30 MINUTES OR LESS: AS THE NOOSE GETS TIGHTER

We could drop theoretical bombs all day. Expect a piece lauding the genius of psychologically oriented formalist theorist Rudolf Arnheim, but until then try to let me use this blog as therapy.

The theater above, AMC Marple 10 in Springfield, PA is the one my single mother of 3 took her children for the before 5pm and early morning weekend matinees. She took me weekly to see everything and anything, which definitely lead to the angel (or monster) I am at this very moment. Today though didn't evoke images of a happy childhood escaping my "lets bring store brand popcorn to the theater instead of buying it so we can have Christmas this year" existence, but was terrible because I am emotionally unstable sometimes and normal at other times-diagnosis anyone? Anywho, I wanted the cinema equivalent of a speedball- I needed something to pep me up, but ultimately make me black out into the fantasmical wonderland of movie magic. So, through some leads, I returned to the place that spawned the cinematic warrior that writes truth for you right now. And my old dealer, my old friend, had a new drug:  30 Minutes Or Less.

 

The shit my dealer gave me was just nutrasweet mixed with pencil eraser dust spit on by my pallid inner-child. It only backed up the immensely cultivated heroic notion I came up with awhile ago that I should stop going to multiplexes. Want me to talk about the movie? Alright, two guys do goofy shit, movie goes on too long, everyone else is better in other movies. Comedy for me is different than other types of film, but this didn't even try. Where was the impact I get with good movies? What is that impact? If you would even ask that you probably just like things because they make you feel good, lower-animals do that too. 

And I say this as most of you probably have the higher cognitive strength to not even think of going to a movie like 30 Minutes or Less. If you feel I have done wrong, I rather die by the hands of you then by someone who would even sit in a theater with a bunch of prepubescents barking at each other while I watched on trying to learn how to pick up women from 14 year olds in sleeveless jerseys advertising gyms they have never been too. In there middle there:

Not enough? Was it OK I was insulted with this right when I came in the door? 

The original Shit Dogs lacked all merit. If you feel some connection to it you surely lack any semblance of meaningful film appreciation. You probably like that the actor in the movie usually isn't like that in other movies. Well. I usually don't give a shit. Peckinpah should of drank himself to death sooner.

I'm saying this as my insomnia-15 years now and still going-impelled me to take a sleeping pill. One that is now beckoning me to stop trying to mix intellectual irony with criticism. You probably are hoping we never mix those two together again like most music and/or post-modern hipster online outfits. We won't, if we do, we'll put the proverbial gun into my literal mouth. Should of done that instead of walking through the hollowed halls of my cinematic first fix. Cinema, my drug, used to be fun, but I feel sometimes I have taken it too far. And I'm now the guy at the party begging everyone to stay while they have to go home to their petty children or something. Yet, ultimately life is really dull, so why not get something stronger. Hence my appreciation of the cinematic equivalent of whatever annoying drug users who, by the way  think I'm one of them, but get annoyed that I just stare at them as they destroy themselves, think is "the better stuff." You can't leave then, your kids will figure out how to find new parents. 

The noose of modern cinema is strangling me to death as the chemicals in my brain tell me to literally fade to black. If you hate that I wrote this, go blow up a movie theater. I'm now going to stare at photos of Juliet Berto.

BRIAN DE PALMA'S BLOW OUT: I WILL WATCH ANYTHING SHOT IN PHILADELPHIA

Driving through City Hall in Blow Out

As the post title states, I will watch anything shot in Philadelphia. To my surprise, I had no idea that Brian DePalma's Blow Out was made in the 'Devil Town.'

Being OK with the filmmaker's works-Redacted, Carrie, Greetings, Sisters, Hi, Mom! and Scarface-DePalma (well not in Redacted) evokes Hitchcock with less of an auteurial stamp. Sure, the guy has his signature split screen shots, long takes (generally utilizing cranes), etc., but his films more times than not are style over substance. Themes of religion and capitalism sometimes connect throughout his films, but he seems more concerned with just making a decent film (or fun film in the case of his more campy works like The Fury or Dressed to Kill) than making high art. Now, many say that has its place, but should he be patted on the back for that? I think not.

Why? He has just as many flops as viewable films: Dressed To Kill, Body Double, The Fury, The Untouchables,  The Bonfire of The Vanities, Raising Cain, and Mission To Mars. This shows that he lacks what it takes to be an Auteur or a filmmaker who demands a certain amount of quality in his or her own films.

And this is where I think it is key to understand that Pauline Kael (former critic for The New Yorker) was one of the chief proponents of DePalma's cinema (found this out in the Criterion DVD supplemental book). A connection that links him to the adulation thrown at him by Quentin Tarantino, who was connected to Kael's complacency. Tarantino, a very talented filmmaker-a definite Auteur-must have subconsciously connected with Kael's assault on Auteur theory that allowed her to like films that lacked the rigor of cinephilic Auteurism. Tarantino, a lover of most cinema, good and bad, found affinity I'm sure in Kael's sometimes nonsensical choices of what was good film. Other critics at the time, influenced by 1960's intellectualism-Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis-couldn't jump on to Hollywood cinema as easy as Kael who lacked the intellectualism. Being that she was fully opposed to Auteur theory due to some theorists and critics deeming certain filmmakers poor works as great simply because they liked the filmmaker so much (her main issue was with people loving Ingmar Bergman no matter what he did), she criticized this blind adherence of many auteur theorists. This is an understandable criticism, but instead of re-assessing Auteur theory, in an infantile fashion, she denounced all of it.

The height of Kael's assault was her war against Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, a battle that awarded her press coverage during the late 70's and early 80's when the economic decline of the post-WWII Keynesian war economy lead to a rollercoaster ride of recessions. Film, being a immensely capitalistic art, was targeted along with the billionaires for allowing "Auteurs" to go wild with their budgets, simply to see their "vision made," when some of those millions could have gone to people starving. Yet, it was a poor approach by Kael,  fueled by her desire for personal fame. She never proposed, say, an economic program of how the millions spent on films that she attacked like Heaven's Gate or Apocalypse Now could get to the starving people. No, she just had to get her opinion out there, helping lead to the decline of viable film criticism in America.

NOTE ON CIMINO:
Saying this, Cimino isn't an amazing director. His best work, the so-so The Deer Hunter, a film that owes more to Vilmos Zsigmond-who was also cinematographer on Blow Out-and the actors rather than to the director, is a slow moving film that is generally hollowly contrasted with moments of greatness.

BACK TO BLOW OUT:
Blow Out is like The Deer Hunter in this regard, as it looks great consistently throughout-not all DePalma's films do, so Zsigmond's stamp then can be seen. One of DePalama's best also because the story is basic and the film is solely based on tension, obviously hearkening back to films like Conversation and Blow Up, which are much deeper and layered films. This film is wrought with tension and has some cool long takes. The best LT is found here (at 4:26) and shows that a simple scene on paper, Travolta's character learning all his audio has been wiped, can be made more effective by some creative formalist techniques. Then there is this LT (at 0:44) which shows what one can do with a large budget. I was amused by the non-motivational lighting throughout and especially in the final scene (see image below), where blue and red lights, which are supposed to be from the fireworks in the scene, flashed during a murder scene. This added to the tension, with an interesting cinematic device that only had a causal connection to "the world" around it. Modern filmmakers can take something from this, as it is lacking in most films and film-schools, where you are taught how to make things "look like movies," "professional," and/or "look real."

Overall, the film has technique, but lacks everything else. It works because the story is simple and to the point. I felt about this film what I felt about Tree of Life: to me this is what all Hollywood films should be. Well done, but not that challenging, just get the job done. Then there should be filmmakers who can do what DePalma does or what Tree of Life did, but go above and beyond that. In the era that was New Hollywood, which DePalma was apart of, I tend to favor Francis Ford Coppolla. He can do what DePalma does, but his films are so layered, so concise and poignant, you get the story line, the technical craftsmanship/high aesthetics, but you also get a immensely layered film that allows for hundreds of viewings. Modern film lacks this as a result of several factors, some due to the mainstream assault lead by Kael against Auteur theory, others on the account of the full take over of Hollywood by corporations in the 70's and 80's-whose logic became immensely financial in the 80's. Those who lead the corporations saw themselves as the smartest guys in the room (in the 1980's these tended to be ex-Wall Street players, ex-CEO's of corporations) and felt the directors should give up their "vision" for the producers genius input. This is now, after 30 years of corporate rule, a steel boot with its consolidated power forces everyone below to tighten their belts/relegate their power even more now "due to piracy." Goodbye cinephila, hello corporate-capitalist Big Brother a la big event Blockbuster cinema or what a producer in Hollywood-during my time in the nightmare city-called "producer films."

Putting all the analysis that really calls for something like Shooting Wall aside, if you live in Philadelphia, it's fun to watch Blow Out to see Philly back in the day. If you like Hitchcock and have already seen his films, skip Argento and check out Blow Out or preferably films like The Butcher and Les Biches by Claude Chabrol. Otherwise, there are better films that you could check out before Blow Out. Or check out our 2nd zine pg. 13, most of the best films of last year barely got distribution in the US. See them, using whatever means required, instead.

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A Gentle Reminder from Errol Morris

 
 By K Gronsbell

Errol Morris is the one of the most adept one-trick ponies in American film. His 2011 endeavor, Tabloid, explores America's sensationalist interests. Studying the 70's "Mormon sex in chains" case and its anachronistically bubbly star player, Joyce McKinney, Tabloid is exactly what a casual Morrisphile would expect: portrait-style talking heads with lighting that would make Henry Fuseli jealous, editing beats for laughs and gasps at the audacity of the interviewees, and a quaint manipulation of text that pops up to highlight particularly absurd ideas and events in the spoken story - in a terribly consumable newspaper font.

The conventions undoubtedly work. Tabloid gleaned a few laughs from this hardened cinéaste, especially during a segment towards the end of the film. A reporter, in a painfully traditional medium shot, had a few too many seconds of screen time. To incorporate his vocal information without jumping to another batch of B-roll, Morris racks focus. The subject and his school-picture backdrop cloth were out of focus for less than two seconds; Morris' ability to manipulate the audience is undeniable. The simplest narrative "error" and the viewer is reminded to pay attention, even if the editing has slowed and downloadable typewriter strike foley noises have ceased. This moment is not an amateur's attempt at anything; it is the mark of a seasoned director who understands the public's inability to commit. Let us not forget Morris' foray into commercials in the 2000s and understand that Tabloid is a child of that period. It is intentionally gaudy in content and construction, with a cast of jesters the audience is forced to identify with and support. Morris is serving exactly what he knows Americans want: little nuggets of recycled scandal, that are prepared to seem just absurd enough to enjoy but not disturbing enough to realize that there were allegation of rape, bondage and imprisonment.

Tabloid is Morris' proof that he still earns his reputation. It is camp enough for the elite to engage in metacommentary, but simple enough for the person who wandered in from Horrible Bosses to get a chuckle or two. Morris created a demon that is indicative of the state of American cinema: a beast with one very fluffy head and one with a mouthful of pointed teeth.

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We have audio from our last Show & Tell event on Nagisa Oshima's Boy. Reviews of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, Michael Winterbottom's The Trip, and Errol Morris' Tabloid. A discussion about the best comedy so far in 2011, info on SW's various tactics in their war against poor cinema, and polemical discourse from the host Karl Starkweather.

       

   
   
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