Tampa and Xquisite

It's important to keep up with whatever Steven Soderbergh's doing because he's one of the most talented American Independent filmmakers currently working. He also does studio productions, but it is apparent that creative freedom means a lot to him. There are rumors that he's "given up trying to make important films"; however, his work is nevertheless intriguing because he's finding projects that cost less and he keeps churning them out. His worldview is sophisticated and typically seeks out nuances pertaining to mass media pop culture and to a lesser degree, historical and global political subjects; but, he also knows how to be sexy and gear vehicles toward younger or say, more lowbrow audiences.

Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderbergh) is both fun and funny. The title character definitely anchors the narrative and Channing Tatum's role in the film is a star turn that capitalizes on his star persona and a reported real life stint as a 19 year old stripper in Tampa. But, in many ways, Matthew McConaghuey steals the show. McConaghuey stars as the owner of the Xsquisite all male revue club, Dallas, and projects such charisma mixed with pastiche of his own star persona that he can come across as the only character with any real life to them.

So if I may backtrack, Magic Mike is a fun movie about Dallas and his career. Dallas is flamboyantly over the top, larger than life, dripping with some West Coast type semblance of what must be an attempt at the country boy mystique, but all the while completely straight-faced about it. At one hilarious moment, Dallas is getting his troops motivated and waxes something like: "This isn't a joke."

But of course we know it is. The tone of the film is that of a familiarly over-recylced narrative: backstage performer drama, or ingenue + veteran performer + power producer/manager + one star ascends as another descends. See also 42nd Street (1933, Lloyd Bacon), A Star Is Born (1937, William Wellman), Stage Door (1937, Gregory La Cava), All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven), Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes) or Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky) for examples.

What Magic Mike adds to the backstage performance genre is a well-placed sense of cheapness. The millieu here is morally and ethically on par with Showgirls; however, Showgirls celebrates excess, whereas there's something sad about all of these young dumb sexy kids in Tampa. Mike reminds me of a strata of subculture I perceive as dressing cooler, looking sexier, and partying way more than I do in real life. (I suppose the Olivia Munn charcter is offered as my surrogate.) So, while Mike has no problem getting paid or laid in Tampa, he also suffers from a stasis that he can't quite overcome. And in the film, he isn't equipped to. Mike's practically naïve
to the point of being stupid; or not just naïve, but disaffected. Normally I don't criticize qualms like this so harshly, but I found a few troubling issues with the script:

• Why doesn't Mike ever tell The Kid more, like what's really bugging him?
• Why does Mike give The Kid so much money and not seem to care?
• Why does Mike quit right after giving away his savings?
• Why does Dallas spend the whole movie refusing to dance, then does with no explanation?

In addition to all of this, the scene in the bank where he wears the clear lenses/fake glasses to look professional speaks a lot about what Mike's really all about. He seems to be performing the role of an entrepeneur as if he were onstage in Xquisite. And his table business at first was something I found virtuous, but by the end, like The Kid, I thought it was just stupid crap.

If I'm being hard on Mike, it's actually because I feel genuine sympathy for his character. He's like a Replikant out of Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) in the sense that he's young and stupid and he knows he's about to die. In all seriousness, I find something poetically and profoundly tragic about a thirty year old male stripper.

Okay, so if Vegas is the locus of the glamorous excess found in Showgirls, then Tampa is more of a hotbead for dumb strippers and sorority sleaze. Everyone looks beautiful in this filmed Tampa, but in a cheap and trashy way. Soderbergh matches his content with a form that lets most of the strip club action play out in long takes from very wide angle masters. There's not a lot of camera movement, but Magic Mike doesn't suffer from the filmed-play look that marred The Girlfriend Experience (2009, Soderbergh). He's right--the club is filmed like a real strip club or a document of one, as opposed to a strip club that's been lit like a movie and filmed from a bunch of different coverage.

Finally, to support my claim that there's a cheap theme throughout this movie, I'll just bring up the Warner studio card from the 1970s and the montages. I can't figure out why they used the Seventies Warner logo. Because movies started showing a lot of sex in the Seventies? Because porno movies began being produced in the Seventies? I guess. The visuals are all glittery (the black and white ecstasy deal into red and blue sexcapades particularly proved eye-catching). But the montages in Magic Mike indulge the greatest strength of the montage. To compress time? No--to have cheesy fun. The montages cracked me up almost as much as wathcing the men dance.

No matter who you are, it's weird, but I imagine you'll find this movie hilarious. The theatre I was at was packed with women, but there were explosions of laughter continually throughout the screening. I think there is a sense of as laughing with/not at these courageous exhibitionists.

Riley Keough and her micro pig are awesome in the movie.

--Dregs

New Penzance and the Original Path of the Old Chickchaw Migration

I'm late to being a fan of Wes Anderson's films. I still don't think he's earned the right to try to be dark. The success of Moonrise Kingdom arises out of its bright telling of the classic hero journey.

The compositions in the Bishop family home are brilliant. The dolly tracks are flat and recall the golden age of studio production. (Dolly tracks occur continually throughout Moonrise Kingdom and are similar to each other--always wide lens + same speed + flat background.) The compositions in Moonrise Kingdom are not flat in the sense of being dull; but, this descriptive language seems potentially ineffective or flawed because flat can also be used to describe dull images, which is also subjective, and I cannot say I found a single shot in this movie to be dull. The shots are flat in the sense that objects are usually seen from the frontal perspective, not showing receding lines, or, lines imagined to trail away along the z axis. But, something about the way Anderson's used this technique since The Royal Tennenbaums gives me an impression of showing audiences what's inside his prized toybox. The images are so organinzed, clean, and also like a collection of toys, somehow representative of a chance to use a plastic vehicle to imagine you were somewhere safe and full of creative possibilities like Richard Scarry's Busytown. The opening scene in the house builds a pattern: the dolly tracks, like instruments in an orchesta, are joined by pans. The pans are also brilliant. Then finally there's a crane up. The crane/camera boom up totally reminds me of the one in 7th Heaven (1927, Frank Borzage) and makes me wonder why I can't think of anyone other than David Fincher or Gaspar Noé who indulge so assuredly in floating through walls like Max Ophüls or Stanley Kubrick used to. The command of symmetry and fluid camerawork are all I can think to say, but I wish I could say more about the simplicity's boldness. The art direction is as bold as a box of primary Krayolas. Bob Balaban's a ton of fun as the narrator of the nature films--I wish I could see more of him (not really, but that's my way of saying he's a great character. Maybe I should say I found his brief sketches lively and stylized in the right way, re-creating all of the fun associated with old 60s forgotten innocence illustrations of Norman Rockwell type adventures--the kind that are more fun to look at than actually partake in). And I find the shot reverse shot classically refined because even if it's not the typical repetition between two actors, it's what I'd like to think of as an economy of setups. Anderson to me is like a post card designer--he gets it all in one frame.

The first half of the movie totally sucked me in. I was even caught up wondering about the missing boy myself. That's one of my favorite narrative devices in Moonrise Kingdom: I was thrilled when I realized, "wait, this is a movie, even though everyone is looking for the missing Khaki Scout, I'm in the audience and get to see where he is and what he's up to even though no one else on screen can." Okay that might sound moronic, but I really don't try to predict movies and that was a delight when it hit me.

At forty five minutes, I had to look at my watch.

As I had thought, the midpoint was timed perfectly. In three act structure, the midpoint is said to occur halfway in a screenplay and mark a "point of no return" for the protagonist(s).

So if the first half of the film was all adventure and romace, the second half is the same, but with obstacles. And it worked. Personally, I like movies with unsympathetic heroes like (TV's) Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down or Mavis in Young Adult (2011, Jason Reitman), and that may be why I never liked Anderson's ensembles until recently. I felt like he used to have flawed characters, but he was just too coy about obviously thinking they had an inner nobility after all. That's like cowardice to me: if you're gonna show some dark side, don't be afraid to make 'em bleed. But Moonrise Kingdom gets away with this because it's about children. There's a scene of violence in the film that Anderson, fittingly for him, refrains from showing the graphic imagery. Like Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange, Anderson places a couple of still images of a pair of scissors to replace an offscreen scene where Suzy stabs a boy--in the Kubrick film there's that bludgeoning of the Cat Lady where he inserts the still image of the laughing clown mouth.

I discovered the music of Benjamin Britten watching Beau travail (1999, Claire Denis) where the Billy Budd opera serves as backdrop for Denis's restaging of her own nautical adventure. The Britten tunes in Moonrise Kingdom are similarly regal in their grandeur and give the movie an even greater sense of the drama building like an approaching hurricane.

Usually I don't buy movies that are too obvious about indulging my fantasies. This is an exception to that. Yeah, the weirdo who nobody likes and who does whatever he wants somehow finds true love with a really cool girl and is able to defeat a gang of thugs when he has to and can deal with his problems by running away from them, sure. But, it's a nice placebo to take every once in a while. You know, to feel for a little while like life's really like that.

In closing, I've always found something hilarious about the one movie I can ever remember with a premise involving a boat cop. I've always thought that was ridiculously boring. A boat cop? Seriously? Well that movie was Striking Distance (1993, Rowdy Herrington) and as you know doubt'll remember, starred Bruce Willis. I won't even comment about why I am so crazy about how much I think this is genius, but I do.

Bruce Willis plays a boat cop in Moonrise Kingdom.

--Dregs

Paul Walker has a stock ringtone

Introductory Maundering

I have already forgotten how exactly I stumbled over the Flophouse Podcast. But I did find it, and I have spent a lot of the last few days working my way through their capacious archives. What they do is watch a non-great movie, then talk about it, taping the while, and unleashing a podcast of that talk. Which is to say that what they do is damn' reminiscent of some classic Reviewieran goings-on. The podcast reminds me so intensely of hanging out w/ Tinzeroes--and, often, Greggums & Pierre Idiot Trudeau and others--that I almost can't listen to it, because it makes me wish for those old, old days of B3, or Giant Turtle Patrol, or whatever else we felt like calling it when we'd say "Kiss my ass" to the outside world, grab a sixpack of tallboys, and watch somebody's failure. (I have a half memory that we once perpetrated a double feature of Alone in the Dark and Badlands. This may not have happened. I drink. And that explains at least some of what you will encounter below.)

Not all of it, though. Not all of it. I curled up with my fictional housecat and fired up the ol'd DVD player.

Fat Sits Through Fast & Furious

Sitting down to Fast & Furious. Missed a few entries in the series: hope I won't get too lost!

— Chris Collision (@cfCollision) June 11, 2012

It begins! Let us have some kind of highway heist, yes? Yes.

Michelle Rodriguez & Vin Diesel share what had to be a world-class awkward kiss.

To-be-heisted driver is, whilst driving, reading a magazine & sharing a candy bar w/ an iguana...he's armed! The driver. The iguana is not in fact armed. (So far, he's much much better than anybody from Ghost Road Black Dog.)

M-Ro appears to be wearing something from the Resident Evil collection...

At 7.13, I'm calling it: this film officially has the loosest interpretation of physical reality ever.

— Chris Collision (@cfCollision) June 11, 2012

Abe the Professor: Hey man don't go judging so fast.

Fat: I AM FURIOUS.

Pierre Idiot Trudeau: Fast Five is like The Italian Job, but entertaining. Though...I did see it on a Mexican bus.

...

Many minutes pass. Paul Walker's in a footrace in downtown L.A. The only part of this that bears any resemblance to physical reality is the commitment to product placement.

Walker explains some plot to his skeptical boss & Rushmore's girlfriend, who is smirky. She is really not great at walking. The hell. I have no idea what's going on.

Back to Vin: somebody's been murdered. Time for a little funeral montage.

Apparently M-Ro's too expensive, as she is No Longer With Us. Vin's making out w/ a car or something & hanging out w/ some cheaper model of M-Ro; no particular distinguishing features. PW discovers M-Ro's death; Vin visits the crash site and I suspect the two threads are about to intertwine--PERMANENTLY.

Vin is a crash whisperer: he can somehow sense that M-Ro was shot after the crash, not killed in it. I'm buying this.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CAN I GET A CHASE SCENE PLEASE?

Vin knows he's a fugitive from like...all the countries. He's been told there are stakeouts. His low-pro move is to hang out exclusively w/ known associates & relatives while driving a bright red muscle car. He is currently having a long heart-to-heart with a relative in front of her house in her car. He just pulled a U-turn. He is, also, the size of a double-wide trailer. I feel that he would not be difficult to find.

Now he is assaulting figures in the scene. (The, you know, underground cars-working-on scene. It's a pretty well-regarded scene, from what I can tell.)

Oh. Apparently the non-descript chick is Vin's sister & Walker's ex-betty. She plants a seed: MAYBE HE'S NOT A COOL GUY MAYBE VIN DIESEL IS A COOL GUY.

Food for thought there.

Walker & Vin have a quick mo'. Vin is gonna kill the big bad; Paul wants to catch him. This is quite a conflict. Paul kicks the shit out out of one of his fed buddies for no reason I can fathom. (Oh, Vin demonstrates his commitment to killingering in fine PG-13 fashion by dropping a dude out of a window. Guy doesn't die, due to extremely plausible catching-pant-leg-on-drain-pipe shenanigans. So far, 31.58 in, we have had one car chase and two out-the-window scenes WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?)

Car-working-on montage. Vin's alone; Walker's a team man, w/ a 'standard-issue tracking device' installed.

Vin & Paul are gonna race to get a job working for the big bad. Vin's pulling rank. Unclear whether or not anybody recognizes him--but wasn't he like Lord of the Roads!? Bow to Road Lord, you busters! ("Busters" is Fast/Furious-world slang for...person like Paul Walker. I assume that it's at least as reliable a "say-this-and-get-punched-in-the-nose" epithet as "motherfucker".)

A computer is now assigning the directions. These are some of the most emotional line readings we've had in the film to this point. 38.25; finally we get some driving of cars. Which is immediately undersold by representing it Tron-style as colored lines on a computer screen. You know, like in Bullit and Blues Brothers--when you want a truly riveting chase scene, what you want to throw in to the mix is a solid dose of abstract representation.

Beardo & Black Guy the first casualties.

Really unsure about this GPS thing. Not like this is Drive or anything--thank fucking hell--, but is not some of the point of fast-drive smugglerizing for a driver to know where they're going? I mean, it's not helping the audience any either, being buffeted by "turn left now" (car turns left) and "turn right now" (car turns right) with no idea whatsoever where the damn'd cars are supposed to be going.

Other Black Dude now down.

Vin wins the race. Vin gets the lady. GPS explained--easy narrative way for the big bad to remain faceless WHAT IF IT'S A LADY IT COULD EVEN BE A LADY WE'VE ALREADY MET MAYBE EVEN ONE WE MAYBE THINK IS DEAD OR A COP OR AN UNDERWORLD FIGURE.

Underworld montage. Walker is now planting evidence on people. Given this plus the two on-screen conversations about his criminality we've endured thus far, I'm sorta starting to wonder...maybe Paul Walker isn't a cool dude.

Apparently there's a pretty clear hierarchy about these smuggling driver ring things: one guy goes down, Walker is in. This succession act makes more sense than the U.S. gov't's.

Some unleavened exposition. The cat & I are essentially unimpressed. Little more underworld montaging. Big Bad unlikely to be a lady. Dude Vin dropped out the window is in the club. Think this is bad, as I seem to remember Vin mentioning in front of him 'I am going to kill the Big Bad'.

Vin is now attempting to seduce a vaguely ethnically indeterminate lady. He has rejected her. That will show her. VIN DIESEL HOLDS NO TRUCK WITH THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE, MISSY.

Chase scene! Made no sense. Tunnels there are, apparently, linking Mexico to the U.S.

Vin has found the henchjerk who killed M-Ro.

Vin blew up his own car as a sort of don't-think-about-this-too-hard ambush, then I think beat the henchjerk to death. (He basically turned his car into a time bomb, then had a conversation which ended at the exact right time for the bomb to go the fuck off at a very appropriate moment with excellent comedic timing.) Walker saves Vin! Not sure why. Walker is now not turning over the drugs they seized--and (a) checked in to a police impound lot to stash the vehicle with the drugs--"where they'll never think to look", & (b) did so w/ a badge he had on him, & (c) just stole a car from that lot.

 

All of that seems problematic to me.

 

Let's think it through. He's undercover but carrying his badge. I would worry about that. He has checked into a police impound lot. I would assume they probably...write down somewhere who comes into these lots when--and maybe what they dropped off. And probably I'd guess they don't like it when double-wide-trailer-sized Vin Diesel-looking guys smash a window and steal a car. Anywho. Let's bracket this.

Vin's having a moment w/ a scrapbook abt M-Ro. Walker is worried that maybe nothing matters b/c he doesn't have a code. Nondescripta blinks. The nation joins her. Not sure she has any lines, actually...I kinda doze off when she's onscreen.

 

Vin is kicking the shit out of Walker. The nation cheers. Obligatory bad MMA, as Walker decides the way to defend himself is with an...arm bar. Movie teases Vin picking up Walker and dropping him on his head repeatedly. The nation holds the nation's breath. They stop fighting to talk. The nation mutters "Aw fuck." Walker was using M-Ro to infiltrate the big bad; prolly why she's dead; she was working w/ the Feds to clear Vin's name. Vin's not forgivish. I genuinely cannot parse the morality here.

 

Plan comes together. A person says 'Stay frosty, don't move a muscle'. Henchjerk was beaten up, not to death, as he is back. Big bad shows up, has a strong vibe of Most Interesting Man in the World. The nation yawns. --Guy Walker beat up makes a bad plot-enhancing decision, is probably a bad guy; predictably, the Big Bad is somebody we've known about all along BUT I'M NOT SAYING WHO.

The plan that came together falls apart in a brief and dull scene.

An unfathomably dull scene follows. Vin grieves, probably for what little narrative momentum this thing ever had.

Walker shows up, points out to Vin that maybe it's a bad idea for an on-the-run guy to be at his sister's house. This point is shrugged off quickly.

Vin & Walker decide to pull one last job--a job from which THERE IS NO COMING BACK. Oddly suicidal vibe here: maybe this scene was filmed after the test screenings hinted at the strength of the franchise going forward?

Sex and death continue to mingle as Walker PG-13ly fucks Nondescripta on the kitchen counter. She hugs her brother, and the boys head for the border. This literally all happens in the same night. Everything since the scrapbook has been the same night...

I forget where the cars came from. But the boys have appropriate and attractive automobiles.

Ethnic lady hands the big bad to Vin. I fucking knew telling her he wasn't interested in her was gonna pay off. Nicely done, Mr. Diesel. And no--I wasn't surprised.

We are in Mexico. It's fucking hella sepia up in Mexico, if you didn't know. Also Catholic--big bad just paid a priest for a blessing. Is there no depth to which he will not sink? I mean...heroin smuggling? That is one thing. But indulgences are plain and simply fucked. Vin just ambushed the big bad and sneered 'You're not forgiven.' Big bad comes up with 'You and me, hermano...we're not so different.' This script is surging with excellence.

Low, low, LOW-grade plot twist.

1:28:00--car chase. Henchjerk chases Walker. Vin's on the scene. Muscle cars are apparently excellent for bitchin' off-road action. Still hella sepia. Vin has a shotgun. It has some intriguing relationships with physical reality, in that when it shoots downward at a tire, the car attached to that tire flies up into the air and generally lands on its roof.

I'm into it.

Driver yells 'Come on!' while driving for about the eighth time. The chase scene is the same as the last one. :(

Henchjerk & his widehawk are about to fuck up some Paul Walker, who is such a shitty driver he has caused his car to be upside down. This orientation--this mis-orientation--has completely compromised his vehicle's fast and or furious properties.

Vin is being shot at. He responds by ensuring that the bullets hit the impregnable undercarriage of his totipotent vehicle. Definitely a good place for the bullets to go, I'd say. I know very, very much about how cars work. This is about the fifth 'my car can do a wheelie' moment. I used to be pretty good at poppin' wheelies on my Schwinn. Vin notes that the henchjerk is a 'pussy'. Seems reasonable. Henchjerk in fact had a widehawk. So, you know: math checks out.

 

Credits mention 'action', 'driving', and 'car play'. For the first time, I am uncomfortable. But hey: I did make it all the way to the credits! Car play. Gross.

Summing Up

According to the director's commentary:
(a) "I really love sequels"
(b) this is the fourth movie in the series--not the Fast Five Pierre Idiot Trudeau mentioned above (I honestly didn't know)
(c) the purpose of the first scene--the truck heist--is to make us care about the characters.

Only one of those characters is actually still in the movie after the 10-minute mark.

The oil derricks in the film represent Michele Rodriguez. The director said that out loud. I have it on tape, if you want to hear it.

Apparently there was a sequel. I'm as surprised as you are. Vin, in all seriousness: you are better than this. Paul Walker: you are not. The gag reel consisted mostly of Paul Walker giggling at inopportune moments of filming. Nothing else to report at this time. Live long and prosper, everybody.

--Fat, for whom awful movies will never not be meat and drink

Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson (1992) .

Snow Crash is a book of superbly written and unprecedented cyberpunkian-near future tech-geek set action pieces book-ended, often akwardly, by juvenile linguistic theory intertwined with Sumerian mythology and history, and various descriptions of the Raft, a floating slum-refugee-city in the Pacific Ocean powered by a private-owned nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.  Also included is a vision of a franchised corporate America of sometimes-former criminal organizations, heavily dependent, like the main characters Hiro Protaganist and Y.T., on jokey tongue-in-cheek humor and/or names (the mafia now runs a national pizza chain, etc etc).

The opening chapters are adequate and things get somewhat interesting with the introduction of a computer virus called Snow Crash and Hiro's subsequent investigation of the same, which leads him to Sumerian mythology and linguistics. However, the book hits its first big speedbump right there, as the Sumerian diatribe ambles for too long. I'm a fast reader but I found this shit repetitious and boring. I plowed on and the plot moved, or at least the locations changed. The ultimate purpose of the Snow Crash virus is revealed to be pathetically boring (crazy rich guy wants to rule world). The virus is defeated by Hiro writing a program. Full stop.

There's some tech/gear-porn stuff to look at while on your way this book of let-downs - a super-motorcycle, a super-gun, a super-hoverboard thing. Oh, and in case you didn't catch it the first time around, you can read the whole Sumerian thing a second time when Hiro has this big pow-wow with Uncle Enzo and some other people and explains it to them. There's an awful section where YT makes a delivery that's an ambush by federal agents which basically solely exists so you can read the exciting action set-piece of her escape. You could tear that whole chapter out of the book and not miss a beat.

And speaking of set-pieces, the best one's at the end but features a character you don't even meet until the last 100 pages or so (Uncle Enzo, who owns aforementioned pizza chain), who kills Raven (super-eskimo who can throw super-harpoons, has a nuclear warhead attached to motorcycle) on an airport tarmac.

The whole thing feels like a series of essays and excerpts strung together (poorly), all the while oozing gear- and tech-porn coolness. Hiro is cool - he's the best hacker in the world and plays with samurai swords and lives in a storage unit. Y.T. is cool - she's a teenage smart-skateboard courier. The world is cool - its all ironic juxaposition of crass commericalism and collapse of functioning civil government. Cool cool cool but I don't give a shit. Hiro and Y.T and Raven are action figures battling it out on the world's coolest playset. When they talk I want them to shut up, and the rest is like watching some other kid play with his toys - boring and no fun at all. The worst book I have had the pleasure of finishing.

-d.d.

SLADE! GATEFOLD EDITION!

D.D. TINZEROES A prelidiction with the British glam rock genre of music, appropriately perhaps, is cobbled together from the best bits of a couple different vectors. First and foremost is love of the historical period, let's say roughly 1971 to 1974. '71 is a good concensus start point, with T. Rex performing "Ride a White Swan" on Top of the Pops in late 1970, wherein (if I'm correct) Marc Bolan put glitter on his face for the first time (and wore a decidedly feminine outfit). The moment itself seems pretty unremarkable looking back, but record buyers ate it up (the single was #1 in the UK for six weeks, and kicked off a string of four #1 singles for T. Rex, ending with a four week stint for "Metal Guru" in 1972). Slade's "Coz I Luv U" single also hits #1 in late 1971 and starts a string of six #1s ending with "Merry X-Mas Everyone" in '73. David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust is released in the spring of '72.The end definitively is in 1974, with T. Rex already completed bottomed out and the release of David Bowie and Slade's final glam-period records (Diamond Dogs and Slade in Flame, respectively). How Can It Be? Contrasted to Bolan's rockabilly three-piece and Bowie's experimental sounds of the same period (or Roxy Music or Alex Harvey), Slade's flavor is decidedly populist. "How Can It Be" is an admittedly honky-tonky, bouncy tune, with Noddy Holder reciting rather rhetorical questions which would not be out of place in a modern-day country song. This song is a bit of the odd-ball on Old New Borrowed and Blue (1974), but I like the Slade odd-ball songs because if nothing else they do demonstrate the existence of some sort of range of ability (Bolan's fatal flaw). This Girl. "This Girl," from thier glam piece d'reistance album Slade in Flame (1974) (which doubled as the soundtrack to thier feature film of the same name) has more of that populist lyric to it, this time about, well, "this girl" who is out to paint the town red and holds all the men in her sway, despite thier best efforts. I'm usually not a big fan of "over-produced" songs (this was Bolan's weakness when he started producing his own albums - "you know what this song needs? A string section!"), but I love the horn section on this song - I guess horns tend to be more rock-n-roll than strings (see also: Andy McKay of  Roxy Music). Know Where You Are "Know Where You Are" is first found as an vocal-less mellow jam session on the first track (titled "Genesis") of Slade's (then called Ambrose Slade) first album Beginnings (1969) (which flopped). Dropping the "Ambrose", Slade's second album (Play It Lound (1970))  featured the same jam but with lyrics and now-called "Know Where You Are." Slade toured relentlessly in this period, and by the time "Know Where You Are" ends up on the Slayed Alive! (1972) album it has grown into a galloping anthem of late-60s-styles philosophic questions. Who can not delight in Noddy Holder hollering to "read a new book - FINISH THE OTHER ONE!" over the wail of drums and crashing of guitars? I am also fond of the lyric "acing the song to make your playing look easy" which I feel is a nod at thier success being connected to thier touring chops.

L. CONTRADICTION It's not clear to me exactly why Tinzeroes is on this giant T-Rex / Slade kick.  T-Rex I've always basically loathed, and as for Slade?  There's some great stuff there, to be sure, but I cannot say that I ever actually cared about them.  (And the Six by Slade thing he gave me I find unlistenably screechy, pointless and self-indulgent.) But for a band I don't care much about, they've sure been kinda prominent in my life.  So here's a couple-three Slade songs that always--always--put a smile on my face. Run Runaway This was one of the great hits of my pre-musical life.  As I would fiddle with the parental receiver on a sunny sunday Kansas afternoon, not remembering exactly when Dr. Demento came on, I'd hear this, sometimes.  And I would kinda sing along and bop around to what I didn't know was really the last gasp of a once potent power. hey ho wish you well (representing the cassette Rogue's Gallery) As I began to make music more and more central to my life, I began trawling the Sound Warehouse cheapo cassette bin.  One day, probably 87, 88, I found this for 2.99 and Ramones Leave Home for 3.99.  Maybe the other way around.  I loved both, for a while, and that was probably the biggest moment I ever had with Slade, headphones on and blaring tinnily, stomping around in my Christmas 88 jean jacket that was so too big that, when I moved from Portland, a full-grown man, it was still too big.  First couple years of high school, it was not uncommon for me to tag things with Slade-spelled PLEEZ EKSKUUZE ANEE LAAK UV INTELLIJUNCE Then again, first couple years of high school, I spent most of my time drawing covers for my double concept album, JOHNNY WAS HERE, which was sort of a Zen Arcade meets Quadrophenia teen suicide epic, with, as I recall, one like 8-page long song-soliloquy from Satan. my oh my Somehow I had always pencilled this one in as a 70s smash lingering into the classic rock stations of the 80s, rather than a reunited-cash-in move.  But, whatever.  Sometimes a man's in the mood for a power ballad.  And this one is an oddly happy ballad. In fact, that's what I think Tinzeroes is responding to in and with Slade--it's similar to my perspective on Cheap Trick, which is that some very rare kinds of art operate on a level that's neither formal/aesthetic nor contentual/ethical, but is instead concerned with and productive of: JOY. More on this anon.

The Fast and the Furious

Shame (2011, Steve McQueen) is irreducible. It is about a young marketing professional who's a sex addict (Micheal Fassbender) and his suicidal sister (Carey Mulligan), set in New York. By the end of the film, nothing changes.

I'm split between two ways to read this movie. My first response was positive. Knowing the premise beforehand (Brandon's a sex addict), every shot rang completely true to his symptom. When I first saw the opening shot of Brandon catatonically staring at the ceiling, I projected that he wakes up with one thing on his mind and nothing else--the look of a junkie. And I thought, "brilliant, wow, that's exactly what it's like." I also thought the music, pacing and composition were refined, and that the film did so much in such an understated way.

But after reflection, I was not so sure. Hunger (2008, Steve McQueen) is a bona fide masterpiece about an historical figure who sacrifices his self through starvation to make a political statement in a humanitarian way. Shame's Brandon is the opposite: he indulges his sexual appetite and cares for nothing and nobody. And as a character, what the hell do I care about some rich upper-East side yuppie who gets laid as much as humanly possible? Seriously? Sympathy? For that? I realized, with a different filmmaking approach, I would not be empathizing with this guy's misery, I'd be appalled by the audacity someone had to have to think anyone actually cares about this character's conquests--it might even be nothing more than high dollar softcore.

In conclusion, Steve McQueen is a brilliant visual artist. In the film's beginning, there is an edit that is joined by a shot of Brandon jacking off in the shower that goes soft (blurry) on an MCU of him, which is followed by a match cut of a soft focus MCU of Brandon on the subway.

Also, there's a now signature McQueen overhead shot, composed with perfect symmetry: Brandon taking a bathroom break during work and what he does in the stall.

Then there's the first POV of Marianne in Brandon's office: she appears naked from the shoulders up (even though in the diegetic world she's clothed), and the frame is disturbed--what are we looking at? Her shoulders? Her lips? One eye?

The other two big sequences are: the tracking dolly shot of Brandon running out in the city at night, which follows him as he falls off into black, then catches him sporadically as he approaches overhead sources (also similar to the technique employed for he and Marianne's first walk and, maybe, inspired by the EXT. night shots in Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville)); and the six minute two shot of he and Sissy (Mulligan) talking on the couch. I probably don't need to point this out, but six minutes is an exceptionally long duration for a shot, especially in the modern cinematic climate of today. (And Steve McQueen's most famous shot from Hunger is an uninterrupted seventeen minute take of two guys talking that is unlikely to be rivaled anytime soon.)

Like I said, it's impressive how every shot works by staying with Brandon or Sissy and omits dialogue for moments of silence and stillness, but preserves focus and remains truthful to their story.

--Dregs

Driven

My favorite films are dark and feminine. Recently, for feminine, there's:

• The Last Days of Disco (1998, Whit Stillman) glamorous, chic, and witty.
• Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier) dark musical.
• Amélie (2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet) so saccharine and girly, although light.
• Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch) scary Hollywood dream/nightmare.
• Palindromes (2006, Todd Solondz) dark adolescent satire.
• Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola) pink period/pop art.
• Volver (2006, Pedro Almodóvar) Classic Hollywood-style domestic melodrama.
• Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky) scary ballet dream/nightmare.
• Mildred Pierce (2011, Todd Haynes) the final word in the genre, period.

Damsels in Distress (2011, Whit Stillman) is very light, so it simply cannot be significant for me in a way that actually matters. However, it is riotously funny, softly flowery with a pink feminine touch, and completely bizarre with its own droll ambitions of Classic Hollywood cinematic mannerisms meeting WASPy, adorkably naïve prep school girls who are delightfully characterized through exposition and dialogue.

Violet (Greta Gerwig) is a decoy who initially appears to be Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) from The Last Days of Disco, but reveals truly unexpected character turns that layer onto her initial appearance--vacuum headed eccentric who seems to aim low, but with an air of superiority, claims virtuosity and altruism (the variant is that Violet is as naïve as Charlotte is cynical). And this is her vehicle to say some of the most insanely offbeat lines I never saw coming. The tone is set in the opening, when Violet scorns some male coed passersby because of their "acrid odor." The score under moments like this is audaciously prim, which signals the film's knowingness of its own satirical edge.

I've spoken a lot lately about how films only convey sight and sound, and that the other senses like smell, taste and touch must be evoked through other means. It's unimportant at this point, but smell seemed a big part of Hunger (2008, Steve McQueen) for me because I felt like he created a constant smellscape of putrid stench. Violet's character evokes smell in several ways. She even goes into a funny speech about how the smell of one's environment has a direct bearing on their state of being.

Violet also speaks with  proper formality and impeccable diction. And it never ceases to be hilarious and charming. (To regretfully digress yet again, Veda from Mildred Pierce has the most brilliant dialogue because it's also period; but, her prim and proper orations are daggers and one of the strongest parts of that film.)

This film constantly reminded me that I was in new territory, which I mean in a good way. It cannot be taken seriously, but it touches serious emotions and ideas. And Whit Stillman is a clever craftsman, in an elegantly minimalist way.

Violet has three close friends who support her adequately. Lily (Analeigh Tipton) becomes very prominent and is intriguing to look at--she has a distinguishing scar on her cheek that almost looks decorative. But of course, Gerwig is the core of Damsels in Distress, and her turn as Violet will be what lasts with audiences.

--Dregs

Torque

Since I was fourteen, I've known I want to write and direct my own movies. There's nothing I've thought about more or invested as much of myself into the pursuit of. There are quite a few ideas I've had that involve drastically reinventing the cinematic language. Every once in a while, I'm surprised to see another filmmaker, before anyone else, achieving something I'd only dreamed of.

Case in point: the notion I've fancied for some time now of someone making a feature length motion picture that did everything a Britney Spears music video or Chanel perfume commercial does in a minute, only for the ninety minute duration of a movie.

To assess this chronology thus far:

• Go (1999, Doug Liman)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky)
• Spun (2002, Jonas Åkerlund)
• Domino (2005, Tony Scott)
• Speed Racer (2008, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski)
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010, Edgar Wright)

Spun was novel, but in the service of meth-tweaking, its editing style proves superfluous and nauseating overall; Domino is just an overly cross processed/saturated green color temperature and intentionally shoddy undercranking of the shutter speed; Speed Racer is simply mimicking animation styles; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is mostly just a live action video game...

...mostly.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World brought many of the motifs Wright had pioneered in the watershed Spaced TV series, which aired on Britain's Channel 4 from 1999-2001. During Spaced, Wright liberally parodied various Hollywood genres, in his Tarantino-like, fanboy way. The key to what makes Scott Pilgrim vs. the World so unique is its frenetic, hyper-self-aware style of visual onslaught, with constant pop-ups of text providing up-to-the-minute exposition during, and often before its context becomes apparent. That shit is not from video games; Wright was tapping into the aesthetics of MTV music videos.

Detention (2011, Joseph Kahn) finally delivered what I'd been awaiting: a ninety minute feature that constantly sells itself as a music video--it's like eating a huge, eleven-course meal where all of the entrées are cotton candy, pixy stix and cocaine, with only Jolt cola to wash it all down.

The narrative is unlike anything I've ever seen, including Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Grizzly Lake High, as a location, contains the milieu of this cast of characters, although there are quite a few times when the story follows some into intergalactic galaxies, and others who are cavorting through the space-time continuum.

I can't help myself from giving away a little of the goodies (major spoilers in this and the next ¶). The film begins with a Ferris Beuller style direct address (character breaking fourth wall), nodding to Clueless's (1995, Amy Heckerling) Cher along the way, as Taylor Fisher (Alison Woods) tells us how to follow her "Guide to Not Being a Total Reject." The on-screen text is eponymous and resembles Tarantino's style of chapter breaks, especially in the style he began using on Kill: Bill vol. 1 (2003, Quentin Tarantino), which he obviously got from Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableux (1962, Jean-Luc Godard). As old as I am, I seemed to get most of the dialogue and pop culture references during this sequence, and actually felt like I think I got more out of this movie than teenagers will, in this regard.

And, the ensemble is made up of students of Grizzly Lake. The killerest part is that each of the stereotypically John Hughesian characters are living in their own hyper-aware, emotionally overwhelming teen dramas that respectively get played out as isolated movies, each apologetically embodying a different genre. Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell) lives in TV's My So-Called Life (1994); Ione (Spencer Locke) is in a Freaky Friday (2003, Mark Waters) meets Back to the Future (1985, Robert Zemeckis) plot; and Billy (Parker Bagley) is living The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg).
But this still doesn't quite communicate what exactly you get with Detention. Each vignette is titled, as its own chapter, but by the end you realize they're all insanely interlocked and build layers on top of each other that all work. Well, except the tilt-shift heavy "The Mysterious Tale of the Time Travelling Bear."
(End spoilers)

Kahn's music video aesthetic begins with his fancy for lens flares. I believe this was invented on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg), where Vilmos Zsigmond intentionally utilized the blue streaks of light that play out in anamorphic lenses when you aim uncorrected HMIs at it. But Kahn realized it looks cooler to key light Britney Spears with this technique (see the music video "Stronger"), instead of Spielberg using it to just hide what were maybe UFOs. Kahn also loves to push in on characters, a lot (I heard some kid saying that all Fincher's style is is pushing in--I kind of disagree). But, Kahn also uses "geometric editing" and vectors to put his puzzle together.

And the color temperature in Detention is typically a blueish frontal and overhead diffused source mixed with golden backlights and sidelights to mimic sunlight--which is actually very distinguished, fresh and works.

So, Kahn's narrative, his music video aesthetic and a ton of awesome pop songs and pop culture references (I mean really ambitious pop culture references, not Diablo Cody one-liners) make this film a new personal favorite of mine. The Ione character is so fun and cute--she's like if Taylor Momsen tried to be "Hit Me Baby One More Time" era Britney. Detention's an oasis in the desert of dull narrative filmmaking and I wish I could watch it again soon.

--Dregs

Biker Boyz

The duality of man theme expressed in Full Metal Jacket (1987, Stanley Kubrick) shows how man’s id can be tapped to create a killing machine; and, say, one that risks exterminating his ego and superego as a result (i.e. Pyle and Animal Mother).

For this reason, Full Metal Jacket is one of the 2 most important films I’ve seen, thematically. And for this same reason, I find it the one movie that best suited Kubrick’s talent and vision. And, that vision is cynical, satirical, and dystopian, to say the least.

The other most important film, thematically, for me, is Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson). Au hasard Balthazar has been my favorite movie for years. It’s the one movie I actually love.

Instead of showing the duality of man, Bresson links man to animal through their souls. He shows that man is not a paradox, but a spirit, just as all living creatures are. But, Bresson also believes all of our destinies to be martyrdom.

Le gamin au vèlo (2011, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne) is very much concerned with the same aesthetic reverence and milieu of Bresson. Its central protagonist, Cyril, has a desperate hunger in his spirit to understand his purpose in life. He strives to decide if he’s a boy or an animal. And this juxtaposition is central, for the core of the film is this dilemma.

The narrative is a diptych in the sense that first, Cyril fights to understand what’s up with his dad, then the second half of the film arises after what Cyril does after he finds out.

The brilliance of Le gamin au vèlo’s focus arises from the blurring of the lines between boy and animal; because, all Cyril needs to be able to live as a boy is a parent, yet the film expands the elasticity of that connotation. In effect, what this establishes is the perspective that shows how the exact same thing is true of animals—or, as Au hasard Balthazar hypothesizes, kindness nurtures and is necessary for a spirit to exist and cruelty kills it, for humans and animals alike.
With the same ferocity as Alan Clarke’s characters like Gary Oldman in The Firm (1989, Alan Clarke) or the two adolescents in Christine (1987, Clarke), Cyril has a primal inertia. He sprints, attacks, bites, scales walls, climbs trees, and it’s easy to anticipate what he’s like once he gets on his bike—it becomes a Maverickian extension of his need for speed, or, more accurately, stress release and an escape.

The typical Dardennes camera style is maintained: handheld and documentary style. Yet, they also spend quite a bit of time on fluid
tracking shots of Cyril.

The color scheme calls attention to itself. Cyril always wears red, except for one shot. In color theory, primary red’s complimentary hue is primary cyan. In Le gamin au vèlo, Cyril appears in the first shot wearing a primary cyan tee under his zip-up primary red jacket. I actually believe right now that cyan represents Cyril’s spirit. (Other instances where primary cyan occurs are: the nighttime interiors when Cyril sleeps; and to a lesser extent, the accents in Cyril’s bedroom on the estate, and the clothes worn by other boys he encounters on the streets—notice which men wear black.) Finally, there is a crucial moment in the third act wear Cyril wears a primary cyan tee under a denim jacket, with no red—the only time in the film—and, during this scene, the one chance Cyril felt to be worthy of actually living as a boy with a spirit, it just so happens that life is a little more complicated and I’ll leave it at that. (You know it wouldn’t be a Dardenne brothers movie without that awesome "this can’t last" kind of dénouement, like Sirk at his best.)

The Dardennes are still the masters of minimalism when it comes to music. In Le gamin au vèlo, their sixth narrative feature, they use non-diegetic music for the first time—but it’s hardly anything resembling an actual score. The Beethoven cues really feel like the way Bresson portioned out the Mozart in certain moments during Un condamné à mort s' est èchappè ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956, Bresson).

Basically, I identify most strongly with Cyril’s wild side; especially considering that pretty much all he’s after, underneath it all in the end, is someone to love him. That, to me, is a beautiful paradox: one’s wild animal nature ferociously fighting to find peace and love.

And the fact that movies this simple can still be made still remains a feat to me. I think its a wonder to be able to watch stories play out that can feel this honest and modern, with such lack of fuss over spectacle or high production values in the serivce of genre conventions.

--Dregs

Great Urinals of the Pacific Northwest

Gus Solomon Courthouse.