&c.

Inglourious Basterds d. Quentin Tarantino, 2009

2009-09-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

Consider play. Fun & jest; the action of participating in a game; a dramatic composition; space in which something can move. Now consider Inglourious Basterds. I found myself with two initial responses to the film: 1) That was fun 2) But was it moral? 2a) Yes, it was 2b) No, it was not 2bi) Wait, should that have been fun? Perfunctory readings of readings seem to indicate - more or less - that my response to the film follows a mostly typical arc. Only a curmudgeon would deny that Inglourious Basterds is compelling filmmaking - stylish without being overbearing, tautly written and tightly edited¹, and filled with life-brimming characters. Response #1 stands: qua film, IB is an enjoyable time at the cinema

But the morality and ethics of the thing complicates this response. Like Dogville before it, the denouement recasts the heroes of the film as potential immoral butchers, applying a justice and vengeance that might not be theirs to serve to an audience² that might not actually deserve it.

What saves Inglourious Basterds - and, frankly, the audience as well - from occupying an untenable position is this idea of play. In spite of Quentin Tarantino’s attempts to author the thrust of this film univocal³, Inglourious Basterds is very much playful, in absolutely every sense of the word. (Or at least those gathered above.) This is obvious, but it still needs to be stated: this is not a historical film. It's concerned, yes, with history and with injustice, but this is first and foremost a cinematic thought experiment taken to its logical end.

The viewer is repeatedly reminded of the fact that what she's watching is a film. Tarantino's movies are always rife with cinematic imagery, but they usually take the shape of constative indices - visual, audio, narrative, and casting cues that point back to the stuff found in cinema. Inglourious Basterds treads a different path altogether, pointing to the stuff of cinema. Outside of an early scene that recalls that final shot of The Searchers - where an august John Wayne's lumbering walk toward the sunset is cut pathetically short by a closing door - I failed to pick up on any other moments recalling specifically other films⁴. Here cinema is performative, its qualities, rather than its experiences, doing the heavy lifting: Lt. Aldo quips, "Watching Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to going to the movies"; the finale takes place in a cinemaplex. To return, this puts the film and the audience in a cinematically charged frame, as opposed to the political and moral frame that one might approach a movie about WWII or the holocaust with. Which is not to say that the film is evacuated of ethics and politics, only that its political and ethical codes are not the same as those of the world outside of the film. Rather, and here we go again, the filmic space is one in which morality and politics can be put into play, ambling back and forth in an antipodean dance, refusing to cling to a single position. So, to speak of a univocal morality like the enumerated list in my first paragraph is to miss the whole point; the humor, excitement, drama, politics, and morality of the film are fluid and intertwined - extrapolating one from the other is to ignore the cinematic space of play.

The result of this play is a complex network of moments that stretch and pull at each other, threatening a breaking point, only to rebound and meet up again in the middle somewhere. Inglourious Basterds opens with an act of pure evil: Jews slaughtered by Nazis via machine gun fire rained down through the floorboards. It follows that the Nazis deserve their comeuppance, but when that comeuppance is brought down, the shots of the Basterds standing in the gods reflect both the Nazis slaughter of the Jews in the opening scene and the watchtower massacre perpetrated by Frederick Zoller. These moments that bind the Jews - especially the Basterds - to the Nazis occur throughout the film: Hitler tells Goebbles that the film-within-a-film is his finest work yet, while Aldo Raine proclaims, "This just might be my masterpiece", and Shosanna's hijack-film is eerily continuous with Goebbels', replacing one on-screen massacre with another. While I don't mean to imply that there is anything ambiguous about the morality of the Nazis - and there is not; that opening scene is a demonstration of pure brutality and evil - these connected images serve to nullify any pat reading that works to anchor the Basterds' action as moral or immoral. That sense of play in the film - the fun type - works with the tropes of vengeance and morality to create spatial play. The film bounds and rebounds between glee and justice, so much so that the two become inextricably intertwined; the mode of the film, then, is one of play, of constant movement between joy and despair, morality and evil, justice and vengeance. Rather than being a final word, an object that states HOW THINGS ARE, Inglourious Basterds operates as a conduit of interpretation, deflecting readings that seek to cement it in place and rewarding those that allow it to breathe.

¹ Yes, even with its 2.5 hour runtime
² Literally
³ The entirety of Tarantino's speech at the premiere, via Vulture: "So, are you ready to see some Basterds?" [Mild applause] "I said, are you ready to ready to see some Basterds fuck up some Nazis?" [Louder applause] "Yeah, motherfucker!" [Throws microphone on the floor]
⁴ Do bear in mind, however, that I'm only moderately well watched and that I also possess a terrible memory for recollection.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford d. Andrew Dominik, 2007

2008-04-29T22:15:00.001-07:00

After seeing My Blueberry Nights - and, yeah, cribbing plenty of notes from Matt Zoller Seitz's (as always) whip smart words - and then seeing TAoJJbtCRF (should that b get capitalized?), I'm struck by the idea of the moment, of mood. MZS writes:

Wong Kar-Wai's films aren't just intoxicating; they're intoxicated. They deploy slow motion, fast motion, freeze-frames and other visual flourishes not to highlight pivotal narrative moments, but to italicize feelings -- some sorrowful or profound, others fleeting, playful, sensual

and then:

In place of a Syd Field-approved three act story, My Blueberry Nights offers a series of moments (some pivotal, others fleeting) in the lives of various, tangentially unrelated characters. The moments are threaded together via the experiences of a New York coffee shop waitress named Elizabeth (Norah Jones), who tries to get over a breakup by living and working in other cities, witnessing and/or participating in other characters' dramas. But Elizabeth's experiences less a dramatic through-line than an emotional echo chamber: a means for Wong to simultaneously explore one character's self-reckoning and a second character's reaction to it.

I'm not entirely sure that My Blueberry Nights succeeds, but its blueprint as viewed by Seitz - a series of moments and emotions threaded together by experience - is the great movie at the heart of the very good movie that TAoJJbtCRF is.

Simply put, the narrator hobbles TAoJJbtCRF. In what could have been an excellent scene, Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) plays the chameleonic flaneur, essentially living, through James' garments, accoutrements, and things, the life of Jesse James. The visual narrative is coherent without being obvious, subtle without being abstract, but the V.O. operates as a sort of play-by-play announcer, describing for the impaired the image on screen and - this is the dealbreaker - ascribing concrete meaning to that image. The V.O. plays exactly what the film is not: a poor biographer.

A good biopic - Capote comes to mind (and not to say that the film at hand is necessarily a biopic, but the biographical elements are the same) - paints in (wait for it) the medium of moments and moods; it simply presents, without presenting judgment. (Actually, and clearly, this is the stuff of good storytelling and quality characterization period - good films pretty much always operate in a liminal space.) And this is exactly what TAoJJbtCRF does when the voice over is absent. Perhaps a bit too heavy on the young-man-peering-despondently-over-the-countryside trope, TAoJJbtCRF presents portraits - vignettes, really - of Jesse (Brad Pitt) and the sundry members of his gang. Only one hold-up is portrayed in the film, and even that is shrouded in mystery, hardly the clear procedural of the usual filmic robbery, train- or otherwise. The forthright title is routinely questioned in the film - was it cowardice that drove R.F. and was Jesse James such a monumental figure that his death deserved to be called an assassination? - so much so that the coda, in which the honor and character of Robert Ford is explored, is fully deserved. That is, deserved if one forgets the V.O.

Sans voice-over, TAoJJbtCRF resembles very much a Terrence Malick film or, digging into the archives of the western, Peter Fonda's excellent The Hired Hand. The pathos would be a bit unbearable at times, but the excellent cast, visuals, and script would more than make up for it. Instead, with the narration, the film splits itself in two, attempting to appeal to both the art-house set and Oscar-driven populace, satisfying completely, I imagine, neither.

Music: 2007: The Year in Review: Diving Off the Balcony

2007-12-20T15:39:00.000-08:00

I paid attention in 2007, but not well enough. To be forthright, it is my opinion that it's pretty much impossible to truly pay attention to the contemporary music game. Things move so fast. If you got the indie rock thing dialed, then you miss whatever is going on in underground hip hop; if you got hip hop on lock, then you miss the noise/metal scene; if you got that thing covered, then you miss the decadent, gorgeously overwrought pop emanating from the pores of your radio's speakers; and if you skim all of those equally, well then you're staying completely on the surface, missing all that low-level goodness. And, to make this ridiculous, if you pay complete attention to contemporary music, you miss those great albums from yesteryear that are constantly bubbling up into the collective awareness. Consider that a caveat; what follows is my favorite of what I've heard and by no means definite. It'll change - certainly - by the end of next year.

Now, a few words on the subject at hand. 2007, especially following the very middling '06, has been a fantastic year for music. Not only has the stream of solid, competent, even excellent releases been steady, but there have also been a number - 5-8, by my count - of flat-out masterpieces, the kind of album that you speak about in hushed, reverent tones 10 years down the line. (This talk of the future is obviously speculative, but if I'm not listening to these albums 10 years from now, then I've either discovered some very excellent music indeed, or I've gone soft-headed. Consider this a time capsule.) Moreover, 2007 produced one song which I consider to be among the Top 10 ever created. Both a feat and coup in this modern climate. So, then: here, and with brief comments, are my favorite albums and songs (and other miscellany) of 2007.

Albums

25. Dirty Acres (CunninLynguists)
24. Weighing Souls With Sand (The Angelic Process)
23. Curses (Future of the Left)
22. In Rainbows (Radiohead)
21. Death Is This Communion (High on Fire)
20. Kala (M.I.A.)
19. Beyond (Dinosaur jr.)
18. Phantom Limb (Pig Destroyer)
17. Eater of Birds (Cobalt)
16. Planet of Ice (Minus the Bear)
15. Bambi's Dilemma (Melt-Banana)
14. Liars (Liars)
13. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Of Montreal)
12. Given to the Rising (Neurosis)
11. Boxer (The National)

10. Pilgrimage (Om)

There's something to the name of this band. Their music - just, literally, drums and bass - is repetitive to the point of, surface-wise, boredom. But it never actually induces boredom. I won't claim it induces a bodhisattvaic trance-like state, either - that'd be silly - but it is (spoiler: critical buzz word ahead) kinda meditative. Probably the ultimate stoner metal record, but don't hold that against it. This is what it means to lock into a groove and ride it 'til the runout.

09. You Follow Me (Nina Nastasia & Jim White)

Stunning production care of Steve Albini: the way White's A-G percussion meanderings dance with Nina's voice and guitar is simply perfect. What should be a straightforward record - just drums, vox, and guitar - is actually a slippery little thing. Both players dance around "typical" melodies and rhythms, skewing and splaying them across the surface; when it locks, when you are given that taste of perfect pop, it's that much sweeter.

08. Mirrored (Battles)

Potentially the year's best record, if only I understood it better. Music from twenty years in the future, maybe. Boredoms and Kraftwerk filtered through Ornette Coleman, but with more guitars.

07. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Spoon)

Probably the most consistent band ever. Britt Daniel is always the coolest guy in the room.

06. Untrue (Burial)

The aural echo of a dejected night's walk through a piss-drizzle of rain.

05. Ire Works (Dillinger Escape Plan)

Track three is titled "Black Bubblegum," and that's really the perfect figure for this album. DES don't so much drop their math-metal tendencies as they integrate Timberlake (!) styled croonings into parts of them. No joke. The result works surprisingly well, with the ultimate apotheosis being the Faith No More acolyte, "Milk Lizard." Its fence-sitting will ultimately insure that very few people actually like this album, but for those with an ear for both Pig Destroyer and Rihanna, this is about as close as one can get to a blissful marriage.

04. Strawberry Jam (Animal Collective)

The Animal Collective comes through with its most immediate and approachable album to date. I don't know yet whether it's my favorite - the last three have all been overwhelmingly good - but it sure is a stunner. "Peacebone" is essentially a summation of the Collective's career arc, arhythmic noise finds a beat, then a semblance of melody, then a hook, and finally a non-sensical, but catchy, refrain. Yeah, they've waxed pop, but that's certainly not a bad thing - when they meld their avant-meandering to a good hook, the results equal something approaching genius.

03. Person Pitch (Panda Bear)

Forget comparisons to Brian Wilson, talk of the samples, questions of authorship - the real deal with Person Pitch is those gorgeous, hummable melodies; the real deal is those washes of sound that layer up like a great dub record. I simply don't understand those that accuse this record of being inaccessible or odd - it's perfect pop. The various samples and percussions flowing with, bouncing off, or grinding up against each other; the sheets of melody and harmony that - even divorced from anything resembling sense - emote all over the fucking place; the swelling transitions, like that tiny bit of darkness that creeps into the end of "Comfy in Nautica" - this is the excellence of Person Pitch. Even in a year of several great and distinguished albums, Person Pitch stands apart.

I won't try to ascribe some deep, philosophical meaning to PP. I've read the lyrics (cause I certainly didn't understand 'em while listening), and they're definitely good, but this isn't a Leonard Cohen album. Neither will I try to ascribe some deeply personal meaning to Person Pitch - listening to it really loud while lying on my bed, drunk on Lancers, doesn't make me cry or ponder my being. All I'll say is this: Person Pitch is really great, really pure music, music whose surface is constantly in flux and always in the process of washing over and redefining itself. That's pretty much everything I want in music.

02. Colors (Between the Buried and Me)

This is the one that, while I was walking to my school's career center trying to figure out what do with my life (answer, btw: pizza boy), made me fall in love with metal. Not for everyone, obvs., but this album really is excellent music. There's the requisite speed-riffage, natch, but there's also the steady hand of an editor present. BtBaM temper their insatiable appetite for the riff with these perfect, and often beautiful, interpolations - e.g. the refrain in "Sun of Nothing," the breakdown in "Ants of the Sky," and the entirety of "White Walls."

01. Sound of Silver (LCD Soundsystem)

The way it's sequenced - the faux club-romp of "Get Innocuous" and "North American Scum" bleeding into the meditations on, respectively, loss and aging in "Someone Great" and "All My Friends" that finally coalesce into something resembling, simultaneously, elegy for past and affirmation of present in "Sound of Silver" and "New York I Love You, but You're Bringing Me Down" - is pretty much peerless, as albums go, in the last five years. It's the one-two punch of "Someone Great" and "All My Friends," however, that puts Sound of Silver over the top. James Murphy proffers one of the great opening lines ever in "All My Friends," "That's how it starts," invoking both an entire lost past and a sort of unavoidable, yet somehow mysterious, future. It's my favorite trope: finding the epic in the banal, with the result being that each subverts the other, leading to this weird space of simply, well, being. The result is an affirmation, with a great deal of trepidation, of being where you are, of this moment, right now

Singles

I don't really know singles too well, but here 'tis anyway.

10. "The Underdog" (Spoon)
09. "Peacebone" (Animal Collective)
08. "No Pussy Blues" (Grinderman)
07. "Bros" (Panda Bear)
06. "Fireworks" (Animal Collective)
05. "Umbrella" (Rihanna)
04. "Paper Planes" (M.I.A.)
03. "Year of the Pig" (Fucked Up)
02. "Titus Andronicus" (Titus Andronicus)
01. "All My Friends" (LCD Soundsystem)

n.b. the b-side to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's "Lay & Love," - "Señor" - is really deserving of that #2 spot, but - for some weird reason - I've deemed it ineligible. Nonetheless, do give it a spin.

edit:

I meant to add this on first publish. Nobody will read it now, but that's ok. Just to show how transitory these things are, here's last year's list - as made last year - contra the same list from this year's vantage point:

2006

1. The Drift (Scott Walker)
2. Orphans (Tom Waits)
3. Drum's Not Dead (Liars)
4. If You Come to Greet Me (Laura Gibson)
5. Sam's Town (The Killers)
6. Return to Cookie Mountain (TV on the Radio)
7. Fishscale (Ghostface Killah)
8. Sensuous (Cornelius)
9. Harmony in Ultraviolet (Tim Hecker)
10. 45:33 (LCD Soundsystem)

11. Hell Hath No Fury (Clipse)
12. The Body the Blood the Machine (The Thermals)
13. Citrus (Asobi Seksu)
14. Roots & Crowns (Califone)
15. Boys and Girls in America (The Hold Steady)
16. Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (Lupe Fiasco)
17. Destroyer's Rubies (Destroyer)
18. Night Ripper (Girl Talk)
19. Carnavas (Silversun Pickups)
20. Taiga (OOIOO)

2006 via 2007

1. The Drift (Scott Walker)
2. Dead Mountain Mouth (Genghis Tron)
3. Drum's Not Dead (Liars)
4. Brother, Sister (mewithoutYou)
5. Blood Visions (Jay Reatard)
6. Orphans (Tom Waits)
7. Blood Mountain (Mastodon)
8. Hell Hath No Fury (Clipse)
9. Diadem of 12 Stars (Wolves in the Throne Room)
10. Boys and Girls in America (The Hold Steady)

11. Return to Cookie Mountain (TV On the Radio)
12. Fishscale (Ghostface Killah)
13. Sensuous (Cornelius)
14. Harmony in Ultraviolet (Tim Hecker)
15. 45:33 (LCD Soundsystem)
16. The Body the Blood the Machine (The Thermals)
17. Futuresex/Lovesounds (Justin Timberlake)
18. If You Come to Greet Me (Laura Gibson)
19. Sam's Town (The Killers)
20. King (T.I.)

Crazy, right?

music, ought-seven style

2007-12-05T00:29:00.000-08:00

This is probably pointless, being that roughly five people read this blog, and most - if not all - of them (of you, I guess?) I see or talk to at least once a week. I feel like procrastinating, so here goes anyway.

As you know, I like lists, and I'm putting a couple together, so what have you heard, music-wise, in 2007 that I should have heard? A quick rundown:

Sound of Silver LCD Soundsystem

A lock for spot numero uno.

Person Pitch Panda Bear
Strawberry Jam Animal Collective

These guys are teh hottness.

Weighing Souls with Sand The Angelic Process
Ire Works Dillinger Escape Plan
Colors Between the Buried and Me

Three "metal" albums that have slayed me over the last few weeks.

Untrue Burial

Ghostly dubstep-revival; the perfect soundtrack to walks on a dreary day.

There's more, natch:

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Spoon; Mirrored Battles; Pilgrimage Om; the new Radiohead, Liars, and Shellac albums; Mammatus; that new Boredoms platter; the Dinosaur jr. reunion-type disc; Pig Destroyer, Neurosis, and High on Fire; Sunset Rubdown, Parts & Labor, A Place to Bury Strangers; UGK, Beanie Sigel, Durrty Goodz, about a thousand Lil Wayne mixtapes, M.I.-fucking-A. Et cetera, etc., &c.

So, anyway, what have you been spinning?

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie d. Shinichiro Watanabe, 2001

2007-12-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

Not as successful, not to mention satisfying, as the show, which I very strongly recommend to anyone who can handle even a small taste of anime. The melange of tones and genres that the show so deftly pulls off is muddled a bit here. In terms of tone, especially, the film relies too heavily on a sort of quasi-profound pathos, the type that anyone who has been around a large group of indie-loving freshmen/sophomores knows only too well.

This is a good place to stop. I'm going to leave that up there unfinished. Two reasons: 1) Anywhere I go from there will be more comparison between the show and the film, which isn't particularly generous to the film 2) I don't have the desire, the interest, to devote the time and energy to the film that it deserves. Maybe; I'll clear that up in a moment.

So ends my November Thing, and - in terms of the work of writing something about every movie/television show seen - it has been a success. I still find myself unsatisfied, though. While I'm pretty happy with the style I've developed w/r/t television criticism - especially my bit on the Weeds finale - and various film reviews - my stuff on Chaplin, for instance, or the bits on Happy Together and Nikita, no matter how embryonic and typo-ridden they may be - the highlight of this whole experiment has been the Thanksgiving-weekend exchange between Ryland, Cuyler, and myself, and the ensuing spill-over at their 'blog. Plus, our professor even threw his hat into the fray, sending out a pretty robust email filled with lots of good things that pertained to the matter at hand. Which is to say, I don't know where I stand in relation to film criticism at this point. The critical stance I assumed in my Run, Lola, Run review (aha!) isn't where I'm at - and, honestly, never way; I'd like to think that type of flippant dismissal is a by-product of the constraints of the November Thing - but I can't fully glom onto the type of criticism posited by Ryland and Prof. Gutterriez.

Here's where the dissatisfaction comes from: I'm not sure I've found the right language to express my absolute love and excitement for certain films while also saying something important, intelligent, and relevant. Ryland makes a good point when he writes, and I paraphrase, that when you devote time to writing about something, you're already making a judgment call, already saying that the thing is worth writing about. But I don't think it's necessary, after that, to throw out hierarchies. For instance, I found Million Dollar Baby very much worth writing about, but I despised it as a film. I.e. it is not good; it is bad.

I think, actually, that Ryland and I are after the same thing, or at least something similar; in reading a bit by Manny Farber in Negative Space, I'm struck by how judgmental the language is. While Farber decries hierarchies and simple good/bad judgments, his writing is still rife with the language of judgment. I don't think this is bad thing, at all. Rather, it's the nature of the thing itself. The best writing on film is both critical and judgmental; it has a passion for film, that kind of ebullience that you feel after seeing a really excellent film, or even the kind of despair you feel after seeing something reprehensible. It avoids simple judgments - e.g. don't see this film, it sucks; this film is the best thing EVAR!!1! - but is filled with the adjectives that have judgment implicit to them - compelling, disgusting, etc. I don't think the excitement and love of film that's found in hierarchical judgment can be separated from truly great film criticism.

This is all a bit muddled, but so are my thoughts right now. Anyway, expect less writing - especially until Dec. 15, when finals are over for me - but, hopefully, the writing you find here will be richer, more alive, and more in love with film.

Nashville d. Robert Altman, 1975

2007-11-26T00:03:00.000-08:00

How could I have gone so many years without this? Eventually I'll write something of substance about it - my refrain lately - but for now I'll just bask in that final scene, equal parts hope and sadness, captured in that last perfect, looking up, yes, but only to gray skies. Crushing.

Sunnyside & A Day's Pleasure & Pay Day d. Charlie Chaplin, 1919/1919/1922

2007-11-23T22:31:00.000-08:00

Real quick: I encourage everyone in the bay area to check out the Charlie Chaplin Mini-Retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive. It runs through Dec. 17 and, obviously, is a great time at the movies.

Three Shorts:

Sunnyside seems to be - and as intimated in the bio-doc, Charlie, might purposefully be - a work of a man tired of and by film. All signs point to rote monotony: the farmhand (played by Chaplin) works long hours, and does whatever he can to either shirk the work or make it interesting. Chaplin employs a good deal of his object transmutation, finding new uses for old objects. The intertitles can't even finish themselves, reading, e.g., "The farm hand, etc. etc. etc." At this point, to get biographical myself, the shorts Chaplin was doing for Mutual were becoming old hat, tired to the point where the audience wouldn't be at all baffled by the etc. repetitions. To get meta, Sunnyside operates as both the title of the town and of the film; the former, in its banality, operates as a mirror for the latter, and the farm hand as a figure for Chaplin himself, attempting to creatively navigate the daily grind of the film industry. N.B. There is a great paper to be written on the false escapism inherent to Chaplin's dream sequences.

A Day's Pleasure is a sort of familial precursor to Modern Times. An ostensibly day of fun turns into an unnecessarily complicated sojourn, made frustrating by the modern conveniences of cars, boats, and traffic. Plenty of American iconography is present, so maybe this is a - definitely light-hearted - poke at the USA?

Pay Day is the slightest of the bunch, but also features one of the best setpieces of the three: an elevator on a jobsite that plays a version of musical chairs with everybody's lunch. This short proves that even when Chaplin is dealing only with gags - that is, no real thematic - his films are still fantastically compelling.

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin d. Richard Schickel, 2003

2007-11-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

A traditional biographical documentary can only be so good, and this one only reinforces that idea. Perfectly informative, but - outside of the clips from Chaplin's films, press conferences, and whatnot - I would have been just as happy, or complacent, as the case may be, viewing this in book form.

Happy Together d. Wong Kar-Wai, 1997

2007-11-23T00:21:00.000-08:00

Where Wong begins to meld the super-slow to the hyper-fast (or was that in Ashes of Time?), a move that reaches zenith with (the heartbreaking) In the Mood for Love. (Indeed, if you haven't seen ItMfL, stop reading this and go watch it. Now. Right now. Really. Yes, really.)

And that's the thing: the collision and inextricability of opposites. Agony and ecstasy commingle throughout, especially in the lovemaking scenes; the grandeur of the Iguazu waterfalls is apposed with a jaunty type of score; Brazil and Argentina, Fai (Tony Leung; quite possibly my favorite actor) surmises, are polar opposites. It's all put together to say a simple thing: opposites attract, but their attraction is destructive, a collision.

Which (to use a phrase I come back to again and again) isn't to say that the film is simple. This an extremely deft and complex account of a relationship - equally complex - crumbling, as if two magnets managed to, through their mad attraction, dive through each other, continuing with their velocity intact but already past the object of attraction, directionless in their singular, immutable direction. That's an unnecessarily epic simile, maybe, but it also seems to capture the grandiloquence of style that pervades Happy Together. Wong's style is so powerful, so apparent, that it seems too easy to dismiss his films as an exercise in form over substance; that is, the style inflects the substance of the film just as much as the "substance" itself. It's as if - to return to a favorite horse of mine - the style of the film dictates the (constantly elided) time and space of the characters.

The two lovers, btw, are gay; that Wong takes their sexuality for granted, while still dealing with the complexities of them being a homosexual couple in a heterosexual world, is an absolutely lovely thing.

No Country for Old Men d. Ethan Coen/Joel Coen, 2007

2007-11-22T00:37:00.001-08:00

Perfect, except for one bathetic old lady (and she might even work thematically; I need a second viewing real bad, preferably one where I'm not a frigtard who decides it's a great idea to drink two cups of tea in order to keep awake for a late night screening: unlike some folks, I make sure my bladder knows who's boss when it comes to theater-going.) I can't quality exactly why I feel this way, but I do know that the movie hits three of my (admittedly related) favorite themes: 1) Aging 2) The Dehumanization of Man/Nature vs. Civilization 3) The insuperable gap, partially brought on by the advent of new technologies, that divides generations. A deeper critical analysis - certainly illuminating those themes - will follow upon second viewing, assuming school isn't kicking a downed man at that point in time. Until then:

Sailing to Byzantium
-W.B. Yeats

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

"Of what is past, or passing, or to come." That collapse...chills.

Run, Lola, Run d. Tom Tykwer, 1998

2007-11-21T00:59:00.000-08:00

This was among the first batch of films I watched when I first started watching - as opposed to just watching - movies. I remember being quite into the pacing and visual invention. I've apparently changed. I still think the pacing is quite good, especially considering how difficult it is to hold the viewer's attention when telling the same story multiple times, but the cinematography and editing - and this may be on account of how things have changed since '98 - make R,L,R feel like one long car commercial. Also, although the film is gussied up with a good deal of philosophizing - care of the quotes and V.O. in the prologue -, there really isn't much to it other than the adrenaline rush. Entertaining, enlivened affair that I wouldn't be opposed to watching again, but only that.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe d. Les Blank, 1980

2007-11-20T09:53:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite short films ever. Actually, that "short" really isn't necessary; this is one of the best things I've seen, period.

Weeds: s.3 ep.15: "Go" wri. Jenji Kohan, 2007

2007-11-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that all the religious talk throughout this season leads to an apocalypse. That theology might've been a bit heavy handed in this episode - what with "Majestic Inferno" emblazoned across the screen and Guillermo essentially outed as Satan - but this was a fine, if very different, season finale for Weeds.

Even though a raging suburb fire backdropped the entire episode, season three's finale was a bit more tame than the previous two. Turns out that I was right about this whole cyclical thing, but it also turns out that the show is smarter than I am. Per Nancy and Guillermo's hilltop talk - like Jesus tempting Satan on top of the temple, no? - the Sisyphean cycle of build-crumble-rebuild is part of the show's thematic.

So where do they go now? I'm not worried, per se, but it seems like Nancy, et al have been painted into a corner. There's nothing to do now but to flee and keep fleeing, right? Capt. Till's gotta put two and two together and figure out that Nancy was playing one of his agents, and I can't imagine there will be any stopping on the DEA's part - if for no other reason than personal revenge - until Nancy is behind bars. So the show changes gears, I think.

That cycle theme worked real well, in hindsight, when it was centered in the suburbs. For all the subversion that a pot-dealing mom brings to Majestic/Agrestic, it still seems impossible to break through and out of the routine that typifies suburbia. That is, the suburbs are a powerful force capable of absorbing any sort of movement that attempts to reconfigure or move away from itself; the subversion is built into it. (For a really interesting - but pretty theoretical - take on this, read Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. As a quick aside, the first edition of Debord's book was bound in sandpaper, thus destroying any book it was placed next to. Hehe.)

Ok, which - to bring the innards of that parenthetical out here into what we're really talking about - is interesting: the necessary means to escape Majestic/Agrestic is violence. (Which is also what's implied in the physical performance, but not the content, of Debord's book. Natch.) Both in the show and outside of it, the destruction of the Agrestic/Majestic suburb is an extremely violent act, one that destroys a televisual town, but one that also destroys an entire three-season long mise-en-scene. I really do think Weeds is moving in a very different direction; that coda made it starkly clear that the space of the suburb - at least this suburb - is vacant of the things that enlivened it. Maybe its another meta-bit, maybe I was right to grow tired of the cyclical plot toward the end of this season: could be that the writers are just as stuck as Nancy, and find that the city of Agrestic has been completely harvested of all its potential. Regardless of where Weeds plants its roots [that was awful, sorry -ed], it's pretty clear that the audience is good hands, which is just about the highest compliment one can give to a show.

Seedlings:

-More cycle stuff: so maybe that's why Nancy always had a frappuccinoesquee beverage that she was slurping on? Maybe I should go back and see just how often the show "repeats" itself; could be that this a more thematically dense show than I've suspected.

-Absolutely loved Doug's banjo-playing. Wherever Nancy's going, I hope Doug comes along.

-Dean? Where has he been? While I really would miss Doug in the show, the last few weeks have proven that I wouldn't really notice if Dean were gone. Whether they meant to or not, the writers effectively wrote Dean out of the show when they put him in the middle of that bizarre biker accident.

-Nancy's neglect of Shane was made a little more explicit with the bit about the turtles. Nice touch.

-That toss-off line from Silas was all I needed to feel good about saying goodbye to Mary-Kate.

The Kid & The Pilgrim d. Charles Chaplin, 1921/1923

2007-11-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

There is a common theme in many of Chaplin's film - at least the three I've seen in the past couple days - where the social and physical aspects of a setting determine the actions of the characters within it. Consider a scene from The Kid, where the titular Kid (Jackie Coogan), dressed in an apron, is making pancakes. Chaplin's Tramp sits in bed, reading the paper and smoking. The Kid tells the Tramp that breakfast is ready; the tramp bickers back some non-intertitled retort. The two have entered a domestic relationship, the Tramp and Kid playing, respectively, the stereotypical husband and wife. That is, their situation - which is typical of a marriage dynamic - has caused them to enter into its typical roles. The great gags ensue when two separate worlds collide, and the Tramp is caught between the two.

And then The Pilgrim: Chaplin plays an escaped convict masquerading as a priest. Of course, he's mistaken for another priest, and finds himself at a sermon. He looks toward stage-right of the quasi-cruciform church and sees what looks eerily like like a juror's box; a glowing "12" burnt into the film hangs ominously over the heads of the jury/congregation. The Convict moves between characters - convict, preacher, actor. It's as if The Convict is responding to 1) the internal world he feels, projected as exteral 2) the actual, physical space 3) the film itself. To be a character in these films is to be determined by what exists externally.

Ratatouille d. Brad Bird, 2007

2007-11-18T00:33:00.000-08:00

I'm late to the party on this one - I did see it opening weekend, I just didn't write about it - so I'll just say that I think pretty much the same things that all the other people that really like this movie think. That is: it's gorgeous; it's a near-perfect account of the nature of artistic greatness, specifically filmmaking.

I only add: I found the script and the voice-actors a bit slipshod in the first section. Specifically, the theme structure was great, but the dialogue left me a bit let down. Any hesitation to fully embrace this movie first viewing was on account of this. I just don't feel like the dialogue, and especially its execution, sets up the rest of the film very well. (I'm speaking, specifically, about everything that happens before Remy and his rat pack split up.) Also, if you want to take the filmic route in analyzing Ratatouille, the exchange between Remy and his father ("If it's garbage, why are we stealing it?!?!?) has got to be a dig at lesser filmmakers, right? Especially those celebrated as great who really are settling for recapitulation. Then: what of the cooks and whatnot in the kitchen? They also recapitulate, sticking to tried recipes instead of creating. Their walk-out on Linguini (whose first name is Alfredo, I just learned this viewing) and Remy is a statement that greatness is often misunderstood, even by those who are (nearly) great themselves. When it boils down, Brad Bird is making some awfully big headed claims - Ratatouille seeming awfully biographical, at least in mission statement, at times - but who can argue with him when his films are this good?

For a great piece of writing on Ratatouille (and some on Paprika, which is only a little bit better than alright (er, the film, not the writing)) check Ryland.

Modern Times d. Charles Chaplin, 1936

2007-11-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

That saying kept bouncing through my head during the entire screening - the first section of the film is that idea taken to the nth degree. That is, what happens when the world you live in equips you to do one thing?

Tellingly credited as "A Factory Work" - note that lovely indefinite article - Chaplin is a sort of cipher for what it means to be dehumanized by work; his rote assembly-line jop seeps into his core being, performing a good chunk of Marx's social theory. He leaves the assembly line, pulling every lever that he sees, twisting every dial, tightening every bolt, and oiling every cog that makes noise - machinic and human alike. The assembly line, so it goes, gives him one way of going, even displacing his sexuality, as he - thrice - attempts to tighten various Ts and As.

But later sections of the film present two different reverses. One - that which Mr. A Factory Worker employs most - is to get away. When him and his equally indefinite gamin (Paulette Goddard, spunky and beautiful) muse on their dream home together, the audience is given a bucolic idyll: a cow replaces the car in the driveway; grapes, instead of powerlines, crowd the window. This is the escapist dream. Indeed, Chaplin's factory worker finds refuge in prison, a place that, yes, is part of the mechanical system, but also exists outside of it.

The second reverse is the more interesting: subversion. Although the film ends on an escapist note - with the former factory worker and the gamin walking into the sunset - subversion of the machinic system, within the system itself, is at the heart of Chaplin's Little Tramp character. Made in 1936, well after the advent of sound, Modern Times is a mostly silent film. Even when we hear a character speak, it is through some type of medium: loudspeaker, record, screen, or radio. No personal communication is heard; this absence - juxtaposed against speech's disembodied presence elsewhere - is alarming. The implicature is that personal communication is difficult to come by in this world. Toward the end of the film, Chaplin's Tramp is forced to perform in a singing act. He forgets the words and instead offers an ad-libbed mixture of French and Italian; his actions sell the story. A couple of things are interesting here: 1) The audience of the Tramp's song responds extremely positively; the factory worker has used the constraints of the society in order to achieve real communication 2) The language of the modern world is action, not words; the content of words are no longer important, only the context that they are couched in. Whether you subscribe to one conclusion or the other, or an admix of both, the point is that the factory worker - now the Little Tramp - has figured a way in which to navigate the non-communicative, mechanical world that allows him to subvert its rules and be wholly and uniquely himself.

Another quick thing: the title can be read two ways: 1) As a synonym for "the modern era" and 2) As a temporal figure. Via the latter reading, the film can be interpreted as a collision of different temporalities; the Tramp, then, becomes a mutable figure whose job it is to figure out how each time is best navigated. I'll check this out next viewing.

Friday Night Lights: s.2 ep.7: "Pantherama!" wri. Bridget Carpenter, 2007

2007-11-17T23:22:00.000-08:00

What do you do when the highlight of an episode is a storyline - in this case, Smash's - whose best trait is that it merely keeps with the tone and theme of the show?

There wasn't too much to hate about this episode - although Julie's hall-evading speech to Noah Barnett (John From Cincinnati's Austin Nichols, who is always good times on my computer, er, TV screen) approached this threshold - but there wasn't anything to love, either. No, "Pantherama!" was clearly about treading the middle ground. Even though the Landry/Tyra isn't anything for the writers to brag about, the worst thing that could happen to Friday Night Lights is for it to become just another teen drama. All of the potential pieces are there, just as they've always been, for FNL to tread this path, but this is the first episode - at least in toto - where it seems that they've come together. Matt and Julie's relationship, at least on J's end, has devolved into histrionics, two separate (three if you count Riggins' thing) child/adult love stories have come into play, the outsider trying to break in has put on his hurt puppy mantle, and - hell - we even got two (2!) love triangles in the works. Thank you, Dawson's Creek.

Yet, these plot developments wouldn't have seemed so off in season one. Why is that? I don't fully understand myself, but it seems that the various elements of the show have become more diffuse than they were last season. The show works best - as it did in every episode of season one - when its hinge is the Dillon Panthers. What makes the show special is that it is a character-driven show centered around a plot-based figure; when it's working best, the show is about the characters that orbit and are affected by Panthers football. Smash's storyline fit this bill, but it still lacked the power that his recruiting drama achieved last season; it seemed like a supporting pillar to a main story. The only problem is that all the other main stories have devolved in general drama that has no way of distinguishing itself from any other general drama. I don't mean to say that the show should make every episode about what happens on the field, but clearly what happens with the team - on the field and off - has a a powerful effect on the community of Dillon and Dillon High, and those effects aren't really being shown this season and - specifically - were mostly absent this episode.

The lower bits:

-How the hell did Santiago make it in juvi? Give this kid some guts, right? Or at least an emotion other than "broken and sad." I admit that his plot is directly connected to the team, but are we really supposed to believe that a kid who has never played football and already done at least one spell in juvenile hall is somehow supposed to get a spot on a state champion team?

-I actually like the Saracen/Carlotta development. I feel like it was presented early enough that it was given time to fully develop; the writers sprung it at the right time. Matt's home is one of those arms of the community that - as a carry-over from season one - feels like it is directly affected by the Panthers. His grandma puts so much stock in his QB1 position, and the writers have done a good job of connective even Carlotta to his position as a Panther. This is a good example, I think, of how seemingly ridiculous plot developments can be made to be organic.

-Kind of a waste of Riggins this go 'round. Shame.

-Pantherama!? This could've been great, but was really only a chance - like the two girls presented it to the players - to stare at Lyla and Tyra. Also: what was with Landry keeping his beater on during the players' half-monty dance?

Time d. Kim Ki-duk, 2006

2007-11-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

So this is what it's like to grow old together, apparently. Kim Ki-duk creates a portrait of the human need for the uncanny in love: the simultaneous search for the familiar and the new. This theme becomes a bit unwieldy around the mid-point, but Kim wraps it up nice at the end, turning the film in on itself in a pretty clever manner. Going through it a second time, it's clear that the film is very well-structured, with every part finding an emotional rhyme in another part of the film. Very well crafted and...ugh, I'm tired of this boring writing. Goodnight. I'll have something good, maybe, about Modern Times tomorrow.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles d. Chantal Akerman, 1976

2007-11-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

A brutal film. Jeanne Dielman is a woman whose life is regimented to the point of absurdity; she is reduced entirely to her actions. The film is cut up into three days. During the first day, the camera almost always cuts on movement, from one set-up to another, a bastion of economy. Because of this, there is no room in Jeanne's movements for anything other than specific actions. Everything she does can be tersely described: boiling potatoes, reading a letter, turning on the radio. There is no liminal space, no transitions. Her being is defined by sum aggregate of what she definably does. Therefore, when her regiment begins to break down, so does Jeanne. I won't say any more: the film deserves the type of detailed analysis that I'm not capable of right now. Suffice it to say that this is a very affecting film about the consequences of extreme emotional conservativism and the perils of a solitary, segmented life.

The Office: s.4 ep.8: "The Deposition" wri. Lester Lewis. 2007

2007-11-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

As Alan Sepinwall wrote, this could very well be the last episode of the season. If that's the case, what an exit.

In a conversation we had a while back, my friend Dan made a claim: Dwight, Jim, and Michael, at root, want three separate things.

-Dwight wants power. He wants to be able to tell people what to do, to dictate their lives in order to optimize (what he sees as) efficiency and effectiveness. This is evident in his haggling over his title (Assistant Regional Manager/Assistant to the Regional Manager) and the dictatorial posture he affects when given even a small taste of authority.

-Jim wants to entertain, to make other people happy. His motives aren't entirely altruistic - in part, he's trying to save his brain from the lifeless job he has by working some creative angle - but Jim's actions work to make the place he is in a place that's fun for everybody (or at least the majority). See, e.g., Dunder-Mifflin Olympics, the betting episode, pranks with Pam, even his "that's what she said" moment at the end of the last episode.

-Michael is the most complicated, surprisingly. What he wants manifests itself as a push for authority, but it's rooted in his need to be liked. Michael wants his employees to be his friends, he wants to get glorious rounds of applause in return for any speech - no matter how pedestrian - he gives. What Michael wants is rarely achieved; his need to be liked is usually fulfilled, if at all, in mandates and facades, like the notes from Pam in this episode or his ridiculous attempt to out-outdoor Toby in the last. So when David Wallace, CFO of Dunder-Mifflin, calls Michael a nice guy, Michael is genuinely satisfied.

Michael didn't choose the company over Jan, and he didn't simply ignore the fact that he was passed over for her job; rather, he went with the most important person in the room that expressed affection for him. The moment was somber, but when Michael talked to David after the deposition, he only mentioned how he thought David was nice too. That is, on an emotional level, Michael didn't even register the fact that the company slapped him in the face. His stunned look after hearing David's words wasn't on account of being hurt, but being so genuinely awed to hear that David Wallace thinks he is a nice guy. "Wouldn't you say," the lawyer says to Michael, "that the the company has a history of mistreating its employees." His reply: "Absolutely not."

What's so impressive is that the show could have easily played this for laughs. It still would have been good writing, but its work would have been only to develop Michael the Buffoon. Instead - and The Office is the only comedy I know of operating in this space - "The Deposition" walked that perfect line between pathos and humor, earning the jokes that much more because the audience has been shown that they come from an authentic, uncomfortable place.

In other news:

-Outside of the Michael Scott plot, this was Mindy Kaling's episode. "I'll give you a hint: it's not my boyfriend, I think it's the guy over here." Her delivery, gestures and all, was note-perfect.

-Running with that: the writers had to love the trash/smash talk sesh: your mama's so fat she could eat the internet; you're ugly and I know it for a fact cause I got the evidence [1/2 beat] right there; were Jim's parents first-cousins that were also bad at ping pong?

I could go on, really: there wasn't a single sour note in this episode. Could go toe-to-toe with almost any episode from seasons 2 and 3 and come out with either a W or a draw.

The Roe's Room (Pókoj saren) d. Lech Majewski, 1997

2007-11-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

The director, in a Q&A following the screening, made mention of various influences and references on and in the film - Giorgio de Chirico, surrealism, miniature deer, and on. A man three seats to my left began half-whispering to his viewing partner about all these various references, his whispers amounting to not much more than, "Oh damn, I recognize that. Let me tell you about how smart I am." Full disclosure: let me admit that I didn't know who Chirico was until tonight's screening. Let me further say that I had a helluva time looking up his name on the internets. Carrico? Korico? Corico? Those Italians, amirite?

The Roe's Room is very much a work of symbolism. As if it mattered, the director himself said as much in the Q&A. He described a tree that spans three floors of a tenement building - central to a scene that I don't really care to detail - as a symbol for the body's desires, the body itself, and the morality of the body, a quick redux of the id, ego, and superego. Broken into four chapters corresponding to the four seasons, the film is roughly about a tri-part family - mother, father, son - whose apartment grows more natural, covered in grass and the aforementioned miniature deer, as the seasons progress. By the end of Winter, ivy is pushing its way through the walls.

Symbolism can be an effective trope when employed right, when the tenor, to speak metaphorically, is as apparent as the vehicle. In The Roe's Room, the entirety of the thing is vehicle. The film is so autobiographic that the meaning objects that the symbols point to are really only apparent to one man: the filmmaker. Again, this can also work (for proof, see Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend the Knee), but a focus on something other than symbolism - tone, visuals, plot - is necessary. What The Roe's Room amounts to is my viewing compatriot, playing connect the dots with the film and what he's learned before. It alienates most viewers - those that don't get the extremely univocal meaning of the film - and panders to the other set, making them feel good for knowing what they know while simultaneously offering nothing new.

My Kid Could Paint That d. Amir Bar-Lev, 2007

2007-11-16T00:07:00.001-08:00

This will be the beginning of a run of posts that should have been longer, but are awfully short because: 1) I'm dedicated to this "write about everything I see" thing, no matter the quality of it 2) School got me down last week when I was going to write about these films; I had to write papers instead of write about movies. From now on, I'm going to try and get my thoughts up within a day of watching whatever it is I watch. Much longer than that, and I get overwhelmed by the fallibility of my memory and impossible process of piecing all my nascent thoughts together.

For the sake of time, I'll give no plot rehash.

While the themes covered - the nature of art (especially abstract), greed, the question of authenticity - are interesting, just as interesting is how they are handled. I kept expecting the greedy parents plot, and its more or less delivered, but not in the clichéd way I was expecting. That is, in almost every child prodigy story - factual or fictional - the parents-skimming-money topic comes up. I don't mean to say that it isn't an important angle to cover, but it's a tired one. Instead of trading in monetary currency, here the parents go after prestige, especially the father, whose false modesty - "I'm no expert in art" - betrays his fierce desire to find a prestigious place in the art world.

N.b. Bar-Lev displays an alarming amount of formal acuity, especially considering his DV is so damn ugly. For instance: the division between the two parents is a key component in the film, but Bar-Lev formally illustrates this by avoiding any intentional two-shots of the parents until the very end of the film, what is certainly the most divisive scene they are involved in. Here, even when he sits them on a couch together, it is only to ironically illustrate how far distanced they are from each other.

Vanishing Point d. Richard C. Sarafian, 1971

2007-11-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

The flashbacks - especially the romantic angle - weigh down the film with unnecessary explication. I would have much rather Kowalski stay a sort of enigmatic figure who mysteriously becomes a magnet that unites all aspects of the counter-culture. Road movies are inherently counter-cultural and always freighted with meaning; any attempt to overload them with meaning turns to excess and waste. The driving and chasing and everything pertaining to the road, however - including the blind DJ who speaks to Kowalski - is fantastic. The end makes perfect sense: with all of that meaning and importance to be the final anti-heroic figure of the sixties, how could Kowalski do anything but explode in a ball of flame? He was being set up as a martyr from word go; there's no other way one actual man - as the flashbacks prove - could stand up to that type of scrutiny.

Quick question: what's with the black car that repeatedly shows up in the same place as Kowalski's challenger? Gosh, I hope it's not some type of symbolizer for the DJ or a metaphor for race relations.

Friday Night Lights: s.2 ep. 6: "How Did I Get Here" wri. Carter Harris, 2007

2007-11-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

This episode bought into a number of clichés; some of them worked, some didn't. Three to focus on: 1) The visiting sister 2) The murder cover-up 3) The unwilling mentor. The third is all good; the second is all bad; the first is an admix of both.

The first - the visiting sister plot - begins as the worst offender. She bears all the hallmarks of The Visiting Sister: she's not beholden to anyone in anyway, she's well-traveled, she divides the family from itself, i.e. she's the antithesis of the sister she's visiting. The plot doesn't tread any new territory, but the final moment between the sisters - as is almost any moment of the show featuring Connie Britton - is so purely authentic - the apotheosis of the generic in the most complimentary of ways - that it overwhelms whatever clichés might be, or might have been, invoked. That is, this one scene reminds the viewer why clichés are clichés: when done right, they are terribly effective.

Which leads to the Landry plot. Jesse Plemons as Landry, for his part, sells the plot. So does Landry's father. No, the actors aren't at fault here, the writing is. Maybe this murder plot has allowed the audience into the Landry Clarke household, and I'm happy to know that family better, but the ends simply don't justify the means. We already have an unnecessarily duplicitous kid, who is simultaneously carrying around an extremely ponderous burden and playing the football hero. Separately, the plots aren't impossible; I wasn't against the murder storyline from the start. But the collision of the two sides of Landry doesn't make any sense. How can he crack wise while living with the secret of having killed a man and covered up that killing? Now we get another improbable, and clichéd, development: the good cop betrays his force in order to protect his son. Again, this could work, but piled on top of everything else, it betrays the trust of the audience. A denouement that works is still a possibility, but that possibility shrinks with each improbable and difficult development that's laid before it.

As for Riggins and Santiago: this is what FNL is about, as far as I'm concerned: football-related stories that transcend the playing field. Riggins is and has always been one of the most developed and complex characters on the show. His actions earlier in the season were slightly worrisome: Why have such an interesting character fall back on his typical actions: drinking, sleeping, and sexing? But it makes sense. Riggins is a regressive personality by nature. It's how he goes. What makes him great is the juxtaposition of his good heart and selfish action. And what makes this tutelage plot so good is how it combines both. If Riggins were acting out of pure self-interest or pure altruism, his teaching Santiago how to play ball would be boring; that is, the character would become a teleologically focused plot. Instead, with Riggins' two sides lobbying for position, this plot opens up all kinds of possibilities: Riggins can interact with Lyla, with Coach, with Street, etc., all while retaining his edge - after all, training his own replacement must get to him - focusing him enough to avoid the binge drinking and get on with his life.

These three plots illustrate really well where Friday Night Lights is at right now, and could be in the future. The writers have the talent, and the show has laid the groundwork, to avoid and subvert whatever tight spots it's been painted into. But that doesn't erase the fact that those tight spots are still there, and as was proven with Landry and his dad, they aren't easily avoided. Still, FNL's strengths, no matter how frustrating other aspects of the show are and become, will always be there. So, no matter how difficult, frustrating, and implausible the show becomes, it will always be worth watching, if not for its current plots, then at least for its potential to flip whatever's wrong into something good.

Weeds: s.3 ep. 14: "Protection" wri. Roberto Benabib, 2007

2007-11-15T22:23:00.000-08:00

Time for everyone to come up with a new narrative

That epigraph is a pretty good summation of how I feel after this episode. The writers took what was the only significant development that I liked about last week's episode - Shane's meta-gaze into the camera - and coated it in pathos. Now Shane's up to his overly precocious antics, channeling Pops and offering proxy advice to everyone around him. I was prepared for the father-as-ghost rather than father-as-invisible-friend angle - I mean, part of what makes an invisible friend so compelling to the befriended is that the friend invisible to everybody else is visible to you, right? - but I didn't expect - or want, for the matter - there to be any intimation that Shane was anything but crazy. Follow: rather than running with the totally plausible and possibly interesting plot - Nancy's hash-slinging is ruining her family - this new development places the plot-focus on Shane, whose wiser-than-his-years platitudes make for far more interesting fare when plated on the periphery.

As for the Guillermo development: 50%?!?!?! Thinking back on Conrad's numbers during the U-Turn ordeal - and correct me if I'm wrong - MILF Weed has a growing period of three months prior to harvest, making four cash crops per year. Conrad mentioned $300K at one point, but also said that the initial harvest - the one that Celia sunk into the Botwin pool - could have grabbed $500K. Assuming the latter number, that's $2Mil a year, which sounds about right, right? Cut in half, that's a mil for Guillermo and Nancy each. Being that G was so clear about his take being half of everything, I imagine expenses and whatnot comes out of Nancy's pocket. I.e. she's gotta' pay Doug, Celia, Heylia, Conrad, Silas, Mary-Kate, etc. etc. Celia alone is making, what, $15K a month? That's $180K a year. After everyone gets their taste, Nancy must be sitting on, gee, somewhere around thirty grand. Just looking at the scratch math, this is a very shitty deal that Nancy has going. Logistics aside, the show has set up Nancy as being a better businesswoman than one who would take the first deal offered, let alone one that asks for 50%.

I do, however, like the idea of Guillermo having a bigger part in the show; the brick-dance scene from earlier in the season had good dynamics. However, how long can we expect him to stick around? With that fire raging, it seems clear at this point that the Botwins are headed to Pittsburgh, or some other such place. Which kinda' brings us back to where Nancy was at the beginning of season one, which is oddly reminiscent of where she was at the beginning of this season.

Which is all to say: I don't really know where this show is going, and I don't have too much faith in its destination. Which isn't to say I've disliked it so far - it's a good, plot-driven half hour of teevee. But the plots so far have run in circles, especially after season one. I imagine the peaks and valleys are part and parcel of the drug world and all, but they're not always the same peak and the same valley, right? Essentially, we've seen Nancy actuate her Godfatheresque (cf. the finale of season one) rise and fall two, going on three, times now. There must be more to the drug dealer's life that building an empire and watching it fall.

Still, I'm mostly prognosticating here, so there's a good possibility that all that I'm foretelling could never happen. Here's hoping it doesn't, or that if it does, the writers find another angle to make me happy. In all honesty, I haven't been let down by Weeds yet, so my worries are probably unfounded.