Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Sings the Blues
seen @ Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
2.28.09

The Wexner Center for the Arts has got to be one of the best kept secrets around in terms of public art institutions. This was one of the many things that made me proud to live in Columbus, if only for a brief time. Located on the Ohio State campus, the Wex showcases a wide variety of exhibits year-round, from music to film to art and more. When I was in Columbus, they had a massive Andy Warhol show that was unique in all the country, and attracted visitors from around the world for months. (I even mailed Vija a copy of the program.) In describing the Wex to my friends back home, I'd compare it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music or the Museum of Modern Art. I can't recommend this place enough if you're in the area, or even if you're visiting Ohio in general.

The Wex screens a variety of international films, past and present, occasionally before anyone else. I saw the Bobby Sands biopic Hunger there before it came to New York, if you can believe that. Often times, the filmmakers appear for Q-and-A sessions. In the summer, classic films are screened outdoors, on the front plaza, with local businesses providing food and drink.

I had first read about the one-woman-animated feature Sita Sings the Blues from Roger Ebert's blog. By the time the film came to the Wex in early 2009, I knew I had to see it. By chance, a couple of old friends from Michigan, Sean and Sophia, were planning to come down to see it as well. Unfortunately, they could only come for the Saturday show, not the Friday night one in which creator Nina Paley would attend for a Q-and-A. A tough decision to make, but I decided to wait the extra day.

Part of what fascinates me about this film is how Paley was able to not only make art out of a personal tragedy in her life, but to find relevant inspirations in other media and other cultures that she could incorporate into her work. Between the Hindu trappings, the 1920s blues music, and the present-day story arc, Sita is a remarkable mash-up of time periods.

While I had a number of friends in Columbus, old and new, there were times when I felt cut off, so to speak, from the life I'd left behind. So I would be not only excited, but grateful, whenever friends came in from out of town, because it would be a tangible reminder of that old life. Granted, I don't see Sean and Sophia that often to begin with, but I do remember thinking how seeing them under these circumstances - living a new life in a different city - felt different. When Bibi and Eric passed my way while touring the Midwest, it was the same, only more so, since I'm much closer to them.

After the movie, we, along with mutual friend Mike and his girlfriend, hung out at a cafe for the rest of the night.

Director Mike Leigh and his actresses

...it is easier to feel one might be a Mike Leigh woman than to generalise about any of them. What Leigh has, in common with Pinter, is a genius for dramatising ordinary people. Unlike Pinter, he is never sinister nor stylised. Pinter enjoys enigma, Leigh is about transparency. You can see right through his characters, you know more about them than they do about themselves. And his films have a good heart. Alongside misery, there is always human kindness. And – tiny but telling detail – his women are forever putting the kettle on (as in life) when the troubles of the day are over or, more often, just as they are getting under way.

Also:
- The Dilemma director Ron Howard says the gay joke is important to the character. (The Big Picture)
- On the ever-evolving state of film criticism... and the democratic response. (Awards Daily, In Contention)
- Fine artist-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel on his latest film, Miral. (Guardian)
- Check out these old newspaper ads for horror movies. (Retrospace)
- A review of a new book about the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup: is it the best war movie ever? (Out of the Past)
- This U.S. map assigns a definitive movie to each state. (Huffington Post)

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
seen @ Lincoln Plaza Cinema, New York NY
10.27.10

It’s easy to take a filmmaker like Woody Allen for granted. Time may have distanced us further from his greatest hits (Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors), but he continues to crank out films on what appears to now be an annual basis. No matter what you may think of the man, the filmmaker is one of the most prolific and consistent ones out there, and you’ve got to respect that much about him.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, however, did seem like old hat for Allen. Many of the familiar Allen tropes are there, including the Narrator, the Allen stand-in (Anthony Hopkins), the bickering couples, the ingénue whom the Allen stand-in wants to make over – I mean, this is set in England, but story-wise, it could’ve come straight out of Allen’s New York in the 80s. Which is not to say that it’s bad – mediocre Allen is usually better than other filmmakers at their best – only that it doesn’t seem like he’s doing anything different here.

Seeing this movie was a bit of an impulse decision. I was with my friend Andréa, who’s the first friend I made through Facebook – meaning, not the first person I “friended” when I signed onto Facebook, but the first person I “friended” who started as a stranger but became a genuine friend. (Does that make sense? Peculiar how Facebook has changed the very definition of the word “friend.”) It was a rainy afternoon, and after eating, we kinda settled on seeing a movie to escape the blah (yet unseasonably warm) weather.

We saw Stranger at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, a theater I hadn’t been to in years. Except for the box office, it’s entirely below street level. It’s small, with a bunch of paintings strewn about the lobby and a relatively cheap (for Manhattan) snack bar that includes baked goods like muffins and brownies. The seats, however, were less comfortable than I remember them. I kept fidgeting throughout the movie; I could not get comfortable no matter how I tried, and I don’t recall having this problem before. My seat felt too firm. Andréa didn’t seem to have a problem, though, so it was probably just me.

It’s easy to forget about the Lincoln sometimes when you’ve got the Houston Street trio (Sunshine, Angelika, Forum) plus the IFC Center, all within easy walking distance of each other, and that’s not even including other art house theaters in the Village. I like it fine, though, even if the seats are too firm for me. I went to high school in the area, although I never had any interest in indie films back then. I’d always go to the Loews on 84th Street. (The AMC on 68th Street would come later.)

Mystery Science Theater 3000 presents Manos: The Hands of Fate

Manos: The Hands of Fate
as presented on Mystery Science Theater 3000
seen online @ YouTube
10.30.10

Inevitably there comes a time where you simply have to see something for yourself to believe it. Friends warned me about this movie. Numerous online reviews paid testament to its awfulness. In the end, though, I had to see it for myself. There was no way around it. Some might say I took the easy way out by watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version instead of the pure, unadulterated one, but after seeing it, I'm convinced I made the right decision. No one should have to watch the original version of Manos: The Hands of Fate. That's too cruel.

I prepared for it the best I could. I scoured the IMDB reviews - and I was surprised to see how many people were eager to talk about it. 612 reviews have been posted as of this writing, and a number of them are quite creative. There's another reason, perhaps, that people watch bad movies - because they so often inspire great reviews. I should've realized that. After all, how often do glowing, four-star reviews of anything make you laugh? They may be beautifully composed, but in the end, it's all in service to a praiseworthy work... and human nature tends to find more pleasure in tearing something down.

Which brings me to MST3K. While I was familiar with the show, I'd only seen snippets here and there of it, so it was nice to finally sit through an entire episode. People have always talked at a movie theater before, but this show seemed to have made it an art form. While not as much of a free-for-all as your average Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, I have to admit that the snark made watching Manos much more bearable. Then again, given how bad Manos is, that's still like saying I preferred having five of my toenails ripped out instead of all ten. If I understand the show's premise correctly, the guy and the two robots are forced to watch bad movies by some evil mad scientist or something, but they don't look like they're being coerced. If anything, they seem resigned to their fate... but maybe that's part of the joke. It's obviously in the spirit of late-night or Saturday-afternoon creature-feature shows, with some host introducing the movies, and that's cool.

I had started watching Manos in the early afternoon, but then I got an instant message from someone I really wanted to talk to, so I set the movie aside for awhile. Then I decided to go out, thinking I could watch the rest when I got back, which I did. The copy uploaded onto YouTube which I saw claimed to have it in ten parts, but I only saw nine, which was confusing. Then again, I wasn't that eager to see it to the very end, which I'm sure you'll understand.

In trying to look at it from the filmmakers' point of view, I'm sure they felt like they were capable of making as good a film as anything out of Hollywood, and they were probably acutely aware of the limitations they had to work within in terms of talent, on both sides of the camera. In that sense, the very fact that they got Manos completed and distributed means they beat the odds. Filmmaking today is much easier for the average person than it was in 1966, after all.

That said, I get the impression no one told director-writer-star Harold P. Warren that perhaps he should rethink his script... or find a better production crew... or better actors! It brings to mind a couple of other auteurs who can't be told anything: George Lucas and James Cameron. And yet, their movies have made billions of dollars worldwide, while Manos languishes in infamy. Is that justice?

Funny thing is, I couldn't help but think that with a little more thought, Manos might've had something to say about cultists. Charles Manson was beginning to put his Family together around the time it came out, and Jim Jones already had his People's Temple at the time, though they wouldn't move to San Francisco for another nine years. I wonder if such thoughts were even in Warren's mind when he originally conceived this story. Regardless, I've seen Manos now, and I can get on with my life.

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Previously in Halloween Week 2010:
Nosferatu
Young Frankenstein
The Phantom of the Opera
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Related:
MST3K presents Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
seen @ Trinity Church at Wall Street, New York NY
10.29.10

Trinity Church is this great big church down in lower Manhattan that dates all the way back to the 17th century. It's got quite a history. Though not a believer, I've always been fascinated by the architecture of churches and cathedrals ever since studying them in my high school art history class. In college, I took photography, and one of the very first places I went to take pictures was St. John's Cathedral. I think it's the general design of a church that interests me: the vaulted ceiling, the flying buttresses, the stained glass windows, the sculptures. Obviously not all churches are built the same, but the classical looking ones, the ones that have stood the test of time all over the world, those are always great to look at and admire.

So it was with a very secular feeling of awe that I came to Trinity last night for a screening of the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A small vestibule leads to a long, spacious nave, overlooked by a high, vaulted ceiling. The movie screen at the front blocked the altar, and candelabras flanked its sides. High above, a backlit carving of Jesus (presumably) shines from the rear wall. A giant organ stands stage right from the movie screen. The pews line up on either side of the center aisle, kind of like box seats at a stadium, with giant pillars like oak trees at intervals. Within each pew was a slanted desk-like surface with a nook underneath containing prayer books, hymnals, and of course, bibles. Maybe this all sounds like standard accoutrements for a big-city Catholic church, but I'm not Catholic, so seeing all of this was a rather exotic and unusual experience for me.

There were some concessions to modern times, however. Spotlights and video screens were mounted on the pillars. The latter were tied into the main screen, so they'd also show the film, but they were wide, and as a result the aspect ratio of the original film was distorted significantly. The picture on the rectangular video screens was flat in comparison to the more square-like main screen that showed the film in its original dimensions. Fortunately, I had a good view of the main screen and didn't need to rely on the video screens. (Well, actually, the guy in front of me was pretty tall, so I had to lean a little bit to the right, but not much.)

The screening of Caligari was part of a family-friendly Halloween party the church was throwing that afternoon. Before I entered, I caught sight of a play area for the kiddies with what looked like some kind of "spooky" jungle gym. I also saw a photo booth, which I found odd.

The pews were more comfortable than I thought they'd be. That's because they had cushions. I really thought I'd have to sit on the hard wooden benches. (At least I didn't have to kneel.) It was a large crowd. I had to sit towards the back after not finding anything closer to the front, and I obviously didn't want a view obstructed by a pillar.

A lady preacher introduced the organist after some obligatory announcements about upcoming events. I gotta say - this guy was amazing. The organists at the Loews Jersey City theater are always entertaining in an old-school Hollywood kind of way, but you could tell this guy was used to playing in a church. It didn't hurt that the acoustics here were stronger. From the opening chords, I swear it was almost as if my heart skipped a beat and my teeth rattled. That's how powerful the music was. I was sleepy last night and I occasionally nodded off, but sooner or later, another power chord would jolt me awake again!

I'd only seen Caligari one other time, back in my film history class in college, so I didn't remember much. Unlike Nosferatu, there's fewer dark, moody shadows and more weird, unusual set design. This didn't strike me as a horror movie so much as a psychological suspense movie, kind of like Hitchcock's Spellbound or even recent fare like Memento. It hints at the supernatural, but it has more to do with madness and obsession.

The Trinity Church was an inspired choice of venue to watch a silent German expressionist film - by candlelight, no less! I have no idea how often they show movies there, but I certainly wouldn't object to returning for another one - especially if it means hearing that organ again!

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Previously in Halloween Week 2010:
Nosferatu
Young Frankenstein
The Phantom of the Opera

Soundtracks: The Lost Boys

(This is going up early because I'm seeing a movie tonight and I'm gonna write about it tomorrow.)

The Lost Boys was another great summer movie that I saw with friends from camp. It's a little bittersweet to watch this now, because of what happened to Corey Haim since. Corey Feldman seems more than eager to continue the Lost Boys movies without him, though. This is another soundtrack I have on vinyl, and this remains my favorite song from it.

INXS and Jimmy Barnes, "Good Times"

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
seen online @ YouTube
10.28.10

I hadn't intended to watch so many silent horror movies this week, but I've taken a greater interest in silents recently, in part a result of discovering the blog Silent Volume, which is an excellent resource. Watching silent films requires your complete attention; you can't doze off or else you'll miss a title card or some other bit of information. It requires a level of interactivity greater than in "talkies;" you have to imagine what the actors sound like, and your interpretation may be different from the person next to you. And of course, the music is integral for establishing mood, be it low comedy or high tension.

The version of The Phantom of the Opera that I watched was not the greatest in terms of picture quality. There are several moments in the film where characters read handwritten notes, and I had to pause the movie so I could make them out. Some were more difficult to see than others. In addition, the score sounded like it was merely taken from some classical music record without any regard for how it fits the scenes. Lighthearted moments would have somber music playing, and vice versa.

I couldn't help but notice that in the comments, there was some discussion as to whether or not Lon Chaney's Erik, the titular phantom, was a tragic romantic figure or not. Personally, I don't see how he could be. Yes, he does what he does out of love, but his love is obsessive, possessive and leads to acts of madness and desperation. And some women think this is romantic? (There's a funny scene from the movie Forget Paris where Billy Crystal addresses this. If I could remember what he said verbatim, I'd quote it here.)

Not much more to say about the film except that I'd love to have seen this when it first came out so I could see people freak out over the famous unmasking scene.

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Previously in Halloween Week 2010:
Nosferatu
Young Frankenstein