Such Hawks, Such Hounds, The 9 Minute Trailer

The Dark Knight of My Dreams

Four reasons why THE DARK KNIGHT is a new kind of chick flick: 

Christian Bale

Heath Ledger

Aaron Eckhart

Cillian Murphy

Bonus Points for Maggie Gyllenhaal

Sucks Hawks, Such Hounds. Such Horrible Production Value.

Before my crazy, accidental viewing of SUCH HAWKS, SUCH HOUNDS I had no idea that anything called Doom Rock, Desert Rock, and Stoner Rock existed.  The music sounds like, actually doom, desert and stoner, melted down, with a lot of heavy bass, monk robes and cascading hair for flavor.  This doc is not and should not be the definitive feature on the underground heavy rock scene.  It is completely (but kind of lovingly) amateur, and rife with way too long music sequences, cheesy graphics and lighting best described as Cheez Whizian.  

The thing that comes across so clearly, and judging by the beer belching enthusiasm from the audience, satisfyingly, is the passion of the depicted musicians for their music and their independence.  In a world where nearly every genre and sub genre of music has mainstreamed, the desert rock scene remains wonderfully underground.  The majority of the big names testified to the less than star like status of their day jobs.  Housepainter, flower delivery man, prep-cook, these are the occupations of an artist keepin it real.  

I would be interested to see a more focused film, possibly on one of the more engaging bands such as Pentagram.  An analysis of vocalist Bobby Liebling’s hair alone could sustain a ninety minute film.  Also worth further dissection is Sleep, creator of the seminole, 52 (post-editing!) minute track ‘Dopesmoker.’ This is the song that begat the terms Weedian and Hashishian and I could not be more grateful for their efforts.  It is Awesome.

Esse Filme Nao Tem Uma Imagem De Bunda

An event for this summer’s eve:

A documentary short on the influential Brazilian band Os Mutantes is playing at the Silent Movie Theater at 8pm tonight in the city of angels. Ricodinho has provided a brief history and quick crit of the band in his native tongue as well as a translation for us gringos. Snaps for Ricodinho!

Quando todos no Brasil estavam apaixonados pela bossa nova, e queriam ver e ouvir o trio banquinho, voz e violão, Os Mutantes vieram com suas fantasias, guitarras elétricas e sons pra lá de esquisitos. Enquanto a ditadura reprimia, censurava e prendia, Os Mutantes faziam seu rock e tomavam seus ácidos. O carisma de Rita Lee, a habilidade de Sérgio Dias na guitarra e as letras inspiradas de Arnaldo Batista foram aos poucos conquistando o público jovem, o adulto, o Brasil e o mundo. Até hoje, quase 30 anos depois da fim da banda, devido a separação amorosa de Arnaldo e Sérgio, Os Mutantes continuam conquistando fãs pelo mundo. Entre seus fãs mais famosos estão Beck, que nomeou seu álbum Mutations em homenagem aos Mutantes, e Kurt Cobain, que pediu para os Mutantes se reunirem e abrirem os shows do Nirvana no Brasil nos anos 80. Infelizmente, isso não aconteceu.

O filme do Jeff McCarthy é sério e correto sobre os fatos e envolvente dentro do idéia de que os mutantes viviam em um mundo a parte, animado, infantil e psicodélico. Enquanto o pau quebrava, e os militares batiam, os Mutantes tocavam e encantavam.

When everyone in Brazil was in love with the Bossa Nova, and wanted to see and listen to a trio of voices and acoustic guitars, the Os Mutantes showed up with their weird cotumes, eletric guitars and strange sounds. While dictatorship repressed, censored and arrested cultural liberties, Os Mutantes would play rock’n roll and take LSD. Rita Lee’s charisma, Sergio Dias’ skills playing the guitar, and Arnaldo Batista’s inspiring lyrics slowly conquered the youth, adults, Brazil and the world. Among their most famous fans are Beck, who named one of his albums “Mutations” after the Brazilian band, and Kurt Cobain, who asked the Mutantes to reunite and open Nirvana’s shows during a South America tour in the mid 80’s. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

Jeff McCarthy’s film is serious, factual and very evolved in the story telling. The Mutantes lived in a separate world, animated, childish and psychedelic. While the generals tortured, the Mutantes played and charmed.

Hateful

Hateful being that a dude might direct the first Louise Brooks biopic. From louisebrooks.livejournal.com.

A Louise Brooks movie?

According to various news reports . . .

SHIRLEY MacLAINE has developed a script for a movie about the life of screen icon LOUISE BROOKS – and she wants to play the dancer in her latter years. The actress reveals filmmaker Martin Scorsese is interested in directing the movie.

She tells WENN, “I’ve written a script with Kathleen Tynan and it was a pretty good script. Martin Scorsese is interested in doing it. He took an option on the script, so that might happen.

“I’d love to be part of the film – I’d love to play Brooks in her later years, when she was living an isolated, hermit-like existence in upstate New York.”

I know the dude is Scorsese but geez, of all the stories in the filmosphere, this one needs to be directed by a woman. He’s overrated anyway.

A Pillow for Your Thoughts

Since this site is dedicated in part to illuminating ideas and work by, for and about women, I thought I might shed some light on a writer who was a sharp and unapologetic chronicler during an enlightened era of art, literature and culture.

Foreshadowing Candace Bushnell and a wealth of web-loggers (bloggers), Sei Shonagon (Sei) was a court lady to Empress Sadako of Japan during the Heian period which lasted from 794-1885. Sei was a prolific chronicler of everyday life. These observances constitute The Pillow Book, which conceptually inspired a film by Peter Greenaway.

Sei’s writings are composed of lists of such wonderful subjects as Hateful Things, which today might be an interesting companion to Martha Stewart’s “good things,” bleh. I kid. I love Martha. In this section she writes of lovers and morning afters, bad manners and ill-fitting attire. This passage is endlessly quotable so I’ve selected a few that inspired in myself a particularly slow, ongoing head-nod of recognition, ‘you said it grrrrl.’

An admirer has come on a clandestine visit, but a dog catches sight of him and starts barking. One feels like killing the beast.

A certain gentleman whom one does not want to see visits one at home or in the Palace, and one pretends to be asleep. But a maid comes to tell one and shakes one awake, with a look on her face that says, “What a sleepyhead!” Very hateful.

One is in the middle of a story when someone butts in and tries to show that he is the only clever person in the room. Such a person is hateful, and so, indeed, is anyone, child or adult, who tries to push himself forward.

The sound of dogs when they bark for a long time in chorus is ominous and hateful.

And finally, my favorite,

Sometimes one greatly dislikes a person for no particular reason-and then that person goes and does something hateful.

“The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.”

-Louise Brooks

Welcome to the Machine

In the case of film people v. hd people, I fall firmly on the filmic side of the divide. The richness, the texture of image produced by a crappy super 16 camera is unmatched by this slick futuristic technology!

Watch and compare the trailers for THE EXILES and THE MIDNIGHT KISS. Both are low budget, black and white. They are separated by about forty years but each is set in Los Angeles. The trailers show similar shots from atop Mulholland Drive and downtown. I challenge anyone to a thumb war who claims THE MIDNIGHT KISS looks and feels better.

Perhaps the advent of digital technology is democratizing, but is that really a good thing? Film advances cinematic Darwinism. It is too expensive and fragile and temperamental for everyone to use. I hear progress is being made, new lenses et all that allow a filmmaker to mimic the look of film on HD. Here’s hoping that the soulfulness film can capture may be rendered unto HI DEF.

Full of Secrets

What is it about black bobs and bangs that the hairstyle reappears continually in films, crowning the think tanks of spirited characters? I submit for evidence the following images:

The original and our favorite, Louise Brooks. Still inspiring citizen gals to chop it off.

Chantal Goya. Ye-Ye chanteuse and star of Masculin, Feminin. she. is. so. cute.

Audrey Hepburn in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Curly-cue bob. Perfect for luncheon with Gary Cooper.

The Grease 2 cheerleader twins. Annoying? Yes, but those kicky bowl cuts scream 'don't mess.'

The Mrs. Mia Wallace. Knows how to twist.

Horror Heroine DEUX

In the lexicon of horror films that dot the storied galaxy of this film industry, the presence of positive female imagery is almost nil. In one way or another, either as victim or perpetrator, the inarguable traits that characterize females and femininity are used to incite fear, revulsion and carnal bloodshed in audiences. The audiences for horror films (and any unqualifiedly chick flick) have always been assumed by marketing managers to consist of males, age 18-34. These are films made by men, for men, at women’s expense; THEY WERE (are) EXPENDABLE.

FAT GIRL, French title A Mon Soeur, by director Catherine Breillat is as close an approximation of a feminist horror film to be conceived to date. It pointedly refutes the feminist film theory put forth by Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” that determined a Lacan/Freudian interpretation domination of film criticism since its publication in 1975. The persistent reliance on this particular psychology might be viewed as flawed in itself since feminist film theory has been evolving for nearly forty years. Is it still necessary or even feminist to interpret every film in this way? A system that is reliant on a male theory that assumes films inherently possess a male gaze? As women, a minority majority, is this viewpoint ingrained or has it been indoctrinated? Regardless of its relevancy it is necessary to use this theory to posit FAT GIRL as a feminist horror film because it is the widely regarded standard bearer of feminist criticism.

FAT GIRL would not typically be categorized into the horror genre. Superficially it might be considered a coming of age drama yet, typical of Breillat, it revels in raw depictions of female sexual declaration and perversion. Twelve year old Anais lolls her portly visage about the gray seascapes at her family’s beach house while observing the gradual corruption of her lustful yet innocent older sister Elena. Anais’s physicality is instrumental to the film’s classification as a feminist horror film. She is for most of the film, wholly asexualized. Too young to be respectably objectified, too overweight to be idealized, too naive with which to be identifiable, the male gaze has no outlet on which to project itself. Elena serves as the representative of a traditional horror film victim: classically beautiful, promiscuous, and egotistical. Men want to be her and do her but because she is female, this simultaneous identification/objectification is also threatening. She thus must be destroyed.

This resolution manifests with the introduction of the character Fernando, a law student who’s additional purpose seems to be to exacerbate the mutual contempt residing beneath the surface of sisters’ relationship. Fernando sees the girls for nothing but their sexuality, Elena, and lack thereof, Anais. Anais bears witness to the her sister’s deflowering and all it’s twisted logic and anatomical tug-of-war power-plays.

photo courtesy of The Schlindz

She is now the voyeur. She has overtaken, or taken back?, the gaze from the presumptive male. We the audience must see from this moment on the events of the film through her eyes. Because she is disgusted and rendered sagacious by this scene of corruption, we may now admire and thus identify with her as a powerful character/heroine.

The stage is set, rockets boosted, for a third installment of this venture into FAT GIRL’s subversive charms. For now, let’s all go see THE LAST MISTRESS, the most recent film by Catherine Breillat, in theaters now.