DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

At a historical moment where social class and economic redistribution have entered the public consciousness (vis-à-vis both the lefty populist rhetoric of Occupy and Mitt Romney’s “47%” blunder), these movies cast the tenants of “good filmmaking” (sympathetic characters, compelling human drama, a coherent moral program) aside like last season’s Prada, articulating a worldview defined by stockpiling fancy things. They might be criticized as decadent and superficial, but isn’t that the point? They’re materialistic, but also materialist: intentionally or not, they expose the unquenchable, desiring logic of capitalism.

Crappy writing about film is the norm these days, and this is a good example of crappy writing about film. Nothing about the films, drop Zizek’s name, quote a famous critic, mention a theory while not applying it, and publish. Sounds intelligent. Is meaningless. Chloe Wyma implies, as the closing paragraph illustrates, that the films are good because they’re bad. Classic bullshit. 

Wyma has no clue about materialism, philosophical and economic. On the other hand, her editor should have one and should have cut the final sentence. The play on words in Wyma’s coda is quite insipid. In addition, I’d like to know about a moment that isn’t a historical moment, for example all those billions and billions of moments prior to Occupy Wall St and Mitt Romney’s latest Presidential campaign where the public consciousness has, in fact, been focused on social class and economic redistribution. It’s clear Wyma has no eye for contemporaneity and original social difference. If she thinks it, everyone must think it.

This introductory sentence to Wyma’s conclusion is a ridiculous generalization. Be incorrect, make mistakes, take chances, be daring, but do not generalize like this. Maybe her imagined readers are sixteen-year-old Sofia Coppola fans who love dreaming about society played out in the sad lives of rich people on TV, in cinemas, and in fashion and music magazines and web sites. I don’t know. However, I do know who loves Lost in Translation. Chloe Wyma does.

So, what’s the point here? Is the point so innocuous—these three movies are crass examinations of people and their things or examinations of crass people and their things? And are they good films because Wyma is shocked that, in spite of herself, she doesn’t like the characters? I don’t know. A more honest focus on that sentiment—when I watch these characters I kind of want what they have in spite of being frightened of them (Spring Breakers), shocked by their behavior (The Bling Ring), and annoyed with them (The Great Gatsby); in these characters I see myself and I don’t like it though I kind of do—would be much more interesting, wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t require such terrible attempts at referring to theory the author clearly hasn’t mastered and history she clearly doesn’t understand.

Roger Ebert had amazing good moments. RIP

Three Noir and One Neo-noir Boxing Films

• The Set-Up (1949)
• Champion (1949)
• No Way Back (1949)
• Fat City (1972)

All worth watching in comparison-contrast to how Kubrick handles the noir boxing film in Killer’s Kiss (1955).

dagNotes: for future reference: 과속 스갠들 and the conventional

I’m obsessed with all the stuff in the scenes in the film. That’s what spurred my first post. You don’t see this sort of production in art cinema, for sure, but I think that’s the benefit of filming the conventional (and dressing it up in a place the audience recognizes) vs filming an idea of the conventional (and staging the idea on location in a way that makes the ordinary strange).

beetleinabox:

Image from Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983).

I saw these games born in Japan. I later met up with them again all over the world, but one detail was different. At the beginning the game was familiar: a kind of anti-ecological beating where the idea was to kill off—as soon as they showed the white of their eyes—creatures that were either prairie dogs or baby seals, I can’t be sure which. Now here’s the Japanese variation. Instead of the critters, there’s some vaguely human heads identified by a label: at the top the chairman of the board, in front of him the vice president and the directors, in the front row the section heads and the personnel manager. The guy I filmed—who was smashing up the hierarchy with an enviable energy—confided in me that for him the game was not at all allegorical, that he was thinking very precisely of his superiors. No doubt that’s why the puppet representing the personnel manager has been clubbed so often and so hard that it’s out of commission, and why it had to be replaced again by a baby seal.

socialismartnature:

Charlie Chaplin final speech in The Great Dictator (1940)

(Source: youtube.com)

Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (Leanne Pooley, 2009)

basicallyatomb:

abudai:

Wes Anderson’s films are just fanciful montages of White People Doing Things. 

this

The One Trick Pony. Sick of Wes Anderson. And now he’s teamed up with a Coppola. Maybe that means we can get even more hip white who gives a shit about this shit anyway. Come to think of it: if i wanted more hip white who gives a shit about this anyway, I’d watch a Noah Baumbach film because at least he’s smug and hyper-intellectually cynical like an educated, wealthy white son of a bitch should be and he’s a better writer. It’s more honest. Wes Anderson is simply a bad parody of whiteness.

I’ll see this, though, because I have a thing for Frances McDormand.

We can take a few snickers from knowing that Anderson had to work with Bruce Willis, who is supposed to be one of the biggest assholes on the planet. That must have been a real treat.

(via deactiavtedhookedonsemiotics)

I saw this film at a small theater in Orlando, Fl, in 1989. By the time it was over, the auditorium was almost empty. And I left a Greenaway fan. I like this and ZOO a lot. Maybe ZOO a little more. If you’re going to watch The Falls, be prepared for something different. It’s not going to have the lush art direction and long left to right camera movements. It’s an entirely different experience.

workandentropy:

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, Peter Greenaway (1989).

Rating: ****1/2

I enjoyed this film even more than The Belly of an Architect. Like that film, the technical production of the The Cook was fantastically well-executed. Whereas the former drew on neoclassical aesthetics, however, the traces of expressionist style found in the lighting, etc., of that film become fully manifest in this one. Expressionist approaches to symbolism abound. Each shot of The Cook is so visually replete with detail that the effect is overwhelming, and this effect is consistently augmented by Greenaway’s use of color and light (the style is so distinct, it makes me wonder how much Italian cinema—later Fellini, like Satyricon, but especially the films of Dario Argento and Mario Bava—influenced this ). A really beautifully shot film.

Thematically I found this film just as complex and interesting as Belly. Between the two films I noticed a thematic similarity (apart from the most obvious one, sex): a recurring focus on food, consumption, and digestion. I’ll be interested to see if this persists in Greenaway’s films when I watch Nightwatch, once I’m off work on Saturday.

I was also struck by—I don’t know how else to describe it—how Greek this film was. The characters, narrative, and climax are strikingly reminiscent of Greek tragedy The symbolic dichotomy between “The Thief” and “The Lover,” one a visceral character marked by his consumption of food, the other an intellectual marked by his consumption of books, also add to this sense of “Greekness.”

Overall, I’d highly recommend this film.

(via workandentropy-deactivated20120)

i really liked this film. i haven’t watched it in ages. going to have to find it. i love The Falls.

workandentropy:

The Belly of an Architect, Peter Greenaway (1987).

Rating: ****

This was pretty awesome, a fascinating film. Brian Dennehy did a great job. An extremely visual film (though not because it lacks in great dialogue or characters or thematic depth), this film shines, to me, particularly for its brilliance of technical execution. The cinematography was fantastic, and Greenaway’s sense of perspective and scene composition—his utilization of architecture in Italy in constructing his shots, for example—illustrates the kind of directorial vision that renders almost every shot itself a work of visual art (consider the three screenshots). It’s not surprising that Greenaway’s formal training was as a visual artist, it shows. In many ways, the architecture itself permeates the narrative as a character, and though thoroughly postmodern, the film’s use of neoclassical aesthetics in developing this presence creates an intriguing dialogue between the films formal aspects, its plot, and its thematic explorations.  

Also, this bore a lot of similarities to Julian Barnes’ novel, Flaubert’s Parrot. I’d recommend that book to anyway who enjoyed this film, or vice versa.

(via workandentropy-deactivated20120)

Hunger (Mcqueen 2008)

I love this film and for this scene. The movie wonderfully puts aside the ideological debate for a look at people. Behavior. Acts and Responses.

An incredibly long scene. A conversation: Bobby and The Priest. Incredible. Would have loved to be with the actors rehearsing this for lord knows how long. Amazing imagined conversation.

The conversation with the priest and Bobby Sands begins at 4.43 of the first part below, following the IRA’s assassination of a particularly troubled and sadistic British prison guard.

DA Pennebaker’s “Daybreak Express” (1953)

dagScreen: Editing

I’m always complaining about editing when watching film. This guy has posted two parts of a three part series on editing action scenes.

Worth watching.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

In the Cut, Part II: A Dash of Salt from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

Reminds me of my film theory classes back in 2000-2002 while I was working on my MA.

Womb (Benedek Fliegauf, 2010)

bicyclesforafghanistan:

Matewan - Directed by John Sayles

A labor union organizer comes to an embattled mining community brutally and violently dominated and harassed by the mining company.

Starring:    Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham
Genre:     Drama | History
Director:    John Sayles
Release Date:    June 30, 1988
Runtime:    135 minutes

…In case you need further proof that a boss is not something worth having. If you can’t find it in your library or local film shop, click the picture to download. For evaluation purposes only, of course.

One of the best films to come out of the US. Would be on my top ten American films of all time.