I(ndie) Will Drink Your Milkshake

In opposition to 'Cloverfield', here is a film built entirely on old fashioned values: actors, a script and rugged location shooting. It's long, it's slow at times, but it has more than one of those shiover-down-the-spine moments that you are watching cinema history (even if only with a small 'h'). Daniel Day-Lewis is given over to the film, and vice-versa, apparently, so the symbiotic actor-director relationship which was established is responsible for the striking unity of the film. There are moments of Guignol, and a few plot mishaps (trying hard to give no spoilers here) bt the film hangs together so well they do not seem gratuitous. Even Day-Lewis' choice of acting style (big, brash and concentrated) doesn't offend, because it's all of a piece with the whole film. This, unlike the recent (also pretty durn good) 'No Country For Old Men' - which had many of the same qualities, but lacked the unity - what you might call a soul - so you feel its excesses are purely to affect the spectator (which knowledge - that the film exists to address an audience) make sit post modern. There Will Be Blood is not.
And while it is about oil, and oilmen, and although it is set 'safely' at the start of the last century, it does not invite an allegorical viewing. You can do that, of course, but it's not primarily only an allegory. It is itself, something increasingly rare.
Go and see the film and we'll talk about it after, Be warned - there are a lot of good lines in the script, and you will find yourself applying some of them to real life. I think i have absorbed the Daniel character, so watch out!
Might come in handy these next weeks, mind...

You Are Here

This is how it might look in the 22nd century. If only there were a transport system. And what happened to Rhinecliff?

Prize Quiz

A prize will be given (from Bread Alone) for anyone correctly identifying and contextualizing this photo. It's a really smart idea and involves the wholly real place of SVALBARD (yes, that Svalbard). Answers, please.

New Logo

The real one is bigger and made of wood.

Zeitgeist, Ex-Hobbits and Hubris

This happens more often that you might think - and no conspiracies or theiving is necessary to explain it. there's obviously something in the air, and unfortunately we may all have to troll off to New York to actually watch the thing, but it seems the imagination count is very low, and aside from a very similar premise, the project is unsuccessful and mired in realism. So, something to learn from that?
Check out what you can about Day Zero, and come armed with ideas. Remember - every problem is really a hidden opportunity, and yes, you can learn from others' mistakes.

Cloverfield

I succumbed. Well, not really - I actually wanted to see this film, as a devotee of 'Lost', and have tried to avoid any knowledge whatsoever of its form or content. It's interesting to try to get back to that pre-internet / pre-gossip state, yet somehow still hear about movies. I mean, how do you hear about a new movie?
Anyway, no spoilers here except to say that i did indeed like it very much and was not disappointed. There are other things to be said, but let's wait until we've all seen it.
The risk for the producers was that such a secretive film would flop at the box office. But, as it's already taken $41 million in its first two days, I guess they are sleeping (or partying) easily right now. By tomorrow (MLK) it may well have become the highest grossing opening ever. Star Wars holds that at the moment.
OK, it's not Stan Brakhage, but it's pretty good for a mystery/horror/thriller movie.

Re Redacted

We have seen it now - or to be accurate - others are seeing it, but I left the room. Not because it was strong or gruesome, but because it was visibly fake. And fake not only in the sense of having a lot of bad acting (i.e. well scanned supposedly spontaneous takes) or because the speeches felt like adapted stage dialogue, or because the inconsistent (i.e. badly thought out) use of camera styles... though that would all be enough... but because the film did not trust its own sense of truth or outrage at the actual incident (and indeed, why make a film of that?). This is manifest in the lack of faith in the film's performances and images to carry its truth. So, the images are multiplied and underlined and the story is tweaked totally unecessarily to add shade. But this is so clumsily done that we do not read shade, we read UNDERLINING. The 'mistake' at a roadblock where innocent Iraquis are killed cannot just be a tragic mistake (which points out the inevitability of collateral damage in such a laxly policed war, any war) but the driver had to be presented as impetuous, refusing to respond to signals. Iraqis are 50% illiterate, says the film. A justifiable mistake. People... literacy has nothing to do with understanding what an armed roadblock means... the film deliberately presents Iraqis as stupid. A person was killed. the scriptwriter makes that person a pregnant woman. This is very lazy screenwriting. perhaps she should also have been carrying a kitten?
The foreshadowing wears clogs. The script, in general, wears clogs and boxing gloves.
Now, in theory, the rape/murder scene should be exempt from these criticisms because it actually happened. But the film did not have the courage to film the truth of the event. It filmed a curiously bashful version of the events, complete with ellipse of the girl's murder and horribly acted pious accusation by the father. Kubrick had a certain courage in 'Full Metal Jacket' and gaspar Noe did in 'Irreversible'.
De palma's film is only deep in a strict sense of narrative: it describes horrible events. But it does so badly, in the aesthetic sense. But the film sets out to describe true events, or at least a true situation, and it does so lazily, convinced of its own moral authority. Un reflecting on its own stated Film Theory 101, which it works into its own argument (Sal's speechifying about the implications of filming events).
Oh well, another bad war film won't kill us, I suppose.
It was very interesting to me to see how the style(s) of the film immediately negated any sense of its truth. At least a Dogma version would have carried force - or not - depending on what was in front of the camera. here, every element worked against every other element, as in Bresson's warning, any truth in there was nullified by all the falsehood.
Oh, and I didn't like it, either.
If I run back inside, I'll just catch the end.
Feel free to comment.

Donde Vamos?

Or here?
I had this same choice in 1978, and opted for vancouver rather than guadalajara, aided somewhat by an unbelievable snowstorm which closed New York and New Jersey, but somehow left the road through Pennsylvania open... anyway... if you can get hold of the film 'The Getaway' or better - the book it came from (which has a much weirder and nastier ending than the Steve McQueen vehicle, there is an interesting parallel to the would-be draft dodger's predicament in it. Never end a sentence with a preposition, neither.

What is 'Fey'?

This is fey.

The question was about how to harmonize various story styles within the one film, and how - without wanting to produce boring conformity - some story moods fit badly with others, and, furthermore, to try to shoe-horn a fantasy type story into a realist style film does violence both to the story itself and to the film as a whole. So, is there a middle ground? Can elements be combined or modified? Or should the two stories agree to go their separate ways.
In which context, the word 'fey' as a perjorative, meaning 'magical but weak and not rigorous' was canvassed. faerie, yes; fey, no.

Also for reference, we discussed 'Pan's Labyrinth' and the considerably less fey 'Spirit of the Beehive' upon which much of 'Pan' was based. Look it up in the videotheque.

J'Arrive Acadia

Where would you go? It's not so far - though further in winter. And what is the season, anyway? Questions to be answered.
below follows an untidy version of today's mise-au-point. May be tidied up in the next days, until then, ponder; disagree;complain.

Structure at start of 2008:

House of War
general synopsis

1st scene- news report on T.V. about draft/war with Iran –not saying it exactly
media character…john stewart ??

2nd scene- all characters present, in a public place but not necessarily together (school cafeteria/diner/ restaurant/ train station)
longish scene

3rd scene- DOC interview 1 – e.g. American deserters in Canada from Iraqi war

each story strand starts with the same scene/image/moment

4th- (1 story strand) ??????????????? could this be a child???
geneva’s story
kid obsessed with reading and Lord of the Rings, theatrical. Has a friend (imaginary) with same interests, and always meets her in the forest. Upon discovering he is drafted, goes to hide in forest with her. When police finds him, the audience finally realizes that the friend doesn’t actually exist. Backstory: father died in a war. Character is anti-war because he believes is it dishonorable to fight and kill virtually, without face to face contact.

5th section - DOC interview 2

6th section - (another story strand)
jericho’s story: prereq, women are drafted.
boy’s pov. 18 yr old. Gets draft letter, ambiguous. Lets anger out on girlfriend. Reveals the news. Later, girl tells boy she’s also been drafted…And, she’s pregnant. Boys pushes abortion, but argument ensues. She breaks up with him, keeps child to avoid draft.

7th section
DOC interview 3

8th section (Robin’s story)
a bunch of slackers sit and ignore the draft. One of them begins having nightmares of war and decides to take extreme drugs to render himself unsuitable for selection. But the price paid turns out as bad as going to the Army.

9th section
DOC interviews 4

10th section (child’s view)
a kid in elementary school knows her father is going away, but can’t understand why or the context.

11th section
DOC interviews 5

12th section (Kaela’s story)
a young man evades the draft by going up to Canada (or Mexico) and uses and develops a kind of Underground railroad system which - at great risk - he transmits to his friends who have not dared to run away.

SECION 13 – the ends
We see what became of each person in the story and learn some interrelationships between the various people. Some reversals? Some surprises? Some epiphanies? Let’s dance.