Indian Sneak Peak

With a thin offering of dark chocolate, I stopped in on my friend Mridu Chandra today as she was finishing up some grants to get them out on a tight deadline. She needed to test a DVD that she was sending off with a grant application, so I had the good fortune of getting to preview a rough cut of the first part of a documentary trilogy that she is working on about hidden aspects of Indian American life. Part I is called, "Indian Summer" and it's a funny, short observational doc about Hindu Heritage Summer Camp in Upstate New York. The teens featured in the doc cracked me up repeatedly with their, like, views and observations. It was an upbeat and well-crafted glimpse into a world that I didn't know existed and was delighted to learn about. I hope Mridu has great success with this project so that many many people will see it.

Double Feature Day with Sara Varon

One of my favorite things in life is a movie day with Sara Varon. When I was living in DC, we had movie days as much as possible when I went to New York. Or Sara would take the bus down for 24 hours and we would fit as many movies into a day as we possibly could. We timed them just right and often saw things we would not see otherwise, just to fit them into our intricate schedule. So when I came to New York this time I was really looking forward to the Wednesday we set aside for one of our movie days. We packed an extensive lunch and charted out the films we most wanted to see.

We started with Hurt Locker at Quad Cinemas, thinking everyone else had already seen it and we'd have the place to ourselves, but that's what dozens of senior citizens were thinking too. I expected great things from this one, because that's all I'd heard about it. And it was indeed impressive, a thinking, empathic, layered, excellent war movie. I was especially impressed having just seen Black Hawk Down, another film lauded as "best war movie," and being gravely disappointed. The focus on interpersonal and intercultural relationships held my interest here, and director Kathryn Bigelow's skill with suspense is extraordinary. (I won't even get into the many discussions about Bigelow as a female filmmaker and the historical significance of this film, or crap like this...)

But we had to hurry on and we couldn't dwell for long in Bigelow's Iraq. Rather, like Sgt. James returning to a Texas supermarket, we made a surreal cultural jump. Ours was to pre-WWI Germany at Film Forum where Michael Haneke's White Ribbon was playing. Haneke is one of my favorite directors, and I was curious to see how this black and white period film would fit into his ouevre. It was reminiscent of The Castle, Haneke's 1997 Kafka adaptation, both in style and in setting. Being rather obsessive and anal retentive myself, I must admit that I appreciate Germanic perfectionism. And it is a veritable treat to watch a Haneke film and know that everything will be absolutely perfect (although I'm pretty sure Haneke would not appreciate the association, particularly considering the implications of this film...). White Ribbon is a horror film, a psychologically probing film, a culturally revealing film- suffice it to say, it is a great film.

Trippy Canonical Feminist Film

Rhyne and Dara were joking before the Light Industry screening of Riddles of the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 16mm, 1977, 90 mins) that we were about to watch the feminist Avatar, because the film has a reputation for being cutting edge and trippy. Or maybe there were other reasons. But it was certainly cutting edge and trippy. I suppose it was too organized and logical to be considered truly trippy, but it was indeed a trip of feminist nostalgia that I, for one, sorely needed.

Trippier, actually, was Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley's 1966 Schmeerguntz, which preceded Riddles in this program, with its inspiring collage of babies, crap and beauty pageants. Schmeerguntz set the stage perfectly, complete with pageant soundbites to put Miss South Carolina to shame. ("I'll always let my boyfriend think he's the best. Because I think that's the way it should be.")

Mulvey's structure for Riddles of the Sphinx is calculated and complex. But the main thing I took from it was pretty simple and definitely resting on my historically placed reading of it- we've gone backwards in our feminist evolution as a society. Why does this happen? All the right questions are in this film, literally in the narrative of Louise and her questions about motherhood and patriarchy. She poses riddles such as, "Is exploitation outside the home better than oppression in it?" and "In the workplace, should men and women organize differently?" Her questions of gender are so basic, yet we may never have the answers.

Read & Watch!

Today in a Frameworks post I learned about a film and book blog that filmmaker Veronica Ibarra has started. Glad to see it! I watched her short film, The Uncertain Existence, which you can see here. It's a pretty, reflective, kind of painful film, quiet and still and full of mirror images, double existence, and loneliness in a cold London in late spring.

Low Expectations are the Key to Happiness (or a word on The Princess & the Frog)

I just saw The Princess and the Frog with 3 Wisco kids in a big exciting New York City cinema. Everything I see lately reminds me that, at least for me, low expectations are the key to happiness. I hadn't heard anything great about this film. On the contrary, I've heard a lot of criticism about the clouding over of the racial disparities that this film depicts but does not address. But I was enchanted with the voodoo plot (watch out mainstream America!) and the can-do female lead. The best thing this film has going for it is the fact that Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) is wildly ambitious to the end of achieving her career goals. She supports the prince financially and teaches him about hard work and dedication, a scenario much in line with a lot of real life stories. It's still a barfy fairy tale, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this one in comparison to all the other Disney offerings.

It's Not That Complicated

Yesterday afternoon I found myself with some time to kill around Penn Station while I waited for my sister and her family to arrive in New York. The only movie playing in the neighborhood that I was interested to seeing was Nancy Meyer’s It's Complicated.

It has been so exciting to me to read all of the popular articles being published lately about women directors. (Thank you, Manohla Dargis!) Long overdue conversations are finally happening, and women directors are finally getting full stories, not the least of which was Daphne Merkin's New York Times Magazine piece, "Can Anybody Make a Movie For Women?". As problematic as that article might have been (...), I was glad to see it. So all of the hype could only lead to disappointment. And there's not a whole lot more to say.

The scenery and music of Complicated were as sweet and sunny as the dialogue, and so was the whole experience. It was surprisingly saccharine, rosy and slick, though that should not have surprised me. The consistently vocal gentleman next to me, who was actively enjoying the film throughout, said at the finish that it was a good movie for TV, and I'm afraid I found that observation astute. The vaginaplasty joke also REALLY worked on him. Personally, I liked it when Jake (Alec Baldwin) expressed his approval of former wife and present lover Jane's (Meryl Streep) lack of bikini wax saying, "You've gone native. I like it." But my favorite part was when Jake grabs Jane's crotch post-coitum and declares with a satisfied smile, "Home sweet home." Jake's desire to win Jane back is comedic, way overdone and embarrassing. But mostly so for Nancy Meyers.

Invictus & the Baggage We Take to the Movies

I walked from Santa Monica to the Pico Landmark to see Invictus today. Even though it took 2 hours, it's not all that noble a feat. I only had to leave the house because Andrea's cleaning lady came, something that has resulted in my every-other-Tuesday morning movie ritual. All the way there I was thinking about how this movie would probably piss me off, because it seemed to be yet another movie about South Africa centered on a white protagonist. I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually about Mandela (Morgan Freeman), albeit with white rugby captain François Pienaar (Matt Damon) as his pawn. Invictus is a thin take on Mandela, but it was excellently acted, a satisfyingly sympathetic and tear-jerky portrayal of the great leader's enormous humility. The connectedness between Pienaar and Mandela is appropriately that of the former deriving fundamental inspiration from what the later has overcome. According to the Mandela mythology perpetuated here, Mandela sustained himself during the 18 years when he was prisoner at Robben Island with the words of Victorian poet William Ernest Henley: "You are the captain of your soul, master of your destiny." When he shares with Pienaar the poem and his personal history with it, the team captain is justifiably and reasonably inspired and moved.

The rugby plot that drives this story seems a stretch, but it works with the politics for what this film is. After all, as Mandela points out, sport is a social equalizer, a popular and most basic form of politics. In this film there is much focus on surroundings, details of set-up leading up to the game, and social make up, rather than the actual rugby match. This is a smart move on the part of the filmmakers, for Americans at least know little about rugby, and it's doubtful it would hold their interest were this more of a sports movie. We see people watching the climactic match with New Zealand’s All Blacks (a reference to their black shirt uniforms) in homes and bars, white and black and mixed groups, in townships and in gated white communities, within the stadium and outside of it. The mingling and unbridled excitement post-game reminded me of the energy on the street in DC when Obama was elected president. The legacy of slavery in the US all too closely resembles that of apartheid’s legacy in South Africa, even though almost 150 years separates those events. I appreciated the roles of black South Africans brought to the foreground in this film and the way it highlighted and exposed this legacy, not least in terms of class differences, in much the way slavery in the US can be seen today. We see this repeatedly in the positioning of blacks as domestics in the homes of whites, cleaning the field before the game, a young boy from a township who lurks about a cop car trying to listen in on the score. The audience is asked to consider South Africa as only the latest in a long line of former colonizers and enslaving oppressor countries. For example, when the New Zealand team dances its Maori war chant at the beginning of the game, the whole team relishes in raw Kiwi pride, although there are far more white faces than Maori on the team. This is juxtaposed with the almost exclusively white South African team's initial refusal to learn the new national anthem, Nkosi Sikkeleli Africa, the haunting and inspiring former ANC anthem that pleads, "God Bless Africa."

Last week over breakfast I was arguing with my cousin about Avatar. He said, "You sure took a lot of baggage into that film," and I had to admit that he was absolutely right. It seems that that is just the point, we all take all of our baggage into each film we see, and that's what makes a film relatable or not, great or not. It's this power that film has that makes it the greatest contemporary art form, and this is why film is exciting to me at all. That’s why I think I loved Invictus. It was an ode to Mandela, someone I have a huge emotional nostalgic connection to and great admiration for. One of the greatest memories of my life is that of waking up on February 11, 1990 and listening to the radio in my German host family’s kitchen, crying tears of joy at the news of Mandela’s release. These are the moments we take to the movies.

The black and white hand placed together on the trophy cup at the end of Invictus was a bit much. But that's when I suddenly remembered that this was a Clint Eastwood film...

Broken Embraces

Just saw this at the Royal with Andrea. I love Almodovar. And Penelope Cruz. So this was enjoyable. Funny and smart and good. But not absolutely compelling, probably because of the main Kelsey Grammer look-alike character who just didn't pull me in. I think he fit the part well, he just wasn't a very sympathetic character.

a few days later...

I like this movie less in retrospect than I did when I first came out of Almodovarland. I think that's due in equal parts to the powerlessness of Lena and the fact that Harry Caine is not very compelling or, ultimately, likable. Oh well.

First Films of 2010

In keeping with my promise to myself to create documentation about everything I see this year and to write about it for the upcoming blog, here's my take on the first few moving images of my year.

When I arrived in San Diego for New Year's, the first thing we did was watch THE COVE. I had heard that this doc was as drama-filled as the best of narrative films and mind-blowing as an environmental exposé. That is was, but frankly the main thing that stayed with me from the film was it's ethnocetricism. Why did these powerful monied white American dudes not have a single Japanese person on their crew, or at the very least someone who spoke Japanese? That's mind boggling to me. It would be too paranoid to think that they couldn't find any number of Japanese folks who would have been interested and willing in working on the project, and it would have helped their understanding of the situation, not to mention their on-the-ground comprehension of Japanese, tremendously. In that sense they came across as pretty stupid to me. Perhaps particularly because of the outright cultural accusations made in the doc, that the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji is perpetrated solely because of tradition and a stubborn refusal to succumb to international pressures to stop this practice because it is inhumane and wrong.

That said, THE COVE was powerful and heartbreaking, as dramatic as promised, cohesive and fast-paced. I liked it a lot, except for that serious bad taste in my mouth from the major cultural ignorance flaw...

The next day, on New Year's Eve, along with my cousin and my parents and millions of others, we went to AVATAR. Ugh. This blog posting by Gilad Atzmon helped clinch our decision to finally go see it. And we all regretted it. Amend that- we didn't regret it, this is something everyone has to see simply because it will be praised and referenced for years to come. And I was indeed impressed with the special effects. But I had better be impressed, considering the 15 years and millions and millions of dollars and manpower of hundreds of people on crews all over the world that went into creating this.

This is not the kind of movie I get excited about. But the interconnectedness of nature and humans and life is a compelling topic and imagining a world like that of the Na'vi and what exists on Pandora should have been much much more exciting and original and thought provoking. As Jenn (and many) pointed out, so many of these ideas have been explored in hundreds of books and films before this one. What really bothered me was how UNimaginitive this film was. With all of the resources available to James Cameron and his crew THIS is as good as you can do in imagining a futuristic society? I was so disheartened when the kick-ass and invincible woman that Jake Sully (the character meant for everyman to relate to) meets in the forest slowly loses her power after meeting him, becomes...a woman. Indeed how could we tell that she is a female character except for her breasts and her lulling comely female nature and her sexy come-hither voice. She must be vulnerable, fertile seeming. Is that it? I just lost any interest I might have had, which was also true as Sigourney Weaver's bad-ass scientist is revealed as a save-the-children type earth mother anthropologist that I won't even get into. Jenn had a spot-on analysis of the problematic racism at play (and she shared these blog posts:When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar? and Avatar: Totally Racist, Dude on that note). Obviously, there are dissertations to come out of this, but I'll stop here.

Andrea and I picked up BLACK HAWK DOWN and watched it the night after our other 99 cent video store pick, THE PROPOSAL. I watched this diligently for the first hour or so, expecting some insights into Somalia and the situation there. But by an hour and a half of this film, when Andrea told me that we still had 45 minutes to go, I was long tuned out. Bang bang bang I do not care.

We had both been wanting to see this film, having heard the hype about it for years. Of course, when it came down to it, neither of us could quite remember why it had been so hyped. I thought this had happened because it was the only mainstream filmic depiction of US involvement in Somalia, something too few people probably knew anything at all about. Andrea thought it was because guys like war movies a lot and this is apparently a good war movie. Surely, its acclaim was due to a combination of these things. But I'd love it if anyone can tell me why they liked this movie. I am curious. I don't have patience for American war movies, or war movies in general I'm sure, particularly when almost all of the 2 hours and 24 minutes of the film are spent in battle. Andrea seemed to have been prepared for this, but for some reason I was expecting a film about Somalis and insights into the situation there, touched by Americans yes. But this film, shot in Morocco, didn't even involve Somalis, they were barely peripheral. I think this fact would be all the more disturbing to me were I to give it more thought, but I don't plan on it.

In Honor of my Alaska Peeps...The Proposal

On New Years Day over breakfast Jenn and James and I decided to start a blog where we can simply write about all the movies we see and start a conversation about them. The biggest hurdle is a title, but that will come, I'm certain. Yesterday Giovanna unveiled her fabulous blog with the same purpose, so clearly we were all meant to join forces. Until we get that up and running, I'm going to store responses here.

My most recent viewing, with Andrea last night, was Anne Fletcher's THE PROPOSAL. We knew it would be what it was and it certainly was that. Like much of America, we were in the mood for something light and funny. And one or the other or both of us had already seen all of the other options at the 99 cent video place on Santa Monica. It was also an appropriate choice for us since we saw Fletcher's 27 DRESSES together at The Grove a couple years ago.

...Gosh, I guess I don't have much to say about it. It certainly required a lot of suspension of disbelief. But any movie that combines a power-woman with Alaska scenery and Betty White is as worthy of watching as THE HANGOVER or I LOVE YOU, MAN. And, frankly, I laughed out loud several times, though Andrea didn't join me. She disapprovingly mentioned "America's Sweetheart" several times post-viewing, but I don't mind Bullock. The cast was quite decent actually. ... That's all.