FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON

A few years back, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien traveled to Japan to make CAFÉ LUMIÈRE, a charming, languid tribute to one of that country's greatest filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu. In this, his first non-Asian effort, he has crafted the earlier film's Western equivalent. Inspired by Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short THE RED BALLOON, Hou instinctively approaches Paris as a thoughtful tourist, though perhaps that term doesn't do him justice--he's more a seeker, freshly viewing France's day-to-day rhythms with the same sense of discovery as in his Japanese film.

One does not necessarily need to be familiar with Lamorisse's whimsical boy-and-his-balloon travelogue--it's merely a jumping off point for Hou. By way of a lost red balloon, we meet one of the three main characters, a young boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu), who is introduced standing outside a Metro station, looking upwards and begging the titular object (which slowly comes into our sight) to return. In contrast to Lamorisse's film, the boy never gets his balloon back, but it remains a constant, often ghostly presence as Hou intermittently, leisurely tracks its whereabouts: bobbing in and out of the Metro, floating past windows and skylights, and eventually gliding over the Parisian skyline.

The other two principal characters are Simon's frazzled mother, Suzanne (a terrific, bleach blonde Juliette Binoche), who makes her living narrating puppet shows, and the comparatively more serene Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese film student (and sly stand-in for the director) whom Suzanne hires as her son's babysitter. Half the film is set in Suzanne's tiny, cramped apartment; the other follows Song and Simon as they stroll through Paris, the former making her own student film homage to THE RED BALLOON with her video camera. Not much else happens, apart from a trip out of town to meet with a legendary Asian puppeteer and Suzanne's squabbles with her tenants, and those incidents feel vestigial at best.

As always, Hou is more concerned with emphasizing textures: the glow of a hidden side street, the way a gorgeous, melancholy reoccurring piano theme casts shadows over sidewalks and parks, and most spectacularly, the title-referencing motifs that subtly surface throughout, from a simple red handbag to the soft, pink glow emanating from an overhead lamp to even Simon's head of curly red locks. This is Hou is at his most inviting, engaging and poetic and I hope he considers filming something similar in America--maybe he'll have a better go at it than Wong Kar Wai recently has.

IFF BOSTON BLURBS

I'm unable to link to them directly, so here are my blurbs for some films screening at IFF Boston 2008, which starts tonight. If you're in the Boston area, come support the region's best film festival.

FRONTRUNNER
In 2004, Afghanistan held its first ever public democratic elections. Seventeen candidates challenged interim president Hamid Karzai; among them was one woman, Dr. Massouda Jalal. A 42-year-old pediatrician and teacher, Jalal had placed a distant second behind Karzai in a 2002 emergency election. Coming only three years after the Taliban government's collapse, Jalal's courageous, uphill battle of a campaign evokes the social reform slowly starting to shape a nation undergoing massive change and unrest.

Running on a platform promoting "life and hope", Jalal insists she is not a woman rights candidate, but a pacifist who will serve as a mother to her war-plagued country. The film shows us the similarities inherent between Jalal's and any other politician's quest for the people's support, particularly in how shrewdly she develops her public persona in the media with the help of political advisors. However, the cultural backdrop is worlds away from what we see in films like THE WAR ROOM. Jalal faces the challenges of being a woman in an Islamic Republic head-on as she deals with police tearing down her campaign signs, her country's war refugees and a mostly illiterate, uninformed populace. Although the election itself is nearly derailed by scandal and ineptitude regarding voting procedures, Jalal's optimism and tenacity sets her apart from her peers-you sense she emerges victorious regardless of how many votes she wins.

MY WINNIPEG
Guy Maddin's Winnipeg is unlike any other city you've ever encountered. He paints Manitoba's capital as a myth-rich land with grueling winters, a network of secret back lanes and byways, an old commercial signage graveyard and a single sledding hill made entirely out of a few decades worth of garbage. He explains how its hockey-loving, sleepwalking denizens have participated in labor strikes, standoffs to protect the world's smallest park (a tree in the exact middle of a lane) and department store-sponsored male beauty pageants. He even claims that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was impressed by the town's unique "psychic possibilities" which included séances conducted via ballet dancing.

In his first documentary, Maddin continues to refine his inimitable style that heavily draws upon silent and early-sound era cinema. Complemented by suggestive intertitles and the occasional animated reenactment, stock footage and newly-shot sequences feverishly coalesce to the point where it's not always easy to identify an image as one or the other. At one point, the filmmaker moves back into his childhood home with his mother (actually played by 86-year-old Ann Savage, star of the 1945 film noir DETOUR) and casts actors to portray his three siblings. Together, they recreate the family dynamic, circa 1963 (with riotous dialogue straight out of a B-movie melodrama). Throughout, Maddin's voiceover narration veers from the acerbic to the poetic as he reflects on childhood traumas (an incident at a three-story, gender-segregated pool), mourns for lost landmarks (his beloved, demolished Winnipeg Arena) and altogether celebrates his one-of-a-kind hometown.

PING PONG PLAYA
Self-assured slacker Christopher "C-Dub" Wang thinks it's only a matter of time before he's a professional basketball star, but his limited height only ensures victory over the neighborhood pre-teens. For the rest of his family, the sport of choice is ping pong: Mom teaches classes at the community center, Dad runs a ping pong supply shop and older brother Michael is a bona fide ping pong champion, his fame attracting customers to both parents' venues. When Michael and Mom are injured in a car accident, an unenthusiastic C-Dub is recruited not only to teach the ping pong classes but also take his brother's place in the annual ping pong championship.

In both arenas, he soon has a new rival in the snobbish Gerald. Sensing a golden opportunity with C-Dub's inexperience, Gerald is determined to win Michael's title any means necessary-including stealing C-Dub's students. This awakens a sense of pride in C-Dub as he vigorously trains to defend his family's honor in a climactic, nail-biting match. Featuring a starring turn from newcomer Jimmy Tsai, who also co-wrote the screenplay, PING PONG PLAYA is the first narrative feature from accomplished documentary director Jessica Yu (PROTAGONIST, IFFBoston 2007). Together, they've crafted a wacky comedy that both parodies and pays tribute to classic sports films like THE BAD NEWS BEARS, but also studies and gently subverts Asian American culture and stereotypes in contemporary suburbia.

SECRECY
When government information is withheld, does it effectively protect national security or repudiate the public's basic right to know? In the years following 9/11, this question grows ever more relevant as the amount of classified information in U.S. policy and practice has increased exponentially. With intricate but clear-headed discourse, SECRECY examines the effect of secrets on both political and personal matters from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War through Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act. It employs a mixture of interviews from a spectrum of journalists, former CIA employees and civilians; archival footage; art installations and snippets of impressionistic, black-and-white animation.

In this debate over secrecy's pros and cons, two landmark court cases are examined thoroughly. The first, which dates back nearly fifty years, involves Patricia Reynolds Herring, whose husband was killed in a U.S. bomber plane crash in Georgia. The second concerns Guantanamo detainee and Osama bin Laden driver/bodyguard Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was charged with conspiracy related to the 9/11 attacks. Both cases expose the human cost in keeping secrets and illustrate how power derived from doing so is often misused to break or rewrite legal precedents. The practice of secrecy is ultimately shown to be necessary and unavoidable in most cases; but as one interviewee notes, it also has the potential to threaten the very notion of democracy.

THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS
If Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page) is just a self-described "normal 15-year-old girl", how did she wind up sitting on the back of a bus, wearing nothing but a ragged shower curtain, looking for her lost little brother Sonny (who thinks he's a dog)? Well, her life is fraught with dysfunction from her parents, her shrink (the peculiar, androgynous Dr. Heker), her more popular classmates (who ostracize Tracey, cruelly referring to her as "It") and most of all, her obsessive crush Billy Zero, the dreamy, elusive new boy in school.

Adapted from Maureen Medved's novel, the film takes its title literally. It eschews a traditional linear narrative in favor of an audacious sound-and-vision collage with the screen continually split up into fragments. Instead of falling into a set pattern throughout, the fragments (which range from two to twenty at any given moment) appear, scatter and overlap in a seemingly infinite number of configurations. The fluid, jagged editing rhythms result in illusory tricks, often leaving the viewer wondering how or if a certain fragment is related to another. Fortunately, the style and story mesh perfectly; not only do we see many perspectives onscreen simultaneously but we also get a vivid sense how Tracey's reality and fantasy tend to blur (out of nowhere, a heavily stylized credits sequence appears for Tracey's own movie about her life). Featuring an effectively atmospheric score by Broken Social Scene, the film establishes a new creative standard for what one can accomplish with digital video.

MUSIC YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD

...unless I've already put it on a mix for you. Of course I made a Muxtape. It’s the greatest internet sensation since YouTube, don’t you know. Click here to listen. The track listing (and some notes):

1. Stars, “Elevator Love Letter”: Four minutes of sustained infatuation and longing, this boy/girl duet should resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a crush on an elusive, unobtainable other, which means everyone should love it.

2. Marit Bergman, “No Party”: The misery and splendor of being alone, according to a woman who so much deserves to be a household name outside her native Sweden (especially with this video).

3. Tamas Wells, “Even in the Crowds”: Winsome, soft-spoken, achingly sad Australian folk-pop that belongs on the same A-level shelf as Paul Simon, Harry Nilsson, Elliot Smith and Stuart Murdoch.

4. Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton, “Crowd Surf off a Cliff”: Metric vocalist Haines strips down to nothing but a voice and a piano, but she carries the force of an orchestra with her presence (and those simple but spooky chord changes).

5. Roisin Murphy, “You Know Me Better”: Still only available as an import in the U.S., this ex-Moloko singer’s second solo album features plenty of sublime, tart dance-pop like this, where she very nearly resembles a young, pre-fame Madonna (arguably the best kind of Madonna).

6. The Negro Problem, “Repulsion (Show up Late for Work on Monday)”: Wanted to include some Stew in anticipation of seeing Passing Strange next month. I can’t wait to hear if any of its numbers feature a banjo solo.

7. The Go-Betweens, “Bye Bye Pride”: I adored this one long before its writer/singer died two years ago; it carries even more weight now, like a philosophy or way to live.

8. Saint Etienne, “Are We Gonna Be Alright”: From the band’s fan club CD compilation Boxette, a cover of a song written by Matthew Sweet. So delectably shiny/happy it makes me want to hear Sarah Cracknell’s takes on “Sick of Myself”, “I’ve Been Waiting” and many other gems from Sweet’s catalogue.

9. Imperial Teen, “Room With a View”: This venerable indie rock quartet’s fourth album would’ve ended up high on my top ten list last year if I had heard it in time; this is its centerpiece—pretty astonishing in both how grown-up and giddy it sounds.

10. John Martyn & Beverley Martyn, “Auntie Aviator”: A track I put on my beloved “Mysteries” mix that effortlessly lulls me into an altered, more blissful state every time I hear it.

11. Tompaulin, “Slender”: I just found out these obscure Brits broke up a year or two ago; they were the best band I discovered while writing music reviews for this website, and this powerful, momentous track was the most-played one on my iTunes before I had to move my mp3 library to a new hard drive earlier this year.

12. Belle and Sebastian, “Lazy Line Painter Jane”: They’ve had a fantastic career since recording this single more than a decade ago, but they haven’t topped it. Maybe it was a just a one-of-a-kind, magical convergence of melodic hooks, emphatic lyrics, cathedral organ and snappy, soulful guest vocalist Monica Queen?

BA BA BA

I'm exhausted, so to tide you over until my next big burst o' creative energy (whenever that may be), here's a simple but fun music meme you can easily find all over the 'net (a.k.a., 23 Random Selections from my iTunes).

- - - - - - - Your Life: The Soundtrack - - - - - - - -
So, here’s how it works:
Open your music player (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, etc).
Put it on shuffle.
Press play.
For every question type the song that’s playing.
When you go to a new question press the next button.
Some songs fit perfectly.
(otherwise, wash, rinse, repeat.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Opening Credits: This (Brian Eno)
Birth: Shy (Ani DiFranco)
Waking Up: Girls Room (Liz Phair)
Working song: Dim All the Lights (Donna Summer)
Falling in Love: Little Fishes (Brian Eno)
Sex: Wonderboy (The Kinks)
Lusting: The Dull Flame of Desire (Bjork)
Cooking Dinner: Gatekeeper (Feist)
Walk in the Park: Victoria (The Kinks)
Working out at the gym: Hug My Soul (Saint Etienne)
Fight scene: Time to Get Away (LCD Soundsystem)
Breaking up: Toto Dies (Nellie McKay)
Getting back together: Trigger Hippie (Morcheeba)
Secret Love: Where the Streets Have No Name/Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You (Pet Shop Boys)
Life’s okay: Ba Ba Ba (Ivy)
Mental breakdown: Love and Happiness (Al Green)
Partying: Everything Hits At Once (Spoon)
Long night alone: Cast Your Fate to the Wind (Vince Guaraldi)
Final Battle: Possibly Maybe (Bjork)
Death Scene: Teen Titans Theme (Puffy AmiYumi)
Funeral: (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone (Aretha Franklin)
Credits: The Daily Planet (Love)

CAUGHT RED-HANDED!

I took this at The Friendly Toast in Portsmouth, NH on an all-too-brief overnight trip there last month (Steve and I were desperate for an affordable getaway of any kind). This popular eatery is steeped from ceiling to linoleum'd floor in mid-20th century kitsch. Given permission, I could spend all day there documenting the walls with my camera. (and I wouldn't be the first).

This curious little bric-a-brac was at our booth. I wouldn't be surprised if all the other booths in our section were lacking in the sugar dept. Unbeknownst to Steve, his hand wandered into the frame as he was sneaking some sweet-n-low. I'd love to do a photo essay consisting of nothing but various hands intruding the frames, but this one's special precisely because it was accidental.

***

As to why I haven't posted much lately, I've been busy writing blurbs for work and for here. And with exciting news of Zeitgeist releasing a Jarman DVD box in June, I may have to rethink this project's timeline.

SEBASTIANE

In an effort to write more, I’m taking on the films of one director at a time. While I would love to do this on a weekly basis, I’ll start off monthly and see how it goes.

To kick things off, I’ll be revisiting the work of British New Gay Cinema pioneer Derek Jarman. I wrote my master’s thesis on him nearly a decade ago, but I haven’t viewed any of his films in well over five years. When I was studying Jarman in depth, he had only recently passed away (from AIDS in 1994) and he still seemed fresh in the public’s memory (or at least the specialized, mostly academic audiences in this country who knew of his work). Since then, I sense his profile has faded. One could argue that his films are too esoteric, too British, too much of an era long since passed to have a lasting impact (and it doesn’t help that more than half of his features are unavailable on region 1 DVD). In reviewing these films, I hope to rebuke all of that, for something in Jarman’s style singled him out to me from the many directors I was exposed to as a Film Studies grad student.

The 33-year-old Jarman was already an established painter and set-designer (both for stage and screen). He had picked up a Super 8 camera a few years before and had begun to make off-the-cuff experimental short films with his friends (many of these were collected in the feature IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN (1980), which I haven’t seen because it’s never been available in the US on VHS or DVD). In his first memoir, DANCING LEDGE, Jarman recounts meeting producer James Whaley at a luncheon. After introducing himself as a "maker of little films", Whaley asked him if he had any ideas for a feature. The producer was most taken with Jarman’s mention of St. Sebastiane, and the two set off on writing a treatment.

Jarman may share a co-director credit with editor Paul Humfrees on SEBASTIANE (1975), but the film clearly bears the former's stamp. It nearly overflows with stylistic motifs that would reappear in all of his subsequent work: the emphasis of mood over narrative, a painterly visual tableaux, and dominance of the male gaze, for starters. One can easily trace his revisionist approach to portraying the lives of historical figures from its humble beginnings here to his more sophisticated, conceptually daring takes on CARAVAGGIO, EDWARD II, and WITTGENSTEIN.

The film opens dauntingly and loudly with a party at Diocletian’s palace straight out of Kenneth Anger’s SCORPIO RISING. Lurid pinks, golds and blues and a relentless tribal beat accompany a troop of half-naked men wielding plastic, super-soaker-sized phalluses as they wildly gyrate around a debased central figure, climaxing in what Jarman calls “a condensed milk orgasm.” Although the sequence has little to do with what follows in the narrative, it undoubtedly sets a tone, not only for SEBASTIANE but for Jarman’s entire filmography: an unrepentant celebration of homoeroticism, sex and camp.

The rest of the film follows Sebastiane (the slight-framed, beatific Leo Treviglio) as he is sent into exile in the desert by the Romans for professing his Christian faith and eventually martyred. We get many scenes of Sebastiane and his fellow soldiers engaging in fight practice, goofing off and lazing about—in the first of a long line of deliberate anachronisms, Jarman has his cast throw around a plastic frisbee.

Between these seemingly trivial, often comic moments exist lyrical ones that shape the film into something far more ambitious than a simple historical piece, revisionist or not. Thirty minutes in, Jarman fixates on two soldiers, Anthony and Adrian, as they sensually frolic and embrace each other in the water. Drawn out in a series of slow-motion shots with Brian Eno’s ambient score languidly hanging overhead, the sequence is passionate and blissfully erotic without being pornographic (though in some versions a glimpse of an erection appears in one shot). Arguably, it’s more audacious than the opening orgy—to portray on film a physical act of love between two men, as opposed to merely sex, did not have much precedent in 1975; nor did depicting homosexuality as something other than an affliction to overcome.

Also audacious is how Jarman recontextualizes Sebastiane’s faith in God as something material. Early on, Sebastian muses on his own beauty, devotedly staring at his reflection in the water. Throughout, he recites his winsome, plainspoken poetry (both out loud and in voiceover); combined with visuals like the soldiers' embrace, they start to sound less like prayer and more like paeans to the male form. I don’t think Jarman is suggesting that Sebastiane was gay (he actually fends off sexual advances from one of his superiors) so much as appropriating his status of persecuted outcast as an allegory for anyone who upsets the status quo by being different.

At this early stage in his career, Jarman has all the disparate pieces on the table but not the ability to successfully alchemize them into a convincing whole. The fragmented narrative rambles without any sense of momentum or poetic epiphany. Sebastiane himself is so much a generic cipher that when his execution concludes the film, it has precious little resonance. As each soldier methodically shoots an arrow at Sebastian as he is tied to a post, we hear nothing, not even the arrow puncturing the skin; only the wind is audible. Such a somber, mournful tone is the complete opposite of the film’s opening frenzy. The lack of melodrama is soothing, but not haunting enough. An earlier, minor scene where Sebastiane and another soldier find divine revelation by listening to a sea shell is far more affecting.

When researching my thesis, I quickly dismissed SEBASTIANE as a first film by a talent awaiting refinement and development. It’s still not the best Jarman work to begin with, though it’s far from the most challenging one. Sure, it’s a little naive, but in a charming rather than annoying way. Stay tuned to see what happens as that naivete gradually transforms into knowingness and something approaching both rage and lament.

OSCAR BLOGGING # 5

--Only four awards left and it's not even 11:30. Diablo Cody gets Original Screenplay amidst a truly horrid orchestral version of "A Well Respected Man", and is actually pretty adorable despite the tattoo, outfit, hair, etc;

--I was hoping they'd include the infamous milkshake monologue for Daniel Day-Lewis' Best Actor clip from THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but the maniacal religious conversion scene's nearly as good.

--Oh those Coen Brothers. If they win Best Picture, I wonder if Ethan will have more to say.

--And the big winner is... NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Surely the best Best Picture in years. And hey! Ethan doesn't have to say anything.

As for my predictions, I correctly guessed 17 out of 24. Not sure if I'll be live-blogging again next year. I have to admit I feel a bit like Comic Book Guy, tapping snarkily away. And finally, why the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme?

OSCAR BLOGGING # 4

--Aw, I was looking forward to Roderick Jaynes' acceptance speech for Film Editing, but it went to THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM instead.

--Without 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS on the list or THE BAND'S VISIT even eligible, I don't care much about Best Foreign Language film this year. As I predicted, it goes to THE COUNTERFEITERS (how the Academy loves a holocaust film), though I'm guessing (hoping?) the accompanying music's not in the film as it's much better suited for a figure skating competition.

--Here comes John Travolta and his spray-on hair. Vinnie Barbarino would not approve. It kinda restores one's faith in humanity when something from ONCE wins Best Original Song. Make art, indeed.

OSCAR BLOGGING # 3

--Jon Stewart's sarcastic reaction to the belabored, oh-we're-so-clever behind-the-scenes Academy voting montage? Perfect.

--Sigh... seeing Kristin Chenoweth perform the second nominated number from ENCHANTED reminds me how much I'm missing PUSHING DAISIES.

--Hmm... Seth Rogen does give off a bit of a "Dame Judi Dench" vibe (though Jonah Hill ain't no Halle Berry).

--Where is the Sound Editing and Mixing love for TRANSFORMERS? (Just kidding).

--Wow, Lead Actress less than two hours into the broadcast? Oscar goes schizoid once again? (though I don't think ATONEMENT will be winning Best Picture). And it goes to Marion Cotillard, who was so absolutely mesmerizing as Edith Piaf that I don't even mind Julie Christie losing.

OSCAR BLOGGING # 2

--Deserved Best Supporting Actor winner Javier Bardem acknowledges his haircut, touchingly thanks his mother in Spanish, and sets the bar high for best speech of the evening.

--Oscar's Tribute to Periscopes and Binoculars is actually far more entertaining than watching performances of the Best Original Song nominees.

--And now, the most unpredictable category... ever. Best Supporting Actress goes to one of my all-time favorites, Tilda Swinton, who gives a typically genuine, unrehearsed acceptance speech. How can you not love the way she comments on the statue's "buttocks"?

OSCAR BLOGGING # 1

--"Oscar is 80 this year, which automatically makes him the front runner for the Republican nomination". Leave it to Jon Stewart to score with the political jokes instead of the obligatory strike-related ones.

--First up, Best Costume Design. What happened to kicking things off with a supporting actor or actress award? Why does Jennifer Garner have Peter Petrelli's haircut from the first season of HEROES?

--The best thing about montage # 1, celebrating 80 years of Oscar: too many hairstyles of the damned to mention (bonus points for young Michael Jackson's 'fro... and Jane Fonda's too).

--Only in a category like Makeup can both NORBIT and LA VIE EN ROSE exist. The Academy goes with the classier of the two.

KRIOFSKE MIX: I AM 32 FLAVORS (AND THEN SOME)

October 1998: 120-minute cassette

SIDE ONE
01. Propellerheads feat. Shirley Bassey, “History Repeating”
02. Soul Coughing, “Circles”
03. Erasure, “Too Darn Hot”
04. The Kinks, “Apeman”
05. Tom Waits, “16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six”
06. Pulp, “Dishes”
07. Leonard Cohen, “Sisters of Mercy”
08. Meryn Cadell, “Window of Opportunity”
09. Saint Etienne, “Been So Long”
10. Jane Siberry, “See the Child”
11. Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco, “Holding On”
12. The Darling Buds, “Do You Have to Break My Heart?”
13. Information Society, “A Knife and A Fork”
14. Everything But the Girl, “Mirrorball”
15. Liz Phair, “Polyester Bride”

SIDE TWO
16. The Jam, “Start!”
17. LaBelle, “Lady Marmalade”
18. Billie Holiday, “Comes Love”
19. Frank Sinatra, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”
20. Rosemary Clooney, “Mambo Italiano”
21. Keely Smith, “Don’t Take Your Love From Me”
22. Vince Guaraldi Trio, “Linus and Lucy”
23. Dionne Warwick, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”
24. Pizzicato Five, “Fortune Cookie”
25. Annie Lennox, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”
26. Kirsty MacColl, “Angel”
27. Saint Etienne, “Hobart Paving”
28. XTC, “Earn Enough For Us”
29. Morcheeba, “Let Me See”
30. Indigo Girls, “Galileo”
31. Sam Phillips, “These Boots are Made For Walkin’”
32. Sheryl Crow, “My Favorite Mistake” (labeled “Mystery Flavor”)

Ah, I *heart* the ‘90s. I made this mix nearly a decade ago for a friend’s 23rd birthday (the same recipient of this and this) and revisited it when I made a CD version of it for her 32nd birthday a few months ago. Given I’ll be 32 for only a few more days, I thought I’d better write about it now.

I don’t think I’ve recently listened to any other mixes I made from that pre CD-burning, pre iPod era—in fact, this is one of the few from that time where I wrote down the track listing for my own records. Forgive me my nostalgia, but for all its detriments (fuzzy sound, analog sequencing, limited durability), I really miss mix tapes, especially the 120-minute ones: two neatly appropriated hours of song, as opposed to an arbitrarily determined 75-79 minute swath of time. Too bad most people no longer have anything to play them on (the main reason I “digitized” this mix for my friend).

The title, of course, is from an Ani DiFranco song, although her appearance here is limited to musical backing for a Utah Phillips monologue. Apart from the actual number of songs, there’s no running theme, except for a long stretch of pre-1975 tracks on Side Two that I don’t remember being intentional. As with most of my mixes, this is a perfect time capsule of what I was into then. Apparently, the soundtrack for my clove-smoking grad school years contained lots of Britpop, slightly quirky alt-rock, the BIG NIGHT soundtrack, and a few random selections, like “Sisters of Mercy” (I must’ve seen McCABE & MS. MILLER recently) and “Lady Marmalade” (a whole three years before the tacky MOULIN ROUGE remake).

Surprisingly, I’m not embarrassed by any of the selections I made as a 23-year-old; I doubt I could say the same for a mix I made at 18 or especially 13 (which would’ve consisted of songs taped off the radio). Before setting out to re-make it, I discovered I already had most of these songs on my iPod. Hearing it again, some of it actually seems more relevant today, particularly this apt lyric from Pulp’s beautifully world-weary “Dishes”:

A man told me to beware of 33
He said, “It was not an easy time for me”
but I'll get though
even though I've got no miracles to show you.

FROZEN HALL'S POND

I've been busy trying to complete two writing projects: one for this blog, the other for another site. I'm also distressed that a certain forthcoming album has yet again been delayed, this time until a vague "Spring" release date.

In the meantime, enjoy these recent pictures of Hall's Pond sanctuary, which is hidden in Brookline off Beacon Street. It has long fulfilled my idea of a secret, special, solitary space. A walk down there on my lunch break is extremely therapeutic any time of year...

THE BEST FILMS OF 2007

What an amazing year for film--possibly the best since 2001, which gave us this, this, and this, among many others. Let's see how '07 compares...

THE TOP TEN:

1. THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Paul Thomas Anderson’s dizzying period saga about a self-made oil tycoon practically defies all expectations (and perhaps logic): it’s undeniably epic yet intimately rendered, seemingly a throwback but feeling entirely new, predominantly exhausting yet altogether exhilarating. It opens daringly without any dialogue (substituted by Jonny Greenwood’s striking, innovative orchestral score) and ends, two and a half hours later, with an extended lunatic exchange people will be quoting from for years to come. Daniel Day-Lewis takes his cartoon-come-to-life persona from GANGS OF NEW YORK and deepens and shapes it into a multi-faceted enigma, while Paul Dano is nearly his equal, especially whenever preaching himself into a vicious frenzy. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is like manna from heaven for film lovers: it shrewdly draws upon conventions from a century of cinema and simultaneously, ingenuously rewrites them. Should every film this utterly bleak be so much fun to watch.

2. THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS
I never expected a look at competitive video game players to end up my favorite documentary of the year, much less a serious contender for the overall top spot. It just goes to show that you can make a good film about anything—or does it? From a distance, we can laugh at (or lament) people like Billy Mitchell, a mullet-sporting hot sauce magnate still living off the fame and prestige granted to him by a Donkey Kong championship he won over twenty years earlier, even as affable unemployed family man Steve Wiebe challenges his all-time high score. But as director Seth Gordon uncovers a fascinating subculture he also structures a classic, nail-biting good vs. evil tale out of it, one that’s instantly recognizable and involving amidst all the peculiar (yet entertaining) behavior on display.

3. AWAY FROM HER
As an actress, Sarah Polley exudes beauty, grace and a subdued intuitiveness that’s rare among her peers. Those qualities are abundant in her outstanding directorial feature debut, an elegiac adaptation of an Alice Munro short story. Refreshingly unsentimental in how it approaches aging and loss, the film provides a luminous Julie Christie with the role of her career as an Alzheimer’s patient, while Gordon Pinsent is considerably underrated as her longtime husband—arguably the trickier role to pull off. Polley lets the narrative’s subtleties delicately surface like frost on a windowpane, gently propelling the film towards a closing, reconciliatory sequence (scored by K.D. Lang’s soaring cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless”) that is among the most poignant and jubilant I’ve seen.

4. I’M NOT THERE
Not merely the ultimate Dylan film, this kaleidoscopic study of the 1960s often plays like the ultimate Todd Haynes film. The director’s oft-intriguing, sometimes ballsy conceit of employing six actors to portray different Dylan-esque characters is just the beginning: practically everything Haynes puts on screen signifies something and it’s thrilling just to anticipate what will appear next. The mere idea of Cate Blanchett embodying Bobby circa DON’T LOOK BACK is brilliant in how it deconstructs the man’s ever shifting persona (and Blanchett’s stunning, convincing performance goes beyond mimicry in doing so). I’M NOT THERE is messy yet revelatory filmmaking—even the much maligned Richard Gere sequences offer insight into an era, its death, and how its principles continue to regenerate.

5. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel builds on the promise of BASQUIAT and the accomplishment of BEFORE NIGHT FALLS with his third feature, a real breakthrough of a film that alters our way of seeing. In adapting the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor who suffered a massive stroke and was left paralyzed except for one eyelid, Schnabel forges a whole universe as it might have appeared from such a limited perspective. Then, he gradually pulls back to reveal Bauby’s past and his present from our own perspective, and the juxtapositions are startling. Like the memoir, Schnabel succeeds in expressing how one can create great, transcendent art out of the most tragic circumstances and more importantly, suffuse a life with it.

6. PERSEPOLIS
Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoirs of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution wonderfully come to life in this droll, tender adaptation she co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud. Keeping in spirit with the books' minimalist, black-and-white tableau, the impressionist, handcrafted animation feels warm and reassuring in an age of too much CGI. Satrapi also confidently expresses so many nuances out of such a deliberately limited, carefully constructed palette. Told with sincerity, resourcefulness and humor, her story relates the painful love/hate relationship she develops with her beloved, complicated culture. Plus, she connects with us at an emotional level many live action coming-of-age films rarely approach.

7. DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT
Julia Loktev’s wrenching, absorbing effort follows an anonymous 19-year-old girl (Luisa Williams) of no discernable ethnic background as she rigorously trains to do something (to give away exactly what this is somewhat lessens the film’s impact). However, when the girl actually attempts to carry off that something and it doesn’t go as planned, she faces an array of complexities and consequences she hadn’t previously considered. Methodically paced and shot in a bare-bones style, the film ends up in a far different place (both literally and figuratively) than where it begins. And although the word “haunted” is much overused, I can’t think of a better way to describe the expression on Williams’ face at the inconclusive, lingering final shot.

8. THE HOST
The world doesn’t need yet another monster movie. South Korean director Bong Joon-ho probably considered that when making this whip-smart takeoff which pays tribute to the genre while stretching it out a great deal, adding in slapstick, domestic drama, and more than a smidgen of satire, while not ignoring the horror of its creation. The cast is uniformly excellent, from Song Kang-ho as a snack-bar working slacker to Bae Doona as his sister, a professional archer. Carrying an infectiously gleeful anti-authoritarian undercurrent throughout, the film tries to be a little bit of everything to everyone, and amazingly, it succeeds.

9. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Oh, those Coen Brothers. Not only do they come back from the vagaries of THE LADYKILLERS and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, but they make a film that rivals FARGO as their very best. Who knew they could obliterate the snarky tone and condescending attitude towards their characters (always their Achilles' heel) but keep everything else intact? Their Cormac McCarthy adaptation is both a sobering, economical thriller and a meditative, almost surreal study of violence, greed, stubbornness and consequence. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is the premier nihilist villain of our time, so thank goodness that Tommy Lee Jones’ besieged sheriff eventually emerges as the film’s heart and soul.

10. BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
Since THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, it’s been a joy to watch Guy Maddin further develop and refine his demented, hallucinatory style. This one is typical Maddin madness: a fractured fairy tale about a marooned orphanage, a fountain of youth and gender-bending teens flies by in a blur of lurid intertitles and images that bleed into one another, all of it (sort of) held together by Isabella Rossellini’s priceless narration. But the director reaches a new apex of invention here, crafting a narrative ever more involving and accessible while remaining delightfully eccentric. He’s achieved a perfect balance that comes from concurrently pushing and pleasing his audience.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

RATATOUILLE
Brad Bird’s masterful third feature not only wrings an excellent, affecting tale from an unlikely premise, but also speaks volumes about how talent and drive combine to make sublime art, and what the audience’s role is in consuming and comprehending it.

I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE

Like all his Taiwan-set works, Tsai Ming-Liang’s first film shot in his native Malaysia finds strange beauty and poetry in what to nearly anyone else would appear as a miserable, crumbling landscape.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Perhaps the most vivid study we’ve had of the Cold War and its personal implications from the other side. The late Ulrich Muhe gives this year’s most intense and least showy lead performance.

RED ROAD
A neat digital video equivalent to Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION, Andrea Arnold’s psychological thriller delves deep into issues of voyeurism and redemption.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON
The year’s most puzzling box-office flop, it artfully recounts the Apollo moon missions; the living histories its subjects provide make it a powerful, vital document.

JUNO
By gradually supplanting its twee, faux-hip dialogue and overload of attitude with actual compassion and wit (not to mention a superb ensemble cast), this deserved indie hit resonates more with each viewing.

CLIMATES
Nuri Bilge Ceylan probably isn’t the first filmmaker to equate a faltering relationship with a season cycle, but his languid pacing and creative yet unflashy visual sense and sound design have little precedent.

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL
This could have been a one-joke flick, so thank Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and the rest of the cast for breathing life into the joke and making it seem not so ridiculous.

AUTISM THE MUSICAL
A true buried treasure, this provocative, exuberant doc debunks myths about a misunderstood disease by painting its subjects as real, complex individuals to respect as we would any other kids.

THE GOLDEN DOOR
America as concept and misconception, stirred by tall tales, hearsay, dreams and Anges Godard’s otherworldly cinematography.

LINDA LINDA LINDA
From Japan, an unexpectedly contemplative tale about a teenage girl rock band that seductively captures the lovely day-to-day rhythms of normal life.

BEST FESTIVAL FILMS:

MONKEY WARFARE
An anarchic, razor-sharp Canadian comedy that strikes a faultless balance between idealism and pragmatism with irresistible, ramshackle charm.

AUDIENCE OF ONE
An ambitious but terribly incompetent Pentecostal minister attempts to make a science fiction film about the biblical story of Joseph in Michael Jacobs’ hilarious but fair, must-be-seen-to-be-believed documentary.

THE BANISHMENT
Still without US distribution, Andrey Zvyagintsev's follow-up to THE RETURN shows him continuing to enhance and perfect his inimitable style, aided by unforgettable images, strong performances and a cyclical, slightly more accessible narrative.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS

MY WINNIPEG

THE VISITOR

SILENT LIGHT
I'll write more about these as they hit theaters throughout 2008.

ALSO RECOMMENDED:
(I gave all these at least 4 out of 5 stars)

BROKEN ENGLISH
CONTROL
CRAZY LOVE
THE DARJEELING LIMITED
GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
HELVETICA
JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLE’S TEMPLE
KURT COBAIN: ABOUT A SON
LAKE OF FIRE
MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
NO END IN SIGHT
OFFSIDE
ONCE
PAN’S LABYRINTH
PAPRIKA
PROTAGONIST
THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
SUMMERCAMP!
SUPERBAD
SWEENEY TODD
THIS IS ENGLAND
WHO THE $#%& IS JACKSON POLLOCK?
ZODIAC

2007 BOOKLIST

I usually post my top ten films of the year around this time, but I'm holding off until I get a chance to see something that doesn't open in Boston for another week. In the meantime, taking a page (ba-dump bump) from my friend and fellow book-grouper Linda, here's what I read last year:

1. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Bill Bryson)
2. The Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby)
3. Notes From a Small Island (Bryson)
4. Spook (Mary Roach)
5. Comfort Me With Apples (Ruth Reichl)
6. Straight Man (Richard Russo)*
7. Love is a Mixtape (Rob Sheffield)
8. Alternatives to Sex (Stephen McCauley)
9. You Don't Love Me Yet (Jonathan Lethem)
10. Altman on Altman (Robert Altman)
11. The Lost Continent (Bryson)
12. Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Story (Paul Whitelaw)
13. Now is the Hour (Tom Spanbauer)
14. Made in America (Bryson)
15. Reading Like a Writer (Francine Prose)**
16. No One Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July)
17. The Giant's House (Elizabeth McCracken)
18. The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life (Simon Goddard)
19. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling)
20. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Alice Munro)
21. Live From New York (Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller)*
22. Marooned: The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs (various)
23. I'm a Stranger Here Myself (Bryson)
24. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
25. Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
26. Mother Tongue (Bryson)
27. Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)
28. Not That You Asked (Steve Almond)
29. Schulz and Peanuts (David Michaelis)
30. The Abstinence Teacher (Tom Perrotta)
31. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)
32. Born Standing Up (Steve Martin)

*re-read
**unfinished

A few notes:

--I've been on a Bryson kick ever since a friend gave me a copy of In a Sunburned Country in 2006. He's one of those few authors (Tom Robbins and John Irving also come to mind) where I feel compelled to devour the man's entire oeuvre. In Bryson's case, I have two more to go: his new Shakespeare biography, and the somewhat daunting A Short History of Nearly Everything.

--My favorite read on this list, by far, was Now is the Hour (published in 2006). I had read Spanbauer's The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon some time ago, and thought it was okay. But this epic yet intimate coming of age story set in 1967 Idaho was fantastic, combining complicated characters with a striking, unique conversational style.

--Two things inspired me to check out Alice Munro: the film AWAY FROM HER (an adaptation of her story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" that will surely make my film list), and a recommendation from Prose, whose book on writing is intriguing, but so densely written that I have difficulty making it through more than five or ten pages at a time (and consequently haven't touched it in months).

--I ended the year with some massive reads: Michaelis' controversial but indispensable Schulz biography (672 pages) and Murakami's original, dreamlike tale of loss and identity (624 pages). So, Steve Martin's entertaining, illuminating memoir (224 pages) came as a relief.

--I plan on reading more Munro, Murakami and Mitchell in the new year.