twenty-three films. not as many as last year, but not a single festival day skipped, thanks in large part to a commitment to looking good in pants. and so, in wrap up and summary, the best of the 34th portland international film festival.
critic's favorites
1. "heartbeats" (day 4)
2. "silent souls" (day 2)
3. "the white meadows" (day 3)
4. "the arbor" (day 10)
5. "the housemaid" (day 9)
popularity by country of origin
1. spain (three films: "flamenco, flamenco," "black bread," "the last circus")
2. canada (two films: "heartbeats," "the whistleblower")
3. russia (two films: "silent souls," "how i ended this summer")
4. united states (two films: "cameraman," "cold weather")
5. france (two films: "potiche," "certified copy")
post popularity by pageviews (not scaled for time at site)
1. day 9 ("the whistleblower" and "the housemaid")
2. day 4 ("behind blue skies" and "heartbeats")
3. day 1 ("potiche")
4. day 8 ("last report on anna")
5. day 12 ("all that i love")
popularity of films (reviewed here) by search topic
1. "the whistleblower" (day 9)
2. "heartbeats" (day 4)
3. "come undone" (day 7)
4. "steam of life" (day 6)
5. "potiche" (day 1)
you'll have to read somewhere else on the films that got nods for the festival's audience awards. of the fifteen narrative and documentary features included, only two of the twenty-three discussed here made the not so illustrious cut. i didn't stick around to hear the awards announced at the closing party. that blog photographer was there again.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 17
"the last circus," spain, dir. alex de la iglesia
spain must be doing some soul searching lately. like "black bread" (day 15), the story of a poor rural village in catalonia struggling to deal with the disinterring of its ugly past in the years following the spanish civil war, "the last circus" is a not too flattering scrutiny of iberian ideological identities and what it meant to be spanish in the middle twentieth century. the film opens in 1937 with the forced conscription of a circus troupe into the republican army. after his capture, the troupe's happy clown bequeaths his son, javier, with the responsibility of the troupe's revenge on the facists. javier will only ever be a sad clown, and it's in that role that he -- transition to 1973 -- joins the troupe of the happy clown sergio, a sadistic alcoholic whose ability to make children laugh while in costume is the lifeblood of his circus. sergio's acrobat girlfriend natalia is at turns drunkenly infatuated on his sexual prowess and physical dynamism and terrified at knowing that the sexual passion will give way to total subjugation and beatings. she's immediately drawn to javier's mild manner and quiet pride. but, when the happy and sad clowns come to physical conflict over the lady's affections, "the last circus" turns quickly from a dramatic metaphor into a slasher farce of ideological zealousness. both of them now disfigured, the clowns terrorize madrid, alienating natalia who has come to fear them both. still, "the last circus" is infused with wild color and humor (it's about a circus in the 1970s, after all), which temper the somberness of its themes -- the audience should laugh at the same time as it takes everything very seriously, another extension of the metaphor of the happy and sad clowns. i was enthralled from the opening credits, which feature a fast photo roll of spanish history from the civil war to the present set to a military march and a flamenco tango, a brilliant satire of francoist national identity construction. franco gets his hand bit by the sad clown at one point during the movie. that was pretty funny.
"even the rain," spain, dir. icíar bollaín
i probably should have gone to this one to see what spain's been about outside of reflections on the civil war, but, to be honest, i wasn't interested enough to drag myself to one final film. no sweat, though, it was spain's submission for best foreign language film oscar, and it's got gael garcía bernal. i'll have another chance. but i probably won't feel like paying.
spain must be doing some soul searching lately. like "black bread" (day 15), the story of a poor rural village in catalonia struggling to deal with the disinterring of its ugly past in the years following the spanish civil war, "the last circus" is a not too flattering scrutiny of iberian ideological identities and what it meant to be spanish in the middle twentieth century. the film opens in 1937 with the forced conscription of a circus troupe into the republican army. after his capture, the troupe's happy clown bequeaths his son, javier, with the responsibility of the troupe's revenge on the facists. javier will only ever be a sad clown, and it's in that role that he -- transition to 1973 -- joins the troupe of the happy clown sergio, a sadistic alcoholic whose ability to make children laugh while in costume is the lifeblood of his circus. sergio's acrobat girlfriend natalia is at turns drunkenly infatuated on his sexual prowess and physical dynamism and terrified at knowing that the sexual passion will give way to total subjugation and beatings. she's immediately drawn to javier's mild manner and quiet pride. but, when the happy and sad clowns come to physical conflict over the lady's affections, "the last circus" turns quickly from a dramatic metaphor into a slasher farce of ideological zealousness. both of them now disfigured, the clowns terrorize madrid, alienating natalia who has come to fear them both. still, "the last circus" is infused with wild color and humor (it's about a circus in the 1970s, after all), which temper the somberness of its themes -- the audience should laugh at the same time as it takes everything very seriously, another extension of the metaphor of the happy and sad clowns. i was enthralled from the opening credits, which feature a fast photo roll of spanish history from the civil war to the present set to a military march and a flamenco tango, a brilliant satire of francoist national identity construction. franco gets his hand bit by the sad clown at one point during the movie. that was pretty funny.
"even the rain," spain, dir. icíar bollaín
i probably should have gone to this one to see what spain's been about outside of reflections on the civil war, but, to be honest, i wasn't interested enough to drag myself to one final film. no sweat, though, it was spain's submission for best foreign language film oscar, and it's got gael garcía bernal. i'll have another chance. but i probably won't feel like paying.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 16
"cold weather," united states, dir. aaron katz
katz is from portland, but he doesn't live here anymore. he did, however, set and shoot "cold weather" here, so i wasn't expecting much of the film beyond a slightly differently styled fedora tip to the everyone's favorite megalopolitan phenom. i'm not sure whence the title, although the director of the film center used it to make a superlatively lame joke about people being so excited to see "cold weather" that they braved the twenty degree weather to come to the screening, which took place at cinema 21, the architectural embodiment of indie movie culture in portland. maybe, though, katz called his film what he did because his main character, a man named doug who has recently moved back to portland from chicago to live with his sister, has almost all of a degree in forensic science but can only get a job working the night shift at an ice factory on swan island (just like the job i had in the freezer room of the fresh cut flower factory! -- until i got hit by a car two days after starting). and that's a shot (two shots!) of the hill at fremont and mississippi just two blocks from my apartment! and dougie even has my same nokia dinosaur phone!!! i'll admit that for the first half of the film i appreciated nothing more than being able to add to the list of places i recognized -- which i suspect is a sentiment i shared with most of the other people in the audience. but i'll also admit that for all my cynicism i couldn't discount katz's solid and clever writing, especially after "cold weather" transitioned from rose city slice of life to detective fantasies of the underemployed. (doug's ex-girlfriend is in town and the gang gets involved in the mystery of her disappearance.) unfortunately, doug's performance by cris lankenau was just a little too on purpose, and distracting as a result. "cold weather" has been critically received elsewhere as the next step in the mumblecore movement, but lankenau seemed to be the only actor with that genre actively in mind as he made his character. (i doubt that katz ever directed any of his actors not to move their hands from their sides.) even so, and ultimately, i couldn't help but love the shots of the bridges and the river and the rooftop shots of crisscrossing power lines backgrounded by the rainbow gradation of the evening sky over forest park. things like that are, in the end, why we're here, right? or why i am. katz doesn't live here anymore.
"chicogrande," mexico, dir. felipe cazals
after pancho villa invades columbus, new mexico in 1916, woodrow wilson sends 5,000 united states troops to mexico to find the revolutionary general. chicogrande is a villista soldier helping his injured general to safe hiding in the mountains. he needs a doctor, which takes him dangerously close to the camp of an american military detachment looking for villa. under pressure from the mexican military to leave mexico as quickly as possible, the americans have resorted to the humiliation and torture of the local population in their attempts to exact villa's whereabouts. the only american soldier who exhibits any remorse over his army's tactics is the military doctor responsible for keeping the tortured alive. his is also the most overblown of a cast of stilted performances. aside from their initial lines of dialogue at a new meeting, the americans always speak in english, and the mexicans in spanish, a device that successfully conveys the essentials of the racism and classism that fuel the conflict of the movie. (characters obviously gather each other's meanings even as they're speaking in different languages.) but, whether by intentional stylization or poor direction, the dialogue -- already rough and unnatural -- was delivered robotically and made it difficult to associate real emotion with the physical disgust inspired by the many scenes of atrocity in "chicogrande." what's more, the last third of the plot was confusingly disjointed, with the action sidling down too many dead end alleys before resolving completely illogically and outside any of the possibilities established by the narrative before the final two minutes. why didn't the dwarf prostitutes just kill the guy? seriously.
katz is from portland, but he doesn't live here anymore. he did, however, set and shoot "cold weather" here, so i wasn't expecting much of the film beyond a slightly differently styled fedora tip to the everyone's favorite megalopolitan phenom. i'm not sure whence the title, although the director of the film center used it to make a superlatively lame joke about people being so excited to see "cold weather" that they braved the twenty degree weather to come to the screening, which took place at cinema 21, the architectural embodiment of indie movie culture in portland. maybe, though, katz called his film what he did because his main character, a man named doug who has recently moved back to portland from chicago to live with his sister, has almost all of a degree in forensic science but can only get a job working the night shift at an ice factory on swan island (just like the job i had in the freezer room of the fresh cut flower factory! -- until i got hit by a car two days after starting). and that's a shot (two shots!) of the hill at fremont and mississippi just two blocks from my apartment! and dougie even has my same nokia dinosaur phone!!! i'll admit that for the first half of the film i appreciated nothing more than being able to add to the list of places i recognized -- which i suspect is a sentiment i shared with most of the other people in the audience. but i'll also admit that for all my cynicism i couldn't discount katz's solid and clever writing, especially after "cold weather" transitioned from rose city slice of life to detective fantasies of the underemployed. (doug's ex-girlfriend is in town and the gang gets involved in the mystery of her disappearance.) unfortunately, doug's performance by cris lankenau was just a little too on purpose, and distracting as a result. "cold weather" has been critically received elsewhere as the next step in the mumblecore movement, but lankenau seemed to be the only actor with that genre actively in mind as he made his character. (i doubt that katz ever directed any of his actors not to move their hands from their sides.) even so, and ultimately, i couldn't help but love the shots of the bridges and the river and the rooftop shots of crisscrossing power lines backgrounded by the rainbow gradation of the evening sky over forest park. things like that are, in the end, why we're here, right? or why i am. katz doesn't live here anymore.
"chicogrande," mexico, dir. felipe cazals
after pancho villa invades columbus, new mexico in 1916, woodrow wilson sends 5,000 united states troops to mexico to find the revolutionary general. chicogrande is a villista soldier helping his injured general to safe hiding in the mountains. he needs a doctor, which takes him dangerously close to the camp of an american military detachment looking for villa. under pressure from the mexican military to leave mexico as quickly as possible, the americans have resorted to the humiliation and torture of the local population in their attempts to exact villa's whereabouts. the only american soldier who exhibits any remorse over his army's tactics is the military doctor responsible for keeping the tortured alive. his is also the most overblown of a cast of stilted performances. aside from their initial lines of dialogue at a new meeting, the americans always speak in english, and the mexicans in spanish, a device that successfully conveys the essentials of the racism and classism that fuel the conflict of the movie. (characters obviously gather each other's meanings even as they're speaking in different languages.) but, whether by intentional stylization or poor direction, the dialogue -- already rough and unnatural -- was delivered robotically and made it difficult to associate real emotion with the physical disgust inspired by the many scenes of atrocity in "chicogrande." what's more, the last third of the plot was confusingly disjointed, with the action sidling down too many dead end alleys before resolving completely illogically and outside any of the possibilities established by the narrative before the final two minutes. why didn't the dwarf prostitutes just kill the guy? seriously.
Friday, February 25, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 15
"black bread," spain, dir. agustí villaronga
what could be more soul rending than a brutal, protracted civil war? being poor and on the losing side of one. at least that seems to be the overarching theme of "black bread," the story of a small farming village in catalonia that is re-divided by political allegiance and personal vendetta after a double homicide in the aftermath of the spanish civil war. school age andreu comes across the bodies of a man and his son in the woods. before the dying boy kicks it, he whispers the name of a "monster" said to live in a nearby cave. andreu's father, a republican, is suspected of the murders and jailed by the local mayor, a francoist and former suitor of andreu's mother. andreu goes to live with his grandmother, aunt and cousins. in his ardor to exonerate his father, he unearths buried secrets that shake his prepackaged view of ideals and good and evil in conflict. despite a series of quickly paced twists, "black bread," its title a metaphor for the steerage class lot of the not already privileged, is ultimately about a simple but age old truth: republican or fascist, the rich are victorious because they have the means to win. the film brilliantly expresses a supposed diametric of good and evil in the alternation of brightly lit midday scenes and nighttime scenes of imagined phantasms, even as andreu's understanding of the difference blurs to disillusionment. unfortunately, "black bread" leaves too many plot threads untied. why are we supposed to turn on andreu's club handed female cousin, cast initially as a victim of war and abuse then suddenly repurposed into a vindictive slut of a witch? why the introduction of the vaguely homosexual consumptive at the monastery? it seemed as if "black bread" was trying to excuse its characters' every lapse in ethical judgment by their destitution. the film swept the spanish film awards, and i wonder if that wasn't the result of the collective spanish will to exonerate itself from the responsibility of history. poverty is awful, for sure, but... if nothing else, "black bread" is intensely thought provoking. españa, una! españa, grande! españa, libre!
what could be more soul rending than a brutal, protracted civil war? being poor and on the losing side of one. at least that seems to be the overarching theme of "black bread," the story of a small farming village in catalonia that is re-divided by political allegiance and personal vendetta after a double homicide in the aftermath of the spanish civil war. school age andreu comes across the bodies of a man and his son in the woods. before the dying boy kicks it, he whispers the name of a "monster" said to live in a nearby cave. andreu's father, a republican, is suspected of the murders and jailed by the local mayor, a francoist and former suitor of andreu's mother. andreu goes to live with his grandmother, aunt and cousins. in his ardor to exonerate his father, he unearths buried secrets that shake his prepackaged view of ideals and good and evil in conflict. despite a series of quickly paced twists, "black bread," its title a metaphor for the steerage class lot of the not already privileged, is ultimately about a simple but age old truth: republican or fascist, the rich are victorious because they have the means to win. the film brilliantly expresses a supposed diametric of good and evil in the alternation of brightly lit midday scenes and nighttime scenes of imagined phantasms, even as andreu's understanding of the difference blurs to disillusionment. unfortunately, "black bread" leaves too many plot threads untied. why are we supposed to turn on andreu's club handed female cousin, cast initially as a victim of war and abuse then suddenly repurposed into a vindictive slut of a witch? why the introduction of the vaguely homosexual consumptive at the monastery? it seemed as if "black bread" was trying to excuse its characters' every lapse in ethical judgment by their destitution. the film swept the spanish film awards, and i wonder if that wasn't the result of the collective spanish will to exonerate itself from the responsibility of history. poverty is awful, for sure, but... if nothing else, "black bread" is intensely thought provoking. españa, una! españa, grande! españa, libre!
Thursday, February 24, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 14
"eastern plays," bulgaria, dir. kamen kalev
bulgaria is tough stuff. i passed through sofia on a train from istanbul to budapest once, and the attendant in my car warned me that i should be awake for the stop but not get off the train. so i bought a sandwich through the window. things looked rough for the people hanging around the station. "eastern plays" paints an even bleaker picture of post-soviet life in the capital of bulgaria, a country it presents as nearly bereft of opportunity and smoldering with xenophobia. teenage georgi falls in with a group of neo-fascists that attack arabs on the street at the behest of nationalist politicians. his brother christo is a struggling artist and recovering drug addict who makes his livelihood spray-lacquering furniture in a desolate factory. the estranged brothers are reunited in the street after georgi's gang attacks a family of turkish tourists and christo, stumbling drunk, comes to their unlikely rescue. after the incident, christo finds a renewed motivation for art and action in his reconnection with his brother and the time he spends with isil, the daughter of the family he protected. "eastern plays" smacks of 1990s american arthouse cool (or maybe it was just the nu-metal and the wallet chains that had me in that space of mind), but bulgaria was dealing with too many of its own problems in the nineties to worry about keeping up with the vagaries of western bloc art. there were at least a dozen pensive bus ride sequences. but then, maybe it was just the wallet chains. now i'm thinking that "eastern plays" was more like a combination of fatih akın's "edge of heaven" and matteo garrone's "gamorrah." the film also introduces of a soft thread of religious moralism which, however understated, isn't often to be found in art films from around these parts. faith based salvation? pooh-pooh. but how provincializing of me. how cynical and condescending. maybe that's why i sympathized so much with christo (even laughed) when he repeatedly ignored the sobbing entreaties of his ex-girlfriend to get back together, or at least try to be friends. but had he not pushed her away at that restaurant on her birthday, he never would have gotten blitzed and saved the day. apparently, that's the best of the good fight in bulgaria.
bulgaria is tough stuff. i passed through sofia on a train from istanbul to budapest once, and the attendant in my car warned me that i should be awake for the stop but not get off the train. so i bought a sandwich through the window. things looked rough for the people hanging around the station. "eastern plays" paints an even bleaker picture of post-soviet life in the capital of bulgaria, a country it presents as nearly bereft of opportunity and smoldering with xenophobia. teenage georgi falls in with a group of neo-fascists that attack arabs on the street at the behest of nationalist politicians. his brother christo is a struggling artist and recovering drug addict who makes his livelihood spray-lacquering furniture in a desolate factory. the estranged brothers are reunited in the street after georgi's gang attacks a family of turkish tourists and christo, stumbling drunk, comes to their unlikely rescue. after the incident, christo finds a renewed motivation for art and action in his reconnection with his brother and the time he spends with isil, the daughter of the family he protected. "eastern plays" smacks of 1990s american arthouse cool (or maybe it was just the nu-metal and the wallet chains that had me in that space of mind), but bulgaria was dealing with too many of its own problems in the nineties to worry about keeping up with the vagaries of western bloc art. there were at least a dozen pensive bus ride sequences. but then, maybe it was just the wallet chains. now i'm thinking that "eastern plays" was more like a combination of fatih akın's "edge of heaven" and matteo garrone's "gamorrah." the film also introduces of a soft thread of religious moralism which, however understated, isn't often to be found in art films from around these parts. faith based salvation? pooh-pooh. but how provincializing of me. how cynical and condescending. maybe that's why i sympathized so much with christo (even laughed) when he repeatedly ignored the sobbing entreaties of his ex-girlfriend to get back together, or at least try to be friends. but had he not pushed her away at that restaurant on her birthday, he never would have gotten blitzed and saved the day. apparently, that's the best of the good fight in bulgaria.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 13
"crab trap," columbia, dir. oscar ruiz navia
for all its lumbering preachiness about white capitalism spoiling colombia, "crab trap" still manages to effect a beautifully analgesic mood of resignation to basic living. david, a foreign tourist, arrives in la barra, a (very probably fictional) town on the pacific coast of colombia looking for a boat to leave the country. where is he trying to go, and how does he plan to get there in a boat with just an outboard motor? there's not much off the colombian pacific coast. daniel perks up when he's told by a group of local boys that they'll be boating over to san juan for a soccer match. unless that san juan is just another remote coastal village then it doesn't have a real world counterpart. but it's the very impossibility of daniel's proposition and its attendant sense of being completely out of real place or time that give the "crab trap" its ruminant theatrical quality. daniel trades cerebro work for a place to stay while he waits for the village fishermen to return with the boats. jazmin, the village sexpot, floats between cerebro, daniel and paisa, cerebro's civic rival and the only other foreigner in la barra (though everyone else is black and not indigenous). a young girl befriends daniel from his arrival in la barra and teaches him her game of trapping crabs on the beach. "you don't understand adults' problems," daniel tells her at one point. does she, maybe? or maybe daniel, with the little girl as his helpful foil, needs to learn to let go of the problems he lets preoccupy him. although "crab trap" is moody in general, its water scenes are especially contemplative, whether the camera is bobbing along with daniel as he takes a swim in the ocean or slowly following cerebro and daniel as they boat into the jungle for wood. the allegory of why all the fish are gone from the local waters while paisa has so many on ice may hit too squarely, but the blow definitely doesn't knock "crab trap" off its feet. good thing, too. it'd be a shame if it messed up that pretty face.
"cameraman: the life and work of jack cardiff," united states, dir. craig mccall
jack cardiff was the guy that photographed "black narcissus" and "the red shoes." he also did "conan the destroyer" and "rambo: first blood part ii," but apparently his best days were in technicolor. "cameraman" is a delightful biography on a cinematic figure of huge import as well as an eye onto the development of cinematic photography in the twentieth century. i felt that i shouldn't have had to suffer so much scorsese, but he was apparently a big fan and follower of cardiff's, and he had some interesting things to say about cardiff's experience as a painter and his application of his painterly knowledge to film lighting. "cameraman" was funny and inspirational, but in ways that wilhelm reich would have hated, principally because they served mostly to inspire envy (the appeal of hollywood really is just the mass psychology of facism). i was in fine spirits when i left the theater, striding happily under the vicarious delusion that it was i who had gotten that oscar and had taken "amateur" photos of audrey hepburn, sophia loren and marilyn monroe. that's the power of motion pictures. jack cardiff knew it well.
for all its lumbering preachiness about white capitalism spoiling colombia, "crab trap" still manages to effect a beautifully analgesic mood of resignation to basic living. david, a foreign tourist, arrives in la barra, a (very probably fictional) town on the pacific coast of colombia looking for a boat to leave the country. where is he trying to go, and how does he plan to get there in a boat with just an outboard motor? there's not much off the colombian pacific coast. daniel perks up when he's told by a group of local boys that they'll be boating over to san juan for a soccer match. unless that san juan is just another remote coastal village then it doesn't have a real world counterpart. but it's the very impossibility of daniel's proposition and its attendant sense of being completely out of real place or time that give the "crab trap" its ruminant theatrical quality. daniel trades cerebro work for a place to stay while he waits for the village fishermen to return with the boats. jazmin, the village sexpot, floats between cerebro, daniel and paisa, cerebro's civic rival and the only other foreigner in la barra (though everyone else is black and not indigenous). a young girl befriends daniel from his arrival in la barra and teaches him her game of trapping crabs on the beach. "you don't understand adults' problems," daniel tells her at one point. does she, maybe? or maybe daniel, with the little girl as his helpful foil, needs to learn to let go of the problems he lets preoccupy him. although "crab trap" is moody in general, its water scenes are especially contemplative, whether the camera is bobbing along with daniel as he takes a swim in the ocean or slowly following cerebro and daniel as they boat into the jungle for wood. the allegory of why all the fish are gone from the local waters while paisa has so many on ice may hit too squarely, but the blow definitely doesn't knock "crab trap" off its feet. good thing, too. it'd be a shame if it messed up that pretty face.
"cameraman: the life and work of jack cardiff," united states, dir. craig mccall
jack cardiff was the guy that photographed "black narcissus" and "the red shoes." he also did "conan the destroyer" and "rambo: first blood part ii," but apparently his best days were in technicolor. "cameraman" is a delightful biography on a cinematic figure of huge import as well as an eye onto the development of cinematic photography in the twentieth century. i felt that i shouldn't have had to suffer so much scorsese, but he was apparently a big fan and follower of cardiff's, and he had some interesting things to say about cardiff's experience as a painter and his application of his painterly knowledge to film lighting. "cameraman" was funny and inspirational, but in ways that wilhelm reich would have hated, principally because they served mostly to inspire envy (the appeal of hollywood really is just the mass psychology of facism). i was in fine spirits when i left the theater, striding happily under the vicarious delusion that it was i who had gotten that oscar and had taken "amateur" photos of audrey hepburn, sophia loren and marilyn monroe. that's the power of motion pictures. jack cardiff knew it well.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 12
"all that i love," poland, dir. jacek borcuch
it can be difficult to stick to a resolve to see the more "film festival" of the film festival films when the festival makes it into its final week. "all that i love" will probably get distribution on dvd, and maybe even a limited theater run, but i went and saw it anyway. it's a crowd pleasing story about youth, love and fighting the good fight, which in "all that i love," set in poland in 1981, means standing alongside the solidarity party as the "commie cops" of the polish state declares marshal law and sends combat regiments to break solidarity's strikes in gdansk. will the ruskies invade? it doesn't matter: we have punk rock! janek, the teenage protagonist of the film, wants to play music (the film is titled after the name of his band). he wants to smooch his girlfriend. the trouble (well, in addition to the nationwide political unrest, although the film is completely devoid of any sense of political tension) is that his dad's a military man. the navy commissar doesn't like janek's freedom preaching lyrics, and janek's girlfriend's activist father doesn't like his daughter hanging out with the son of a uniform. "all that i love" is part autobiography, which might explain why borcuch directed janek to act with such unctuous juvenescence. but who casts himself as so untrammeled and charming? regardless, both janek and his father give strong performances that highlight the individual challenges posed to persons and families hoping for better futures under the strong hands of oppression and social conformity. should they stay or should they go? that song's from '81, right?
it can be difficult to stick to a resolve to see the more "film festival" of the film festival films when the festival makes it into its final week. "all that i love" will probably get distribution on dvd, and maybe even a limited theater run, but i went and saw it anyway. it's a crowd pleasing story about youth, love and fighting the good fight, which in "all that i love," set in poland in 1981, means standing alongside the solidarity party as the "commie cops" of the polish state declares marshal law and sends combat regiments to break solidarity's strikes in gdansk. will the ruskies invade? it doesn't matter: we have punk rock! janek, the teenage protagonist of the film, wants to play music (the film is titled after the name of his band). he wants to smooch his girlfriend. the trouble (well, in addition to the nationwide political unrest, although the film is completely devoid of any sense of political tension) is that his dad's a military man. the navy commissar doesn't like janek's freedom preaching lyrics, and janek's girlfriend's activist father doesn't like his daughter hanging out with the son of a uniform. "all that i love" is part autobiography, which might explain why borcuch directed janek to act with such unctuous juvenescence. but who casts himself as so untrammeled and charming? regardless, both janek and his father give strong performances that highlight the individual challenges posed to persons and families hoping for better futures under the strong hands of oppression and social conformity. should they stay or should they go? that song's from '81, right?
Monday, February 21, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 11
"how i ended this summer," russia, dir. alexei popogrebsky
a psychological thriller set on an arctic russian island seemed to have an unignorable boring potential. i asked the volunteer checking tickets outside the theater if she'd been at either of the two previous screenings and whether i should gamble on the iranian film in the theater across the corridor instead. she hadn't seen "how i ended this summer," but had read a good review. "and you know, this is a film festival," she cautioned me, as if that were license for any thriller screening to be dull so long as it had been praised for being contemplative and insightful. thankfully, "how i ended this summer" passed muster in all categories. two men are isolated at an isolated island taking meteorological readouts that they regularly radio to the mainland. summer is almost over, and the younger of the men, pavel, is scheduled to return to the mainland soon. his middle aged workmate has taken readings at the island for years and is anxious to take leave to see his wife, who was evacuated from the island when she became pregnant two years prior. mistakes and misunderstandings. then fear, and a chase. man versus man and man versus nature. "how i ended the summer" doesn't skimp at all on suspense, but it also isn't a run of the mill cliffhanger. (this is a film festival, after all.) the deceptions are nerve wracking and the chase is exciting, but the real tension of "how i ended this summer" is in pavel's head as he struggles to face the responsibilities of adulthood and the emotional demands of maturity. and a polar bear.
"some days are better than others," united states, dir. matt mccormick
carrie brownstein and a portland connection? didn't we just go through this? we did, and that's why i didn't go to this screening, even though it was the only one scheduled for this film during the festival. if "some days are better than others" likes portland enough, it will come out on dvd, although user rankings at imdb.com don't bode well for distribution.
a psychological thriller set on an arctic russian island seemed to have an unignorable boring potential. i asked the volunteer checking tickets outside the theater if she'd been at either of the two previous screenings and whether i should gamble on the iranian film in the theater across the corridor instead. she hadn't seen "how i ended this summer," but had read a good review. "and you know, this is a film festival," she cautioned me, as if that were license for any thriller screening to be dull so long as it had been praised for being contemplative and insightful. thankfully, "how i ended this summer" passed muster in all categories. two men are isolated at an isolated island taking meteorological readouts that they regularly radio to the mainland. summer is almost over, and the younger of the men, pavel, is scheduled to return to the mainland soon. his middle aged workmate has taken readings at the island for years and is anxious to take leave to see his wife, who was evacuated from the island when she became pregnant two years prior. mistakes and misunderstandings. then fear, and a chase. man versus man and man versus nature. "how i ended the summer" doesn't skimp at all on suspense, but it also isn't a run of the mill cliffhanger. (this is a film festival, after all.) the deceptions are nerve wracking and the chase is exciting, but the real tension of "how i ended this summer" is in pavel's head as he struggles to face the responsibilities of adulthood and the emotional demands of maturity. and a polar bear.
"some days are better than others," united states, dir. matt mccormick
carrie brownstein and a portland connection? didn't we just go through this? we did, and that's why i didn't go to this screening, even though it was the only one scheduled for this film during the festival. if "some days are better than others" likes portland enough, it will come out on dvd, although user rankings at imdb.com don't bode well for distribution.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 10
"the arbor," great britain, dir. clio barnard
meta-narratives have been so overdone in the past decade that even artists who manage to do them well risk coming off as hackneyed and passé (case in point, "certified copy" from day 5). but then, of course, it's that much more refreshing and inspiring when someone, say a filmmaker named clio barnard, manages to pull together so, well, refreshing and inspired as this film. angela dunbar wrote her play "the arbor" as a teenager living in the slums of bradford, england in the late 1970s. after having three children by three different men and achieving middling success as a stage and screen writer, she died of an embolism in her local pub (what one of her daughters called her real home in bradford) at 29. three decades after dunbar's play premiered at the royal court theater in london, barnard revisits the arbor in bradford in her film of the same name. in it, actors lip-synch to recordings of conversations and testimonials recorded by bradford with the surviving members of dunbar's family, most significantly her daughters lorraine and lisa. footage of the actors giving their lines is interspersed with scenes from dubar's play, newly reenacted for the film on and around the grass at brafferton arbor in bradford, as well as with television footage of dunbar and her family from the late seventies and eighties. the result is an intricate, highly original and theatrical performance of andrea dunbar's legacy -- the legacy of a severely underserved housing project -- just as dunbar's "the arbor" was a performance of her place and time as she experienced it directly. much more than a documentary, barnard's "the arbor" is a biographical play on screen. unfortunately, as refreshing and inspiring as barnard's presentation may be, her subject matter is anything but, and it might just be that there's even less hope for the people on the arbor than there was when andrea dunbar told their stories over thirty years ago.
"flamenco, flamecno," spain, dir. carlos saura
saura's "carmen" was the reason i fell in love with flamenco, so i might not be impartial in my assessment of this, his newest film, although i'll loudly restate my dissatisfaction with "fados," and i seemed to have been in the dissenting opinion on "flamenco, flamenco" among the group of flamencos with whom i saw the film. most of the music and dance in "flamenco, flamenco" are non-traditional. purists will hate it for that. but what's purism in music or dance, especially as is is implied to pertain to a style as historically mutable and untraceable as flamenco. it's de-bastardization and codification didn't really happen until recently anyway. for my part, i loved the two pianos playing the bulerías to the rhythm of the palmas. i loved the balletic style of the dance in the garrotin. the silencio looked like it might have been choreographed by fosse for a remake of "funny face," and i loved it. and there was more than enough for the purists, too, although a friend mentioned hating eva yerbabuena's dress from her soleá, one of the more traditional performances. i remembered liking the dress, especially that the thighs had been so worn from repeated slapping. and when she ended the dance posed as the dancer from john singer sargent's el jaleo (the painting having been the backdrop for yerbabuena and her musicians throughout the scene)? rapture. saura is an amazing director with a keen eye for photography in general and for framing in particular, and his expression of flamenco on screen is itself dynamic and powerful, regardless of the debatable power of any of the performances he includes in his film -- the last of which is a charming throwback to his "flamenco" from 1995. i won't spoil it.
meta-narratives have been so overdone in the past decade that even artists who manage to do them well risk coming off as hackneyed and passé (case in point, "certified copy" from day 5). but then, of course, it's that much more refreshing and inspiring when someone, say a filmmaker named clio barnard, manages to pull together so, well, refreshing and inspired as this film. angela dunbar wrote her play "the arbor" as a teenager living in the slums of bradford, england in the late 1970s. after having three children by three different men and achieving middling success as a stage and screen writer, she died of an embolism in her local pub (what one of her daughters called her real home in bradford) at 29. three decades after dunbar's play premiered at the royal court theater in london, barnard revisits the arbor in bradford in her film of the same name. in it, actors lip-synch to recordings of conversations and testimonials recorded by bradford with the surviving members of dunbar's family, most significantly her daughters lorraine and lisa. footage of the actors giving their lines is interspersed with scenes from dubar's play, newly reenacted for the film on and around the grass at brafferton arbor in bradford, as well as with television footage of dunbar and her family from the late seventies and eighties. the result is an intricate, highly original and theatrical performance of andrea dunbar's legacy -- the legacy of a severely underserved housing project -- just as dunbar's "the arbor" was a performance of her place and time as she experienced it directly. much more than a documentary, barnard's "the arbor" is a biographical play on screen. unfortunately, as refreshing and inspiring as barnard's presentation may be, her subject matter is anything but, and it might just be that there's even less hope for the people on the arbor than there was when andrea dunbar told their stories over thirty years ago.
"flamenco, flamecno," spain, dir. carlos saura
saura's "carmen" was the reason i fell in love with flamenco, so i might not be impartial in my assessment of this, his newest film, although i'll loudly restate my dissatisfaction with "fados," and i seemed to have been in the dissenting opinion on "flamenco, flamenco" among the group of flamencos with whom i saw the film. most of the music and dance in "flamenco, flamenco" are non-traditional. purists will hate it for that. but what's purism in music or dance, especially as is is implied to pertain to a style as historically mutable and untraceable as flamenco. it's de-bastardization and codification didn't really happen until recently anyway. for my part, i loved the two pianos playing the bulerías to the rhythm of the palmas. i loved the balletic style of the dance in the garrotin. the silencio looked like it might have been choreographed by fosse for a remake of "funny face," and i loved it. and there was more than enough for the purists, too, although a friend mentioned hating eva yerbabuena's dress from her soleá, one of the more traditional performances. i remembered liking the dress, especially that the thighs had been so worn from repeated slapping. and when she ended the dance posed as the dancer from john singer sargent's el jaleo (the painting having been the backdrop for yerbabuena and her musicians throughout the scene)? rapture. saura is an amazing director with a keen eye for photography in general and for framing in particular, and his expression of flamenco on screen is itself dynamic and powerful, regardless of the debatable power of any of the performances he includes in his film -- the last of which is a charming throwback to his "flamenco" from 1995. i won't spoil it.
Friday, February 18, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 9
"the whistleblower," canada, dir. larysa kondracki
"the whistleblower" is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, although too strong of a heart or too sensitive of a social conscience would make the movie difficult to watch as well. several people walked out of the screening i attended. i couldn't help crying...twice. kondracki's film tells the (based on a true) story of a nebraska policewoman, kathy, who, in 1999, moves to sarajevo to work as a peacekeeper for the united nations. kathy is good at her job, or at least more willing to do it well than many of her fellow privately contracted colleagues. her efficacy earns her a position at the united nations' office for gender affairs investigating sexual assaults. she comes to know the face of the human trafficking that stocks the post-war brothels of bosnia and serbia. that face isn't pretty. it's been hit and underfed and subjected to horrible physical, psychological and emotional abuse. quite a bit of that gets shown. what's more, the peacekeepers are involved. so are military officials and diplomats. looking to protect its own, the bureaucracy of united nations internal affairs closes all of kathy's case files. "i'm just doing my job." "i know. but no one cares about you." "the whistleblower" is, ultimately, a thriller and sacrifices character development to the pace of its plot -- kondracki manages to get the whole thing in under two hours -- but it knows how to tug the heartstrings. though i suppose the formula demands him, i didn't give a damn about kathy's dutch lover. but i felt for those girls. i left early, too, by about ten minutes, to make another screening downtown. that may have been a mistake, as i was gambling on missing out on a final glimmer of humanity and redemption. but, to be honest, i can't imagine how "the whistleblower" could have ended happily.
"the housemaid," south korea, dir. im sang-soo
i want to see the original. the program didn't say this was a remake, but i think i'm doing good by making that known. i didn't find out until the credits, after which i wondered if watching the 1960 version of "the housemaid" might be of some help in explaining why i was absolutely confounded by the final scene. wow. ...so you can watch the original for free online, and the site thinks that i'm as rich as the family in the remake because the video of the original opened with ads from cartier and qatar airlines. a comment at the same site laments that the 1960 version isn't better known in the west as it's a seminal work of south korean cinema. (i feel the same way about "funeral parade of roses" from japan -- and so did stanley kubrick, for your information.) hmmm. the moral of the 2010 version seems to be that money breeds sociopathy, but then again, there isn't really a moral. despite the modern western interior design of husband and pregnant wife and young daughter's home, the driving emotions in "the housemaid" are underpinned by a very asian sense of service, resignation and ill will breeding ill will. liberation comes at a price that might not be worth the, well, there isn't actually a reward. but the sex scenes go for it and succeed. "the housemaid" deserves the too often tossed around designation of "erotic thriller." fantastically, though, even during sex its characters move with an eerie phlegmaticness, always as if within a tableau titled something like "man at piano" or "family at repose" or "trouble in the foyer." "the husband with the housemaid in the servants' quarters."
"the whistleblower" is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, although too strong of a heart or too sensitive of a social conscience would make the movie difficult to watch as well. several people walked out of the screening i attended. i couldn't help crying...twice. kondracki's film tells the (based on a true) story of a nebraska policewoman, kathy, who, in 1999, moves to sarajevo to work as a peacekeeper for the united nations. kathy is good at her job, or at least more willing to do it well than many of her fellow privately contracted colleagues. her efficacy earns her a position at the united nations' office for gender affairs investigating sexual assaults. she comes to know the face of the human trafficking that stocks the post-war brothels of bosnia and serbia. that face isn't pretty. it's been hit and underfed and subjected to horrible physical, psychological and emotional abuse. quite a bit of that gets shown. what's more, the peacekeepers are involved. so are military officials and diplomats. looking to protect its own, the bureaucracy of united nations internal affairs closes all of kathy's case files. "i'm just doing my job." "i know. but no one cares about you." "the whistleblower" is, ultimately, a thriller and sacrifices character development to the pace of its plot -- kondracki manages to get the whole thing in under two hours -- but it knows how to tug the heartstrings. though i suppose the formula demands him, i didn't give a damn about kathy's dutch lover. but i felt for those girls. i left early, too, by about ten minutes, to make another screening downtown. that may have been a mistake, as i was gambling on missing out on a final glimmer of humanity and redemption. but, to be honest, i can't imagine how "the whistleblower" could have ended happily.
"the housemaid," south korea, dir. im sang-soo
i want to see the original. the program didn't say this was a remake, but i think i'm doing good by making that known. i didn't find out until the credits, after which i wondered if watching the 1960 version of "the housemaid" might be of some help in explaining why i was absolutely confounded by the final scene. wow. ...so you can watch the original for free online, and the site thinks that i'm as rich as the family in the remake because the video of the original opened with ads from cartier and qatar airlines. a comment at the same site laments that the 1960 version isn't better known in the west as it's a seminal work of south korean cinema. (i feel the same way about "funeral parade of roses" from japan -- and so did stanley kubrick, for your information.) hmmm. the moral of the 2010 version seems to be that money breeds sociopathy, but then again, there isn't really a moral. despite the modern western interior design of husband and pregnant wife and young daughter's home, the driving emotions in "the housemaid" are underpinned by a very asian sense of service, resignation and ill will breeding ill will. liberation comes at a price that might not be worth the, well, there isn't actually a reward. but the sex scenes go for it and succeed. "the housemaid" deserves the too often tossed around designation of "erotic thriller." fantastically, though, even during sex its characters move with an eerie phlegmaticness, always as if within a tableau titled something like "man at piano" or "family at repose" or "trouble in the foyer." "the husband with the housemaid in the servants' quarters."
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 8
"last report on anna," hungary, dir. márta mészáros
anna is anna kéthly, and this recent historical drama tells the story of her life and her life in exile in brussels following the failure of the hungarian revolution and the imre nagy government in 1956. most of the film's action takes place in 1973, when péter faragó, the nephew of one of anna's old flames, visits her in belgium with orders to inform on her from the hungarian secret police. "last report on anna" isn't anything groundbreaking as far as the art of movie making goes. in fact, it suffers from the same problem that many of the central european films selected for the portland festival by the northwest film center do: an almost childish melodrama that elicits a strange embarrassment in the audience -- the sets in the flashback scenes look like they might fall over, and don't the actors know that they don't have to try so hard? it does, however, present the story of what i assume to be (even, probably, in hungary) a relatively unknown historical figure of significance. anna kéthly joined the social democratic party of hungary in 1917 and was elected to parliament in 1922. (it's a shame that i can't tell you the names of any other first women in parliament, or even guess at the years when they were elected, but i suppose that that's why films like this one are important.) anna was a member of parliament until the german invasion of hungary in 1944 and resumed her duties after the war until she was dismissed from her party and lost her seat in 1948. she was a staunch opponent of both fascist and communist dictatorship, and apparently she liked to get silly with golda meir. that makes for some good infotainment. guess whether péter convinces her to go back to hungary.
anna is anna kéthly, and this recent historical drama tells the story of her life and her life in exile in brussels following the failure of the hungarian revolution and the imre nagy government in 1956. most of the film's action takes place in 1973, when péter faragó, the nephew of one of anna's old flames, visits her in belgium with orders to inform on her from the hungarian secret police. "last report on anna" isn't anything groundbreaking as far as the art of movie making goes. in fact, it suffers from the same problem that many of the central european films selected for the portland festival by the northwest film center do: an almost childish melodrama that elicits a strange embarrassment in the audience -- the sets in the flashback scenes look like they might fall over, and don't the actors know that they don't have to try so hard? it does, however, present the story of what i assume to be (even, probably, in hungary) a relatively unknown historical figure of significance. anna kéthly joined the social democratic party of hungary in 1917 and was elected to parliament in 1922. (it's a shame that i can't tell you the names of any other first women in parliament, or even guess at the years when they were elected, but i suppose that that's why films like this one are important.) anna was a member of parliament until the german invasion of hungary in 1944 and resumed her duties after the war until she was dismissed from her party and lost her seat in 1948. she was a staunch opponent of both fascist and communist dictatorship, and apparently she liked to get silly with golda meir. that makes for some good infotainment. guess whether péter convinces her to go back to hungary.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 7
"come undone," italy, dir. silvio soldini
this movie should have been at least ten times sexier. unlike literary fiction, narrative film is perfectly suited to the challenges of presenting sex in a sexy way that can also be thought provoking, titillating without lapsing into straight up pornography. anna lives with her doting partner, a big, dorky guy who dotes on her obsessively. domenico has a wife and two children. anna and domenico meet when domenico is cater waitering a party at anna's office. they embark on an affair -- "a heated affair," says the festival program, "punctuated by sordid erotic encounters." the poster for "come undone" suggests the same, but the encounters depicted in the movie are really anything but. not much sordid has a chance to happen in the fifteen seconds it takes domenico to climax the first time he beds anna. they do, granted, have their weekly trysts at a love hotel that keeps customers' ids until they check out, but their sex is just of the good vanilla variety, which is simply the essential element lacking from either character's more committed partnership. i did, however, appreciate that the "come undone" was more of an introduction to "topics and issues in infidelity" than a close up of anna and domenico's relationship itself. there's no solid dialogue or action that precipitates their pairing. they're about to ravage each other in anna's office after hours after briefly flirting twice. there's something hot between them, but that something isn't explained or investigated, just presented as a basis for the problems that their affair causes them. and even if the sex wasn't all it could have been (sure, it would have made "come undone" a different picture, but i still felt duped), i liked the editing: quick cuts that seemed to layer still images in an way that struck me as very true to the naked eye, an artifice that succeeded in mimicking a very realistic effect.
the first thing i remember thinking after the projectionist finally got the subtitles high enough that they were visible onscreen was that anna (played by alba rohrwacher, who also played the daughter of tilda swinton's character in "i am love") looked like an internet photo morph of japanese pop idol ayumi hamasaki and metric front lady emily haines. the last thing i remember was being roused from a stupor that i hadn't realized falling into when the final shot transitioned to the credits. heated affairs shouldn't make you want to fall asleep.
this movie should have been at least ten times sexier. unlike literary fiction, narrative film is perfectly suited to the challenges of presenting sex in a sexy way that can also be thought provoking, titillating without lapsing into straight up pornography. anna lives with her doting partner, a big, dorky guy who dotes on her obsessively. domenico has a wife and two children. anna and domenico meet when domenico is cater waitering a party at anna's office. they embark on an affair -- "a heated affair," says the festival program, "punctuated by sordid erotic encounters." the poster for "come undone" suggests the same, but the encounters depicted in the movie are really anything but. not much sordid has a chance to happen in the fifteen seconds it takes domenico to climax the first time he beds anna. they do, granted, have their weekly trysts at a love hotel that keeps customers' ids until they check out, but their sex is just of the good vanilla variety, which is simply the essential element lacking from either character's more committed partnership. i did, however, appreciate that the "come undone" was more of an introduction to "topics and issues in infidelity" than a close up of anna and domenico's relationship itself. there's no solid dialogue or action that precipitates their pairing. they're about to ravage each other in anna's office after hours after briefly flirting twice. there's something hot between them, but that something isn't explained or investigated, just presented as a basis for the problems that their affair causes them. and even if the sex wasn't all it could have been (sure, it would have made "come undone" a different picture, but i still felt duped), i liked the editing: quick cuts that seemed to layer still images in an way that struck me as very true to the naked eye, an artifice that succeeded in mimicking a very realistic effect.
the first thing i remember thinking after the projectionist finally got the subtitles high enough that they were visible onscreen was that anna (played by alba rohrwacher, who also played the daughter of tilda swinton's character in "i am love") looked like an internet photo morph of japanese pop idol ayumi hamasaki and metric front lady emily haines. the last thing i remember was being roused from a stupor that i hadn't realized falling into when the final shot transitioned to the credits. heated affairs shouldn't make you want to fall asleep.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 6
"steam of life," finland, dir. mika hotakainen and joonas berghäll
despite a reputation as a tear jerker, "steam of life" is ultimately a crowd pleaser, which is why it didn't do all that much for me. to begin with, i generally prefer narrative features to documentaries, and this documentary, about finnish men pouring out their hearts to each other while sharing saunas, was porked up with maudlin sentimentality, a business that i try to avoid not just in film but in art at large. sure, i understand that the "stripping down" of the (what we're encouraged to assume are) otherwise stoic and impassive men on screen is the emotional program of the directors. and, "steam of life" is definitely one of those documentaries that keeps its audience wondering how the directors were able to get what they got on film: a lot of naked men talking candidly about their feelings. unfortunately, those feelings seemed intentionally overblown in their presentation in order to effect an odd kind of feelgood feeling sad response. for my part, i was charmed more by the grasping gestures of certain listeners to console their stricken friends than by the gushing of those friends over their tales of woe. when the tears started flowing, those timid shoulder pats and mumbles of "...take some time..." seemed more honest, raw, and were honestly more moving than the more obvious focuses of the film. (i wanted to offer my own condolences, because the audience at the whitsell auditorium last night was in perfect festivalgoer character and laughed whenever it felt uncomfortable.)
outside the saunas, "steam of life" does an amazing job of capturing the hushed -- and sometimes bleak -- beauty of finland, especially its forests and countrysides, and i'm almost tempted to recommend seeing it just for the landscape photography. it also does well in representing the special relationship that the finns have with water (i'd not an inkling), and not just the steam in their saunas but their pools, lakes and rivers as well. finnish immigrants, with their long knowledge of fishing and logging, played a starring role in the early settlement of oregon, and there's still a finnish social club in astoria under the astoria-megler bridge. it's directly across the street from the defunct union steam baths ("authentic finnish sauna, est. 1928"). maybe the building owner would fire up the boiler for people who showed their "steam of life" ticket stubs. the men in the movie cracked quite a few beers after leaving the saunas. i'd join the crowd in astoria in that.
despite a reputation as a tear jerker, "steam of life" is ultimately a crowd pleaser, which is why it didn't do all that much for me. to begin with, i generally prefer narrative features to documentaries, and this documentary, about finnish men pouring out their hearts to each other while sharing saunas, was porked up with maudlin sentimentality, a business that i try to avoid not just in film but in art at large. sure, i understand that the "stripping down" of the (what we're encouraged to assume are) otherwise stoic and impassive men on screen is the emotional program of the directors. and, "steam of life" is definitely one of those documentaries that keeps its audience wondering how the directors were able to get what they got on film: a lot of naked men talking candidly about their feelings. unfortunately, those feelings seemed intentionally overblown in their presentation in order to effect an odd kind of feelgood feeling sad response. for my part, i was charmed more by the grasping gestures of certain listeners to console their stricken friends than by the gushing of those friends over their tales of woe. when the tears started flowing, those timid shoulder pats and mumbles of "...take some time..." seemed more honest, raw, and were honestly more moving than the more obvious focuses of the film. (i wanted to offer my own condolences, because the audience at the whitsell auditorium last night was in perfect festivalgoer character and laughed whenever it felt uncomfortable.)
outside the saunas, "steam of life" does an amazing job of capturing the hushed -- and sometimes bleak -- beauty of finland, especially its forests and countrysides, and i'm almost tempted to recommend seeing it just for the landscape photography. it also does well in representing the special relationship that the finns have with water (i'd not an inkling), and not just the steam in their saunas but their pools, lakes and rivers as well. finnish immigrants, with their long knowledge of fishing and logging, played a starring role in the early settlement of oregon, and there's still a finnish social club in astoria under the astoria-megler bridge. it's directly across the street from the defunct union steam baths ("authentic finnish sauna, est. 1928"). maybe the building owner would fire up the boiler for people who showed their "steam of life" ticket stubs. the men in the movie cracked quite a few beers after leaving the saunas. i'd join the crowd in astoria in that.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
WHERE'S THAT DEAD HORSE?
"his own heart is beating again, slow and hard, and he feels postcoital lassitude spreading through him like a barbiturate." that sentence, from the sex scene in james hynes' next that won salon.com's first good sex awards, was the only one from all eight finalist excerpts that aroused any reaction in me -- probably because it was near the end of the passage that was the end of my reading on the awards and had an ironic appeal after i'd quickly (but dispassionately) plowed through the seven passages that i hadn't read since the announcement of the awards last thursday. the international film festival has kept me distracted since then, and it wasn't until i'd realized that valentine's day had passed that i remembered the awards and with what excitement i'd anticipated the judges' justification for including that passage from the petting zoo. i also realized that the festival had been monopolizing the posts here, and while that's not a problem in itself (we can discuss culture in portland without having to discuss the city), the numbers tell me that people are bored. i'm still committed to blurbing every film i see, but i thought it might be good of me to throw you some sex -- or some semblance.
from laura miller on the petting zoo: "obviously, the writing itself was pretty bad, but it got points for being substantial and detailed, and for what i can only call its sincerity." surprise! it was a ruse! of course that excerpt was bad. it was the situation that was important. miller continues: "this, to my mind, is one of the things literary writing about sex ought to do: describe not just the fact of sex, but the way how it happens changes how characters understand who they are." i feel tricked, or that i should feel like i was tricked, conned into following the award because i hoped that the rest of the finalists would be just as much overblown crap. then the judges dropped the serious stuff, the trying hard to try less hard excerpts. and i'll admit that the one i appreciated the most, a scene from perfect reader by maggie pouncey, came in only one place better than the petting zoo at number seven, and i liked it because it didn't describe much sex. (i permitted myself some smugness when i read miller's comment that, "to me, the maggie pouncey excerpt...whatever its other merits, doesn't even constitute a sex scene.")
in that way, i sympathized most with walter kirn, the last of the four judges to weigh in on his preferences, who seemed to recommend the inadvisability of convening the good sex awards' altogether in stating that, "sex on the page, when its goal isn't simply arousal -- porn -- just always feels odd and clinical and wrong." after reading all of the judges' analyses (almost completely antiseptic outside of maud newton's refreshingly vulgar description of her -- literary -- sexual leanings), the contest seemed more like a perfunctory effort to question its own ontology than an honest effort to bring good literary sex scenes to light (if that's how the participants like to do it, of course). "one odd thing i've noticed about sex scenes over the years," kirn continues, "is that the more nuanced and specific they are, the more alienating they are. what constitutes good writing in other realms somehow just doesn't work in the realm of sex." let's maybe forget about it for now, then...and maybe even for next year, though i'll still be on the lookout for nominees. it's what readers want, sexy or not. so, readers, there you have it: SEX SEX SEX! cock and cunt and middle aged straight people. and speaking of art movies, back to the festival.
from laura miller on the petting zoo: "obviously, the writing itself was pretty bad, but it got points for being substantial and detailed, and for what i can only call its sincerity." surprise! it was a ruse! of course that excerpt was bad. it was the situation that was important. miller continues: "this, to my mind, is one of the things literary writing about sex ought to do: describe not just the fact of sex, but the way how it happens changes how characters understand who they are." i feel tricked, or that i should feel like i was tricked, conned into following the award because i hoped that the rest of the finalists would be just as much overblown crap. then the judges dropped the serious stuff, the trying hard to try less hard excerpts. and i'll admit that the one i appreciated the most, a scene from perfect reader by maggie pouncey, came in only one place better than the petting zoo at number seven, and i liked it because it didn't describe much sex. (i permitted myself some smugness when i read miller's comment that, "to me, the maggie pouncey excerpt...whatever its other merits, doesn't even constitute a sex scene.")
in that way, i sympathized most with walter kirn, the last of the four judges to weigh in on his preferences, who seemed to recommend the inadvisability of convening the good sex awards' altogether in stating that, "sex on the page, when its goal isn't simply arousal -- porn -- just always feels odd and clinical and wrong." after reading all of the judges' analyses (almost completely antiseptic outside of maud newton's refreshingly vulgar description of her -- literary -- sexual leanings), the contest seemed more like a perfunctory effort to question its own ontology than an honest effort to bring good literary sex scenes to light (if that's how the participants like to do it, of course). "one odd thing i've noticed about sex scenes over the years," kirn continues, "is that the more nuanced and specific they are, the more alienating they are. what constitutes good writing in other realms somehow just doesn't work in the realm of sex." let's maybe forget about it for now, then...and maybe even for next year, though i'll still be on the lookout for nominees. it's what readers want, sexy or not. so, readers, there you have it: SEX SEX SEX! cock and cunt and middle aged straight people. and speaking of art movies, back to the festival.
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 5
"certified copy," france, dir. abbas kiarostami
juliette binoche is beautiful and can act in three languages (that's as many as she uses in "certified copy" anyway, though i wouldn't put it past her to know more). and, she's almost all this film has going for it. binoche plays a single mother living in tuscany who attends a presentation by an english author on his book "certified copy," a treatise on authenticity, reproduction and the perception of art and its intrinsic (versus market/historical/socio-geographical) value. binoche slips her phone number to the author's translator before being dragged away early from the presentation by her hungry adolescent son. she and the author agree to meet. most of "certified copy" is spent following the two on a day trip to livorno. binoche takes the author there to show him a famous forgery -- an 18th century painting officially considered to have been a roman original until after world war ii. the author isn't especially intrigued. the couple enters a cafe after the museum, and after the proprietress takes the author for binoche's husband the couple becomes a couple, the two of them taking each other's cues as they assume their roles in a fifteen year marriage. certain bits of dialogue, however, seem to indicate that the two do in fact have a shared past. it's a movie, with actors acting characters who are acting characters themselves, all the while discussing art and originality. i wasn't especially impressed. i'd hoped for something much more intellectually stimulating than the self-consciously fake authenticity that kiarostami is selling in "certified copy." what i got was an invitation to self-congratulation: two hours of "getting it" in the dark. supposedly this is the director's most accessible film. i'd like to take a look at another for comparison. in the end, i appreciated "certified copy" more for its ruminations on the quality of aging love than for any investigation of the ideas suggested by its clever title. yes, juliette, i noticed that you removed your lipstick. and you still look as good as the day we first met.
juliette binoche is beautiful and can act in three languages (that's as many as she uses in "certified copy" anyway, though i wouldn't put it past her to know more). and, she's almost all this film has going for it. binoche plays a single mother living in tuscany who attends a presentation by an english author on his book "certified copy," a treatise on authenticity, reproduction and the perception of art and its intrinsic (versus market/historical/socio-geographical) value. binoche slips her phone number to the author's translator before being dragged away early from the presentation by her hungry adolescent son. she and the author agree to meet. most of "certified copy" is spent following the two on a day trip to livorno. binoche takes the author there to show him a famous forgery -- an 18th century painting officially considered to have been a roman original until after world war ii. the author isn't especially intrigued. the couple enters a cafe after the museum, and after the proprietress takes the author for binoche's husband the couple becomes a couple, the two of them taking each other's cues as they assume their roles in a fifteen year marriage. certain bits of dialogue, however, seem to indicate that the two do in fact have a shared past. it's a movie, with actors acting characters who are acting characters themselves, all the while discussing art and originality. i wasn't especially impressed. i'd hoped for something much more intellectually stimulating than the self-consciously fake authenticity that kiarostami is selling in "certified copy." what i got was an invitation to self-congratulation: two hours of "getting it" in the dark. supposedly this is the director's most accessible film. i'd like to take a look at another for comparison. in the end, i appreciated "certified copy" more for its ruminations on the quality of aging love than for any investigation of the ideas suggested by its clever title. yes, juliette, i noticed that you removed your lipstick. and you still look as good as the day we first met.
Monday, February 14, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 4
"behind blue skies," sweden, dir. hannes holm
not every film at the festival is going to do something for everyone. "behind blue skies" did almost nothing for me. this coming of age story, about a 17 year old kid from stockholm who gets mixed up in a crime ring after getting a summer job at sandhamn island through the wealthy father of a school friend who summer's there, is something like "almost famous" meets "dirty dancing" meets a made for television version of "spun." sadly, none of the rich kids ever hang out at the yacht club workers' quarters, and there's not a single dance scene. so, really, it's just a coming of age movie, though the actor who played martin, the main character, was convincing across a wide range of emotions and was able to tinge his performance in every scene with just enough "virginal confusion at encountering the dubious morality of adult responsibility" (which is probably a direct translation of the character's emotional motivation as it was described in the swedish screenplay). there's also a blow job aborted over awkward conversation in the first scene. they're teenagers! she's asking him to promise to stay the night as his dick is going limp in her hand -- and that's not inference, i'm describing exactly what i saw. that's how you know this film is art.
"heartbeats," canada, dir. xavier dolan
it's not fair. xavier dolan is twenty-one, gorgeous and wrote, directed and starred in this film. i'm not sure why it was titled what it was in english instead of a more literal translation of the original title, "les amours imaginaires," which seems much more descriptive of a story about a young gay man and his young female friend both lusting after a rich, insouciant adonis mcgill student who flirts but doesn't reciprocate any real affection; but that's just an afterthought on a completely brilliant film. i think that dolan must be a fan of christophe honoré, because he directs in a very similar new wave throwback style -- not to mention that the premise of "heartbeats" isn't at all unsimilar to that of honoré's "love songs," and that just when i thought the movie might be going on too long it went on just another thirty seconds longer to deliver a perfect final cameo by louis garrel. dolan also narrates with a woody allen wit and visually frames his dialogues on love a la the counter-rhythms of sex romps and psychoanalytic brain picking characteristic of eric rohmer. but i suspect that it won't be too long before critics start writing that so-and-so makes films like xavier dolan. for "heartbeats" in particular i happily suspended my disbelief until that final cameo by garrel, although, who knows, that may have just been the result of my familiarity with (proximity to) the costuming and conceits of the contemporary north american twenty-something (the knife was on the soundtrack, too, although -- i think -- not "heartbeats"*). who wants to wife me in montreal? teach me french so that i can watch "i killed my mother" without the titles.
*but thinking about that puts the title in better perspective. there's a spanish version of nancy sinatra's "bang bang" (remember the "kill bill" soundtrack?) that recurs as well. the internet learned me that françois ozon used a french version in a film called "a summer dress" in 1996 (seven years before tarantino).
not every film at the festival is going to do something for everyone. "behind blue skies" did almost nothing for me. this coming of age story, about a 17 year old kid from stockholm who gets mixed up in a crime ring after getting a summer job at sandhamn island through the wealthy father of a school friend who summer's there, is something like "almost famous" meets "dirty dancing" meets a made for television version of "spun." sadly, none of the rich kids ever hang out at the yacht club workers' quarters, and there's not a single dance scene. so, really, it's just a coming of age movie, though the actor who played martin, the main character, was convincing across a wide range of emotions and was able to tinge his performance in every scene with just enough "virginal confusion at encountering the dubious morality of adult responsibility" (which is probably a direct translation of the character's emotional motivation as it was described in the swedish screenplay). there's also a blow job aborted over awkward conversation in the first scene. they're teenagers! she's asking him to promise to stay the night as his dick is going limp in her hand -- and that's not inference, i'm describing exactly what i saw. that's how you know this film is art.
"heartbeats," canada, dir. xavier dolan
it's not fair. xavier dolan is twenty-one, gorgeous and wrote, directed and starred in this film. i'm not sure why it was titled what it was in english instead of a more literal translation of the original title, "les amours imaginaires," which seems much more descriptive of a story about a young gay man and his young female friend both lusting after a rich, insouciant adonis mcgill student who flirts but doesn't reciprocate any real affection; but that's just an afterthought on a completely brilliant film. i think that dolan must be a fan of christophe honoré, because he directs in a very similar new wave throwback style -- not to mention that the premise of "heartbeats" isn't at all unsimilar to that of honoré's "love songs," and that just when i thought the movie might be going on too long it went on just another thirty seconds longer to deliver a perfect final cameo by louis garrel. dolan also narrates with a woody allen wit and visually frames his dialogues on love a la the counter-rhythms of sex romps and psychoanalytic brain picking characteristic of eric rohmer. but i suspect that it won't be too long before critics start writing that so-and-so makes films like xavier dolan. for "heartbeats" in particular i happily suspended my disbelief until that final cameo by garrel, although, who knows, that may have just been the result of my familiarity with (proximity to) the costuming and conceits of the contemporary north american twenty-something (the knife was on the soundtrack, too, although -- i think -- not "heartbeats"*). who wants to wife me in montreal? teach me french so that i can watch "i killed my mother" without the titles.
*but thinking about that puts the title in better perspective. there's a spanish version of nancy sinatra's "bang bang" (remember the "kill bill" soundtrack?) that recurs as well. the internet learned me that françois ozon used a french version in a film called "a summer dress" in 1996 (seven years before tarantino).
Sunday, February 13, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 3
"the white meadows," iran, dir. mohammad rasoulof
there was a man tabling for a petition to iran's united nations ambassador outside the theater. rasoulof is in prison in iran. it's not surprising. the festival program bills "the white meadows" as "an allegory for government persecution of artistic expression," but i'd say it takes things so far as to be a complete repudiation of the thought and behavior policing of contemporary iranian society by its power holders. i wanted to cast the functionary who collects the tears of the aggrieved as a stifled hero, but his definitive act of heroism never came. in fact, his routine of collections was as resigned to futility as those of the grief stricken people who put their faith in him to help alleviate their sorrows. what's more, the dead flats where his collections take place are separated by a wide salty sea, and the quiet message of that metaphor may be subtle but it isn't lost. "the white meadows" isn't, however, just commentary on current events. the sequence of the collector's very episodic trips from island to island share more with classical epic poetry than contemporary cinematic storytelling, which helps "the white meadows" succeed as a general statement on a human condition outside the picture of its director's personal political-artistic situation. all that said, is there anything to say that might still convince you that the film isn't a complete soul sucker? perhaps not. maybe you'll just see it because it's beautiful.
there was a man tabling for a petition to iran's united nations ambassador outside the theater. rasoulof is in prison in iran. it's not surprising. the festival program bills "the white meadows" as "an allegory for government persecution of artistic expression," but i'd say it takes things so far as to be a complete repudiation of the thought and behavior policing of contemporary iranian society by its power holders. i wanted to cast the functionary who collects the tears of the aggrieved as a stifled hero, but his definitive act of heroism never came. in fact, his routine of collections was as resigned to futility as those of the grief stricken people who put their faith in him to help alleviate their sorrows. what's more, the dead flats where his collections take place are separated by a wide salty sea, and the quiet message of that metaphor may be subtle but it isn't lost. "the white meadows" isn't, however, just commentary on current events. the sequence of the collector's very episodic trips from island to island share more with classical epic poetry than contemporary cinematic storytelling, which helps "the white meadows" succeed as a general statement on a human condition outside the picture of its director's personal political-artistic situation. all that said, is there anything to say that might still convince you that the film isn't a complete soul sucker? perhaps not. maybe you'll just see it because it's beautiful.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 2
"silent souls," russia, dir. aleksei fedorchenko
"silent souls" didn't especially pique my interest when i first read my program, but there wasn't anything else playing in the early friday evening time slot that i wanted to see. and luckily, too. it's only the second film i've seen at the festival, but fedorchenko's was a surprise standout. calling an art film meditative is, generally, not much more than a reduction to vague catch-all, but i feel more than justified in describing "silent souls" as such. not only is its narrative focused on the pursuit and preservation of rites and ritual amongst a small northeastern russian community of finnish descent (a scene depicting the tying of colored strings to a bride's pubic hair by her girlfriends in preparation for her wedding night on which her new husband will undo the knots and tie the strings to an alder tree is especially moving), but its droning soundtrack -- including a chanted choral number on local herbs and "the smell of summer" -- as well as the bleakness of its colors and its long, voiceovered shots help mantain a mystically contemplative and reverential mood throughout the film. near the beginning of "silent souls," the narrator, son of a local, self-taught poet, poses a question: "why are we like this and not something else?" the film doesn't, of course, offer a straightforward answer, but it certainly reinforces the importance of asking. and huh, it was based on a novel (the buntings by denis osokin).
"good morning to the world," japan, dir. hirohara satoru
i've been too close to the diaffectatedness of contemporary japanese youth to want to see it on screen for an hour and a half, but i appreciated the opportunity to nostalgize over having gone to a high school with classrooms, uniforms and hallway gossip almost exactly like the ones in this movie. its protagonist is a sixteen year old tokyo resident looking for a realer human experience than the one offered him in his daily routine. a final shot of him staring up at the retreating camera as he chases a rising hot air balloon is aggravatingly precious and only not out of place because its out of placeness wihtin the rest of the action is the lifeblood of a film like "good morning to the world." its disjointed plot aside, the film's slow frame digital photography does well to establish a very early 21st century post-industrial mood. "good morning to the world" may not make a particularly poignant statement on its subject, but it knows it well and depicts it effectively on the screen, even if i'd had enough before i started watching. what did i expect? i'm not sure i remember, but i sure did see it anyway.
"silent souls" didn't especially pique my interest when i first read my program, but there wasn't anything else playing in the early friday evening time slot that i wanted to see. and luckily, too. it's only the second film i've seen at the festival, but fedorchenko's was a surprise standout. calling an art film meditative is, generally, not much more than a reduction to vague catch-all, but i feel more than justified in describing "silent souls" as such. not only is its narrative focused on the pursuit and preservation of rites and ritual amongst a small northeastern russian community of finnish descent (a scene depicting the tying of colored strings to a bride's pubic hair by her girlfriends in preparation for her wedding night on which her new husband will undo the knots and tie the strings to an alder tree is especially moving), but its droning soundtrack -- including a chanted choral number on local herbs and "the smell of summer" -- as well as the bleakness of its colors and its long, voiceovered shots help mantain a mystically contemplative and reverential mood throughout the film. near the beginning of "silent souls," the narrator, son of a local, self-taught poet, poses a question: "why are we like this and not something else?" the film doesn't, of course, offer a straightforward answer, but it certainly reinforces the importance of asking. and huh, it was based on a novel (the buntings by denis osokin).
"good morning to the world," japan, dir. hirohara satoru
i've been too close to the diaffectatedness of contemporary japanese youth to want to see it on screen for an hour and a half, but i appreciated the opportunity to nostalgize over having gone to a high school with classrooms, uniforms and hallway gossip almost exactly like the ones in this movie. its protagonist is a sixteen year old tokyo resident looking for a realer human experience than the one offered him in his daily routine. a final shot of him staring up at the retreating camera as he chases a rising hot air balloon is aggravatingly precious and only not out of place because its out of placeness wihtin the rest of the action is the lifeblood of a film like "good morning to the world." its disjointed plot aside, the film's slow frame digital photography does well to establish a very early 21st century post-industrial mood. "good morning to the world" may not make a particularly poignant statement on its subject, but it knows it well and depicts it effectively on the screen, even if i'd had enough before i started watching. what did i expect? i'm not sure i remember, but i sure did see it anyway.
Friday, February 11, 2011
THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, A BEGINNING
last year's film diary was cute, but i stopped writing in it after the first week of the festival. this year's goal: write a blurb on every film i see; let them be short, improperly punctuated, just get them written. fifteen days. you'll know what i like. hang on.
opening night: "potiche," france, dir. françois ozon
the newmark theater was even more crowded than for "i am love" last year (see that film if you haven't). the crowd was much younger, too. ozon attracts the men who moviego with other men, and the theater stunk of too much cologne. i got compliments on my boots.
"potiche," with catherine deneuve and gérard depardieu wasn't what i expected. ozon made it more in the vein of "angel" than his earlier, more seriously depicted films like "swimming pool" and "time to leave." the actors' performances bordered on campy, and the flashbacks and imagined scenes were imbued with kitsch, both stylistically and technically. set in the late seventies, "potiche" made good use of that era's bright and varied color palette to evoke the playfulness and lightheartedness of the dialogue and action. as a result, in "potiche," ozon seems more like pedro almodóvar than himself, but maybe he's been going a new route, since the "angel" was characterized by similar elements. i haven't seen "hideaway." i feel bad drawing the parallel between two high profile gay directors (the two?), but also i don't. the comparison is apt. ozon's film, however, didn't have the depth of character or winding plot that mark almodóvar's films, its only plot twist seemingly intended more for humor than overall narrative effect.
it's about a woman, a housewife, who awakens to the cause of women at large after managing for a short time the umbrella factory that her father owned and that passed to her draconian husband when they were married. there are rabbits doing it in the woods in the opening scene, which is introduced in ballooned multi-colored titles. funny ha ha, and depardieu has gotten big. i was yawning for most of the first half.
free drinks at nel centro. no you can't take my picture for your blog.
opening night: "potiche," france, dir. françois ozon
the newmark theater was even more crowded than for "i am love" last year (see that film if you haven't). the crowd was much younger, too. ozon attracts the men who moviego with other men, and the theater stunk of too much cologne. i got compliments on my boots.
"potiche," with catherine deneuve and gérard depardieu wasn't what i expected. ozon made it more in the vein of "angel" than his earlier, more seriously depicted films like "swimming pool" and "time to leave." the actors' performances bordered on campy, and the flashbacks and imagined scenes were imbued with kitsch, both stylistically and technically. set in the late seventies, "potiche" made good use of that era's bright and varied color palette to evoke the playfulness and lightheartedness of the dialogue and action. as a result, in "potiche," ozon seems more like pedro almodóvar than himself, but maybe he's been going a new route, since the "angel" was characterized by similar elements. i haven't seen "hideaway." i feel bad drawing the parallel between two high profile gay directors (the two?), but also i don't. the comparison is apt. ozon's film, however, didn't have the depth of character or winding plot that mark almodóvar's films, its only plot twist seemingly intended more for humor than overall narrative effect.
it's about a woman, a housewife, who awakens to the cause of women at large after managing for a short time the umbrella factory that her father owned and that passed to her draconian husband when they were married. there are rabbits doing it in the woods in the opening scene, which is introduced in ballooned multi-colored titles. funny ha ha, and depardieu has gotten big. i was yawning for most of the first half.
free drinks at nel centro. no you can't take my picture for your blog.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
HOW TO KICK A DEAD GIFT HORSE (IN THE MOUTH THIS TIME)
although i have to agree with commenter 'unimpeachable bastard' that, "all [non-erotica] sex writing is pretty much laughably bad," i have to give laura miller credit for inaugurating salon.com's first good sex (the year's best writing in fiction) awards. as much as the attempt may be futile, miller's got it right with her premise: "writing well about sex -- one of life's most delightful and important activities -- is difficult, so instead of sneering and sniggering at the authors who get it wrong, why not celebrate the ones who succeed?"
salon will now be excerpting "good sex" passages from eight finalists, two today, two tomorrow, two on saturday, the runner-up on sunday and the top award winner on valentine's day monday. unfortunately, number eight (the excerpt on which unimpeachable bastard commented), from the petting zoo by jim carroll, doesn't bode well for the footing of the contest. we love us some penis talk, but this?
i'm sniggering. let's hope that places seven through one do better and that the good sex awards can make it into a second year and outlast the salon book club (though maybe that was just a summer thing and wasn't actually canceled). i'll be keeping my eye out all this year for nominees.
chin up, laura. the worse the selections, the more i'll be excited for your judges' comments.
update, 5:18 p.m.: from the looks of the comments posted after unimpeachable's, ms. miller's readers don't agree with her judges. will we even get number seven today?
salon will now be excerpting "good sex" passages from eight finalists, two today, two tomorrow, two on saturday, the runner-up on sunday and the top award winner on valentine's day monday. unfortunately, number eight (the excerpt on which unimpeachable bastard commented), from the petting zoo by jim carroll, doesn't bode well for the footing of the contest. we love us some penis talk, but this?
marta slipped off her blouse and shorts. then, before he could protest, she unsnapped his pants and withdrew his cock. it was no different than billy, half bewildered, half aroused. wet, and hissing through clenched teeth, marta straddled him again, and in one deft move, squeezed her fingernails into its base while insistently shoving the engorged head of his miraculous hard-on inside her...
there were no interruptions this time, however, and billy lost all passivity to the moment and his masculine instincts. grabbing marta’s classically rounded hips, he slammed her up and down on his perfect erection until he began to shudder in orgasm.
i'm sniggering. let's hope that places seven through one do better and that the good sex awards can make it into a second year and outlast the salon book club (though maybe that was just a summer thing and wasn't actually canceled). i'll be keeping my eye out all this year for nominees.
chin up, laura. the worse the selections, the more i'll be excited for your judges' comments.
update, 5:18 p.m.: from the looks of the comments posted after unimpeachable's, ms. miller's readers don't agree with her judges. will we even get number seven today?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
bookstores are having a hard time of it, and we're not just talking borders' continuing pavane with general electric, its creditors and the bankruptcy courts. independent bookstores have always needed to be hyper-sensitive and hyper-reactive to market changes, reading habits and the wants and needs of their communities to stay in business, but the quick rise of ebooks has proven to be more of a challenge to brick and mortar bookselling than even the popularity of virtual stores, which traditional indie sellers have in some cases been able set up themselves.
times are tough. add to that a general economic malaise, and it's understandable that bookstores are doing whatever they can to tighten their belts and hunker down for a long winter. but powell's? the hope diamond of independent bookstores and the cultural symbol of downtown portland?
thirty-one layoffs -- seven percent of its unionized workforce. it's never been easy to land a job at powell's (i remember going up to the fourth floor on my second day in portland and being all but laughed back down the stairs when i confidently presented myself for employment), but now it's more than apparent that we're not going to be seeing any postings for openings in the stacks at the store on burnside or in the local warehouses for at least another year. for details, this post at the portland mercury blog. not that we think there's really a chance of it, but we'll repeat the response in the mercury because you can't hear us knocking on wood: "DON'T DIE, POWELL'S! DON'T DIE! (please)" i can't promise i'll be buying any more new books this year than usual (christmas only comes once, and my nieces only have so many birthdays), but i'll do my absolute best to boost your used sales.
best wishes for an easy rebound to those thirty-one.
times are tough. add to that a general economic malaise, and it's understandable that bookstores are doing whatever they can to tighten their belts and hunker down for a long winter. but powell's? the hope diamond of independent bookstores and the cultural symbol of downtown portland?
thirty-one layoffs -- seven percent of its unionized workforce. it's never been easy to land a job at powell's (i remember going up to the fourth floor on my second day in portland and being all but laughed back down the stairs when i confidently presented myself for employment), but now it's more than apparent that we're not going to be seeing any postings for openings in the stacks at the store on burnside or in the local warehouses for at least another year. for details, this post at the portland mercury blog. not that we think there's really a chance of it, but we'll repeat the response in the mercury because you can't hear us knocking on wood: "DON'T DIE, POWELL'S! DON'T DIE! (please)" i can't promise i'll be buying any more new books this year than usual (christmas only comes once, and my nieces only have so many birthdays), but i'll do my absolute best to boost your used sales.
best wishes for an easy rebound to those thirty-one.
Monday, February 7, 2011
THE BIGGEST BIG CITY IN THE WORLD; or, TOKYO MON AMOUR
this post was originally drafted on december 12, 2010, just under two weeks after i returned from a month in japan. i'm picking up the thread of that initial effort somewhere around the end of paragraph four...
a.(drian) a.(nthony) gill is no stranger to criticism: he writes his own for the sunday times in the united kingdom -- and is readily and frequently criticized for his acerbic takes on culture and its makers. over the summer, a bbc presenter went so far as to file a complaint with the press complaints commission (the independent article where i read that implied that it's a huge deal) over comments gill made about her sexuality. so he should have been easy to pillory for his exceedingly reproachful take on japan and the japanese, thoughts that he put down in an essay called "mad in japan," which is headed "tokyo, september 2001" and appears in a collection of gill's travel writing entitled a. a. gill is away.
japan, in the entirety of its hidden and self-esteemed convolution, is too much for me to take up in a single post, which i don't say to recommend that it can't -- or shouldn't -- be done, but rather to pre-iterate a theme: that i can only take japan in meted doses. gill gave all of what he'd experienced of the country a dozen pages, probably the same number of days that he spent traveling in hiroshima, kyoto and tokyo (the same principle three that i showed my parents when they visited me for two weeks in february 2003 during my winter break.) my memories of hiroshima are occluded by distance, and i had my say on kyoto more than once while i was there. so this time we're dosing on straight tokyo, which i'm about to tell you is not an easy trip. (i haven't seen "enter the void," but the apartment i took in the city was in the area where that was set.)
to be honest, i'd planned a post on tokyo from well before arriving there. that city was the bright lights mecca of my early adulthood, and although i'd let the scales fall (you'll permit me that hackneyed idiom for knowing that they use a verbatim translation of it in japan) as far as my perspective on most things since i'd last lived there, i had reserved an exclusion for tokyo, the formative big city of my youth. gill's essay seemed like an easy foil. of course a non-initiate would be so immediately reproachful. gill derides: "but then, silly me, of course i don't understand. i'm constantly being patronized for my coarse sensibilities and told that naturally i couldn't comprehend the subtlety, the aesthetic bat-squeak of japanese culture." on the other hand, my own experienced understanding should be subtle and nuanced (i.e. sycophantically trained, subtlety and nuance being two of the most important tools for appreciating, and being appreciated by, the japanese).
having gotten to this point, though, i wonder if maybe that's just the impenetrability of the place, maybe the japanese have always had me in the dark and i've never had any claim on that city whatsoever; because despite all the starry-eyed planning -- and then the strange dismissive resignation -- i find myself with absolutely no way in, and everything i thought i had to say stops dead up against a wall of babble just as incongruously convoluted as my subject would like to seem. what was once, however, a mysterious magic now just seems drearily enervating. the harder i try to write around the inevitable in my lead up, the more i just succeed in drawing the outline of a place that has, for me, lost everything but a clichéd curiosity.
"if freud had lived in tokyo," gill writes, "we'd never have got analysis. he wouldn't have known where to start." it's tough to say whether the sexuality of the city is more confusing or confused, but there's no doubt that the bright lights and hyper-modern kitsch of tokyo's sex industry, which makes no attempt of hiding itself from view, are as representative of japan in the west as sushi or giant robots. the japanese are as eager to glom onto a fetish as admirers of japan in the west are to exoticize and fetishize all of its cultural quirks.
those damn scales, though, they drop easy. maybe it's just my frustration at having worked so long and hard to perfect a fluid and graceful posture within a such an opaque and rigid system of social strictures only to find myself still denied the benefits of being on the inside, but the cultural quirk of japan seems to be just a game of self-distraction played by the japanese to keep them from facing up to the paucity of their contemporary social ethos. i'll defer one last time to gill, quoting words of his that i felt so much righteous defiance towards when i first read them: "japan has taken the worst of the west and discarded the best. so it has a democracy without individualism...it makes without creating. and, saddest and most telling, it has emotion without love." but we loved each other once, didn't we, tokyo?
so this essay is ultimately about nothing, because, in the end, saying what i've said amounts to nothing more than crying over a breakup to friends at the bar, friends that couldn't be expected to know anything of the real tumult of the emotions on either side of the story but who listen (as you're reading) because it's the nice thing to do. sadly, in the terrible end it's also impossible to sound convincing when you say that things were once absolutely lovely. i drew the veil because i didn't want it drawn aside, and so when i planned this post on tokyo before arriving there in november, i saw myself walking the streets of that old flame to the soundtrack of "your silent face" by new order and "theme for great cities" by simple minds.
tokyo, you are a great city. the great city of my youth, the powerful eighties, and although i didn't know you until the end of the next decade, you still had that air of glory when we met. neither of us, however, can deny that all that's gone. i still listened to my soundtrack, and it still made sense, but only for the way we were (don't worry, i won't let streisand sully our memory). even if i didn't see you the same way, i took solace in individuals, our mutual friends. they didn't take sides. having given myself some time alone to think, i don't feel nearly so adamant about airing my grievances, but this post isn't finishing itself much differently than it started. that says something, right? no hard feelings, tokyo, but i think we're breaking up. we can be civil. there's no need to make our friends take sides now. and we'll always have, well...yeah. but you should have told me that you cheated on me with a.a. gill.
update, 2/8, 10:21 a.m.: i've got an email in my inbox from ameba, a japanese web magazine and social network of sorts that hosts a friend's blog. the subject line is, "women with clean toilets do well with men. a group of models and ame-blog readers share their manuals for becoming a more polished woman." i don't take back a thing. i meant it all.
a.(drian) a.(nthony) gill is no stranger to criticism: he writes his own for the sunday times in the united kingdom -- and is readily and frequently criticized for his acerbic takes on culture and its makers. over the summer, a bbc presenter went so far as to file a complaint with the press complaints commission (the independent article where i read that implied that it's a huge deal) over comments gill made about her sexuality. so he should have been easy to pillory for his exceedingly reproachful take on japan and the japanese, thoughts that he put down in an essay called "mad in japan," which is headed "tokyo, september 2001" and appears in a collection of gill's travel writing entitled a. a. gill is away.
japan, in the entirety of its hidden and self-esteemed convolution, is too much for me to take up in a single post, which i don't say to recommend that it can't -- or shouldn't -- be done, but rather to pre-iterate a theme: that i can only take japan in meted doses. gill gave all of what he'd experienced of the country a dozen pages, probably the same number of days that he spent traveling in hiroshima, kyoto and tokyo (the same principle three that i showed my parents when they visited me for two weeks in february 2003 during my winter break.) my memories of hiroshima are occluded by distance, and i had my say on kyoto more than once while i was there. so this time we're dosing on straight tokyo, which i'm about to tell you is not an easy trip. (i haven't seen "enter the void," but the apartment i took in the city was in the area where that was set.)
to be honest, i'd planned a post on tokyo from well before arriving there. that city was the bright lights mecca of my early adulthood, and although i'd let the scales fall (you'll permit me that hackneyed idiom for knowing that they use a verbatim translation of it in japan) as far as my perspective on most things since i'd last lived there, i had reserved an exclusion for tokyo, the formative big city of my youth. gill's essay seemed like an easy foil. of course a non-initiate would be so immediately reproachful. gill derides: "but then, silly me, of course i don't understand. i'm constantly being patronized for my coarse sensibilities and told that naturally i couldn't comprehend the subtlety, the aesthetic bat-squeak of japanese culture." on the other hand, my own experienced understanding should be subtle and nuanced (i.e. sycophantically trained, subtlety and nuance being two of the most important tools for appreciating, and being appreciated by, the japanese).
having gotten to this point, though, i wonder if maybe that's just the impenetrability of the place, maybe the japanese have always had me in the dark and i've never had any claim on that city whatsoever; because despite all the starry-eyed planning -- and then the strange dismissive resignation -- i find myself with absolutely no way in, and everything i thought i had to say stops dead up against a wall of babble just as incongruously convoluted as my subject would like to seem. what was once, however, a mysterious magic now just seems drearily enervating. the harder i try to write around the inevitable in my lead up, the more i just succeed in drawing the outline of a place that has, for me, lost everything but a clichéd curiosity.
"if freud had lived in tokyo," gill writes, "we'd never have got analysis. he wouldn't have known where to start." it's tough to say whether the sexuality of the city is more confusing or confused, but there's no doubt that the bright lights and hyper-modern kitsch of tokyo's sex industry, which makes no attempt of hiding itself from view, are as representative of japan in the west as sushi or giant robots. the japanese are as eager to glom onto a fetish as admirers of japan in the west are to exoticize and fetishize all of its cultural quirks.
those damn scales, though, they drop easy. maybe it's just my frustration at having worked so long and hard to perfect a fluid and graceful posture within a such an opaque and rigid system of social strictures only to find myself still denied the benefits of being on the inside, but the cultural quirk of japan seems to be just a game of self-distraction played by the japanese to keep them from facing up to the paucity of their contemporary social ethos. i'll defer one last time to gill, quoting words of his that i felt so much righteous defiance towards when i first read them: "japan has taken the worst of the west and discarded the best. so it has a democracy without individualism...it makes without creating. and, saddest and most telling, it has emotion without love." but we loved each other once, didn't we, tokyo?
so this essay is ultimately about nothing, because, in the end, saying what i've said amounts to nothing more than crying over a breakup to friends at the bar, friends that couldn't be expected to know anything of the real tumult of the emotions on either side of the story but who listen (as you're reading) because it's the nice thing to do. sadly, in the terrible end it's also impossible to sound convincing when you say that things were once absolutely lovely. i drew the veil because i didn't want it drawn aside, and so when i planned this post on tokyo before arriving there in november, i saw myself walking the streets of that old flame to the soundtrack of "your silent face" by new order and "theme for great cities" by simple minds.
tokyo, you are a great city. the great city of my youth, the powerful eighties, and although i didn't know you until the end of the next decade, you still had that air of glory when we met. neither of us, however, can deny that all that's gone. i still listened to my soundtrack, and it still made sense, but only for the way we were (don't worry, i won't let streisand sully our memory). even if i didn't see you the same way, i took solace in individuals, our mutual friends. they didn't take sides. having given myself some time alone to think, i don't feel nearly so adamant about airing my grievances, but this post isn't finishing itself much differently than it started. that says something, right? no hard feelings, tokyo, but i think we're breaking up. we can be civil. there's no need to make our friends take sides now. and we'll always have, well...yeah. but you should have told me that you cheated on me with a.a. gill.
update, 2/8, 10:21 a.m.: i've got an email in my inbox from ameba, a japanese web magazine and social network of sorts that hosts a friend's blog. the subject line is, "women with clean toilets do well with men. a group of models and ame-blog readers share their manuals for becoming a more polished woman." i don't take back a thing. i meant it all.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
SUNDAY HUMAN INTEREST
of late, it's come to our attention that "looking good in pants" has become disproportionately "bookish," and in light of that (granted, still very cultural) bias, we're reminded again of our responsibility to reporting on portland culture, our original raison d'etre. our return to our roots this time is admittedly a stretch, but to the extent that portland still lines up once a month for the soul night meat market, it's not without justification that we take it back to the numero group, a chicago based record label that specializes in the re-release of minor soul and blues music, a label with personal connections to columbus, ohio, the origin of our exodus to portland.
according to this article in the other paper, a colubmus indie weekly, it seems to have happened that ryan gosling was in possession of a compilation issued by numero, one track of which, "you and me," he had featured in his recent award nominated film, "blue valentine." i myself was won over by the scratchy doo-wop style of that track and made a specific point of waiting for the music credits when i saw the film (i amateurishly guessed carole king for at least the songwriting), and was disappointed to read that the song was credited to penny and the quarters, and act of which i knew absolutely nothing.
no one else seems to know anything about them either. dante carfagna, the columbus native who introduced his friend, a co-owner of numero, to "you and me" acquired it in a buy of tapes that were originally purchased at an estate sale for clem price, the owner of prix, a bygone columbus record label. of all of the boxes of music that carfagna got in that buy, the only one for which he wasn't able to confirm biographical information was the one that contained music by penny.
as a result of the popularity of "blue valentine," penny and her compatriots are now ringing up royalties (already more than one thousand dollars), but numero's owners haven't any idea to whom to write a check. but then, just yesterday, the columbus dispatch ran a story on a possible lead: "the female voice in a mysterious song from the 1970s that's making waves in a new movie might be that of a former columbus schoolteacher." after the story of "you and me" started riding the press waves, the dispatch interviewed the surviving siblings of that schoolteacher, barbara sue mccarrol, and, "although they can't be certain...[they] say the unidentified vocalist...sounds awfully familiar." the twist? mccarroll died at the end of this past december after a long battle with cancer.
mccarroll's brother and sisters are probably on the up and up and are probably happier that their sister is finally getting some overdue recognition than they are interested in claiming her share of her group's fame for themselves. i can't, however, help but wonder if they aren't trying to pull an "annie." that little orphan was a cash cow, and miss hannigan knew it. numero ain't no daddy warbucks, but i wouldn't knock mccarroll's siblings for scouring their attics for what may prove to be the silver locket in their own family drama. we're not here to cast aspersions. at this point, we're really only wondering who will reprise carol burnett's role in the movie. even if whoever it is doesn't tug your heartstrings as expertly as this story has, we're sure that the screen adaptation will have some killer musical numbers.
and barbara: whether or not it's you in "you and me," rest in peace. no doubt you had some pipes.
according to this article in the other paper, a colubmus indie weekly, it seems to have happened that ryan gosling was in possession of a compilation issued by numero, one track of which, "you and me," he had featured in his recent award nominated film, "blue valentine." i myself was won over by the scratchy doo-wop style of that track and made a specific point of waiting for the music credits when i saw the film (i amateurishly guessed carole king for at least the songwriting), and was disappointed to read that the song was credited to penny and the quarters, and act of which i knew absolutely nothing.
no one else seems to know anything about them either. dante carfagna, the columbus native who introduced his friend, a co-owner of numero, to "you and me" acquired it in a buy of tapes that were originally purchased at an estate sale for clem price, the owner of prix, a bygone columbus record label. of all of the boxes of music that carfagna got in that buy, the only one for which he wasn't able to confirm biographical information was the one that contained music by penny.
as a result of the popularity of "blue valentine," penny and her compatriots are now ringing up royalties (already more than one thousand dollars), but numero's owners haven't any idea to whom to write a check. but then, just yesterday, the columbus dispatch ran a story on a possible lead: "the female voice in a mysterious song from the 1970s that's making waves in a new movie might be that of a former columbus schoolteacher." after the story of "you and me" started riding the press waves, the dispatch interviewed the surviving siblings of that schoolteacher, barbara sue mccarrol, and, "although they can't be certain...[they] say the unidentified vocalist...sounds awfully familiar." the twist? mccarroll died at the end of this past december after a long battle with cancer.
mccarroll's brother and sisters are probably on the up and up and are probably happier that their sister is finally getting some overdue recognition than they are interested in claiming her share of her group's fame for themselves. i can't, however, help but wonder if they aren't trying to pull an "annie." that little orphan was a cash cow, and miss hannigan knew it. numero ain't no daddy warbucks, but i wouldn't knock mccarroll's siblings for scouring their attics for what may prove to be the silver locket in their own family drama. we're not here to cast aspersions. at this point, we're really only wondering who will reprise carol burnett's role in the movie. even if whoever it is doesn't tug your heartstrings as expertly as this story has, we're sure that the screen adaptation will have some killer musical numbers.
and barbara: whether or not it's you in "you and me," rest in peace. no doubt you had some pipes.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TWO HEADED COIN
early last month, scott esposito of "conversational reading" posted his interview with charlotte mandell, translator of zone by mathias énard, a book that i had just begun reading at the time but which i appreciated greatly, in no small way aided by mandell's fluid translation of what is for most intents and purposes a single sentence of over 500 pages. thankfully, the interview acknowledged the long sentence for the challenge it might have presented for the interviewee as a translator, but didn't dwell on it as much of the critical discussion surrounding zone has done since its publication in english translation. perhaps more on that interview later.
but enough for now. although i had every intention of expounding on that interview here today, i could only remember that i'd come across it via hyperlink at "maîtresse," and when i visited that blog to follow it again to esposito's, i came across a newer post on the orhan pamuk interview that was covered here last week (and on the same day as it was discussed at "maîtresse"). that post quickly consumed my attention. the take there:
i don't think that pamuk implies anything of the sort. the maîtresse reads and writes in french as well as in english. my own experience is in japanese. both of those languages get (widely construed) a wide variety of literature in translation. i've even lamented at this blog that i'm not able to share some of my favorite works of japanese literature with many of my friends in america because those works are only available in japanese or in french. the criticism shouldn't be that pamuk regards the anglophone book world too highly, but that the anglophone book world insulates itself too much in its own high regard. the problem is that less major writing from more marginalized sources goes completely unread here simply because of how relatively few books we translate and the decisions that are forced by that condition. as a reader, i'm certainly not trivializing the importance of a writer being read in his or her native language just because i'd like to be exposed to his or her writing. and that the writers we do translate are "provincialized" in reviews as nothing more than representatives of their countries is an unfortunate symptom of a book culture that may only know one or a few authors of a certain national origin.
what's more, pamuk was being interviewed by the guardian, an anglophone publication, and it seems obvious that he would react to what he saw as a fault of the dialogue on literature in the anglophone world. i suspect that his comments might have been different had he been speaking to le monde. i'll leave it to "maîtresse" to determine whether critics in france (quoting pamuk in reference to critics in the u.s. and britain), "say that this turkish writer writes very interesting things about turkish love," or allow pamuk's love to, "be general."
i did agree with "maîtresse" on one basic point (although, sadly, i don't think "the horse is dead" yet on the fundamental conversation on whether or not we should simply translate more, at least not in america): "we need new ways of thinking about world literature that don't presuppose the anglophone world to be the center of anything." indeed. but i don't understand why we can't agree that opening that world to more literature in translation would also further the dialogue that would give the lie to the problematic presupposition. unless, that is, we're to be ostracized and cut off from world literature entirely, in which case i might have to admit that we deserve it.
but enough for now. although i had every intention of expounding on that interview here today, i could only remember that i'd come across it via hyperlink at "maîtresse," and when i visited that blog to follow it again to esposito's, i came across a newer post on the orhan pamuk interview that was covered here last week (and on the same day as it was discussed at "maîtresse"). that post quickly consumed my attention. the take there:
the problematic part is that pamuk implies that the anglophone literary world is the only world that really counts, and if you don't publish in english it's as if you don't publish at all. "...their work is rarely translated and never read." as if to have one's work read only by other speakers of your native language is about the same as no one reading it at all...
so he's arguing that non-anglophone writers need to be translated into english to be "read" (by anglophones, who it would seem are the only readers that matter). but then he's complaining that once translated, those writers are treated as representatives of their countries in ways they find limiting...
but how can a work in translation not be treated as a work in translation, and therefore as a representative of another culture? especially if a plea is being made to translate more for the sake of translating more? to what extent is Pamuk suggesting we erase cultural difference in the service of literature?
i don't think that pamuk implies anything of the sort. the maîtresse reads and writes in french as well as in english. my own experience is in japanese. both of those languages get (widely construed) a wide variety of literature in translation. i've even lamented at this blog that i'm not able to share some of my favorite works of japanese literature with many of my friends in america because those works are only available in japanese or in french. the criticism shouldn't be that pamuk regards the anglophone book world too highly, but that the anglophone book world insulates itself too much in its own high regard. the problem is that less major writing from more marginalized sources goes completely unread here simply because of how relatively few books we translate and the decisions that are forced by that condition. as a reader, i'm certainly not trivializing the importance of a writer being read in his or her native language just because i'd like to be exposed to his or her writing. and that the writers we do translate are "provincialized" in reviews as nothing more than representatives of their countries is an unfortunate symptom of a book culture that may only know one or a few authors of a certain national origin.
what's more, pamuk was being interviewed by the guardian, an anglophone publication, and it seems obvious that he would react to what he saw as a fault of the dialogue on literature in the anglophone world. i suspect that his comments might have been different had he been speaking to le monde. i'll leave it to "maîtresse" to determine whether critics in france (quoting pamuk in reference to critics in the u.s. and britain), "say that this turkish writer writes very interesting things about turkish love," or allow pamuk's love to, "be general."
i did agree with "maîtresse" on one basic point (although, sadly, i don't think "the horse is dead" yet on the fundamental conversation on whether or not we should simply translate more, at least not in america): "we need new ways of thinking about world literature that don't presuppose the anglophone world to be the center of anything." indeed. but i don't understand why we can't agree that opening that world to more literature in translation would also further the dialogue that would give the lie to the problematic presupposition. unless, that is, we're to be ostracized and cut off from world literature entirely, in which case i might have to admit that we deserve it.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
FANNING THE FLAMES, part 5; or, IT'S NOT OVER UNTIL IT'S OVER
now that tao lin and i are "friends," i have to be careful expressing my opinions on his writing, not so much for fear that i would compensate for presumptions on the effect of our relationship on the degree of my positivity, but because i'm afraid that readers would expect that sort of compensation and thereby not necessarily interpret my statements as sufficiently or genuinely negative. looking back, i judge my previous treatment of lin (in parts 2, 3 and 4) to have been admirably fair -- even when skeptical -- but all of those other posts were written before i met the man himself, on which evening he learned from our conversation that i'd studied japanese literature, which then prompted him to inquire after my favorite authors, a difficult inquiry in that i hadn't actually met any of them, but i answered that, as far as contemporary authors, i appreciated ryū murakami, to which he responded that he had been asked to write a long essay for "thought catalog" on almost transparent blue.
that essay was posted yesterday. it's long. and why? in his own words, lin wanted to, "'exploit' my natural interest and write the 'end-all' english essay," on the book. this murakami certainly hasn't been read enough thanks to the other one, who's been much more extensively translated and enjoys a wide popularity (which lin, seemingly a fan, acknowledges), but he has been critically discussed even more seldom, at least outside of academia, despite his being a seminal writer and critic in japan of a status at least equivalent to the other murakami's. so, despite lin's good intentions and obvious fondness for the book, i would hate for this newly opened dialogue to end here, and can't help but think it pompous for someone who's only read one of ryū murakami's books to call the end.
granted, i sympathized with most of lin's take on the tone of the book, which he described as being imbued with the "mysteriousness" with which its first person narrator experiences his world. the narrator's delivery is always calm and intensely observant, even amidst an orgy or another character's drug induced frenzy in a tomato field in the rain, a blank stare rather than a directed vision. in contrast to other less abstract works, lin saw "almost transparent blue...more like 'this is something that happened from the perspective of one character, who viewed their own thoughts and feelings also as "things that happened," and so did not attempt to interpret them for himself or an imaginary other.'" lin also effectively describes the layeredness of the tone, which evokes the simultaneity of the narrator's physical and emotional experience, both inwardly and outwardly directed.
however, as much as his discussion of tone seems to hint at it (he writes of the narrator: "i am willing to include things the character might not have noticed, in the moment, with their full attention, but i will not include things the character was completely unaware of or didn’t think or feel or know at the time"), lin doesn't break through to what i think is possibly the most compelling element of almost transparent blue: the near complete dissociation of the first person narrator from the first person character. i don't have the book in front of me and haven't read it for years -- which probably disqualifies me from writing any sort of criticism -- but i'm almost absolutely certain that at one point, in a train on the way to a rock concert, i think, the narrator lapses and mentions himself in the third person. many of murakami's books are driven by manipulation of perspective (sometimes solely, as in the case of the quasi-sequel to almost transparent blue in which settings change based on the application of imagination to the end of some line of sight originating in the immediate action), and the calming effect of the almost overstatedly detailed (but not absurd or bathetic) descriptions of the narrator in almost transparent blue amidst the tumult of his character's surroundings are representative of murakami's keen attention that element of his writing.
and crap. i'm almost at 700 words, the length of the paraphrase and commentary piece that lin originally planned for his review of almost transparent blue. i'll take myself to task in deference to lin's effort and impose a word limit on myself. shying away? absolutely not. i didn't even have time to talk about the black bird! tao! you should have brought that bit out of your "miscellaneous notes" and expounded. i think it was important.
762. damn. ironically, i won't even finish under 800 if i try to explain that i very much sympathize with lin's difficulty in getting his essay to "lead somewhere." like him, "i felt, throughout, that i could write much more...ten times as much...and still feel like i was misrepresenting, simplifying, or blocking out certain aspects of the book." but then where's the "end-all"? of course, that term was in quotation marks in lin's essay as well, which probably means he meant it less certainly, perhaps even as a challenge to elicit contrary opinions. or maybe he just really wanted his essay to go viral, in which case i'm abetting him regardless of any criticism. should it bother me, though, that most of the response will be praise? just because he's written some books?
i've had at least five copies of that book over the years and at one time had one of them almost always on me. i'm going directly from the keyboard to powell's to get that second edition from the japanese section. but should i let pride stop me from encouraging the spread of something that will probably encourage a decently large group of people (and young, taste making people) to read a work of literature in translation? and one of my favorites at that? that's going to be how it sounds, because i only gave myself 700 words. or lin did, anyway, and that's 1000.
that essay was posted yesterday. it's long. and why? in his own words, lin wanted to, "'exploit' my natural interest and write the 'end-all' english essay," on the book. this murakami certainly hasn't been read enough thanks to the other one, who's been much more extensively translated and enjoys a wide popularity (which lin, seemingly a fan, acknowledges), but he has been critically discussed even more seldom, at least outside of academia, despite his being a seminal writer and critic in japan of a status at least equivalent to the other murakami's. so, despite lin's good intentions and obvious fondness for the book, i would hate for this newly opened dialogue to end here, and can't help but think it pompous for someone who's only read one of ryū murakami's books to call the end.
granted, i sympathized with most of lin's take on the tone of the book, which he described as being imbued with the "mysteriousness" with which its first person narrator experiences his world. the narrator's delivery is always calm and intensely observant, even amidst an orgy or another character's drug induced frenzy in a tomato field in the rain, a blank stare rather than a directed vision. in contrast to other less abstract works, lin saw "almost transparent blue...more like 'this is something that happened from the perspective of one character, who viewed their own thoughts and feelings also as "things that happened," and so did not attempt to interpret them for himself or an imaginary other.'" lin also effectively describes the layeredness of the tone, which evokes the simultaneity of the narrator's physical and emotional experience, both inwardly and outwardly directed.
however, as much as his discussion of tone seems to hint at it (he writes of the narrator: "i am willing to include things the character might not have noticed, in the moment, with their full attention, but i will not include things the character was completely unaware of or didn’t think or feel or know at the time"), lin doesn't break through to what i think is possibly the most compelling element of almost transparent blue: the near complete dissociation of the first person narrator from the first person character. i don't have the book in front of me and haven't read it for years -- which probably disqualifies me from writing any sort of criticism -- but i'm almost absolutely certain that at one point, in a train on the way to a rock concert, i think, the narrator lapses and mentions himself in the third person. many of murakami's books are driven by manipulation of perspective (sometimes solely, as in the case of the quasi-sequel to almost transparent blue in which settings change based on the application of imagination to the end of some line of sight originating in the immediate action), and the calming effect of the almost overstatedly detailed (but not absurd or bathetic) descriptions of the narrator in almost transparent blue amidst the tumult of his character's surroundings are representative of murakami's keen attention that element of his writing.
and crap. i'm almost at 700 words, the length of the paraphrase and commentary piece that lin originally planned for his review of almost transparent blue. i'll take myself to task in deference to lin's effort and impose a word limit on myself. shying away? absolutely not. i didn't even have time to talk about the black bird! tao! you should have brought that bit out of your "miscellaneous notes" and expounded. i think it was important.
762. damn. ironically, i won't even finish under 800 if i try to explain that i very much sympathize with lin's difficulty in getting his essay to "lead somewhere." like him, "i felt, throughout, that i could write much more...ten times as much...and still feel like i was misrepresenting, simplifying, or blocking out certain aspects of the book." but then where's the "end-all"? of course, that term was in quotation marks in lin's essay as well, which probably means he meant it less certainly, perhaps even as a challenge to elicit contrary opinions. or maybe he just really wanted his essay to go viral, in which case i'm abetting him regardless of any criticism. should it bother me, though, that most of the response will be praise? just because he's written some books?
i've had at least five copies of that book over the years and at one time had one of them almost always on me. i'm going directly from the keyboard to powell's to get that second edition from the japanese section. but should i let pride stop me from encouraging the spread of something that will probably encourage a decently large group of people (and young, taste making people) to read a work of literature in translation? and one of my favorites at that? that's going to be how it sounds, because i only gave myself 700 words. or lin did, anyway, and that's 1000.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
PONTIFICATION FROM THE PORCELAIN THRONE; or, ON POSTURE
yesterday evening, i spent quite a bit of time between dinner and dessert in the bathroom. my friend and hostess had a copy of playboy from april of 1964 near the toilet, and although i found out a short bit later that she'd bought it at cameron's downtown for the peter sellers' spread, it was the interview with jean genet -- seemingly his first from what the interviewer wrote in his introduction -- that held my attention after i had glanced over the ad photos of all those handsome sixties dandies in their slim suits. i didn't, however, finish the interview, because, entertained though i was, i had started to notice how long i'd been away from the table, which meant that suspicions were probably mounting back in the kitchen.
of genet's works i've only read "the maids" and "deathwatch" (because the latter was collected in the same volume as the first) and a bit of querelle of brest before giving myself over to the film adaptation. i'd been on a fassbinder kick at the time, and brad davis' chest was much more exciting than genet's prose in that book, my copy of which was of an exceptionally uninteresting design and with too densely packed text. (searching "querelle" just now for image results i find ample (really, very ample) pictures of davis and also realize that the image on the front jacket of the faber & faber edition of trisan garcia's hate: a romance was originally an illustration done by warhol which was used for the movie poster of fassbinder's film.) i once briefly owned a copy of our lady of the flowers, but it was inside of a bag of mine that was stolen a few years ago, a bag that also contained my passport (full except for one visa page) and a notebook of translation attempts. my money clip and my digital music player were on my person when the bag was taken, so the bag and everything in it (that brown polo i liked so much was in there too!) probably made it quickly to the trash.
so it wasn't so much genet that interested me as an interview with genet in playboy, a magazine with which i hadn't had much contact, although i certainly remembered hearing jokes about men who bought it "for the articles," which from my bathroom encounter did in fact seem to be quality, that april 1964 issue having also had an editorial on the kinsey report by hugh heffner who argued in it that the widespread persistence of homosexuality throughout history should be proof enough that homosexual practice wouldn't undermine the viability of the human species or its family units. i sat back down to the table wondering why there weren't smarter more literary periodicals for men who liked men. playboy seems (from my bathroom encounter) to have been, in a way, the "gay playboy" of a certain era (and to clarify, i'm concerned with quality content in a sex driven lifestyle magazine and not the sex driven content in particular), but what magazine fit that niche today? apparently (according to my hostess), playboy hasn't been much for at least a decade now and so doesn't fill that niche itself anymore. playboy wasn't, in other words, playboy anymore. it wouldn't have excerpted nabokov's posthumous novel, so whether any racier gay magazine did or would have was outside my comparison.
dessert was delightful: ice cream topped with shaved chocolate and almonds, served with cinnamon dusted molasses cookies, suitable to the theme of the fajitas and millet a la spanish rice that were served earlier, even if the zither music (which sounded about to launch into "happy birthday" in every song) wasn't. but, we could only listen to the two more appropriate records so many times, and the zither record was appropriate in its own way to a conversation about playboy in the sixties.
i didn't go back to the toilet to continue the interview. i did go back to the toilet, just not to read. genet had been a point of departure, but i'd been stupefied, blissfully, by the end of the meal and the wine (now also finished) and wanted to let the conversation carry on as it pleased from there. i needed time to process dinner.
it might maybe have been better to accept the invitation and stay the night. i could have borrowed that robe again, so short on me that i would have felt in real mid-century homosexual character as i drifted off with a book on the couch; but i chose a cold ride home over an earlier morning. if it's not the rain in this city, it's the goddamn east wind. my feet were completely numb by the time i made it across town, and all i could think about as they painfully defrosted under a couple of blankets was conscription, winter warfare, forced marches and frostbite. voluntary military service: what a blessing. that's freedom (and i imagine that mr. franzen's book reads something like this post). if i were being forced to march in the snow on feet that cold i'd probably break ranks just to get the bullet. it didn't take much to sympathize then with genet the deserter. i should have borrowed that magazine. no way i was finishing querelle before bed.
of genet's works i've only read "the maids" and "deathwatch" (because the latter was collected in the same volume as the first) and a bit of querelle of brest before giving myself over to the film adaptation. i'd been on a fassbinder kick at the time, and brad davis' chest was much more exciting than genet's prose in that book, my copy of which was of an exceptionally uninteresting design and with too densely packed text. (searching "querelle" just now for image results i find ample (really, very ample) pictures of davis and also realize that the image on the front jacket of the faber & faber edition of trisan garcia's hate: a romance was originally an illustration done by warhol which was used for the movie poster of fassbinder's film.) i once briefly owned a copy of our lady of the flowers, but it was inside of a bag of mine that was stolen a few years ago, a bag that also contained my passport (full except for one visa page) and a notebook of translation attempts. my money clip and my digital music player were on my person when the bag was taken, so the bag and everything in it (that brown polo i liked so much was in there too!) probably made it quickly to the trash.
so it wasn't so much genet that interested me as an interview with genet in playboy, a magazine with which i hadn't had much contact, although i certainly remembered hearing jokes about men who bought it "for the articles," which from my bathroom encounter did in fact seem to be quality, that april 1964 issue having also had an editorial on the kinsey report by hugh heffner who argued in it that the widespread persistence of homosexuality throughout history should be proof enough that homosexual practice wouldn't undermine the viability of the human species or its family units. i sat back down to the table wondering why there weren't smarter more literary periodicals for men who liked men. playboy seems (from my bathroom encounter) to have been, in a way, the "gay playboy" of a certain era (and to clarify, i'm concerned with quality content in a sex driven lifestyle magazine and not the sex driven content in particular), but what magazine fit that niche today? apparently (according to my hostess), playboy hasn't been much for at least a decade now and so doesn't fill that niche itself anymore. playboy wasn't, in other words, playboy anymore. it wouldn't have excerpted nabokov's posthumous novel, so whether any racier gay magazine did or would have was outside my comparison.
dessert was delightful: ice cream topped with shaved chocolate and almonds, served with cinnamon dusted molasses cookies, suitable to the theme of the fajitas and millet a la spanish rice that were served earlier, even if the zither music (which sounded about to launch into "happy birthday" in every song) wasn't. but, we could only listen to the two more appropriate records so many times, and the zither record was appropriate in its own way to a conversation about playboy in the sixties.
i didn't go back to the toilet to continue the interview. i did go back to the toilet, just not to read. genet had been a point of departure, but i'd been stupefied, blissfully, by the end of the meal and the wine (now also finished) and wanted to let the conversation carry on as it pleased from there. i needed time to process dinner.
it might maybe have been better to accept the invitation and stay the night. i could have borrowed that robe again, so short on me that i would have felt in real mid-century homosexual character as i drifted off with a book on the couch; but i chose a cold ride home over an earlier morning. if it's not the rain in this city, it's the goddamn east wind. my feet were completely numb by the time i made it across town, and all i could think about as they painfully defrosted under a couple of blankets was conscription, winter warfare, forced marches and frostbite. voluntary military service: what a blessing. that's freedom (and i imagine that mr. franzen's book reads something like this post). if i were being forced to march in the snow on feet that cold i'd probably break ranks just to get the bullet. it didn't take much to sympathize then with genet the deserter. i should have borrowed that magazine. no way i was finishing querelle before bed.
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