Beltmann

And so began the Cheese Touch Frenzy. Friend turning on friend. Brother turning on sister. It was madness.

On 10/1/2022 at 9:18 AM, bleedorange said:

Hey Everyone! Been a long time. 

Hey, bleedorange! Great to see you back in these parts!

Kicked off October, my usual month for nonstop horror, by watching the movie that has horrified the Twittersphere.

There are deep divides inside of Andrew Dominik's Blonde, a movie that is not about Marilyn Monroe or Norma Jeane Mortenson, but rather "Marilyn," a fictional, cracked-mirror imagination of Monroe. The movie, not unlike Dominik's earlier portrait of Jesse James, uses this invented avatar to examine the duality of being both a person and a celebrity, expanding into a larger, impressionistic meditation on how the spotlight has the power to shine and to burn, whether it is "Marilyn," who was loved and unloved and who we may only think we understand, or any other individual both blessed and cursed by fame.

The question of the moment, of course, is whether any of this is fair to the real-life Marilyn Monroe. The accusations of exploitation have been thoroughly aired, so I won't recount them here. But having seen and contemplated the artistic ambitions of Blonde, I'm struck by how, in another divide, I'm both sympathetic to and unconvinced by those accusations.

My mind simultaneously holds these two thoughts: 1. The arguments against Blonde are largely rooted in valid ideological assumptions about Monroe, gender, and exploitation that in a broad sense I share and support; and 2. Those assumptions and arguments, in a particular sense, do not easily apply to Blonde, which does not purport to be a rounded telling of a person's life and vibrantly operates instead on a plane where such arguments are rendered beside the point.

In other words, those who resent Blonde and those who defend Blonde aren't having the same conversation, and that's yet another divide that intrigues me.

Everyone seems to agree, at least, that Blonde is visually spectacular. Dominik rapidly switches between lighting strategies, color, black-and-white, cutting methods, and aspect ratios to recreate many of the most iconic Monroe photographs and build entire scenes around their vintage look. I can understand why, for some viewers, that might play as overly precious, but for me it was both breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly affecting. From start to finish, I was emotionally invested.
 

Today I thought I heard a guy driving down Main Street blaring "Kamera" and singing along maniacally as if it were 2002 and he was hearing such sonic gold for the very first time. Then I glanced in the rearview mirror and realized it was me. Phone my family, tell 'em I'm lost.

I've spent the last few months diving deep into Criterion's 15-disc Agnès Varda box set, rewatching many old favorites and taking in all of the bonus features and essays. There are also a handful of features that are new to me and man, I was really sleeping on Kung-Fu Master!, a knockout starring Jane Birkin that I should have seen years ago. It might be Varda's most underrated feature.
 

On 9/18/2022 at 10:15 PM, u2roolz said:

See How They Run has the look & feel of an unproduced Woody Allen script directed by Wes Anderson. It has a dynamic visual flair and witty dialog. It’s also an homage to Agatha Christie. 

My 14-year-old enjoyed See How They Run so much that I'm going to show him Knives Out soon, hopefully in time to take him to see The Glass Onion when it arrives. It's nice to see a throwback entertainment meant to be light yet still well-crafted and eager to please. Twenty years ago, this kind of original movie was a regular item on the menu; these days, it feels like welcome nourishment after weeks spent in the desert. I've also been baffled by the studio's treatment of Confess, Fletch as an afterthought. The original Chevy Chase movie was formative for both my wife and me, so we planned to see the new movie this weekend, but it has already fled our area. This is hardly surprising, given how the marketing strategy amounted to, "let's not."

We currently live in a dire time of flux, with studios, distributors, theaters, and streamers all trying to figure out the best way to position movies in the evolving entertainment marketplace. Nobody knows anything right now, so we have a bewildering mix of experiments and strategies that most of the time feel like huge mistakes, with generic product being overproduced and actual movies too often being wounded or strangled in the process. It's not good for filmmakers or audiences, and I don't know how or when we will resolve this limbo, or whether we'll come out the other side in a better place.

My weekend proved overstuffed, so I haven't yet had much opportunity to dive deep into the set, but just a cursory glance and listen at the contents has me over the moon. As someone who has spent decades with the YHF demos/engineer's demos, I agree with maxspr1 that there's still a treasure trove of unfamiliar material here. I'm also struck by how the tracks have been presented in a way that even the Criterion Collection might envy. Discs 2-4, especially, appear to be arranged into albums from the multiverse; these are what may have been the released versions of YHF had different decisions been made. The included book seems equally fussed over. This box set is exactly what I've spent decades wishing for.

Bonus points for the awesome T-shirt and baseball cap!

Compared to most mainstream animation designed for kids, Netflix’s "The Sea Beast" feels like a tonic, a real movie rather than a manic machine. Yes, it has expansive, exciting action scenes, but it also takes the time to earn them through solid characterization. The first half is especially strong, which allows the movie to eventually challenge viewers to consider the generational pull (and consequences) of inherited bigotry. That's big stuff for a children's movie, and once it is introduced, the movie unfortunately shifts into a less interesting didactic mode. But the characters remain compelling, and the animation remains gorgeous. It's a movie that's easy to look at and easy to like.

Ti West’s “Pearl" exists in the same universe as March’s “X,” but provides a wildly different experience. This time around, the horror is built by re-shuffling colorful parts taken from Douglas Sirk, Busby Berkeley, “The Wizard of Oz,” and more. It also gives Mia Goth a ripe opportunity to expand an original character from “X” through a show-stopping performance that, if it existed in any other genre, might generate some awards buzz.
 

Do yourself a favor: See it in a theater and go in as cold as possible. I'll just say that it applies some impeccable satirical logic, skillfully maintains its suspense and pace throughout, gleefully embraces its wildest ideas, and deploys tonal shifts to hugely entertaining effect.

It was also great to see many old friends!

Spot on, as always, Paul. Stacy and I were standing at the "second rail," which provided a perfect view for the entire evening. For my money, it was the best Wilco show in Wisconsin since 2017, maybe.

On 6/22/2022 at 2:01 PM, jff said:

I'm not going to rank them as to which is best or worst

I'm not interested in doing that, either, which is why I'm definitely putting CC at the very bottom of my list. Putting it anywhere else? The mind boggles.

7 hours ago, Passenger Sid said:

My dream for Wilco's next record would be their spin on Power-Pop (think Fountains Of Wayne, including a tinge of humor). Or, at least, an album that FEELS more like the singer & band are having a good time. 

I am so primed for something like this. (Fun fact: I once saw FoW and Wilco back-to-back at Summerfest. Still one of my favorite concert-going memories.)

On 5/28/2022 at 7:09 AM, Blackberry Rust said:

At 21 songs, it's a unweildy, slightly padded collection, but it comes with a lot of depth and flashes of beauty that are sustaining my attention and curiousity on repeated listens. It's also genuinely unsettled.

That was a great post (thank you!) that echoes a lot of my feelings about the record, including the portion I quoted above. Those flashes of beauty and weirdness keep unfolding and expanding for me. "Unsettled" is the right word. I think the whole album, taken as a large concept in which the pieces are in conversation with each other, is a magnificent project that exceeds the power of its individual parts. The title strikes me as an easy gateway: It's about country music, yes, but it's also about a country, and it's about navigating what we think we know about each.

I'm having a complicated reaction to this album that seems to be rooted in competing sensors and expectations.

Most of all, I respond to Wilco's multifaceted muse; I love both chaotic and folksy Wilco, so I'm prepared to follow the band wherever it wants to take me. Still, let me confess that after years of virus and dreary politics, and two brilliant yet relatively pensive albums, what I most wanted from new Wilco was a return to robust rock. And given Jeff's long months playing acoustic versions of his songs on the Tweedy Show, and his expressed desire to emerge from lockdown ready to bring audiences to their feet in communal release, I anticipated that the band's next album would, indeed, contain at least a few helpings of energetic, rousing rock.

Quite the opposite, though, happens on Cruel Country, a fact which disappoints me to a degree. But expectations are often an arbitrary poison, and I learned a long time ago that the best way to meet an artist is on their own terms: Show me what you have, and I'll try to receive you there. While the new album doesn't match my hopes and expectations, it does, indeed, strike my ears as a majestic achievement. What it wants to be, it is, and beautifully so. I think I love this chiseled jewel, at least as much as one can after only a few listens. But I still have that nagging sensation that it isn't quite what I wanted (needed?) at this moment.

Let me discuss "Hints" as a way to illustrate this dynamic. That song is among my favorite tunes that Jeff played on the Tweedy Show. I've listened to it countless times in the intervening months, and my favorite sonic element has been the driving, punchy drum fill. In my head, I have eagerly anticipated the full band version, envisioning how that song, and that drum fill in particular, could be sturdy, crashing, edgy. But what we get on Cruel Country is a version that barely maintains that drum fill--it nearly vanishes in the mix. This is not a criticism. My head and heart both tell me that everything about the album version of "Hints" works; it hits all the right artistic sensors for me. But there's a sliver of that same heart that longs for the imagined "Hints" that exists only in my head.

Anyway, I don't have much point here other than to say that I'm fascinated by how my own feelings and baggage are impacting the way I'm initially hearing this album, and I'm curious about whether others are navigating similarly paradoxical responses.

On 5/22/2022 at 12:25 AM, Brian F. said:

The vocals on "I Am My Mother" sound like Bob Dylan.

Yes! I said the same to my wife yesterday while listening in the car.

I'm still in disbelief. I never met Dave in person, but his presence here and elsewhere on social media made him, to me at least, a larger-than-life member of our community. His absence leaves a gaping hole.

Has film discourse really devolved to, you must think "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is a perfect masterpiece or you hate art? Only slightly less exhausting than reading online reactions to the sci-fi black comedy is the experience of watching the movie, which I found simultaneously exhilarating and deflating. There’s no question that this fiercely original movie should be widely celebrated, but set aside for a moment the wild comic invention, the philosophical musings, the rich romanticism, and Michelle Yeoh’s shaded, career-defining performance as a Chinese-American who harnesses the ability to leap between parallel universes. To my eyes, the film is somewhat plagued by an affliction common to stories about the multiverse: By presenting incalculable new realities, the proceedings become drained of emotional investment; after all, if there are unlimited universes, and unlimited versions of me, what difference does it make if this universe or this me perishes? We still live on, infinitely, as if existence has an inexhaustible number of reset buttons. (As a viewer, if the protagonist I’m watching fails, I can rest easy in the knowledge that there’s another universe where that same mission succeeds.) Ironically, the movie’s most euphoric element--the winking absurdist humor that is the hallmark of its directors--often contributes to the overarching sense of weightlessness.

I guess I’ll hand over my cinephile badge now.
 

On 3/26/2022 at 12:41 PM, uncool2pillow said:

Atlanta Season 3... FINALLY! Both new episodes are so good.

Agreed! Masterful.

On a basic story level, both VFW and Old Henry present variations on the action convention of a small band of men defending against siege that John Carpenter (and Howard Hawks) efficiently perfected. In the case of VFW, that means an aging squadron of Vietnam veterans protecting a ramshackle bar against marauding mutant junkies and dealers. The movie doesn’t pretend to have any aspirations beyond generic exploitation, but at least it has a capable cast that includes Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Martin Kove, Fred Williamson, and George Wendt.

Much better is Old Henry, a Western about a turn-of-the-century farmer who, by extending hospitality to an injured man, inadvertently invites the wrath of a posse searching for a bag of cash. The movie has a lot of fun with sub-The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford dialogue and characterizations, and has a deliberate pace that pays dividends as subtle, accumulating clues begin to unravel several mysteries. There’s also the glorious reward of witnessing Tim Blake Nelson turn into a gunslinging action figure. That old Henry’s just been plain greased and ornery of late, and he’s more ready to put you under the pansies than it might look to most appearances.

Benedetta has been received (and marketed) as “Paul Verhoeven’s nunsploitation movie,” and it’s hard to deny its willful embrace of iconoclasm, sacrilege, and, at times, a pervy male gaze. Still, by pulling viewers into a 17th-century Italian convent aiming to keep both the devil and the plague at bay, Verhoeven seems most interested in exploring power hierarchies and the intermingling of religion, corruption, and delusion. He also asks sincere questions about what it means to be a person of faith. It’s a showy, unruly melding of the sensational and the intellectual, and I kind of loved it.
 

Seen rather than heard. Fun sidebar in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Did you like it, Boss_Tweedy?

I know many top critics, including those with whom I'm usually in sync, are hive-dumping on Belfast. But I've seen it twice now and am eager to stand up for it. It's not a deep movie (if you're looking for a historical, analytical look at the Troubles, you won't find it), but it has plenty of other virtues, including a generous catalog of impressionistic, bittersweet vibes from a child's point-of-view that are, cumulatively, very moving.

Personal anecdote: In December I took my 13-year-old son to see Belfast, unsure about whether he would enjoy it. (His favorite movies are Jurassic Park and Star Wars.) He was held rapt; he was completely overwhelmed; he openly wept at the end and grabbed for my hand. He also hasn't stopped talking about it and says that he wants to see it again. He's rooting for the movie to win big at the Oscars.

It's not fair to compare Belfast to Roma (that's a much richer, more ambitious movie), but maybe it's fair to compare it to Boorman's Hope and Glory or even, at times, Levinson's Avalon. I know that it's my favorite Branagh project since 1989, when he debuted with Henry V, a movie that was a massive formative experience for me as a teen and budding cinephile. Perhaps Belfast will provide a similar service for my boy.

16 hours ago, calvino said:

I guess the Oscar's snubbing the movie is getting some buzz.

The uproar around the Spidey snubbing seems misguided, I think. First, it's silly to complain about the Oscars, which have never been a reliable barometer of artistic merit. It's all a fool's errand. Second, the griping is predicated on the specious notion that box-office hits should automatically be considered artistic triumphs and the false premise that the Oscars aren't populist enough (a stronger case could be made that the Oscars are too middle-brow, routinely overlooking the best, most artistically rewarding fare). Third, it presumes that awards ceremonies ought to cater to populism, to follow audiences rather than lead audiences. But audiences already had their vote. We already give rewards for box-office dominance. It's called "huge profits." Wouldn't it be better if audiences were open to learning about non-tentpoles, seeking them out, discovering their riches, and thereby making them more popular? Fourth, it believes that No Way Home is a no-brainer contender... which I can only refute by saying that sure, I loved watching it, but it's not even close to one of my ten favorite movies of the year.

That said, if No Way Home had been nominated for Best Picture, I wouldn't be griping. Fool's errand, etc.

Let me add that I think No Way Home is indeed superior to Don't Look Up, which in my view was a worthwhile idea poorly executed.