Just because it's the feel-good movie of the year doesn't mean it's any good. Some critics have said that if you don't like Slumdog Millionaire, you must not have a soul. That is just plain stupid. Slumdog Millionaire may be populated by actual slumdogs, which is admirable, and it may have been actually shot in the slums of Mumbai, which is admirable, but it's not like that makes it a landmark of social realism. Why is everyone touting this and not Salaam Bombay! which was SO FAR SUPERIOR? Salaam Bombay! was nominated for an Oscar, too. But nobody saw it.
Danny Boyle frustrates me. He knows how to make entertaining movies that are interesting to watch even as their clichés and retarded characterization make me want to scream. I had so many problems with Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary really is a bad movie. The only reason I've seen it multiple times is because Holly Hunter's scenes are magnificent. Slumdog Millionaire was no different--sleekly packaged, easy-to-handle "social realism" reminiscent of City of God, another movie that made me really angry.
I might not even have gotten so annoyed with Slumdog if I had turned it off before the last five minutes, but unfortunately I watched them. Why did it devolve more and more into a Bollywood ending? Was that really necessary? Why do movies like Trainspotting, City of God, and Slumdog Millionaire feel the need to glamorize something that really, truly, is not glamorous? I'll take something like Maria Full of Grace any day.
When I want to watch a beautiful movie that'll tug at my heart strings, without making me vomit, I'll watch Children of Heaven. I suggest you do so too.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Bam Bam and Celeste
Margaret Cho's debut as a screenwriter is a movie I wish I had watched when I was high. I would've been much more forgiving of its faults (of which there are many) and more amused by its jokes (some of which are pedestrian, many of which are just so odd they just had to make me laugh). The film boasts a stellar little trio of comedic supporting actors: Jane Lynch as a dykey Davy Crockett, Kathy Najimy as a fortune teller (she reminded me of Rosanne in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, one of the worst movies I've ever seen with one of the most amazing casts), and Alan Cumming as Cho's dorky love interest.
I can't be overly critical of Bam Bam and Celeste because I think everyone involved was aware of what a bad movie it is, even as they were making it. It has the camp feel of a John Waters movie, without enough of the outrageous edge to make it a real success. It also has a bit too much heart, too didactically presented. If the theme of the movie hadn't hit me over the head so many times, it might not have made me roll my eyes so much at the end when Cho's character achieves self-actualization.
That said, there are some real gems in this honestly awful movie. Most of them are Cho playing her mother. I think Margaret Cho's mother must be one of the most entertaining people on the planet. I'm incredibly jealous that Margaret gets to have frustrating phone conversations with her on a regular basis!
I can't be overly critical of Bam Bam and Celeste because I think everyone involved was aware of what a bad movie it is, even as they were making it. It has the camp feel of a John Waters movie, without enough of the outrageous edge to make it a real success. It also has a bit too much heart, too didactically presented. If the theme of the movie hadn't hit me over the head so many times, it might not have made me roll my eyes so much at the end when Cho's character achieves self-actualization.
That said, there are some real gems in this honestly awful movie. Most of them are Cho playing her mother. I think Margaret Cho's mother must be one of the most entertaining people on the planet. I'm incredibly jealous that Margaret gets to have frustrating phone conversations with her on a regular basis!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Frozen River
Generally I am ambivalent about watching Sundance movies. I find their formulaic tearjerking often has the opposite effect than intended. Frozen River felt quite different from the usual Sundance fare, despite being a gritty, low-budget movie about important social issues.
What surprised me most about the movie was how economical the script was. It had the refinement of a short story, perfectly detailed without overly padding the characters. It left me wanting to know much more about them, rather than merely feeling informed about their "type." The movie deals with issues of race and economic class by showing just how individuals within their race or class can act against stereotype, perhaps from desperation, or perhaps just from uniqueness.
That element of taut characterization was especially apt in the formulation of the Mohawk community within the film. In an interview the director, Courtney Hunt, said she didn't want the Native American element of the film to devolve into an exposition, so she gave us just enough to understand that Lila, one of the main characters in the film, feels both alienated from whites, mainstream American culture, and her own community. We understand enough about the disparity between Mohawk law and US law to realize there is too much murky territory for there not to be crime and confusion.
The filming itself, while not particularly interesting--and shot entirely on somber, washed-out DV--does what it can. Close-ups are not gratuitous, the sense of location is palpable, and the cinematography evokes the anxiety, desolation, and economic depression that permeate the story of the film.
The best thing about Frozen River is by far the narrative. In the aforementioned interview, Hunt also mentioned that it was vital to her that she keep her audience engaged, that there had to be a story, not just a message or a feeling (and Sweet Moses to I hate message films), and she had probably been influenced by her father in that regard, who was always watching Westerns when she was growing up. Frozen River utilizes several tropes of the Western but transports them to upstate New York in the dead of winter. We have the murky borders where the law may not apply, tensions between whites and Native Americans, smuggling (though in this case people and not money or guns), and a morally conflicted protagonist whose heart is in the right place. Putting a Western in the disguise of a low-budget socially-aware thriller was some brilliant genre bending, seriously.
What surprised me most about the movie was how economical the script was. It had the refinement of a short story, perfectly detailed without overly padding the characters. It left me wanting to know much more about them, rather than merely feeling informed about their "type." The movie deals with issues of race and economic class by showing just how individuals within their race or class can act against stereotype, perhaps from desperation, or perhaps just from uniqueness.
That element of taut characterization was especially apt in the formulation of the Mohawk community within the film. In an interview the director, Courtney Hunt, said she didn't want the Native American element of the film to devolve into an exposition, so she gave us just enough to understand that Lila, one of the main characters in the film, feels both alienated from whites, mainstream American culture, and her own community. We understand enough about the disparity between Mohawk law and US law to realize there is too much murky territory for there not to be crime and confusion.
The filming itself, while not particularly interesting--and shot entirely on somber, washed-out DV--does what it can. Close-ups are not gratuitous, the sense of location is palpable, and the cinematography evokes the anxiety, desolation, and economic depression that permeate the story of the film.
The best thing about Frozen River is by far the narrative. In the aforementioned interview, Hunt also mentioned that it was vital to her that she keep her audience engaged, that there had to be a story, not just a message or a feeling (and Sweet Moses to I hate message films), and she had probably been influenced by her father in that regard, who was always watching Westerns when she was growing up. Frozen River utilizes several tropes of the Western but transports them to upstate New York in the dead of winter. We have the murky borders where the law may not apply, tensions between whites and Native Americans, smuggling (though in this case people and not money or guns), and a morally conflicted protagonist whose heart is in the right place. Putting a Western in the disguise of a low-budget socially-aware thriller was some brilliant genre bending, seriously.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Tango Lesson
Sally Potter is one of my favorite filmmakers. I've seen almost all of her movies, but until last week I hadn't yet seen The Tango Lesson. So I made the awkward decision to go see it alone on Valentine's Day at the "Festival du Cinema Romantique." Seeing a Sally Potter movie on the silver screen is an exceptional visual pleasure. She knows how to work a philosophical and visual thrill together into a dynamic shock for a receptive viewer.
The Tango Lesson is a meta-movie, but don't let that deter you. Sally Potter has none of the ego or arrogance that makes meta-movies painful to watch. She plays herself, lonely and quietly, as she attempts to write a script. Fighting writer's block, she begins taking tango lessons and there learns about rhythm, the lead-and-follow dance of romance and work and gender roles. Instead of discussing all that to death, as the French are often wont to do, Potter instead relates these realizations visually, through extended black-and-white sequences of her pacing her bare white apartment, dancing increasingly ably with her partner and somewhat-lover, Pablo Veron, and wandering around Paris and Versailles.
Potter utilizes one of my absolute favorite visual tricks, mixing somber black-and-white with brief shocks of vivid color film. The black-and-white film is the meta-story, the story-of-writing, and the shocks of color are the story itself as it plays through her head. I have recently read that these tantalizing snippets of a movie that is never realized in The Tango Lesson have been re-cast and altered as Potter's newest film, Rage, recently premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. After watching The Tango Lesson I am so incredibly excited to see how she expands these lush sequences and snatches of terror into what I'm sure will be a philosophical and political allegory to rival Yes, my favorite movie of 2004.
Sally Potter just does everything that makes me love movies perfectly, and in an elegant balance, like a well-ordered mathematical equation: lush visual pleasures (but not at the expense of substance), complex emotional and philosophical meanings embedded in said pleasures (but not dogmatically or didactically), gorgeous musical counterpoint (her trademark atmospheric vocals juxtaposed with staccato tango), and unbelievably elegant simplicity of composition, design, and narrative focus. Simply marvelous.
The Tango Lesson is a meta-movie, but don't let that deter you. Sally Potter has none of the ego or arrogance that makes meta-movies painful to watch. She plays herself, lonely and quietly, as she attempts to write a script. Fighting writer's block, she begins taking tango lessons and there learns about rhythm, the lead-and-follow dance of romance and work and gender roles. Instead of discussing all that to death, as the French are often wont to do, Potter instead relates these realizations visually, through extended black-and-white sequences of her pacing her bare white apartment, dancing increasingly ably with her partner and somewhat-lover, Pablo Veron, and wandering around Paris and Versailles.
Potter utilizes one of my absolute favorite visual tricks, mixing somber black-and-white with brief shocks of vivid color film. The black-and-white film is the meta-story, the story-of-writing, and the shocks of color are the story itself as it plays through her head. I have recently read that these tantalizing snippets of a movie that is never realized in The Tango Lesson have been re-cast and altered as Potter's newest film, Rage, recently premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. After watching The Tango Lesson I am so incredibly excited to see how she expands these lush sequences and snatches of terror into what I'm sure will be a philosophical and political allegory to rival Yes, my favorite movie of 2004.
Sally Potter just does everything that makes me love movies perfectly, and in an elegant balance, like a well-ordered mathematical equation: lush visual pleasures (but not at the expense of substance), complex emotional and philosophical meanings embedded in said pleasures (but not dogmatically or didactically), gorgeous musical counterpoint (her trademark atmospheric vocals juxtaposed with staccato tango), and unbelievably elegant simplicity of composition, design, and narrative focus. Simply marvelous.
Sita Sings the Blues
A couple weeks ago Kim and I went to see Sita Sings the Blues, an animated feminist musical interpretation of the Ramayana, told from the perspective of Rama's wife, Sita. I've been looking forward to this wacky project ever since seeing some excerpts at an animation festival several years ago. The full-length version did not disappoint.
The cartoon was written, created, and animated entirely by Nina Paley, who teaches at Parsons School of Design and has created several other intriguing and funny animated shorts. It weaves together the story of the Ramayana, told and discussed by several hilarious shadow puppets in a more cerebral and less irritating Mystery Science manner, with the story of Paley's tragic trip to India and subsequent divorce from her husband. The incredible diversity of animation and storytelling style makes for a dynamic and engaging tale that never attempts to answer the fascinating questions it raises about feminism, love, sacrifice, devotion, and interpretation. Instead, the shadow puppet chorus bickers amongst themselves and comments on the action in a way that, to me, allows a humorous and emotional connection to the tale that also walks a fine line when it comes to respecting the tenets of classic Indian mythology.
While the movie sounds complicated enough already, Paley has taken the anachronistic mishmash of the plot a step further and inserted a slew of musical numbers in the most dramatic moments of the story of the Ramayana, sung by a singer of old standards, Annette Hanshaw. The numbers are funny and charming and full of visual irony as cartoonish violence punctuates bittersweet tunes like "Mean to Me" and "Can't Help Lovin' That Man," and underscores the absurdity that surrounds the poignant emotional dimensions of the tale.
Despite the carefully respectful irreverence of the comedic telling, Paley has received numerous death threats and countless hateful criticisms of her award-winning film. Ignore them. It's a fantastic movie and deserves to be seen by all. Much to my (and your future) delight, that will soon be possible: Paley is fighting to pay off all the copyrights in order to host her movie for free online so anyone can download it or stream it if they like. For Paley, Sita Sings the Blues was a labor of love that took over five years to realize, and she doesn't give a damn about making money off it. That's pretty fabulous.
The cartoon was written, created, and animated entirely by Nina Paley, who teaches at Parsons School of Design and has created several other intriguing and funny animated shorts. It weaves together the story of the Ramayana, told and discussed by several hilarious shadow puppets in a more cerebral and less irritating Mystery Science manner, with the story of Paley's tragic trip to India and subsequent divorce from her husband. The incredible diversity of animation and storytelling style makes for a dynamic and engaging tale that never attempts to answer the fascinating questions it raises about feminism, love, sacrifice, devotion, and interpretation. Instead, the shadow puppet chorus bickers amongst themselves and comments on the action in a way that, to me, allows a humorous and emotional connection to the tale that also walks a fine line when it comes to respecting the tenets of classic Indian mythology.
While the movie sounds complicated enough already, Paley has taken the anachronistic mishmash of the plot a step further and inserted a slew of musical numbers in the most dramatic moments of the story of the Ramayana, sung by a singer of old standards, Annette Hanshaw. The numbers are funny and charming and full of visual irony as cartoonish violence punctuates bittersweet tunes like "Mean to Me" and "Can't Help Lovin' That Man," and underscores the absurdity that surrounds the poignant emotional dimensions of the tale.
Despite the carefully respectful irreverence of the comedic telling, Paley has received numerous death threats and countless hateful criticisms of her award-winning film. Ignore them. It's a fantastic movie and deserves to be seen by all. Much to my (and your future) delight, that will soon be possible: Paley is fighting to pay off all the copyrights in order to host her movie for free online so anyone can download it or stream it if they like. For Paley, Sita Sings the Blues was a labor of love that took over five years to realize, and she doesn't give a damn about making money off it. That's pretty fabulous.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The United States of Tara
Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning writer of Juno, has created a new show for Showtime called "The United States of Tara." Produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Toni Collette (famous for a variety of stellar performances in Little Miss Sunshine, The Sixth Sense, and the unforgettably uncomfortable Muriel's Wedding) and John Corbett (famous mostly for playing Aidan on "Sex and the City," but older television viewers might remember him on "Northern Exposure"), "The United States of Tara" has quite an unusual premise for a half-hour dramedy.
Tara, a cynical interior designer, is married to Max, an unflappable landscaper. They have two kids. Kate is an incredibly self-conscious and outspoken 15-year-old with a tendency to date loser Japanijunkies. Marshall is her faggedy cinephile little brother. He drinks chai, listens to classic jazz and sleeps on zebra-print pillows. Diablo Cody probably could've constructed a comedy full of overstylized, zippy one-liners about a dysfunctional middle class family...and the show would've retained my interest for about 10 minutes.
Instead, that wacky ex-stripper had a stroke of genius: Tara also suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. She has multiple personalities, and they are all hilarious. Much more fascinating than Tara herself. T is a 15-year-old who is tacky, wildly inappropriate, and the polar opposite of Alice, a 1950's type-A housewife who gets unbearable urges to iron Max's dungarees ("Don't put creases in my jeans, Alice!") and bakes an elaborate, kind of racist cake for a school bake sale benefiting Brazilian starving children or something. Alice is Donna Reed with a ticking time-bomb in the background.
The best by far, however, is Buck: a gun-loving, chainsmoking, homophobic hillbilly. Buck loves teasing Marshall and hitting on every female in sight, swaggering around in a cut-off flannel shirt and filthy baseball cap. While Toni Collette has already proven to us that she is a quality actress who really absorbs a role, she has blown me away with Buck. Collette plays these four characters so convincingly that one can watch Tara transitioning from one personality to another solely through body language, before Collette even changes costume. It's marvelous to watch.
In fact, the almost commonplace treatment of Tara's DID is what makes "The United States of Tara" such a remarkable show. The subject matter is really off-the-wall, but it's treated as logically as any other problem one might find in a "normal" middle class American family, be it an alcoholic mother or a depressive father or a host of other problems. The show, while containing this element of crazy, instead focuses on how it affects the family on a quotidian level, and finds very refreshing, very unusual humor there. For example, which alter-identity is her daughter's favorite? Her husband's? Her son's? What are we to make of the possibility that these alter-identities, even while wreaking havoc on her children's reputations in school, are actually helping Tara mother her children when she feels most unable?
The show raises so many interesting questions, and is so much less stylized and irritating than Juno (don't get me wrong, I loved Juno, but to me it did not hit at the kind of realism and emotional immediacy that makes me want to continue watching a family dramedy). Having only watched three episodes, I am completely hooked. Highly recommended.
Tara, a cynical interior designer, is married to Max, an unflappable landscaper. They have two kids. Kate is an incredibly self-conscious and outspoken 15-year-old with a tendency to date loser Japanijunkies. Marshall is her faggedy cinephile little brother. He drinks chai, listens to classic jazz and sleeps on zebra-print pillows. Diablo Cody probably could've constructed a comedy full of overstylized, zippy one-liners about a dysfunctional middle class family...and the show would've retained my interest for about 10 minutes.
Instead, that wacky ex-stripper had a stroke of genius: Tara also suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. She has multiple personalities, and they are all hilarious. Much more fascinating than Tara herself. T is a 15-year-old who is tacky, wildly inappropriate, and the polar opposite of Alice, a 1950's type-A housewife who gets unbearable urges to iron Max's dungarees ("Don't put creases in my jeans, Alice!") and bakes an elaborate, kind of racist cake for a school bake sale benefiting Brazilian starving children or something. Alice is Donna Reed with a ticking time-bomb in the background.
The best by far, however, is Buck: a gun-loving, chainsmoking, homophobic hillbilly. Buck loves teasing Marshall and hitting on every female in sight, swaggering around in a cut-off flannel shirt and filthy baseball cap. While Toni Collette has already proven to us that she is a quality actress who really absorbs a role, she has blown me away with Buck. Collette plays these four characters so convincingly that one can watch Tara transitioning from one personality to another solely through body language, before Collette even changes costume. It's marvelous to watch.
In fact, the almost commonplace treatment of Tara's DID is what makes "The United States of Tara" such a remarkable show. The subject matter is really off-the-wall, but it's treated as logically as any other problem one might find in a "normal" middle class American family, be it an alcoholic mother or a depressive father or a host of other problems. The show, while containing this element of crazy, instead focuses on how it affects the family on a quotidian level, and finds very refreshing, very unusual humor there. For example, which alter-identity is her daughter's favorite? Her husband's? Her son's? What are we to make of the possibility that these alter-identities, even while wreaking havoc on her children's reputations in school, are actually helping Tara mother her children when she feels most unable?
The show raises so many interesting questions, and is so much less stylized and irritating than Juno (don't get me wrong, I loved Juno, but to me it did not hit at the kind of realism and emotional immediacy that makes me want to continue watching a family dramedy). Having only watched three episodes, I am completely hooked. Highly recommended.
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