Thursday, June 25, 2009
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
I haven't seen it and don't plan to endorse it with my dollar. But Roger has made another visionary pronouncement.
Bedtime for Bonzo
Ronald Reagan teaches good manners to a naughty chimpanzee. Sounds like ironically delicious camp...I figured the gag would wear thin by the thirty minute mark. To my amazement, this likely twopenny novelty turns out to be a legitimately hilarious screwball romantic comedy. It's actually kinky in the way it adheres to tidy Production Code standards while the unwed stars suggestively "play house" (in the name of science, you see) and even arrange a stray, sly closeup of bosom. Co-star Diana Lynn is a peach, and when Bonzo makes a tricycle getaway I flat-out keeled over. Seriously fellas, rent this and watch it with your girl — she will love it if she's worth a damn.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Hangover
Since first observing Galifianakis's exotic Comedy Central Presents special seven years ago I have sometimes felt like a naturalist encamped for weeks in my hide, peering through the brush hoping for a glimpse, a bit of photographic evidence of this rare beast to take back to the world and say "Here! Here is this comedian that so maddens and fevers me! See his bearded visage and tremble with hideous laughter! For in his crinkled and sodden eyes your so-called comedy is a joke."
And sometimes Zach will fleet across the glen in a dazzling display of jiggling plumage, but alas my shutter is too slow, capturing only those puzzling and too easily dismissed encounters wherein Zach instead shuffles into view, sniffs his anus, and absently wanders off.
Until this day when, lo and behold! Zacharius has paused in the cineplex to pirouette with queer magnificence. Perhaps, now that you have applauded his dance to the obscene tune of $150 million (more than double the domestic gross of Old School), you can be persuaded to take in
1) his original Comedy Central Presents special,
2) the Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion DVD (his finest hour — rent it for the solid-gold extra features),
3) The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie (stream it on Netflix),
4) the five-part Between Two Ferns interviews,
5) the three-part Absolut Zach spots, and
6) every other clip of him you can find on the internet anywhere. Funnyordie.com has a bunch.
Fun fact! Halley's Comet will be back in 2061, as every Clarke fan knows.
And sometimes Zach will fleet across the glen in a dazzling display of jiggling plumage, but alas my shutter is too slow, capturing only those puzzling and too easily dismissed encounters wherein Zach instead shuffles into view, sniffs his anus, and absently wanders off.
Until this day when, lo and behold! Zacharius has paused in the cineplex to pirouette with queer magnificence. Perhaps, now that you have applauded his dance to the obscene tune of $150 million (more than double the domestic gross of Old School), you can be persuaded to take in
1) his original Comedy Central Presents special,
2) the Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion DVD (his finest hour — rent it for the solid-gold extra features),
3) The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie (stream it on Netflix),
4) the five-part Between Two Ferns interviews,
5) the three-part Absolut Zach spots, and
6) every other clip of him you can find on the internet anywhere. Funnyordie.com has a bunch.
Fun fact! Halley's Comet will be back in 2061, as every Clarke fan knows.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Moral Outrage
Holy shit. I just discovered that Netflix limits your queue to 500 titles. That is unacceptable.
Ramin Bahrani
Ebert has declared that this Iranian-American from North Carolina is the "new great American director", and has already elevated Bahrani's second film, Chop Shop (2007), to the hallowed Great Movies list. Huh?? But then we recall that Roger has lately been of a rather grandiose mood, entreating the world take dictation as he utters his final visionary pronouncements. I can already hear ol' Rog' rattling his chains...And it shall come to pass that all Denny's give way to Steak 'n Shaaaaake! Takhoooooooooooomasaaaaaakk...!
The Sagacious Thumb is not to be discounted entirely, even in his woollier fits of wisdom. It is true that Bahrani is a talented young fellow with the good eye and delicate touch you expect of top shelf observant/humane indie drama. His three movies each give us new images and untold stories of America's post-millennium urban margins — the nocturnal labors of Pakistani street cart vendors in lower Manhattan, the Dickensian jungle of auto wreckers in the lee of Shea Stadium, the transits and encounters of an African cabbie in the Piedmont Triad region of transitional Dixie.
This is good stuff. But I'm afraid it's not quite the revelation Roger makes it out to be. Bahrani's particular subjects are new but the method is old and not forgotten; the Italians were pioneering naturalistic documentation of everyday lives with non-actors in the 1940s, and the practice remains common enough today (e.g. the arthouse projects of Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant). And it's senseless to extol Bahrani's digital cinematography over that of other aesthetic prodigies out there, like David Gordon Green, who still take the trouble to shoot in 35mm.
So what we've got is Equal Opportunity Roger wettings his panties over a non-white American making worthy movies about non-white Americans, which is every reason to get moist, but is not reason to single out Bahrani over the extraordinary contributions of David Gordon Green, Ryan Fleck, Rian Johnson, Jody Hill, Noah Baumbach, Miranda July and John Cameron Mitchell.*
That aside, I want to point out that Bahrani and Green are both members of an impressive cohort that has recently emerged from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, which also includes Green's brilliant cinematographer Tim Orr, directors Jody Hill and Craig Zobel (co-creator of Homestar Runner) and actors Paul Schneider and Danny McBride. Writer Angus MacLachlan (Junebug), a 1980 alum, joined the collaboration with a crack-addled cameo in Goodbye Solo. Apparently NCSA is no joke.
* I stand by this list of young American mainstream directors of consequence. I could really go for Chili 5-Way.
The Sagacious Thumb is not to be discounted entirely, even in his woollier fits of wisdom. It is true that Bahrani is a talented young fellow with the good eye and delicate touch you expect of top shelf observant/humane indie drama. His three movies each give us new images and untold stories of America's post-millennium urban margins — the nocturnal labors of Pakistani street cart vendors in lower Manhattan, the Dickensian jungle of auto wreckers in the lee of Shea Stadium, the transits and encounters of an African cabbie in the Piedmont Triad region of transitional Dixie.
This is good stuff. But I'm afraid it's not quite the revelation Roger makes it out to be. Bahrani's particular subjects are new but the method is old and not forgotten; the Italians were pioneering naturalistic documentation of everyday lives with non-actors in the 1940s, and the practice remains common enough today (e.g. the arthouse projects of Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant). And it's senseless to extol Bahrani's digital cinematography over that of other aesthetic prodigies out there, like David Gordon Green, who still take the trouble to shoot in 35mm.
So what we've got is Equal Opportunity Roger wettings his panties over a non-white American making worthy movies about non-white Americans, which is every reason to get moist, but is not reason to single out Bahrani over the extraordinary contributions of David Gordon Green, Ryan Fleck, Rian Johnson, Jody Hill, Noah Baumbach, Miranda July and John Cameron Mitchell.*
That aside, I want to point out that Bahrani and Green are both members of an impressive cohort that has recently emerged from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, which also includes Green's brilliant cinematographer Tim Orr, directors Jody Hill and Craig Zobel (co-creator of Homestar Runner) and actors Paul Schneider and Danny McBride. Writer Angus MacLachlan (Junebug), a 1980 alum, joined the collaboration with a crack-addled cameo in Goodbye Solo. Apparently NCSA is no joke.
* I stand by this list of young American mainstream directors of consequence. I could really go for Chili 5-Way.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Indie Sex
The IFC recently produced and aired an admirably thorough documentary series that chronicles the history of sex on film, which is necessarily a chronicle of independent filmmaking. Minutes into the first of four hour-long episodes I realized I would need to keep a pad and pen handy; by the end I had jotted down the titles of more than 200 movies mentioned by name and clip, not counting several dozen hardcore stag films from the 1890s - 1920s.
Here's a digest version, supplemented and annotated by myself, of porno (stag), indie and mainstream films that are historically significant for sexual content and confrontation of censorship, taboos. Have fun.
The Dolorita Passion Dance (1896) — unknown — belly dance
Le Coucher de la Marie (1896) — Eugène Pirou — striptease
The Kiss (1896) — William Heise — kissing
A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge (1908) — unknown — stag, in&out
Am Abend (1910) — unknown — stag, fem masturb, oral, anal
L'inferno (1911) — Francesco Bertolini — male full frontal
Traffic in Souls (1913) — George Loane Tucker — prostitution ring
A Florida Enchantment (1914) — Sidney Drew — transgender
Inspiration (1915) — George Foster Platt — fully nude lead actress
First American stag film, 1915
US Supreme Court rules motion pictures not protected by First Amendment, 1915
Anders als die Andern (1919) — Richard Oswald — gay men
Male and Female (1919) — Cecil B. DeMille — Gloria Swanson
The Sheik (1921) — George Melford — Valentino
Manslaughter (1922) — Cecil B. DeMille — Leatrice Joy
The Plastic Age (1925) — Wesley Ruggles — Clara Bow
The Temptress (1926) — Fred Niblo — Greta Garbo
Pandora's Box (1929) — G. W. Pabst — Louise Brooks
Der blaue Engel (1930) — Josef von Sternberg — Marlene Dietrich
L'Âge d'Or (1930) — Luis Buñuel — psychosexual toe sucking
Hell's Angels (1930) — Howard Hughes — Jean Harlow
Night Nurse (1931) — William A. Wellman — Barbara Stanwyck
Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) — Harry Beaumont — Joan Crawford
Mädchen in Uniform (1931) — Leontine Sagan — lesbians
Red-Headed Woman (1932) — Jack Conway — Jean Harlow
I'm No Angel (1933) — Wesley Ruggles — Mae West
Ecstasy (1933) — Gustav Machatý — female O
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) — Cedric Gibbons — nude swimming
Of Human Bondage (1934) — John Cromwell — Bette Davis
Hays Production Code enforced, 1934
The Outlaw (1943) — Howard Hughes — Jane Russell, cleavage
To Have and Have Not (1944) — Howard Hawks — Lauren Bacall
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) — Tay Garnett — Lana Turner
Gilda (1946) — Charles Vidor — Rita Hayworth
Notorious (1946) — Alfred Hitchcock — long kiss
Fireworks (1947) — Kenneth Anger — homoerotic S&M
The Miracle (1948) — Roberto Rossellini — subject of 1952 ruling
Rashomon (1950) — Akira Kurosawa — rape
Un Chant d'Amour (1950) — Jean Genet — gay, explicit oral
US Supreme Court "Miracle Decision" overturns 1915 decision, 1952
Leopard Bikini Bound (1952) — Irving Klaw — Bettie Page
The Moon Is Blue (1953) — Otto Preminger — first use of "virgin"
Glen or Glenda (1953) — Ed Wood — transvestite
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) — Nicholas Ray — teen, gay
The Seven Year Itch (1955) — Billy Wilder — Marilyn Monroe
Baby Doll (1956) — Elia Kazan — child bride
The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) — Russ Meyer — nudie
Shadows (1959) — John Cassavetes — miscegenation
Psycho (1960) — Alfred Hitchcock — deviance/violence
Victim (1961) — Basil Dearden — first use of "homosexual"
Splendor in the Grass (1961) — Elia Kazan — teen lust
Lolita (1962) — Stanley Kubrick — pedophilia
Beach Party (1963) — William Asher — teen beach party!
Promises! Promises! (1963) — King Donovan — Jayne Mansfield topless
The Silence (1963) — Ingmar Bergman — fem masturb
Lenny Bruce arrested on indecency charges, 1963
The Pawnbroker (1964) — Sidney Lumet — code-approved breasts
Masculin féminin (1966) — Jean-Luc Godard — teens on the pill
Blowup (1966) — Michelangelo Antonioni — full frontal
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) — Mike Nichols — "hump the hostess"
Belle de jour (1967) — Luis Buñuel — fetish
I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) — Vilgot Sjöman — sex, drivel
The Graduate (1967) — Mike Nichols — cougar, plastics
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) — Arthur Penn — impotence, oral
I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) — Michael Winner — oral, first use of "fuck"
MPAA ratings system established, 1968
Denmark, Netherlands first countries to legalize hardcore porn, 1969
Flesh (1968) — Paul Morrissey — male full frontal
Women in Love (1969) — Ken Russell — male full frontal
Midnight Cowboy (1969) — John Schlesinger — stud, X
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) — Paul Mazursky — yuppie orgy
The Boys in the Band (1970) — William Friedkin — gay ensemble
The Last Picture Show (1971) — Peter Bogdanovich — teens nude
Harold and Maude (1971) — Hal Ashby — may-december sex
Carnal Knowledge (1971) — Mike Nichols — first use of "cunt"
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) — John Schlesinger — gay sex
Boys in the Sand (1971) — Wakefield Poole — hardcore gay sex
The Devils (1971) — Ken Russell — nunsploitation, X
A Clockwork Orange (1971) — Stanley Kubrick — rape, ultraviolence, Beethoven, X
Last Tango in Paris (1972) — Bernardo Bertolucci — butter, fucked with, X
Deep Throat (1972) — Jerry Gerard — hardcore, porn chic
Pink Flamingos (1972) — John Waters — special interest
Fritz the Cat (1972) — Ralph Bakshi — animated, X
Don't Look Now (1973) — Nicolas Roeg — unsimulated sex
The Exorcist (1973) — William Friedkin — "let Jesus fuck you"
The Last Detail (1973) — Hal Ashby — curse like a sailor
US Supreme Court defines Miller test for obscenity, 1973
The Night Porter (1974) — Liliana Cavani — nazi S&M
Vase de Noces (1974) — Thierry Zéno — bestiality
Shampoo (1975) — Hal Ashby — hollywood orgy
Salò (1975) — Pier Paolo Pasolini — nazi orgy, coprophagia, torture, etc
Debbie Does Dallas (1978) — Jim Clark — hardcore, cheerleaders
Halloween (1978) — John Carpenter — "teenagers with active sex lives are machete magnets"
Caligula (1979) — Tinto Brass — roman orgy, anal fisting, urolagnia, etc, etc
American Gigolo (1980) — Paul Schrader — wang
Little Darlings (1980) — Ronald F. Maxwell — teen virginity
Porky's (1982) — Bob Clark — teen raunch
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) — Amy Heckerling — masturbating, caught
Blue Velvet (1986) — David Lynch — he put his disease in me
9 1/2 Weeks (1986) — Adrian Lyne — erotic? camp
California Supreme Court legalizes hardcore porn, 1987
Hairspray (1988) — John Waters — fat-positive
sex, lies, and videotape (1989) — Steven Soderbergh — Spader
MPAA introduces NC-17, 1990
Henry & June (1990) — Philip Kaufman — first NC-17
The Crying Game (1992) — Neil Jordan — tranny
Basic Instinct (1992) — Paul Verhoeven — cooter
Philadelphia (1993) — Jonathan Demme — AIDS
Showgirls (1995) — Paul Verhoeven — NC-17 bomb
Kids (1995) — Larry Clark — teen AIDS, UR
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) — Todd Solondz — prepub
Crash (1996) — David Cronenberg — WTF, Spader
Preaching to the Perverted (1997) — Stuart Urban — BDSM club
American Pie (1999) — Paul Weitz — teen raunch back again
Coming Soon (1999) — Colette Burson — teen girl O
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) — Jamie Babbit — teen lesb
Fat Girl (2001) — Catherine Breillat — prepub, rape
Irréversible (2002) — Gaspar Noé — graphic rape
Secretary (2002) — Steven Shainberg — BDSM romcom, Spader
Young Adam (2003) — David Mackenzie — graphic sex, NC-17
The Brown Bunny (2003) — Vincent Gallo — fellatio
Brokeback Mountain (2005) — Ang Lee — big gay movie, cowboys
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) — Miranda July — back and forth... ))<>((
Shortbus (2006) — John Cameron Mitchell — celebration, UR
Here's a digest version, supplemented and annotated by myself, of porno (stag), indie and mainstream films that are historically significant for sexual content and confrontation of censorship, taboos. Have fun.
The Dolorita Passion Dance (1896) — unknown — belly dance
Le Coucher de la Marie (1896) — Eugène Pirou — striptease
The Kiss (1896) — William Heise — kissing
A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge (1908) — unknown — stag, in&out
Am Abend (1910) — unknown — stag, fem masturb, oral, anal
L'inferno (1911) — Francesco Bertolini — male full frontal
Traffic in Souls (1913) — George Loane Tucker — prostitution ring
A Florida Enchantment (1914) — Sidney Drew — transgender
Inspiration (1915) — George Foster Platt — fully nude lead actress
First American stag film, 1915
US Supreme Court rules motion pictures not protected by First Amendment, 1915
Anders als die Andern (1919) — Richard Oswald — gay men
Male and Female (1919) — Cecil B. DeMille — Gloria Swanson
The Sheik (1921) — George Melford — Valentino
Manslaughter (1922) — Cecil B. DeMille — Leatrice Joy
The Plastic Age (1925) — Wesley Ruggles — Clara Bow
The Temptress (1926) — Fred Niblo — Greta Garbo
Pandora's Box (1929) — G. W. Pabst — Louise Brooks
Der blaue Engel (1930) — Josef von Sternberg — Marlene Dietrich
L'Âge d'Or (1930) — Luis Buñuel — psychosexual toe sucking
Hell's Angels (1930) — Howard Hughes — Jean Harlow
Night Nurse (1931) — William A. Wellman — Barbara Stanwyck
Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) — Harry Beaumont — Joan Crawford
Mädchen in Uniform (1931) — Leontine Sagan — lesbians
Red-Headed Woman (1932) — Jack Conway — Jean Harlow
I'm No Angel (1933) — Wesley Ruggles — Mae West
Ecstasy (1933) — Gustav Machatý — female O
Tarzan and His Mate (1934) — Cedric Gibbons — nude swimming
Of Human Bondage (1934) — John Cromwell — Bette Davis
Hays Production Code enforced, 1934
The Outlaw (1943) — Howard Hughes — Jane Russell, cleavage
To Have and Have Not (1944) — Howard Hawks — Lauren Bacall
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) — Tay Garnett — Lana Turner
Gilda (1946) — Charles Vidor — Rita Hayworth
Notorious (1946) — Alfred Hitchcock — long kiss
Fireworks (1947) — Kenneth Anger — homoerotic S&M
The Miracle (1948) — Roberto Rossellini — subject of 1952 ruling
Rashomon (1950) — Akira Kurosawa — rape
Un Chant d'Amour (1950) — Jean Genet — gay, explicit oral
US Supreme Court "Miracle Decision" overturns 1915 decision, 1952
Leopard Bikini Bound (1952) — Irving Klaw — Bettie Page
The Moon Is Blue (1953) — Otto Preminger — first use of "virgin"
Glen or Glenda (1953) — Ed Wood — transvestite
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) — Nicholas Ray — teen, gay
The Seven Year Itch (1955) — Billy Wilder — Marilyn Monroe
Baby Doll (1956) — Elia Kazan — child bride
The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) — Russ Meyer — nudie
Shadows (1959) — John Cassavetes — miscegenation
Psycho (1960) — Alfred Hitchcock — deviance/violence
Victim (1961) — Basil Dearden — first use of "homosexual"
Splendor in the Grass (1961) — Elia Kazan — teen lust
Lolita (1962) — Stanley Kubrick — pedophilia
Beach Party (1963) — William Asher — teen beach party!
Promises! Promises! (1963) — King Donovan — Jayne Mansfield topless
The Silence (1963) — Ingmar Bergman — fem masturb
Lenny Bruce arrested on indecency charges, 1963
The Pawnbroker (1964) — Sidney Lumet — code-approved breasts
Masculin féminin (1966) — Jean-Luc Godard — teens on the pill
Blowup (1966) — Michelangelo Antonioni — full frontal
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) — Mike Nichols — "hump the hostess"
Belle de jour (1967) — Luis Buñuel — fetish
I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) — Vilgot Sjöman — sex, drivel
The Graduate (1967) — Mike Nichols — cougar, plastics
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) — Arthur Penn — impotence, oral
I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) — Michael Winner — oral, first use of "fuck"
MPAA ratings system established, 1968
Denmark, Netherlands first countries to legalize hardcore porn, 1969
Flesh (1968) — Paul Morrissey — male full frontal
Women in Love (1969) — Ken Russell — male full frontal
Midnight Cowboy (1969) — John Schlesinger — stud, X
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) — Paul Mazursky — yuppie orgy
The Boys in the Band (1970) — William Friedkin — gay ensemble
The Last Picture Show (1971) — Peter Bogdanovich — teens nude
Harold and Maude (1971) — Hal Ashby — may-december sex
Carnal Knowledge (1971) — Mike Nichols — first use of "cunt"
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) — John Schlesinger — gay sex
Boys in the Sand (1971) — Wakefield Poole — hardcore gay sex
The Devils (1971) — Ken Russell — nunsploitation, X
A Clockwork Orange (1971) — Stanley Kubrick — rape, ultraviolence, Beethoven, X
Last Tango in Paris (1972) — Bernardo Bertolucci — butter, fucked with, X
Deep Throat (1972) — Jerry Gerard — hardcore, porn chic
Pink Flamingos (1972) — John Waters — special interest
Fritz the Cat (1972) — Ralph Bakshi — animated, X
Don't Look Now (1973) — Nicolas Roeg — unsimulated sex
The Exorcist (1973) — William Friedkin — "let Jesus fuck you"
The Last Detail (1973) — Hal Ashby — curse like a sailor
US Supreme Court defines Miller test for obscenity, 1973
The Night Porter (1974) — Liliana Cavani — nazi S&M
Vase de Noces (1974) — Thierry Zéno — bestiality
Shampoo (1975) — Hal Ashby — hollywood orgy
Salò (1975) — Pier Paolo Pasolini — nazi orgy, coprophagia, torture, etc
Debbie Does Dallas (1978) — Jim Clark — hardcore, cheerleaders
Halloween (1978) — John Carpenter — "teenagers with active sex lives are machete magnets"
Caligula (1979) — Tinto Brass — roman orgy, anal fisting, urolagnia, etc, etc
American Gigolo (1980) — Paul Schrader — wang
Little Darlings (1980) — Ronald F. Maxwell — teen virginity
Porky's (1982) — Bob Clark — teen raunch
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) — Amy Heckerling — masturbating, caught
Blue Velvet (1986) — David Lynch — he put his disease in me
9 1/2 Weeks (1986) — Adrian Lyne — erotic? camp
California Supreme Court legalizes hardcore porn, 1987
Hairspray (1988) — John Waters — fat-positive
sex, lies, and videotape (1989) — Steven Soderbergh — Spader
MPAA introduces NC-17, 1990
Henry & June (1990) — Philip Kaufman — first NC-17
The Crying Game (1992) — Neil Jordan — tranny
Basic Instinct (1992) — Paul Verhoeven — cooter
Philadelphia (1993) — Jonathan Demme — AIDS
Showgirls (1995) — Paul Verhoeven — NC-17 bomb
Kids (1995) — Larry Clark — teen AIDS, UR
Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) — Todd Solondz — prepub
Crash (1996) — David Cronenberg — WTF, Spader
Preaching to the Perverted (1997) — Stuart Urban — BDSM club
American Pie (1999) — Paul Weitz — teen raunch back again
Coming Soon (1999) — Colette Burson — teen girl O
But I'm a Cheerleader (1999) — Jamie Babbit — teen lesb
Fat Girl (2001) — Catherine Breillat — prepub, rape
Irréversible (2002) — Gaspar Noé — graphic rape
Secretary (2002) — Steven Shainberg — BDSM romcom, Spader
Young Adam (2003) — David Mackenzie — graphic sex, NC-17
The Brown Bunny (2003) — Vincent Gallo — fellatio
Brokeback Mountain (2005) — Ang Lee — big gay movie, cowboys
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) — Miranda July — back and forth... ))<>((
Shortbus (2006) — John Cameron Mitchell — celebration, UR
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Days of Wine and Roses
Jack Lemmon quaffs a few liters of gin in 1962 and, sure enough, ends up strapped in a Posey gibbering in a rubber corner. Let that be a lesson to you youngsters: Don't drink and time travel. Because fifty years ago commercial liquor was laced with PCP.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder
The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a real place, located on Venice Boulevard in West Los Angeles for the last quarter century or so. Tucked between a carpet store and a Thai restaurant is the unassuming front for a pocket dimension of slanting oddity, a purported museum of...natural history, perhaps??...operated by its own Sardô (accent on the dô) under the equally unassuming name David Wilson. The hushed and solemnly lit exhibits resemble something like a Ripley's Believe It or Not! borne with the academic integrity of the Smithsonian. Resting within mahogany and velvet vitrines are such treasures as a rare Amazonian bat Myotis lucifugus frozen mid-flight inside a block of solid lead (which, we learn, it failed to fully penetrate using its unique X-ray based echolocation), an incomprehensible model of the Sonnabend Model of Obliscence (notice how the Spelean Ring Disparity encircles the Cone of Confabulation), and "The Rose Collection of Now-Extinct Nineteenth-Century French Moths". Each is meticulously labeled and indexed, but with such recondite specificity as to make the supposedly authoritative references* baffling and useless. What the hell is this place? At the desk an informative (puzzling) brochure offers a supposed map of the "Lower Jurassic", which might have been enlightening had it not turned out to be merely a queerly relabeled map of the lands of Egypt.
But this actually is a clue, of sorts. The pamphlet goes on to state:
I learned all of the above from an irresistibly brief work of nonfiction called Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder (1995), an account of author Lawrence Weschler's discovery of and investigation into the MJT. Weschler, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, concludes that the MJT is intended as both an oblique historiography of museums and a satire of the techniques scholars use to create the appearance of authority, although the straight-faced Wilson isn't letting on. (Is his proprietorship a daily piece of performance art?) In any case, many of the astounding items on display are verifiably genuine, but even these may be misleadingly or preposterously labeled, and so the mind slips.
Museums as the institutions we know today originated from the European Wunderkammern of the 16th and 17th centuries: Private collections of curiosities of all description that defied pre-Enlightenment disciplinary classification — works of strange art by God and man — mainly from the New World. Weschler contends that the predominant response of parochial Europe to the avalanche of discovery initiated by Columbus was wonder, the cognitive startle reflex when one tilts on the hinge between seeing and understanding. That experience contains something vital.
* Example. Alongside an array of sundry antlers and horns is a display containing a solitary hairy protrusion captioned as follows, sic:
But this actually is a clue, of sorts. The pamphlet goes on to state:
By far, the most important museum of antiquity was the great institution at Alexandria founded by Ptolemy Philadelphius in the third century before Christ (an endeavor supported by a grant from the Treasury). And no treatment of the museum would be complete without mention of Noah's Ark in which we find the most complete Museum of Natural History the world has ever seen.Beginning to understand?
I learned all of the above from an irresistibly brief work of nonfiction called Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder (1995), an account of author Lawrence Weschler's discovery of and investigation into the MJT. Weschler, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, concludes that the MJT is intended as both an oblique historiography of museums and a satire of the techniques scholars use to create the appearance of authority, although the straight-faced Wilson isn't letting on. (Is his proprietorship a daily piece of performance art?) In any case, many of the astounding items on display are verifiably genuine, but even these may be misleadingly or preposterously labeled, and so the mind slips.
Museums as the institutions we know today originated from the European Wunderkammern of the 16th and 17th centuries: Private collections of curiosities of all description that defied pre-Enlightenment disciplinary classification — works of strange art by God and man — mainly from the New World. Weschler contends that the predominant response of parochial Europe to the avalanche of discovery initiated by Columbus was wonder, the cognitive startle reflex when one tilts on the hinge between seeing and understanding. That experience contains something vital.
* Example. Alongside an array of sundry antlers and horns is a display containing a solitary hairy protrusion captioned as follows, sic:
"We were shown an extraordinarily curious horn which had grown on the back of a woman's head. . . . It is somewhat of a curiosity [for] it appears that men-folk bear their horns in front and such women theirs behind. It was noted on a label that it originated from a Mary Davis of Saughall in Cheshire an aet 71 an. Dn. 1688. No doubt it will have been mentioned in the Transactiones Angl., or in the Hist. nat. of Cheshire. The horn was blackish in color, not very thick or hard, but well-proportioned."
— Testimony of an early visitor to the Musaeum Tradescantianum, The Ark. Bird, 132, vol. 4, 337. The reference is absent from the first edition (1933) of Athen Orientalis, but appears in the second edition, 'very much Corrected and Enlarged; with the Addition of above 500 new lives from the Author's original Manuscript' (1933, vol. 2, col. 888) . . . although Bird's testimony would seem to be of very dubious value.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Be Kind Rewind
Jed's Video was as sacred to me as the marshes and backyards and train tracks of my hometown. The store changed locations once but was always within reach on our bikes, a journey that involved a perilous crossing of the four lanes of Route 12. The second location was better, being near to the tasty hot dogs of Wiener Take All. They wouldn't rent the R-rated movies to you, but you could look at the cover boxes all you wanted. The horror movie boxes had the best, most gruesome pictures, and since they were verboten I was doubly fascinated. They would let you take out PG-13 movies (even before you were thirteen!) and so we rented Tremors and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Critters 2* again and again. Once a dangerously curious friend swiped his parents' rental card and he and I managed to obtain Faces of Death. I still remember riding the bus the next day feeling rather ill and a rare sense of regret. (I only just today learned that much of the footage of actual human deaths is fake.)
Video rental culture died with VHS. During the summer I spent jockeying tapes at a Blockbuster Video (Jed's and its friendly neighborhood kin had been muscled out by the evil rental corporations; Blockbuster owned my labor but never my allegiance) the VHS liquidation was underway. The well-loved cardboard videocassette boxes with their thumbed and curling corners, stuffed with creaking Styrofoam inserts, were daily replaced by sterile plastic DVD cases that snapped and pinched. There is a satisfying weight to a sturdy VHS tape, a mild pleasure in the way a pile of them will clatter and click. By their substantial mass they seem more important, less disposable. Walking out of Jed's with a tape — a particular black box that had somehow been located by the clerk among the millions of identical black boxes behind the counter and withdrawn just for you — you felt that you had been entrusted with a valued object, and you pedaled quickly home.
* The best of the Critters series, as everyone knows. Contains a mind-blowing scene of copious naked boobs. PG-13??
Video rental culture died with VHS. During the summer I spent jockeying tapes at a Blockbuster Video (Jed's and its friendly neighborhood kin had been muscled out by the evil rental corporations; Blockbuster owned my labor but never my allegiance) the VHS liquidation was underway. The well-loved cardboard videocassette boxes with their thumbed and curling corners, stuffed with creaking Styrofoam inserts, were daily replaced by sterile plastic DVD cases that snapped and pinched. There is a satisfying weight to a sturdy VHS tape, a mild pleasure in the way a pile of them will clatter and click. By their substantial mass they seem more important, less disposable. Walking out of Jed's with a tape — a particular black box that had somehow been located by the clerk among the millions of identical black boxes behind the counter and withdrawn just for you — you felt that you had been entrusted with a valued object, and you pedaled quickly home.
* The best of the Critters series, as everyone knows. Contains a mind-blowing scene of copious naked boobs. PG-13??
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Or Was He? [DH]
A Critical Re-appraisal of the Ending to A Clockwork Orange.
[Written by David of Hamburg]
It is universally known among fans of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange that the film's ending is vastly different from that of the Burgess novel. Viz., the film entirely omits the "happy" ending of the novel's twenty-first chapter, in which Alex comes around to a more "mature" or "normal" frame of mind vis-à-vis battery, rape, etc., through the effect of time. It is also a commonplace to observe that although Kubrick claimed not to have been aware of the final chapter when he was writing the screenplay (since it was omitted from the American edition), he would under no circumstances have included it, since it would clearly have been entirely contrary to his uncompromisingly bleak vision for the film. (Remember, this is a man who said of The Shining, "Any story which shows a life after death is ultimately an optimistic story.")
In fact, Kubrick's vision is even darker than most viewers realize, for as I shall show, at the end of the film Alex remains, despite the trivial material gains he has secured from the toadying minister, deprived of that which was most important to him: his very identity, his creative energy. In short, his concluding statement "I was cured all right" is shown by what has come before it to be false in every meaningful sense. To demonstrate this conclusively, I will closely reëxamine the entire closing sequence from Alex's suicide attempt, and show what is really going on.
First, Alex awakens in his hospital bed. In one of Kubrick's brilliant parallelisms, his moans of awakening are answered each for each by the moans of a nurse being fucked by the attending physician in the adjacent bed. Breasts flapping wildly, she rushes over to him. But does Alex make any amused, wittily sarcastic commentary on this? No. Naturally the Alex on screen is in no position to do so, being only barely conscious. But what of the Alex of the voiceover? He has just finished telling us that if he had died, he couldn't be relating the story, and from this we gather that this voiceover Alex is the real Alex of some future time relating the story to us, and thus everything that we see on the screen is known to him (and that point is confirmed at several earlier points also). So why so suddenly silent? This is the first troubling, if indirect, sign that Alex is not as he was before the Ludovico monstrosity.
Next he is visited by his parents, but after their stunning betrayal of him to the odious, oleaginous Joe, all he can manage is a weak "What makes you think you are welcome?" instead of the glorious wordplay that charmed us in the first two acts. Again, he's still weak and recovering, so this is mere foreshadowing.
But now we come to the most crucial scene: the interview with the psychiatrist. First, Alex reports on doctors messing about in his brain. Are they likely to have reversed the Ludovico process with precision? Of course not. Far more likely is something akin to a lobotomy, which as is well known maintains the subject's intelligence but has a devastating effect on his joie de vivre. Then on to the association test. To "Isn't the plumage beautiful?" he replies "It's not got a beak!" Now the interesting thing here is that the bird in the picture clearly does have a beak, so Alex's reply has modest surrealism value, but notice that he hesitates before the final word "beak". Was he perhaps thinking of another monosyllable ending in "k", one which the pictured bird clearly does not have? Was his twice-damaged brain desperately trying to come out with that word, but was prevented, and settled on the inoffensive (and wrong) "beak"?
"The boy you always quarreled with is seriously ill." "And I'll smash your face for you, yarblockos!" The violence is back, yes, and the aggression. But where is the fun? Where is, as Alex so eloquently put it, the "sort of joy of battle"? Random assault of whoever's nearest was never Alex's idiom. Like Highlights magazine, his fun was always with a purpose.
"What do you want?" "No time for the old in&out love; I've just come to read the meter." Superficially, this response seems encouraging: it's actually funny! But think about what he's actually saying: Alexander deLarge is turning down sex in favor of performing his duty as an employee. What is going on? Have we entered BizzaroLand? (Notice that new Alex makes essentially no effort to seduce the very willing-seeming psychiatrist.) Moreover, a minute's further reflection reminds us that this is in fact a very old joke that Alex is merely parroting (with slightly updated Nadsat language). What we have here is a grotesque simulation of the old Alex: enough to satisfy the press (even the ditzy psychiatrist, perhaps), but to us, the viewers, quite plainly an abomination.
"You sold me a crummy watch. I want my money back." "You know what you can do with your watch? Stick it up your arse!" The utter insipidity of this is self-explanatory.
And now the last nail in the coffin: "You can do whatever you like with these." "Eggy-weggs... I would like...to smash 'em!" To smash 'em? To smash 'em?!?!?! Is this what his genius is reduced to, the Incredible Hulk?? The old Alex would have tied down the mother bird and made her watch him slowly destroy each one. The old Alex would have forced one egg into each of the orifices of the pretty devotchka offering them, then informed her that if any of them broke during the subsequent gangbang, he would beat her to within an inch of her life. But the new Alex, the sad shell of an Alex (no pun intended), can only think to smash 'em. And maybe pick them up, and smash 'em again. It's enough to make one cry.
The minister comes. Alex continues to be stubbornly literal-minded: "What job and 'ow much?" His one break into poetry: "As an unmuddied lake, sir. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer" is, of course, a word-for-word repetition of what he told Deltoid at the beginning of the film. It is indeed a telling callback, naïvely seeming to indicate a return to his old scheming ways. But in the light of the psychiatrist scene, we know it for what it is: confirmation that Alex is now but an empty shell, parroting his old self but only on the most superficial level.
And then we move into the final sequence. Alex can hear the 9th without nausea, yes, and it appears to give him one of his trademark visions, but look again. His face as we cut away is not rapture as it was before: it's more like a seizure. And unlike before, when the fantasy shots were quickly intercut to show the activity of his mind, here we have a single shot, in slow motion no less. And what of the content? It appears to be Alex being given a very pleasant ride on the beach by a little blond number, with staid Victorian society applauding on the sidelines. But look closer: Alex and the girl are sunken, and slowly sinking farther; they're being buried! This is what society is applauding, the burial of Alex's joy, his creativity, his precious essence! There's no other way to interpret it: we are watching in real time the final collapse of his mind.
"I was cured all right"? Not even close.
[Written by David of Hamburg]
It is universally known among fans of Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange that the film's ending is vastly different from that of the Burgess novel. Viz., the film entirely omits the "happy" ending of the novel's twenty-first chapter, in which Alex comes around to a more "mature" or "normal" frame of mind vis-à-vis battery, rape, etc., through the effect of time. It is also a commonplace to observe that although Kubrick claimed not to have been aware of the final chapter when he was writing the screenplay (since it was omitted from the American edition), he would under no circumstances have included it, since it would clearly have been entirely contrary to his uncompromisingly bleak vision for the film. (Remember, this is a man who said of The Shining, "Any story which shows a life after death is ultimately an optimistic story.")
In fact, Kubrick's vision is even darker than most viewers realize, for as I shall show, at the end of the film Alex remains, despite the trivial material gains he has secured from the toadying minister, deprived of that which was most important to him: his very identity, his creative energy. In short, his concluding statement "I was cured all right" is shown by what has come before it to be false in every meaningful sense. To demonstrate this conclusively, I will closely reëxamine the entire closing sequence from Alex's suicide attempt, and show what is really going on.
First, Alex awakens in his hospital bed. In one of Kubrick's brilliant parallelisms, his moans of awakening are answered each for each by the moans of a nurse being fucked by the attending physician in the adjacent bed. Breasts flapping wildly, she rushes over to him. But does Alex make any amused, wittily sarcastic commentary on this? No. Naturally the Alex on screen is in no position to do so, being only barely conscious. But what of the Alex of the voiceover? He has just finished telling us that if he had died, he couldn't be relating the story, and from this we gather that this voiceover Alex is the real Alex of some future time relating the story to us, and thus everything that we see on the screen is known to him (and that point is confirmed at several earlier points also). So why so suddenly silent? This is the first troubling, if indirect, sign that Alex is not as he was before the Ludovico monstrosity.
Next he is visited by his parents, but after their stunning betrayal of him to the odious, oleaginous Joe, all he can manage is a weak "What makes you think you are welcome?" instead of the glorious wordplay that charmed us in the first two acts. Again, he's still weak and recovering, so this is mere foreshadowing.
But now we come to the most crucial scene: the interview with the psychiatrist. First, Alex reports on doctors messing about in his brain. Are they likely to have reversed the Ludovico process with precision? Of course not. Far more likely is something akin to a lobotomy, which as is well known maintains the subject's intelligence but has a devastating effect on his joie de vivre. Then on to the association test. To "Isn't the plumage beautiful?" he replies "It's not got a beak!" Now the interesting thing here is that the bird in the picture clearly does have a beak, so Alex's reply has modest surrealism value, but notice that he hesitates before the final word "beak". Was he perhaps thinking of another monosyllable ending in "k", one which the pictured bird clearly does not have? Was his twice-damaged brain desperately trying to come out with that word, but was prevented, and settled on the inoffensive (and wrong) "beak"?
"The boy you always quarreled with is seriously ill." "And I'll smash your face for you, yarblockos!" The violence is back, yes, and the aggression. But where is the fun? Where is, as Alex so eloquently put it, the "sort of joy of battle"? Random assault of whoever's nearest was never Alex's idiom. Like Highlights magazine, his fun was always with a purpose.
"What do you want?" "No time for the old in&out love; I've just come to read the meter." Superficially, this response seems encouraging: it's actually funny! But think about what he's actually saying: Alexander deLarge is turning down sex in favor of performing his duty as an employee. What is going on? Have we entered BizzaroLand? (Notice that new Alex makes essentially no effort to seduce the very willing-seeming psychiatrist.) Moreover, a minute's further reflection reminds us that this is in fact a very old joke that Alex is merely parroting (with slightly updated Nadsat language). What we have here is a grotesque simulation of the old Alex: enough to satisfy the press (even the ditzy psychiatrist, perhaps), but to us, the viewers, quite plainly an abomination.
"You sold me a crummy watch. I want my money back." "You know what you can do with your watch? Stick it up your arse!" The utter insipidity of this is self-explanatory.
And now the last nail in the coffin: "You can do whatever you like with these." "Eggy-weggs... I would like...to smash 'em!" To smash 'em? To smash 'em?!?!?! Is this what his genius is reduced to, the Incredible Hulk?? The old Alex would have tied down the mother bird and made her watch him slowly destroy each one. The old Alex would have forced one egg into each of the orifices of the pretty devotchka offering them, then informed her that if any of them broke during the subsequent gangbang, he would beat her to within an inch of her life. But the new Alex, the sad shell of an Alex (no pun intended), can only think to smash 'em. And maybe pick them up, and smash 'em again. It's enough to make one cry.
The minister comes. Alex continues to be stubbornly literal-minded: "What job and 'ow much?" His one break into poetry: "As an unmuddied lake, sir. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer" is, of course, a word-for-word repetition of what he told Deltoid at the beginning of the film. It is indeed a telling callback, naïvely seeming to indicate a return to his old scheming ways. But in the light of the psychiatrist scene, we know it for what it is: confirmation that Alex is now but an empty shell, parroting his old self but only on the most superficial level.
And then we move into the final sequence. Alex can hear the 9th without nausea, yes, and it appears to give him one of his trademark visions, but look again. His face as we cut away is not rapture as it was before: it's more like a seizure. And unlike before, when the fantasy shots were quickly intercut to show the activity of his mind, here we have a single shot, in slow motion no less. And what of the content? It appears to be Alex being given a very pleasant ride on the beach by a little blond number, with staid Victorian society applauding on the sidelines. But look closer: Alex and the girl are sunken, and slowly sinking farther; they're being buried! This is what society is applauding, the burial of Alex's joy, his creativity, his precious essence! There's no other way to interpret it: we are watching in real time the final collapse of his mind.
"I was cured all right"? Not even close.
Up
The delicate, wordless first reel drew tears. On loan from WALL-E are the economical storytelling and loving character details (Ellie's hazardous haircut), if not the breathtaking wonder and delight. The remaining reels do contain the handwoven material needed to complete a perfect short film, but sadly it is stitched into a coarse and conventional feature about talking dogs (and poker-playing dogs, and butler dogs, and fighter pilot dogs) and an endangered bird; Disney-straight-to-video stuff.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Eden Log
There is a rule about French sci-fi movies: They...are...the...worst. Jean-Pierre Jeunet is an exception. Godard is not.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Drag Me To Hell
I had been wondering why Sam Raimi would remake a movie he's already made four times*. About five seconds into the opening titles, when a spoooky skull came bobbing out of the darkness right at the screen!, I realized the answer: Raimi's slapstick horror-comedy formula is perfect, and yet he has no imitators.
Before you start listing your favorite horror-comedies of recent years — like Slither and Shaun of the Dead and Planet Terror and The Host and, casting back to 1996, The Frighteners — let's look at the actual broad trends in the industry.
Consider US theatrical releases listed in the IMDb. Take the fraction of all movies that are tagged as horror and call it the Lugosi index. Now take the fraction of all horror movies that are also tagged as comedy and call it the Raimi index. Express each index as a percentage. So for example, the figure above indicates that in the mid-90s about 5% of US theatrical releases were horror movies, and of those about 18% were horror-comedies. Data is averaged over 5-year intervals, e.g. 1994-1998, 1999-2003, etc.
The Lugosi shows the history of the relative popularity of horror movies in the US, which, as discussed previously, became a significant genre in the 30s and grew through the war years before tanking in the sci-fi craze of the early 50s. Horror steadily claimed an increasing share of the market over the next thirty years, peaking in the mid-80s before horror in general and comedic horror in particular took an unprecedented dive under the Clinton administration.
The Raimi demonstrates that horror was getting funnier through to the end of the 60s, when something rather sobering occurred. A uniquely American horror cinema emerged for the first time; not merely an import of Old World folklore, nor technophobic Cold War sci-fi-horror, but a bleak and grisly new vision of the American landscape. Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the harbinger and The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) are the exemplars. It was the 70s, Vietnam and Nixon, and shit got real serious.
Until that rusty chainsaw was snatched up by a certain steamroller-chinned S-Mart employee, housewares. Goofball gutsplatter more than doubled its share of the horror genre in the next few years and became a major influence on the 80s horror heyday; even the Freddy-Jason slasher franchises became sillier, more laugh-driven as time went on. (The Halloween series maintained a little more discipline.)
Then, like a machete through a nylon nookie-tent, struck the No Fun Nineties. Looking back...Jesus, we were uptight under that Arkansan huckster. I mean, the 80s were totally ridiculous (can anyone not cringe at what they were wearing?), but although I would still trade hair metal for grunge any day, at least we had Gremlins and Ghostbusters and Pee-Wee and Ferris Bueller and Marty McFly and Roger Rabbit and Goonies and some other Spielberg-Hughes-Zemeckis nonsense every week. The fact is that in 1980 America elected a clown who had once co-starred with a chimp named Bonzo, which sent a clear message: Anything goes, cowboy! I didn't always think so, but now I'm pretty sure it was the best decade ever to be a kid.
Comedy Central will sometimes rerun a block of stand-up from the 90s: Notice that every routine is a rant about political correctness. That damn buzzword was eventually dragged to hell, thank the Maker, but the superjaded zeitgeist of detachment and self-conscious irony persisted for nearly a decade. No room for the childlike fancy and fear that is the basic stuff of spook stories. Both Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson went respectable. No Fun. The horror genre only survived at all by becoming ironic, with Scream (1996) and its ilk.
Comedic horror continued to bleed from the throat during the Iraq war, but horror in general began a hopeful comeback thanks to a cruel revival of the gritty 70s aesthetic (torture porn, pathetic remakes).
Drag Me To Hell is Raimi working in the same sincere, unaffected, classical vein as latter-day Clint Eastwood. It's Tom & Jerry thinly disguised for grown-ups; the hideous horror hag is literally clobbered by an inexplicable anvil. No one else would dare to be so disarmingly guileless.
* Within the Woods (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), Army of Darkness (1993). Word on the street is that Raimi and Campbell are pushing another Evil Dead sequel/remake for 2010.
Before you start listing your favorite horror-comedies of recent years — like Slither and Shaun of the Dead and Planet Terror and The Host and, casting back to 1996, The Frighteners — let's look at the actual broad trends in the industry.
Consider US theatrical releases listed in the IMDb. Take the fraction of all movies that are tagged as horror and call it the Lugosi index. Now take the fraction of all horror movies that are also tagged as comedy and call it the Raimi index. Express each index as a percentage. So for example, the figure above indicates that in the mid-90s about 5% of US theatrical releases were horror movies, and of those about 18% were horror-comedies. Data is averaged over 5-year intervals, e.g. 1994-1998, 1999-2003, etc.
The Lugosi shows the history of the relative popularity of horror movies in the US, which, as discussed previously, became a significant genre in the 30s and grew through the war years before tanking in the sci-fi craze of the early 50s. Horror steadily claimed an increasing share of the market over the next thirty years, peaking in the mid-80s before horror in general and comedic horror in particular took an unprecedented dive under the Clinton administration.
The Raimi demonstrates that horror was getting funnier through to the end of the 60s, when something rather sobering occurred. A uniquely American horror cinema emerged for the first time; not merely an import of Old World folklore, nor technophobic Cold War sci-fi-horror, but a bleak and grisly new vision of the American landscape. Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the harbinger and The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) are the exemplars. It was the 70s, Vietnam and Nixon, and shit got real serious.
Until that rusty chainsaw was snatched up by a certain steamroller-chinned S-Mart employee, housewares. Goofball gutsplatter more than doubled its share of the horror genre in the next few years and became a major influence on the 80s horror heyday; even the Freddy-Jason slasher franchises became sillier, more laugh-driven as time went on. (The Halloween series maintained a little more discipline.)
Then, like a machete through a nylon nookie-tent, struck the No Fun Nineties. Looking back...Jesus, we were uptight under that Arkansan huckster. I mean, the 80s were totally ridiculous (can anyone not cringe at what they were wearing?), but although I would still trade hair metal for grunge any day, at least we had Gremlins and Ghostbusters and Pee-Wee and Ferris Bueller and Marty McFly and Roger Rabbit and Goonies and some other Spielberg-Hughes-Zemeckis nonsense every week. The fact is that in 1980 America elected a clown who had once co-starred with a chimp named Bonzo, which sent a clear message: Anything goes, cowboy! I didn't always think so, but now I'm pretty sure it was the best decade ever to be a kid.
Comedy Central will sometimes rerun a block of stand-up from the 90s: Notice that every routine is a rant about political correctness. That damn buzzword was eventually dragged to hell, thank the Maker, but the superjaded zeitgeist of detachment and self-conscious irony persisted for nearly a decade. No room for the childlike fancy and fear that is the basic stuff of spook stories. Both Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson went respectable. No Fun. The horror genre only survived at all by becoming ironic, with Scream (1996) and its ilk.
Comedic horror continued to bleed from the throat during the Iraq war, but horror in general began a hopeful comeback thanks to a cruel revival of the gritty 70s aesthetic (torture porn, pathetic remakes).
Drag Me To Hell is Raimi working in the same sincere, unaffected, classical vein as latter-day Clint Eastwood. It's Tom & Jerry thinly disguised for grown-ups; the hideous horror hag is literally clobbered by an inexplicable anvil. No one else would dare to be so disarmingly guileless.
* Within the Woods (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), Army of Darkness (1993). Word on the street is that Raimi and Campbell are pushing another Evil Dead sequel/remake for 2010.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Terminator Salvation
Well, at least it was better than T3.
Oh, and I've got bad news in case the trailer for Surrogates intrigues you as much as it did me: Surrogates is directed by the guy who did T3, and written by the guys who wrote The Net, T3, T4 and Catwoman... [sound of hopes crumbling]
Oh, and I've got bad news in case the trailer for Surrogates intrigues you as much as it did me: Surrogates is directed by the guy who did T3, and written by the guys who wrote The Net, T3, T4 and Catwoman... [sound of hopes crumbling]
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