes no sense. And what the hell was Charles Grodin doing as an oil man?
And finally, we have Naomi Watts. We've known you could act since Mullholland Dr. We've known you could you were willing to mock yourself with I Heart Huckabees. Now we know you can do action too. The only Ann Darrow who felt like a real person. She had a talent, besides beauty, and a drive, besides swooning. She formed a real, believable relationship with the great ape. Of course, her digital double defies physics, but Watts herself was just great.
Okay, and then we have to address the whole racism of the movie in general. Is Kong supposed to be emblematic of the untamed black man, and the idea is that we have to protect our wimmin from him? I dunno. I think the more curious question is why these Pacific Islanders all look like Africans, although Jackson's natives look more like a satanic Maori tribe. It seems to be a racist conceit--the whole goddamned thing. Is it?
I'm not smart enough to know for sure. I would say--maybe, and then also say--maybe not. That is, maybe the movie is racist, and maybe the movie is pointing out fear of the unknown, which is the basis of racism--which is fear dressed as power.
And power is what brought Kong down. Bullets in the chest as he tried to protect the blonde. An animal suffering, at the end. Not a black man, or a metaphor--what makes us cry (or almost cry) is the animal misunderstood and attacked. God help us, we've just killed the beast.
After being called out, I have been catching up on all the reviews I haven't quite written yet. Most will be short. Many of the new posts are movies I watched when they first came out, and therefore didn't review for months.
The best of the Batman films by far. Tense, action packed. Great design, great action. I'll write more if and when I see it again. For now, just a thumbs up.
A carefully controlled look at Klaus Kinski, with director Werner Herzog in the starring role of redemption. Look, he claims, I'm not as crazy as the man said. The implicit tone is that Herzog is answering his critics for the record--his critics being both Kinksi himself, and the press and rumor mill that publish stories about the two of them.
Especially telling, to me, was Herzog's nihilist-on-depressants rant about the jungle during the filming of the great Fitzcarraldo. I think this man was every bit as disturbed as his star, but one was only really genius behind the camera. The other, in front of it.
This is a political film, dressed up as a love poem. It's a statement and defense, in the context of so much history to break through.
What's the truth here? Only the people who were there will ever know. But watch Fitzcarraldo, or Aguirre, Wrath of God, and you can forgive the men anything. You can forgive them for tearing themselves apart with madness.
John Waters makes moral films. How long before our country recognizes this great American, and gives him his due?
He has more to say about your hangups than your psychologist ever did. Especially great in this are the three bears. Every bigots worse fear of the gays, and yet, surprisingly sweet and furry at the same time. Or Selma Blair's ridiculously enormous breasts. Here's a question: if a woman exposes her breasts, but they're synthetic, does it count against the movies rating?
Of course, it uncovers the great truth that the only people who see sex everywhere are the ones who are scared of it. Like on trees. And plants.
This is high parody, shot low. Let's go sexing!
So, this guy walks into a film school. The screenwriting instructor says "I have three rules for you if you want to make good movies:
1. Something interesting has to happen to the characters.
2. Never use text on screen or tell the story in exposition. It's cheating.
3. Give people characters they can relate to and will genuinely like.
And the guy says "Fuck you! Your rules are for the dogs." And then he makes a movie that ignores all three rules and, despite some promise, it kinda sucks.
That's this movie.
PS--Maggie rocks. Lisa's pretty damn good. It's the overly clever structure that killed it.
Often trailers are misleading about movies, but the trailer to this movie is specifically misleading in three ways:
1. Bob Hoskins, when caught stripping at the bequest of his new hires, is not caught in his undershorts. We have full-frontal nudity.
2. The naked girls aren't dancing naked girls.
3. She doesn't inherit the theater, she goes and buys it.
We saw this in a grand old theater in Canada, during a rainy Saturday matinee. The room was illuminated for all the blue hair glowing. And the jokes about Americans were especially well laughed at. That's okay. I'm an American that laughs at Americans all the time.
A fun romp with some naked girls, posed and as still as a painting, which was the point. Funny to see Christopher Guest playing such an upper-cruster, considering the other British accent he perfected in Nigel.
The one very dramatic incident wasn't handled well, in my opinion. It was either true, in which case I would have played it differently, or it was a writer's conceit, in which case it was emotionally manipulative.
But that small blemish doesn't stop from enjoying the fine acting throughout. I may not be the demographic it was going for (measuring by my audience, it was going for a demo that actually lived through the war), but I had a good time nonetheless.
The problem with expanding my movies blog to write reviews and reflections is that when I get busy, I don't post the movies when I see them. Maybe in 2005 I'll publish the titles, and then come back and rate them later. Maybe I'll make a new category called "to rate."
In the meantime, you can see what else I'm not writing at my other blog, or my blog for work, and soon to be released, yet another one with a big theme, purpose and everything.
Hmmm, maybe I'm just writing too much...