Sebastiane (1976)

Derek Jarman's Sebastiane has lots of slow-motion naked men in water. It is less clear what this has to say, but I’m not mad about it. And I’m gonna watch another 3 or 4 Jarman movies this month, so I will see what else he has in store for me. Also, this whole movie is in Latin... which made it hard to identify with these guys. Oh, I hated the opening to this, with its references to Fellini-Satyricon, but the rest is much better.

Also, it's been ages since I've seen Claire Denis's Beau Travail, but surely that movie is based on Sebastiane. I will need to look that up.

More 2015 Films. Awards-Season Edition. Part 1.

Confession. I have other writing deadlines that I should be working on and other reading I am supposed to be doing. But I am in Los Angeles, and I've been here for about 5 days. In that time I have seen 4 movies. And if I don't write down some thoughts, then I'm bound to forget everything.

The best of this bunch – and one of my favorite films of the year – is Youth, Paolo Sorrentino's new movie about two octogenarians (Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel) relaxing in a hotel in Switzerland. Caine plays Fred, a retired composer and conductor, and Keitel plays Mickey, a brilliant filmmaker who is working on his next movie with a team of young writers.

Youth is the follow up to 2013's The Great Beauty, and it is very similar in style to the earlier film. Its themes are somewhat similar, too, although I think Youth is more introspective, more about how we behave with the people around us, than The Great Beauty was. But Youth is filled with extraordinarily fascinating characters (Paul Dano, Rachel Weisz, Robert Seethaler, and Jane Fonda are all excellent in supporting roles), powerful dialogue, and lots and lots of magic. This movie, perhaps, has even more magic than The Great Beauty. There is a gorgeous shot early on in the film where Caine is walking on a tiny footpath in Venice. He's just above water level and is surrounded by many Venetian buildings lit up gorgeously. Coming toward him on the bridge is Miss Universe. They inch past one another comically and then continue. It looks like a tribute to Fellini's Casanova at the same time as it looks like something only Sorrentino could dream up.

Vacationing with Paul Dano

Fellini comes up again and again while I watch Sorrentino's movies, and he makes me like Fellini even more. He seems to have imbibed all of Fellini and then coupled it with dance music and irony and a kind of hopeless utopianism. I absolutely loved this movie. It is everything I need from a film. This is a film I wanted to see again as soon as it ended, a film made by a master of the craft (and he's still very young!). There are numerous sequences I could describe that are unforgettable – an extraordinary section where a retired football player (an homage to Diego Maradona) kicks a tennis ball repeatedly into the air without it ever falling, a running joke about a couple that doesn't speak at dinner, an entire bizarre and beautiful section with Adolf Hitler – these sections just keep coming in Youth. The film is consistently surprising, constantly beautiful. As in The Great Beauty, beauty is everywhere around us. And the final sequence – a gorgeous song by David Lang – is the most deeply moving scene of a film I've seen this year. I cannot recommend this enough

Oscar possibilities for Youth: not too many. Jane Fonda is looking good for a supporting actress nomination, although it seems insane to me that no one is talking about Harvey Keitel for best supporting actor. He is amazing in this movie. David Lang should also snag a best original song nomination for "Simple Song #3".

* * *

Lebanon's foreign language submission to the Academy Awards this year is a film by Naji Abu Nowar called Theeb (Wolf). It is an exciting little film with several surprise reversals in it. Theeb is a sort of combination character study slash adventure film slash coming-of-age story. It is by turns strangely erotic and oddly sentimental. In fact, I should say that I think what Theeb is is what Bone Tomahawk sort of wished it could have been. It also boasts an excellent performance from an actor named Hassan Mutlag, a murderer turned father figure who is much more fascinating than the child at the film's center.

But Theeb isn't quite as exciting as I wanted it to be, and it doesn't quite have as much to say as I wanted it to say. This may be (I've noted it before) related to my own impatience with films about children growing up or films that see the world through the eyes of a child. (In fact, I am sort of positive that this is part of the reason I was rather soft on the movie.) But Theeb is also a kind of love letter to a way of life that has passed. The film is set in 1916 during World War I and it mourns the passing of desert guides as the railroad arrives. This struck me as odd, too, since there are, of course, still nomadic peoples who live in the desert and raise animals the way Theeb's family does in the film.

In any case, Theeb is a good little film with some interesting and surprising plot twists, but it never really got under my skin.

Oscar possibilities for Theeb: One. This film made the shortlist of 9 possible nominees for Best Foreign Language Film out of the original 81 submissions. I can't see it actually scoring one of the final five slots, but it could happen.

More movies to come in the next couple of days.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 10 of 14

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Italy (Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediteranneo, Open Doors, Cinema Paradiso, The Family, Three Brothers, To Forget Venice, Viva Italia!, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Girl with a Pistol, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, The Great War, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Galatea Ranzi, Pamela Villoresi, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Giovanna Vignola, Giusi Merli, Sonia Gessner, Luca Marinelli

I have written about this enough times, I suppose. It is the best movie of the year, and there is simply nothing like it. I have even seen it a second time. I had a chance to see the film in the local IMAX theatre and I jumped at the chance. It hit me just as hard the second time, and my friends and I talked about it for days afterward. You will notice that Italy's previous nominations include films by Fellini, Tornatore, De Sica, Pontecorvo, Risi, Monicelli, and Scola (but strangely not Antonioni, Bertolucci, or Bellocchio): Sorrentino is in good company. And if some of the Italian masters have been left off of this list, the film to which La Grande Bellezza has most often been compared is La Dolce Vita, which also missed out on a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination. In who's-going-to-win news, they just recently changed the rules for voting for the winner of this Oscar. Formerly, an Academy member had to see all five of the nominees in order to vote for the winner. This is no longer the case, which means that voting for the winner of Best Foreign Language film will follow the same type of group-think as the rest of the winners. This year, however, that means that the best film of the year in any language will win Best Foreign Language picture.

Will Win: Foreign Language Film

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #1 out of 81

The Broken Circle Breakdown

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Belgium (Bullhead, Everybody's Famous, Farinelli: il Castrato, Daens, The Music Teacher, Peace in the Fields)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Johan Heldenbergh, Veerle Baetens, Nell Cattrysse

This is Belgium's second recent nomination (their most recent was the totally awesome Bullhead – check it out). I haven't seen this picture yet, but Netflix assures me it will be out on DVD on the eleventh of March, a good nine days late for the Oscars. So I will see it then, I suppose. I can tell you that this is a melodrama about a relationship between a bluegrass musician – the film is filled with Bluegrass music, in English no less – and a tattoo artist. It is based on a play by Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, and Van Groeningen's film was nominated for six European film awards where Veerle Baetens won Best Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Césars. You can watch the trailer here.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: Not ranked

Omar (عمر)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Palestine (Paradise Now)

Director: Hany Abu-Assad

Cast: Adam Bakri, Waleed Zuaiter, Leem Lubany, Baher Agbariya, Majd Bitar, Walid Abed Elsalam, David Gerson

Here's another one I haven't seen. This is Hany Abu-Assad's second nomination in this category, but the film looks, well to be honest, it doesn't look all that great. You can watch the trailer here. Omar played at Cannes in 2013 and will be released in the U.S. on the 21st. The poster features the back of Omar's head as he kisses his love-interest in the film, and above their heads are the words "An incredible love story". Apparently, they are assuming we won't watch the trailer so that we can know what the film is actually about. Actually, if you're feeling like you probably will see this film, take my advice and don't watch the trailer. It gives way too much away.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

L'Image Manquante (The Missing Picture)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Cambodia

Director: Rithy Panh

Cast: Randal Douc

This is Cambodia's first nomination ever, and it is very exciting for another reason, too. L'Image Manquante is a documentary about atrocities perpetuated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and this is the first time in a very long time that a documentary has been nominated for Best Foreign Language film. This is a huge deal all around. I don't think the film can win, but this nomination does demonstrate the Academy's interest in cinema from all parts of the globe. This was never in doubt, really, but there has not been a film from the Asian mainland nominated in this category for over five years. The Academy has for the last twenty years consistently ignored submissions by India, South Korea, Vietnam, China, even Hong Kong. I am not saying this is instantly going to change, but this nomination is a step in the right direction. The film is slated for release stateside on March nineteenth. You can see the trailer here.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

Jagten (The Hunt)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Denmark (A Royal Affair, In a Better World, After the Wedding, Waltzing Regitze, Pelle the Conqueror, Babette's Feast, Harry and the Butler, Paw, Qivitoq)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Thomas Bo Larsen, Susse Wold, Anne Louise Hassing, Alexandra Rapaport, Lasse Fogelstrøm

Mads Mikkelsen has starred in three of the last four nominees for Denmark in this category. Apparently it is a winning combination. Obviously, Mikkelsen is a big star, and this goes a long way to making this film as good as it is and in it getting this nomination. In fact, though, the high quality of Jagten has as much to do with the legendary director of the first Dogme 95 film, Thomas Vinterberg, as it does with Mikkelsen. Jagten is a kind of Arthur Miller's The Crucible for the twenty-first century. It is a terrifying, nail-biting witchhunt, that drove me and my roommate absolutely nuts watching it. One wants to scream at the movie screen. This film gets its hooks into you and then drags you around for a little bit. This is excellent, unsparing filmmaking, and it is totally in line with Vinterberg's other work. Denmark has won this award recently, though – for Susanne Bier's 2010 In a Better World (a much-deserved win) – and it won't be taking home the trophy this year unless there is an enormous upset.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: #19 out of 81

A Fight about The Wolf of Wall Street

Unlike our conversation about The Butler, in which we basically agreed with one another (although he made me smarter about the film than I was being), in this conversation about The Wolf of Wall Street, my friend Carlos and I are back to our usual habit of almost totally disagreeing with each other about a movie.
For me these conversations are always pleasurable, so I hope this is a fun read.

* * * * *

Carlos: I just saw the Wolf. Hoooooo.

Aaron: I'm going soon. Make me feel better about it than I do?

Carlos: I thought it was harrowing. Hilarious. Merciless and at times miserable. Unapologetic and ruthlessly joyous. It made me feel both great pride and great shame as an American. First, that whatever your feelings about the story and characters, it is a truly brilliantly made movie. And being that entertainment is our chief export, we've given the world something great. The great shame stems from the fact that we, as a country, allowed the events of the film to take place, and little has changed. I'm still unpacking it all.

Aaron: Oooooo. Thanks. This makes me feel good about it.

Carlos: Also it makes me wish I could try quaaludes.

Aaron: Haha. I've always wished that.

Carlos: But make sure you go in with the proper reservations and expectations for any post-Gangs-of-New-York Scorsese movie.

Aaron: Fear not. I always have reservations about a Scorsese picture.

Carlos: Because... you know... Hugo.

Aaron: The worst.

Carlos: Worst.

* * * * *

Carlos: So I take it you loved Wolf of Wall Street?

Aaron: No. Thank. You.

Carlos: Hahahahaha.

Aaron: But thanks for alleviating the dread at the top.

Carlos: Well, you shoulda known better if I liked it that much. It is a monument to violent excess, chiefly in execution.

Aaron: Yes, yes yes. But one might've enjoyed oneself. So is La Dolce Vita but that movie comes with a lot of pleasure and then a sucker punch.

Carlos: The sucker punch for me, in the grand scheme of things, is that this man was never fully held accountable for his actions. The last shot crystallized it for me. 

Aaron: But I was so bored by the time we got there. So bored.

God Bless America

Carlos: And the fact that the real Jordan Belfort was the one who introduced movie Belfort at the end. The implications of the film were more terrifying to me than 90% of horror movies. But it is long. And has plenty of repeat beats.

Aaron: I know it is totally cliché (and apropos of the way that people speak about pornography: it's not that it's porn, it's that it's bad art) but I honestly feel as though it isn't that I object to the film's outrageous content – to be fair to Scorsese & co. I spent a fair share of the film laughing at the jokes – but it was all just too much. There was too much! And as you say, plenty of repeat beats. Why did he have to keep yelling into that microphone? And what was the point of repeating his betrayal of his friends? Did we need to watch it twice? I understand the film is about excess. Believe me, I get that. But when you have a helipad on your yacht, and then your main character points out twice that there is a helipad on your yacht (not to mention that I can see with my own eyes that he has a helipad on his yacht, since Rodrigo Prieto's camera is pointed directly at the thing), this is not excess, this is tedium.

Carlos: For me, it was a monument of violent excess both in subject and technical execution. For all these characters too much isn't enough. So that's why we have to hear about his stupid helicopter and hot wife and giant house and and and and.... So on and so forth. I acknowledge the repeated beats, but the didn't really faze me. I thought the pacing was so strong that despite the length I never once found myself bored. Which is where I think you and I differ the most.

Mr. McConaughey

Aaron: The pacing was actually good. And stuff did just keep happening. But the things that happened were actually repetitive. You know what I think I needed? I think I needed it to get actually worse. When you start off smoking crack, when the first moment you get rich you spend $3,000 – or whatever it is – on side dishes, there really isn't anywhere else to go. Everything else is just another version of throwing people at giant targets. The whole film is that: excess after excess, but they are all the same, really.

Let me say the things I liked about it. The first ten minutes with Matthew McConaughey (who was absolutely superb) really articulated how the whole thing worked. As a mentor to Belfort, he made sense of the movie: explained how the actual money works (for those who don't understand the materiality of the stock market) and also articulated (it seemed to me) a clear moral center for the film.

Carlos: McConaughey was absolutely my favorite part of the movie. It was, I thought, really understated and subtly fierce. Like, all we got was the glimpse of the tip of the iceberg, but underneath was this coiled beast of finance. I also appreciated that after McConaughey gave us the rundown of how it all works, Jordan never had to again. Even if he was trying something new, he would spare us the explanation because frankly, it didn't matter. He did it. He got away (for a while) with it. And he made a shit-ton of cash.

Aaron: I also loved the sequence where Belfort finally quits Oakmont (or whatever his firm is called). All of that spontaneous crying from the woman in the Chanel suit and the young stockbrokers: hilarious. I am not sure what the point of it was, but it was quite funny.

Carlos: The quitting sequence was one of the best, and I love that it brought things back to the lessons he learned from McConaughey, down to the weird chest-slamming song. I don't really know how to defend the repetetive beats except to say that they just worked for me, in the same way that Spring Breakers' repeat beats and phrases worked for me. It all felt in keeping with the mise en scène. 

Mr. Hill and his chompers

Can we diverge a bit and talk performances? I gotta say, I hate Jonah Hill. Granted, I didn't see Moneyball because if there are two things I don't give two shits about it's sportsball of any type and math in service of sportsball of any type.

Aaron: Haha. So you hated Jonah Hill in this too?

Carlos: Yes and no. I thought that his performance was cretinous, disgusting, and vile. But that all felt in keeping with the character himself. So this movie allowed me to still hate Jonah Hill but acknowledge that he was well cast in this role. But those teeth. I couldn't get over them. I just wanted to kick them right in. Aside from Jon Bernthal all the cronies sort of disappeared into one another. Which maybe was the point. Well and maybe Rugrat. But I thought that Margot Robbie was just great. And maybe the only remotely sympathetic person in this film besides Belfort's first wife.

Aaron: I really liked Margot Robbie, too. Although, I am not sure how sympathetic she was as a character. She was on the hustle, too, of course. I am so with you on Jonah Hill's teeth. They drove me insane.

Carlos: Like I said: remotely sympathetic. Maybe this is why this movie... not maybe... This is why this movie is so difficult for a lot of people. There really is no one to root for. At all. And if you're rooting for Jordan you're probably an MBA who read Rand in high school and never grew out of it.

Mr. DiCaprio, Ms. Robbie, and Mr. Bernthal

Aaron: Actually, one of my favorite moments from the film is the interplay between DiCaprio and Hill during the sequence where they make fun of the dad and are joking with one another about spending all that money on hookers and sides. The improvisation worked for me there. It was silly and funny and worked.



 Carlos: Oh yes. Most scenes with Reiner were hilarious. That was a really fun casting choice. I mean, I thought the whole thing was really well cast.

Aaron: And Joanna Lumley and Jean Dujardin too. Great casting. But there was so much cartooning! Okay, like, for example. We did not need the scene when the two Roccos get to stare at the Duchess's vagina. It serves no purpose – either for the alleged theme of excess or for plot.

Ms. Lumley with Mr. DiCaprio

Carlos: I'll agree that it may just be too much. But I do think it serves a purpose. At that point Jordan is sober. And aside from the hooker dominatrix (which in the grand scheme of things is really only a minor offense) that scene serves to show us that Jordan, even without the aid of drugs and alcohol, is just as depraved, desperate for attention, and 100% self serving. So let me touch on that hooker thing real fast.

Aaron: Sigh. Okay. But, like, I got that from the film's first act.

Carlos: Well it had been two hours so maybe some of the audience needed a reminder.

Aaron: I didn't. But go ahead with the hooker thing.

Carlos: You, sir, are smarter than the average bear.

Aaron: I am not a bear.

Carlos: Otter. Wolf.

Aaron: Witty.

Carlos: But I digress. Hookers.

So at that point, I think, at least I was feeling, that bangin' hookers ain't no thang. His other offenses both against the country, and his family waaaaaay overshadowed his sex addiction. So that one in particular was serving to show us that because of his voracious appetite not being satiated by his drugs of choice he had to move on to more extreme sources of pleasure. Though that's really all subjective. I think getting whipped a bit and a candle shoved up your ass are small potatoes compared to the mountains of drugs and other debauchery he indulged in. So what I guess I'm getting at is that that scene didn't accomplish what I thought it would.

He's the king of the world.

Aaron: Am I simply desensitized to queer sexual behavior? I didn't think anything of that whatsoever.

Carlos: Nail on the head. But I think it would for people less... jaded, shall we say?

Aaron: Less... practiced?

Carlos: Ha. Yes.

Aaron: But you are agreeing with me now, Carlos.

Carlos: Yes, it just took a roundabout path. Look: for all its warts, Wolf of Wall Street is still among my top three movie going experiences of the year. Pacific Rim still wins out. Would I watch Wolf again anytime soon? Doubtful. From a logistical standpoint, who has that kind of time? The more I think about that movie the sadder I become, and not because I like it less on further reflection. I think it really crystallized a time and place in American culture where we have, as a nation, failed and continue to fail. What's saddest to me is that we even have to make a movie about this. I guess what it all boils down to for me is that I'm glad it's there. But I wish it wasn't.

Aaron: This is sort of how I feel about Gangs of New York.

Carlos: Oof.

The Best Movie of the Year

Everything that The Great Gatsby could have been, The Great Beauty actually is.

A couple of years ago when Paolo Sorrentino’s film Il Divo: the Spectacular Life of Giulio Andreotti was nominated for Best Makeup, no one had heard of this movie. (Or maybe it was just me who didn't have it anywhere near my radar.) In any case, my friends and I were shocked by how much we loved this movie, especially the fast-paced editing and the cleverness of Sorrentino’s visual style. Il Divo was a movie that was visually fascinating, and because of that, it was a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed, despite having no previous interest in Giulio Andreotti or the Italian political process in general.

La Grande Bellezza multiplies Sorrentino’s style by ten. This film is a party. And it is a fun one. The Great Beauty is La Dolce Vita by way of the sexiest rager you’ve ever attended. It’s a love-letter to the city of Rome, but not one you’ve ever seen before. This picture is modern Rome, through and through: what’s ancient about the city are simply the remains of antiquity. The main character, Jep, lives a modern, fabulous existence in an ancient city, waking up with a view of the Colosseum from his bedroom window, and drinking orange juice while he looks over the wall into a convent-school. Modernity, antiquity, and religiosity overlap, fold in on one another. And so, by the way, do Renaissance architecture, club music, picturesque gardens, and performance art. Rome is in ruins, but on top of those ruins, among them, the city teems with new life, new art. New money as well as old. Gabriel Fauré, Arvo Pärt, Yolanda Be Cool, Zbigniew Preisner, Lele Marchitelli. The oldest profession and the youngest novitiate.

The plot of La Grande Bellezza is about an aging novelist, who penned a masterpiece in his twenties but hasn’t written a thing since. Why haven’t you written anything since your first great novel? everyone asks him throughout the film. I went out at night, he always responds. Jep has chosen to become a socialite. And he’s great at it. Like the narrator of Remembrance of Things Past (Proust appears as a kind of leitmotif for the entire film as well as being an obvious inspiration), Jep is a keen observer of his society and his friends. He loves parties. He is the king of parties. And he knows everyone. He sees the depth and complexity in all of the shallowest people.

So the film is about wealthy Roman society people, but it's also about growing old and feeling as though one hasn't accomplished what one set out to accomplish... or, well, anything at all. Jep is chasing "the great beauty", or, if you prefer, the green light across the water. And he feels as though he's either given up chasing it or, perhaps, been chasing the wrong light for the last forty years. Of course, Jep doesn't know quite what he hopes to find or what he'll do when he does find it, but the movie follows his search for it.

And La Grande Bellezza does more than this, as well. As Jep is a keen observer of the people in his circle, we learn much about them, too, and much of this is fascinating, studied, and powerfully empathetic. Jep also sees a lot of art – performance art as well as fine art – and the film is studded with performance sequences and cinematographic explorations of old manors, as well as gorgeous shots of outrageous fashion. And the editing. I cannot say enough about the way this film moves through spaces, reflects Jep's mood, finds beauty in the mundane, while at the same standing in total awe of our ancient predecessors or absolutely great art. The film is overboard at all points. And so I fumble with my description. La Grande Bellezza is a film about wildness, the uncontainable, but the film is always formally on point; Sorrentino always knows what he's doing. His main character Jep even has a tendency to find all of this grandeur completely banal. He can simply stare at a piece of art and see nothing of the great beauty for which he searches. It all feels as though it's been done before.

It is a superb testament to the filmmaking abilities of Paolo Sorrentino that he can make a film about a man who is exhausted by the life he leads into a completely compelling, vivid, and beautiful portrait of an ancient city. Sorrentino captures Rome perfectly. La Grande Bellezza is Fellini for the twenty-first century. It is more than that, even. Sorrentino has made a movie that spoke to me deeply about my own search for inspiration, for novelty, for beauty in the everyday.

We're all on the brink of despair, Jep says during an uncharacteristically tense moment. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little... Don't you agree? 

But his cynicism is belied by Sorrentino's film. When, on an outdoor walk in Rome, Jep encounters Fanny Ardant on a staircase and shares a quick greeting with her before she disappears into the night (and disappears from the film), I was nearly giddy with delight. The beauty is everywhere. If Jep is right and we are all on the brink of despair, Sorrentino's film tells us that we are also always surrounded by beauty. At least in Rome, anyway.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1973

I wish that I could like Luchino Visconti, but I guess I just don't. I liked Romy Schneider and Trevor Howard in Ludwig, and literally every shot could be framed and put in a gallery. It's that gorgeous. But the film is just so boring. And I am really interested in Ludwig II and in Richard Wagner, whose life and work have always fascinated me, but I feel like Visconti just drains all energy out of his films. This is sacrilege, I know, but I feel it is time to be honest about this.

There is one sequence in Ludwig that I liked and that has real emotional impact: there is an extended sequence (every sequence is an extended sequence in Visconti) where Romy Schneider takes a tour of all the castles that Ludwig has built. The castles are all empty and unbelievably sumptuous. At the end of the sequence, Schneider throws her head back and laughs. I loved this sequence, but for me that was the film's only scene of merit.

Also. I do not understand what it was with the Italians from this time – Fellini and Visconti in particular. Why are all their films dubbed? I fail to understand it. Helmut Berger, as far as I can tell, was speaking English in the film. But instead of listening to him speak in English, I listen to someone else speak over him in Italian and then read an English translation of that Italian in the subtitles. I am sure there must be an explanation for this, but whatever Visconti's reasoning (and Fellini's and René Clément's) the dubbing works to distance me from the emotional impact of the film.

2 1/2

If I am honest, I will tell you that I do not love all of Fellini's films. I am not crazy about Amarcord, really, and I couldn't really get into 8 1/2 even though it has some very cool stuff in it.

I have decided, however, that I do not like Rob Marshall's films. This evening I saw the newest one, Nine, and I was... well... in a word: bored.

And now, nine thoughts on Nine, because it seems fitting:

1. Rob Marshall is known for making musicals. He made the Best-picture-winning Chicago, which supposedly rehabilitated the movie musical. And yet, both that movie and his newest star-studded musical, are constantly apologizing for being musicals. The man is sold as the best thing to ever happen to the movie musical, but his films appear to wish that they were not musicals. Instead of happening in the stories of his movies, musical numbers in Marshall's films always happen in characters' imaginations. We are forced to leave behind the world of the film and enter into the hyper-make-believe world of the musical itself. So the films actively reinforce the idea that musicalness is phony, that emotions that could only be expressed in song are just too unrealistic to be a part of real life, and yet the film cannot seem to make the "real-life" scenes as realistic or as interesting as its musical numbers, and it seems to be ashamed of its stock-in-trade. We all came to see Nine, in fact (or stayed away, as the case may be), because it is a musical. Yet the film constantly tries to make us forget the fact.

2. I know this is cinema. I know that we need movie stars to make people come to the movies. But how about making a movie star out of someone who is also a great singer? The casting in Nine is very clever and very cosmopolitan (Australia, Spain, Italy, Britain, France, and the U.S. are all represented), the actresses are all fabulous. Honestly. But this movie needed singers. Bad. And that goes for Mr. Day-Lewis, as well.

3. Nicole Kidman is my favorite thing in the picture. She is gorgeous and she has a couple of really fabulous scenes where she talks about women in film, fantasy, and basically what it means to be an actress. It's really fascinating. It's intercut with a musical number, which kind of gets in the way, and it's really the first (and only time) where I was sorry there was a musical number to interrupt a real-life scene.

4. Marshall sort of teases the audience with Fellini references. Sometimes these are fun, and sometimes not that interesting. I really wished Nicole Kidman had gotten in the fountain and done an homage to La Dolce Vita.

5. Penélope Cruz is delightful. A great actress. She is engrossing and compelling in all of her scenes. The film isn't really all that interested in her in the end, but I was rather sorry it wasn't.

6. Dion Beebe knows how to light a movie, let me tell you. You probably already knew that, of course, but it bears repeating. The musical sequence after the screening room scene is absolutely extraordinary.

7. You cannot expect a love story to emerge out of nowhere. We are not going to be attached to Contini's wife if all she does is sit around and look sad and miss him and be angry that he missed her birthday. Particularly if the man's mistress is as much fun as Penélope Cruz is in this movie.

8. The best musical number in the film is Fergie's song "Be Italian." It's fun, it's sexy, and there's sand everywhere.

9. What is this movie about? Why is there singing and dancing? Does Contini (the main character) make musical films? Why isn't any of this explained? Is it because he loved the Folies-Bergère as a kid? I don't get it. Nine, more than anything else, is interested in the derrières of its female stars and extras. This is fine, certainly (Fellini was a breast man, of course, but that's just picking nits), but the movie--like the filmmaker the movie is about--cannot decide what its story is. Is it a movie about a man's love for his wife? Is it about his relationship with his mom? Is it a movie about movie-making (8 1/2 certainly was.)? Or is it a movie about buttocks? A movie about buttocks is a good idea, I think, but if Nine is about that, we need to dump all of the other baggage. For a film that seems to understand that female movie stars act as fantasies for male viewers, it spend a lot of time investing in those fantasies.

P.S. The title of this post is out of five.

Not There.

You've probably already heard about how Todd Haynes' new Bob Dylan movie works. In I'm Not There. Bob Dylan is played by six different actors: Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Whishaw and... Cate Blanchett.

So the film is basically more of a cinematic exercise than a movie. And I think this is okay because the whole thing is fascinating. I mean, the Richard Gere part is kind of boring, but even that has one of the nicest musical moments in the whole movie.

The acting is great all around. I was particularly fond of Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Cate Blanchett is excellent, although I'm not sure the performance ever really jells completely, by which I mean that everything about her sequences always feels artificial. (The Ledger and Franklin sequences are not hampered by this problem.) The Blanchett stuff is filled with Felliniesque touches; there are lots of cool references to 8½ that feel absolutely perfect for this bizarre dream of a movie.

My favorite sequences, though, are the scenes with Marcus Carl Franklin, who plays Woody Guthrie, the eleven-year-old Bob Dylan, who (as I understand it) represents early Dylan, finding his sound, learning the blues and training himself, and finally, learning to sing about his own time. Franklin is adorable, with a wicked grin and wise eyes. He lights up the screen whenever he's in a scene, and I found myself wishing he would come back later in the film when were focusing mainly on Blanchett and Gere.

Basically, I'm Not There. is not to be missed, especially if you are fond of Fellini. It's difficult, and I'm not sure it works in total, but there are some brilliant, gorgeous, sequences, and it's one of the coolest movies of the year.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a quintessentially Japanese film. It's also quintessentially of the 1960s and yet strikingly cosmopolitan. I watched this movie as part of my ongoing project of exploring the Japanese masters. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a beautiful, subtle film that's also a melodrama and a bittersweet homage to Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.

The film is actually a kind of Japanese remake of Cabiria, a connection I might not have even noticed had not director Naruse explicitly referenced Cabiria in the first ten minutes of the film. (Naruse also references Pressburger & Powell's Black Narcissus.)

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is about a woman working as a hostess in a bar (a kind of lower-rent geisha) who is trying to make ends meet and support her louse of a brother back home. It's an old story about the prostitute with a heart of gold, but Naruse's film has the ability to transcend the melodramatic plot and really take both a feminist stance and criticize the dominant political system in Japan. It becomes a film with relevant social commentary as well as a serious drama.

Too Personal

I know I complained the other day about Fellini's Amarcord. I called it too much a meditation on the auteur's childhood or something like that. What I meant by that is not that Amarcord is a bad film, really. But there are links, I think, in a film that is ultra-personal like Amarcord that I am not able to make in my living room, not having lived through the same childhood myself.

The problems of a director's too-personal drama being put into a film are multiplied with Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. The film starts off shaky and continues in fashion. The problem, to my mind, is the plot. It's an all-too familiar story of growing up in New York amid the rough-and-tumble crowd and having to decide—for whatever reason—to leave it. I didn't mind this so much, except the guilt of having left seems to consume Montiel's main character, and I could never figure out why. He's made a really good movie about what a crazy, difficult life he had, and he makes a very strong case for leaving it. Yet the character's big decision is all dependent on this guilt. The climax, in fact, is completely linked with how he was wrong to leave. I was totally lost.

The cast is uniformly good—Channing Tatum, Shia Lebeouf, Robert Downey Jr., Rosario Dawson, Dianne Weist and Chazz Palmintieri—and Montiel (who wrote the script and directed this story of his own life) has a lot of intriguing formal flourishes. Some of these work, and some of them don't. He's certainly seen his share of Spike Lee movies. In one of his best segments (an homage to Lee), each of the kids we've been watching for the last forty-five minutes introduces him- or herself. The best part of it goes like this:

Diane: My name is Diane and I want to fuck.
Giuseppe: My name is Giuseppe and I'm Antonio's brother.
Jenny: My name is Jenny and everyone's a fucking joke.
Antonio: I'm a fucking piece of shit. That's what I am.

It's a wonderful cinematic moment and that final one is simply heartbreaking.

This is A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints at its most intriguing. More often, though, Montiel's playing with form feels like it's only serving to cover up the fact that this is a story we've all heard before.

Amarcord

Federico Fellini's Amarcord didn't feel very Felliniesque to me. Well, I guess I'm not even sure what that means. Amarcord has all of the grotesquerie (am I allowed to say that? am I misinterpreting Fellini?) of the other Fellini films I've seen. But it's also not a very critical film. Instead, Amarcord is a nostalgic look back on what I presume is the director's childhood.

In case you were wondering, Fellini is a tits man. Amarcord is almost exclusively about tits. Fellini is also about ass, so there's a break or two for ass shots.

I liked it enough, but it's not La Dolce Vita, and as I said, it doesn't feel like an exploration of anything in particular except the filmmaker's own childhood memories. This, for some reason, felt less universal than 8½, though I have no explanation for this. What I will say is, the nostalgic childhood films of Lasse Hallström and (especially) Giuseppe Tornatore resonate more with me than Amarcord. I know Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and Malèna are more sentimental films than Amarcord, but I thought they were more interesting.

Buddy Comedy

Remember Steve Guttenberg? I do, but barely. Well, today I watched the 1982 Barry Levinson drama (comedy?) Diner. The film stars Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Tim Daly (whose name I could not, for the life of me, recall) and a superb Ellen Barkin. Steve Guttenberg is first-billed. I didn't really think much of the film, but then, I am not nostalgic for the 1950s. I don't think I will ever understand the obsessive hearkening back to the 50's as the be-all end-all of Americana. Why is everyone so sentimental about that decade? And Diner isn't at all a deconstruction of the decade. It's more of a love letter, an homage to marriage as an institution and an ode to male friendship and homosocial bonding. It's all very hetero. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I'm not usually a fan of Levinson's work and I guess I shouldn't have expected too much. I have to say, though, it was very cool to see all of those guys so young.

And a couple weeks ago I saw the ridiculous Tony Goldwyn remake of Gabriele Muccino's The Last Kiss starring Zach Braff, Casey Affleck, Jacinda Barrett, Tom Wilkinson and Blythe Danner. The film is very stupid and, of course, derivative. The script for The Last Kiss is based directly on Muccino's L'Ultimo Bacio (a film I loved), which was based on Fellini's I Vitelloni. The Goldwyn film was written by Paul Haggis and, while it contains most of the plot points of the original, fails to retain any of the emotional resonance and power of L'Ultimo Bacio. In fact, the film paints all women as either whores or shrews. The men, really aren't any better. They behave as though they are in a script by Neil LaBute, continually doing hateful things to one another and behaving as though all of those things are okay. The role suits Braff, but the writing is so terrible that his talents are wasted. Ditto Blythe Danner's performance, which is easily one of her best performances ever. (And I think she's quite good in Sylvia and downright brilliant in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.) I wish I could recommend the film just for Danner's work in it, but the film is so infuriating, I wouldn't dare recommend it to anyone. Roommate and I both wanted to throw things at our television screen. Paul Haggis (who is everywhere these days) did, as I recall, a great job of making me hate everyone in his film Crash, and with The Last Kiss he's done it again.

Eight-and-a-Half

Fellini's 8 1/2 is not exactly a mess. It's more like... a carnival. I have been avoiding watching it for a while now, and when I finally got up the moxie to put it into the top regions of my Netflix queue, I received it in the mail and just let it sit on top of my DVD player for three weeks or so. I watched it tonight, and I have to say that it was exactly what I expected it to be. It wasn't, for me, a work of genius the way La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria are. (Truth be told I have only seen 4 or 5 of his films.) But 8 1/2 is very good. It isn't what I would call confusing but it is definitely about confusion in a lot of ways and it does a fabulous job of capturing the way memory and fantasy are so much a part of everyday existence: the scenes merge right into one another as Guido thinks of them. It's frequently visually arresting and yet at times it feels a lot like La Dolce Vita: perhaps it's the presence of Marcello Mastroianni. I dunno. I mean, it's excellent, but I didn't love it.

Super Size Me

Bought an enormous $5 Nestle Crunch bar off a man who was selling candy to pay for "his nephew's funeral."  I bought it anyway, ignoring my policy about the barbarism of people who sell things in the parking lot of the grocery.  I kind of felt like eating the chocolate.  Of course, I promptly told my roommate to eat as much of it as he wanted: that I didn't need to eat it and I know it isn't good for me.  The thing about Crunch bars is I love the crisped rice and all that; it's the milk chocolate I hate.  I swear, milk chocolate doesn't even taste good.  It just kind feels good as you eat it.  I always feel a little gross after I'm finished with my consumption of milk chocolate.  I was thinking of how many different chocolate candies would be better with dark chocolate.  I would love dark chocolate Whoppers and dark chocolate Crunch bars.  A dark chocolate 100 Grand would be delicious.  The dark chocolate candies on the market are so few: Riesen and Milky Way Dark and that's it... and Milky Ways are so silly-tasting.  I do like Riesen, but I await the Dark Chocolate Whoppers.  The day they come out, I'm seriously going to gain ten pounds from massive consumption.  I'll make a documentary about myself called Sexual Chocolate or What a Whopper! or He Has Malted Milk Balls.

By the way, I don't think I can see Super-Size Me.  It just looks too revolting.  And I don't even eat at McDonald's.

I watched Of Mice and Men today and thought of Kristen MacLaren.  She did a scene from that in Acting II (the class I should have been in).  Why I didn't take Acting II that year is still rather a mystery to me.  I took Voice that quarter but that was it and then I switched my major to theatre and the following quarter took Acting III and Voice II. 

So long ago.

One of the actors I've cast in Shrew worked with my old friend Antonio Ocampo-Guzman.  I will have to ask him where and when this was.  I just noticed Antonio on his résumé yesterday.

I need to go to the movies and see a really good 2004 movie.  Maybe I ought to stick to the foreign selections.  I have been hanging out in the big theatres (Shrek 2, Troy), and the other movies I've been seeing in the theatre have been old (La Dolce Vita, 7th Heaven).  I need to see a good independent movie.  Big studio pictures are so rarely good, and never good this early in the year.  There's just nothing out right now that looks super-cool.  It is a dearth.  La Dolce Vita rocked, by the way.  That Fellini!  What a master.

I'm craving spaghetti

Hee Hee.  The boss's plans were thwarted today.  One of our bigwig clients told Steve he was coming in before 5p today... so Steve assumes that Jack meant just before 5.  Not so.  Jack and his wife showed up here at 11am!  Ha ha ha.  So of course Steve's not ready and because he is a slacker, he looks like an asshole to the clients (who we've had for years) but have fired Steve on a couple of jobs for just this kind of idiocy.  Soon, they will fire us completely.  I think, after this tax season is over.  Oh well.

I called the Old Spaghetti Factory (me and Wahima's normal hangout) and ordered food to go.  Brilliant.  No waiting to be seated, no crappy service.  Just cheap food to go.  Hopefully this all works out.

I Vitelloni was excellent and it isn't on DVD, so I was glad I caught it down at the NuArt in Westwood.  I took 134-101-405 to get there and it took about 30 min.  Yahoo says that 134-2-5-110-101-10-405 is quicker, but I thought I would rather not drive through the city if I didn't have to... even at 9pm, the city is unpredictable.

I am in a nice mood today and the weather is cool and lovely after days of heat.  Yesterday was nicer, but today is nice too.  Plus I am excited for some reason about seeing Jeremy.  Weird.  I kind of miss him.

When is the next monkey show?  I guess I will go on the website and see.

Jill and I had the greatest phone conversation last night.  I miss her so much and we are both positively giddy about seeing one another on the 12th.  We were laughing about the dumbest shit, I swear.

My NPR station is having a pledge drive.  Ahhhh!  I am tired of it.  I already gave them my money; can't they stop now?

Have I mentioned how much I love the Supreme Court?  I have taken to calling them "The Nine."  I love when they are unanimous about shit.  That is my favorite thing.  I have decided that Clarence Thomas is Antonin Scalia's sidekick, as well... like Robin to Batman.  Just a diluted version of the real thing.

I wonder what is in theatres this Friday.  The only one I can think of is Kim Ki-duk's Spring Summer Fall Winter ...and Spring, which I am definitely seeing.  It looks lovely.