Michael
Jackson made some of the most iconic, visually fascinating music videos
of all time. Some of them were more like short films, especially given
the level of talent he worked with. For this and every Saturday in
February, we'll look at some of his videos as if they were movies and
discuss them accordingly.
Michael Jackson's anthology movie Moonwalker never got a theatrical release in America, but segments of the film were released as music videos, such as "Man in the Mirror" and "Leave Me Alone." (It's worth checking out for the freaky Transformer sequence alone. Also, Joe Pesci.) Perhaps the best-known segment is that for the song "Smooth Criminal." Looking resplendent in a white suit with a powder blue shirt and a stylish slouch hat to match, Jackson infiltrates a lair of underground gangsters and molls and... um... controls them through the power of, uh... dance? Something like that.
Unlike the "Beat It" video, where he's out to defuse a violent situation, here he seems to be the instigator, which, I suppose, is consistent with the persona he adapts in the song. We never see anyone that answers to the name Annie, though, and as a result we never know for sure if she is, in fact, okay. You'd think the video would've answered that burning question.
As in the video for "Bad" - and Moonwalker came out around the same time as the album Bad - Jackson projects an air of hyper-masculinity and aggressiveness greatly at odds with the gentler, more androgynous image he had in life, and I have to admit, at times it's kind of amusing to see. I mean, only in a setting like a music video could a skinny little dude like Jackson stand up to dudes bigger and tougher than him and defeat, or at the very least intimidate, them.
Even when he whips out a machine gun and appears to shoot at the cops lurking outside, there's something about it that feels like a put-on. He's never as tough as he comes across in his videos; his well-known public persona made it impossible to take scenes like this completely seriously. (His character in "Ghosts" seems to be a middle ground between the two extremes.)
There's also a strange middle section where the music stops, the lights are dimmed, and Jackson and the others engage in a slow orgy-like groove that makes no damn sense. I don't know what that's supposed to signify, and frankly, I don't wanna think too much about it either.
And once again, lurking on the periphery are little kids who are easily awed at Jackson's antics. Gaining the approval of children was a thing for him. What it means depends, I suppose, on whether you believe Jackson had a weakness for kids. We'll never know the truth one way or another.
I should also mention the Moonwalker video game based on the "Smooth Criminal" video. I remember playing the arcade version. It wasn't bad, although I didn't play it that often. I do remember it being quite popular for a time.
The Contender seen @ Sunshine Cinema, New York NY 2.7.12
So Gary Oldman finally got that Best Actor Oscar nomination after all. How about that? Even though he's not likely to win in a field with heavyweights George Clooney and Brad Pitt, plus the star of the likely Best Picture winner, a lot of people are still rooting for him, and not without reason. Though I personally wasn't that crazy about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he was certainly very good in it, and he's taken advantage of all the goodwill generated by his Oscar nomination by doing interviews and keeping himself visible.Here in New York, he recently made two appearances as part of retrospectives on his long career: one at the Walter Reade Theater and another at the Sunshine Cinema, where they not only had a Q-and-A with him, but played a bunch of his best films and gave away free tickets online. I couldn't make it to the Q-and-A, but I did go to one of the films the Sunshine screened, the political drama The Contender.
The film stars Joan Allen as a senator picked by the president to become his vice-president after the incumbent dies. Oldman plays the head of the committee holding hearings to determine her fitness to hold the office. When a scandalous secret from her past comes to light, Oldman really comes after her with both barrels, but she steadfastly refuses to publicly address the issue or even its veracity. Allen, like Oldman, has had a career of mostly supporting roles, and Contender, like Tinker for Oldman, was a rare opportunity for her to shine as the lead, and shine she does (though I don't like her as a blonde).
Oldman, with his scraggly, balding pate, looks a little like Paul Giamatti in this one, and with his flawless American accent, you'd never mistake him for the same guy who plays Tinker's George Smiley. As I've talked about before, though, his ability to disappear inside each role he plays is one of, if not his greatest, strengths. He probably won't win Best Actor, but it is nice to see him getting celebrated for his work.
We're back once again for another round of film discussion. This time out there's quite a bit to discuss, too. Once again our panelists for this month are:
A Separation seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY 2.2.12
My father maintained his faculties throughout the final years of his life, so I never got to know what it would be like to see him deteriorate mentally as well as physically. While I wouldn't necessarily call him an intellectual, he always kept his mind engaged and sharp for as long as I knew him, therefore I could never imagine him suffering the way the protagonist's father in A Separation does: afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, spending his life in a haze of lost memory, punctuated by brief moments of lucidity.
We had a number of different home attendants taking care of my father during the day, some of whom I liked, some I didn't. Still, they knew their job, and they knew their responsibilities, and they carried them out professionally. My father always did his best to be friendly with these women. He was a natural conversationalist, and he seemed to genuinely enjoy learning about their lives. He probably also knew that he could set them at ease this way, too - after all, it can't be easy attending to the physical needs of a stranger unable to do so on his own.
This is all a build-up to my point: I know exactly how I'd feel if I seriously thought that any of these women physically endangered my father in any way. None of them did, but when you bring a stranger into your home to take care off someone you love, that's the risk you take. You have to trust that this person will do their job properly, because the alternative is too frightening to contemplate. So when the home attendant in the story makes a grave error in judgment, I was on the protagonist's side completely - but then another twist in the story brings his honesty into question as well, and things get even crazier.
I was riveted throughout this whole film. Even though I didn't completely understand some of the aspects of Iranian culture and law, I understood just enough to follow along. (Most of what I know about Iran I learned through reading Persepolis.) This movie has the total package - directing, writing and acting. While it's not explicitly political, which one might think given the recent events in Iran (and how certain filmmakers have been treated as a result), it certainly says a lot about Iranian jurisprudence and how it ties to the Islamic religion.
And religion plays a huge factor in the story. I don't pretend to know everything about Islam as it's practiced in Iran, and I don't wanna sit in judgment on it (at least not here), but I did like how it provides obstacles for the characters that could not be easily overcome. It influences the law and how it's applied in this particular story. For some of the characters, they live their lives by it - and for one in particular, their faith ends up being used against them.
A Separation is a tough drama to sit through, but well worth it.
Michael Jackson made some of the most iconic, visually fascinating music videos of all time. Some of them were more like short films, especially given the level of talent he worked with. For this and every Saturday in February, we'll look at some of his videos as if they were movies and discuss them accordingly.
Whether intentionally or not, "Ghosts" is surprisingly metatextual. Michael Jackson must have known how very different his life was from the rest of the world, but in this video, he seems to embrace his quirks even as he questions them. By portraying both the strange, mysterious outsider on the fringe of society and the straight-laced, conservative leader of the mob that tries to run him out of town, it's as if he's trying to reconcile dual aspects of his nature: the fun-loving free spirit who lives by his own rules versus the normal guy who just wants to fit into a normal life. We'll never know if this was something he really struggled with, but it's hard not to read such messages into this video.
Make-up whiz Stan Winston directed this video, based on a story idea by Jackson and Stephen King. If you recall, at the very beginning of "Thriller," there's a disclaimer by Jackson stating that the video doesn't endorse demonic beliefs. No such statement appears in "Ghosts," which ramps up the level of demonic and supernatural imagery to eleven - but then, "Thriller" was made during a time when parents were all upset about hidden Satanic messages in rock records. And the make-up work in "Ghosts" is remarkable. In addition to the mob leader, whom I didn't even recognize as Jackson until he starts dancing, there are all sorts of Gothic ghost dancers and Jackson himself, who gets twisted and contorted and reshaped different ways, in different guises. (Scariest moment for me? Near the end, seeing that plastic-surgery-altered face literally crumble.)
As in "Bad," there's a group of people trying to conform Jackson into a certain ideal, but he can only be had on his own terms, and one has to wonder, given how his childhood career was molded by his father, is this him acting out a revenge fantasy on some level? He wants to be free to indulge his idiosyncrasies - he makes a point of saying how he enjoys scaring people - but there's always an adult authority figure who wants to control him. And in this case, that authority figure is him.
But the children are the ones who understand the best, and given how Jackson spent the final years of his life defending himself from charges of pedophilia, one can't help but notice this as well. He always had that Peter Pan aspect to him, an image he consciously cultivated, whether to make up for his lost childhood or something else, we'll never know.
"Ghosts" the song isn't that great, I thought, and both song and video do feel derivative of older material - and did it really need to go on for almost 40 minutes? Still, it's so worth watching just to examine the many layers of subtext on display.
Well, I guess I overestimated the amount of interest in this idea, because the turnout for this was way smaller than I expected. Still, I wanna thank those who did put something together; I appreciate it. Take a look:
seen @ "Brew & View Movie Mondays" @ Hiro Ballroom, Maritime Hotel, New York NY 1.30.12
My first exposure to Pink Floyd, as I'm sure was the case for many people, was the song "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)." I remember there was a day camp I went to as a child in which some kids sung a version that mocked one of the head counselors. In high school, I got heavily into classic rock and naturally, Floyd was among the many bands I got deeply immersed into, though some of my friends were more into them than others. Of course, I saw the film The Wall during this period, and it freaked the hell out of me like it does for many people who see it for the first time. I'm not sure, but in college I think I went to one of those laser light shows that they used to do at the Planetarium, set to Floyd or other classic rock bands.
If I had to explain Floyd's initial appeal to me, I'd say that for one thing, their music was so unlike anything on the radio (and I grew up as a total Top 40 junkie): atmospheric, moody, and bleak, yet emotional and edgy, with virtuoso guitar riffs and haunting melodies. It's not always the kind of music one can rock out to, but it's artistic and highly refined, and attempts to say things about the human condition.
