I think there's a lesson for horror movie directors in Jonathan Glazer's Birth: that little kids can be highly disconcerting, but no matter how Midwich Cuckoo'ed up the tykes are, they're not scary.
It (Birth, I mean) is a mildly interesting film, about a woman who is visited (harrassed, really) by a 10-year old boy (played by Cameron Bright, who we'd also seen as the kid in Thank You For Smoking; on the negative side, he was also in X3 and Ultraviolet) who claims to be her dead husband. While she seems to be laughing off his claims early on, she's obviously fascinated and is quickly seduced by the idea that he could be the man she lost a decade earlier. For his part, the boy seems obsessed solely by his love for her and doesn't appear entirely comfortable in (or entirely aware of) his pre-adult status. A good part of this is due to Bright's powerful stare; for a little kid, he can put on a self-possessed look that'll serve him well in the underage drinking department. Thankfully, it doesn't get into any of the how's or if's of the possible reincarnation (there was a scene that led me to think that it was all a scheme to gaslight the poor woman, but alas, no.) And the realization from my first paragraph came near the end, when this creepy little kid faces off against an adult woman (I'm not spoiling it!) and loses, easily. Oh yeah, I thought, he's just a little twerp!
Nicole Kidman, who stars in Birth, is an actress I like, although there's a couple of weird things about that. For one thing, I'm pretty sure I'd never seen her in anything before this; the only thing of hers that I'm sure I'd want to see is Eyes Wide Shut* (no, I'm not kidding - what, you thought I was going to say Bewitched?) and in a lot of other cases I get her confused with Naomi Watts (whom she doesn't resemble, and can't hold a candle to). The other problem is that she's had, it appears, a fair amount of Botoxing, which leaves her with an unfortunately limited range of facial expressions. Jess & I had a good chuckle doing impressions of her "concerned", "angry" and "happy" face - all of which involve a blank stare (Jess has also expanded this to making fun of Julianne Moore and Andie McDowell; the former I like, the latter is one of many reasons I'm embarrassed for having liked sex, lies and videotape.) She still did a fairly good job in the role, and her Jean Seberg-esque 'do is quite flattering; I just wish it hadn't exposed how paralyzed her forehead muscles were.
Speaking of embarrassment, I'm semi-ashamed to admit that I've started following the re-made Battlestar Galactica. Not as ashamed as if it led me to watch the original again, or if I'd used this space to write STARBUCK IS A MAN (shit!). It's not as great as a lot of its boosters claim - the writing is frequently melodramatic and many of the characters are about as deep as a puddle - but it's well set-up to explore some reasonably weighty issues: what it means to be human, the moral limits of self-defence, that sort of thing. This is in stark contrast to the late-70's version, which seemed focused on using up mass quantities of excess gold lamé - like the sewage system, a valuable service but not fun to watch in action.
I probably haven't mentioned how much I've come to adore The Walrus magazine, which is a big oversight. I've got about 2/3rds of their issues so far (it started in '04) and it's been good to see it develop. It would have been pretty easy to call it the poor man's Harper's for the first year or so, but two things have conspired to fix that. First, obviously, the magazine is starting to find its focus, and is attracting better and bigger articles and writers. Secondly, and maybe this is just me losing interest, but Harper's has taken a steep decline in quality - perhaps since the takeover of new editor Roger D. Hodge (never trust a man with alliterative names) - but maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. I don't remember the last issue I was excited about, in contrast to the latest Walrus, which is chock full of goodness. (The other thing I've come to love from them is the cover art - the recent Bruce Mau-designed cover was just one highlight of their steady rise from 'like a cover of The Atlantic, only with Trudeau' to 'can I get this framed?')
*Kidman will, it turns out, appear in the upcoming Golden Compass, which I do desperately want to see, and also will be in The Invasion with Daniel Craig later this year. Bright will be in Juno, which I'd never heard of until this evening, but it's loaded with Crammit Hall favourites: Michael Cera and Jason Bateman, Rainn Wilson, and Allison Janney. And Juno, whew, is Jason Reitman's follow-up to Thank You For Smoking. Damn!
Oh yeah: some good things happening in the real world, apart from baseball season:
Kelp Records will be having a bunch of events at various locations (Sounds Unlikely, the Carleton Tavern, the Navy Club) the weekend of April 27th, with their excellent line-up of bands (The Flaps, the Acorn, Andrew Vincent & the Pirates, Greenfield Main, Rhume, Camp Radio, etc) and the ever-more elusive Two-Minute Miracles. Several of these events are free.
Acid Mothers Temple play Babylon on April 30th. Sure, it's a Monday, but how often do you get to see Japanese psych-noise bands? Not enough, that's for sure.
And the Wilderness Club will play in Toronto, finally, on May 19th, at Mitzi's Sister on Queen West. Then we will take a lengthy rest while various members buy houses, visit Norway, and write songs.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
How I wasted March
Back in 1985 or so, P.J.O'Rourke had a piece in Rolling Stone called "Trite Lights, Pig City", that followed his meanderings around various hot New York clubs. I'm not sure exactly why a) I owned an issue of Rolling Stone, or b) I remembered it so clearly; in any case, it was in my mind as I was reading Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City last week.
The O'Rourke story was mostly about the sort of scene I'd assumed was described in lurid detail in the novel - he and two friends go bar hopping over a few nights of increasingly exclusivity, until they reach a place with exactly six other people (none interesting, most from New Jersey). They end up escaping to a tavern and declaring the entire scene dead. It's an entertaining piece, given O'Rourke's average - I'd call him the funniest right-winger I've read, if I'd read another right-winger who was funny.
The novel does have a fair amount of boozing, cocaine abuse and so on; it's mostly about a young would-be-writer hitting bottom following a nasty breakup. But other than a passing picture of NYC in the early 80's, in the start of the recovery from its own collapse in the 70's, it's not a terribly exciting read. (Part of that is because of the degree to which the book has been borrowed from since, by writers like Irvine Welsh and David Gates, and in any number of films about the young and ambitious in New York. For example, The Last Days of Disco.)
Which leads me to: we saw Whit Stilman's debut feature, Metropolitan the weekend before last (and have Last Days of Disco taped and waiting for us). I'd wanted to see this for some time, since it'd had good reviews at the time, and LDoD was a film I'd enjoyed (despite the presence of Cloë Sevigny). It's pretty good, too; the performances are weird, either stilted or theatrical, and the dialogue is very mannered, appropriately for a film that references Jane Austin so often. It follows a young man who almost accidentally falls in with a group of his former classmates, and his weirdly sudden adoption of and by this upper-crust clique. He's a weird guy, the protagonist - initially proclaiming himself a socialist and morally (morally!) opposed to elaborate social outings, and spouting strong opinions on books he unapologetically admits he's never read (quiet, you). Within the space of a week (the film takes place over the Christmas holidays "not so long ago"), our hero has become dependent on his newfound group for entertainment and taken the most outspoken elitist among them as his mentor. It's worth a warning that the last 20-30 minutes are just painful, but there's a passable conclusion to the story in the last few minutes.
Strangely enough, Stilman has only made three features so far (the two mentioned and Barcelona; according to a year-old interview, he's working on something "soon"), which are related through a number of characters, and (the two I've seen, at least) deal with social decay among awful rich kids. Honestly, his films should be torture - his characters are largely unsympathetic to start and usually get worse with time - but he's got a way with dialogue that makes it easy to overlook their self-important declarations. I wouldn't say he's a brilliant filmmaker, but he's worth watching.
I caught another nebbishy film after calling in sick (ahem) the other day, the in-hindsight overhyped Sideways. I'd loved it at the time, but there's more than a couple of wine-tasting (and -guzzling) montages, several scenes that go on much longer than neccessary, and a soundtrack that is fucking awful. Really, though, the film sums itself up very early on with an amazing exchange, ostensibly about wine, between Paul Giamatta and Virginia Madsden:
The scene takes place less than half-way through the film, but nearly everything else in Sideways is like an aside to it. Okay, that, and then the final 15 minutes or so, when Giamatta drinks his '61 Cheval Blanc in a fast food joint while noshing on fried chicken. I like to think that as long as I'm not doing that, things in my life can't be all that bad.
We're also now working through the first season-and-a-half of NewsRadio. What's most surprising is how quickly the show finds its footing; after two middling episodes (including the pilot) it feels lived-in and relaxed in a way that very few programs do. The characters have their stock elements, but even Phil Hartman's Bill McNeill (presumably modelled on The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Knight) has a level of un-self-conscious weirdness and such an utter lack of likeability that it's difficult to imagine his existence on a pre-Seinfeld television landscape. The show didn't go for depth, complexity or even particularly highbrow humour, but it wasn't dumb and it recognized that its audience wasn't either. We're not going to follow it into its Jon Lovitz-fed decline, but for 4 seasons at least it's a damn fine laugh.
Shows coming up? My word yes. The Wilderness Club plays Irene's on the 13th, with the Jupiter Ray Project, and I think that's actually our last show for a while, as we've some record stuff to get cracking on (and some new damn songs to write, Casey*). The 14th and 21st of April are crazy - Jim Bryson at the Black Sheep, Do Make Say Think at Barrymore's and the intriguing-but-I-haven't-heard-yet Jetplanes of Abraham at Zaphod's on the former, and Muffler Crunch w/ Mississippi Grover at Irene's and the Wooden Stars w/ Tusks at Babylon on the latter. The 27th of April brings Pawa Up First to the Black Sheep - we saw them a couple of years ago and were both impressed by their krautrock-esque stylings - and we're horrified to see that the opening act are the inexplicably lauded My Dad vs. Yours, who are just awful.
*I'm fired, aren't I?
The O'Rourke story was mostly about the sort of scene I'd assumed was described in lurid detail in the novel - he and two friends go bar hopping over a few nights of increasingly exclusivity, until they reach a place with exactly six other people (none interesting, most from New Jersey). They end up escaping to a tavern and declaring the entire scene dead. It's an entertaining piece, given O'Rourke's average - I'd call him the funniest right-winger I've read, if I'd read another right-winger who was funny.
The novel does have a fair amount of boozing, cocaine abuse and so on; it's mostly about a young would-be-writer hitting bottom following a nasty breakup. But other than a passing picture of NYC in the early 80's, in the start of the recovery from its own collapse in the 70's, it's not a terribly exciting read. (Part of that is because of the degree to which the book has been borrowed from since, by writers like Irvine Welsh and David Gates, and in any number of films about the young and ambitious in New York. For example, The Last Days of Disco.)
Which leads me to: we saw Whit Stilman's debut feature, Metropolitan the weekend before last (and have Last Days of Disco taped and waiting for us). I'd wanted to see this for some time, since it'd had good reviews at the time, and LDoD was a film I'd enjoyed (despite the presence of Cloë Sevigny). It's pretty good, too; the performances are weird, either stilted or theatrical, and the dialogue is very mannered, appropriately for a film that references Jane Austin so often. It follows a young man who almost accidentally falls in with a group of his former classmates, and his weirdly sudden adoption of and by this upper-crust clique. He's a weird guy, the protagonist - initially proclaiming himself a socialist and morally (morally!) opposed to elaborate social outings, and spouting strong opinions on books he unapologetically admits he's never read (quiet, you). Within the space of a week (the film takes place over the Christmas holidays "not so long ago"), our hero has become dependent on his newfound group for entertainment and taken the most outspoken elitist among them as his mentor. It's worth a warning that the last 20-30 minutes are just painful, but there's a passable conclusion to the story in the last few minutes.
Strangely enough, Stilman has only made three features so far (the two mentioned and Barcelona; according to a year-old interview, he's working on something "soon"), which are related through a number of characters, and (the two I've seen, at least) deal with social decay among awful rich kids. Honestly, his films should be torture - his characters are largely unsympathetic to start and usually get worse with time - but he's got a way with dialogue that makes it easy to overlook their self-important declarations. I wouldn't say he's a brilliant filmmaker, but he's worth watching.
I caught another nebbishy film after calling in sick (ahem) the other day, the in-hindsight overhyped Sideways. I'd loved it at the time, but there's more than a couple of wine-tasting (and -guzzling) montages, several scenes that go on much longer than neccessary, and a soundtrack that is fucking awful. Really, though, the film sums itself up very early on with an amazing exchange, ostensibly about wine, between Paul Giamatta and Virginia Madsden:
PG: "...[I]t's a hard grape to grow, as you know...It's uh, it's thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It's not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and uh, thrive even when it's neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention...And in fact it can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked away corners of the world. And, and only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can then coax it into its fullest expression. Then, I mean, oh its flavors, they're just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and... ancient on the planet."
...
VM: "No, I- I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline."
The scene takes place less than half-way through the film, but nearly everything else in Sideways is like an aside to it. Okay, that, and then the final 15 minutes or so, when Giamatta drinks his '61 Cheval Blanc in a fast food joint while noshing on fried chicken. I like to think that as long as I'm not doing that, things in my life can't be all that bad.
We're also now working through the first season-and-a-half of NewsRadio. What's most surprising is how quickly the show finds its footing; after two middling episodes (including the pilot) it feels lived-in and relaxed in a way that very few programs do. The characters have their stock elements, but even Phil Hartman's Bill McNeill (presumably modelled on The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Knight) has a level of un-self-conscious weirdness and such an utter lack of likeability that it's difficult to imagine his existence on a pre-Seinfeld television landscape. The show didn't go for depth, complexity or even particularly highbrow humour, but it wasn't dumb and it recognized that its audience wasn't either. We're not going to follow it into its Jon Lovitz-fed decline, but for 4 seasons at least it's a damn fine laugh.
Shows coming up? My word yes. The Wilderness Club plays Irene's on the 13th, with the Jupiter Ray Project, and I think that's actually our last show for a while, as we've some record stuff to get cracking on (and some new damn songs to write, Casey*). The 14th and 21st of April are crazy - Jim Bryson at the Black Sheep, Do Make Say Think at Barrymore's and the intriguing-but-I-haven't-heard-yet Jetplanes of Abraham at Zaphod's on the former, and Muffler Crunch w/ Mississippi Grover at Irene's and the Wooden Stars w/ Tusks at Babylon on the latter. The 27th of April brings Pawa Up First to the Black Sheep - we saw them a couple of years ago and were both impressed by their krautrock-esque stylings - and we're horrified to see that the opening act are the inexplicably lauded My Dad vs. Yours, who are just awful.
*I'm fired, aren't I?
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