Match Frame

closing shop.

2011-03-28T22:59:00.002+13:00

Decided it's time for a change, and a blog not named after an editing command seemed to be a good part of that. Join me over at Circle of Quality. Or don't. Either way, it's been fun. Intermittent fun, but fun nonetheless.

DJ Playlist: Golden Dawn, 27 March

2011-03-27T23:34:00.004+13:00

Ida - This Must Be The Place
The Whitefield Brothers - Ntu
Bebel Gilberto - So Nice (Summer Samba)
El Rego et Ses Commandos - E Nan Mian Nuku (from Analog Africa - Legends of Benin)
Hot 8 Brass Band - Sexual Healing
Frightened Rabbit - Swim Til You Can't See Land
Ranil's Jungle Party - Mambo En Espana
Ebo Taylor - African Woman
Goblin - La Via Della Droga
Garage Monsters - Safari To Mumboomba
Nouvelle Vague - I Melt With You
El Timba - Descarga Bontempi
Bossa 70 - Here Come The Hiltons (from Peruvian Funk)
El Guincho - Antillas
Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon
La Sonora Cordobesa - El Sabrosito
T-Fire - Will of the People
Man … or Astro-man? - Nitrous Burn-Out
Lord Rhaburn - Disco Connection
Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm - Philly Dog
Sharon Jones - How Long Do I Have To Wait For You?
De Frank Professionals - Afe Ato Yen Bio (from Afro-Beat Airways)
Ondavaga - Mambeado
Sugar - Believe What You're Saying
Beirut - Scenic World
Hedzoleh - Kaa Ye Oyai (Don't Be In A Hurry)
Seu Jorge - Life On Mars?
Bill Fox - I'll Give It Away
Orchestre Polyrhythmo de Cotonou - Se Tche We Djo Mon
Jay Mitchell and the Mitchellites - I am the Man For You Baby
John Barry - Space March (Capsule In Space)
Sun Ra and the Blues Project - Batman
Sweet Talks - Eyi Su Ngaangaa
Q And Not U - Soft Pyramids
Unrest - Yes She Is My Skinhead Girl
Cedric Im Brooks - Shaft
Armando Sciascia - Circuito Chiuso (from Psych Funk 101)
Jacques Dutronc - L'aventurier
Wareika Hill Sounds - Coconut Head Special
The Fall - The Classical
Explosions in the Sky - First Breath After Coma
Evolutionary Control Committee - By The Time I Get To Arizona (whipped cream mix)
My Bloody Valentine - Map Ref 41 N 93 W

(break - performance by Forest Spirits)

Bob Wills - Bring It Down To My House
Oluko Umo - Praise Jah
Dry Bread - Words To My Song
Tallest Man on Earth - Graceland
Kicking Giant - She's Real (Version)
Cassimbas Negras - Bumburumbumbum
First Aid Kit - Hard Believer
Crooked Fingers - New Drink For The Old Drunk
Petra Haden - God Only Knows
Ratatat - El Pico
John Coltrane - Locomotion
Lucille Spann - Woman's Lib
Johnny Thunders - You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory
Buddha On The Moon - 2-Star Motel
Ozzie Hall - Take Five
Cyril Diaz and His Orchestra - Taboo
Glasser - Home
David Byrne/Brian Eno - Home
Alliace Makiedi - Passeio Pour Luanda
Asei Kobayashi & Micky Yoshino - Oriental Melon Man (from Hausu)
Lord Rhaburn - More Love Reggae
Syl Johnson - Dresses Too Short
The Clash - Train In Vain (Stand By Me)
Anibal Velasquez y su Conjunto - Santo Amor
The Meters - Look-Ka Py Py
Willie Williams - Detroit Blues
Gilberto Gil - Bat Macumba
The Dismemberment Plan - Back and Forth
The Dirtbombs - I'm Through With White Girls
Merle Haggard - I Think I'll Just Sit Here & Drink
Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire
Sam Cooke - Medley - It's All Right - For Sentimental Reasons
The New Pornographers - The Bleeding Heart Show

THE SOCIAL NETWORK, screenplay.

2011-01-16T09:09:00.002+13:00

So the screenplay for THE SOCIAL NETWORK is now available on its website. It's a must-read for screenwriters, directors, and producers alike. I'm not sure that any read this blog, but I press on, regardless!

One of the interesting things about it, on a first glance, is how minimal it is. Pages and pages of only dialogue. Very few parentheticals. Most descriptions brief as possible. The inter-cutting of the film feels minimized during the script; although it's certainly indicated, it doesn't overwhelm the reader. (I'd have to see it again to see how different it is.)

It's a common mistake for screenwriters to overwrite descriptions, but here's a great illustration of why you don't need to. (I mean, if you're a genius and can write Sorkin-esque dialogue.)

It's also an interesting exercise for directors. Because the script is so minimal, it's quite easy to see, on reading, the TV version of it, filmed by someone much less ambitious (and/or on a more grueling schedule, let's be fair). Fincher makes a lot of interesting choices. I'd have to look again and count, but I'm pretty sure he uses more camera setups to establish a busload of girls coming in to the final club party at the start than he does during the entire multi-page opening dialogue scene between Mark and Erica.

(And read that again! Jesus! What an intricate piece of dialogue writing!)

I'm not mentioning this in particular to advance a thesis; I'm mentioning it because it's not a choice I'd have made, I don't think; yet watching the film, it really works. It would probably make a great master class for any director to read a scene from this screenplay, shot list it, then watch the scene, and repeat for the entire movie.

(We did this for the opening scene in PULP FICTION at South Seas; every single person made the shot list more complicated than Tarantino did.)

As an aside, as well, in a culture that venerates the writer-director, it's great to see the talents of a writer at the top of his game and a director at the top of his game coming together. Usually when you see a script of a film that's not by a writer-director, there's major variations from the final product. But from the first 30-some pages (which, truth in advertising, is all I've read thus far, having scanned the rest), you can see how closely Fincher hewed to the text, whilst putting a directorial signature on it that is unmistakable on a second viewing.

As for producers: the script makes it abundantly clear that, a few rowing scenes aside, the script's basically 162 pages of people talking. Which is supposed to be commercial death, blah blah blah.

And yet: as you may have heard, it's both done well at the box office and garnered heaps of awards.

So maybe talking isn't all bad, huh?

some quick notes on a culture of violence

2011-01-10T10:31:00.002+13:00

In the face of the horrific shooting in Tucson, a consensus seems to quickly emerge that the violent rhetoric of the right-wing should be blamed, excoriated, and eliminated. Keith Olbermann's impassioned monologue is as good of an exemplar as anything.

Before I go any farther, some things I should make clear:

- what happened was, as I stated, horrific, and my heart goes out to everybody involved.
- in general, I think the Tea Party are to be abhorred and shunned, and have thought that well before this shooting.
- violent rhetoric has no place in politics.

What is gradually becoming obvious, however, are the parallels to other shootings. I'm not talking about political assassinations here, but rather, school shootings. Such as the Virginia Tech massacre, where the film OLDBOY was linked to the killer. Or Columbine, where the killer's interests in music and video games were chronicled at great length in the days after, as were the spurious parallels to THE BASKETBALL DIARIES. Or the myriad cases connected to NATURAL BORN KILLERS.

Here's the thing. If you think violent imagery in one part of popular culture can cause violence, you have to think that elsewhere as well. And this is what I'm struggling with - how can I freely consume violent media on the one hand and fight strenuously for my belief that such work is important and can and should be freely available to consenting adults, while using this event to condemn the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party?

Maybe there's a way, but I can't do it. Putting crosshairs on a map was wrong when they did it, it's wrong now, but any causal relationship is as much of a stretch as blaming OLDBOY for the dead at Virgina Tech. From early reports, the Giffords shooting was not the act of an organized right-wing militia, but the act of someone who was seriously mentally disturbed, to the point where he wasn't allowed to return to his college because of mental health concerns.

And if there's a massive outcry that goes on now, it should be over this:
a. how is it so easy for people who are mentally ill to get firearms?
b. how can we reach out to the mentally ill to prevent these types of tragedies before it's too late?

Because, regardless of whether or not the extreme right-wing turns down their rhetoric -

- and I believe that as responsible human beings, they should, and should have well before this, because the difference between politics and creative works is that, by and large, politics involves real-life human beings and creative works do not -

but regardless, there will be another shooting. And maybe next time, the person who does it is inspired by, say, KICK-ASS, or I SAW THE DEVIL. Or the music of Grinderman. Or The Communist Manifesto (which some commenters have claimed is an influence on the Giffords shooter). Or whatever else. And make no doubt about it - the Tea Party will seize upon this with all the righteous fury their rhetoric is notorious for, and amplify it into a noisy inferno of a witch-hunt. An inferno to which all those who are using this assassination attempt as a kudgel against the Tea Party are currently supplying the kindling for.

And meanwhile, the next shooter is out there, and the one after that, and mental illness goes ignored as a topic of serious discussion. And until we make the discussion about that, instead of our favorite cultural punching bag, we are complicit, ever so slightly, but still.

the social marketing network

2011-01-08T10:12:00.003+13:00

I have a lot on my mind, so let's start with something simple: McDonald's has a Twitter account.

I'm not going to link to it, but I will explain why I know it: they promoted a hash tag, #whats4breakfast, which was trending on Twitter yesterday.

(Long boring explanation for the Twitter-illiterate - hash tags are phrased starting with the hash tag that are used to identify threads across different Twitter accounts. Often they are used for people discussing a TV show - i.e. #Terriers or #Community - or for jokes or other memes that develop. And now, they are used for advertising.)

A few things that surprised me about McDonald's Twitter account:
1. It's reasonably clever. I mean, it's not clever enough for me to recommend, but it's better than I expected.
2. It's participatory. Somebody's on there full time, responding to every query somebody has about McDonald's new (redacted product that they're selling I won't help market further.)
3. 76,879 people (as of this writing) have asked to be directly marketed to by McDonald's.

Which is kind of weird to me, but I guess they do give aways and things, so maybe it makes sense, right?

The problem, which this is hardly unique or especially symptomatic of, is this:

a. social networking is now attempting to serve both its original intended purpose (connecting friends, family, and strangers) and its adopted purpose (a marketing tool for getting friends, family, and strangers to buy things).
b. these two purposes have different, and incompatible, goals.
c. when two purposes come into conflict, the one with more money behind it almost always wins.

I start with McDonald's because it's easy, but it's not fair. The problem is at all levels, much more widespread, much more pervasive.

For example: when I signed up to Facebook, I listed that I was a fan of various films, tv shows, bands, and so on. Why? The usual conscious reasons of wanting to share things I liked with other people, either so they could find common ground or discover new awesome things they weren't aware of.

In one of the 84,256 updates Facebook launched, they converted the "Fan" functionality to "Like", and made it so everything you liked converted to a page. And now, everything you "Like" has the ability to market to you.

Over December and January, I have discovered there are approximately 83 squintillion top ten/twenty lists being made in the world. I have discovered this because every single one of them has been posted by one of the bands, movies, record labels, or DVD labels I "like".

And I do like them. I just don't want them to be marketed to me everytime some guy in Portugal reckons that their album was the 17th best baile-funk album to come out on label that starts with "Q", or when Quentin Tarantino puts it on the same list as fucking KNIGHT AND DAY as one of his top twenty movies of the year.

So yesterday I decided to clean up my Facebook feed, so instead of seeing 23 posts about movies and bands and 2 posts from friends - which, given that I have friends all over the globe that Facebook was a great way to stay in casual touch with, I'd see more posts from friends.

And when I de-liked one movie, directed by one of my Facebook friends, that several of my Facebook friends worked on, that is a film I like, but it's a film I hear about several times a week, that I have no doubt I will hear any significant news about whether or not I subscribe to its feed -

- ten minutes later, I received a request to "Like" that film from the director.

I gave in, I liked it again. Because I like the director. I don't want to be rude to him. But now I am just hiding all the posts by that film from my wall. (At least, until Facebook removes that functionality.)

Marketing vs. friendship, Facebook actions as a social obligation. I've seen THE SOCIAL NETWORK twice now, and "Mark Zuckerberg" (whose name I put in quotes because I doubt the veracity of a single thing in that movie, other than the existence of Facebook, but anyway) says at one point - at several points - he doesn't want to monetize Facebook because Facebook has something else. Facebook is cool. And when you monetize it, you lose that.

Now, Facebook has monetized already in certain ways. But my various friends who are marketing their films, bands, and such aren't using Facebook in that monetized way - they're just using it as a marketing tool.

One that, I believe, is about to completely crater in terms of efficacy.

--------------

In the past two years, the discussion around independent film (and undoubtedly many other things, but I try to speak of what I know, so bear with me) has increasingly been around using social media, building audiences, creating a Web presence for your film, and so on. For instance, the top two resolutions for Filmmaker Magazine's New Year's Resolutions For Filmmakers both involve using social media. It's only at #3 that they start getting into things like watching or making films. Several people have positioned themselves as experts in the field, producing books, giving seminars, writing blogs, and generally talking about how amazing the future is when you crowdsource, leverage your social networks, create viral marketing opportunities ....

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

That's all great, but how about, you know, making a decent film?

Actually, I take that back: that's NOT all great. When everybody communicates with an ulterior motive, and nobody can be trusted, the value of that social connection as a "friend" is diminished. They're no longer a friend, they're a target market that you're trying to leverage, they're an opportunity for viral marketing you're trying to engage, they're a statistic on a Facebook page that can be used for ... well, I don't know what, exactly.

Working in the "creative industry" (whatever the hell that means), I have lots of friends who are doing the same, and trying to create their own opportunities. And, generally, I want to support them to the utmost of my abilities. And I don't mean to be dismissive of people marketing their own work.

Because it's hard. It's hard to get people to pay attention to good creative work of any ambition. That's one reason I'm a tireless advocate of stuff that I love. I know how hard people work to get it out there, and I think, for instance, that Glasser should be just as popular as Bjork, that Ben Marcus should be as widely read as David Foster Wallace, that lots of people would live Nigerian disco-funk if they ever heard it, that BEST WORST MOVIE can touch as many hearts as SPELLBOUND, and so on. I'm not delusional - I don't expect to live in a world where Richard Powers is more widely read than John Grisham or where Superchunk sells out stadiums. And I don't particularly want that. I just want people who have compatible tastes with me to get as much joy from things as I do.

But the line between sharing of passion and the marketing of creative works is a near-intangible divide, and once friendship becomes involved, it gets completely paved over. Can you trust my opinion of, say, the film THERE ONCE WAS AN ISLAND if you know that I know several of the people involved with it? Should you? I hope you do: it's an excellent documentary about an important issue told in a human way.

But you, and you, and you, and especially you have your own projects, and your own friends' projects. They can't all be good. Can they?

And even if they are, do I really want to hear about them every day? Because the key to being noticed is making more noise than every other person. But that just produces a scenario where, in turn, escalating amounts of noise must be produced in order to be noticed. And soon, we are drowning in noise, and the hundreds of posts about band x are lost amongst the thousands of posts about film y, and are soon to be lost amongst the tens of thousands of posts about abstract sculpture z.

(Okay, it's unlikely that abstract sculpture would get that much publicity, but without dreams, what are we?)

This is what happened with MySpace, which was once, in long distant memory, a way for humans to create connections and is now seemingly exclusively used by bands for marketing. And, from where I sit, this is what's about to happen with Facebook and Twitter.

And everyone of us who uses them as marketing tools are hastening this turn of events.

---------------

And then, of course, there's this: I have my own projects, and have to reconcile my preferences about usage of social media with not just my basic sustenance, but doing justice to those projects.

To name the big elephant in the room: the film I wrote and directed, JAKE, will be coming out, hopefully, finally, in 2011. (You may have not heard me mention it for a while, and wonder what's going on. Short story: we're working on it.)

Apart from self-serving goals, of which there are undoubtedly many, it's important for me to do justice to the hard and good work that so many people involved with the project put into it. But how do I do that without falling into so many of the traps I've outlined here?

The pragmatic answer that the experts would tell me would be to refine my social media voice to provide a defined valued proposition to my "market", or whatever. But, as I've already hammered into the ground, to me they aren't a market - they're people.

And all I want to do, in terms of social media, is be myself. Share what I love, try to connect with people, maybe get a few laughs. Treat people like I want to be treated.

And as I try to balance things, ultimately I will fail, and undoubtedly annoy some of those who are my Facebook friends (and perhaps my real friends). One thing I've learned over the years is that no matter what you say on the Internet, someone can and will, silently or publicly, judge you in a way you can never anticipate.

But I would like to think that, if we try hard enough, we can remember we're not just talking to a target market.

We're talking to human beings.

(Except for when we talk to McDonald's over Twitter. In that case, I have no fucking idea what we're talking to.)

2010 IN LISTS: TOP TEN RETRO SCREENINGS

2010-12-28T17:51:00.002+13:00

I'll make a few lists this year. Unlike many, I like waiting to the year is done. However, I'm reasonably confident I won't have another chance to see a retro screening of a film in a cinema this year, so herewith are my top ten highlights of the year. (This doesn't include home screenings; that's a separate list.)

10. ENTER THE DRAGON @ Event Albany, Auckland
How good is this film? This good: I was so physically exhausted I passed out in the middle and it was still a highlight of the year. Still the only Bruce Lee I've seen, a film that demands the big screen, and one of the best experiences of a retrospective bonanza by Event Cinemas that I haven't seen the likes of in my time here in New Zealand. (And, sadly, one that I expect won't be repeated, given the paltry attendance.)

9. FOOD OF THE GODS @ Laurelhurst, Portland, OR, USA
The Laurelhurst is kind of a shithouse, but it's a wonderful shithouse - a four screen theater that serves beer and pizza and still believes in celluloid, and seeing any movie here is always a fun time for me. That it was this absolute disasterpiece of giant animals gone mad, on a pink-y print, was a true blessing - the exact way this sort of film should be seen. (Which is to say, on film, up close, amongst friends, and slightly tipsy.) Note: some animals may have been harmed in the making of this movie. Also: Ida Lupino!

8. THE MECHANIC @ Hollywood Theatre, Auckland
The finale for the 24-Hour Movie Marathon (an event that, considered in its totality, would hit #3 in this list) was also the highlight of the retro screenings on hand this year, and while RAPPIN' was in contention for this list, getting introduced to this Bronson masterpiece was a personal highlight for me. Icy and ass-kicking by turn, feels smarter than most films of its ilk. See it before the disastrous remake hits in 2011. Below is a scene, not a trailer, and indicative of the pace and feel of the movie.

7. GONE WITH THE POPE @ Academy Cinemas, Auckland
Not sure that mere words can capture how awesome this film is, a free association riff of twenty ideas that coalesces into one continuous film through sheer force of will, jaw-dropping in a dozen different ways. Seeing it at a late session makes the whole thing feel like a half-remembered fever dream to me, but I'm pretty sure it felt that way walking out of it as well.

6. THE RED SHOES @ Civic Theatre, Auckland
I saw this once before on DVD, but on the newly restored film print going around, I really got lost in the glory and beauty of this film. Anyone who loves movies needs to see this. There's a reason Scorsese requested that it play with SHUTTER ISLAND when it debuted in Austin at last year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon.

5. BADLANDS @ Event Albany, Auckland
I could watch this movie every week for a year and still find more in it. The strange turns of phrase in Sissy Spacek's narration, the unexpectedly glorious music choices, the absolutely stunning photography, the details in the sound editing ... there's so much in this film.

4. THE ROOM @ Sky City Theatre, Auckland
My first theatrical experience of this and its first New Zealand screening, and I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a sold-out theatre going absolutely ape-shit, shouting along, throwing spoons, and generally providing easily the most energetic and unforgettable audience response I've ever seen in New Zealand, maybe ever period. Thankfully I had seen it before, so I didn't resent missing the dialogue. I'm pretty sure nobody heard "Hi, doggie", for instance:

3. BLUE VELVET/ANDROID @ Academy Cinemas, Auckland
A screening hosted as a fundraiser, what was a sombre affair turned first joyous with a reel of vintage trailers, then actively surreal when a reel came up upsidedown and backwards. Watching a minute of the film this way was a truly Lynch-ian experience. I tried to get somebody to agree to play the whole thing that way while the print was in town, to no avail. I seriously would have paid money for it. ANDROID was the B-feature, and it was enjoyable if forgettable (as in, I've mostly forgotten it already).

2. BEST WORST MOVIE/TROLL 2 @ New Beverly Cinema, Los Angeles, CA, USA
I've written about this screening and the circumstances around it before here, so let me use this space to mention that, even if the idea of watching TROLL 2 somehow, despite my repeated entreaties doesn't appeal to you, don't let that keep you from watching BEST WORST MOVIE, a film that is about much, much more than cult movies and which anyone with a heart will love.

1. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST @ Civic Theatre, Auckland
I think this is now my favorite movie of all time. Seeing it on the first day of the NZ International Film Festival, in the glorious Civic, was almost unfair to everything that followed: there's good, there's great, and then there's this.

what I'm thankful for.

2010-11-25T23:58:00.003+13:00

I'm thankful for my family of friends that has come together in my time in New Zealand, and that when I make it back to America the friends that I've abandoned still, more often than not, have time for me, let me invade their houses, and have continued to be people that I respect, admire, and care for deeply.

I'm thankful for everyone who helped me make JAKE, and is now helping to finish make JAKE, and I promise that I will do my best to make sure that everyone gets to see it next year.

I'm thankful I have work coming up, so that I can finish paying for JAKE.

I'm thankful for the power of music - something that is suddenly prominent in my life right now, having been reunited with my collection of records and CDs and my accordion all at once, while suddenly apparently starting a band. About which, more as it comes.

I'm thankful for the existence of TROLL 2, LADY TERMINATOR, MAD FOXES, PIECES, TRIBULATION 99, and HAUSU. For Richard Ford, George Saunders, Jonathan Franzen, and Richard Powers. For Sharon Jones, The Fall, The New Pornographers, Max Richter, Come, and Superchunk. And countless others.

But especially Superchunk.

I'm thankful I didn't have to hear Bono dedicate a song to the Pike River mine disaster tonight.

And I'm thankful for my family, without whose support I have no idea where I would be today, and who somehow put up with me, despite it all.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

a slow burn love affair with pornographers

2010-11-21T12:24:00.003+13:00

(Note: the content of this post is not nearly as interesting as the title may imply.)

How one comes to love music, and why, is a mysterious and beautiful process to me. I nearly tossed everything in to go to grad school back in 1997, with a view of getting a cognitive science degree and studying preference formation. (I'm sure there's a smarter academic term for it that I'm unaware of, but I'm just sticking with that.) Why is one person's beautiful music another person's unlistenable crap? Why does one song speak deeply to one person's heart and fail to register in anothers?

Et cetera. More intriguingly, to me, why and how do we shift from hating something to loving something. Two of my favorite bands, The Mountain Goats and Guided By Voices, are bands I actively disliked on first blush, and it was only after repeated entreaties from friends who were fans that I gave them the chance to get under my skin. These days, they're bands I schedule international travel to see.

Now, there's a third band, who I've resisted for most of a decade, and whose charms have finally proven themselves to me. I'm talking of The New Pornographers. Fronted by Carl Newman (who also releases excellent records under the name A.C. Newman), and featuring such luminaries as Daniel Bejar (who also releases excellent records under the name Destroyer) and Neko Case (who also releases excellent records under the name, um, of Neko Case), this indie-rock supergroup immediately came out of the gate with an album, MASS ROMANTIC, that became a favorite of all my friends in Portland and was virtually inescapable, in record stores, in bars, everywhere.

And I hated it. I found it shrill and cloying, overly simplistic, the aural equivalent of being poked in the side at regular, frequent intervals. Decide for yourself: here is "Letter From An Occupant".

A couple years later, ELECTRIC VERSION came out, and somehow I wound up with no less than three different tracks from it being sent to me on various compiliations. They all sounded the same to me, twenty pounds of sugar in a ten pound bag. Here's "The Laws Have Changed".

Around this time, I took it for granted that I'd just never, ever understand this band. I couldn't quite let it go, though - I was active on a music geek mailing list at the time, and I'd look at the best of lists of other friends on there, and there'd be 9 albums I loved, and then the freaking New Pornographers. And then there were all their individual projects, which I mentioned before. There's the beautiful desolation of Neko Case, this being a fan video of "Deep Red Bells":

Then there's the post-Bowie grandeur of Destroyer, "Blue Flower/Blue Flame" here represented by a screensaver but nonetheless awesome:

And then A.C. Newman's solo project, easily as poppy but using a diverse, textured instrumentation to entirely different effect than he does in his band, this being "The Town Halo":

And how so much talent could combine to so little effect mystified me. (I don't mean to sell short the other members, by the way, whose works I'm less familiar with. I bought a Kathryn Calder solo record last night at the show; thus far, I'm really enjoying it, and look forward to getting to know it a lot better.)

When TWIN CINEMA came out, finally, there was a song I connected to. I assume someone put "Sing Me Spanish Techno" on a compilation for me, and after the second or third time, I was hooked. The hooks are backloaded on this one. But, in my case, boy do they sink in.

But it didn't really lead anywhere for me, for reasons I can't discern: as the Silkworm album goes, even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn now and again. By the time CHALLENGERS came out, I don't think I was even interested in hearing it, and at this point was completely insulated from them. When they came to visit New Zealand in 2008, I didn't even seriously consider it. Which is a shame, as CHALLENGERS, I think, may be their best album. Check out this awesome video of Daniel Bejar singing "Myriad Harbour":

Fast-forward to Matador 21, last month, not long after the release of TOGETHER (their fifth album, which I had completely ignored), where the New Pornographers are jammed into the last day alongside Ted Leo, Yo La Tengo, and Guided By Voices, after a matinee show by The Clean (and ~15 hours of music the previous day). With such a full day, I seriously contemplated using them as a dinner break. But my showgoing companions were insistent of gaining an up-close spot for them, and I decided to give them one. last. chance.

This is where I tell you that the skies opened and it all made sense, right? Not at first. After so many amazing sets of music, it wasn't feeling revelatory, "Sing Me Spanish Techno" felt slow and perfunctory, and Daniel Bejar didn't really seem to want to be there (he rarely plays live with the band these days). But they had a nice stage banter, and I wasn't finding it painful, so after thinking about bailing I decided to stick it out.

I think it was the tambourine, which Neko plays mostly, that suddenly unlocked it for me. At the time, I made a reference to campfire sing-alongs, but in retrospect that wasn't quite right. In fact, what the New Pornographers are doing has to me a secular gospel feel, as raised on pop records. Maybe I'm crazy (well, I am; beside the point), but with slightly different lyrics and older production value, I wouldn't be surprised to hear these songs popping up on some Numero Group release. (Who are Numero Group? That's a whole post in and of itself.)

The NPs rely on a lot of sing-along harmonies, songs that you can sing along to after a certain point even if you've never heard them before, and others that are burnt in your head after one listen. "Testament To Youth In Verse" is a great example, a song I've never heard a recorded version of, but after just one listen its outro insistently buzzes "no no no no no no no no no no no no ..." in my head at random times.

And then it's the end of the set, and there's "The Bleeding Heart Show", which is a song I had heard but never really paid attention to. Somehow. I consider this a gross personal failing, because seeing it live, it was a roller coaster of joy, and with a room full of bouncing people singing "Hey, la, hey, la, hey la, hey la ..." it became one of the best experiences of the weekend.

And so a month and half later which is last night I saw the NPs again, this time without Daniel Bejar (a mixed blessing) and playing a full-length set (an unmixed blessing), and these songs that once irked me now delight me, it was a glorious experience, and I wish I could have convinced more friends to go and share the joy. But no one that I exposed them to seemed to like them very much.

Ah well, give it a decade, I suppose, and they'll be bouncing along with me, singing like there's no tomorrow, "We have arrived too late to play the bleeding heart show ..."

the legend of Ghost Shark. 2.

2010-10-21T07:44:00.005+13:00

Pictured above: Alan Bagh (male lead of BIRDEMIC), Juliette Danielle (female lead of THE ROOM), and George Hardy (star of TROLL 2). And, improbably, me.

For those of you who don't know, the three referenced movies have become three of the most famous cult movies of incredibly strange cinema, making the above meeting on a par with the meeting of actors in THE EXPENDABLES. (Admittedly, for a very, very small - but also very, very passionate - group of fans.)

I never thought I would have the privilege to have my photo collectively taken with the three other people above - much less direct them in a scene for a movie. But life is strange and beautiful and sometimes fortune shines upon you.

Here's how it happened, in possibly more detail than anyone wants to know.

A couple months ago, I booked a trip to the States. Around the same time, two of my friends, Christchurch-based filmmakers Andrew Todd and Johnny Hall came to Auckland for two reasons: to see ENTER THE VOID at the Auckland film festival, and to shoot a trailer for the fictitious GHOST SHARK 2: URBAN JAWS. My involvement at the time was minimal - they slept on our couches, and I get drowned by Ghost Shark in a tub. (Weirdly enough, while acting out dialogue from a scene from THE ROOM.)

With the incredible response to the GHOST SHARK 2 trailer, Andrew and Johnny committed to making the feature the same way they made the trailer - pretty much the two of them with a camera and audio recorder, no money, and incredible creativity, and locked in an end of October shoot in Auckland (to coincide with their trip for the 24 Hour Movie Marathon). They set straightaway to writing. Having been a longtime supporter of both their work (Andrew's 48 HOURS team deservedly won Christchurch in 2009 with the musical NEW FISH, while Johnny's deadpan surreal shorts include the remarkable "Drinko" series), I told them I'd help out any way I can.

As the time approached, I looked over things to do in my one day in Los Angeles before I moved on with my American adventure. And I noticed TROLL 2 and BEST WORST MOVIE were playing at the New Beverly.

Now, I had met Michael Paul Stephenson (director of BEST WORST MOVIE and childhood star of TROLL 2) previously when he was in Auckland to present his film. I tried to corral him for a brief cameo in the feature I wrote and directed, JAKE, but failed, but nonetheless had a good time chatting with him and stayed in Twitter-contact with him.

So I contacted Andrew 10 days or so before I left, figuring that between that connection and George's general personality (as anyone who's seen BEST WORST MOVIE can attest, George is a very positive and gregarious guy), I just possibly might be able to swing the briefest of cameos for GHOST SHARK 2 while I was in LA.

I imagined one shot outside of the New Beverly with George saying a line about Ghost Sharks into the camera. Andrew, however, imagined a bit more.

To make a long story short, 8 days later, I stepped on a plane with a three-day old Canon 550D DSLR HD camera that I would learn how to use on the plane, a Zoom H4 audio recorder I also would learn to use on the plane so that I could train someone else how to use it, a 2 page dialogue script for the aforementioned 3 actors, and plans to shoot said script four hours after I landed on the ground in LA.

Assuming the plane landed on time.

Now, I was incredibly busy with my day job (editing the travel/music show Making Tracks before I left, so I hadn't had a chance to speak to any of the actors. From what Andrew told me, in the end, George was actually the most difficult to get to commit, because of the level of profanity in the trailer and in the original pages sent to him. They had a long talk, Andrew agreed to write out the profanity from his scene, and George agreed to do the film. Alan and Juliette, by contrast, both signed on rather quickly - Alan had just moved to LA a couple weeks prior to pursue acting further, while Juliette had lived there for years and was currently working outside the industry.

That just left the teensy details of location and crew. While I was used to working with a much larger crew on JAKE, seeing Andrew and Johnny shoot the trailer entirely by themselves emboldened me to direct and operate camera at the same time. My good friend, actress/comedian/director Marisol Medina, agreed to both provide her apartment as a location and run sound. That would have to be enough. The actors would provide their own wardrobe and makeup (as needed). That's everything, right? What else could go wrong?

I asked my flatmate, who helpfully replied: "Well, if you think about it, EVERYthing could go wrong."

Fortunately, that didn't happen. My plane arrived on time, and I managed to arrive at the apartment about an hour before the actors - just enough time to generally block the scene, set dress, and generally work out camera angles. (Andrew, Johnny and I had agreed to keep the coverage, for the most part, as simple as possible: a wide and singles on each actor, shot in tasteful handheld.)

Did I mention that, because of George's commitment to the BEST WORST MOVIE screening that night, we only had about three hours to shoot the scene? And record additional dialogue as well?

Deep breaths, quick lunch, and 15 minutes early, Alan and Juliette arrived.

Now, I had never seen any of the actors in anything besides the films they are most famous for. I'm not even sure if any of them have appeared in anything else that's commercially available in any way. And the films in question are all black holes of talent. Everything is so bad about them, no good quality can escape, except for the individual aesthetic of something gloriously singular, something incomprehensible that it becomes ludicrously captivating.

All of which is a sideways way of saying that I didn't know what to expect from any of the actors, other than the personal (albeit unproven) conviction that all those films represented said actors at their very worst). The goal of all of us - Andrew, Johnny, and I - was not to have a badly acted scene but to have a well acted one, and to give all three actors a chance to step outside the films that they'd made their reputations with, and we believed it was possible.

Thankfully, everyone involved had a sense of humor about said films. (Just about the first thing that Alan said to me was "So are you going to direct me? Because I didn't get that on my last film.") One of the things I had never connected before but quickly discovered as I talked with Alan and Juliette is that all three actors had worked with directors who were from foreign countries (in the case of Tommy Wiseau, director of THE ROOM, his true origin has never been verified; Juliette said that he was referred to as a Cajun on set), all of whom were very controlling on set and refused to allow the actors to change dialogue, no matter how absurd or unnatural it was.

So after some quick wardrobe decisions, we ran dialogue together, me reading George's part as we waited for him, talking out the character details and relationships and as much of the backstory as I knew. (I hadn't directed another person's script since film school, and had certainly never been in the position of directing a scene for a feature that a. I hadn't written b. I hadn't read and c. wasn't even completely written. Challenging!) Thankfully, both Juliette and Alan picked up the flavor of the script very quickly, understanding that the absurdity of the script shouldn't translate into absurdity in performance. A nearby shark toy, coincidentally already a feature in the room, entered in as a prop. After a few read throughs, I left them to run lines while I looked at shots, double-checked all my tech gear, had Marisol test sound, and wondered ...

... where was George?

After a nerve-wracking twenty five minutes of waiting, I decided to abandon my plan of shooting a 3-person master first and to shoot singles of Juliette and Alan. Since Juliette's lines had the broadest emotional range, which is the sort of thing that can fall flat if you wait to shoot until having shot every other angle, I decided to get Juliette's angle first.

And ... just as the shot was set up, George showed up, with BEST WORST MOVIE producers Michael and Brad in tow. I never asked what happened, but LA being LA, I just assumed traffic or directional mix-ups or something. No worries - plenty of time, and we can go back to getting the master first.

Except: through a series of complications, George hadn't got his lines til the night before, and was still getting familiar with them. And, although I hadn't realized it, it was his first time acting in twenty years, since the filming of TROLL 2. Meanwhile, Alan and Juliette had already had plenty of time to get the lines down.

The usual plan of shooting a wide, then closes, was thusly abandoned, and I decided to return to plan B: get Juliette and Alan's angles first, then George's, then the wide.

Drafting the BWM production team to help out - Michael grabbed a table top covered with aluminum foil to act as a flecce (a reflective surface that helps fill in light on shadowy sides of actor's faces), while Brad ran continuity (checking the script to make sure the actors were hitting the lines as written) - we set up, and did several takes of Juliette's performance. To be honest, I was happy after the second, but I wanted to get some performance options for Andrew and Johnny. As her character hits emotional peaks of both anger and sorrow, I wanted to make sure that the directors had the option of overplaying or underplaying that emotion as much as they felt was appropriate. And Juliette gave plenty of good takes with different performance textures, despite some interruptions from nearby construction equipment. (Marisol eventually managed to convince them to take a short hiatus to let us finish. If it's not clear by now, this wouldn't have been possible without her on many, many levels.)

Alan's character, by contrast, was the simplest (both in terms of intelligence and emotional arc), and having rehearsed it fairly thoroughly by this point (both other actors were running their lines off camera during each single), it was pretty straightforward to record - maybe 3 or 4 takes, mostly to experiment with some different use of props.

So then it was time for George's angle.

The first take didn't feel right, and I got nervous inside. Even though I had only met George in person that day, thanks to BEST WORST MOVIE I felt incredibly fond of and protective of him, and I didn't want to have him look bad on screen next to the other actors. We talked through things, and went into a second take, and a third, each improving incrementally, but only marginally.

And then we got to the fourth take.

There's a magic moment that happens when you're directing sometimes. You're watching a take, and your skin suddenly tingles all over because everything is working, and suddenly you don't see the take at all, you see it as the film that you've envisioned, and imagine it working in a theater. I got it, maybe, three times on JAKE.

And somehow between the third and the fourth take everything clicked for George, and I got that feeling, once again, on that take. And I know it wasn't just me: at the end I looked around, and everybody was smiling. I did a fifth take for an alternate line reading on a single line, but for the most part, I'll be shocked if that fourth take isn't the one that's used.

By that time, everyone was warmed in and having a good time, so I shot wides from two different angles, did a take just for shooting stills, got some alternate options for closing shots, and even a new intro to the scene that Juliette suggested, testing my ability to pull focus and operate camera at the same time.

Then it was all over except for some additional dialogue recording for subsequent scenes with the cameras, some group photos, and a quick Skype to New Zealand. Sadly, Johnny was home sick with food poisoning, but it was great to get to introduce everybody to Andrew face to face, albeit electronically.

And then, all too suddenly, everything was done and everyone was gone, and Marisol and I were left to contemplate how strange and wonderful life could be, back up footage, get a beer, and properly catch up after 2 1/2 years of not seeing each other.

Except for this bit. Between takes, George, Alan, and Juliette all talked a bit, as you do, and George did his best job convincing Alan and Juliette to come out and see the BEST WORST MOVIE/TROLL 2 double feature that night. And so Alan and Juliette came, as did I, and I got to see all three of them again, and I met Juliette's family, and George and I talked before the show about New Zealand (where he lived for a time, as it happens) and the potential for GHOST SHARK 2 to be huge if Andrew and Johnny would just cut down on the profanity. And between the movies, George announced to a packed house at the New Beverly how he had spent his day in Los Angeles acting for the first time in 20 years, with Alan and Juliette, to great cheers. And when it came time for the TROLL 2 Blu-Ray giveaway, I got onstage, and with Michael Paul Stephenson's help acted George's immortal "You can't piss on hospitality" monologue in front of George.

And after a big hug from George, I sat down, trying to trace the bizarre spider-web of coincidence that had led to this moment, and then gave up, and just hoped that Andrew and Johnny were as happy with the footage as I was, and that Alan, Juliette, and George would all be happy with the final product.

And, of course, that the rest of the shoot for GHOST SHARK 2 would go as well.

GHOST SHARK 2: URBAN JAWS begins principal photography in Auckland on Saturday, October 22. Keep up with the latest news here:
GHOST SHARK 2 on Facebook
GHOST SHARK 2 on Twitter
GHOST SHARK 2 on IMDB

Superchunk (my favorite band in the world)

2010-09-05T12:09:00.002+12:00

In a month, I'm travelling to the States, and amongst other things, I'm going to be seeing Superchunk four times (twice in Las Vegas at Matador At 21, once in Seattle, and once in Portland). As a result, I've been digging out old Superchunk albums, and coming to the conclusion that they are, in fact, my favorite band in the world.

Which begs the question: why? It's difficult, for lots of reasons. For one, hearing someone talk about their favorite band is like hearing someone tell you that their wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. You nod, but you don't believe.

So: all I can do is testify as to how I fell in love.

I first heard Superchunk in 1992. I had been drafted into a band at the end of my freshman year of university. I was instructed to return with my drum set and three songs under my belt. One of them was "Cast Iron" by Superchunk.

SUPERCHUNK - CAST IRON from Lance Bangs on Vimeo.

(The other two: "The Wagon" by Dinosaur jr. and "Alec Eiffel" by the Pixies.)

I dutifully went out and bought NO POCKY FOR KITTY and ... well, honestly for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the deal was. At the time, I'd been DJ'ing for a semester at KTRU, discovering all sorts of new kinds of music, and getting excited about crazy! different! sounding music. Superchunk was almost the opposite - it seemed completely uninflected, like water.

Sometimes something feels so natural to you, I learned later, that you take for granted how right it feels. Also, water is my favorite beverage.

As I dug into "Cast Iron", I realized that it wasn't so obvious - there's a dropped beat that breaks up its 4/4 rhythm, some little interstitial parts that make it more than verse/chorus/verse, and the lyrics were slightly obscure. Was this a song about alien visitors? Maybe.

The more I got to know NO POCKY, the more I liked it. "30 Xtra", "Punch Me Harder", "Seed Toss", "Skip Steps 1 & 3", all singalong anthems. (Incidentally, I was thrilled when the secret meaning of the last song was recently revealed, which makes me appreciate that song all the more.)

But the song I fell in love with was "Throwing Things".

It's a great love song (whose heart is even more obvious in an acoustic version that appears on the INCIDENTAL MUSIC collection). It's tactile and specific, vividly drawing the moment, and throwing in one great true love lyric for the ages ("Head over heels/my hand's on my heart/I'm making a promise/and that's a start") without leaning heavy on saccharine; more pointedly, it doesn't lean on the semi-creepy possessiveness that pollutes a lot of love songs, particularly from the indie rock camps.

And so maybe that's part of the appeal of Superchunk - there's something about the lyrical approach I've always related to. Their fourth album, FOOLISH, is the breakup album, and "Driveway to Driveway" is more "musically mature", I suppose, but also maintains the evocative approach of "Throwing Things", another moment of running after a loved one, only one that ends badly:

It's not all love songs, of course, not even close. Possibly their most misinterpreted song is "Slack Motherfucker", which various major media outlets took as them declaring their slackerdom, when it fact it's just the opposite (a fact that is blatantly self-evident if you listen to the verses, which excoriate a lazy co-worker):

(As an aside, these live videos also help give some of the flavor of live Superchunk. I've seen the Chunk quite a few times, and the older I get, the more I hurt afterwards, but watching Mac (the singer/guitarist) pogo, I can't help but do the same.)

Superchunk (along with Jawbox) were one of the first bands that I saw that made me feel like I could get onstage too. I grew up listening to lots of metal, bands like Rush that were great technicians, and other music that always felt unapproachable in one way or another. I'm not a stylish guy, but Superchunk made it feel like you didn't have to be. A work ethic and passion meant way more than how you dressed. (Obviously, a gift for writing great hooks and anthemic lyrics doesn't hurt either.)

They were also just bloody nice. Through a really random series of circumstances, I put up Chris Knox in Houston when he opened for Superchunk, and he invited me backstage afterwards, and I wound up sitting down and talking with Mac for 10 minutes about New Zealand (some place I'd never been at the time). Sometimes meeting your idols doesn't really work out, sometimes it does.

As Superchunk went on, they experimented more with tempos, production, and instrumentation, but kept their independence (even moving back from intermittently independent Matador to their own label, Merge, also home at various points to Spoon, Neutral Milk Hotel, Magnetic Fields, the Arcade Fire and many many more, and whose story is chronicled in the fawesome book OUR NOISE). I wanted to include a link to "Unbelievable Things", the lead track from the sorely underrated INDOOR LIVING, as 3:06 into that song is one of my favorite moments in any song ever, but it appears not to be online. Instead, take "Art Class", from their last album from 2001, HERE'S TO SHUTTING UP.

After a particularly trying tour in 2001 (not aided by the fact that their album was released right around September 11), they pretty much shut things down for a while, to work on other projects: running Merge, Mac's 'side project' of Portastatic, parenting. Their drummer, Jon Wurster, put out comedy albums, and wound up joining The Mountain Goats (one of the only serious contenders for that 'favorite band in the world' title). There were the occasional one-off shows, each one tempting me to travel ludicrous distances for one last glance of the Chunk, but the sense was that things were over, and that the glory of pogoing my way through a high-energy live show would never happen again.

Luckily, I was wrong. MAJESTY SHREDDING, the new album, comes out very soon. I hear it's leaked, but I refuse to get it that way. I may have to buy it online instead of the record store, as I've been doing with every Chunk record since HERE'S WHERE THE STRINGS COME IN, but by accounts that I trust, it's up there with their greatest records.

Superchunk - Majesty Shredding from Merge Records on Vimeo.

So, wait, why is Superchunk my favorite band? Sometimes I think it comes down to this: every time I meet somebody who's also really into Superchunk, I know we're going to get along fine. And sometimes I think it comes down to this: every time I listen to Superchunk, things feel just a little more right with the world.

a quick wrap-up of the New Zealand Film Festival.

2010-08-15T19:31:00.003+12:00

So, yeah, that happened.

Spending seventeen days and nights in a row out at theatres is not everybody's idea of fun, I think; certainly, I questioned the fun of it after a while, especially with the increased difficulty of logistics this year (the replacement of the centrally-located Village SkyCity theatre with the Rialto) and what seemed to be the ever-increasing number of people clinically incapable of closing their mouths for the running length of a film, or even a ten-minute stretch of a film. For a time, I thought that the closing night film of SHERLOCK, JR. might convince people because there was an orchestra there; if anything, the opposite happened.

Right, so grump out of the way, and 57 films seen (including Cannes Palme D'Or winner UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, which screened in Auckland ten days after the fact as a special screening - but not including INCEPTION, which I snuck a look at), and many ask me, how can you even process that many films in that short amount of time? And I don't know that you can, always: certainly, moving from the sugar-high scattershot hysteria of A TOWN CALLED PANIC to the glacial, demanding POLICE, ADJECTIVE is not the best way to do justice to the latter movie, nor having barely 45 minutes afterwards to absorb its third-act inversions only to enter into the unremitting grottiness of the tank in LEBANON.

Partway through, I was chatting with a fellow hardcore festival enthusiast, who described his process as "deciding what I'll give a second look". In a time of media super-saturation, where the ability to give everything you want even a first look is beyond luxury, this might seem absurd. But in the days and weeks since the festival's ended, I'm finding myself actually revisiting older favorites at a greater pace than I have in years. I was initially attracted to taking a comprehensive approach to studying cinema because it seemed like, unlike literature, you could get a true measure of all its greatest works in one lifetime; now, with the increasing proliferation of filmmaking combined with the increased availability of works from the past, that's no longer really the case. So, I'm trying to adjust myself to the approach of getting know the things I love better, and expect that I will revisit many of these films in the upcoming years with this in mind.

On the whole, this year's line was strong but rarely superlative. Last year, I only saw 10 films, but three of them were electrifying; this year, only one new film hit me on the level of DOGTOOTH, MOTHER, or BEST WORST MOVIE. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the two most unforgettable screenings were of retrospective films. My fourth viewing of Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME ON THE WEST on the big screen gave me an even deeper appreciation of both its artistry and its cunning politics, and playing it on the first full day of the festival was both gift and curse, as for a week afterwards everything seemed to pale in its shadow. Tommy Wiseau's disasterpiece THE ROOM, coming near the end of the festival, transformed a weary festival audience into a spoon-throwing orgy of hysteria; never have I seen an audience participate in a film like that, and never for a film more deserving. (It's also worth mentioning THE RED SHOES, which stirred me on a second viewing deeply, and is one of the most stunningly shot films, oh, let's say ever.)

But maybe I missed a masterwork, or maybe I missed several. I'm still frustrated at myself for missing THE HOUSEMAID, I have heard many people call CELL 211 the "film of the festival", and others expound upon the virtues of HOW I ENDED THIS SUMMER. A regular on the Criterion Forum now has a top ten for the year consisting of films from the festival, more than half of which (MELODY FOR A STREET ORGAN, THE TIME THAT REMAINS, EXTRAORDINARY STORIES, TO DIE LIKE A MAN, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, and THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA) all seemed worthy of my attention and yet slipped past me.

Below are some films that I'm looking forward to giving a second look to, that you might like as well. (Or might not. Who are you, anyway?) For various reasons, I'm going to recuse myself from discussing New Zealand films in detail, as I am far from a disinterested party, but I was particularly grateful to see David Blyth's narratively daring and bravely acted WOUND, Stephen Sinclair's droll RUSSIAN SNARK, and Briar March's THERE ONCE WAS AN ISLAND - three self-funded films getting attention both locally and internationally, and which will hopefully return to screens later this year.)

THE ONLY MASTERPIECE OF THE FESTIVAL, WHICH SOME OF YOU WILL HATE: CERTIFIED COPY (w/d: Abbas Kiarostami).
I wish that the gigabytes of commentary floating around the Interbot on INCEPTION were dedicated to this film, whose mysteries are just as deep and difficult to parse on a first viewing, but even while I can't tell you exactly what's "happening", I can tell you that the whole time I felt like this film effortlessly transcended every other one at the festival. To even attempt a plot summary would be foolhardy, as later scenes recontextualize earlier ones - or do they? I'd have to see it again to be sure, and even that might not help. Suffice it to say that for those who "need something to happen", all that happens in this movie is that a man and a woman meet, drive and walk around Italy, and talk. If that repulses you, avoid: you will miss one of the most innovative explorations of what it means to be in a relationship ever, as well as any number of entrancing studies of the central theme (what it means to be a copy versus an original), all staged and shot with a quiet artful mastery that's rarely showy but supremely confident.

THE HARDEST I LAUGHED: FOUR LIONS (d: Chris Morris, w: Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Chris Morris).
But: to just say that it's funny (despite the claims of its poster) is to do this film a grave disservice. The very idea of a comedy about suicide bombers is enough for people to get off the train before it even starts, but this is the rare comedy that tackles its material with both a knowing depth of the subject matter and the courage not to back away from its core principles. That the laughs come through the horror, and that the film never falls prey to simple grandstanding, is simultaneously a master achievement and completely unsurprising, given what Morris has been up to on previous work like BRASS EYE.

THE MOST I SMILED: A TOWN CALLED PANIC. (w/d: Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar)
Not everything in A TOWN CALLED PANIC was laugh-out-loud funny to me, but it was never less than thoroughly endearing in its casual surrealism. Entirely reliant on the narrative logic of a four-year old hopped up on Pixy Stix playing with his action figures, only with a more deadpan sense of absurdity, A TOWN CALLED PANIC is a stop-motion delight that will delight anyone who remembers when cartoons were more notable for their gleeful derangement than their winking pop-culture references. (For those of you in the America, it's out now on DVD, so add it to yr Netflix queue, or whatever.)

THE BIGGEST GROWER: FATHER OF MY CHILDREN. (w/d: Mia Hansen-Løve)
Hansen-Løve's second film, on a superficial level, sounds like a lot of French films that follow a French family interacting, a formula that bores as many as it thrills. The titular father in this case is an overworked and overextended film producer, whose woes I could certainly relate to. But I think my appreciation of this film runs deeper than that. There's a narrative twist that's best not to discuss, apart from saying that I've never seen it in a film before, but on its own I wasn't sure if that was enough to praise it for. The camerawork isn't showy and the end slightly fades off rather than striking hard, so it was only belatedly that I realized what was this film's great virtue. Every supporting character is given a deep realism, and in particular what in a lesser film would be the antagonists of the film (the rep at the laboratory to whom the producer owes money, the director of the out-of-control film) here are instead people whose viewpoint is presented charitably. Some have maligned the film, saying this minimizes conflict, but after seeing many, many examples of characters that exist only to provide narrative conflict without any deeper humanity, I found it to seem more and more remarkable as time passed, and can't wait to revisit it. (Also, after you see the film, but not before, do some Googling to read about the real-life story that inspired this film.)

BEST CONVERSATION STARTER: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP. (w/d: Banksy?)
It was almost a recurring joke during the first week of the festival, looking around a gathered group to say "have you seen EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP?" before discussing it, then getting frustrated when one person in the group hadn't seen it. It's a film that demands discussion, not just because of the issues it raises around street art and its commodification, but because ... well, I don't want to talk about it until you've seen it. Rest assured, even if the thought of watching a documentary about commodification sounds boring, this film is anything but; even if it has problems (and having read much about it and discussed it afterwards, I have one or two serious qualms, but want to watch it again before getting too deeply into those discussions) it's solidly entertaining, and coming back to New Zealand screens on 16 September.

MOST ANGER-INDUCING COMBINATION OF FILMS: COLLAPSE and INSIDE JOB. (d. Chris Smith; d. Charles Ferguson)
That's not a critique. It's just a statement of fact. I don't understand how any person could sit through these two films, consecutively, and not roil with anger against the institutions and individuals that have wreaked havoc on our financial system, only to evade any reasonable measure of accountability. Neither is visionary filmmaking; COLLAPSE uses many of Errol Morris's techniques to document what largely amounts to a monologue by Michael Ruppert, explaining why we're in deep trouble society, while INSIDE JOB is a more organized act of reportage, explaining exactly how America wound up in the financial situation it has, and who's to blame. (And, lest anyone jump to conclusions about the politics of this film, the Obama Administration is far from spared.) Essential viewing. COLLAPSE is on DVD now; I'm not sure when INSIDE JOB is due to be released (or if it will be updated before its release, as it had information as recent as May 2010 in it at our screening).

TWO GREAT THRILLERS: WINTER'S BONE and ANIMAL KINGDOM. (d: Debra Granik, w: Granik & Anne Rosellini from a novel by Daniel Woodrell; w/d: David Michôd)
Two very regional films about young non-innocents navigating dangerous criminal environments. The Melbourne of ANIMAL KINGDOM and the Ozarks of WINTER'S BONE couldn't look more different, but in each there's menace lurking everywhere, and nowhere more dangerous and disturbing than close to home. Both take their subject matter seriously and are anchored by an uncomfortable realism and powerful performances. And both are showing around the States right now, with ANIMAL KINGDOM due for a theatrical run in NZ on 16 September. And of all the films that I saw at the festival, they're two of the most likely to work for conventional audiences - in other words, even if you think most of what I like is either pretentious codswallop or annoying vacuous nonsense, you should still pay attention.

LIKE NOTHING ELSE, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE: AMER (w/d: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani)
Probably the most violent post-film disagreements were after this film. I had an idea what to expect from the impressionistic trailer, but I had no idea this film would be so relentlessly impressionistic - with negligible dialogue, next to no conventional coverage of scenes, a huge number of close-ups, incredibly non-naturalistic lighting, and vividly expressive sound design, this film plays like the most extremely stylized moments of Dario Argento, David Lynch, and Stan Brakhage films edited together from a feminist perspective. The narrative is, to put it nicely, occluded, and those who need a clear story will be frustrated. As one particularly angry companion put it afterwards: "Why is it in a theatre? Why isn't it in a museum?" To which I can only say two things: one, if museums actually played films like that, especially on celluloid, I'd be ecstatic (and going there more frequently), and two, given the incredible dominance of narrative cinema in 99.9% of movies, not just in general circulation but even in a festival setting, what's so bad about having one film in a festival that defies that trend? (The following night's film, ENTER THE VOID, proposed a counter-postulate: similar stunning and innovative cinematic approach with an extra hour to pad out a cliched narrative involving characters I never cared about. Responses were generally reversed.)

AND DEFINITELY DON'T MISS THIS ON THE BIG SCREEN: THE ILLUSIONIST (d: Sylvian Chomet, w: Chomet, adapated from a screenplay by Jacques Tati)
Chomet's followup to THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE hits a much different tone than that film; while maintaining his love of absurdity and minimalist dialogue approach, the deliberate ugliness of that film is transformed into something much more wistful here, and the humour of this film intentionally fades into poignancy. As a piece of art, it deserves to be seen on the biggest screen you can find, so you can appreciate every detail of this lovingly-drawn animation. It's scheduled for a Christmastime release in America.

Also: MARWENCOL was a relentlessly surprising, touching portrait of a man coming to terms with a life-changing event in an unlikely way, a fantastic documentary; anime SUMMER WARS had me grinning ear-to-ear for most of its run time, as it combined the stories of worldwide apocalypse and a shy high-school student trying to get a girlfriend with stunning deftness; A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN is top-drawer Scandinavian crime drollery that Coen Brothers fans would do well to investigate; THE LOVED ONES and DREAM HOME topped the horror heap for me, both disturbing and bloody but also incisive and well-crafted in their own ways; ALAMAR was a lovely, gentle respite, a piece of simple beauty; NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is an eerie beautiful documentary that links astronomy, archaeology, and the horrors of the Pinochet government in unlikely ways; TRIMPIN salutes an unconvential composer who's a spirited inspiration, albeit a slightly recalcitrant one; HA HA HA was yet another successful variation on Hong Sang-Soo's "Koreans talking about girls as they get drunk" theme (albeit one that might be mostly of interest to Hong Sang-Soo fans, and not the best starting point for his work); I AM LOVE re-invents the melodrama with bold directing technique that has lingered much longer than expected; UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES is largely incomprehensible but has some stunning moments of meditative beauty and a cheerfully casual approach to the supernatural; BIRDEMIC absolutely must be seen by lovers of bad cinema, one of the most inept things I've ever seen, even counting film school and 48 hour shorts; and SPLICE, while frustrating, had perhaps my favourite moment of the entire festival, as a presentation to investors goes horribly awry.

astonishing cinema: SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE BURGLARS

2010-08-13T08:29:00.002+12:00

There's a movie that opened yesterday in New Zealand. It's got lots of effects and references to video games in it and is supposed to be pretty "awesome".

There's a movie that my friend is seeing tonight in New York. It's from the 70s and is probably laughably dated to many. Here's the trailer:

I've not seen either, but on the basis of available evidence, there's only one of these that blows me away, and it's the second one. Here's why: despite its lack of stylization, there's something real and visceral about it that I fear is gone from cinema forever. I know that Jason Schwartzman did sword training, yeah, and there's probably a lot that's "real" in SCOTT PILGRIM, but there's so much that's UN-real (gauging by the trailer, but by most reviews I've seen so far, it accurately represents the contents) that it doesn't connect with the part of my brain that gets astonished. "Numbed" is probably a better description.

On the other hand, take a look at the shot in THE BURGLARS at around :41, where Belmondo (or a stuntie - can't tell at this resolution) is hanging out a window of a moving train, kicking at the open door of a moving car while it's being pushed against him. It's a crude stunt, but it's also undeniably real, and therefore (to me) exciting. But more than that: it's virtually unthinkable that I'd have the same reaction to even the same shot in a 2010 movie, because I would doubt that it was real. Here, though, there's no question as to whether the car was composited in, or if it was all shot on a green-screen - they just got out there and did it.

Also: I just discovered THE BURGLARS is directed by Henri Vernueil, who I've long been curious about after seeing a film varyingly titled ANY NUMBER CAN WIN, MELODIE EN SOUS-SOLEIL, and THE CAPER THAT SANK. Regardless of the name you see it under, it's an awesome lark.

At some point I want to write a long manifesto on the nature of astonishing cinema and why it's endangered, but there's no better object lesson than those two trailers. (And I say that knowing 90% of those who read this, and 99.9% of the world, would rather watch SCOTT PILGRIM than THE BURGLARS. Oh well.)

(On the other hand, I kind of have a crush on Anna Kendrick, so I will probably see SCOTT PILGRIM eventually.)

Thoughts on INCEPTION that are pretty much spoilers.

2010-07-22T16:58:00.003+12:00

I walked out of INCEPTION today and spent five minutes walking around a food court, more or less in a daze. I'm not sure that's an endorsement. On a second viewing, I think I'll either find it an absolute masterpiece or completely ponderous and frustrating. Regardless of which happens, it's an undoubted testament to Nolan's talent that I *want* to view it a second time, and of course that so many people have already become obsessed with this movie.

My immediate, gut reaction was one of minor disappointment. There's no question that INCEPTION is masterful on all levels, on levels most films don't even dare consider exist. But I found at least two completely missed opportunities for a film that I wanted to see. The first is expanding on the reality-bending powers displayed by Ellen Page's character (Ariadne, and that name is a powerful indication that It's All A Dream, despite my preference that it's not that way - more on that later) in the dream. The sequences of folding the city and then generating a new passageway from a set of mirrors are remarkable, glorious magic - a magic that Nolan then largely discards for the remainder of the film, as her talents are never used in particularly obvious ways, certainly not spontaneously, and her actual contribution to the whole narrative is unintelligible to me.

And so, as the final act plays out with a cross-cutting action narrative, I kept thinking that I could do with a lot fewer explosions and machine guns and a lot more folding cities and crazy shit.

That's one side of my tastes, and on the other side, there's the thematic. Ultimately, INCEPTION is about planting an idea in somebody's brain (and before you say for sure whose brain that is, read Bilge Ebiri's analysis. And it's the tragedy of doing so that supposedly caused Mal, Cobb's partner, to kill herself.

Now, there's a powerful metaphor here about relationships. Ideas take root in relationships, maybe planted by a partner by accident, that wind up growing out of control. And it's here where I have to diverge, briefly, into an unrelated movie.

I've been watching films at the New Zealand International Film Festival, and earlier this week I saw the one true 21st century masterpiece of the festival, CERTIFIED COPY, directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Without spoiling too much of that film, let's just say that it asks questions about reality vs fake in the context of a relationship, and does it with a powerful emotional resonance while leaving the viewer completely unsure at the level of reality at any time.

So I may be putting unfair burdens on INCEPTION. But when we get to INCEPTION's revelation along this front, I was hoping that somewhere down the road we would take a break from the mechanics and get further into the thematic resonances. Because, while none of us can use crazy dream mechanics to get into each other's mind, we can all potentially cause an idea to take root in someone else's mind. And the notion of a relationship falling apart due to self-inflicted damage is something that could have easily been opened in such a way as to resonate with the viewer as something real to their lives, rather than an abstract plot point or vehicle to drive Nolan's preferred emotional thrust, which is to explore grief and not letting go.

There's no way this couldn't have occurred to Nolan in the decade-long development of this, so the question is: why not explore it more? It's a question I kept asking as more and more snowmobiles went by the screen, and it frustrated the hell out of me.

So I walked out processing that, and also the question of how to interpret the last shot, and then suddenly, I went into a daze as I realized I should stop processing this movie on the level of what I want it to be and start processing it on the level of what it is.

Now, the Internet is already full of "definitive" articles on INCEPTION. And I'm neither interested in or capable of writing something more along these lines.

But what there is, apart from the majestic filmmaking, is this: a man coming to terms with the fact that the image of a loved one that he's clinged on to is distorted, false. So he is unburdening himself from the past and trying to move on.

That's Cobb and his dead wife. But it's also Fischer and his dead father.

That can't be coincidence. Can it?

Many have noted that this film has many parallels to SHUTTER ISLAND, and it's the difference in how it grapples with these themes that I find SHUTTER ISLAND more powerful after a first viewing; I'm also dwelling on two films that partake in layers of reality, eXistenz and SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK.

But there's another film that I've been thinking of. INCEPTION has rocketed to the top of the IMDB best movies of all time list, above CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, STAR WARS ... but, notably, NOT above THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

Why does SHAWSHANK resonate so much? Maybe it's the famous quote: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." It's a self-improvement mantra embedded in the delivery device of a film.

And it could just as easily appear in INCEPTION as it does in SHAWSHANK. Coincidence? Well, yeah. But I wonder if it's that resonant thread that people are responding to in both movies, or not.

Something to think about, amongst other things, on a second viewing.

A quick technical note or two: for a film that's about transitions between dream states, it's awesome that the transition device used is a simple cut, rather than some wacky tasteless morphing or other nonsense. And the photography is beautiful, but I wish Chris Nolan actually liked colors. He does pretty much cover every shade of brown and grey out there, though.

NZFF 2010: Films I'm Very Excited About, Part Two.

2010-07-07T11:29:00.002+12:00

As promised from yesterday, another dozen films that I'm very excited to check out at the New Zealand Film Festival, that I mention here because you might want to check them out, too. Divided into sections of three films each, for your browsing leisure.

FEST HYPE: Some films come to my attention because they get attention elsewhere. So if you trust other people more than me, maybe you should see these.

Police, Adjective: I loved Corneliu Porumboiu's first film, 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST, so it's not an unknown quantity entirely, but many who were bored by that film have gone to great lengths to praise this one. I expect being in the "Slow Cinema" thread may scare some off locally from what I've heard is a masterpiece, which would be a shame, as it's highly doubtful it will return and I'm betting will wind up being this year's DOGTOOTH (in terms of a film that everybody skips over and regrets missing later). Whether the trailer sells it or not, I don't know: I'm going blind on this one.

Winter's Bone: "From the director of DOWN TO THE BONE" didn't really mean much to me, but then the reviews from Sundance and Cannes began deluging this film with praise, even notorious hardasses. Honestly, I have very little idea what it's about, other than that it's set in the Ozark Mountains and I think somebody gets murdered, and I could even be wrong about that. Also: the director, Debra Granik, is coming!

Animal Kingdom: Another phrase that doesn't really excite me: "Aussie gangland thriller". But there were the awards at Sundance, and then I watched the trailer, and it seems like this could transcend its roots in a major way. And again, visiting director!

DOCUMENTARY DOCUMENTAGE: The documentary section is, as is often the case, very very awesome this year. This is just scraping the surface: I could have also easily mentioned EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, INSIDE JOB, and COLLAPSE.

The Oath: Osama Bin Laden's former bodyguard, to be brutally honest, probably wouldn't be enough to get me to go to a documentary alone, even though it's undoubtedly compelling material - in fact, I often find that the less interesting the documentary subject sounds on the surface, the more interesting it is if it's gotten international attention. But this has been getting praise as a complex and powerful work from many quarters, with one critic I trust calling it the best documentary he's seen in decades. And it even won a cinematography award at Sundance, so it should have form to match the content. I stopped the below trailer after 22 seconds so as not to spoil, but if you need convincing, look below.

Space Tourists: I have always, always dreamed of going into space. I had a Space Shuttle poster over my bed for most of my youth. Barring sudden wealth, I remain unconvinced it's a dream I'll realistically be able to attain. But I'm pretty excited about getting to experience it viscerally.

Marwencol: I don't really have a handle on what this is going to be, exactly: I know it involves a troubled man who, having lost much of his memory to amnesia, creates a fantasy world with dolls. I've heard a lot of excitement from the Incredibly Strange quarters in particular about this one, and considering they've vouched for such films as WINNEBAGO MAN and DEAR ZACHARY, that's enough endorsement for me.

LAUGHTER IS (NOT) FORBIDDEN: I see you, over there. The guy who's all, like, oh yeah, I saw a film festival movie once, it was about senior citizens making homes for pelicans, it was really boring, so I'm never watching a film festival movie again. And I'd like to convince you that the ratio of good to bad arthouse movies is no different than any other genre, but you've given up. But you can at least go to a comedy, right?

Four Lions: Two words: terrorism comedy. Two more words: Chris Morris. The genius behind the BBC series BRASS EYE, one of the funniest and most complained about shows ever put to air, has come up with a new provocation, showing, among other things, that terrorists can be idiots, too.

The Room: This is one of the few films at this year's festival I've already seen, and I don't even think the writer/director/producer/actor, Tommy Wiseau, is being honest when he says this was intended as a comedy. But I doubt you'll see a funnier movie this year. It's like a film written and acted by aliens who have no idea of what actual human behaviour is, and Mr. Wiseau is one of the most unintentionally compelling screen presences ever. (And I'm proud to own a football autographed by him.)

American: Bill Hicks: Ok, so this one's a documentary about a comedian rather than a comedy per se, but it's undoubtedly going to be full of the late, lamented Hicks' best lines. At the same time, he's a comedian who was as concerned with sharing his ideas as making laughs, a combination that never made him comfortable to the masses. I am slightly nervous that the trailer is a bit overblown musicwise and stylistically, but still: can't be missed.

SHOTS IN THE DARK: I know next to nothing about these films, and haven't heard a single recommendation of them anywhere, but often my favorite films of the festival in years past have fit that description. (LONGING and 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST spring immediately to mind.)

Alamar: I think people sometimes think that I have dark tastes in movies. That's not true per se; I like good innovative films, regardless of their emotional register, and I'd love to make something expressly designed to produce intense happiness. The problem is, most films that set out to achieve that goal are formulaic mainstream crap, and most film festival material tends to mine darker threads, perhaps because it's easier to mine drama from them. So the pull quote from the director - "I was inspired by the simplicity of happiness" - caught my eye.

A Somewhat Gentle Man: Deadpan Scandinavian humor has been a perennial favorite of mine at previous festivals, from A BOTHERSOME MAN to YOU, THE LIVING. This looks to be another entry in that form. Add a brochure pull quote comparing it to early Coen Brothers = ticket booked, without watching the trailer.

The Peddler: I'd never heard of this documentary before, about a nomadic filmmaker in Argentina who goes village to village, and gets the local community to collaborate with him in making a film. It's probably not surprising that I'm a sucker for narratives that celebrate the joy of filmmaking, but I'd like to think it has a universal appeal. Will know if it does in a few days ...

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So, yeah. If you still haven't made up your mind, here's some films to get you started. Hope to see you at the film fest!

NZFF 2010: Films I'm Very Excited About, Part One.

2010-07-06T10:28:00.007+12:00

The New Zealand International Film Festival has been a highlight of my July ever since I moved to New Zealand. It's an excellent film festival, with a wide selection from the mainstreamish to the willfully obtuse to the incredibly strange.

The last two years, however, I've had to miss out - in 2008, entirely (traveling to a wedding and hiking with my family - no complaints) and in 2009 largely (pre-production on JAKE).

This year, I suddenly find myself with no commitments and work lined up on either side to help pay for it. So I am going to indulge.

I found the process of scheduling this year overwhelming, and that's coming from someone who lives for it, and I hear many other friends saying "I don't know what to see!" So here's my pick of twenty-four films that I advocate to varying degrees, divided into easy-to-sort categories that kinda-sorta overlap (check the fest site for additional information):

BIG SCREEN BLISS: Aucklanders are lucky to be able to enjoy films on the massive Civic screen. At times, this can be a curse (if the source material is mini-DV, say), but for these films (amongst others), it will be a blessing.

Once Upon A Time In The West: There's probably not a better way to start a festival than with one of the greatest films ever made, on a giant screen. For those who haven't seen it, and have a bias against westerns: there is no other western that will do more to convince you that you are wrong.

Oceans: This is probably one of those things nobody but me will get so excited about, but as a diver I can watch undersea life for hours on end. And this time I won't have to risk dying! Might take my iPod so I can ignore the likely-to-be hectoring/cheesy soundtrack.

Enter The Void: Now this, I cannot advocate for everybody. From the director of IRREVERSIBLE, a film that still makes people angry years after the fact, comes his latest film. By most accounts, from a content perspective, it's fairly silly; but in terms of visceral experience, nothing screening this year will come close (except possibly AMER, about which more below) to providing an unparalleled unique experience and changing how you think about cinema. Think that's hyperbole? Check out the opening credits, which have more invention than most feature films:

KIWI MADE: There's a larger batch of Kiwi films playing this year than normal. In addition to the short film programs (noting especially the HOMEGROWN DIGITAL program, which features a film I edited, Michael Beran's TEE PARTY), here's three features I'm particularly looking forward to.

Russian Snark: Note that I am in the tank for this film, as the folks say these days, because I cut the trailer. But I do think this independently-produced film, written and directed by Stephen Sinclair, is a very special film, filled with beautiful imagery and a story (about a Russian couple - a filmmaker and his muse who emigrated to New Zealand via boat - and their struggles to reconcile art with a healthy way of life) that's not just strange but true and deeply resonant.

Russian Snark Teaser Trailer from Russian Snark on Vimeo.

There Once Was An Island: A friend went on the first leg of this long-in-the-works documentary, about the island of Takuu, whose existence is endangered due to rising sea levels. While the larger implications and realities of global warming are held up to endless debate and nitpickery, this movie looks to show the unfortunate reality that stretches beyond op-ed pages into actual human lives.

Trailer for There Once was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho from On The Level Productions on Vimeo.

Wound: THIS COULD BE THE MOST DISTURBING FILM IN THE FESTIVAL, AND DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU LIKE TO WATCH, POSSIBLY THAT YOU'VE EVER SEEN. Just wanted to say that loudly and clearly up-front, so nobody gives me a hard time for recommending it. Writer/director David Blyth was an instructor of mine at film school, with a long history of making provocative cult Kiwi films. After a long hiatus from drama feature filmmaking, he's back with an independently-produced film, and by all accounts, the result of the time off is a deeply personal, deeply visceral, absolutely unforgettable film. (Also worth mentioning: it features Campbell Cooley, who appears in JAKE.) Trailer below is not safe for work, the squeamish, the easily offended, etc.

INCREDIBLY STRANGE: The Incredibly Strange program is probably the part of the film festival I'm least biased about - if it weren't for schedule conflicts, I'd see everything in it. (Sorry, TRIANGLE and HUMAN CENTIPEDE.) It's also probably the most divisive. In addition to the two films mentioned above (and a very special film, about which, more soon), here's three very different films that I'm very excited about.

Amer: This is the film that I am most looking forward to at the film festival, full stop. This Belgian thriller, from the little I've seen online, has its style so deeply embedded in its DNA that it becomes its substance. When two of my favorite filmmakers, whose works have never been compared before - Dario Argento and Stan Brakhage - are mentioned in the same breath, I'm there. Please note: likely to be graphic, disturbing, etc, and the trailer below has one squirm-inducing shot in it.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror: From the sublime to the ridiculous. One of two movies in the fest this year competing for the title of Worst Movie Ever, Birdemic has captured instant notoriety across the world for its badly animated birds, its wooden acting, its inept direction, and terrible writing. A perfect midnight movie, but you'll have to settle for a 10 pm screening. Still undoubtedly worth it.

A Town Called Panic: Also guaranteed to put a smile on your face, albeit intentionally. From a Belgian animation team who are responsible for PIC PIC ANDRE (some of my favorite esoteric animation ever) comes what I understand is a casually surreal adventure. Trying to avoid reading much about it, so I probably can't sell it as much as I wish I could; I stopped reading the program description after I got to "A giant snowball-throwing penguin robot". If that doesn't sell it for you, I got nuttin. Except for this, which I stopped watching after 22 seconds in order to conserve surprise for the cinema:

FAVORITE DIRECTORS: This year seems light on "the latest movie by my favorite director", which I usually say about ten films in a year. Here's three.

Ha Ha Ha: Korean director Hong Sang-Soo (who actually has two films playing; the other one is Like You Know It All) is a specialist, telling stories that usually have parallel internal structures about the life of Koreans (usually in the film industry) drinking and making mistakes in love, usually while engaging in elaborate self-justifications. It's a formula that he repeats with minor variations, and despite his impeccable eye I find it hard to advocate his work to other people for fear that they'll be bored, but at the same time TURNING GATE and WOMAN ON THE BEACH are two of my favorite films ever. I haven't watched the below excerpt, but presumably it will give you an idea.

White Material: Claire Denis has made three of my favorite films: BEAU TRAVAIL, VENDREDI SOIR (FRIDAY NIGHT), and L'INTRUS (THE INTRUDER). All of them are poetic and rather ungrounded in conventional narrative structure. From most accounts WHITE MATERIAL is more grounded in narrative and perhaps less poetic, which may leave it less to my liking, but missing a Claire Denis film on the big screen is Not. An. Option. And the trailer certainly has its share of stunning imagery.

A Prophet: This film about a prisoner who turns crimelord was largely hyped at Cannes last year and has since got attention the world over. Jacques Audiard's films (see also: READ MY LIPS, THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED) employ a hand-held, textural, almost collage-like approach; lest that sound painfully experimental, it's all in the service of creating the inner life of the characters, and it's rare to see a filmmaker so in command of his technique and so attached to employing it to the service of the characterization instead of being for technique's sake. And on the Civic screen? Can't wait.

Second installment coming soon. Gotta edit some stuff, call IRD, etc.

The Future Of Music, In My House.

2010-07-03T14:40:00.003+12:00

Of late I have been having apocalyptic thoughts about the future of media, in terms of making a living from it. As I, in fact, do just that at the moment, and would like to continue to do so, I've been thinking about not only how to do so but behave in a way that corresponds with those values.

So I went to the record store today. You remember those, don't you? Yeah: there are a few that still exist. I used to spend hours upon hours in them, get lost in bargain bins, get mistaken for clerks because my bin was so full of CDs. Nowadays? Not so much. For lots of different reasons.

Here's my basic problem, though: new CDs feel expensive, I don't currently have a turntable, and digital downloads also feel expensive. The former is exacerbated often in New Zealand, where CDs retail for $34.95 NZD (at current exchange rates, that's $24 USD). Vinyl, being heavy, is often just as expensive if not more, but feels like it has some beauty and value as an artifact ... but not so satisfying if you can't play it. Digital downloads, meanwhile, were not available in NZ for ages, and were originally encumbered by lots of DRM, and now that all that's finally sorted they still seem quite expensive relative to value.

(As an experiment, I decided to log into the iTunes store and see if I could get Nina Nastasia's new album, OUTLASTER. After waiting 90 seconds for the search results to load, I discovered it is there for $10 - but it's not clear if that's USD or NZD. I could buy it on MP3 for 6.95 GBP from Fat Cat, her label, but with the CD priced only 1 pound higher, it feels like a bit of a ripoff to get nothing physical in return. And so OUTLASTER remains unbought by me.)

The end result is if I do buy, it's either used or at stores in the States, or sometimes via Amazon (often shipping to my infinitely patient parents). And so today when I went to the record store, I mostly bought used CDs. The new Gaslight Anthem (second-hand, NZ$19.95); older bargain priced CDs from Jakob, Fantomas, The Mint Chicks, and Roy Montgomery. And then I had the two most recent CDs from a favorite band, Liars, in my hand, both used. SISTERWORLD is the latest album, priced $21.95 NZD ($15.11). The packaging was flimsy, though. It would get lost.

I wasn't feeling the value, but I kind of felt like I should buy it anyway. Make no mistake: I know I could acquire it digitally, illegally, for $0.00, and on a demand curve between those 2 options, for most music these days, I fall closer to that side than even the less expensive used option. But the guilt pushed me towards it.

(Why, though? Liars weren't getting a dime from my used CD purchase. Remember the good old days when it was used CDs that were killing the record industry, rather than downloading? There was a kernel of truth in that giant pile of bullshit, you know.)

But then, on a whim, I browsed the vinyl, and discovered SISTERWORLD new for NZD $34.95. But it wasn't just the vinyl. It was a double LP, with the second LP being remixes, and a double CD, with the same material as the LP but on the format.

And that, to me, was worth it. No download codes to fuck with, both media options at my hand, and a very nice package.

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I'm listening to SISTERWORLD right now. And as I do so, I'm downloading my first non-physical music purchase, ever.

It was a really random train of circumstance that introduced me to Flingco Sound System, founded by the former head of Kranky Records, a label famous for spacy and drony rock-based sounds. You might be familiar with Deerhunter, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Charalambides, Labradford, Jessamine. (Or you might not be. That's cool, too.)

Flingco is another step more experimental. If you go to that site, you can download a sampler of their material, or listen to songs as you browse. Through one of those mechanisms, I got to hear Interbellum, who combine piano, cello, and what I call "soft noise" (non-musical sound textures on the less abrasive tip) to a very pleasing effect, at least for my ears.

This would usually have been the point where I said, eh, sounds good, will keep my eyes open. I do this when I visit a lot of label's sites. But Flingco, unlike pretty much every other label I know of, made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Their digital downloads are priced at a measly $5 USD! And as it happens, there's no other option for this album - some of Flingco's other albums are available on limited edition vinyl, which is very very very (very!) expensive, but might be worth it if I became a passionate fan of one of their other artists.

But anyway. $5 and a quick and easy paypal transaction later, and I'm downloading Interbellum's album. All 532 MB of it! Not sure if it's FLAC or 8 hours long or what, will find out soon enough.

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I'd like to say this demonstrates multiple paths for successful sale of music in the future. I'm not sure if that's the case. I have no idea how much SISTERWORLD has sold, and my order number from Flingco was 87, which makes me think they're not tearing through the Internet. (That may have more to do with the obscurity of their roster than actual piracy, however.)

But it does feel good to have bought music in ways that I wanted to, in forms where I'll be satisfied with the results, and not be left with that lingering feeling that I'm being cheated.

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The real question for me is this: how can I apply this to movies? I'm not sure of the answer yet, but I'm thinking about it. Thoughts are welcomed.

faceblind?

2010-06-24T20:31:00.004+12:00

As part of my ongoing obsession with neurology, I've been watching lots of documentaries, and have seen now multiple references to the condition of faceblindness.

I've always felt really bad with faces - I have what I consider to be a difficult time identifying people outside of context, if they change the color of their hair, in substantially different wardrobe, that sort of thing. I'm pretty confident there's more than one person that considers me to be an arrogant jerkwad because I've ignored them in public. Even when I was a kid watching movies, I'd sometimes get confused if there was more than one character that was same height, build, and hair color. The truth is, the face just doesn't click with me like it does for some.

I've never considered myself to truly suffer from prosopagnosia*, to be fair - I usually get there in the end. And there are people who have much worse ability than I do. And, until today, I didn't even have verifiable evidence that anything was wrong, really. Just a gut hunch - but how do you compare your facial recognition with other people's?

Answer: the Cambridge Facial Recognition Test. Googling brought me to that site, which I've had open for a while but given that it requires 20 minutes of uninterruptedness, have avoided using until today.

A score of 80% is expected. Below a 65% indicates you might have problems.

I got a 51%.

While there's lots of caveats about low scores not guaranteeing faceblindness and high scores not guaranteeing you don't have a problem, it certainly coincides with my self-diagnosis.

I would, however, be curious to know how other friends rate, as one random Internet test is hardly a complete proof of anything.

*No, I didn't know that word until today, and my ability to even remember how to spell it is about as good as my memory of faces.

WILD GRASS

2010-05-02T23:51:00.005+12:00

So to welcome back this blog, a few thoughts on an amazing film.

WILD GRASS is in love with cinema like few films are; INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is the only one I can think of in recent memory.

WILD GRASS is the first film I've seen since THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE whose form kept taking my breath from start to finish: always unpredictable, fluid, exciting.

WILD GRASS made me think of CONTEMPT (and, in particular, my response to the score of CONTEMPT); how, no matter how evident we make the mechanics of melodrama in film, reveling in it automatically creates an autonomous response in it.

WILD GRASS makes me wonder in what universe this film could possibly have been funded (to the tune of 11 million euros).

WILD GRASS is the work of an octogenarian whose filmmaking ideas are, by and large, fresher than 98% of those half his age.

To provide a plot summary is largely besides the point; the story here is how the story is told.

This movie has one major flaw: we are supposed to believe that someone would be married to Anne Consigny and yet have wandering eyes.

I mean, yeah, it's French and all, but still.

I'm curious to read the book when I invent a "spare-time machine" that gives me spare time to do so, to see if it is the source of the least predictable ending in the history of cinema.

In summation, I doubt I could recommend this movie in good conscience to anybody, but I absolutely loved it.

the Internet never forgets.

2010-05-02T23:42:00.002+12:00

Apparently, I still have a functional blog or eight. This is the one I'm going to start using again.

Year of the Awesome.

2009-01-03T21:14:00.002+13:00

2009, for me, is the Year of the Awesome. Hopefully it will be for you too.

I will be documenting the awesomeness at the Year of the Awesome blog, and hopefully you will join me there.

This blog will be used this year, if at all, for editing tech type things.

Take care, and have an Awesome year.

what I learned from the Grammy nominations

2008-12-04T23:20:00.002+13:00

(listed here)

1. Ministry still exists and released a new record.
2. Paul McCartney doing "I Saw Her Standing There" is, apparently, Grammy-worthy.
3. Unexpectedly, my favorite song on the Radiohead album got nominated for Best Rock Performance, competing against two of my least favorite bands of all time. (Which these are is left as an exercise to the reader.) It also got nominated for Best Rock Song.
4. There are separate categories for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.
5. There is a place called Gdansk, and David Gilmour apparently played live there.
6. Rush did some peace for Tibet thing and wrote a song about it. What would Ayn Rand say? Would she be grateful it was an instrumental?
7. Death Cab For Cutie may be officially the biggest "I saw them when ..." band. (I saw them at, if I remember right, a zine fair at PSU shortly after their first album came out, and nobody was even paying attention.)
8. I've never heard of anyone who performs "Urban/Alternative" music. I'm not even clear what that would sound like.
9. Not something I learned, but wouldn't it be great if the Grammy broadcast built up to a rousing finale of "Category 43: Best New Age Album"?
10. Rock or Rap contemporary gospel is a distinct category from Pop/contemporary gospel.
11. However, "Metal" is lumped into a single category. No separate categories for "Death", "Black", "Doom", "Stoner", and "Hair".
12. I actually did know that there were an absurd number of Grammy categories; however, this is the first time I've noted the Native American music category.
13. Ernest V. Stoneman is apparently the unsung father of country music, and he only gets a nomination for liner notes. Insult to injury, I say.
14. Apparently the Taft/Bryan debates were released on CD. But where's my wax cylinder?
15. I really should have got around to watching that Radiohead video when it first came out.

one less regret

2008-12-02T19:02:00.002+13:00

Last year, I went to Barcelona to a music festival. When I called to book the ticket, I realized I could get an open jaw (i.e. leave from a different destination) for no extra $$. I quickly picked Venice, on the grounds that it was the most likely city to not exist in the future.

I've told this story to people who thought I was joking.

Ahem.

brief overdue update

2008-11-12T18:42:00.003+13:00

So.

I am in Dunedin until the end of February, working for Natural History New Zealand, editing a show for Animal Planet called Dark Days in Monkey City. It will be going to air in the States from January 5th, though you won't see my name on the first few episodes - the production has been going a long time before I got on it.

My role on the production, at least for the moment, is fine cutting, visual effects editing, addressing network notes, preparing for the online, that kind of thing. As somebody who's used to sitting on the "sift through 100 tapes looking for a story" side of the equation, it's a different set of muscles, but I'm enjoying it a lot. Also, I'm very excited that this will be, to the best of my knowledge, the first program that I've worked on to air in the US.

I'm living in a beach apartment 10 minutes from town in what is either Anderson's Bay, Ocean Grove, Tomahawk, or just part of Dunedin. (It's closest to Tomahawk Beach, but there's nothing called Tomahawk on most maps, even though people refer to it in passing; the mailing address says Anderson's Bay, but when I drive towards it, I take the road towards Ocean Grove, not the one to Anderson's Bay. I'm sure you couldn't possibly care, but anyway.) A little 2-bedroom apt to myself, and any visitors who may decide to drop by between now and end of February (minus the two weeks over Xmas where I'll be back around Auckland, plus stray weekends here and there).

I'm also using this time to work on writing a feature script - making some good progress so far. I hope to have a first draft complete by the end of my time here with an eye to production (and post-production) in 2009. Hopefully the numerous interesting and lovely people that I'm meeting and Scotch bars that I'm discovering, along with intermittent explorations of the South Island, shall not prove to large of an impediment.

At the end of it, I'll be driving back to Auckland with the car I bought (as I didn't own one in Auckland; even longer more boring story than the whole Anderson's Bay/Tomahawk thing), and filling in some gaps in my South Island explorations (goals: climbing Franz Josef or Fox Glacier, kayaking in Abel Tasman, exploring Marlborough Sound).

After that? No idea, though a couple production companies have been scraping on the door - will depend on what the pace for production for the feature looks like, whether one or more of the international trips I'm plotting are possible (which in turn is contingent on whether the Kiwi dollar returns to its prior strength or continues to outstrip the peso; Americans, best time to visit in a long time, other than that bit where the crash in the economy destroyed all your savings), and the usual unknown unknowns. Regardless of all of those things, will be stationed back in Auckland for a while, I'm sure.

Well, as sure I can be of anything.

more about Rhys

2008-09-17T22:29:00.005+12:00

I should be packing now, as I fly tomorrow, but I am not. Instead, I am writing my first attempt at a remembrance. As with everything, memory is unreliable, and undoubtedly time has introduced inaccuracies, lost details, misattributions. But memory is what I have and is what I will hold on to. If anyone feels like appending, clarifying, or adding remembrances, that's what comment sections are for.

Like most of my best friends, I don't remember when we met. Obviously it was at film school, and most likely on the first day or two. We were of a similar age (he's 30 days older than I), similar mindset, similar tastes. But the specifics are lost. I am not broken up about this; in a way, there's a comforting feeling when you meet someone that you feel like you've always known, albeit something slightly odd about the fact that you grew up in the midwestern United States and he grew up in the South Island of New Zealand.

One of my first goals at South Seas, upon realizing that watching historic and important films wasn't really part of the curriculum, was to establish a film club, which would meet once a week to watch great foreign or classic movies. Roughly around the same time I approached Rob (the editing tutor) about this idea, I discovered that Rhys had as well. While the film club was often pretty scant in its membership, I'm pretty sure it was never without Rhys, and one time in particular he brought his own film projector (despite the name, we normally screened off of DVD). I specifically remember him bringing BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and screening it for an all too small group of people; when I expressed my disappointment with the marginal turnout, he replied something to the effect that it didn't matter how many people were there, but that the people there valued the experience, which of course they did.

Such a gentle, giving and forgiving response, one that saw the positive side of a situation I reflexively saw the negative side of, was something that came to Rhys as easy as breathing. If he possessed no other qualities, he would still be remarkable for that alone. Of course, that barely scratched his surface.

(As an aside, our classmate Annette reminded me tonight that Rhys also used the opportunity to screen the 8mm films he shot when he was in Japan. Many of them featured the same woman over and over, shot lovingly, and at some point Rhys explained "That's my girlfriend", with a tender smile. I will not recount the story of how Rhys wound up in Japan with Heather here, for fear of mangling pivotal details, but when I heard it in detail I was stunned with the leap of faith that Rhys took in the name of love, and how richly it was repaid.)

(As a second aside, I'm pretty sure Rhys told me got the print of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN from the Communist Society in Dunedin. Anyone who remembers more of the mechanics of this process, please fill them in.)

To mention other qualities: enthusiasm. Rhys shared the same enthusiasm I did for projects, ideas, and just generally doing cool things. He was one of the people that participated in a round-robin CD exchange I instigated, and his CD was easily the most eclectic mix of things, from household names (Beatles, Styx, Who) to indie and punk rock legends (Guided By Voices, Husker Du, Magnetic Fields) to saccharine pop obscurities (The Free Design? The 1910 Fruit Company? Tommy Roe?) and on and on ....

He also was one of the first to join in on our 48 HOURS team that year, in which he and I holed up in the edit suite for 27 hours, Rhys designing graphics and credits and helping out while I mostly drove the Avid. We didn't really know what we were doing - all the transitions, for instance, were 1 second because that was the default and I didn't know how to change it - but through some element of magic, the resulting film, BURNS & MCCLOUD: STREET SENSE, came in 2nd in the competition that year, a result none of the teams I have been on since have ever approached. Rhys is visible briefly in the beginning (he's at the back table in the first shot, flipping pages in a binder; his wit is visible more prominently later on, in the magazine covers that he invented from whole cloth (such as TRUNCHEON, featuring our hero cop Max Burns in a story on "The New Appliance of Justice").

When we won, we faced the issue of what to do with the prize money. We discussed making something else, a proposal that Rhys most firmly advocated; for various reasons, this never fully eventualized, though we did make some fake commercials that he participated in, acting in one and IIRC directing another. If I find them, I will put them online. In the meantime, Rhys found many other projects to involve himself with; music videos, stop motion, and a documentary on my first (and thus far only) tattoo. All the pictures on my Flickr page of my tattoo are, I'm pretty sure, taken by Rhys. (To be fair, I did have a tattoo gun in my calf for 2 hours, so I may have missed some details.)

As the school year started getting to its close, I was, along with a few other students, offered the chance to direct an "ET4". (Basically, directing students directed their final film in term 4; for a few students who had some interest in directing but didn't major in it, we got to direct a smaller scale film before the directing students, or "an early term 4".) I didn't hesitate to pick Rhys as my editor, and the result was (at the risk of sounding immodest) pretty stunning, finished to a fine edge by Rhys despite my near-complete physical breakdown near the end of the process. The ending was entirely of his invention, created after my scripted ending failed abysmally in practice, and over time FREEDOM FROM SPEECH has been fondly remembered by many and even screened in Chicago to appreciative audiences.

(I'm pretty sure I never told him that last fact. I wish I had.)

After that, I was inspired to get a feature off the ground. My problem, one which will surprise absolutely nobody who knows me: too many ideas and not enough focus. Rhys graciously took a huge chunk of his time to sit down with me and talk through the numerous ideas that I had, gently nurturing what he thought were the better ideas while allowing that others could have potential beyond what he saw. It was on his urging that ultimately I wrote FALL BACK; while the resulting script has not as of yet been shot, it is only on my shoulders that that failure falls. Conversely, without his support, I strongly doubt that script would exist.

At the end of the school year, Rhys moved down to Wellington, while I remained in Auckland. Even there, he assisted me above and beyond the call of duty. As I desperately searched for work, I sent him my CV; he sent it back brilliantly reformatted, in a style I still use today. The first person to hire me from it said something in passing about how my CV showed that I obviously had a strong visual sense. I chose not to correct his misconceptions and inwardly thanked Rhys.

I visited Rhys a few times in Wellington. I wish it had been twenty times as often, now, but all of them were special times, and perhaps they would have been less special if I had been more often. One of my fondest memories is one of the most random: us attending the Newtown Street Festival, watching a square dancing club that wore American flag shirts. There was something wonderful about the quiet absurdity of the whole situation, something both he and I instantly appreciated.

The last time I visited him was this January. In retrospect, I can't even remember what triggered the visit; I for some reason decided it was a good idea to follow up a month visit to the States with an almost immediate trip to Wellington and Nelson. My plan had been to catch up with everybody I knew in Wellington, but from the time Rhys picked me up from the airport that went out the window. Heather, Lewis, and Olive were in Dunedin with family, so he and I had a long weekend which, bar a couple hours where he had to work, we spent gloriously as two overgrown geeky boys having a grand time: playing Wii, listening to records from his glorious stash of vinyl, travelling to museums, going to bars, bookstores, comic book stores, seeing tons of movies (everything from LUST CAUTION to CLOVERFIELD to TRON to SAMURAI COP), cooking Mexican food, and talking a lot. We talked about all the big things: love, family, career, artistic aspirations, our parallel experiences in youth buying records, everything. Rhys was full of ideas and projects; his circumstances (a busy job and a family) kept him from actuating those things as quickly as possible, but it was clear that for him the trade off was well worth it, and that at some point, slowly, eventually, he would actuate those projects.

Except, of course, here we are. He mentioned when I was down there that he'd had some stomach problems, but either it didn't register or I had no notion of the severity. I didn't hear from him for several months; this was not at all unusual, as, at the risk of speaking ill of the dead, he was pretty crap at keeping up with correspondence. It was only when I sent him birthday wishes that I heard from Heather that Rhys had been diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer; despite a lousy prognosis, however, they were fighting hard, Rhys was going through chemo, and his job was being kept open for him when he got better.

I told Heather to tell Rhys that as soon as he felt up for a visitor, I'd be there immediately with a fistful of bad movies for us to watch. (I had promised him on my last visit that I'd show him LADY TERMINATOR, an 80's Asian ripoff of the Terminator series that is completely jawdropping.) Heather told me he was looking forward to it. I daily sent positive thoughts to Wellington, thinking of the weekend that we'd spend together, even noting that in December a favorite band of ours was playing Wellington, and hoping beyond hope that he'd be up for going out to a show, that I could tear him away for a night, that cancer would be something slowly disappearing in the rear view mirror and a lengthy stream of tomorrows were on the road ahead.

And then, two nights ago, I got a phone call.

Since then, I have tried to contact as many people as possible from our year together at South Seas. It is of course a shock that only the most callous would be immune to: that any 35 year old man would leave us so rapidly, that he would leave a wife and young children behind, is by definition a tragedy. But the raw well of feeling that we have all shared in the past two days goes much, much deeper. Everyone who knew him knew his prodigious talent, his copious knowledge, his gentle and open nature, his love of life. It was virtually impossible to interact with him and not come away feeling better, no matter how much of a cynical bastard you were.

I am trying to be positive. It is only through the most absurd and gossamer of circumstances that we ever met, that we were at that specific school at the same time, that somehow he wound up there that specific year and not sooner or later, that I stumbled across a school in New Zealand and plopped myself halfway across the world. And it is all too easy to imagine an alternate world where we never met, where I am blissfully unaware of this tragedy that has unfolded. It is a world I do not wish to imagine, for I am so, so incredibly grateful that I had the chance to know Rhys while he was with us.

But, goddammit, I miss him.

-----------------------

Additional links (updated as I get them):

News posting from Park Road Post
Rhys's Tribute Page
Photos of Rhys on Flickr (note: If you have photos of Rhys on Flickr, add the tag "Rhys Bonney" - important to use the quotation marks - and it will show up on this page.)
Amit's remembrance
Iain's (Rhys's brother's) remembrance with slideshow

Rhys

2008-09-16T10:14:00.004+12:00

My friend Rhys Bonney passed away Sunday night. He was 35.

He and I went to South Seas together, and he was a kindred spirit, but kinder, gentler, and more thoughtful than I could ever hope to be. As a friend said last night, "the gentlest of gentlemen".

I think most of my friends who read this, if there are any left who do given this blog's advanced stage of neglect, are North American, so I imagine few of you have any idea who he is. I've posted several pictures on my Flickr page, but my favorite was passed on by our editing professor last night.

The funeral is on Friday afternoon in Wellington. On the off chance that you're reading this and don't know details otherwise, let me know and I'll pass them on.

And love all you can, while you can.

(For those who have linked here from elsewhere, I have posted a longer remembrance of our year together at film school here.)

THE STRANGERS

2008-09-07T09:46:00.002+12:00

Okay, that's more like it. One of the best horror movies I've seen in a long time, so consistently tense and single-minded that I'm willing to overlook its few flaws.

(Those flaws, btw: one horrible lapse of judgment by the protagonists in the middle of the film; a few too many shots of the antagonists designed to scare the viewer rather than the antagonist; two unnecessary jump scares; a few scenes in the middle where the editing loses all sense of spatial integrity.)

(For those who are wondering what I'm talking about with that last point - where the heck is the swing set that Liv Tyler sees in the back yard when she's out there, and how far is it relative to her? I can't answer that question.)

But I come not to dwell on the flaws, but to praise it. THE STRANGERS is somewhat similar to a recent French film called ILS (THEM), which also works the home invasion by mysterious antagonists angle, and as such it's similar enough to make the differences noteworthy. By my lights THE STRANGERS comes out on top. Instead of opening with a completely unrelated scary scene to goose the tension, we open on our protagonists, and spend a good twenty minutes with them and the horrible emotional wreck of a situation that they're in. This also leads some ambiguity to the antagonists' ultimate motives which was lacking in ILS.

As the situation unfurls, many of the shots and scares unfold not in overedited quickness, but in nice lingering wide shots. Not all of them, but enough that you're being scared by the situation rather than a quick cut and a loud banging sound effect. (Which is not to say those scares don't exist in ILS; they're just not as primal.)

Don't want to go on too much more. Suffice it to say that it's a good horror, more tense and scary than bloody (it's R-rated, but I've seen episodes of CSI that were harder to stomach). If it had something on its mind thematically it might be a great overall movie; as it is, it's merely a very effective genre piece; "merely", of course, being something that Hollywood is virtually never able to accomplish.

(And as an aside, I've never liked Liv Tyler in a movie before this, so if you share my feelings about her as an actress, don't let that dissuade you.)

well, that's been a season.

2008-09-06T01:35:00.003+12:00

Finished a show, went to the States, hung out in LA, backpacked with my Dad and brother in Isle Royale, saw my friend Sara get married in South Bend, saw The Dodos, Bon Iver, HEALTH, and lots of other musical goodness at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago as well as witnessing an intimate performance by Lord of The Yum-Yum, came back to Auckland in the middle of a rainstorm, got food poisoning, got a job editing a show, am part way through that, got another job editing another show come October that will be based out of Dunedin, so I'll be there from Oct - Feb, give or take. Moved out of my old flat, into a new one, had a flatmate move out, maybe we found somebody, will know soon I think. Lots of other dramas. None that I feel like talking about.

Last Sunday Hybrid made its first video since our 48 Hours entry (which will be online, possibly, sometime before the next 48 hours). You can watch it here. This Sunday we'll be doing our next one.

I stopped writing for the Nonalignment Pact a couple months ago, and since then I have written virtually nothing apart from correspondence. I have some ideas - too many, as always - but am not sure where I'm going with them.

But I will, for at least a short time - or until a director writes me and tells me I should kill myself, as happened the last time I did this - write some thoughts about movies that I watch.

So, HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY. I watched the first HELLBOY (director's cut) a couple weeks ago and was surprised how much I liked it; particularly, I was in love with Del Toro's staging of the action scenes. This movie promised more imaginative effects, characters, et cetera, but despite delivering on that point for me it largely fell flat. Talking with Alastair, I can't decide if it's:

1. The lack of a human protagonist (Myers, the audience identification character from the first one, doesn't even appear; he's apparently been shipped to Antarctica, by Hellboy, as a joke or something).
2. The switch of milieu from dark occult supernatural to goblin/fairy/troll supernatural.
3. The choppy editing of action scenes, which was definitely not a hallmark of the first one and one of my most major disappointments.
4. The feeling that we've been there, done that, either from the previous movie (villain invading hero's lair) or from every superhero movie ever (the public doesn't understand that the heroes are on their side!)
5. The general lack of tragedy compared to the first one.
6. The general sense that the heroes are five minutes behind you in figuring out the appropriate course of action (two major examples: one is early on and involves them shooting at very small opponents when the obvious solution lies with one of their basic powers; the other involves the titular [heh] Golden Army and is presaged in the opening scene).
7. Something else entirely I haven't figured out yet.

That said, it's certainly not without moments; it's a production designer's wet dream, every five minutes or so there's another jawdroppingly imaginative character design, and I could watch little mechanical doohickeys like the crown or the background monster gags during Jeffrey Tambor's first appearance all day. In a weird way, it's a movie that gets so many details right but loses the larger picture.

"woman on wharf or ship"

2008-06-15T23:19:00.002+12:00

So tonight I was chatting with a friend about the definition of robbery/burglary, which grew into an exploration of homicide/murder/manslaughter, and then spilled over into sexual offenses, and the very delicate question of what constitutes "abnormal sex" and "immoral behaviour" in the eyes of the NZ government.

So I was googling around and found this. Which explains it mostly clearly.

However. If you read closely, you'll see that one of the definitions of immoral behaviour is "woman on wharf or ship".

What?

So, yeah, I googled that phrase, and nothing, except that document in question.

I assume that's a mistake of some kind, but it's a pretty bizarre one. Kiwi ladyfriends, be careful the next time you are on a wharf or ship.

in case you were wondering ...

2008-06-08T20:35:00.002+12:00

no, I'm not dead. But I've been ludicrously busy working on MAKING TRACKS (you can watch the Israel episode which I edited through that link until Thursday or so, I believe, and then had my laptop burgled. Plus did a 48-hour film challenge and made plans to move. And other stuff I can't remember because I am a magpie at the moment.

I did not back up my laptop since, oh, December, so I've lost shitloads of things, and there's things that I have but in an inaccessible form, like all my gmail for the last five months, stuck online. (I use the Apple Mail client.) So, basically, if you've been sitting around waiting for a reply to email, or sent me an email with your new phone/address/whatever: send it again. Bother me. Please.

I am visiting America, but I am going to disappoint lots of people because it looks like I'm only going to be in LA and Detroit/Chicago/South Bend. Or perhaps I flatter myself. Anyway, I will lock down dates shortly and report back.

There is probably much more to update about, but for the moment I am going to try to recreate my iTunes library and watch a flick. Possibly GODZILLA. The old one, not the new one.

water.

2008-04-06T08:07:00.003+12:00

As one of the most vocal proponents I know of drinking lots of water, you'd think this would leave me humble pie. Maybe. And I'll admit that saying everyone should have "8 glasses a day", regardless of height or body build, is a poor metric. But I'm unconvinced.

Part of the reason is that, empirically, I feel like I feel better when I drink more water. I had a bout with eczema several years back, and although it's mostly gone, when I don't have enough water I can feel my skin get itchy. Drinking water relieves it. I used to get headaches. I don't anymore. Et cetera. Obviously this doesn't mean that it's generalizable to everybody, but there's that.

Part of it seems to be the clear joy with which they're trying to take down the bottled-water industry - an industry I have no particular truck with, but good science is not made by good nemeses.

And part of it, at least in this short form, is that some of the inferences are silly. For instance:

The body is already 60 percent water. So, if you take a 200-pound man, he's 120 pounds of water.

Adding a few extra glasses of water each day has limited effect. "It's such a tiny part of what's in the body," says Goldfarb. "It's very unlikely that one's getting any benefit."

Imagine if he said:

The body contains over 50,000 potential calories in fat. Therefore, adding an ice cream cone or two a day has limited effect.

And then the idea that water and diet soda are completely neutral in their effect on the body is, to me, somewhat offensive.

But do I just have an investment because this is a sacred cow of mine? Maybe. And the one statement that is of legitimate concern is that excessive fluid consumption could impair the kidney's ability to function. So I'm going to try to work out a test experiment. The problem is getting a control. In the meantime, I'd be curious with your experiments with water drinking.

For what it's worth, by the way, here's the simultaneously more snarky and more compelling Snopes take on the same topic.

converting YouTube stuff to usable video for Macs.

2008-03-04T09:38:00.002+13:00

I'm going to start keeping track of things here whenever I figure something out, as I realize I'll figure out something, think I'll remember forever, then forget six months later.

Today I needed to download a YouTube video to use in a temp edit. I knew that Download Helper, a Firefox plug-in, would save YouTube videos; however, it saves them in the highly useless-for-digital-video-editing .flv format.

So! Part 2: get a converter for .flv to a usable format. In this case, I found iSquint, which can convert to AVIs or QuickTime movies. Both very usable! And it's super intuitive. And free! If it weren't overburdened with desperate pleas for using its pay cousin, it would be my favorite app ever!

(Well, probably not, but it's still cool.)

let's just throw on a movie ...

2008-02-27T23:28:00.002+13:00

...a 7 HOUR MOVIE.

I've heard about Bela Tarr's SATANTANGO repeatedly. It is in Hungarian, black and white, mostly in long shots, and, as you might have guessed, 7 hours. It is reputedly genius.

I've never seen it, but after a website knocked 70% or so off the price, I decided to order it a couple weeks ago, and it arrived on Monday.

But now I have to find seven adjacent hours to watch a movie. I've thought about watching it episodically, but I'm not one of those people who breaks up a movie. (Although the movie is broken up itself into three discs, and I'm reasonably sure it's never screened anywhere without an intermission, apparently despite the director's wishes.) I also rarely feel like I have seven hours in a row I can commit. And I've got, like, 2 1/2 seasons of THE WIRE to go, and things are heating up. (I'm on season 3, just finished ep 7.) Plus 470 hours or so of other programming to watch. Add a job, projects, etc., and, yeah.

But: it taunts me every time I look at it. The reputation of SATANTANGO precedes it as one of the most important films of the 1990's, a legend undoubtedly buttressed by its epic length and general unavailability.

A quick rundown of positive descriptors of SATANTANGO from the package: epic, unique, visionary, transcends genre, masterpiece, immaculately composed, brilliantly photographed, tour-de-force, enthralling, magnum opus, mesmerizing, masterpiece. (Yes, it appears twice.) And that's not counting the praise for Bela Tarr.

By contrast, a list of positive descriptors from another recent purchase, FRANKENFISH*: gut-wrenching terror, suspense all the way, new**, will have fans of films like LAKE PLACID and DEEP BLUE SEA hooked.

Incidentally, while I haven't seen the on-screen credits, only one of the films lists a credit for "a film by" on the box. And it ain't the Hungarian dude's one.

So what to watch now? Trick question: it's bedtime! I will now spend roughly as much time in bed as it would take me to watch SATANTANGO. Or FRANKENFISH, like, five times.

*It was at a Blockbuster close-out, and a friend had been singing its praises the night before. This also calls to me, but the idea of watching it alone and/or without lots of alcohol doesn't have much lure.

**Not necessarily a positive descriptor, but I'm reaching here.

voluntourism

2008-02-18T10:00:00.002+13:00

I'm in the very early stages of planning a possible trip around the world. There are good reasons for me to be in America in July and Asia in August, so rather than making two trips from NZ, it would make sense to just continue on, stop by London in the middle and say hi to some friends.

One thing I am trying to figure out is how long the trip should be. I have heard that it is incredibly cheap to get around Laos, Cambodia et al once you get over there, and so I have the idea of spending a good chunk of time there to really get to know it. But there is (always!) some guilt in how I choose to spend my time, and the very valid question of what the hell I would do besides sight-see. Is that enough? On my own? dunno if I could sustain that for three months.

So I had the idea of volunteering some place. Sounds great! Go be useful for a month or two to somebody. As somebody who has consistently under-delivered in his intentions towards charity in his adult life, it sounded like a very very good idea.

Until I started reading about it and realized that it is, in fact, a very indulgent and ineffective way to help. If there's one thing that developing countries are in full supply of, generally, it's healthy labor. And me working for a week in NZ or the US and sending that week's earnings to said country would (presuming it was via a reliable disburser of funds) make more of a difference than me going there to work for a month.

The few skills that I have - video editing, Lotus Notes - are not particularly areas of need for most third world countries.

So, hmmmm. There are places that will place volunteers for a fee, but I suspect in most of these cases it's preying upon people's desires to feel as if they are doing good. Teaching English is about the only thing I could come up with that strikes me as helpful, but considering my painfully overcomplicated usage of the language, I'm not sure I'm the best candidate for being an English teacher.

experimenting with tumbling

2008-02-13T10:36:00.000+13:00

I don't know if this will take, but check this out.

At very least, it's a few cool links. Maybe I'll just do link posts here? Maybe I'll start a new job on Monday and neglect things for a couple months? Money on the latter but you never know ...

who it's okay to hate in America

2008-02-11T16:13:00.000+13:00

I was looking at the political blogs today, and I stumbled across this interesting poll.

I don't think the results reflect reality so much as they reflect who people are willing to admit they are biased against. And taken that way, the poll says no group is more okay to discriminate against than ...

atheists.

I'm a little stunned by that result, but I suppose I shouldn't be. I guess I've always been more of a believer in "country founded for freedom of belief" than "country founded as religious state" despite the various references to theism that permeate our national culture. (Swearing in on bibles, the pledge, etc.)

Relatedly: I hadn't realized McCain was 72. If that poll is remotely accurate, his problems just got bigger. (Not that he doesn't have enough to worry about after the latest round of primaries.)

so behind I might as well be ahead.

2008-02-10T21:50:00.000+13:00

So last time I wrote here I was in LA just having watched THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a month later now, and since then I've been to Oakland, back to Auckland, down to Wellington, over to Golden Bay, back to Auckland, down to Waitomo Caves, back to Auckland, up to the Bay of Islands and the Hokianga, back to Auckland, and then back to work.

Which is part of the reason I spent most of this weekend sitting around doing as little as possible, though not all of it.

Below is a picture of my entry into the very exciting Waitomo Caves on the Lost World Epic, a 7-hour quest.

Once in, me, my friend Erik, a 25-year old British yachtie named Paul, and two guides scampered, swam, climbed up, jumped down, and generally made our way through the cave. It was awesome, and I pushed myself farther than I thought I could, particularly when I jumped 10 meters into a cave pool - this being after learning that if I jumped too far I'd smack myself against the far edge of the cave.

Anyway, near the end, my foolhardy self decided to put myself through a tighter squeeze than I probably should have, and ended up cracking a rib in order to get out. (I spent a week not knowing for sure what the problem was, then finally went to the doctor after about the 43rd person who confidently diagnosed it as one of a bajillion things. Doctor says it's broken, nothing I can do but wait for it to heal.)

So that was kind of dumb, but it was still an amazing experience.

There's probably other stories to tell from the last month, like about my month-long alcohol fast, but I'm sleepy, for some reason. Off to finish a trailer tomorrow morning, go to three shows this week (Explosions in the Sky, Interpol, and Dead C.) and then next week start a longer gig. Plus THERE WILL BE BLOOD opens in NZ on Thursday, and I'm all excited to see it again.

(A weird footnote: this is the first year in memory where a) I've seen all five of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture before the ceremony and b) I really like them all. ATONEMENT is probably my least favorite, but it's still got a lot going for it.)

"I'm finished."

2008-01-09T20:24:00.000+13:00

I see lots of movies that I like, and a decent number that I love. But I can't remember the last time I saw a new release that was an absolute unalloyed masterpiece, no quibbles, no questions asked. Looking back at the lists, I'm tempted to say YI YI in 2000.

Ladies and gentlemen, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is that masterpiece.

Do not miss this in the theater.

That is all.

2007: some things

2008-01-06T05:59:00.000+13:00

I started running a list a couple days ago in my notebook, thinking I would try to do some kind of top ten or something for the year. But it's neither ten nor much coherent. But nonetheless, I will note some of my more awesome experiences of the year.

MOST HIGHEST QUANTITY OF BEING ROCKED LIVE: Pelican, at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. While Bloc Party and Bad Religion (both in Auckland) were close runners up, there was nothing like the experience of wandering in on a band that you had never heard, hearing them at the height of their powers, and being completely immersed in the glory of everything you've ever liked about music. Everyone complains about their drummer, and on record I can hear the problem, but either he had a night on fire that night or something went wrong on the record.

MOST SCARIEST AND UNEXPECTEDLY AWESOME MOVIE SEEN THIS YEAR: EXORCIST 3: LEGION. Forget that it went through all sorts of unfortunate revisions, it wasn't supposed to be an EXORCIST movie, etc. This is legitimately one of the most creepy movies I have ever seen, with possibly the most scary long-take ever. And I don't even like the first EXORCIST movie.

MOST ASTONISHINGEST LITERARY "DISCOVERY": Paul Auster. Unlike most of the rest of humanity, I'm quite cognizant as to what those quotation marks actually imply, which is that Paul Auster is not a discovery for the rest of the world, but I only started catching up this year. His book IN THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS knocked me on my side, and if I could draw I'd probably try to get an animated version made (I can't imagine it live action). It's taken me six months to get up, but THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS is the first book I've read in 2008, and its power is very different but equally sublime, and I suspect if I did nothing but read Auster books in 2008 I could have a very satisfying year, literary-wise.

MOST BEST DOCUMENTARY THAT NOBODY SEEMS TO BE TALKING ABOUT DESPITE BEING IN ENGLISH AND BEING COMPLETELY AWESOME: DEEP WATER. Look, okay, I'm over survival documentaries as much as the next guy. I'd already seen TOUCHING THE VOID, LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY, etc, and I didn't really feel strongly that I needed another one. But DEEP WATER managed to not just win me over but leave me completely in tears, at two different points, for two very different and unexpected reasons. The events in this film are so absurd and unexpected that they would never pass muster in a dramatic script; reality, once again, is more astonishing than anything we can imagine. That this film has gone completely overlooked at the end of the year (only two reasons I can think of: 1. people haven't seen it and 2. it doesn't "revolutionize the documentary form" or some nonsense like that) is an injustice; people keep claiming this to be a watershed year for cinema, but while I keep being somewhat to slightly let down by most of the (over)hyped movies of the year, DEEP WATER rises above most of them. Do yourself a favor, read nothing about this film (I suspect it works best if you don't know the story ahead of time), and check it out.

(runner-up: THE UNFORESEEN.)

MOST ASTONISHINGEST PLACE WHERE I DIDN'T SPEND NEARLY ENOUGH TIME, ART MUSEUM DIVISION: The Fondation Maeght in St. Paul, France. To be fair, I managed to see everything in the most literal sense, but it was roughly the visual equivalent of three visits to the Sizzler buffet in fifteen minutes (in terms of processing what I was seeing, not actual quality). Everything about this place, from the work on the walls to the sculptures to the landscaping, is worth spending some close-up detail time with, but I had to return a rental car. Poor planning, my problem, but it was still well worth it.

(runner-up: my kamikaze attack on SFMOMA in December, where I managed to inhale a copious Joseph Cornell exhibition as well as a jaw-dropping installation by the heretofore unknown-to-me Olafur Eliasson and a third exhibition by large-scale photographer Jeff Wall, plus a quick survey of the work of only to realize at the last minute that I had totally overlooked much awesomeness in their general collection and rushed through, stumbling upon a genius Rothko that I'd overlooked.)

MOST UNEXPECTED GENRE OF TV ON DVD THAT I FELL IN LOVE WITH: Transgressive cop shows. I've had a longstanding bias against cop shows, because there's so many of them and the same cliches get regurgitated again and again. In 2006 I fell in love with THE WIRE, which I assume you all know is basically the best television show ever. (If not: it is.) That's not transgressive, but two of the shows I most enjoyed in 2007, THE SHIELD and DEXTER, certainly are, the latter to an extreme paralled by AMERICAN PSYCHO. Two very different cop shows, both of them well worth watching. They're not THE WIRE, but you don't stop watching movies because you haven't seen anything as good as NORTH BY NORTHWEST for a year or two, do you?

MOST BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH: Amy Adams. I usually get celebrity crushes once every five years or so (the last one was Maggie Gyllenhaal, and before that Julianne Moore). Somehow, I had basically no idea who Amy Adams was (missed JUNEBUG) but in the course of a week and a half or so, saw her first appearance in the US version of THE OFFICE ("It was great to meet some of you"), said, "who's that?": Amy Adams. Then I saw the trailer for the unfortunately-titled MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, and who was that redhead who was actually making me consider seeing a period comedy of manners? Amy Adams. Then I saw the unexpectedly pretty great CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, and spent the whole film trying to figure out who his amazing whip-smart aide was; yup, Amy Adams. Does this mean I have to see ENCHANTED now?

MOST TASTIEST NEW COCKTAIL DISCOVERY: The Manuka Mule. Squeeze three lime wedges into a tall glass. Clap your hands on a sprig of mint and add it, maybe stir a little if you want. Fill the glass with ice, add ginger beer and manuka honey vodka. Refreshing and awesome. Works well with ginger ale and regular vodka as well.

MOST ASTONISHINGEST NEW ARTIST DISCOVERY, GLASSBLOWN SCULPTURE DIVISION: If you're going to Italy for new art, Florence probably isn't high on your list. But nestled away in the otherwise-stodgy Museum of Porcelain was an exhibition of the work of Roberto Fallani, who combined blown glass with silver sculpture to create nightmarish organic hybrids that look like production designs for a lost David Cronenberg movie.

Maybe more later. Time to have a shower, get some breakfast and enjoy a nice mudslide-filled day in Los Angeles!

somehow I forgot to mention this, I think.

2007-11-25T22:34:00.000+13:00

CHERYL SLOOTCIST, the sixth short I've edited for Galadina, is online!

And while we're on the subject of friends in Los Angeles, my friend Ransom Riggs has his first animated short online. I know firsthand just how difficult animation can be, and I'm quite impressed with how this came out. Plus, you'll learn something!

Now only 110 more e-mails to clean out or something! Sigh.

Candidate Poll Calculator

2007-11-23T22:03:00.000+13:00

So, following Conor's lead, I checked out the Candidate Calculator and was surprised to realize just how far to the left I've shifted over time, or something. My top match was:

Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) 100.00% match

who I know my friend Jeremy loves, but I always thought of him as "that way liberal guy", not meaning that in a particularly complimentary way. But here we are. Anyway:

Your Other Top Matches
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) - 94.44%
Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) - 73.33%
New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) - 68.89%

Middle of the Pack
Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) - 68.89%
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) - 64.44%
Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) - 60.00%
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) - 55.56%
Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) - 44.44%
Businessman John Cox (R) - 37.78%
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) - 28.89%
Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) - 26.67%
Arizona Senator John McCain (R) - 26.67%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) - 24.44%

Bottom of the Barrel
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) - 18.89%
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) - 17.78%
California Representative Duncan Hunter (R) - 13.33%
Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) - 13.33%

----------------------

I had the vague sense that, of the three Democrats that I was aware of that were running, Edwards was the Democrat I supported the most, followed by Obama then Clinton, which is the exact opposite of what plays out here. (Although it's odd that Clinton gets "top match" and Obama gets "middle of the pack" when they actually have the same percentage.)

For the most part, it honestly doesn't matter much to me. I'm hard-pressed to imagine any scenario in which I won't vote for the Democrat, strictly from a house-cleaning perspective (by which I mean that maintaining the status quo party in the executive branch will diminish our international standing even further, if such a thing is possible), and I'm not really looking forward to discussing whether or not Hillary tipped some waitress or whether some candidate jumped up and down too much during the primary or what have you for the next 12 months.

polvo reunion polvo reunion polvo reunion

2007-11-10T10:45:00.000+13:00

i know only like maybe three people read this any more and possibly one of them might care but this has simultaneously made my day and is now causing me to seriously consider flying over to the other side of the world in May: http://www.atpfestival.com/events/explosions/news.php?view=744

POLVO
POLVO
POLVO

oh man.

In other news I've been working incredibly stupid hours and basically have no personal life, and the only thing I've contemplated writing about here is the difference in effects editing functionality between Avid and Final Cut, which would bore you all silly. But I have the weekend off, and it's sunny, so time to go walk, get some brunch, and listen to ...

... you guessed it ...

POLVO!

polvo-ly yours in polvo,
doug mcpolvo

p.s. Polvo.

meow.

2007-11-01T22:10:00.001+13:00

travel itinerary

2007-10-13T12:35:00.000+13:00

Dec 11 - dep Auckland 7:30 PM, travel backwards in time, arr. SFO 10:45 AM
also Dec 11 - leave SFO to Portland, dep. 5:17 PM, arr. 7:04 PM
Dec 19 - dep. Portland 10:50 AM, arr. Denver 2:12 PM
Dec 20 - dep. Denver 3:15 pm, arr. Detroit 8:04 pm
(prob Dec 22-23 - rent car, drive to South Bend/Chicago and back, weather permitting)
Jan 3 - dep. Detroit 4:35 pm, arr. LA 8:34 pm (stop in Salt Lake City)
(TBD, prob. Jan 10) - fly to Bay Area
Jan 14 - dep. SFO 7:00 PM, arr. Auckland Jan 16 at 5:10 AM

Boy do I hope I fall asleep on that return flight.

Things have been crazy busy and will probably continue to be so for the next two months, but hi! And I hope you all are well.

tee-hee

2007-09-17T09:15:00.000+12:00

from xkcd, my discovery of the morning:

welcome to paradise!

2007-09-16T12:20:00.000+12:00

Where the streets are safe and the speech is free!

Oh, wait.

The former story speaks for itself, I suppose, other than to say Remuera and Herne Bay are relatively nice areas - this is roughly equivalent to the story taking place in Hillsboro or West Bloomfield, for Portlanders or Detroiters.

As to the latter: while the idea of the American system, where a parent can take her four-year old to see HOSTEL: PART II bothers me, the Kiwi system where a film can't even be released, even if it's age-restricted to those over the age of 18 (and a test screening shows the majority are in favor of it being released), is even more disturbing.

And this is someone who is basically against the HOSTEL movies and thinks that, all things considered, the world would be better if they hadn't been made. (To be fair, this is completely uninformed as I haven't seen them; however, everything I've read about them persuades me that it's cheap provocative bullshit designed to pander to those who get off on massive brutality. And I say this as someone who actually mostly liked Eli Roth's first film, CABIN FEVER.)

But I am basically pro-free speech, and there's no guarantee the next banned film won't be something that I do value.

quote of the day

2007-09-16T10:52:00.000+12:00

from an interview with filmmaker Craig Zobel by Steve Erickson:

Do you have any advice for beginning filmmakers?
Battle your impatience. There's a saying that a movie can be high-quality, inexpensive or fast, and you can only get two of those at the expense of the third. The only one you can sacrifice is speed. If you're on a low budget, take your time and plan everything. Time is the only thing working in your favor. It took three years to get this movie made — which is not as long as some people. It was shot in the summer of 2005. I had written the first draft of the script in 2001, started casting in November 2004 and by the time we were shooting I had shot lists of everything. We were sometimes trying to do nine pages a day. We had diagrams of what we were going to shoot next. Everyone had to be on the same page or we weren't going to be able to get it done. I've seen movies that are good but flawed in ways that come out of the attitude that velocity is more important than planning.

I'm a little wary of the filmmaking of Great World of Sound simply in terms of taking advantage of the unaware, but I'm still quite curious to give it a look.

less talk, more pictures

2007-09-15T00:07:00.001+12:00

I decided I should finally design a business card.

Armed with my purchase at Borders (Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual, by Timothy Samara) and possibly more enthusiasm than taste, I have come up with five designs:

Any preferences? Thoughts? Cautionary tales about what business card printing is apt to do?

getting things off chest

2007-09-14T10:06:00.000+12:00

A whole lot has happened in the last little bit. Some of which I don't feel like talking about here. But anyway.

* I'm going back to America over Xmas. My plan is, roughly:
Dec 11-19 - Portlandia
Dec 19-20 - Denver
Dec 20-Jan 3 - Detroit area (with a 2-day trip to Chicago/South Bend in there)
Jan 3-10 - LA
Jan 10-15 - "The Bay Area" (I always say San Francisco here, but I'm rarely actually ever IN San Francisco.)
Jan 15 - back to New Zealand

I've only bought the ticket over and the Jan 3 ticket, need to buy the rest shortly. Agonizing slightly still over the Mike Gunn reunion in Houston Dec 16th plus my
general desire for more Texasness (friends food fun), but it's a bad time of year to drop in on long-lost friends unexpectedly and will add, I imagine, roughly $1000 and/or $1000 worth of inconvenience on other people to the cost of the trip, which is already stupidly expensive. Plus it would mean cutting Portland absurdly short.

* I'm starting a job on Tuesday, cutting the Cocktail World Cup for a production company I've never worked for, Two Heads. Looking forward to it. It will keep me busy until roughly when I fly to America.

* As an aside - my half-assed job-hunting recipe was a small batch of sending a few emails and a much bigger helping of sitting around and waiting til somebody called, dashed with a soupcon of complaining to editor friends that I'm unemployed. It took two months for this to yield results (via a contact I hadn't spoken to in eight months) that were more than a day or two's work here or there; ironically, in the two-three weeks since I got the job, I've had six (SIX) unsolicited job offers of varying duration projects. (Thankfully, one of those yielded a long-term job for another friend.)

Possible lessons here:
1) Try harder.
2) Spend August and early September outside the country because there's no work and it's dank here.

* Truth is, though, a huge chunk of the reason for that lazy job approach was that I've only really gotten better in the last week from my sickness - I had some kind of virus, so the doctor claims, and then I had post-viral rhinitis, which lingered for several weeks of coughing so hard I couldn't sleep, etc. Thankfully, that's finally done. Another good reason to have left the country?

* My long-gestating animation project is getting much, much closer to fruition. I also am almost done editing a final sketch for Galadina for the year. There are a number of other projects in the works. A feature screenplay that needs a re-write, now that I've finally got my head around the various notes from various people and how to change it and keep the soul of it. Another one - my ultimate lo-budget idea - that needs a write, if I can get the confidence that I can write it in such a way that the lead won't be so unlikable as to make everybody turn it off. (I just borrowed Adaptation from my friend Al yesterday for a re-watch, to see how it addresses that topic.) A third that may be a collaboration with another writer/director - it's his idea but he wants a writing partner, and I really like his short film, and it would be interesting to do a horror film (which is what he wants to do). And a fourth (a supernatural tragedy) I've written an outline for. Countless shorts in various stages of writing/pre-production. There are always projects. I thought about doing a status update each month in this blog, but it would force me to admit that I have an entirely untenable number of ideas, and I come up with them quicker than I discharge them. This is problematic.

And, of course, this is only the "filmmaking project" aspect - there's music (get one-man bandness going, write album, get drums, join band, change world); there's writing (ongoing for Nonalignment Pact, perhaps look for leads for technical film writing as a good supplemental income, perhaps look for leads for film reviewing for good way to get passes to film festivals, short stories); there's travel; there's cooking, reading, still photography, scuba diving, acting, learning languages, learning graphic design, spiritual practice, exercise, aikido, fencing, building friendships, finding that woman who would like to spend their life with somebody scatterbrained enough to have all of the above interests, finding a place that's not a transient rental but truly a home, and just basically living.

(Note: I have not actually done all of the above. This is part of the problem.)

* Semi-apropos - the one quote I have above my desk is this:

Each day your life grows a day shorter. Make every move count. All that matters is accomplishing what you envision with the greatest dispatch.

Once you do, that aspect of your interest is discharged, and you can then go on to some new interest.

If you do not engage in this ongoing process of action, you will never satisfy all the various aspects of the soul, and realization will never fully mature for you.

This is Emerson, and what I realize is now problematic is that I'm not sure that aspects of my interest are ever "discharged" - rather, they tend to grow.

* I turn 34 soon. Next Saturday, cocktails at my place. (Although I'm pretty confident nobody in the same hemisphere as I is actually reading this, or apt to take action on it if they do.) It's two days before my actual birthday (the 24th), but Monday's aren't great days for parties.

* The other week, I discovered a video featuring a dead friend of mine, Dwain Weston. He worked at Boom Vang, and seemed like - well, definitely not a normal guy, but it took a while for us to figure out that he had a second life as a BASE jumper, and one of legendary proportions.

Unfortunately, it's an incredibly dangerous proposition, and in the fall of 2003, he died attempting to execute a complicated stunt. The video below, which I stumbled upon while wondering what had happened (the initial news from the event was confused and contradictory) talks a bit about who he was and how he has inspired people).

Since finding this, a high-school friend who I'd long lost touch with has passed away, and a friend of my flat-mate, also around the same age, has died under very different circumstances. (Not my place to discuss publicly, I don't think.) Another friend had unexpected emergency surgery, which thankfully he's rebounded rather quickly from.

This is, as you might expect, a bit to absorb, and I have not much to say about it, other than being incredibly sorry for and sympathetic towards those people whose lives have been ripped apart by these events.

* I have been ruminating quite a lot, what with the lull between jobs and avoidance of my own projects and what-not, about the nature of story-telling in our lives. I have pages and pages of cryptic notes, but they roughly boil down to:

1) Humans have a compulsive need to make stories out of their lives and other people's lives.
2) This is, while understandable, a bad thing - it limits one's self to the experience of the story rather than the experience of the humanity.
3) Figuring out a way to get people out of this headspace would be, conversely, a good thing, and a reasonably satisfying thing to have accomplished with one's life.

I fully expect to expound more on this point eventually, although in what format I have no idea.

* I have finally taken steps to shut down Ertia Creations. It will be off the web at the end of the month, and any email addresses for me that end with "@ertiacreations.com" will no longer work. Digesting what the Ertia experience was (and wasn't) and met could probably be a huge blog post in itself.

This is not close to everything, as there are various things that I think are probably not appropriate to share publicly. But it is something.

I think, now, I will go to Miranda Hot Springs for the day, and take advantage of being in New Zealand, something I do far too infrequently. I went to Whatipu on Monday, apropos of nothing other than a need to get away, and it turned out to be an incredible experience. Anyone who comes to visit, make sure I drag you there.

Take care. Hug someone if you can. Be glad to be alive.

the beast and other such merriment

2007-08-24T12:55:00.000+12:00

I edited a couple shorts for my friends in Galadina back in July. One of them just went up on MySpace two weeks ago and already has had over 80,000 viewers. Crazy!

Go here to watch the Beast ... if you have a strong constitution ...

(Also: Casual Gay.)

some advice from chopper.

2007-08-22T22:32:00.000+12:00

I was sitting with my friend Alastair tonight, saying I need to toughen up a bit (after relaying a story about being soft-skinned about criticism), to which he replied, "what you need to do is harden the fuck up."

By which he was meaning to refer to this ever-so-awesome bit of Australian television:

dougcasting.

2007-08-18T23:01:00.000+12:00

Okay, so I gave my song another listen, and decided it's not ready for prime time. Once this cold wears off, I'll give the singing another go and see if I can get a full take that I don't cringe at. (If not, maybe I'll just post it anyway, and you can tell me whether or not my cringing is warranted.)

But on the off-chance that you're one of the two people that wanted to hear my voice and good music, here's the two things, presented in serial rather than parallel form: Dougcast 1.

Track listing:
Flogging Molly, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive"
Hot Hot Heat, "Middle of Nowhere"
Hot 8 Brass Band, "Jisten To Me"
Bob Dylan, "Thunder on the Mountain"
Miles Davis, "Half Nelson"
The Hold Steady, "You Can Make Him Like You"
Etran Finatawa, "A Dunya"
Against Me, "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong" (acoustic)
Lali Puna, "Micronomic"
Superchunk, "Unbelievable Things"
The Minor Thirds, "In Medias Res"
Moondog, "This Student of Life"
Clipse, "Keys Open Doors"
Bloc Party, "This Modern Love"
Hot Water Music, "Bleeder"

Let me know if you actually listen to it, like it, want to hear more, have any suggestions, etc.

Unrelated: This interview with Uwe Boll is a must-read of megalomania.

zombie mac, with new powers!

2007-08-16T16:55:00.000+12:00

So a week later and $500+, I have my Mac back. It now has a much larger (and, more excitingly, functional) hard drive, running a newer version of the Mac operating system with new, exciting applications! The downside is that not only does it not have my old, also exciting applications installed, I forgot to back them up, which is a nuisance. However, I did backup all my other data a week before it died and gmail thoughtfully fills in most of the gaps. Lost a couple things but it could have been a LOT worse.

Amidst trying to get various apps back up and running, I decided to experiment with new arrival GarageBand, which is Apple's make your own recording thing. Being Apple, it's absurdly intuitive, and after putting together something with loops and primitive keyboards, I recorded one of my songs using the built-in mic. The audio quality, apart from the high noise floor, is MUCH better than I expected. I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the song (an old one, "Perfect Houses", that you might have seen The Jet Effect play in our, like, one show ever - I played guitar for that one). I mean, I like the song (it's simple but not too embarrassing) but I'm pretty rusty on guitar and still trying to get my head around singing, vocal delivery, the basics of singing in key. I recorded three different takes. If I can figure out how to export them from Garageband and can withstand possible embarrassment and think anybody cares, I might post them to get feedback, either here or at the NAP.

Otherwise, just getting over a nasty cold/flu that I think I've finally licked after a week, probably my body's revenge for abusing it during the film festival. Cut a movie trailer, and may be cutting another one shortly. Getting the animation project back off the ground, slowly.

And going to make a cup of herbal tea. Like, now. Bye!

FYI ...

2007-08-07T09:08:00.000+12:00

my computer died last night. (Boot drive failed while trying to correct disk permissions, can't correct them from single-user mode.)

Psychically, I backed up last week, but I still lost a couple things (a week's worth of emails, a few pages of writing and a day's worth of work on an editing project) that hopefully I can recover. But I am not optimistic.

Time to shower.

how we read

2007-08-02T11:23:00.001+12:00

something not about death ... this link at Scientific American is interesting to me, in that it breaks down reading into three parts and kind of helps me explain to other people why I'm a fast reader. I remember my dad trying to time me when i was a kid, and then telling me to stop and ask what word i was on, and i couldn't. I could only give him a general area.

While the article emphasizes phonics, I don't think that's ever meant as much to me - there's lots of words I read that I can't pronounce. (I managed to eke a whole linguistics paper about this freshman year.) For me, I think contextual clues (what comes before and after) and holistic word recognition (recognizing a word from a shape) are much more of the puzzle - as I see a sentence, I see all the words, work out most of them from the shape, and as i scan the words more closely i get to the end of the sentence more quickly as the content becomes more obvious. (Meanwhile, I'm probably scanning the next sentence with my peripheral vision.)

This is probably one reason I have no problem with subtitles.

The downside of this is that it doesn't work very well for things that are dense in content - I'm literally reading faster than I can absorb - or for very idiosyncratic writing styles. I often find when I read, say, Italo Calvino, that I have to re-read sentences, get lost, will wind up re-reading the same paragraph twice and get to the end before I realize I've already read it.

I wonder if there's a class to take for slow-reading.

o death.

2007-08-02T00:08:00.000+12:00

Bergman. Then Michelangelo Antonioni, director of the masterpieces L'ECLISSE, L'AVVENTURA, and THE PASSENGER (as well as possibly others - there's a number of his films I have yet to see.)

And then Jeremy Blake. Although I didn't know his name until today, I knew his work: he did the incredibly striking animation sequences in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and the films that played behind Beck during his SEA CHANGE tour (as well as the cover of said album), and apparently has done a lot of other groundbreaking video work I haven't seen, and he committed suicide a week after his girlfriend did the same. Antonioni was 94, Bergman was 89, but Jeremy Blake was only 35. This is a tragedy of a much different order; it's horrible and sickening, actually.

Also dead this week: Houston reporter/personality Marvin Zindler. In his vigilant crusade for consumer rights and against slime in the ice machine, he literally worked up til the very end, filing his weekly report from his hospital bed, 9 days before his death.

Please everyone stop dying for a bit. Thanks.

RIP Ingmar Bergman

2007-07-31T09:30:00.000+12:00

Unless you call every death a tragedy, it's perhaps overstretching the word tragedy to apply it to the death of an 89-year old who died, presumably, peacefully at his beloved home. Certainly, it's unlikely (though not impossible) that we have been deprived of future Bergman masterpieces. (He does seem to be surprisingly spry on the bonus features for his most recent film SARABAND, however.)

But I was more than a bit sad when I went to bed and still sad now, because we've lost a giant, somebody who was absolutely and deeply respectful of the medium of film and working with it as a great artist. I remember my parents telling me once about how they saw most of the Bergman films in college and thereafter - it was just something people of a certain education level did, and part of the general cultural discourse. Now "foreign film", unless it's basically Hollywood film with subtitles (AMELIE, CROUCHING TIGER, etc.), is a subset of a grotto that's unlikely to penetrate the consciousness of anybody who's not already hip-deep and obsessed with it.

And I wonder if the death of Bergman is, symbolically, a death of taking film seriously, as anything more than entertainment.

I think I'm going to go watch WILD STRAWBERRIES.

for the editors in the house

2007-07-24T21:26:00.000+12:00

Disgruntled editors (or those who wish to understand the minds of disgruntled editors) should read this.

Update 3 probably coming tomorrow night (the crowds, after all, are clearly desperately awaiting this news). I saw Charles Burnett speak with his film KILLER OF SHEEP tonight. It was made in 1977 as a student film and was one of the first 50 films added to the National Film Registry when the Library of Congress began preserving films, and I've been wanting to see it for a decade. After the screening, I asked the soft-spoken Burnett if there was anything he knew now that he wished he knew when he made that film, which in retrospect sounds like a criticism but I didn't mean it that way.

He responded by saying he couldn't think of much, and admitted that he didn't know much when he made KILLER OF SHEEP and that that was probably a good thing, because you need a bit of naievete to make a feature film. If you think of all the things you have to do to make a film, he went on, it's overwhelming. But if you actually just pick up a camera and go out, then you're making a film, without thinking of everything that gets in the way.

Of course, music clearances meant that this film was unreleasable for 30 years, and the company that released it finally spent 7 years getting the clearances, so there's that. But the larger point is well taken.

Biennale redux

2007-07-20T18:59:00.000+12:00

So I've mentioned how much I liked going to the Biennale, and now it turns out David Byrne went to the Biennale as well. He has two of the better pieces of video art embedded in his blog, one by Joshua Mosley and one by Sophie Whettnall. The Los Torreznos stuff is cool as well, and hey, maybe you'll like the other stuff also. Cheaper than a ticket to Venice, probably!

NZFF report #2

2007-07-20T17:24:00.000+12:00

okay, lots to catch up with, so these might be terse. Ask me about anything you're curious about if you want more info.

THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT: One of a string of documentaries presented in the wrong aspect ratio (in this case, a letterbox 4x3 master squished to 16x9), this film nonetheless is a gut-punch of first-person testimony in the lengthy attempt to overturn the conviction of a man accused of rape. Very strong, incredibly moving, recommended.

RESCUE DAWN: I'm as big of a Werner Herzog fan as they come, but this was a pretty big disappointment. Christian Bale's performance and the stirring patriotic end (complete with symphonic music) strike me as the two most problematic elements, but there's also lots of basic storytelling issues - finding the sole, for instance, doesn't mean anything because you've barely registered that they don't have shoes and/or that not having shoes is a problem. Some beautiful images and nice passages, but gimme WILD BLUE YONDER any day.

DEEP WATER: A stunning documentary about the first sailing race around the world. While there's seven competitors, it focuses largely on two: a relatively inexperienced inventor and a French philosopher. The story, augmented massively by footage shot by the sailors during their travels, is one that you're best knowing nothing about going in, as the twists and turns are increasingly stunning and heartbreaking. Even more highly recommended.

TALES FROM EARTHSEA: in which the first movie by the son of famous animator Hayao Miyazaki (MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, etc.) fails to even remotely escape his father's shadow. I've never read the original source material, but this is just a mish-mash of some fantasy gobbledy-gook and a lot of gabbing, along with some unlikeable characters, and very few cute Ghibli creatures to at least keep things interesting to look at. My second least favorite film of the fest so far.

TV JUNKIE: Bizarrely presented in a perfect square in the middle of the screen, which was annoying. Rick Kirkham is a tv presenter who obsessively filmed himself, and this film after a brief prologue is basically a long first-person account of his descent into drug abuse and self-destruction. There's something bizarre about how acutely aware Kirkham seems to be of his situation, despite the fact that he just keeps falling deeper. I am a bit unsettled by how his children feature into this, particularly given the ending.

HELVETICA: Yes, it's a documentary about the font, and I'm tempted to argue that it's so much more but I'm not sure that it is. But I'm also not sure that matters, because what this really is about is hearing legendary graphic designers speak passionately about the pros and cons of Helvetica (and, by extension, alternative fonts), and it emphatically proves the point that hearing intelligent, passionate, articulate people talk about their field of knowledge is generally fascinating no matter what the field is if you have any curiosity about the world. And you'll definitely look at the streets around you with different eyes after this. Highly recommended.

AUDIENCE OF ONE: Presented in the same screwed-up format as TV JUNKIE. This fly-on-the-wall documentary follows a pastor who decides to lead his rag-tag congregation into making a $50 million epic sci-fi retelling of a Biblical story. Wisely, the film holds some of the more extreme aspects of the church til the end, but there's no stopping the subjects from digging their own grave when it comes to their pie-eyed optimism/extreme ineptitude at filmmaking. (This article should give you some sense, if yr. curious.) The final slide presentation by the pastor is thus far, I believe, the most jaw-dropping moment of the festival.

ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE: A 70's classic that I'd never seen, partially because I thought it was porn-related. Couldn't be more wrong - Electra Glide is a brand of motorcycle, and Robert Blake is the not-very-tall man riding it as an Arizona highway patrol man who wants to be a homicide detective. It's shocking to think that a feature this inventive and accomplished was by a first-time director James-William Guercio, who never directed after this (apparently it was derided as "Fascist" at Cannes, I guess for daring to suggest that policemen are human and some criminals actually are bad people). Plus, great Conrad Hall photography. A must-see!

A DIRTY CARNIVAL: This year's Korean gangster film is a step up for me from last year's stylish but sluggish A BITTERSWEET LIFE, perhaps because it's actually two interweaving stories (the second being of the filmmaker who went to school with the lead character, and now wants to research his life to make a gangster film). It's perhaps not as stylish or as relentlessly violent as some other Korean films of note, but for that it hurts all the more.

SMILE: Another 70's film that I'd never seen, by director Michael Ritchie, who I thought I was unfamiliar with - little did I know he directed both the Lee Marvin film PRIME CUT and FLETCH. This film is in the Altman mode, profiling the "Young America Miss" contest with a mix of humor and pathos but mostly staying on the funny side of the fence. Fans of Altman definitely should check this out.

RETRIBUTION: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (CURE, PULSE [KAIRO]) is one of my favorite directors working, and his sense of atmosphere - from his choice of crumbling locations to the infinite shades of grey he uses in his production design to his pervasively oppressive sound design - is so striking to me that I'm disposed to like most everything he does. A number of other people were unimpressed by this film, and perhaps it's not as good as CURE or PULSE, but I can't think of many directors who can sustain a two-hour feeling of dread and unease this strong and (apart with mild dissatisfaction with some of the digital effects) I came away fully satisfied in that disquieted kinda way.

BELLE TOUJOURS: While not as unremittingly awful as I had heard in the pre-screening gossip, it certainly stretches mightily to make its 69 minute running time. A sequel to BELLE DE JOUR of sorts, there's some nice moments of rumination on identity and aging, and it did more to sell Paris to me than PARIS, JE T'AIME ever did. And near the end, there's some nice Bunuelian elements that seep in. But by and large, I can't imagine most people would get much from this, and the actor who plays the bartender gives the worst performance I've thus seen this festival. At the end, I discovered that it's the director's grandson. Go figure.

THE BOTHERSOME MAN: If you've ever felt that IKEA might be a sort of hell, this is the film for you. A quietly surreal expedition into an afterworld that seems perfectly agreeable only by its lack of any disagreeable elements, this is visually striking in its portrayal of terrifying blandness. Sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, ultimately sad, and I'm not really sure what to make of it overall but definitely think it's worth seeing.

STILL LIFE: I've seen three films by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke now (the others being UNKNOWN PLEASURES and THE WORLD) and I feel like I'm missing the boat a bit - they've all been good, but by many he's been anointed as one of the greatest filmmakers working, and I just don't see it. As an editor, I'd probably be less bothered if he didn't rely on the intermittent use of very naff visual effects - some of them may meant to be charming, but some are just sloppy. That said, I did enjoy this story of two people coming to the area around the Three Gorges Dam to re-connect to a past that's in the process of being washed away, and Jia definitely takes advantage of a visually striking landscape for moments of quiet absurdity and sadness. I like it more as I write about it, which is certainly a good sign.

THE LOST: If David Lynch was less weird and more mean? Set in a location out of time, this adaptation of a crime novel justifies its brutal and gory finale by devoting a lot of attention to character development - while I certainly can't recommend it for those with weak stomachs, I would definitely recommend it for anyone who likes horror, and it's an amazing accomplishment on a low budget. Some minor storytelling lumpiness aside, very impressive.

DESERT/MEX: My least favorite film of the festival, from the hand-held largely out-of-focus photography to the incredibly unlikable characters. I'm more than mildly baffled by all the praise this is getting, and I would've walked after twenty minutes if there had been anything else on to see; as it was, I only stayed to see if I could figure out what the appeal was. Yes, I suppose the acting's good, and points for telling a non-linear story in an unobtrusive manner (though why it has to be non-linear other than to be showy is markedly unclear to me), and maybe you'll like the endless stream of characters with anger-management issues better than I do. If so, good on you! But if not, don't blame me.

MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET): A gut-punch of a documentary about life in Brazil by a former Errol Morris assistant, this doc manages to be pretty independent of Morris's style - while the free-associations of a frog farm, a kidnap victim, a corrupt politician, a plastic surgeon specializing in ear reconstruction, and a paranoid businessman might seem out of FAST CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL, in fact they're glued together at a much more primal level. Not for the squeamish, but highly recommended.

TEKKON KINKREET: The latest animation from Studio 4C, who did last year's mind-blowing MIND GAME, this effort is slightly more traditional narratively speaking, but pushes the envelope even further as animation goes. The use of animation as camera is stunning here, from soaring city-scape shots to lots of "hand-held camera" that works shockingly well to "steadi-cam" tracking shots to even getting drops of water on the "lens" when near the water. A must-see for anyone who is interested in animation.

And today I rested! Tonight: EXILED!

NZFF report #1

2007-07-16T23:37:00.000+12:00

RED ROAD: Partially funded by Lars Von Trier's Zentropa outfit and supposedly first in a three-film series using different writer/directors but same characters and actors, this is supposed to be yet another experience in observational hand-held drama leading to surprising revelations related to grief but mostly seemed kind of absurd - I spent a good half hour in the middle muttering under my mental breath about how I didn't believe the main character. This seems to be an increasing problem for me, though - I felt the same about BROTHERS - so your mileage may vary. Craftwise, I thought it was largely well done, and certainly would check out another of Andrea Arnold's films.

ANIMATION NOW!: The film festival's yearly animation round-up program was a real mixed bag. My favorite by far was BURNING SAFARI, heavily in debt to Pixar but super entertaining. Also of note: the clever TEN THOUSAND PICTURES OF YOU, the existential WEISS, and although a bit long, the portrait of Madrid, STUART.

(BURNING SAFARI, for your viewing pleasure.)

COCAINE COWBOYS: Now we're cooking. Several almost gleefully unrepentant survivors of the Miami-based cocaine business tell how cocaine went from nothing to a nationwide epidemic, and their stories are astonishing and entertaining and appalling by turns. Some dodgy sound editing, but nobody besides me will care.

THE SIGNAL: all the reputation this had was as a brutal visceral horror, and while there's no question that it's not a family film, what I hadn't heard much about was just how funny it is, particularly in its second section. (The film is made in three sections by three different writer/directors, and while the story runs through each director puts their own twist on it.) For people who like horror and/or low-budget films, this is a must-see and a heck of a ride, although in retrospect it's not clear if it makes a lick of sense.

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES: an absolutely outstanding film. It's billed as a documentary about artist Edward Burtynsky, but from the agonizingly long first dolly shot it's clear that this is not just a vessel for another artist but a work of art in its own right. While it took me a while (like, not til several hours after the film) to come to terms both with the fact that it is not just grappling with Burtynsky but tackling his same themes on its own terms and with its laser-like focus on China, in fact (as a. rightly pointed out to me) China is the product center through which the consumerist world inflicts its modifications to the land. Meanwhile, Jennifer Baichwal brings not just her own eye (one that is able to find in motion as iconic and indelible of images as Burtynsky finds in stillness) but an ear for sound design that is impeccable and architecturally staggering.

The trailer for MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES.

METAMKINE/PLAINS: Both part of the film festival and part of the Alt.Music festival. Plains is a local largely electronic group, working more on the musique concrete side of that term. They were joined by guitarist Dean Roberts tonight, playing to video accompaniment by Michael Morley, famed for his presence in the Dead C. and Gate. However, while I enjoyed the music, the relation to the largely tedious video (which, intentionally or not, I wound up watching mostly as a study in digital compression) was pretty incidental.

Metamkine I wrote about this week at Nonalignment Pact. Suffice it to say here it is an absolutely essential experience for anybody who has even the vaguest interest in non-narrative film and/or experimental viewing.

THE HIRED HAND: What a discovery. Peter Fonda's 1971 western, his directorial debut, was pretty much ignored on initial release and overlooked for decades. It stands on a relatively simple story, but one that's beautifully told, particularly with some visually dense overlaid montages and use of still shots that come into motion. Apparently Fonda managed to direct two other films (WANDA NEVADA and IDAHO TRANSFER) but hasn't directed since 1979; a shame.

FOREVER: A rambling meditation set largely in Paris's Pere-Lachaise cemetery (which weirdly enough just featured in PARIS, JE T'AIME, although Wilde's gravestone is largely a footnote here). The focus is on the relation that living people have with dead artists and how they inspire us and inform our lives, though that focus drifts to include just about anything that happens to seem interesting in the generous interviews that make up the bulk of the film. I was definitely fading during this, but I think it's fair to say that while interesting its lack of narrative drive would be a hindrance for many.

EXPLORATIONS OF FOLDED TIME: LEIGHTON PIERCE: Unknown by me til this program, Leighton Pierce has apparently been making films since the late 70's, though this focuses on his video works from the past eight years or so. The program traces the evolution of one style, starting with the meditative and relatively recognizable images of WOOD to the more densely layered THE BACK STEPS (of which a sample is featured on his web site, should you be inclined to see if his work is of any interest to you). Themes develop, grow, and recur, up to 2004's VISCERA, which is the densest, most insistent, and most fully realized work, to the point where future progress seemed unimaginable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the last program on the film, NUMBER ONE, points in a somewhat different, relying on kaleidoscopic image doubling and the framing of multiple images in the frame. Anyway, definitely deserves more attention than I can give at the moment but very worthy of your attention if you like the abstract filmatists.

Time to get some sleep, will try to catch up with everything else I've seen tomorrow.

i've been meaning to say this for a while.

2007-07-12T16:35:00.001+12:00

I really think you should look at this site

you can't be everywhere at once ...

2007-07-09T12:26:00.000+12:00

... but I wish I could have been here.

Ah well. Consolation prize = dinosaur jr. tonight!

do you like funny things?

2007-07-06T14:41:00.000+12:00

Of course you do! Who doesn't?

I casually know one of the folks over at Mukpuddy Animation, and their film won the Auckland leg of the 48Hours competition. (I missed the competition for the first time since I moved to New Zealand, because I was busy editing a TV show on a nearby island.)

Anyway, the TV finals were on Sunday, and while they got my vote (not because of the friendship, but because I enjoyed them the most), they didn't win. (To be fair, the winner was my second choice, and is also well worth watching, and can be viewed at the official site.)

For the broadcast, each team had to provide a little introduction to their film. They had my vote pretty much sealed away with their excellent introduction:

and here is their 48 Hours entry:

Well played, Mukpuddy!

In less amusing news, I encourage all of you to sign MoveOn's petitionto Congress to force Vice-President Cheney to conform to the law or else begin impeachment proceedings.

It's wet here. Boo. I got a tax refund. Yay!

There are new pictures up at my Flickr page. Just a tease:

That is all.

a link.

2007-07-03T22:04:00.001+12:00

I'm still planning on doing some sort of massive follow-up write up of my trip, but for those who want to read a lot about Gerhard Richter, musings on art and writing, and have a bit of travelogue mixed in, all in the context of a Fennesz review, this week's NAP post is really really long.

Man, SILENT HILL is a weird film.

back home!

2007-06-26T01:43:00.001+12:00

just a quick note saying i'm back in auckland. heads down a couple days on a big project for galadina, then hopefully will get some pictures on line ..

a little more (just because)

2007-06-18T08:02:00.000+12:00

the because meaning I'm tipsy and in a sweaty internet cafe. Did you know that in Italy they need to get an ID off of you, either driver's license or passport? It's true. Listening to the Birthday Party ('strophe and antistrophe! strophe and antistrophe!' - I wish I knew what that meant) and so I summarize the recent history -

- today I went to the Boboli Gardens, which are on the far side of the river but not a very big walk. (Nothing tourists want to go to in Firenze, as they call Florence here, is a very big walk, in terms of distance at least.) I was hoping to just chill out and relax under a tree, and was a wee bit disheartened to realize that a. I got there at pretty close to noon, when sun was directly overhead and shade was minimal, and b. there's lots of uphill there. Anyway, apart from the bit where I trudged up the hill and sat under a tree and listened to lots of Unwound and The Mountain Goats, they also have some museums there that are part of the purchase price, most of which didn't interest me. But, surprisingly enough, the Museum of Porcelain (look! 20 different china patterns! this is jack's excitement personified!) also had a completely unlabelled and completely amazing exhibition of glassworks by Roberto Fallani, who is very modern and very spectacular. This interested me way more than decorated pitchers, which was the focus of another museum, or the history of Roman gardens. That's just me.

I effectively bailed on the big guns of Firenze, the Accademia (where David is, although I saw a copy, so close enough) and the Uffizi, which I should have made reservations for, like, for ever ago. Waiting for hours in line held no appeal. Still holds no appeal, come to think. Plus I think I'll come back, given so much left undone. No counterfeit leather purses purchased - what was I THINKING?

Other than that, been mostly chilling out today, having more gelato (peanut butter is the highlight thus far, although the last two times I've had gelato I've had to find a W.C. pretty quickly, so a wee bit nervous about that, but still may have some when I'm done here). I've been using a Rick Steves guidebook to get around Florence that I picked up at the hostel, which is quite good, but as I discovered at dinner, you often wind up eating with a bunch of people using the guidebook as well. Which is fine, I met some friendly Americans from Idaho, and the dinner was good. (Gnocchi with pistachios and blue cheese for a primi, and shrimp and avocado with some awesome sauce for a secondi.)

Yesterday? There was the travel from Cinque Terre to Firenze, which passed through Pisa. I hadn't planned on going to Pisa, but as I said to Josh and Becky, if we're going to Pisa, it's just rude not to see the Leaning Tower. (Who are Josh and Becky? Keep reading, and I might get to it! The joys of reverse story telling!) The Leaning Tower is about a mile or so walk from the train station, mostly in a straight line, and just when you think you might have missed it, there it is, looking for all the world like it's been Photoshopped into reality at an oblique angle. (Which, I guess, maybe it has.) I do wish I'd had a bit of time to see the various cathedrals and stuff in the same piazza as the Tower - it's a very beautiful plaza, and I assume everything there has something of value, but I just thought the lines were big and I didn't want to deal with it.

(I did, however, go into a CD/DVD store, and found a DVD of the latter-day masterpiece THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE, only it's Italian so its title is different, but I can't remember it. But it had English subtitles so I bought it. Sadly, Paolo Sorrentino's follow-up, L'AMICO DI FAMIGLIA, is only in Italian.)

So then I arrived in Florence, as I might have mentioned, and after arriving at my lovely hotel (Il Bargellino - thanks, Brenda!), dropped my stuff off and did my kamikaze attack, which consisted of seeing the Medici Chapels, Baptismery, and Duomo Museum. None of these are really as amazing as the exterior of the Duomo, which I could stare at for hours.

(And maybe will after this.)

And then I wandered down to the water, and watched a Florence sunset over the various bridges down there, and it was really something, and I think I took my best picture there. Though when I get them into the computer, they will probably all look the same. But, hey!

And then I ate dinner at Trattoria Marone, my first proper dinner in two days, which is mostly why I couldn't finish it. It was okay and reasonably priced by Florence standards, some kind of veal bits and some bean soup.

And then I went back to go to sleep on the off chance I'd get up early enough to do a morning rush on the Uffizi. (No suspense here; obviously, you have figured out it didn't happen.)

That's all I can type for the moment, my brain is empty. Or something like that.

a quick hello from Firenze

2007-06-17T19:35:00.000+12:00

or, as us Westerners call it, Florence. I don't get it either.

I came to Florence under duress from multiple appalled parties who noticed its lack in my prospective Italy plans, and it would be fair to say I had a chip on my shoulder and looked forward to it least. (Oh, boy! Old statues! Museums with long lines! Whee!)

As it turns out, as it does so often in these cases, my cynicism was misplaced. Florence is rather extraordinary, and I'm glad to have come, shady people selling possibly black market goods on the street and all.

Prior to that was Cinque Terre, five remote beautiful villages along the coast. Tomorrow? Why, Venice of course!

In nine days I'll be home. Whee!

Okay, off to see gardens with statues in them or something. And I'm excited about this.

Also: cherry gelato? So good.

hello from Nice

2007-06-12T20:37:00.001+12:00

or bonjour de Nice, or a Nice, or something. I'm staying at the Villa Saint Exupery, after a couple days of driving around rural Provence, which was pretty awesome. I have extensive notes and lots of photos. Hopefully these will be translated into something public at some point.

It's 10:30 in the morning and I'm about to head out for a day of museums: Matisse, Chagall, and the MAMAC (the big contemporary art museum in Nice), plus a bit of shopping. (Socks and DVDs, most likely.) I've eaten pizza the last two nights; I really need to get back on the French food bandwagon, as my first dinner was awesome.

I'm not awake now, so that's all for now, but I have decent Internet here so hopefully will check in before I go.

5 minute brain dump

2007-06-06T22:44:00.000+12:00

yesterday: got up went to cathedral this is cool and free before 1230 but pretty much like most cathedrals line at picasso museum is huge this neighborhood is pretty cool hey that´s the gallery Maeght must be related to the Fondation Maeght cool abstract art thére must be a tapas place nearby oh look right on this street text from conor let´s meet at guell park this is the coolest park ever undulation and mosaic and sheer beauty i love gaudi i love barcelona let´s go to another park now was there something in the middle possibly but i can´t remember oh yeah walked through barri gotic again roman walls aren´t that exciting but hey they´re free this fountain in this other park was also made by gaudi but earlier and then go to beach gehry sculpture eh what´s this cool circular thing in the park drinks on the beach eventually meet our friends and new friends and have dinner and lots of wine arroz negra is in fact paella made with octopus ink and is in fact awesome 1 minute of internet time left so must run more explanation later possibly possibly not

I survived Primavera!

2007-06-04T22:14:00.000+12:00

I´m now done with all four days of the three-day festival. (No, that´s not a typo.) Discovery of the festival and possibly my favorite show of all three days - Pelican. Instrumental indie metal, 7+ minute epic songs that ruled from note one to the last note. The Fall was also almost everything I hoped for, majestic, etc. Longer excursis of course can be found at the Nonalignment Pact. Although I forgot to mention there that Ted Leo was also pretty excellent, Todd, and the crowd went wild for the song you quoted from. As well as all the rest of them.

Today I am off for some Gaudi buildings, hopefully. We are travelling in a group of five and the herding cats metaphor is incredibly apt. Plus adjusting to a normal day after staying up til 6 AM on the nights of the festival. But hey, these are nice problems to have.

hola from Barcelona

2007-06-02T02:38:00.000+12:00

As evidenced by the fact I don´t know the Spanish (or Catalan) for ¨from¨, my language skills here are negligible. I was informed everyone spoke English; I was wrong. Which is mostly fine, gesturing and small words get you a long way.

Today is day 2 of the Primavera Sound festival, which I´ll be leaving for shortly. Yesterday´s highlight was my perennial favorite, The Dirty Three, who were just like I remembered except lead violinist Warren Ellis has a big beard. A REALLY big beard. Other than that, same brilliant musicianship, same glowingly rambling introductions to songs, same re-interpretations that make stuff that´s ok on record head-explodingly majestic live. Also saw Slint play ¨Good Morning, Captain¨. Goosebumps ensued.

Tonight I will see The Fall. There are other bands I am excited about (Beirut, Blonde Redhead, Modest Mouse) but they are the most, but also have the most potential for debacle. We shall see what the future holds.

hello from Hong Kong airport

2007-05-30T13:25:00.000+12:00

where I have a six-hour layover or something like that. Music is playing as I sit next to the noodle bar where I just ate some noodles and milk tea, using the free half hour of Internet I get with said purchase. I'm contemplating whether to spend HK$100 (roughly $20NZD, $14USD) on a shower, which would feel nice but I'd still be climbing back into the same grimy clothes.

Not sure that I have much else remarkable to report thus far. I got a 2GB memory card for my camera (since I'm now taking a laptop) and now it takes about a minute to start up, trying to decide what to do about that (either a. suffer b. use the old memory card most of the time c. buy new smaller memory cards as well). Not very interesting to share, though.

Perhaps this is more interesting, or perhaps not. Last night I managed to say another set of good-byes to my friends from Castaway, who had come back later than I because they stuck around for the wrap party (consensus: I didn't make the biggest mistake in the world by missing it). It turns out that one of the other editors I worked with, Chloe, was on the same flight, so we wound up trekking to the airport together, having a drink, etc. Then on the ground here, we said our goodbyes as she got in a line to go to London/Heathrow.

Five minutes later, I saw her again on the other side of said line, where she had to get in another line to clear security. Flying Lufthansa, it appeared I had to go somewhere else.

So I said my goodbyes again after a bit of time, then went to my place to clear security. Then I got upstairs (in Hong Kong airport, departures are upstairs and arrivals are downstairs - I guess this is how they can let people meet people at the gates or something), and lo and behold, Chloe is there again.

After another hour and the least sentimental goodbye yet (cuz I mean, hey, three goodbyes to the same person and you wear yourself out after a while), I think I can finally say I've seen the last of the Castaway crew for quite a while, unless they come to visit me while I'm in Europe.

Speaking of which, if anybody cares, rough itinerary from memory of where I'm spending each night:
May 30 - June 8 - Barcelona
June 9-10 - Provence
June 11-13 - Nice
June 14-15 - Cinque Terre
June 16-17 - Florence
June 18-20 - Venice
(June 21 - airplane)
June 22-23 - Hong Kong
(June 24 - airplane)

home June 25th. For at least a little while. Anyway, if you have recommendations, are in the neighborhood, whatever, let me know. (Assuming you're one of the like 4 people who haven't given up on this infrequently published blog.)

hello goodbye

2007-05-28T22:22:00.000+12:00

I am back! I'm leaving!

"Back" = back from Great Barrier Island, working on CASTAWAY.

"Leaving" = heading to Europe for three weeks (plus 2 days in Hong Kong on the return).

I will try to post information here, but I'm not taking my laptop. We'll see how many cybercafes have usable keyboards, etc.

still not dead.

2007-05-11T10:35:00.000+12:00

But definitely flagging, feeling like a marathon runner at mile 23. Except for a marathon runner who's also trying to knit a sweater and work out the next few months of his life, and a much longer marathon. Anyway. Still fundamentally happy. Still fundamentally alive. Two weeks to go ....

For those of you who are curious, by the way, here's the movie trailer I cut earlier this year, annoying YouTube compression and all:

not eaten by rats

2007-04-01T21:38:00.001+12:00

I'm sure you were all concerned about that.

A month into the job here at GBI. A friend wrote me yesterday, presuming that my radio silence on the blog meant I was quite busy. Yes and no; when there's down time, it's DOWN time. I've read, IIRC, five books in a month (THE ECHO MAKER and THE TIME OF OUR SINGING by Richard Powers; HOW TO BE ALONE by Jonathan Franzen; HOW TO BE HUNGRY by Dave Eggers; GHOSTWRITTEN by David Mitchell; all are recommended, most highly.) There's a TV and DVD player here now (watched: SHORT CUTS, CAT PEOPLE, SARABAND, ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, DOPPELGANGER, the CREATURE COMFORTS TV series, THE HOLY GIRL, ON THE RUN, THIS SO-CALLED DISASTER, THE RED SHOES, and EXPERIMENT IN TERROR), but no Internet access, no neighbors that we know, no local place to go to, and when it pisses down with rain enough to cancel all flights on and off the island (as it did on Thursday) not much to do except crack a bottle of wine, gossip, play cards, and so on. At the barn on the hill in Okupu, we're far away from everything, though as time goes by, my perception of distance changes.

For example, yesterday morning I walked to Claris Texas, the cafe in Claris, the closest place where you can exchange money for goods and/or services without using the telephone. (Actually, that's not quite true - there's a backpackers slightly closer, but one thing I don't need is lodging.) It's about a 4-5 km walk to Claris, takes me roughly 45-50 minutes. (Last time I did it, the entirety of At The Drive-In's IN/CASINO/OUT plus two songs off that new Converge album which I don't get the appeal of. This time, a bunch of tracks by Cafe Tacuba, courtesy of the estimable Carlos Anaconda. Anyway.) I got to the cafe, and several other people from the show were there (what with it being, like, one of five restaurants on the islands, and near a cluster of residents). After chatting for a while, some of us took an entirely unplanned walked to Kaitoke Beach, the third time I've been there, but it was quite nice and I'm always astonished that there's just nobody there. Well, I mean, we were. Also, I managed to get a ride back up the hill to home from the shuttle driver, who was taking one of our number to work.

The show? It's what it is. (If you're like my mom, you've been following it breathlessly at the official web site and doubtless have formed your own opinion.) Am I being coy? I am. Non-disclosure agreements. Best thing is not to talk about it, which is not meant to sound ominous, just saying. I will say that I enjoy the people I'm working with, and that the nature of the setup means that I'm working with a different edit producer every day, which means I've really learned a lot about how to talk about editing, what my idiosyncrasies are as an editor, and how to best work with different producers. Things have settled into a regular schedule, which means a week of days, then a week of nights, with Thursday/Friday off. This may all change again, but at least for the last week the call sheets and roster have matched, so I'm optimistic it will be true until the end of April at least.

I'm at "home" and it's 4:43 PM and working nights tonight (10 pm - 8 am). The wiser among you would suggest I should be asleep, and you'd be right, but after going to bed at 9 AM I woke up at 1 PM and haven't been able to get back to sleep. In fact, I'm the giddiest I've been in a long time. Reason being is that I've booked a trip after this finishes that goes to Barcelona in time for the Primavera Music Festival and leaves from Venice three weeks later. Not sure how I'm getting from point A to point B, or what my itinerary is (other priorities are the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain and the Fondation Maeght in St. Paul, France; other suggestions are highly encouraged). But it should be awesome, although I think I should be more daunted than I am by my complete lack of knowledge of Spanish, Catalan, or Italian, not to mention my entirely half-assed French.

(Plus I have a two day layover in Hong Kong on the way home.)

Okay, I'm going to brush my teeth and try to get some more sleep. As a postlude, the soundtrack to my time here, should you wish to play along at home, is something like this:

1. Flogging Molly, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive"
2. Beirut, "Elephant Gun"
3. Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
4. The Hold Steady, "You Can Make Him Like You"
5. Alkaline Trio, "Rooftops"
6. Hot Water Music, "Bleeder"
7. New Order, "Ceremony"
8. Jesu, "Conquerer"
9. Jurassic 5, "Contribution"
10. Skatalites, "Dick Tracy"

and, of course, the whole of THE EARTH IS NOT A COLD DEAD PLACE by Explosions In The Sky. Been listening to the Old 97's this afternoon, dancing around a bit, and really enjoying being alive.

I hope you are all well.

Quick links roundup.

2007-03-07T23:49:00.000+13:00

Things that are awesome or interesting:

This evisceration of Macrovision's response to Steve Jobs' open letter.

I can't remember if I linked it, but Galadina's Secret Sniper is online now.

About men and depression.

How the Chinese handle the Internet.

Back to GBI tomorrow for a while. Bye!

pictures online of GBI.

2007-03-06T18:44:00.000+13:00

(Over at my Flickr page.)

BARRIER ... to success!

2007-02-26T12:16:00.000+13:00

Hi Guys,

This is a post from Great Barrier Island. I am on lunch break the first day of work.

I am feeling uncreative but letting you know that I am alive and have a good view.

I hope you are well.

Yes, you.

(Yes, I know I used that before. But it never gets old!)

if you care about these sorts of things ...

2007-02-24T12:07:00.000+13:00

... I now have a Flickr page.

Maybe I'll put up pictures from Great Barrier Island. Maybe not.

The suspense!

T minus 22 hours or so.

people might like this

2007-02-24T00:34:00.000+13:00

it's late and my prose is crap, so let me just say that John Safran is brilliant and this is worth watching.

what's happening in a week

2007-02-18T17:07:00.000+13:00

I think I've mentioned this before, but people keep asking me, and plus also too it's probably buried under lots of other stuff. So.

On Sunday I will be on a ferry for Great Barrier Island. I will be working there for three months as an editor on a production for British television called Castaway. You can read about the first season, back in 2000, here. (And the current version here, in a much more cynical write-up.)

I'll be there for three months, along with lots of crew, although accomodation is scarce and scattered so we'll be all over the place, not taking over a hotel or anything. I don't know how much is under non-disclosure so I'll be circumspect about any additional details of the production, although truthfully that Wikipedia article knew more than I did.

I will be staying in a 4-bedroom house with three other editors, a half-hour drive from the job site. (They'll be picking us up and dropping us off every day.) There are two shifts: 11am - 9pm, and 9pm to 7am. Supposedly we'll be switching between them. (Not too often, I hope.)

I will have mobile phone coverage at my house "if I go up the hill", and possibly dial-up ("very slow", which I presume means even by dial-up standards) Internet. I'll have the option of coming back to Auckland once every two weekends, if for some reason that sounds like a better option than staying in a house 1km from a great swimming beach and 18km from the nearest "good shop". (Apparently many locals get their groceries freighted over from Auckland once a week.)

Great Barrier has no power grid, so our amenities will be modest - for instance, we can't use "heat-generating devices" like hair dryers (not a worry, since I've clipped it all off again and don't use one even when I don't) and there is no freezer. (I haven't asked but assume there is no TV.) Nonetheless, I'm very looking forward to it. I have an 18-inch pile of books to take with me, my snorkel and fins, and am very looking forward to three months of living in isolation. I've sort of always had this fantasy, and it'll be a great way to give it a test run and see if I take to it like a duck to water or like oil to water.

For what should be incredibly obvious reasons given the above, expect updates here to be even more sporadic than normal. But I'll be thinking about you.

Yes, you.

I'll post a proper update soon.

2007-02-14T16:41:00.000+13:00

But in the meantime, I'm posting this PSA on behalf of my friend Ransom:

Hi all,

I'm sending this to everyone I know, and everyone they know, and
probably even a few people I don't know. The reason: a short film I
directed called "Portable Living Room" has been named a finalist
in the IFC Spirit Awards -- one of four nominated out of
many, many submissions -- and if it wins it will be broadcast live
on the Independent Film Channel as part of the 2007 Independent
Spirit Awards telecast.

The finalists were chosen by a panel of IFC judges, but the winner
is chosen via online voting. So I need all the votes I can get,
and the competition is fierce! Lots of people watched the film
online after my first email, and though I got a lot of great
feedback from people who enjoyed it, not very many voted.
If you could take a minute to register for the IFC site
and rate the film 5 stars, it would be a great help!
(And if you're a friend of a friend of a friend and aren't sure
who I am, please accept my apologies -- and check out the film anyway!)

Here's a direct link to the film on IFC.com:
http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=3431

HOW TO VOTE

A lot of people wrote to tell me that they liked the film, but
didn't know how to vote. Unfortunately, the IFC site isn't
very straightforward, but what seemed like errors or glitches
to people who tried to vote is actually the way the site works!
Here's what you have to do. (This actually doesn't take very
long):

1) Go to the link above. My film will start playing immediately.
You will see RATE IT! and 5 blank stars below the film, but
when you click on it, the site asks you to register.

2) Fill out the registration form. It will ask you to re-enter a
bit of semi-garbled text for security purposes. You may have
to type it in a number of times; this isn't a glitch, it's just
an (annoying) security feature.

3) The site sends you an email. Click on the link in the email
and it will take you back to the site. Enter your email address
and the password you created.

4) You see a page called "my profile." Just ignore this -- you
don't have to enter any info here -- just go back to the page
with my film on it, using the same URL as above:
http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=3431

5) Now you can vote. 5 stars!

it's here.

2007-02-05T01:11:00.000+13:00

it's here.

You know the drill by now. Let me know in the next week or so if you want a copy, as time is tight before I get on the boat.

DISC ONE
1. Petra Haden - “God Only Knows” (www.petrahadenmusic.com)
2. Juana Molina – “Elena” (SON)
3. Nina Nastasia - “Brad Haunts A Party” (ON LEAVING)
4. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – “Lay And Love” (THE LETTING GO)
5. Talkdemonic – “Dusty Flourescent/Wooden Shelves” (BEAT ROMANTIC)
6. Cat Power - “Living Proof” (THE GREATEST)
7. Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – “Ole! Tarantula” (OLE! TARANTULA)
8. The Mountain Goats – “Alibi” (BABYLON SPRINGS EP)
9. Sonic Youth – “Reena” (RATHER RIPPED)
10. Aceyalone – “Grand Imperial” (GRAND IMPERIAL)
11. Ratatat - “Lex” (CLASSICS)
12. Islands - “Rough Gem” (RETURN TO THE SEA)
13. Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy” (ST. ELSEWHERE)
14. The Mint Chicks – “Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!” (CRAZY? YES! DUMB? NO!)
15. Nouvelle Vague– “Ever Fallen In Love?” (BANDE A PART)
16. Neko Case – “That Teenage Feeling” (FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD)
17. Tapes ‘n Tapes– “Insistor” (THE LOON)
18. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Cheated Hearts” (SHOW YOUR BONES)
19. Portastatic – “You Blanks” (BE STILL PLEASE)
20. Tara Jane O’Neil – “Bluelight Room” (VA - PDX POP NOW! 2006)
21. Lambchop - “Decline of Country & Western Civilization” (DAMAGED)
22. Liars - “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack” (DRUM’S NOT DEAD)

DISC TWO
1. Kind of Like Spitting - “Share The Road” (THE THRILL OF THE HUNT)
2. Yo La Tengo – “Pass The Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” (I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU AND I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS)
3. Black Chrome - “My Band” (BLACK CHROME)
4. Killer Mike – “That’s Life” (I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE GRIND)
5. OOIOO – “UMO” (TAIGA)
6. Maxime De La Rochefoucauld - “Fuite Au Coeur De La Nuit” (ORCHESTRAKI)
7. Smoosh - “Find A Way” (FREE TO STAY)
8. So So Modern – “At/One/Fell/Swoop” (EP0003)
9. Propagandhi– “A Speculative Fiction” (POTEMKIN CITY LIMITS)
10. TV On The Radio – “Playhouses” (RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN)
11. Man Man - “Van Helsing Boombox” (SIX DEMON BAG)
12. Destroyer - “A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point” (DESTROYER’S RUBIES)
13. Built To Spill – “Goin’ Against Your Mind” (YOU IN REVERSE)
14. The Hold Steady – “Southtown Girls” (BOYS AND GIRLS IN AMERICA)
15. Band of Horses – “The Funeral” (EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME)
16. Eric Bachmann – “So Long, Savannah” (TO THE RACES)
17. The Thermals - “I Hold The Sound” (THE BODY, THE BLOOD, THE MACHINE)

top life forms found in my house recently

2007-01-26T02:19:00.000+13:00

1. Flies
2. James (our cat, kinda, long story)
3. Slugs
4. Ants
5. Flatmates
6. Stray invader tomcat
7. Moths
8. Me

hello from the bruin

2007-01-19T00:47:00.000+13:00

"Bruin" being a term that toddstadlerwillconsumeallblogs! coined to denote a blog fallen into disrepair, which this place feels like.

Anyway, I've been busy editing a reality television show, which was unfortunately shot and originally edited like a documentary. The truth is, the reality of editing reality shows is that it is very focused on drama. Basically it's taking the minute problems and escalating it into opera. And this is very difficult in a country whose people, left to their own devices, pretty much end every sentence with some variant of "but it's all good."

I find myself probing my ethics when editing reality television a bit, because obviously there is some distortion of the truth, as in the extent to which a problem is really a problem, et cetera. I suppose my gut response is that, in this point in history, if people sign up for a reality show expecting documentary-like verisimilitude, they're woefully mistaken. (Whether they should expect documentary-like verisimilitude from a documentary is another question. To which the answer is "no". But that's a separate discussion.)

I had a point but I forgot what it was and now I'm sleepy. I guess it's this: sign up for the Nonalignment Pact podcast. It's got the good musics on it.

well, isn't that special.

2007-01-08T11:29:00.000+13:00

I've been operating under the assumption that, to get my NZ citizenship, I'd have to wait three years from my residency date, and spend at least half the year in NZ each of those years.

Today, I decided to check that assumption, and discovered - thanks to a policy change made since the time I originally investigated the issue - that I'm grossly mistaken.

In fact, I have to wait five years, and spend at least 240 days a year for five years in NZ, and 1350 days overall (i.e. if I spent only 240 days overall each year, I'd be 150 days short of the legal requirement). (You can check both the old requirements and new requirements here, should you have an overpowering passion for reading bureaucratese. It turns out I was slightly mistaken on my initial conception prior to the policy change, but that's moot.)

This becomes an issue if I want to do, well, anything overseas, be it work on a project in the States for a bit or just a lengthy jaunt.

I'm not sure how this will change my plans yet (so don't ask), but it definitely undermines the reasoning behind my current plan.

Also: the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs uses Lotus Domino for its website! Who knew?

back in Auckland

2007-01-07T01:49:00.000+13:00

in case you were wondering.

Just because, this isn't my top ten or whatever, but since you already know how awesome CASINO ROYALE and THE DEPARTED are, and I rambled at great length in previous entries about the genius of film festy movies like I AM A SEX ADDICT, 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST, THE WILD BLUE YONDER, and LONGING, I thought I'd mention a couple films that got really overlooked this year that deserve better, that maybe you can check out the next time you're at the video store, and for once I'll mention movies that are in English and can be found at yr. local video store (either now or in a couple months): MONSTER HOUSE. THE PRESTIGE. TALLEDEGA NIGHTS*. CHILDREN OF MEN. FEARLESS. CRANK. And, in the "was overlooked by me until this year" division, the remake of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

For the most part, these movies are exactly what they appear to be, but really really good versions of it. One caveat: MONSTER HOUSE is definitely not a little kid's movie - I thought it was kinda scary at points, and I think it would be way too intense for little ones. Fortunately, that won't preclude you, oh grown up friend of mine, from enjoying it. There's a moment involving a sign on the house's lawn near the start that's a complete throwaway but one of my favorite moments of the year.

I could go on. But I should be asleep. So I will attempt to do so.

*This was huge in America, I think, but in NZ everybody just stares at me and says "was that actually funny?" And then I can't respond because I think of the cougar and I laugh too hard. So, briefly: yes. Very.

hello from methven

2006-12-30T23:50:00.000+13:00

just the latest in a series of thriving metropoli in our south island whirlwind tour. Previous stops: Hokitika, Takaka, and Motueka.

Yes, we've broken a trend by not spending the night in a place that ends with -ka.

Tomorrow night, New Year's Eve in Dunedin, then down to the Catlins. Having a great time, seeing nature, shooting silly footage which you may or may not see sometime, et cetera.

In advance, Happy New Year!

once more into the breach

2006-12-26T12:27:00.000+13:00

Hi all,

So I hope you'v e been having a merry christmas and stuff, I know I have.

Anyway, I'm off to the South Island very shortly here, so don't expect to hear from me for a while. Back Jan 7 or so.

Have a great new year!

book list 2007

2006-12-18T12:03:00.000+13:00

So I decided, as you do, to compile a list of all the recommendations I've received over the past few years that I haven't taken action on, in order to assemble a reading list so I don't just re-read the same authors over and over again. (Some of those authors are on here, too, to be fair.)

This list doesn't include some books I own that I intend to tackle (two Neal Stephenson books, Vollmann's RISING UP AND RISING DOWN, Richard Powers' THE TIME OF OUR SINGING, Dave Eggers' HOW WE ARE HUNGRY, Ben Marcus's NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN, and, um, some others), and a few books I have from the library that I won't get to til next year probably. (Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD and Michel Houllebecq's A POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND rating high amongst them.)

Have I mentioned how GALATEA 2.2 by Richard Powers blew my mind? It did.

Anyway, the list (and, no, I don't really expect to read all of these in 2007, but hopefully I will make a dent:

John Banville: The Sea
Saul Bellow: Henderson the Rain King
John Burnett: Where Soldiers Fear To Tread
*Italo Calvino: If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Mr. Palomar
Peter Craig: Hot Plastic
Lydia Davis: Almost No Memory
*Don DeLillo: The Body Artist
Don DeLillo: Mao II
Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
Theodore Dreiser: An American Tragedy
*Nathan Englander: For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
Percival Everett: American Desert
Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White
Richard Ford: The Lay of the Land
*Jonathan Franzen: How To Be Alone
Samuel Fuller: A Third Face
David Gates: Wonders of the Invisible World, Jernigan
Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Kent Harrington: Red Jungle
Eric Hansen: Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea
John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany
Ken Jennings: Brainiac
Tore Janson et al: A Natural History of Latin
*Franz Kafka: The Castle
*Ken Kalfus: The Comissariat of Enlightenment
Elizabeth Kostova: The Historian
Ray Kurzweil: The Singularity Is Near
William Langewiesche: Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert
Daniel Levitin: This Is Your Brain on Music
*Mark Leyner: Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog
Sam Lipsyte: Home Land
Margaret Macmillan and Richard Holbrooke: Paris 1919
*Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
Carson McCullers: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Ron McLarty: Memory of Running
Ben Mezrich: Bringing Down The House
Rick Moody: The Diviners
Christopher Moore: The Stupidest Angel
Haruki Murakami: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, The Elephant Vanishes
George Orwell: Down and Out In London
George Pelecanos: The Night Gardener
Andrew X. Pham: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
*Richard Powers: The Gold Bug Variations
Richard Powers: Gain, The Echo Maker
Mary Roach: Stiff
Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Harry Saint: Memoirs of an Invisible Man
George Saunders: In Persuasion Nation
Alice Sebold: The Lovely Bones
Carl Shuker: The Method Actors
Ignazio Silone: Fontamara
Laura Slater: Opening Skinner's Box
Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle
Zadie Smith: White Teeth
Hunter S. Thompson: The Rum Diary
Leo Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych
John Updike: Rabbit Redux
Jennifer Vanderbes: Easter Island
*David Foster Wallace: Oblivion, Consider the Lobster, Girl With Curious Hair
David Wallis (ed): Killed
Franz Wisner: Honeymoon with my Brother
Noboru Yoshimura: Inside the Kaisha

(* = my flatmate owns it, nothing more or less exciting than that)

Any additional recommendations? I think I may permanently maintain this list on my computer as a reference.

Cal Robbins needs your help.

2006-12-16T12:42:00.000+13:00

Cal Robbins is the young son of J. Robbins, frontman of Jawbox, Burning Airlines, and Channels, and Janet Morgan (also of Channels). To dramatically understate the case, Cal's having a rough go of it; details are here.

I'll be writing something for Nonalignment Pact tomorrow about this, but basically Jawbox affected my life more than any other band, and any little thing I can do to return the favor in their time of need, I will.

desert island lists

2006-12-12T23:59:00.000+13:00

You know those times where you get asked "if you could only take n (books/records/DVDs/whatever)" to a desert island?

Well, it's not quite a desert island, though it is close to deserted, but I'm going to spend three months next year working on Great Barrier Island. Just found out today.

Time to start figuring what makes the cut ... probably things I've never read or watched. Planning on spending as much non-work time in nature as possible and also working on secret projects that may or may not be secret for much longer. At any rate, it's good to have a big piece of work locked down already for next year.

the ruins

2006-12-06T23:00:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I was downtown having a very productive day (getting passport renewed, money transferred to States, Christmas shopping) and decided to pop into the library, despite my large number of books that I'm meaning to read and/or currently reading. I meant to just grab Christopher Alexander's A PATTERN LANGUAGE, what with me being semi-besotten with him, but it was out. So I did my customary wander through the graphic novels (hi Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman), and then checked them out, and then my willpower declined and I also checked out three novels - Michel Houellebecq's A POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND, Richard Powers' GALATEA 2.0, and Scott Smith's THE RUINS.

I read THE RUINS yesterday, staying up very late to read it in one breath. Scott Smith is the author of A SIMPLE PLAN, which I've not read (though I've seen the movie). THE RUINS is different in a lot of ways but sort of conforms to what my former roommate Jerry said when he turned off the movie half way through: "This is just one of those movies where everything's going to keep getting worse."

I'm probably not doing a very good job of selling THE RUINS. Let me try again. I don't read many supernatural thrillers, so I don't know how it stacks up, but to my eyes it was the most unputdownable, gut-sinking slow burn I've read in a long, long time. There aren't even chapters, per se - every twenty paragraphs or so, there might be a new section, demarcated by an extra line of why and a larger capital letter, but it just keeps grinding along, with enough clever foreshadowing (like revealing that an unspecified character is going to die from the recollection of a night's events the next morning by the character who you thought would have been one of the likeliest to die) and a smooth transitioning between the perspectives of the four main characters. There's lots of human detail that will undoubtedly be smoothed over in the inevitable movie adaptation (I've seen it as a movie in my head, already, and if they fuck up the last shot I'll be pissed), and from the Amazon reviews (which I recommend avoiding if you intend to read the book) a lot of readers who like their Stephen King and Dean Koontz were pissed with its inclusion, but I loved it. These are real characters, and the slight aggregation of detail really paid off for me as it moved on.

Time to go to sleep. I think I'll flip through the Adrian Tomine graphic novel. (He of OPTIC NERVE fame. I think the name of the one I got is SUMMER BLONDE.)

my talented friends.

2006-12-04T22:26:00.000+13:00

At the risk of sounding all "aw, shucks" and shit, I feel lucky to know a lot of talented and creative people who do interesting things.

My friend Randy is one of the co-authors of the Mental Floss book Scatterbrained, an engrossing compendium of trivia linked together by the thinnest of threads. Great stocking stuffer, should you, y'know, have a stocking. Also, if you are in LA, there are several upcoming showings of his short film Spaceboy. Also, his latest short film, "Portable Living Room", is online here or at the endlessly confusing site that Nissan assembled for it, along with a few other of the short films that it sponsored.

Former partner in noise crime Conor has gone the solo road and is engaging in speaker-destructive sonic terrorism under the moniker of Lordosis. Download now and you'll have the collected recorded works of Lordosis, along with a recording of the only live show to date. (Hint: they're the same thing.)

My friend Zane, co-producer of MADDIGAN'S QUEST, is shortly hopping on a boat to document the seemingly inevitable demise of the island of Takuu, likely to be the first casualty of global warming. Read all about it here, and if you can, contributions to the project are welcome and encouraged.

I have many other talented friends who I don't mean to overlook, but I suspect I have neglected to mention these things of late in my blog and so here we are. Perhaps you will find this more interesting than eight paragraphs about a Korean filmmaker who makes films you've never heard of and can't see in the States. Or perhaps not.

Hong Sangsoo

2006-12-04T01:03:00.000+13:00

So recently there was a Blog-A-Thon on film criticism, and Tim Lucas (editor of VIDEO WATCHDOG) had a particularly interesting post to me. The piece concludes with this sentence:

In short, I now write criticism primarily to educate myself, to better know myself, and it's been my good luck that a select group of others seem to get something out of eavesdropping on the process.

I'm not participating in this Blog-A-Thon per se - I've avoided trying to enmesh myself in the world of film bloggers, as I'm way too intermittent and less convinced of my input, plus professional conflict of interest could arise etc. - but for various reasons "know myself" has been a theme for the past week. And as a filmmaker, an editor, and a guy who loves films, there's definitely an amount of "me" that is wrapped up in the films that I love.

So I'm going to dedicate some intermittent (but hopefully reasonably frequent) posts over the next chunk of time to various filmmakers that I love, with an attempt to explain what it is I love about them. Maybe you'll get something out of this, check out a film that I think is great and wonderful; for me, it's just a chance to really ask myself, what is it, ultimately, that makes this medium so important for me?

-------

Hong Sangsoo is the first person that comes to mind, not because he's my favorite filmmaker, but because I saw his film WOMAN ON THE BEACH tonight at the Korean Film Festival. And also because, more than any other filmmaker I know, his films seem to all inform each other, despite no character overlap.

A bit of background: Hong is a Korean filmmaker who's been making films for a decade now. I still haven't seen his first film, THE DAY A PIG FELL INTO THE WELL, but I've seen all the rest. I started with ON THE OCCASION OF REMEMBERING THE TURNING GATE (aka TURNING GATE), which I bought on DVD off of many recommendations and which blew me off my seat. Since then, I've seen WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN in the 2004 NZ festival (shivering like mad, so I think I underappreciated it); THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE and VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS from a 3-DVD boxset of Hong's early works (it also contains WELL, but apparently it has bad subtitles); TALE OF CINEMA at this year's NZ Festival, and tonight his latest film, the aforementioned WOMAN ON THE BEACH. I say all this not just to mention all his films by name but because I'm not sure there's another director that I've seen as many films by in three years, and certainly not as large a proportion of a director's filmography.

Most Hong films have a similar feeling or structure, with a small number of characters, uncannily parallel or rhyming situations, and a relationship-based drama slowly unfolding. His protagonists are almost always flawed, most often men who are insular and stubborn and don't really get things about life, coming either closest to or farthest from complete honesty while being drunk. (And if it's a Hong film, you bet they'll be drinking. Probably a lot. Although I notice most Korean cinema has lots of drinking, so there's that.) There's nothing resembling a hero, and any audience identification is largely of the uncomfortable "God, why do I have to watch someone make the same stupid mistakes I make" variety, not the wish-fulfillment of adopting a heroic point of view. As the same time, though, the films aren't also abject debasements of caricatures of humans a la Todd Solondz; Hong's not willing to give you just one side of anybody. The eponymous character in WOMAN ON THE BEACH has one scene in particular that made me disgusted with and sick of her, but yet the next scene (the morning after) she was astonishingly gentle and kind. There's a monologue a character has in WOMAN ON THE BEACH about the building of character as defining a series of points, and one suspects that this is part of Hong's strategy with his films.

His visual style is simultaneously simple and complex. There are very few closeups: most scenes play out in extended master shots. In his last two films, Hong uses the zoom lens as a technique to reframe within a shot, and I think he did something special with it in WOMAN ON THE BEACH. Other than that, his style is very unflashy but also distinctive, deliberate in feel. There's a depth to almost all of his shots - Hong virtually never uses shallow depth of field - and the result is that nothing is really distinguished in the frame as being a particular point of interest by that technique. Nor by lighting, or often even by framing. The characters are there; you just have to decide which one is important to look at, and why.

Another strange thing about Hong films - they're the only films I've seen where it feels like the film itself has an inertia apart from the characters. The relatively minor level of drama and real-time observation of most of his films (as I recall, VIRGIN plays with a nonlinear time frame) means that you're never really sure where you are in the "story" per se, and often the film defies what you think the story might be. A seemingly major character vanishes halfway through WOMAN ON THE BEACH, never to be referred to again, because he's no longer at the beach. It's as if the film has set up shop there, in sort of a permanent present tense. Sort of similarly, TURNING GATE has a two-part structure, with its male protagonist in each wooing a different woman, the events of the first time echoing his actions in the second. TALE OF CINEMA, meanwhile, turns itself inside out halfway through the film when you suddenly discover you've been watching a film within a film. The three-act structure is left entirely adrift in these films: there's no doubt they're structured - I imagine Hong makes diagrams, perhaps, though maybe I'm way off-base - but their structure is felt more in the rigor of the filmmaking than because there's any resemblance to traditional film structure.

I don't know if any of this makes these films sound watchable, but they are - they may be slow for some, and too "talky" for others, but they're certainly not offputting and are sometimes quite funny in their quiet observations. (Also, several of them include pretty explicit sex, if that encourages you, though BEACH rejects this, framing its sex more chastely than your average rock video.) They're not the sorts of films with big emotional payoffs at the end; in fact, it's rare that I've had a really immediate emotional reaction to an individual Hong film, even to my favorite (TURNING GATE). But they seem, more than the work of any other filmmaker I know, to be obsessed with understanding why it is that we act how we act, without using any artifices of filmmaking to force a false or simplistic response to the question, and because of this they resonate longer, strike a deeper chord, and remain with me long after most films have left my memory. That Hong so often chooses to depict filmmakers as characters in his films further reinforces the sense that he is not working from an abstract concept of humanity to make characters but digging into his life experience to grapple with the questions of how we live, and maybe how we can do better than we have. As a character in TURNING GATE says: "Even though it's difficult being human, let's not become monsters, ok?" (As sentimental of a notion as you'll get in a Hong movie.)

Anyone interested in digging deeper into the world of Hong Sangsoo is strongly encouraged to check out this website. In terms of DVD, though, unless you're up from importing from Asia you're out of luck at the moment, though WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN is due out soon in the States. If you are up for importing, YesAsia has TURNING GATE for $9.99 on DVD, which is as fine an introduction to Hong as I can suggest. They also have the 3 DVD set of his early works for reasonably cheap as well.

educating women may be very very very hazardous to your health.

2006-12-01T17:17:00.000+13:00

I've had this story on my desktop for a couple days now, and it doesn't get any easier to digest. I wanted to write something about it, but every thing I have to say seems self-evident.

Except, maybe, for the fact that nobody else is talking about it. While every one's wrapped up in the fact that we're losing the Iraq War, virtually no one even remembers that there was another war that we thought we had won that apparently we're also starting to lose.

When I imagine a utopia, I imagine a society entirely free of coercion. Stories like this, and the one I mentioned last week about the Congo, remind me just how pitifully, astonishingly far we are from that as a species. I sometimes fantasize of a land where everybody who wishes to subject people they don't know to laws about morality are left to themselves and given no one and nothing to have power over, and everybody else is left to do what they want, provided they don't inflict violence upon anybody else.

Sigh, enough of that. Anyway. Off to spend a lively Friday night in front of the computer doing animation!

the problem with Borat

2006-11-28T22:55:00.000+13:00

So you might have heard of this movie, with this guy who pretends to be from Kazakhstan, exposing the "true" America. More likely, even if you haven't heard of any movie that's opened in the past month, you've heard of BORAT.

There's no question that BORAT is, more than occasionally, really damn funny. It's also in my mind incredibly problematic. The difference between BORAT and the (even funnier) JACKASS 2 is that, after JACKASS 2 did something in public in front of unsuspecting people, they copped to who they were, and got release forms signed, and if you wouldn't sign one, they'd pixelate your face or not use the footage. BORAT, by contrast, claimed to be a small production not intending to distribute in the States, and often not only set things up under entirely false pretenses but maintained those false pretenses well after the fact. (One first-hand account can be found here.) This is a massive breach of filmmaking ettiquette (and, most likely, law); further, expect people who aren't nearly as funny to duplicate the same kinds of stunts in the near future; further, as a result, expect any serious but seriously underfunded short-film or documentary filmmakers to have increasing amounts of trouble getting releases to film places.

Additionally, the film really tries to have it both ways: by being "documentary" it's supposedly telling the truth about the intolerance of America or some-such (as if the average person around the world would somehow be more tolerant of him), while by being "drama" they can set up any sort of thing they want and pretend it's real (like the RV, being driven by crew members, which has our memorable and memorably racist frat boys who are supposedly travelling across country in it). Plus the editing (while quite good) is very, very stacked, leaving any patina of "truth", or cause and effect that's not revealed in the same shot, as being highly dubious as best.

Anyway, the ever-brilliant George Saunders (of PASTORALIA and CIVILWARLAND IN SEVERE DECLINE, two must-reads if there ever were any) rips open the film's hypocrisies in his own inimitable way, entertainingly and depressingly pointing out the issues at hand.

on a lighter note

2006-11-27T22:23:00.000+13:00

or something:

I came to New Zealand a little less than three years ago. At the time, I owned 0 (zero) keys.

I now have fourteen* in my room. I'm not even really sure what six of them are for, other than that one of them looks like a car key and I suspect it was given to me for safekeeping as a backup key for a car that's no longer a going concern. Another one's for a car I sold, and another one is for a desk I sold. Three others are for production companies I'm not working for anymore, and the other three live on my key chain.

So: fourteen keys. And none of them lock the drawer on my new desk. (I assume. I haven't tried.)

Also: I switched to writing on Sundays for the Nonalignment Pact. Just so you know.

*Addendum: Make that fifteen!** Found one attached to a lock.

**Addendum 2: Found two more. Seventeen keys. What the hell? They're clearly more frisky than I am.

the two sides of comics.

2006-11-27T21:47:00.000+13:00

2 1/2 days apart, I've had two of the most powerful - in very different ways - reactions I've had to writing in a while, and they're both blogs about comics. Kind of.

Saturday morning, I spent about an hour and a half reading The Comics Curmudgeon, and I don't know the last time I laughed that hard, that often. Possibly TALLADEGA NIGHTS. It's funny with a capital FUNNY, I tells ya!

And then there's the other side of things. Tonight, I read this blog from an unnamed female comic creator, who, having got really fed up with the whole industry on any number of levels, spent three days writing one of the most raw, powerful, and simultaneously well-written memoirs I've ever read. And it left me with two powerful lessons, lessons I probably should have learned by now but have difficulty internalizing.

1. Be careful of what you give of yourself to an industry you're passionate about, because it feels no obligation to give back.

2. The ideas, the thoughts, the images we put into the world have more of a ripple effect than we imagine.

I started to elaborate on the second point, and then second-guessed myself. Suffice it to say that I'm thinking a lot about what to work on next at the moment, and that it's certainly informed my thoughts.

you don't throw oranges on an escalator!

2006-11-22T23:21:00.000+13:00

Robert Altman died today. He was 81. You might know him as the director of such films as NASHVILLE, THE LONG GOODBYE, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, THE PLAYER, or SHORT CUTS, to name just five masterpieces.

Tonight Jonny and I cracked a bottle of red in his honor and watched CALIFORNIA SPLIT, which I had never seen before and is unequivocally a sixth. It's a deceptively light piece about two compulsive gamblers who team up, and the deftness with which Altman lets the plot and characters unravel is really astonishing. Plus, it has the line which is the title of this blog, which would automatically mean it was a pretty good movie.

I tried the lentil recipe that Scout posted in a comment below. It did not work well. I mean, it seemed good in theory, and tastes good bar the lentils, but the lentils were not cooked enough and husky. I think the problem is that brown lentils that come into this country are heat-treated, which I think screws with any attempt to cook them normally. And/or, perhaps, my oven is not accurate.

But I will not be experimenting a third time with brown lentils in this country. Unless I find some indigenous, non-heat treated ones.