Critical Culture

2009-06-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Romanian Jazz

2009-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Can you hear it? Delicious disc of jazz from Romania, compiled by Jazzanova. Release was in 2007, favourite tracks are thumpin' Johnny Raducanu's "Ballada" and the ticklish "Iarna, Iarna" sung by Aura Urziceanu.

Discovery and links are credited to a dark Jazzor in England. The album can be purchased in several physical & digital formats from Sonar Collektiv. And browse their catalogue—it's great.

Music from the Films of Bela Tarr

2009-06-13T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice up someone made—Mihaly Vig's music from the Tarr films Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies, Almanac of the Fall, and Damnation.

I think original release was 2001, then re-released (or imported somewhere) in 2004. Dunno the original label; re-release is under somethin' called Bahia. It's outta-stock at Amazon, not sure where else you could buy it.

For a zshare link, thank the Greek.

Makes great mood music, if you're in the mood, whether you've seen the films or not. I like remembering the magical Damnation. And if you want something Tarr-ish to watch after listening, seems like a nice rip of Family Nest at the Bay...

In the Realm of Oshima

2009-06-09T12:57:00.001-07:00

Blah blah blah the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is currently showing a Nagisa Oshima retrospective called In the Realm of Oshima. More info at the Ontario Cinematek.

Oshima is important because "no other director of Oshima’s generation has made more vital, inventive and challenging films, or taken more risks. He is a giant in contemporary cinema." (No other Japanese director, or no other director? 'cause Godard was born a mere two years earlier...)

The retrospective is a "landmark, once-in-a-generation event" because "with few of his films available on DVD or video, much of Oshima’s work has existed more as legend than presence."

Few films on DVD or video? Really? How odd: we Internet-generation peoples must be living in the future! ...because all but one of the feature-films playing in the retrospective are available online, through bittorrent or emule or both. I assume they got there by being ripped from DVDs or video cassettes (or recorded off TV, though not in these cases).

Anyhoo, here they are in retrospective order:

Cruel Story of Youth
[bt] [em]

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
[bt] [em]

A Town of Love and Hope
[bt] [em]

Three Resurrected Drunkards
[bt] [em]

Boy
[bt] [em]

Death by Hanging
[bt] [em][2]

Night and Fog in Japan
[bt] [em]

The Catch
* private trackers

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
[bt] [em]

Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel
[bt] [em]

The Sun’s Burial
[bt] [em][2]

The Ceremony
[bt] [em]

Band of Ninja
[bt] [em]

A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Song
[bt] [em]

In the Realm of the Senses
[bt] [em]

Violence at Noon
[bt] [em]

The Man Who Left His Will on Film
[bt] [em]

Dear Summer Sister
* private trackers

Pleasures of the Flesh
[bt] [em]

Empire of Passion
[bt] [em]

100 Years of Japanese Cinema
[bt] [em]

Double Suicide: Japanese Summer
[bt] [em]

Gohatto
[bt] [em]

For additional kicks, you may also wish to check out Charlotte Rampling's affair with a chimpanzee in Max My Love [bt] [em], which isn't showing in the retrospective.

Of course, if you are the or like the curator of In the Realm of Oshima, James Quandt, you don't believe that seeing these films anywhere but in a theatre qualifies as seeing these films. Personally, and with Photoshop being all that, I don't believe in the existence of James Quandt. I've only ever seen pictures.

If you want some Oshima materials to read before delving in, take a gander at Berkeley's CineFiles project:

>> 8-page booklet from a 1972 Oshima retrospective

>> 4-page booklet to a 1982 retrospective also called In the Realm of Oshima

>> 23-page booklet from an Oshima retrospective held at the Hong Kong Film Festival

You can also find old press kits and articles from various sources. I think it's neat.

Keep in mind, however, that all of the materials are merely high quality scans of the original booklets. You haven't truly read the information or learned anything until you read the originals. For example, the background colour of the 4-page booklet is off-off-white in the scan, whereas it was clearly off-white in the original. When I saw that yesterday, I was like, "like whatever! Trash."

Chelsea - Barcelona

2009-05-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

Brave performance by Chelsea, determined domination over Barcelona's "possession" football, and it's all ruined because the Norwegian cunt of an official misses four (!) penalties. Bad decisions all-around (red card—where?) but Chelsea are the ones hard-done. Coming into the match, I was a neutral leaning toward the Spaniards, but, afterwards, I'm a neutral gutted. What a disgrace!

We can only hope for a classic final to wash away the bitter taste of Tom Henning. One thing's for sure, though: it wasn't Barca's fault, but now I have to cheer for Man United. In the meantime, I sincerely apologize for the following image:

Payback's a bitch?

NHL Playoffs I

2009-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year! Time for some 1st-round hockey playoff predictions. Let's start in the East, where one of Canada's three teams tries to battle its way into the second round.

THE EAST

Boston - Montreal

I still remember when the Canadiens were playing so well that there was serious Cup-talk going on. Now they're without a real coach and barely crawled into the playoffs. Hence, no surprise upcoming. Boston is too good, too solid through-and-through. And anyone who thinks Tim Thomas will be the goalie to choke in a match-up of Thomas v. Price is fantasizing.

Cheering for the Bruins and see them winning in 5.

Washington - NY Rangers

Even bad goaltending for the Caps won't be enough to give New York more than two games. Tortorella has done an admirable job, and the series should be a fun one to watch, but is there any denying the Caps' attack? I don't mean just Ovechkin, either: Backstrom, Semin, Green from the blueline. There ain't. Theodore will sink this team—but not yet.

Cheering for the high-flyin' Capitals and see them shooting the lights out in 6.

New Jersey - Carolina

Paul Maurice got canned by the Leafs and went and made the Hurricanes good again. They ride his hot streak into the first round. But is there any team more capable of stopping it than the Devils? I don't think so. Two good keepers will keep the scores down, though buzz about boredom and upset won't come to pass. Cam Ward can't stay up for months at a time either; heavy eyelids and sore limbs will get their revenge yet.

Cheering for the Devils and see them fighting it out in 6.

Pittsburgh - Philadelphia

Speaking of coaching changes and mid-season turnarounds: the Pittsburgh Penguins! That said, Philly can play. There won't be any easy games, periods, minutes in this series. If Crosby, Malkin and co. can sustain a high level of creativity throughout, then they'll get battered, bruised, and go through. But they have the smallest margin-of-error of any team in the first round. Relax, and they're out.

Cheering for the Flyers but see the Pens squeezing it out on pure talent in 7.

THE WEST

San Jose - Anaheim

This is a tough way to start the playoffs for the Sharks, who come in with a history of under-performing. Anaheim isn't the Anaheim of old (they're too old) but they're grizzled enough to make games very, very difficult. Although the Sharks sure are pretty to watch when they get their flow, expect a series without much of it. The Ducks will do anything to keep proceedings choppy. And if they ever get ahead, in a game—let alone the series—I don't know how San Jose will face the jitters. Like Meryl Streep, they'll have such Doubts!

Cheering for the Ducks but still see the Sharks facing demons and moving on in 6.

Detroit - Columbus

Even with so-so goaltending, the Red Wings shouldn't have any problems defeating a Blue Jackets bunch that no one expected to be here. We'll see, of course, how Mason responds to the post-season pressure in the Jackets' net—but even more of his season-same won't be enough to win more than one game. Worst case scenario: Carey Price last year, anyone? Allow me to yawn and call this my non-series.

Cheering for Detroit and expect them to sweep.

Vancouver - St. Louis

If Columbus was unexpected, St. Louis was dead, buried, and cremated—before getting their ashes together and skating into the post-season. Lucky, lucky, too: they meet a good team (for them to beat!). Granted, the Canucks are just as likely to win this series, but just as likely is enough for me to go with the lower, younger, more exciting seed. Wishful thinking that will be put to rest by the play of Luongo and Sundin? Perhaps.

Cheering for the Blues to upset the Canucks in 6.

Chicago - Calgary

I hate when this happens: I like both teams. Chicago has the young guns and the freshness of being in the playoffs for the first time in a long time, while Calgary has the dogged determination and experience of winning. They also have Iginla. I expect close games, exciting finishes, and real suspense over the course of these contests. And whatever happens, expect the Hawks to be back and even better next year.

Cheering for a good series and have a hunch that the Flames go through in 7.

Yore Modern Shakespeare

2009-04-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Modern Library is in the midst of publishing the works of Shakespeare in cheap ($5.95 on Amazon) series paperback. Tomorrow sees the release of 4 plays—Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Macbeth, The Winter's Tale—and a book of poetry: The Sonnets and Other Poems.

Although the new releases don't have Amazon's useful "Look Inside!" feature, older releases in the series do. And the insides are a mixed bag. You get notes, for example, but they're cursory, often padding their own count by explaining simple terms, and messily laid out. Before the play, you also get an introduction (11 pages for Hamlet) divided into several topics, as well as sections "About the Play" and "Key Facts". After, you can read several pages of "Textual Notes", a scene-by-scene analysis (17 pages for the Dane), and—a nice touch—around thirty pages about how a given play has been staged, received (?) over the years. The remaining twenty-or-so sheets are stock for the entire series: "Shakespeare's Career in the Theater" and a chronology. Good for someone who buys one book, additional thickness for someone with two or more.

The argument, therefore, comes down to price. Oxford, which is also publishing Shakespeare's works in new editions, costs twice as much. Two books or one? The answer: because even twice the price is $10, Oxford holds serve easily. It has better notes, longer introductions and essays, and a better layout. Anyone strapped for cash can go to the library or read the plays online for free. While more Shakespeare is always good, Modern Library would do better to leave Will alone and concentrate on printing cheap editions of works by authors who don't have as much exposure.

Classics, Publishers

2009-04-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief look at publishers that put out (ha!) the Classics. I haven't read enough to have an informed opinion nor have I ever held a work in more than one edition (if you're into that, scroll down to Further Reading), but at least I can give links. I can also attest that if you're not exactly picky-choosy, editions by most of these publishers can be found pretty cheap, used, online. "Happy reading"—should be a more popular farewell.

Penguin Classics

The ubiquitous editions! I've read some, but only have one: an older version of Bernal Díaz' The Conquest of New Spain (0140441239). The size, typeface, paper (bit yellow, but I don't mind because it doesn't reflect much light), handling are all practical—as with all the Penguins I've read; and, really, as with most books I've ever read—but the "extras" are bare-bones. A brief introduction by the translator is followed by a few maps and sparse footnotes throughout the text. To be fair, two other Penguins I remember reading, Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and Jack London's Martin Eden, had more stuff, so maybe it's just this work, or this edition, that suffers. Certainly, Penguin's selection is unmatched. Website: Penguin Classics.

Update: I was going to write a separate chunk on The Viking Critical Library, then realized it actually belongs (?) to Penguin. Anyway, they're awesome! My [unread, because Joyce scares me] edition of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (0140155031) is over-550 pages long, of which the book takes up less than half. That means 300 pages of goodies: other writings by Joyce, essays, a chronology, bibliography—plus notes, of course. The one bad point: notes are at the end: page-flipping. Physically, Viking and Penguin are twins.

Oxford World's Classics

The series I'm second most-familiar with. Like with Penguin, I've read my fair share and have only one: King Lear (0192839926). Books are the same size as Penguin's, but my example has a different typeface—crisper, narrower, just-as easy to read—and whiter pages. I couldn't guess at thickness. The extras are great: a substantial introduction (just under 100 pages), three shorter essays, and notes abundant on every page. Shakespeare is privileged this way in many editions, but I've yet to be disappointed with the intros and essays in any Oxford book. Selection isn't Penguin, but ain't shabby, either. For what it's worth, a recent redesign (haven't seen it, only pictures) made the books sexier. Website: Oxford World's Classics.

Everyman's Library

I don't know if there are Everyman's paperbacks, but I have a number of their comparatively-cheap hardbacks. For the comparison, I've pulled out: The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays by Camus (1400042550). The book is slightly larger than the paperbacks, the whiteness of the pages somewhere between my Penguin and my Oxford, and the typeface different-still: neat and tidy, like Oxford stretched or Penguin on a diet. Larger spacing 'tween lines. Something worse is the thinness of the pages (no measurement, just perception); the text bleeds-through more than the others. On the flip-side, the extras are nice and compact. Tastes differ, but this is what I like in my books: an introduction to the author or work, a time-line, and a bibliography of further readings. Missing—and depending on the work, this could be a big or small problem—are annotations. Selection could use fattening, but has more than classics. Website: Everyman's Library.

Modern Library

I have one but haven't read it: Basic Writings of Nietzsche (0679783393). Taller paperback than Penguin or Oxford and with larger text. Typeface is very similar to my Penguin. In addition to the texts, there are two introductions (one by the translator, one by someone else), three brief commentaries by famous people (Heidegger, Camus, Deleuze), indices, and a "Reading Group Guide" that doubles as a joke. The text isn't overloaded with notes, but they exist, and, at a glance, appear useful. Modern Library's classics line isn't yet a decade old, but has over 400 titles. Website: Modern Library Classics.

Könemann

I rarely see these tiny, hardback editions written-up anywhere. I have a small collection of them, and lugging around their green/blue-bound, slightly-thin, waxy pages is oddly comforting: on the bus, in-hand, backpacked over mountains. The example I grabbed off the shelf is Conrad's Nostromo. Characteristically, it comes with nothing but the text and a fair number of notes. There are typos. I really shouldn't like these editions as much as I do. Selection is probably minimal. Website: ?

Editions I've Never Read

Hard to comment on things you've never seen or don't remember, but links are OK—so, more publishers to explore: the oft-praised, academic-minded Norton Critical Edition; the new Oneworld Classics; the "I swear I had one but can't find it" Vintage Classics, by Random House; and, last but perhaps least (in price, at least), Wordsworth Classics.

Further Reading

For more-comprehensive, better, and knowledgeable opinions, check out "How to choose your classic" at The Times and "Paperback Classics" at the wonderful Classical Bookworm blog. In addition, comments on personal experiences had with any of these (or other, kindred) publishers are encouraged, and would become much-welcome "further reading" for me and whoever else winds up here via Google.

Balthazar Poster

2009-04-04T10:08:00.001-07:00

Film poster I designed to decorate my wall. Inspiration is Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar. Size is half an American one-sheet (13.5" x 20") but would look clear at actual one-sheet dimensions, too—if the sketch were re-scanned. The black border is a Flickr addition and doesn't appear on the original.

The design itself is exceedingly simple. The sketch is my own, hand-drawn, scanned-in, with blacks and greys slightly tinted. The background is a half-half gradient using pastel earth and sky colours. The first part of the title is sky blue, the second a more vibrant blue. Title font is Qlassik. The two others bits of text are Impact font—year coloured pure white and Bresson earth brown at 30% opacity.

The Taste of Cherry

2009-04-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what to make of Kiarostami's film. The ending came as an abrupt surprise, though I was plenty bewildered already. Is it a joke, with a "who cares what happens, it's only cinema!" punch-line? Is Mr Badii entering a "theater-state" as darkness entombs, sensations take over, thunder hits overhead? I found the film affecting, melancholy, as much for the minor characters as for the major, who remains enigmatic. As we watch Tehran from above, I also couldn't help but wonder: is the city itself not attempting suicide, resting below the mountain on which we spend so much of our time, waiting for the dawn, for someone to twice call out its name—or else pick up the spade and bury it underneath twenty shovels-full of dry, dusty earth.

OK End Here

2009-04-02T08:41:00.001-07:00

Photographs from Swiss-born filmmaker Robert Frank's 1963 short film OK End Here. Style mixes parts Antonioni with the French New Wave, resulting in a kind of planned spontaneity. Focus is on a stagnating marriage. Frank is best known for his Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues.

David Bek

2009-04-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

These are from Amo Bek-Nazaryan's little-known 1944 Soviet wartime film about Armenian military leader David Bek. They also serve as an illustration to my Film Album post.

The polaroid frames were made by fiddling with rawimage's Polaroid Generator Photoshop action file. The images were taken from the film David Bek, then post-processed. Because the aspect ratio of the polaroid frame did not match the film's aspect ratio, the processed images were magnified and cropped to my own satisfaction. I think this is important: it underlines the point that the "photos" are not meant to be accurate representations of the film, but rather personal mementos of the experience of watching the film. In terms of style, I'd like to fiddle with post-processing for each separate film while keeping the overall layout of the photos constant.

Idea: Film Album

2009-04-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Something akin to a film log—but more fun, more creative, and more in-tune with the visual nature of cinema!—is a film album. What's a film album? In its basic form: a collection of screencaps from more than one film. You can keep one offline or online, using tags (title, director, year, country, etc.) to help you organize. The idea is that films speak to you in images, and by saving those images you save, or are able to recollect, the thoughts, feelings, emotions that you had while seeing a film. It's a more involved type of logging than simple text because you not only have to pick which frames to grab, but can also get fancy with the presentation.

For an example, see my: David Bek photographs

Holy Goalie Trading Card!

2009-03-31T08:27:00.001-07:00

Because I couldn't resist, here's another trading card example based on my template. If you're left scratching your head as to what it all means, consider yourself lucky and free from pain. If you're a Slovak or from Ulster: you're welcome.

From Jack Finnan's Guide to Magical Footballers: "The first in a short line of Borubars, the Holy Goalie stalks the night-life in Glasgow, stopping shots less often than stopping to get doltish tattoos on its neck."

Trading Card Template

2009-03-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was looking around for a vector-based trading card template and couldn't find one that I liked. So, I decided to make one. Here's the result, which anyone can use for anything they like. I couldn't resist making mine film-related, but that's only one idea!

Download

This particular card is made up of four rectangles, four bits of text, and two images. Every element is labeled and you can easily change whatever you like: adding, subtracting, editing things until they suit you. The fonts I used are Arial Narrow for the text-box and the wonderful Qlassik font, by Dimitri Castrique, for the rest. Enjoy.

Film Structure Music

2009-03-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered what a film sounds like—and I don't mean the soundtrack stripped of the video; I mean what the actual structure of the film sounds like?

Over the past few days, I've tried to come up with a way of taking film structure (meaning: shot types and shot lengths) and translating that structure into music.

My starting point was data provided through Cinemetrics, a user-updated databse devoted to a quantitative analysis of cinema. The site's main focus is shot length, but films have been counted in other ways, too. For example, I chose a pair of films that had been mapped by shot length as well as by shot type: Luchino Visconti's 1972 Ludwig and Paul Verhoeven's 1983 De Vierde man.

After de-visualizing the Cinemetrics graphed data into a table (if there's an easy way to download the data on which the graphs are based, I couldn't find it), I had what I needed: a written description of both films' structures.

To read a painfully non-technical, layman's (read: musically-stupid) description of how I proceeded, scroll down to the "Method" section. To hear the results, read on!

Film Structure As Music

These are my attempts at expressing film structure as music. The files are in MP3 format and are "composed" of around 80 shots of their respective films. Chord lengths are proportional to shot lengths. The higher the base note of the chord, the closer the shot. Both files were played at the same tempo. Although both "songs" are simple midi compositions, I used soundfonts for output. Ludwig was played using a cello soundfont while De Vierde man was played using a sax.

Ludwig (Visconti, 1972)

Listen!

De Vierde man (Verhoeven, 1983)

Listen!

De Vierde man is quicker, sounds more frantic than Ludwig, which has longer shots and sounds more subdued, majestic. Although both structures begin slow, once Verhoeven picks up the pace, he keeps it up—befitting a jazzy thriller. Ludwig creates a more-varied piece of music, with quicker and slower passages.

My Method

Since Cinematrics provides data as graphs, the first step was to re-create that data as a table. In my spreadsheet, I made two columns: A for shot type and B for shot length. The shot types for both films were: Long Shot (LS), Full Shot (FS), Medium Long Shot (MLS), Medium Shot (MS), Medium Close-Up (MCU), Close-Up (CU), and Big Close-Up (BCU). Lengths were written in seconds. In total, I chose around 80 shots for both films.

Now, how to make sounds of my two columns of information?

Shot length would equal length of sound. That's simple enough. But, since I didn't want a 1:1 ratio and because I know very little about music, it still posed a practical problem. Happiness: I opened up my midi sequencer, chose the piano-roll editor, and saw that it was divided into neat squares. How convenient! I quickly decided to use this grid as my counting tool, using the "snap to" option to help me along. In my spreadsheet, I wrote a simple formula and divided each of my actual shot lengths by 5. The result would become how many "squares" long each sound would be. I could fiddle with tempo to speed up or slow down the result.

Shot type was trickier, but I knew I wanted a different sound for each shot. I also wanted the sounds to start from a low LS to a high BCU, so that I could hear differences and progressions. Stumped, I asked a musical friend. He gave me a list of seven chords for my seven shots. I don't know his reasoning, but I went along. From LS to BCU, his chosen chords were: CM, Dm, Em, FM, GM, Am, Bdim. A quick VLOOKUP in the spreadsheet and each shot was mapped.

Now that I had both the length and the chord, I went to work in my midi sequencer. There weren't any input tricks. Input was manual, working from the spreadsheet. When I finished, I chose a soundfont (cello for Ludwig, saxophone for De Vierde man) with which to render the result, and exported my creation as an MP3.

Sources

Shot data is from Cinemetrics. Esther de Lange noted and uploaded the counts for Ludwig and Vera de Lange did the same for De Vierde man. Software requirements are a spreadsheet program (though pen and paper also work) and midi sequencer with piano-roll editor. In the latter, I used two freely-available soundfonts: Güray Dere's "Super Tenor Sax" and Nando Florestan's "Florestan string quartet".

Future Experiments

My work-in-progress is Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, for which I'm trying to use more than one instrument as well as attempting to create a beat or bass line by using the average shot length and most popular shot type. The result is too monotonous so far, but I'd like to break up the film into groups of 25 or 50 shots, calculating an average for each group, indicating faster and slower sections of the film. I hope that the composition resulting from an entire film will yield audible patterns, structural motifs that we can hear perhaps better than we could see.

Going the other way might prove interesting, too—taking an existing piece of music and using its structure as a basis for the formal structure of a film: note lengths becoming shot lengths and using the musical scale as a cinematic "shot scale" that goes from a low-sounding Long Shot to a high-sounding Close-Up.

So, as Chuck Berry once sang:

Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tarkovsky the news!

Director Popularity*

2009-03-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around in Excel with fetching search results, and here's something I came up with: a comparison of the number of hits when searching 26 filmmakers (random selection, and I apologize for not including any Italians!) on Google Scholar and Google Blog Search. I was hoping to come up with a way of assessing "critical popularity" versus "popular popularity", and this is my very rough first stab.

Note: Although I forgot to label the axes and series, thick blue corresponds to Scholar and uses the axis on the left and thin yellow is Blogs, which is read using the axis on the right.

In the future, I could add more filmmakers as well as use more types of search results—calculating a "critical popularity" and "popular popularity" by combining numbers. Other sites to explore: Google's Book Search, IMDB votes, isoHunt or Piratebay searches, etc.

The Results

Are preliminary and possibly faulty. For example: a few nights ago I was doing similar stuff about Japanese filmmakers and a lesser-name came up with a significant number of hits. It turned out that he shared a name with a science researcher who had a large number of articles indexed by Scholar.

Assuming (I'm lazy but will check) that's not the case, I am surprised by the high critical position held by Chaplin and the seemingly-inflated critical numbers put up by Fritz Lang and John Huston. I'm also surprised that Sembene has more Scholar hits than Tarkovsky or Ozu.

The height of both Spielberg bars suggests a correlation between Scholar and Blog searches, perhaps hinting that they're both actually popular rather than critical measures of popularity. Then again, differences for filmmakers like Griffith and Eisenstein, for whom you'd imagine there would be more critical writing than fan or general writing, suggests the opposite. The Blog popularities of Miyazaki, Herzog, and Cameron make sense in the latter context, as well. When I did my Japanese comparison, Miyazaki was the leading popular popular filmmaker, edging out Kurosawa as he does here, but in the middle of the pack critically.

In the cases of Bela Tarr and Sergei Parajanov, the blogosphere is the forum for discussion, with scholarship being bare bones.

...and so on.

Filmmaker Trees

2009-03-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

I've been interested in data visualization lately. Here's one way of visualizing the lives of filmmakers—inspired by trees. How it works:

A dot represents a director's birth. Each subsequent ring represents one year in his or her life. A black ring means that one or more films was made in that year. A blank ring means that no film was made. The outer-most brown ring represents the year of death.

The size of the "tree" gives an idea about the length of a director's life. The space between the dot and the first black ring shows how early a director made his or her first film. The space between the last black ring and the brown ring shows the time between the last film and death. The frequency of the rings (darkness / lightness) shows periods of high and low output.

The fun, of course, comes in comparisons!

Examples

Here are three trees that I felled in the woods this morning. The original vectors are still drying by the fireplace, but these .jpg snapshots should give you an idea of what I'm writing about. Incidentally, they look a bit like vinyl records.

Andrei Tarkovsky

Robert Bresson

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Into the Forest

It's at times like these that I wish I were more computer literate. But I think this is possible and not-too-difficult to implement: an online gallery of "trees", exported from Illustrator into Flash (?), zoom-able, with rings becoming highlighting links to IMDB or Wikipedia pages, or Google .torrent searches, etc.

European Cup: 1960 & 1962

2009-03-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

The greatest finals ever played? Certainly two great matches that every football fan should see at least once. For: the play, the tactics (read: attacking), the actions and conduct of the players, the referee (shoving a physio off the field), the filming—even the half-time entertainment!

Eintracht Frankfurt - Real Madrid
Glasgow, 1960

EMULE

Benfica - Real Madrid
Amsterdam, 1962

EMULE

Enjoy the football. Squads, information, and links can be found on the appropriate pages of Wikipedia.

Zanussi, Agent?

2009-03-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi appears in the files of communist Poland's secret police, the SB (Służba Bezpieczeństwa) under the codename "Aktor". First contact was made in 1962, when Zanussi was 33 years old. The extent of any cooperation or activities is unclear. Zanussi claims he didn't have a pseudonym and did not have any meetings beyond a pair in 1962. He also says that he purposefully spread news about those meetings in order to make himself less-tempting as a possible agent.

Photocopies of the documents are here.

They're in Polish, but legible if you know the language. If you know the language, you may also want to warm up your emule client and download some or all of the following: The Structure of Crystals, Camouflage, The Contract, Illumination, Spiral, Hypothesis, or Death of a Provincial, Zanussi's diploma film.

Latest Capsules

2009-03-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Murderers Are Among Us (Staudte, 1946)

Impressive post-war German mixture of expressionism and neo-realism, combining to form a stylish "rubble film" (more)

Still Walking (Koreeda, 2008)

Modest, unassuming film about the joy and sadness of families and their passing (more)

Achilles and the Tortoise (Kitano, 2008)

What begins as a coming-of-age satire of the art world passes through an un-engaging romantic phase and ends as an absurd story about a ruined artist—macabre undercurrent flowing throughout (more)

Blood of the Condor (Sanjinés, 1969)

In the Bolivian mountains, a man, his wife. Their children: dead. Life according to tradition. One day, police arrest the man, shoot him in cold blood (more)

Babysitter Wanted (Barnes, 2008)

Disarmingly-entertaining flick about a devout Christian girl who goes to college (Art History) and takes a babysitting job at a farmhouse out in the sticks to earn money (more)

Humboldt County (Jacobs, 2008)

Awful "indie" about a lost (played: comatose) medical student who follows a girl (where did you go, Fairuza?) to a Northern California pot farm (more)

Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)

Goodfellas get born, get made, get dead (more)

Summer (Glenaan, 2008)

Story of two life-long friends, friendship cemented by an accident that left one crippled (more)

The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce (Rowland, 2008)

Alexander Pearce was an 19th-century Irishman sentenced to Sarah Island penal colony in Australia. Twice he escaped—once with seven men, once with a single partner—and twice he came out alive, alone, having eaten human flesh to survive (more)

Towelhead (Ball, 2007)

Alan Ball plays with a Lebanese Lolita rather than Mena Suvari in this re-hash of American Beauty (more)

My Brother's Wife (Wishman, 1966)

Unloved housewife Mary falls for suddenly-arriving, lecherous bro-in-law Frankie (more)

My Brother's Wife

2009-03-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Images and bric-a-brac from Doris Wishman's 1966 sleaze flick, in non-chronological order:

Bored housewife Mary wants to be loved by older husband Bob. His gorilla-like brother Frankie will arrive, stay and seduce.

One of the film's most-interesting scenes: creepy, not-exactly consensual (but not exactly not) lesbian foreplay between cousins (or are they?) echoes future David Lynch.

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson? The Graduate premiered in 1967, next year.

Close-up of lecherous, slimy Frankie.

Mary fixes her hair in the toaster. She wants to look good for Frankie. But why? The film, whose entire soundtrack was dubbed over its images, resulting in words not matching lips, sudden shots of people's headless bodies, feet, is composed largely of two voice-overs: Mary's and Frankie's.

Nothing to say, but I like this shot.

In many ways, My Brother's Wife is Godard's "gun and a girl" taken to its most synthetic extreme. The film features both, and makes less of them than you might imagine.

Wishman's influence: film noir? The film begins in the present, the discovery of a dead body, which leads to a long flashback. Shadows play on the walls (sometimes even the cameraman's shadow!) and Frankie is quite the homme fatale. He destroys Mary, he destroys his brother. Welcome to the urban underworld.

The film's few outdoor scenes help alleviate stuffiness and close camera-work. Here, Mary waits for Frankie in a park.

Lovers meet, in a love scene. There are many of these, though most end before anything actually happens. Imagine a porno made by a film student with all the porno cut out, leaving only the story.

Wishman's camera loves breasts, legs, and a stomach. I also wanted to mention that the film has a constant, catchy jazz score. It's a bit like a silent film.

One of Wishman's inserted shots of whatever happens to be lying around. Some, like this one, are very nice. They often serve as transitions, but not always.

Eroticism without nudity.

Eroticism with nudity.

There's a feeling of sadness that runs throughout the film. From Mary's marital malaise to the black and white to the sparse sets, these lives are empty. Badly-written characters probably, but not without impact.

An image culled from the opening titles, a still of a still. Say whatever you will—and you should say a lot, because My Brother's Wife is a terrible film—but Wishman's got a good eye for compositions, plain-Jane weirdness. She might well give meaning to the phrase: bored stiff.

Doris Wishman, 1966

GM Labour Costs in Canada

2009-03-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

According to the 2008 Harbour Report:

(1) the average Hours / Vehicle for a "Compact Non-Premium Conventional" car is 25.73

(2) the average Hours / Vehicle for GM cars and trucks made in Canada is 17.13

The hourly cost of one GM factory worker in Canada is somewhere around $70—which includes wages (about half that figure) as well as benefits.

If we multiply:

17.13 x 70 = 1199

∴ For every car that GM produces in Canada, GM pays its factory workers $1199.

A Chevrolet Impala, one of the cars produced in Canada's Oshawa Assembly Plant, has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $26,625 - $36,625.

Let's take a middle price: $31,625

And divide:

1199 / 31625 = 0.038

∴ GM factory worker pay in Canada accounts for 4% of the price of one average-priced Impala.

∴ If Canadian auto workers worked for free and received no benefits, GM could shave costs by $1199 / car or make an extra 4% profit on one Impala.

I admit, I don't know much about the car industry or GM. I'm probably missing something important and or making drastic errors. But some things I'm curious about, interested in, or that don't quite make sense to me:

(1) GM either makes a massive profit on each car it sells or something other than factory worker wages and benefits account for the vast majority of GM's production costs.

(2) The general public anger at Canadian auto workers appears founded more on ideological grounds than on concrete, economic ones—the public wants auto worker concessions because it feels auto workers make too much money compared to other manufacturing jobs, not because making such concessions will help GM or make sure that Canadian money going to GM is better-spent.

(3) The rising anti-union sentiment bodes well for GM's future, if it survives.

(4) Auto workers and unions are both serving as scape-goats for the rickety state of GM and, more broadly, the auto industry. Public and media discussion is confined to agreeing or disagreeing about whether unionized workers make too much money, preventing any real discussion about the causes and solutions for the industry's problems. The 4%, so to speak, is taking the brunt of the blows while the 96% lays low and gets out unscathed.

(5) We continue to worship hockey players and movie stars, despite their comparatively-higher (to say the least!) "wages".

In general, people are blending their opinion that GM workers make too much money with their knowledge that GM is in trouble, and assuming a connection between the two that doesn't follow. GM, the auto industry, and the Media are taking advantage of this connection to weaken the position of unions and unionized workers.

May I call you David?

2009-03-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Referring to actors, director, writers, etc. by their first names ("Tom was just so funny in Tropic Thunder!") has always struck me as pretentious. But what's the convention for making reference to book or film characters: is Martin Eden a Martin, an Eden, or a Martin Eden?

Emma, I Presume

Sometimes this seems straightforward. For example, when a character's first name is the title of a work, as in Jane Austen's Emma, it sounds natural to refer to the character as Emma rather Emma Woodhouse or—the very strange-sounding indeed—just Woodhouse: Woodhouse loves Darcy? Then again, that points to another problem. When a character in the same novel is mentioned by his surname rather than his first name, calling him anything except "Mr Darcy" (or Darcy) sounds as odd as calling Emma by her surname: Emma loves Fitzwilliam? In this case, it sounds best to follow the author and do as she does, even when there's no firm rule in place. If we don't, we might end up describing Emma as that famous novel about the Woodhouse + Fitzwilliam romance.

A Special Case

When two characters share either a first name or a surname, referring to both characters by both names makes clear which character you're talking about. Simple, sensible, probably not a common issue.

Davey C.

One glaring difference between an actor and a character is that the former is alive and the latter is alive only on a page, on a screen, in someone's imagination. Because being on "first name" terms with something that doesn't flesh-and-blood exist is impossible, perhaps calling a character by his or her first name would not only be unpretentious, but might also show an affinity for that character. We might like David or dislike Copperfield, for instance.

Or else we might be more inclined to refer to David as a child and Copperfield as an adult. But would we go further, would we ever refer to David Copperfield, supposing we liked him a lot, as Davey?

Henry [Hill]

Sometimes characters are based on real people and share names. Another kettle: are first names off-limits then unless we happen to know the real Henry Hill? Plus, how do we switch from talking about the character to talking about the person? If we write about Henry Hill and use the pronoun He, unless context dictates otherwise, we're writing about the actual Henry Hill, not the one played by Ray Liotta, right?

It, The Character

Something that always bugged me—what pronoun do we use when we refer to fictional people: are Emma and David Copperfield she and he, based on the sex of their characters; or is a character always an it, a sex-less construct?

The first option is definitely more popular. So, we usually write,

She (Emma) walked down the path.

rather than,

It (the character) walked down the path.

For another example, suppose that we have a sentence ("Charles Foster Kane is an excellent character.") and want to follow it up by stating that Kane was based on real-life person William Hearst.

We could write,

Charles Foster Kane is an excellent character. He (Kane) is based on William Randolph Hearst.

or,

Charles Foster Kane is an excellent character. It (the character) is based on William Randolph Hearst.

The second example sounds awkward, off, strange. But it's not without its clarity. Let's add a third sentence to our pair and see why:

Charles Foster Kane is an excellent character. [He / It] is based on William Randolph Hearst. He (Hearst) is a newspaper tycoon.

If our second sentence begins with the pronoun He, the third sentence is unclear: is Hearst a newspaper tycoon or is Kane? To avoid confusing our readers, we'd have to be more specific and use the proper noun Hearst. However, if the second sentence begins with an It, then the He in the third sentence must refer to the Hearst, making our paragraph clear as-is.

Incidentally, the same problem applies to animals. We say "Poor dog, he's hungry" as often as "Poor dog, it's hungry." It's all enough to make my head spin, and God only knows how we'd refer to fictional dogs!

Park Row

2009-03-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

As the newspaper business crumbles, some going under, some online, and even big boys like the New York Times facing big problems and big, existence-related decisions, it seems as proper a time as there ever will be to visit Samuel Fuller's 1952 love-letter to the ideals and heyday of the Big Press: Park Row.

Gene Evans plays Phineas Mitchell, a damn-good journalist who gets fed up when his important employing paper plays power-politics and circulation numbers at the expense of a man's life (shades of His Girl Friday); quits; and, with only talent, passion, and ideals (shades of Citizen Kane) decides to put out his own newspaper: a good paper, an honest paper, an innovative paper, a paper printed on the cheapest newsprint available, sold for cheap, and—by God!—a paper that will never, never sell out its dreams and the dreams of all the demi-gods and heroes who set foot on the hallowed cobblestones of Park Row!

Opposing him is his former boss, the cold, beautiful dominatrix of a newspaper mogul Charity Hackett, played wonderfully by Mary Welch—her only film role before dying young in 1958. Charity doesn't live by the same lofty rules as Mr Mitchell, thinks of her business as just a business, uses her influence for whatever suits her, and has no qualms about using dirty or downright despicable means to crush, convert, or destroy her competition. Naturally, Mr Mitchell falls head-over-heels, prompting an exquisite shot: following the seduction, during which Ms Welch is dressed in uncustomary white, as the two maybe-lovers embrace and kiss, the camera pulls backward, spinning so that the balusters dividing Mr Mitchell's office from the printing floor become jail bars, trapping him in the unethical grasp of the she-newspaperman!

Given the film's propensity for speeches and declarations of principles, and given the [weird, it's true] love story, you may be inclined to think: "Samuel Fuller? But this sounds grandiose and schmaltzy." Wipe it from your mind. Wipe it! If ever there was a filmmaker who deserved to rosy-it-up once in a while, to play the devoted idealist rather than the cynical, apolitical fighting man, that filmmaker is Samuel Fuller. And the film is not without its toughness. There's unsentimental death to balance the sentimental idealism, and the characters are all worth their salt. They're fighting men fighting for the truth and the freedom to express it, you might say.

Fuller's style abounds, as well, the master weaving his camera through cheaply-made sets (it all takes place on one street, in only a few rooms—still squeezing the buck as good as always, old Sam) like some kind of drunken snake, making you dizzy while forcing you to follow the action, unaware that you should have said "Wow, what a shot!" unless you concentrate. So, Fuller's tough, masculine eye isn't closed—he's just squinting a bit. Still the same Fuller world-view, but less clear, less defined, with more room for interpretation and grand speeches. Something else: because it's Fuller, you also know he damn well means it. So you better listen up, take notes, and learn how to set type the old-fashioned way. Now set this:

Park Row, drenched in Fuller's own history, dunked in the history of the newspaper business, bursting with the desire to keep the press meaningful and uncorrupted, is not a poor man's Charles Foster Kane. It is cheap, it is strange, it is tautly-told, and it comes straight from the goddamn heart. It is exceptional.

Samuel Fuller, 1952