Film Review

Robert Altman's best films contain ironies and counter-ironies in such copious quantity that it's tough to know which in particular to cite. What's the most indicative example of them all--Sidney Chaplin's BBC reporter, Opel, thrusting her microphone and her pretentious opinions upon a world of artificiality, in a vain effort to discover the "real" Nashville? Or, is it instead best realized in Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton, a fixture in the Nashville scene, too self-absorbed to realize he's about as well regarded around town as his ridiculously false toupee. Nothing could be simultaneously more or less real than this parallel universe of the superficial, the egocentric, and the self-serving.

Each character behaves in a coldly selfish fashion, and even the kindest gestures appear mutually parasitic in the end. Criticism of L.A. glitz and its culture of gorgeously inauthentic unreality would reach its ultimate conclusion two years later with Woody Allen's magnum opus, Annie Hall, but here is one of its first major public viewings.

The country music capital as allegory for the American political process is the best way to pull together all of these disparate elements into some coherent whole. At best, this is a means of pulling together a rough microcosm of fundamentally different people, linking the political world with the celebrity world, and as such it is the axis upon which the movie revolves. Altman's Nashville is a backwater Los Angeles, and its satirical, caustic eye goes easy on absolutely no one.

Quite unusually, while many Hollywood films extend the supreme cliche of a grotesquely farcical portrayal of the south, playing up the peculiarities of natives at the expense of their dignity, in watching Nashville, that overused cliche is thankfully nowhere to be found, so much so that it's easy to forget that this is a film set in that oft-lampooned region of the country.

It's a harsh film, played straight-faced and without the winking kind of grossly distorted caricature present in many satires, which amounts to letting the audience in on the joke and providing sure-fire laughs--as such it demands much from its audience. It's the sort of picture that may take a couple viewings and some background study to understand in totality, and even then it leaves many questions unanswered.

Nashville makes no attempt to stick to narrative conventions, instead trying to examine bits and pieces of the lives of no less than twenty-five characters in a little over two and a half hours of running time. The ultimate ensemble film, the audience never gets a chance to be bored, or, at first, totally engaged. Imagine a soap opera or a rapid-cutting miniseries which never makes promises to tie up loose ends or resolve plot devices. To put it bluntly, it takes a while to get into Altman's directorial world, and in particular to process the dialogue, which in the director's trademark fashion is peculiarly cross-streaming, flowing from one scene to another and often within individual scenes themselves. Yet, within this paradigm, linear time is strictly observed, as the events progress in real time, over the course of five consecutive days.

Nashville at times comes across as a parade of eccentrics spouting droll, dry-as-bones humor. One must accept the metanarrative that selfishness is the supreme drive of the human condition and that celebrity is utterly and entirely vapid and hollow. At no point is the audience allowed to completely suspend disbelief--one always knows one is observing art, so those wishing to see character development or much in the way of conventional plot, per se, will be sorely disappointed. Though it may take some getting used to, Nashville is a good film, definitely one-of-its-kind and one never imitated by subsequent directors. Frankly, I don't know how one could.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Album And/Or Song Titles

Both of these, unsurprisingly, were not that great in quality, or at least weren't nearly as good as prior efforts.

1.


Franz Ferdinand- You Could Have It So Much Better

2.

Mansun- "I Can Only Disappoint U"

Music Review

This is Portishead?

(Review of Portishead's new album, Third)

Following in Lock Step

All the cool kids are doing this.


visited 24 states (48%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

There's another one showing the countries of the world you have visited, but I've visited so few it wouldn't be worth the effort.

The Unhealthiest of Unhealthy Obsessions

I've been meaning to post on this topic well before now, but no matter. What prompted me, in part, was observing how the Baby Boomers, who tried their hardest to redefine youth and youthful rebellion in their heyday, have now been trying to prolong the experience. This kind of endeavor makes me deeply uncomfortable. It reminds me how youth-obsessed we are in this culture. Being obsessed with outward appearances while discounting the lessons and experience born out of time is deeply foolish.

There should be nothing shameful in growing old. Existing in a state of arrested development is quite dangerous and sets a regrettable precedent for generations to come. Sure, our outward bodies are more attractive in youth, but that can only take you so far. Just as beauty is only skin deep, so too is youth. This sort of cult of youth that has sprung up now and has encouraged cottage industries to spring up with names like plastic surgery, botox, and color-treated. Millions of Americans desperately fork out dollars to find the Fountain of Youth.

Part of it too is that we often want it all. We'd never really sacrifice the good things that age has to offer if there were some way to exchange them for physical agelessness. Ingrained assumptions are many in this culture and one such example is that of the idea of youth. Many of us will laud experience as the sole denominator of which we place our faith. But while we will criticize those who seem too youthful and inexperienced, we will with the same breath criticize those who appear too old and wizened.

I, personally, have made more progress towards peace of mind and a kind of inner comfort as I have aged. My teenage years were some of the most uncomfortable I've ever experienced. My grandparents generation collectively referred to those times as "the awkward age" and awkward is a kind way to describe the way I felt then.

It's a fallacy of thought to think that we ever had a total reverence towards our elders. American culture, with its emphasis upon newness and particularly the next big thing, has never been receptive towards the idea. So instead of lamenting that which never was, let's create what should be, instead. Age is nothing to shirk from, and it ought to be welcomed rather than smoothed, snipped, color-treated, or altered out of existence.

Film Review

To begin--Wings is not a great film.

Gore Vidal once described the famous film Ben-Hur as "gorgeously trashy" and this rather glib characterization can easily apply here to the first Best Picture Winner. It's easy to see why audiences in 1927 loved this movie. All the elements that make for commercial success are present: frequent and high-flying (pardon the pun) action scenes, a love triangle, an upbeat, optimistic (albeit excessively so) attitude throughout, and a kind of romantic melodrama which appears supremely dated in these days of uber-realism and skeptism.

Wings would never be made now. Having been inundated with numerous examples of the harsh reality of war, no one would believe the kind of glossy, saccharine portayal of armed combat the film sets forth. Nor would anyone buy the campy mannerisms and over-theatrical acting, while although common to the period, would seem hokey in this day and age. A modern audience would have difficult suspending their disbelief long enough to take much of this film seriously.

Director William Wexler's inventive camera shots and overall shot composition provides just enough "art" to satisfy the purists, but even these don't detract from the film's numerous flaws. Namely, the intertitles, which are so patently ridiculous and overwrought that they seem written by the author of a 1950's hygiene film. Second, and perhaps most objectionable is the portrayal of a bumbling, buffoonish Dutch immigrant, whose ineptitude and goofy demeanor is played for laughs. His awkward, halting English and over-the-top silliness would not play for laughs in these days.

Which leads me to my next point. We often have a tendency to lionize the past, thinking that the pasts provides a kind of quality, artistic faithfulness, and overall integrity that does not exist in our times. This is a myth. The past provided just as many examples of, at best, shoddily crafted product masquerading as art as it does now. Wings is, first and foremost, a popcorn film, and think of how often in these times the Best Picture statute is rewarded not towards quality, but as a nod toward films which attain massive popularity and rake in money hand over fist at the box office. That's never changed one iota.

Please Please Me

last night I said
these words to my
girl.

The Obligatory Mention

You should know where I am on Saturdays by now.

The American Street

Saturday Video

My favorite Kinks album is Arthur: Or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, from which this song, "Shangri-La" is pulled. This, the group's first concept album and, arugably, best was meant to be the soundtrack for a BBC television series. The album's satirical critique of English post-war society takes as its foil the person of an everyman named, you guessed it, Arthur. Each song unfolds through a kind of third person omniscient narrator, often resorting to mild mocking sympathy of the title character. It's obvious Davies pities him, but can't resist putting in a few stinging barbs at the character's expense.

Ray Davies' sardonic criticisms of consumerism and conformity are at their strongest in this batch of songs, which he and the rest of the group would never top in quality. A return to success in American success was still a year away, fostered by the off-kilter hit "Lola", but the band reached its peak here.

Media Hyperbole Versus Reality

In the course of this election, I've been musing actively upon the controversies that the media has sought to exploit to attract attention, sell papers, and attract the attention of the increasingly distracted electorate. Slate's video reducing the recent Democratic primary fight to night minutes has reminded me of the proportion between actual controversies and the numerous nontroversies which are created out of thin air. I would estimate no more than one in ten of these stories really have any meat or heft to them.

Back to the Presidential Race-- what can't be argued is that the media clearly salivated over the prospect of being able to capture the photogenic Obama looking Presidential at a variety of campaign stops. Nothing appeals to theatrics more than a well-received 200,000 strong speech. Obama has won over the media, now, as to whether or not the American electorate will respond in kind is anyone's guess. I openly admit to not being able to understand people who make up their minds at the last minute about elections or anything. That there would be any undecideds now, roughly 100 days from the election is completely beyond me.

As I've mentioned before, fatigue has set in, both here in the blogosphere and in the world. An exciting primary fight grew wearying about a month before Hillary's concession at the first part of June. Most people I talk to just want this to be all over. And truthfully, I've been hard pressed to find anything original or interesting to write about, scraping the bottom of the metaphorical barrel for nearly two months.

Will This Overseas Trip Help Obama? Possibly.

A column by a British editorial writer sparked the impetus for this post. The central premise in this post is a variation upon what he had to say in his column. He was interviewed yesterday on MSNBC and I found myself nodding my head in total agreement with the argument he was advancing.

To wit, what has been bandied about recently is the hope that an Obama visit will mend fences with the rest of the world, and clean up American's reputation in the world, a reputation sullied by the excesses of the Bush Administration. Among the left, a major sticking point with the current government in power is how it has abused and misused its power. In Obama, leftists hope to see a resumption of American good standing in the rest of the world. It's a worthy cause to laud, though a more thorough examination might do us well to ponder.

Though I hate to admit it, this country is often in a Catch-22 situation when it makes major policy decision, or really, any decisions at all. It can often do no right, or at least get little to no praise for the things it does right; it is overwhelmed by criticism when it makes mistakes, no matter how minor. Likewise, when this country flexes its muscles either economically or militarily, it is perceived as forcing its hand unjustly in the affairs of the world, but when a crisis abroad appears, it is lambasted in the opinion of the world when it does not act decisively.

It's a combination of sour grapes and just plain old envy. We are the most powerful, most affluent country in the world, and other people resent us for those facts. Obama's visit will hopefully impress upon the rest of the country that he is a capable leader, and at the same time make the same impression upon undecided voters, but I don't see this being the slam dunk the mainstream media wishes. It makes for good theater and hyperbole, so I understand the reason why the mainstream media is pushing it. I reflect upon similar press-driven events that are not nearly as important to the overall debate as the hype would have one believe.

What might be a more helpful question would be to ask why, historically, one nation or state has secured so much wealth at the expense of all the others. Should we accept this as a lamentable fact of human nature or is there some way to expand a more equal distribution of wealth and entitlements across the face of the world?

Five Things I Don't Understand

1. People who obsess about pets.
2. The Golf Channel
3. Manufactured celebrity controversies
4. Paying $500 for a pair of shoes
5. Windows Vista

The Lockbox

Wonderin'

The 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary Race in Nearly Nine Minutes

Cleverly done and well worth the time to watch it from beginning to end.

You Can't Be Twenty on Sugar Mountain

Dance, Dance, Dance

Movie Review

I've always been a fan of movies which represent the first taste of success for their director. They are usually edgy enough to appeal to my artistic sensibilities, but commercial enough to be accessible to the rest of the world. Often after achieving public success, artists of all shapes and sizes have a tendency to lapse into vanity projects which represents their worst excesses personified. So it is that I much prefer This Sporting Life to Lindsay Anderson's later films, of which If.. and Oh Lucky Man are ample evidence of this phenomenon.

Director Anderson's films all possess a kind of dreamlike bleakness and deep pessimism. This Sporting Life fits the definition of a tragedy underneath it all, though it masquerades as a drama until its final conclusion. Anderson's films subtly switch from ultra-realistic cinema verite to surrealism which would not seem out of place in a Fellini piece. This Sporting Life plays like a particularly savage nightmare, particularly with its partially non-linear narrative, especially in evidence in the first half of the film, an extended flashback by which rugby player Frank Machin (Richard Harris, in one of his best leading roles), reflects back on the past several months of his life while presumably under ether having his front teeth extracted after a vicious hit incurred while on the playing field.

Nearly forgotten now is the "angry young man" genre of filmmaking common to British cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s. The genre featured beautifully photographed, usually black and white portrayals of the lives and struggles of rough and tumble men in the dirty, industrial north of England. Prior films belied their roots in the theatre, often relying on the claustrophobic staging of one or two interior rooms to emphasize the poverty of the characters. This Sporting Life ups the ante by occasionally moving away from this setup into documentary-style sweeping portrayals of the rugby scrum or the pub. A synthesis of conventional tactics, combined with obsessively tightly crafted editing and scene selection is what makes this movie a worthwhile view from start to finish.

_____________

AN ASIDE.

On why Lindsay Anderson never moved to Hollywood or felt totally comfortable with the glitzy, glamorous, utterly sterile American studio system---

"Lindsey preferred British hypocrisy to American bullshit."

A fantastic quote and one I both totally understand and agree with enthusiastically.

Saturday Video

After Bathing at Baxter's was Jefferson Airplane's deliberate effort to shed its commercial pretenses and construct the perfect aural acid trip (remember, this WAS 1967, after all). The album is surprisingly tuneful at times, belying its reputation as a freak out, experimental disaster.

"Watch Her Ride" is my favorite song off the album and utilizes the group's unique three-part harmonies. In addition, Baxter's spares the audience of the reverb overkill which plagued Surrealistic Pillow. As an aside, I was glad to see Surrealistic Pillow issued in a much punchier mono mix which to me crushes the more familiar stereo mix like a grape.

Bottles and Cans and Just Clap Your Hands (And Just Clap Your Hands)

Where it's at.

The American Street.