Or 'insomnia part 80 billion' or something.
I still don't have the energy to really say anything about 'The Host,' but I will relate this anecdote to those of you who have seen it. So I work in a Children's Hospital, and right outside the door to my office is a wall where the feeding disorder kids hang their art therapy projects. These kids are between the ages of 2-10, I'd say, and were probably almost all born prematurely. At any rate, I am always largely impressed by these projects, and am particularly enamored of the work of a young girl of about 4 named Claire, whose last project "snazzy feet," I actually considered stealing before I realized what I was considering. This week Claire has painted a large, watercolor mural; of a river flowing, and the sun, and some plants, and.... a large, indiscriminate amphibious looking blob? And the word HAN scribbled in big yellow kiddie letters, with an arrow pointing to the river. Now I'm sure there's some perfectly reasonable explanation for this; if you figure it out, let me know.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Science!
Hi all, sorry for the shocking lack of content in recent weeks. Tomorrow I am off to IMFAR (International Meeting for Autism Research) to present a paper; this is why I haven't had any time to write about movies. Although I haven't managed to stop thinking about them... At any rate, wish me luck, it's the first thing I've ever been first author on.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Feminism, apparently
Alright, let's talk about vagina. In film. I'd like to preface this by saying that I am by no means a feminist, educated about feminist theory, or even really a huge fan of feminists as they appear to me to exist today; nor am I really very similar to most women and therefor close to being able to understand how they feel about gender roles and all that jazz. So here goes what looks to be pretty much a shot in the dark.
I specifically want to talk about feminism in the context of two films: Catherine Breillat's 'Anatomy of Hell,' and Peggy Ahwesh's 'The Dead Man'. Both of these films purport to be explorations of female sexuality, sans "the usual patriarchal-porn trimmings" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, on The Dead Man). Both are adapted from literary sources (The Dead Man from the short story by Georges Bataille, Anatomy of Hell from Breillat's own novel Pornocracy). And both are very focused around one overwhelming mood: revulsion.
I didn't choose to talk about these movies because they are good, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure Breillat's movie sucked, but they did make me think.
'The Dead Man' was interesting in that it has been heralded as a feminist film, as is evidenced by the above quote, but damn if it isn't absolutely true to the Bataille story. In the story (and the film) a young woman discovers her lover's corpse. She leaves her country home and wanders, naked under a raincoat, out into a storm and engages in a series of acts that convey that she has completely relinquished her self control; the violent situation produces a series of violently unstudied actions. Our heroin, naked, soaking wet and already at the edge of experience enters a bar and things escalate until she is engaged in raunchy public sex acts with the lecherous local yokels; falling down drunk and not above squatting on the bar and urinating on one of it's patrons before being unceremoniously fucked on the floor. Ahwesh's treatment of the subject matter is pretty much verbatim, and I don't think Bataille would be at all displeased with her decision to include acting so bad it made the audience squirm almost as much as the image of one of her actors pulling on his limp dick, or the very long and simply shot sex scene on the floor, with all the drunken grunting and thrusting that that involved. As the original story was written by a man, and the film is, in fact, shockingly true to the tone of the story, it is interesting that it is considered a feminist film. My best guess would be that this is a reflection of the perception that works that are violently confrontational and have female characters that make us uncomfortable are feminist works. Exactly why it is important, to the end of establishing gender equality, that we be made uncomfortable, that we be confronted with a revolting woman, I can't say I know. Needless to say, I thought the dead man was the most awesome movie ever.
The Anatomy of Hell, on the other hand, was deeply flawed and at times obnoxiously preachy. It did, however, leave an impression, as some of the images are burned into my retinas until the end of time, or at least the end of this week. In this confused head trip, a gay man(aging Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) happens on a woman, in a gay bar, slitting her wrists. They enter into an agreement in which he will be payed to watch her while she sleeps at her isolated country home. What follows is a lot of terrible dialogue about how revolting women are, and how (straight) men want to possess them. The heart of the film, however, is the imagery and without the dialogue obnoxiously spelling out what must have been basically the entirety of 'Pornocracy,' the mood in this film is basically the same as that of 'The Dead Man.' Important differences are that the female character in Anatomy of Hell is in no way rooted in psychological realism, in fact I'm pretty sure that as this was in conception and execution a feminist film, she must necessarily be less specific than that and be representative of women. In addition, she has complete control, and although she's asleep for most of the action (and she's quite a deep sleeper), appears to constantly be doing things to poor Rocco. Rocco does an excellent job of being deeply affected by all this, and calmly drinks the reddened water she prepares for him by infusing it with her used tampon, but I have trouble buying the importance of the shit that he's so deeply affected by. Also of note is that Rocco's big, hard, beautiful cock makes a number of appearances in the film and female anatomy is, well, made revolting. I guess we'd have to ask Breillat how this forwards the feminist agenda. The film is absolutely violently confrontational, although when coupled with the explicit feminist 'men want to own me period blood is OK' dialogue it seems as if we are being asked to feel guilty for thinking the disgusting, confrontational imagery is gross rather than being asked to push ourselves to the limits of experience, perception and understanding as I feel we are in 'The Dead Man.' Overall an interesting idea in that it's violent and confrontational about sex, but, well.
So those are my thoughts on at least this one specific aspect of feminist film.
Anatomy of Hell available through netflix, The Dead Man available for rental(16mm) from the NY film makers coop
I specifically want to talk about feminism in the context of two films: Catherine Breillat's 'Anatomy of Hell,' and Peggy Ahwesh's 'The Dead Man'. Both of these films purport to be explorations of female sexuality, sans "the usual patriarchal-porn trimmings" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, on The Dead Man). Both are adapted from literary sources (The Dead Man from the short story by Georges Bataille, Anatomy of Hell from Breillat's own novel Pornocracy). And both are very focused around one overwhelming mood: revulsion.
I didn't choose to talk about these movies because they are good, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure Breillat's movie sucked, but they did make me think.
'The Dead Man' was interesting in that it has been heralded as a feminist film, as is evidenced by the above quote, but damn if it isn't absolutely true to the Bataille story. In the story (and the film) a young woman discovers her lover's corpse. She leaves her country home and wanders, naked under a raincoat, out into a storm and engages in a series of acts that convey that she has completely relinquished her self control; the violent situation produces a series of violently unstudied actions. Our heroin, naked, soaking wet and already at the edge of experience enters a bar and things escalate until she is engaged in raunchy public sex acts with the lecherous local yokels; falling down drunk and not above squatting on the bar and urinating on one of it's patrons before being unceremoniously fucked on the floor. Ahwesh's treatment of the subject matter is pretty much verbatim, and I don't think Bataille would be at all displeased with her decision to include acting so bad it made the audience squirm almost as much as the image of one of her actors pulling on his limp dick, or the very long and simply shot sex scene on the floor, with all the drunken grunting and thrusting that that involved. As the original story was written by a man, and the film is, in fact, shockingly true to the tone of the story, it is interesting that it is considered a feminist film. My best guess would be that this is a reflection of the perception that works that are violently confrontational and have female characters that make us uncomfortable are feminist works. Exactly why it is important, to the end of establishing gender equality, that we be made uncomfortable, that we be confronted with a revolting woman, I can't say I know. Needless to say, I thought the dead man was the most awesome movie ever.
The Anatomy of Hell, on the other hand, was deeply flawed and at times obnoxiously preachy. It did, however, leave an impression, as some of the images are burned into my retinas until the end of time, or at least the end of this week. In this confused head trip, a gay man(aging Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) happens on a woman, in a gay bar, slitting her wrists. They enter into an agreement in which he will be payed to watch her while she sleeps at her isolated country home. What follows is a lot of terrible dialogue about how revolting women are, and how (straight) men want to possess them. The heart of the film, however, is the imagery and without the dialogue obnoxiously spelling out what must have been basically the entirety of 'Pornocracy,' the mood in this film is basically the same as that of 'The Dead Man.' Important differences are that the female character in Anatomy of Hell is in no way rooted in psychological realism, in fact I'm pretty sure that as this was in conception and execution a feminist film, she must necessarily be less specific than that and be representative of women. In addition, she has complete control, and although she's asleep for most of the action (and she's quite a deep sleeper), appears to constantly be doing things to poor Rocco. Rocco does an excellent job of being deeply affected by all this, and calmly drinks the reddened water she prepares for him by infusing it with her used tampon, but I have trouble buying the importance of the shit that he's so deeply affected by. Also of note is that Rocco's big, hard, beautiful cock makes a number of appearances in the film and female anatomy is, well, made revolting. I guess we'd have to ask Breillat how this forwards the feminist agenda. The film is absolutely violently confrontational, although when coupled with the explicit feminist 'men want to own me period blood is OK' dialogue it seems as if we are being asked to feel guilty for thinking the disgusting, confrontational imagery is gross rather than being asked to push ourselves to the limits of experience, perception and understanding as I feel we are in 'The Dead Man.' Overall an interesting idea in that it's violent and confrontational about sex, but, well.
So those are my thoughts on at least this one specific aspect of feminist film.
Anatomy of Hell available through netflix, The Dead Man available for rental(16mm) from the NY film makers coop
Friday, April 13, 2007
Acephale
So, for all one (possibly two) of you who are wondering what's up with Acephale... The lovely foreign boy that I married three years ago and I are about to embark on that leg of the journey towards a green card in which, we have been told, the government will start to interview people, monitor our monitorable communications, and snoop around generally making sure we're really married. It might be overkill but I don't plan on losing this boy or this battle with the department of homeland security, so I'm going to kill Acephale temporarily. Given that it's taken 3 years to even get this far, temporarily might mean any number of things. At any rate, maybe it will give me some time to come up with new material. Damn shame about the timing, as I just found out that Mia shares Hitler's birthday, and more than a few of my interests...
Monday, April 9, 2007
!!!!
This isn't film related, but it was so cool.
I visited my grandfather on the north shore of lake Ponchetrain(outside New Orleans) over the weekend and last night as we were sitting on the porch drinking coffee we started talking about... well shit, I don't remember. Somehow music machines came up, and my grandfather pipes up with "My neighbor Randy collects antique music players and machines, why don't we go and ask him to show us?" We call Randy up and moments later he is graciously ushering me into the house, obviously tickled that we asked to see his collection, of which, my grandfather has told me, he is very proud. He starts in the dining room, with an old gramophone and a 50's juke box he has restored, with before and after pictures. Then he showed us the phonograph cylinders, and several music boxes that dated back to the 18th century, more juke boxes, and all kinds of things I can't even remember the name of, before taking us back into the room where he kept all the really good stuff. I don't even know what to call the thing I saw.... It was, I guess, a fully automated band from 1918, which read from a paper roll. It had been re-done in the 30's when an accordion was added and it was given an art-deco makeover. Apparently there are people, somewhere, who still transcribe music onto rolls for these things, and Randy said he had a bunch of Beatles and some Hank Williams from sources like that. Did I mention the size of this thing? It was monstrous, with the instruments a few inches above eye level and a giant organ in the back, filled with pneumatic tubes and machinery behind the green art-deco facade. He had it play us a few songs, and he showed us the Mills novelty Co. Violano-Virtuoso, which is a self-playing violin with piano accompaniment. So awesome. I might be 5 years old, but I love watching the keys on the piano move by themselves. And as a true appreciator of genuine weirdos, I have to say that this is one of my favorite types: the crazy collector in backwoods Louisiana whose hobby is worth WAY more than his house, and is totally awesome. If anyone else ever finds one, tell me and maybe I'll make a movie about it. Oh yeah! He also had a piano that could record and play back those rolls, how cool is that?
I visited my grandfather on the north shore of lake Ponchetrain(outside New Orleans) over the weekend and last night as we were sitting on the porch drinking coffee we started talking about... well shit, I don't remember. Somehow music machines came up, and my grandfather pipes up with "My neighbor Randy collects antique music players and machines, why don't we go and ask him to show us?" We call Randy up and moments later he is graciously ushering me into the house, obviously tickled that we asked to see his collection, of which, my grandfather has told me, he is very proud. He starts in the dining room, with an old gramophone and a 50's juke box he has restored, with before and after pictures. Then he showed us the phonograph cylinders, and several music boxes that dated back to the 18th century, more juke boxes, and all kinds of things I can't even remember the name of, before taking us back into the room where he kept all the really good stuff. I don't even know what to call the thing I saw.... It was, I guess, a fully automated band from 1918, which read from a paper roll. It had been re-done in the 30's when an accordion was added and it was given an art-deco makeover. Apparently there are people, somewhere, who still transcribe music onto rolls for these things, and Randy said he had a bunch of Beatles and some Hank Williams from sources like that. Did I mention the size of this thing? It was monstrous, with the instruments a few inches above eye level and a giant organ in the back, filled with pneumatic tubes and machinery behind the green art-deco facade. He had it play us a few songs, and he showed us the Mills novelty Co. Violano-Virtuoso, which is a self-playing violin with piano accompaniment. So awesome. I might be 5 years old, but I love watching the keys on the piano move by themselves. And as a true appreciator of genuine weirdos, I have to say that this is one of my favorite types: the crazy collector in backwoods Louisiana whose hobby is worth WAY more than his house, and is totally awesome. If anyone else ever finds one, tell me and maybe I'll make a movie about it. Oh yeah! He also had a piano that could record and play back those rolls, how cool is that?
Monday, April 2, 2007
Still horrified
Two things I wish I had never overheard:
"Let's see... Maryland... Maryland... I just can't remember what state that's in "
- a Comcast employee, talking to a customer who was apparently calling from Maryland
"I'm really bummed they locked that gate"- my neighbour
"Why?" -his girlfriend
That last one isn't quite as awful out of context, but the gate to the back of my building has been locked and we now have to walk around a block of apartment buildings in order to get to the back, besides which the only reasonable answer to that question is "because I can no longer use the gate" in almost any context. I wonder what she's like in bed. Not very intuitive, I would imagine.
I swear to Jesus on the cross I'll watch some movies soon, and then write unbelievably interesting things about them.
"Let's see... Maryland... Maryland... I just can't remember what state that's in "
- a Comcast employee, talking to a customer who was apparently calling from Maryland
"I'm really bummed they locked that gate"- my neighbour
"Why?" -his girlfriend
That last one isn't quite as awful out of context, but the gate to the back of my building has been locked and we now have to walk around a block of apartment buildings in order to get to the back, besides which the only reasonable answer to that question is "because I can no longer use the gate" in almost any context. I wonder what she's like in bed. Not very intuitive, I would imagine.
I swear to Jesus on the cross I'll watch some movies soon, and then write unbelievably interesting things about them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
