Simulacrum Sandwhich

            During moments of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, you’ll find yourself repulsed, disturbed, and aroused, sometimes in the same scene. Similar to Gene Wilder’s famous boat ride scene as Willy Wonka, Aronofsky steers us down his own Styx River, scaring the shit out of us along the way. The film is a juxtaposition of genres, camp, horror, noir, which by the end, have fused into an elegy of macabre proportions.

            Taking cues from Repulsion, The Yellow Wallpaper, and House of Mirth, Aronofsky uses Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as the milieu for his female protagonist to dance her swan song into insanity. As the film’s lead, Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers with total abandonment and gives the type of performance that wins Oscars and changes the course of women’s roles onscreen.

            Nina has just been chosen by her dance company’s director, Thomas Leroy (played by Vincent Cassel) to replace Beth Macintyre, (Winona Ryder) who has lost her place onstage and in Vincent’s bed. As soon as it seems that Nina has won the role of a lifetime, Lily, (Mila Kunis) a devil in a blue tutu, appears as her doppelganger and understudy. Already the archetypal White Swan, Nina is encouraged by Thomas to explore her darkside in order play the other have of the role, the Black Swan. The grimy subways and backstreets of Manhattan are a modern take on T.S.Eliot’s “Wasteland”. The film works establishing Nina’s environment as a gothic Gotham.

            Through the constant appearance of mirrors, we see the terrifying reflections and hidden refractions of Nina’s persona. Once Lily turns her androgynous advances towards Nina it’s understood that the two girls represent the Ying and Yang of a singular ego. With much success, Aronofsky dances with ideas from both Aristotle and psychiatrist Carl Jung. Binary oppositions of black and white, good and bad, anima and animus are apparent in the character’s personality and clothing colors.

            Failing, are the dancing sequences that expose a lack of empathy with ballet in which Aronofsky drowns Tchaikovsky’s vision with his own. Adding insult to injury, the choreography scenes are filmed too tightly, robbing them of their buoyancy. The 1977 film Turning Point, is an excellent example of a film that lets the dancing take center stage when needed.

Nina’s apartment (more like Ibsen’s dollhouse) that she shares with her mother, (Barbara Hershey) proves to be a better stage for the tight roaming shots that illustrate Nina’s taut anxiety. Hershey, resembling a cross between Gollum and a Jill Sander model, plays a mother whose past dancing failures fuel her vicarious micromanaging.

Work proves to be even less of a haven for Nina. The dancer’s behavior backstage mirrors the hedonistic antics of Jersey Shore. The catty company is a zoo of animal instincts, screwing over, and under, anyone it takes to reach stardom. With nowhere to turn, and losing her grip on reality, Nina’s self mutilation, demonic hallucinations and dark metamorphosis have become irreversible.

For all the female-centrism of the film, the presentation of it’s sexual politics fumbles in the hands of a male director. The film’s graphic sex scenes are charged with so much self-aware eroticism that they can’t help but veer into camp. But, as noted in philosopher Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”, Swan Lake is already the de-facto camp ballet.

 So, the more ambiguous charge is whether Aronofsky was aware that during his mediation on doppelgangers, he charged himself as the architect of Nina’s madness. Thomas is to Aronofsky, as Joe Gideon was to Bob Fosse in All That Jazz, and Guido Anselmi was to Federico Fellini in 8 & ½. The fact that both men are instructing, directing, and exposing Nina in directions that are either nurturing or exploitive, the similarities can’t help but be made between the two men in charge of the proceedings.  Whether Svengali or savior, Nina needed Thomas, and Lily, to awaken in her the passion needed for the dual roles.

In interviews, Aronofsky has stated that “Black Swan” is meant as a companion piece to his other film, “The Wrestler”. By the time Nina has hurled herself past the breaking point, she is much like the Greek myth of Leda. She has been raped by the very swan that she worshipped.

Lee Escobedo

127 Hours

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Clémence Poésy

Rated: R

Man has the unique perspective, whether by design or learned from tradition that his moral compass sets him apart from all other beasts as a logical being. Usually from within the safe confines of a classroom or over a few beers in a bar, we debate the “what if’s” of desperate situations.

However, when shit hits the fan, and your counting the hours until death, you might find yourself reminiscing on the strangest of memories and considering the most gruesome of acts.

This is where we find Aron Ralston (James Franco), the antihero of director Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, his right arm pinned beneath a boulder and stuck deep in Utah’s Blue john Canyon’s. Set less than two years after September 11th, it’s understandable that Ralston escapes the bull’s-eye of the consumer cultism of the city for the untamed wilderness.

Based on Ralston’s memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the film synchronizes brilliant work from pre to post-production. Franco’s understated performance, A R. Raahman’s guitar driven score, Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak’s lush and spatial cinematography and the adapted script penned by Boyle and Simon Beaufoy rip the brakes off a film that barrels into audiences hearts like a runaway train.

Boyle’s opening montage plays like a pinball machine, using abrasive editing that splices American society’s signs and semiotics into Ralston’s early morning packing. Ralston is a rebel without a care, leaving no note of his whereabouts and leaving his Swiss Army Knife at home (which will come back to painfully haunt him, literally).

Boyle has proven to be deft at helming films of various genres. 127 is his most idiosyncratic film since Trainspotting. Boyle seems to be having a hell of a time directing the film. Especially evident during the hallucinatory scenes, where he employs psychedelic cross cutting and a thick haze of ambient lighting. As a result, he brings the boyish exuberance of a young director.

Passion can sometimes breed reckless missteps, and Boyle’s hand often jabs too empirically during scenes of Ralston’s mental decay. Like last years Slumdog Millionaire, the director can’t decide if his film is a drama or comedy. Goofy one-liners and cocky camera angles are failed attempts at lightning the mood of a story that’s about stumbling in the dark before finding illumination.

After his early Golden Globe winning portrayal of James Dean, Franco has been compared to the late actor in his brooding looks and approach. However, Franco is more Montgomery Clift, possessing more of his tender touch than Dean’s clenched fists. With Ralston, Franco finds the method to his madness and descends delicately into territory that would overmatch most actors his age.

Carrying most of the film alone, Franco did what Boyle asked him to do, find the right amount of empathy within a character whose situation volleys between physical endurance and mental frailty. For his career, Franco’s been a memorable supporting character (Milk, Pineapple Express), and a forgettable lead (Annapolis, Tristan and Isled).

This film, along with his recent strange turn as Franco on General Hospital, should redefine his brand as a respondent performer. It was a timely career change for an actor who was fading from relevancy. Nominating Franco with an Oscar would be appropriate for an actor who came out of a role better than he went in. Awarding him Best Actor might be granting hero status to a man who like his character, defied expectations fueled on self-preservation.

For all his adrenaline pumping over the outdoors, Ralston is a minimalist to a point. Along with a bottle of water and a burrito Ralston bring his camcorder, which after the accident, proves to be a lens into the mind’s eye.

In a social network obsessed age, Ralston’s recordings predate Facebook to make him the star of his own movie. As his mind begins to crack he hosts his own game show, starring as host, contestant, and audience. The absurdity of having more gadgets than water serves as a warning to audience members who clutch their phones over their partner’s hand during the amputation scene.

It’s coming, and no matter how much you ready yourself, there is no preparing for the amputation scene. Boyle eases us in slowly, showing us the depths that Ralston goes to survive. We are stuck with him as he succumbs to drinking his own piss, admits on camera to a failed personal manifesto, and contemplates masturbating to feel pleasure one last time. With films like Saw and Hostel amputating audience empathy, the sickening aftertaste of the climatic severing scene refreshingly reminds us that we haven’t devolved into detached depravity yet.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Km9L1Sqd0

Director Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy finds John Lennon (Aaron Johnson of Kick-Ass) at a crossroads between destiny and personal destruction.

After the death of his beloved father figure, Uncle George (David Threlfall) each uncovered family secret and newfound friend change the course of his life and music history.

When we first meet Lennon, he is far from the pacifist of the 1960s Bed-In for Peace movement with his future wife Yoko Ono.

 The film’s title describes him rightly as a boy genius who is stuck in maturation limbo. The film frames him as a poet of fists and snark. He skips school to stroll around the neighborhood inflicting pain and pleasure to his classmates. Johnson resembles Lennon in the singer’s androgynous allure and captures the singer’s voice both in song and slur. He presents our antihero rebelling against an authoritative England whose ethos of extreme nationalism and academics are completely detached to Lennon’s pursuit of pleasure.

Relief comes in the form of a chance encounter with Screaming Jay Hawkin’s record, I Put a Spell on You. Soon after he meets his mother, Juliet, (the wonderfully disturbed Anne-Marie Duff) he uses Hawkin’s possessive hex to begin an Oedipal charged, but sexually subtle, relationship with her. He gives her the son she lost long ago and she introduces him to the concepts of rock ‘n’ roll and celebrity that lead to the formation of Lennon’s first band, The Quarrymen.

Lennon’s mother calls him her dreamer, and a dreamer he is. During a date to an Elvis concert-movie with his mom, he dreams for himself the screaming adoration, including his mother’s, that Elvis commands. He’s getting his fair share of sex on campus, but Lennon’s bent toward narcissism that flexes his ego. Juliet’s role is that of both mother and muse. However unorthodox the methods, she teaches him that rock ‘n’ roll is sex and therapy, and homage is paid in the poignant use of the real Lennon’s song, “Mother,” during the closing credits.

Wood keeps the incestuous undertones in check by balancing Duff’s performance with the emotionally sterility of Lennon’s aunt Mimi(Kristin Scott Thomas). Thomas demands your attention each time she’s on screen, the other half that balances Juliet’s dangerous passion for life with her own brand of totalitarian nurturing.

Both women instill a crucial personality trait that will influence the rest of Lennon’s counter culture life and self-preservation. Without this, he could have been another bloke who let the revolution pass him by and drank himself to death in the pub. Either way, Mimi and Juliet ensured that Lennon wouldn’t squander the brilliant poetic mind that would eventually serve as a voice for a generation.

Few people wanting to see the film are ignorant to the fate that lies ahead for Lennon at the hands of Mark David Chapman. This makes the cloak of death that followed Lennon throughout the years recreated here all the more ominous.

Wood crafted a film that reflects the research she’s put into examining Lennon’s early life. The scenes showing Lennon’s need to feel accepted by family and peers, explain his future obsession with creative control. Wood slyly hints at Lennon’s identity issues in scenes of early encounters with Paul McCartney (played with a surprising shoot from the hip charm by Thomas Brodie Sangster) are held together by the prepubescent competitiveness of two future legends.

The story is based on a book written by Lennon’s half-sister and focuses more on the family ghosts rather than Lennon’s rise to Beatles mania. It ends before the infamous trip to Germany where the Beatles would hone their sound and Lennon would explore drugs and his sexuality.

The film shouldn’t be approached as a depiction of the Beatles beginnings. In the film, McCartney and Lennon are two men fighting over adolescent insecurities not rock demigods fighting over how much reverb to use on their first album. This is a story of a prodigy finding his way from nowhere to somewhere. Even though that quest ended up at the top of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it began uncharted, off track, and out of control.

MEET THE FEEBLES

Warning: This review might have material that offends some viewers. I will redirect those who are weak minded stomached here—-> http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19791114/REVIEWS/51114006/1023

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yrI01TOlOE

When most people think of Peter Jackson they think either The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the multiple Academy Awards. He’s a director that’s carved a niche built on special effects, wide zoom shots, and epic fight scenes. This makes a recent viewing of Jacksons little heard of 1989 gem, Meet the Feebles, so damn ironic.

If you approach his sophomore release expecting something similar to King Kong or The Lovely Bones, you will be sadly disturbed and or disappointed.

By naming the film after the 1944 MGM jingoistic release, Meet the People, which promoted the film industry with gimmicky propaganda, Jackson wanted to show what the industry has evolved into.

As an insider now, it makes sense that he dismissed the film during the ’04 Oscars as being “rightly overlooked”.

The film contains a inside looks into the way that studios cheat, rob, and steal in order to make profit. It also can be analyzed under multiple microscopes of Marxist, feminist, and GLBT lens to see how different minority groups are framed as “otherness” within cinema.

The cast of characters are subversive plays on Jim Henson’s Muppets. Whereas the Muppets were given child characteristics such as naivety, curiosity, and child wonder, the Feebles are reflections of modern adults, exposing our deviant and manipulative tendencies. The story revolves around a group of performers that are preparing for a weekly episode of their variety show titled, Meet the Feebles. The film follows the decay and chaos that ensues when the shows star, a big titted hippo named Hedi (Miss Piggy’s doppelganger) as she is phased out from the show by her ex lover, the shows creator, a gangster Walrus named Bletch. The backstage hallways are dark and grimy, with the cast enjoying drugs, booze and each other while rehearsing for the show.By shooting the film in fuzzy gray and blue hues, it provides a morally ambiguous setting for Jackson’s puppet opus.

The film depicts snuff films, murderous rampages, and orgies as commentary on the dark side of humanity. It’s further when set against the end of the Reagan ear which was highlighted by Jingoistic ignorance of urban decay and a imprint of global imperialism.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the absence of humans. This furthers galvanizes the idea that these vile characters are representations of us at our worst. There’s no binary scope to outline the differences between man and puppet. Here we are represented by porno directing rats, threesome enjoying rabbits, and two timing walruses.

But the mirror doesnt reflect total bleakness. Characters do exist here that are devoid of existential ambivalence towards their actions. One of the subplots focuses on a porcupine named Robert, who’s just joined the Feeble cast, and falls in love with a poodle named Lucille. He, along with a cockney accented worm named Arthur, proved the moral gravitas to the film.

The plot itself doesn’t actually hold the film together. It’s the interweaving of each character’s story that illustrates the ideas that the movie is touching on. The first being, that humanity is capable of committing horrific acts. And trying to portray that by presenting the audience with hero/villain binary under the guise of a superhero, action adventure, or political thriller has been pushed to the point of sterility.

By framing something that were used to thinking of in a certain context, (puppets) acting out human sins, makes a more startling impression on a viewer. Especially a viewer that has become increasingly desensitized to violence on TV. and in film. In fact, the most startling scene in the film is a flashback montage involving the knife throwing, Vietnam vet, and drug addict frog named Wynyard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAcDQLOiDg

The scene is devoid of humor, focusing on sharp editing with footage that pays homage to The Deer Hunter and Platoon. You can see the future Jackson in this scene, obsessed with set design and a prima donna for bombs and blood. For a cast of puppets, it displays the horrors and self perseverance that is omitted in most war films. Movies such as Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor control the narrative to make you think that man’s moral compass points the straightest during battle.  The thing is we all want to survive, and sometimes we leave the guy that just saved our ass to ensure our own survival. Its a scary thought that the scene brings alive, and certainly accounts for Wynyard’s future drug habit.

A simple scan of the Halloween films playing now at the local Cineplex will show movies that rely on such celluloid offenses to our intelligence as naked girls making out with each other before being savagely eaten by piranhas. (Sadly this actually occurs in the film Piranha, out now.) In a culture that professes to embrace a spiritual center to their collective thinking, God is all but absent in today’s horror and comedies aimed at teens and adults.

Disney CEO Robert A. iger

A good analogy of what Jackson is trying to attempt is David Cronenberg and his most recent films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. In them, he takes an auteur approach in commentating on our desensitization to media, by stripping the violent scenes in his films of Hollywood glass and comically enhanced sequencing. These brutal fights and fucks are meant to jolt us from our passivity and challenge our thinking.

The film is incredibly hard to find today, but usually the films that are the easiest accessible are purposefully easily available for mass consume. Studios and their corporate backing hope multiple viewings will increase revenue and change public consumption towards the loud, bright, and shiny movies that perpetuate status quo and horde in revenue.

Here’s to the fucked up little films that continue to address the questions of morality and a need for organized belief systems by showing us at our worst. Every bad must have a good to compare itself to in order to exist. So like the inclusion of little “W”obert and his “Wovely” Lucille spat over his misunderstanding of her rape by Trevor the rat as consensual sex, (The little porcupine has a very annoying accent and pronounces his R’s as W’s) were reminded that amid bleakness and chaos, love and forgiveness can survive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1SiIS4JaZE

Last Friday, Harlem (http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/2009/06/17/harlem-and-matador/) played at Nightmare on Elm Street in Deep Ellum. I got backstage and interviewed the band. Heres my review and video! (Thanks to youtube user Tlove36)

By Lee Escobedo

                                                Hippies, Free Drugs, and Harlem

            “The fate of the world resides on this next shot so everyone shut the f*ck up!”

Harlem lead singer Curtis O’ Mara leaned over the foosball table, eyes bloodshot from PBR’s, cigarette tightly clinched between his front teeth, and did a three move combo that resulted as the game winning point. Unfortunately, it was the game winning point for his bandmate and Harlem bass player Jose Boyer.

            On a macro level we should all be worried such cosmic annihilation doesn’t rest on the shoulders of a hippie savant. In terms of micro salvation, the missed shot and subsequent ranting that occurred afterwards, in no way affected the kinetic energy that permeated the small Deep Ellum rock venue, Club Nightmare.

            Well after the show at least 30 Hipsters still hung around, drinking canned beer and smoking. They were unable to kick the feeling that might have just seen one of the greatest performances of charming punk and lowbrow aesthetics that the Dallas music scene has produced in awhile.

            The band played songs from both Hippies and their debut album Free Drugs. Their set was punctured with bursts of chaotic acid jazz, filtered through dissonance and heavy feedback. The crowd was one big wave, riding out the tide of melodic crests and discordant troughs. All throughout the set the audience stood entranced, off of the greatest free drugs of all, endorphins.

            26-year-old Harlem fan Kenneth McKee was certainly feeling the Big Sur like waves of musical harmony.

            “I remember at a 48 hour electronic festival out on the hills of north Austin, I was high on ecstasy and I remember a sense of unity and flow that kept all of us up all night,” McKee said. “This was on a smaller scale but tonight I wasn’t high on anything but I definitely felt something similar. Something flowed out of their show that really had all of us totally buying into the vibe.”

            Harlem credits the flow of the concert with the unity of the band.

“Were like band of brothers, their common goal was killing Nazis,” says O’ Mara. “Our common goal is killing Nazis.”

                        Friday night was the last leg of Harlem’s tour promoting their newest album Hippies. They will return to Austin where vocalist and drummer Michael Coomers says they will recover from “weed and beers” with “weed and beers”.

            The show was set up by popular DFW music blog, and 2010 Dallas Observer Best Booking Agent nominee, Parade of Flesh. POF creator John Iskander splits his time between teaching Social Studies and booking punk and metal bands. Iskander says he uses nightmare alot for booking his bands because of the intimate vibe.

            “You can tell this was a great show because everyone stayed around after the show,” Iskander said. “I picked Harlem because I love their music. 90 percent of the bands I book I listen to a lot.”

            Nightmare occupies what used to be hip-hop club, The Lounge. It opened up in June and serves as a local stage where metal and rock bands can play in front of audiences smaller than Palladium Ballroom but large enough to still have more than 60 people in attendance.

            After beating O’ Mara and then adding salt on his bandmates wounds by ratting on his drunken hookups, Boyer is looking for the silver lining.

            “Were a brotherhood on stage,” he explains. “But off the stage we hate each other. Doesn’t matter though cause at the end of the day were just happy to be doing this.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA87lhkAZ3E

I am bringing this blog back for a second semester!
My first review will be of the 1996 art film Basquiat, which covers the rise and fall of neo-expressionst Haitian painter, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here is a trailer and a few paintings to first familiarize yourself with his work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeTT9XYesnw

I must confess, as a follower of surrealist and post modern aesthetics, Basquiat is my favorite painter and the most powerful expresser of human response to society. The film is written and directed by his friend, and fellow painter, Julian Schnabel. It’s his debut film and he is blessed to already have a defined artistic statement, along with a rat pack of A+ underground character actors. David Bowie slurs and moans as Andy Warhol (which is fabulous for any rendition of Warhol), Dennis Hopper plays art collector Bruno Bischofberger, Gary Oldman playing Schnabel’s doppelganger, Albert Milo, and Michael Wincotte as ARTFORUM writer, and Basquiat discoverer, Rene Ricard. (Here is his piece on Basquiat he wrote for the ARTFORUM after discovering Jean-Michel -http://www.smartwentcrazy.com/basquiat/text/jmb_radiantchild.htm)

Schnabel uses surrealist editing themes (such as Jean-Michel seeing a man surfing on a wave every time he looks at the sky (viewable in trailer) to show Basquiat’s schizophrenic way of seeing the world. The film starts in the West Village of Manhattan, showing Basquiat climbing out of cardboard boxes, which served as sheltered beds during rainstorms, and wooing waitresses with portraits fingered out of pancake syrup. Sadly, it also shows him snorting coke with his SAMO collaborator Benny Dalmau (played by Benecio Del Toro), a small step towards a eventual full blown heroin addiction that would kill him. The films gravitational pull is centered around Jeffery Wright’s low-key but elegiac lead performance. Wright is a deeply underrated talent who has brought a Stanislavski/Strasberg school of method approach to every role he has done. Whether playing Colin Powell in W., a Puerto Rican drag queen in Angels in America, or Martin Luther King Jr. in Boycott he displaces himself from the role and absorbs every nuance so that he is reacting to the scene as that character. He’s one of the few minority actors in cinema that doesn’t let the studio market his race or fall into the BET/era predeterminist trap that controls other minority actors performances. (See Denzel Washington in Training Day or Halle Berry in Monsters Ball)

Basquiat is a fine film, filled with behind the scenes confessions that only an insider like Schnabel could have given. However, the film is at times is overly cluttered with characters. This could have given the film a manic pace but instead clutters the staging of scenes. The film is fine with implicating his surrounding as accomplices in his downfall, but lacks in assigning Basquiat his due responsibility of his own demise. After reading Phoebe Hoban’s A Quick Killing and watching Basquiat friend, Tamra Davis’ documentary, Radiant Child, I saw that Schnabel’s film found the director caring more about constructing a detached simulacrum of the 80’s art world instead of letting Basquiat’s life exposition his death with his habitual self destruction. However, this is a film that is worth seeing as insight into the eighties art world, which was unlike any other of the century. At that time New York City served as a commune, although wrought with hierarchy, that let creative growth fester and bring people from different mediums together. Nevertheless, here was a vanguard collection of American vagabonds and superstars that jarred the sterilized art world that came before. They combined the high and the lowbrow (not without initial hesitation) with a convergence of the different art mediums into a big orgy of self expression and intertexualization.

I’m sure when it premiered, the film didn’t step on too many people toes. It’s safe enough for the average cinema watcher to enjoy and also serves as a great introduction to Schnabel. He has become a fledging auteur with his canon of small, but personally crafted films. I think Wrights performance is one of the best in American cinema history and Bowies Andy Warhol is the truest testament to the artist that has yet to be seen on celluloid. The films post punk soundtrack, featuring Iggy Pop, Public Image LTD., and John Cale, echoes the hollow, absurd lifestyle of the great American painter. Some of the best scenes feature Basquiat transforming everyday found objects into works of art. Broken doors, refrigerators, his girlfriends dress, etc are readily re-imagined into 20th century cave walls, where his hieroglyphics depict the everyday, same ol shit, of hunting for food and living for pleasure.

A masterpiece? No. A masterpiece within a masterpiece? Maybe. There are some things to ponder here. The lead performance, the assuredly of first time director Schnabel, and the rambling, sparse script that turns quotes into delving probes on ulterior motives and ego affirmation.

I want to keep these blog entries short so that the reviews don’t seem overwrought. I am going to experiment with size, content, visuals, and narrative structure to give the best reviews possible in the future!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUU-q5GXTU4

I spend every Sunday with my mom. My parents have been divorced since I was 6 and we have only recently begun to develop a close and lasting bond. I consider her one of my best friends now and enjoy her intellectual curiosity on all subjects including insects and post-punk bands. She is a avid fan of film, which is where I must get it from, and we decided to visit the local cinema by my house in Cedar Hill for a movie. Film has been a bonding force for us and was the initial bond on which we rectified our relationship. Predictably, there was only comedy pap and special effects trash available for viewing. Until, at the very end of the yahoo movie list online, I saw Oceans. I quickly researched it and saw that it was a French documentary on the worlds Oceans and their effect on all other living matter. I was excited to see the organisms that inhabit the biggest ecosystem in the world, and my mom was equally excited to see how they handled the economic and pollution ramification of mankind on the seas. The film is produced by Disney and directed by french filmmaker Jacques Perrin. The film costs over 50 million euros (About 67 million dollars) and uses the most high tech cameras available. The film concentrates in the negative ramifications of mankind on the environment without being overly preachy. It saves the humanitarian message for the end and instead, focuses the bulk of the film on the natural habitats of the oceans animals. It uses the sounds and sights of crashing waves against rock formations off of New Zealand to demonstrate the magnificent power of mother nature. There are tender moments of sea otters, polar bears, and sperm whales show motherly instincts such as teaching their young to swim, cuddling up to sleep, and instructing how to catch food. There are vicious sequences of the food chain, sharks eating otters, Orca’s eating otter, and Otter’s eating fish. The hierarchy of the ocean is old as the waters itself, establishing a ruling domain of eat and/or be eaten. The shots are jaw dropping, the movements fhe animals on the ocean floor resemble at times, Anna Pavlova preforming the Dying Swan. The film reminds us, in one montage of thousands of Spider Crabs marching to war against other seemingly identical spider crabs, that the world of the deep closely resembles that of our own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DfJc0Une5g&feature=player_embedded#

I have really enjoyed claymation over the years. From the early MTV show of Celebrity Deathmatch to my childhood memeories of the christmas specials that were made with stopmotion animationand clay. One of the creepest ones was a movie with Mark Twain and a bunch of kids titled, Mysterious Stranger. Other great claymation films are The Adventures of Tom Thumb, Brothers Quay, and Jans Svankmajer’s Alice, Faust, and Little Otik. A excerpt of Alice can be found here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wHMgTPF-s

Calymation is a awesome medium that should be a intresting medium in the age of aggresive CGI and overrelaince on blockbusters.

After a week of contemplation I have constructed my top ten most important films of the decade. These are not necessarily my favorite but the ones I find the most progressive and important in 21st century film.

This was extremely difficult. I had to omit films that were largely monumental due to performance in favor of a holistic approach to how a movie, to quote Heath Ledgers Joker, changed things.

10. Grizzly Man- The best documentary I have ever seen and one of the few I have watched on multiple occasions and still came away without a explanation. This is on the list not only for the subject matter but also as a handbook for future directors to make a soundly objective, yet warmly engaging documentary. This film features one of the most enigmatic characters ever explored on film. Timothy Treadwell is a product of this country’s rapid progression of seeing its population as consumers over human beings. Jingoism, mass consumerism, soulless capitalism, and substance dependence should be held accountable for how we view Mr. Treadwell. Whether we know it or not, these factors creep into our subconscious, persuading us to see him as either outcast, Eco-martyr, or lunatic. I admittingly see too much of myself in his sorrow to minimalize both of us with a label.

9. Y Tu Mama Tambien- A intimate, sometimes too intimate, portrayal of the 21st century male. No longer comfortably identifiable by masculinity or sexuality, all lines are blurred in the pursuit of sexual exploration. This film was made before the advent of social sexing, so the results of today’s  idle mores are scaled down then they otherwise would have been. It states the facts: more youths today are more disinterested in social and religious morals and are more likely to construct their own personalized creeds. These creeds involve a detached involvement in incest, homosexuality, and adultery. Even if it means ruining the most important relationships for one night of sexual ecstasy

.

8. Ghost Dog- Jim Jarmusch’s anti-establishment take on the samurai film. Already creating his own Frankenstein renditions of the western (Dead Man), romantic comedy (Stranger Than Paradise), and the escaped convict film (Down By Law), he now turns his attention to today’s inner city violence. He also gives just attention to how each trigger happy gang (separated by race) has there own code of ethics while relishing in sadomasochistic violence.

7. Julian Donkey-Boy- A deeply disturbing descent into the mind of a schizophrenic. A young man Julien (Edwin Bremmer in a breakout role that somehow failed in launching his career. This is probably because he was convincing enough that observers believed he was playing himself. Kormine adheres (mostly)to the Dogme 95 manifesto of independent DIY film making and creates a slice of real Americana. Smashing together non nonsensical and morbid images of a family bounded to incest and mental deterioration, the brilliant Harmony Kormine reminds America that by engaging in sodomy with imperialism and greed, she has given birth to Beelzebub, lord of the flies.

6. Punch-Drunk Love- This is THE role that made film watchers aware that Adam Sandler could perform in dramatic films. A dizzy, disorienting love story that’s interrupted with bouts of rage and pornography. A portrait of a tortured man trying to find solace in love but is being harassed by a sex phone manager played with arrested development by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. A man beset by self loathing and rage Paul Thomas Anderson and Jon Brion’s score, allow for Sander’s Barry Egan to reach a desperate catharsis that saves him and his love. (Emily Watson)

5. Cache’- I was talking to a friend at work the other day. He said his wife nearly kicked him out of the house when he was watching the lesbian scene in Muholland Drive. However, they could sit around the TV and watch 300 together or slay Orcs on the family network with World of Warcraft. It reminded me of how this country views sex and violence. The naked human body is something to be feared, while we can watch terrorists’ head get shot off on 24. With daring bravado, this film examines violence and its relationship with media.Of course, this being a Michael Haneke film, it also explores the nature of man and how we have become detached from human suffering and are constantly rationalizing the abuses we perpetrate on one another.

.

4. No Country For Old Men- Adapted from a novel by the Colonel of the post-modern western, Cormac McCarthy, the Coen Brothers bring a trio of binary gravitas to a film that examines a diaspora that is slowly weeding out its morality. Some of the deadly sins have been committed and the devil incarnate, Anton Chigurh, has been dispatched to reap souls for damnation. The best thriller of the decade and the most important film the Coens have made since their debut with Blood Simple. Electrifying breakout performances for Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem (A superb character actor who has worked in Spanish film for some time) and maybe the most deeply moving performance of Tommy Lee Jones career as the weary sheriff.

3. My Winnipeg- Guy Maddin’s love letter to the deceased Derek Jarman, a surrealist tale of suburban self loathing. Industrialization has killed personalized identification and made a fortress of steel and glass. This is the world Maddin is trying to escape. Key word on trying, he is stuck in a proverbial purgatory. A matrix type world where memory and fiction coexist to paint a decaying portrait of life.  Shot in stark black and white, the film uses Jarman’s technique of stream of consciousness like narration overlapping dreamlike images of Maddins past. This film is a wake up call to all of the mindless pap that continues to get executive funding while personal and artistic projects like these are left on the drawing board. Townies beware, you are part of a absurdest cycle of  monotony and commercialization

.

2. Brokeback Mountain- One of the greatest love stories ever produced on celluloid. Brutal and violent, society fights against nature as the social dogma of the times ascend on Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. In a country that is haunted by its own homoerotic repression, all forces of society hunt  to kill them for indulging what is second most natural to us after chaos, love

.

Sorry I have been out for awhile!  Too long for a blog that is supposed to be updated on Fridays. As it goes I have been dealing with a few interpersonal relationship issues that have taken precedence over this and other endeavors. I hope that it shall not interfere to the same degree again, and that the art will outlast the artifice! Cheers Comrades!

Here are my Top ten Lists for the year (09), with the decades best coming tomorrow. Crispin Glover article coming Monday!

2009

10.  The Princess and The Frog- I know this has to look out of place. But in fact it is. It is a welcome the return of Disney to hand drawn animation. After a orgy of CGI movies the last decade (Pixar has made some very moving pieces, i.e. Wall-E and Up, which I wish I could have found room for but alas) Its refreshing to see a story with the freshness this film projects. It hearkens back to the best of Disney (Late eighties, early nineties) and goes places the corporation has to dared to go before. A African American/Caribbean love story set in the jazzy swamps of New Orleans, the story is a tribute to the music and milieu of New Orleans. A special dedication to a still ravaged city. (See Spike Lees-When the Levee Breaks)

9.  Watchmen- The film, by proto-deutchbag Zach Snyder, is much better than 300.  Unfortunately it works best as a companion to the actual groundbreaking graphic novel. Alan Moore might be the most genius writer of the 20th century. This is a heavy handed comment given the competition. However his writings and ideas transcend the medium of comics and literally are so great of a aesthetic, that one must fully mediate on it for great lengths afterwords. Never meant as commercial pap, Moore’s Watchmen is one of the reads, like Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra, Russell’s Why I am Not A  Christian, and Salingers Catcher in the Rye that make you question your entire way of  looking at life. The film however gives the novel justice but leaves out alot simply because there’s too much heavy shit to handle in 2 hours. The best part about the film is the casting and mood. It is able to duplicate for the most part the noir’ish feeling you have when reading the comic, that impending doom of either global destruction or ethically demise. The casting works on so many levels with the great choice of Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach. Picking up on all of the Manichean pathos, the film in my opinion does what Moore did not. It highlights Rorschach as the “hero”  and whether you agree with this move or not, Haley should have the most screen time.

8.  Julia-  A gritty film that reminded me of Amores Perros but with a androgynous twist. Tilda Swinton, the BEST actress making films anywhere, brings her punk inspired approach and flame red mane to a film that desperately needs a center. She provides mother in more ways than one, bringing brains and control to a film that would otherwise fall flat on its formulaic face.

7.  Where The Wild Things Are- Spike Jonze’s new film is a anthropomorphic creature masquerading as a film.  Screenwriter and author Dave Eggers gives it it’s heart by  encompassing the brutal realities of childhood. Loneliness, despair, regret, everything that never leaves, but seem most intense as  a child. Here he puts us on display, his own personal zoo, for us to watch ourselves dressed up as huge carnivorous beasts with the same infantile desires that mirror our own. Its knowing without having to call it by name.

6. Elegy- The best attempt at adapting a Phillip Roth novel yet. One of the realest translations of human attraction on film. The mixture of lust and art provide a steamy backdrop to the existential conundrum of Ben Kingsly’s David Kapesh. It’s sad, knowing now the condition of Dennis Hopper’s health, how prophetic this film would come to be. Albeit, he gives the most translucent and honest performance of the whole piece. Penelope Cruz gives a haunting performance as his muse and the forgettable Peter Sarasgard (who hasn’t been noteworthy since Boys Dont Cry and Garden State) give exposition to Kapesh as a morally defunct man. As a man, masculinity  is a constant theme in Roth’s work,  he combats the intellectual fortress he has attained with his work with the hedonistic hunting of post modern sex.

5.  Food Inc.- No review needed. Watch this film and unless your receiving a daily colonoscopy, you will change the way you eat.

4.  Moon- First SAM ROCKWELL got snubbed by the Oscars!!! Second, this is a uniquely original science fiction film that stands out in a genre that usually chooses blood over brains. The list is short but powerful when noting the greats. The original Solaris, Gattaca, The Fly, Pi, Alien, Blade Runner, Scanner Darkly, Ghost in the Shell,  Paprika, Dark City,and the mecca of them all 2001. This deserves its place. Rockwell gives a multiple performance as clones who become self aware and then do what any actualized being would, they revolt. Major first work by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones.

3.  Control- Watching the rise of Joy Division and yet knowing, the eventually tragic fate of its front man Ian Curtis, is equivalent to getting the shit kicked out of you by four masked tyrants in a dark alley. You get to feel all of the senses of being human. I remember when I walked out of the theater after seeing this beautifully photographed picture, I watched as a homeless man, after ignoring my help, scratched at the brick wall for relief that would not come. It made me realize that we never know the potential that exist in man, yet we are so quick to extricate him into the edges of society. This is so society doesn’t have to  be present when its creation breaks.

2. Away We Go – It was Dave Eggers year. The author penned two of the best screenplays and still wrote a novel set during Katrina ravaged New Orleans. This film is a TRUE date film. It will basally set you and your mate up with the confounding questions of commitment and choice. Choice to stay or go through all of the bullshit. Mine, yours, ours, theirs, everyones is present and along with a impending pregnancy, the couple (thoroughly convincing and fantastically interracial: Maya Rudolph ((ANOTHER OSCAR SNUB)) and John  Krasinski) explore the road map of America when trying to find a place to raise their child. Along the way Eggers and Oscar winning director Sam Mendes take us to the saddest parts of the brain and most loving places of the heart.

1. In  A Single Man- The best film of 2009. A heartbreaking work of a man (cognitively unrecognizable Colin Firth) shattered into a million little pieces by his lovers (A suitable Matthew Goode)  death.  Firth gives the performance of his career, which isn’t too difficult given he usually plays his flub and flab perfectly in British romance comedies. Here however, he lays himself stripped bare in Tom Ford’s directorial debut. The fashion designer weaves a morally abstract tale based on Christopher Isherwoods novel. With a Oscar worthy supporting performance by Julianne Moore and set design that’s truly a period throwback it only adds to its must see status.A Single Man is a minimal tale of human desperation when the waves of love and death collide.