PopMatters, July 2008

If there’s a nagging conviction behind Stay Positive, it’s a constant refusal to be pinned down on E Street, revealing a toxic indulgence to revel in the spit and swagger of the punk side of town.

And you thought the Hold Steady were just living on E Street? Littered with early Springsteen analogies ever since they broke through with the bar room tales of Boys and Girls in America, Craig Finn has constantly referred to the debt his band owes to the likes of the Ramones, Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, only for critics to remain defiant of their origins in favour of references to the New Jersey Godfather. If there’s a nagging conviction behind Stay Positive, the Hold Steady’s fourth album, it’s a constant refusal to be pinned down on E Street, revealing a toxic indulgence to revel in the spit and swagger of the punk side of town.

While Stay Positive proves that Finn and co. still love to get with the E Street shuffle, the first crashing notes of “Constructive Summer”, the record’s charged opener, are a “White Riot”-style riff that Mick Jones would be proud of. The tingling piano and made-for-arena drums that follows may be pure Springsteen, but only after he’s been dragged through a dozen chaotic bars by Finn, all the time regaling the Boss with the genius of Bob Mould. Seventeen seconds into “Constructive Summer” and Finn has already dropped an Iggy Pop reference:

Me and my friends are like the drums on Lust for Life
We pound it out on floor toms
Our psalms are sing-along songs

And while the song may break down into classic early Springsteen territory, all Born to Run piano and Finn’s recounting of disappointing encounters with school and church (“I heard your gospel / It moved me to tears / But I couldn’t find the hate / And I couldn’t find the fear … I tried to believe all the things that you said / But my friends that aren’t dying are already dead”), it’s the lethal bark in Finn’s voice as he croaks out “Raise a toast to St Joe Strummer / I think he might have been our only decent teacher” that is the moment the Hold Steady step back and reclaim their punk mantle.

Still, Stay Positive is a curious record. It’s both a progression on Boys and Girls in America — harpsichords, mandolins, even theremins are plucked out for appearances — and an excuse to explore unfinished business. “Sequested in Memphis”, “Navy Sheets” and the title track could have been lost down the back of the studio sofa after the last album. Its appeal (and how fast it will take to get under your skin) all depends on how willing you are to swallow any expectations you have and just approach it as great, solid rock album.

Finn points out much the same in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper, dismissing any particular concerns with subverting the expectations of long-time fans. “I think it’s more of a challenge for us to make a more consistent, less rambling rock record. Boys and Girls was a step towards that, and Stay Positive is more fully realised,” he says, adding, “as for the fans, I don’t think too much about that. We got our fans by pleasing ourselves.”

The endearing attraction about the Hold Steady—and a large reason behind their solid fan base—is that this selfish attitude to songwriting is not forged out of arrogance. It’s just a way for Finn to say ‘if I wasn’t in his group I’d be in the pit watching them’. This, and a purposeful defiance to pander to the accepted rock and roll game—no asymmetrical haircuts to dress up elaborately-designed style-mag covers; no piercing cheekbones to hang the affections of feigning rock chicks (and critics)—is both refreshing and unprecedented in an age when most new artists seem to come shrink-wrapped in ‘Barbie boxes’ and an American Idol tie-in.

The Hold Steady make no qualms about their age (Finn is 36) and if Stay Positive is strung together by a common theme it’s the act of growing old gracefully. “Constructive Summer” closes with Finn warning “Getting older makes it harder to remember / We are our only saviours / We’re gonna build something this summer.” But it’s the title track, a thumping sing-a-long number as good as any they’ve written, that addresses the issue head-on. Finn name-drops early straight-edge band 7 Seconds as a reason behind the kids giving him credit “for being down with it”, before predicting a time when “These kids at the shows will have kids of their own / And these sing-a-long songs will be our scriptures.”

And yet while Stay Positive might find Finn in existential contemplation of his past, present and future, thankfully it doesn’t keep him away from his observational wisdom in recounting tales of hedonism, naivety, drugs and alcohol in small town America. “Joke About America” may not be their finest five minutes, although it’s an absorbing song based around a sweet Hammond groove, a telling, slow beat and a dark narrative of splintering music scenes and friendship. But Finn’s lyrics are exceptional:

Back then it was beautiful
The boys were sweet and musical
The laser lights looked mystical
Messed up stuff felt magical
Girls didn’t seem so difficult
Boys didn’t seem so typical
It was warm and white and wonderful
We were all invincible

Elsewhere, while you’re contemplating Hold Steady’s consistent attention to thunderous, playful rock, Stay Positive has a knack to take you on a few sharp left turns. Straight after the rousing “Sequested in Memphis”, “One for the Cutters” kicks-in with a majestic harpsichord line that, even though it undercuts a great Craig Finn narrative, is still enough to make you check the CD cover for proof it’s still the Hold Steady and not Tori Amos. “Lord, I’m Discouraged”, leaves E Street and the punk quarter far behind and drifts off on a desolate tale of helplessness as a lover fades into addiction. Somewhere between Buffalo Tom and R.E.M. at their most melancholy, it features a painful piano line as Finn comes to terms with the “excuses and half truths and fortified wine”.

Stay Positive closes with the joyous “Slapped Actress”, a reference to Opening Night Director John Cassavetes (“We are the actors / The cameras are rollin’ / I’ll be Ben Gazzara / You’ll be Gena Rowlands”), but also seemingly pointing to the constant burn of touring:

Sometimes, actresses get slapped.
Some nights, makin’ it look real might end up with someone hurt.
Some nights, it’s just entertainment, and, some other nights, it’s real.
They come in for the beating, to see the stadium seating.
They’re holding their hands out for the body and blood, now.
We’re the directors, our hands will hold steady.
I’ll be John Cassavettes, let me know when you’re ready.

Grinding along on an infectious, spiralling crescendo, the piano holds the melody together before being overtaken by a J Mascis-style cacophony of guitars and a rising chorus, Finn closing the song and reaffirming the Hold Steady conviction at the same time, “Man, we make our own movies / Man, we make our own movies”.

Editor’s Note: This is part III in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  For part II, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

In my previous posts on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I touched upon some of the ways in which these films exploit the uncanny feelings we experience in relation to our own bodies, as well as how these films may have a comment on the ways in which contemporary power structures terrorize and appropriate the female body.   In this continuation of the larger discussion on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I am interested in investigating how these films might also be mining some horror from the inherently uncomfortable disconnect we all have between our minds and our bodies.

In support of this notion, I will posit that the eeriest things in life are not often the things prowling around outside your home at night, nor are they the things coming down from outer space to apprehend unsuspecting sleepers, and certainly they are not pitchfork-wielding goblins reveling in a fiery orgy of sin below the earth.  On the contrary, the eeriest things in life often originate within the confines of our own skulls.  Throughout our history, we humans have made a habit of projecting the weird things going on in our own psyches outwardly, thereby attributing anomalous or unsavory behavior or phenomena to demons, witches and the like.  For instance, Mary Beth Norton makes a compelling argument in her 2002 book In the Devil’s Snare, that the Salem Witch Trials toward the end of the 17^th Century can be largely attributed to the anxieties and other psychological ramifications of frontier life, and specifically the fear of Native American attacks on European settlements.  The dark-skinned men lurking in the unfamiliar forests, along with the constant bloodshed that was inherent to that time and place, created a fear that was coupled with an already-present collective belief in witches, demons and unknown evils lurking in the shadows.  While these settlers did have actual danger prowling outside their homes, they were not aware that the reach of Native American influence reached through the walls of their homes into their minds, leading to irrational behavior and decision-making.  Those weren’t demons in the woods, those were people tired of being slaughtered and otherwise molested by strangely-dressed white people.

The point is that our own minds are the source of our greatest terrors.  And historically, as with the Salem Witch Trials example above, it has been  much easier to explain away the most uncomfortable or undesirable aspects of our lives with a little bit of supernatural belief and magical thinking.  The most powerful of these supernatural belief systems are the monotheistic religions which, although they are very much thriving to this day, are much more difficult to accept absolutely than they were, say, 500 years ago.  Magical thinking was a pat way to explain away events and circumstances that otherwise were baffling or anxiety-provoking.  With scientific knowledge skyrocketing in the latter half of the 19^th Century and through the 20^th Century, it became much more difficult to blame everything on witches, angels, demons and god(s).  In this vein, both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist share a subtheme of religious faith and the loss thereof.  Father Karras, the central priest character in The Exorcist (although not the “Exorcist” referred to in the title), is wrestling with his own loss of faith.  Father Karras resides in a slummy area of Washington DC, with poverty and squalor constituting his day-to-day world and, along with this, he shares his small apartment with this ailing mother, who eventually is forced to move into a mental institution brimming with the psychologically anomalous.  Karras finds it difficult to rectify these realities with his Catholic beliefs and the demon possessing Regan exploits this fact.  In Rosemary’s Baby, one scene has the camera conspicuously linger on the April 8^th, 1966 cover of Time magazine.  The cover simply features the question “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters over a black background.  This was an actual cover of Time that was attached to an article that stated that the age of religion was essentially out the door.  Rosemary herself, when asked by Roman if she is religious, states, “I was brought up Catholic, but now I don’t know”.

Both films take as their setting a 20^th Century backdrop that is turning more toward medical, scientific and psychological knowledge to assist with problems of the body and mind instead of relying upon supernatural paradigms.  Until recent modern history, many of us have told ourselves stories about the ethereal soul and its dominion over the base, corrupted body.  The soul is said to be made of otherworldly material that is unfortunately tainted by the fleshy, gooey spaceship that it must possess in order to traverse through our inherently dirty world.  If one begins to accept the idea that we – every part of us – are of this world and then supplants the soul idea with this way of thinking, then the means by which one thinks of oneself and the world becomes dramatically altered.  This paradigmatic shift would be seismically uncomfortable, and it is my contention that Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist place themselves firmly in the fault line created from just such a shift.

In his wonderfully entertaining 2007 film The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema, Slavoj Zizek shares some of his thoughts on modern cinema from a philosophical perspective that is rooted in the ideas of famed French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan.  In his film, Zizek pontificates on Ridley Scott’s Alien and claims that this film derives its power, particularly regarding the iconic scene in which an alien baby hatches from the stomach of its human host, from the idea that humans are essentially alien intelligences with a human body as a host.  We humans are uncomfortable in our own skins because of a fundamental disconnect; we tolerate our bodies, but we must also misrecognize our bodies as something different from ourselves in order to get by.  This disconnect is much easier to handle when one has, for instance, the Christian notion of the soul which advises comfortingly that there is no need to worry, that it’s right to fear your body, and that it’s really okay that you will die someday, for everything will be taken care of because your personality is actually not of this world to begin with.  For psychoanalysis as well as for Christianity, we are essentially ghosts inside a machine, or aliens inside of spaceships.  Christianity tells us that our alien souls will someday rejoin the Mothership (Fathership?)  in the sky, whereas psychoanalysis offers no such happy ending.  For psychoanalysis, life is weird and then you die.

Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist generate some wonderful creepiness by interjecting antiquated notions of Soul/Body and Good/Evil into a modern, scientifically-advanced setting.  One can have every priest and psychologist on call, but life will never cease to be strange.  It’s unfortunate that this basic concept is lost on many contemporary horror filmmakers.  These filmmakers spend too much time on computer graphics and convoluted story lines and not enough time looking into the mirror and contemplating the stranger staring back.

Note: I’m thinking there’s one more post on these two films on the way.  I’m thinking the next post will be about domestic spaces and antagonistic furniture in Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

On the magical night of November 20. The love to fall in love, we’ll be dealing with sound recording and filming dialogue.
It’s an art, and a delicious and precise one at that.

It’ll be one heck of a time, so make it down.

After the workshop we’ll allow writer/director John Cassavetes shows us one of reasons the film medium was invented with A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

So there it is and will be: Friday November 20, 6pm, in Room 435 St. Patrick’s Building. Now rm 435 is just around the corner from 400, backing on the it.

k

Brilliant. Time to talk about our Ten lists once more, so settle in for the long haul and try and keep up. Much discussion ensues as Sam tries to extol the virtues of Ingmar Bergman, praise the magical realism of Billy Liar and attempt to make sense of All About Lily Chou-Chou. John continues the theme, causing slight, though understandable, consternation with his uncensored views on Raging Bull and confessions of multiple tears during Schindler’s List. Tom rounds the night off in business-like fashion with praise for The 400 Blows, controversial dislike for the second half of Stalker and man-crushed love for Le Samourai.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 40.5

Remember to email us, sugarplums!

Clássico do cinema independente americano completa hoje 50 anos. Trata-se de “Shadows” de John Cassavetes.

Uma verdadeira obra-prima do improviso.

Editor’s Note: This is part II in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

Regan MacNeil’s bodyin The Exorcist and Rosemary Woodhouse’s body in Rosemary’s Baby are commandeered by male entities who exploit these female bodies for their own self-benefit. (If nothing else, these films prove that the devil is indeed a Republican. As if this were in question.) Regan and her mother find themselves abandoned by the male-dominated team of doctors who further abuse Regan’s body through a serious of invasive testing. Chris MacNeil must then turn to the Catholic Church, which although having a history and a present of oppressing women, sends priests to their home: men who are removed from the traditional male-as-sexual-predator-toward-women role. These men are supposed to exist asexually, and therefore are perhaps the only ones who can save Regan from her plight. Yes, I understand that Catholic priests have a habit of sexually preying upon young non-women, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

In Rosemary’s Baby, young, early-20s Rosemary Woodhouse realizes that her husband and the neighbors around her are conspiring to exploit her fertile body and maternal drives for their own ends. When she begins to piece together the puzzle, she runs to her original obstetrician, Dr. Hill, for safety. She does this at the behest of her girlfriends, who console her in the kitchen during a party. Rosemary’s doctor, Dr. Sapirstein, who comes recommended by her nosy and invasive elderly neighbors, has advised Rosemary to ignore the intense abdominal pain that she has been experiencing for weeks. When one of her girlfriends pleads with Rosemary to see a new doctor, another friend chimes in: “Yeah, some doctor besides that… that… nut!”

This kitchen scene comes as a welcome reprieve to the creepiness that completely saturates most of the film. Rosemary’s girlfriends are concerned for their friend’s well-being, are not dismissive of Rosemary’s complaints and ultimately are among the few benevolent figures in Rosemary’s life. But alas, the kitchen scene is a set-up. After this scene, Rosemary begins to exert some agency within her situation, and runs away from her husband, the neighbors and Dr. Sapirstein. She makes it to Dr. Hill, and in maybe the most harrowing scene in the film, Dr. Hill reveals himself to be more aligned with the male-dominated power structure than with the needs and concerns of his female patient. Once again, the creepiness of this film comes from the focus upon already existent aspects of our day-to-day lives.

Rosemary’s husband’s name is Guy, a name which points to the fact that this man is not an anomalous and horrible person. He is just your average “guy”, an unthinking man who, if given the chance, would sign away his wife’s body for his own selfish gains. At the end of the film, Guy offers these words in the form of an apology after it has been revealed that Guy allowed his Satan-worshipping neighbors access to Rosemary’s body so that Satan could impregnate Rosemary with the anti-Christ fetus (you know, your average marriage snafus): “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt and you haven’t been…really. I mean, supposing you had the baby and you lost it? Wouldn’t that be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.” Guy’s flippancy toward his wife is truly terrifying and the viewer, at this point, has seen many signs of it. Even before we begin to piece-together the scenario along with Rosemary, we see Guy give his wife dismissive pats on the ass, pooh-pooh her suspicions as resulting from the “pre-partum crazies”, and most scarily, admit to fornicating with Rosemary’s unconscious body — an admission that we discover is a cover-up for what really happened.  After the otherwise lovely night when Rosemary is raped by the devil (something Rosemary doesn’t realize until much later in the film), Rosemary wakes up and this back-and-forth with her husband ensues:

Rosemary: I dreamed someone was raping me, I think it was someone inhuman.
Guy: Thanks a lot. Whatsa matter?
Rosemary: Nothing.
Guy: I didn’t want to miss the night.
Rosemary: We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split-second.
Guy: I was a little bit loaded myself, you know.
Rosemary: You… you had me while I was out?
Guy: It was kinda fun in a necrophile sort of way.

Rosemary shrugs off Guy’s excuse for allegedly having sex with her lifeless body, which is a very scary thought in itself — even without the devil business.  This is to me is the scariest aspect of Rosemary’s Baby — the utter helplessness that Rosemary experiences in relation to the whims of men.

When Dr. Hill opens the door and lets in Guy and Dr. Sapirstein, Dr. Sapirstein has this to say, with Guy standing sheepishly at his side: “Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don’t argue or make a scene. Because if you say anything more about witches or witchcraft, we’re gonna be forced to take you to a mental hospital. You don’t want that, do you?”  In many modern works of fiction, the mental hospital becomes the last viable option for men in dealing with women who are for whatever reason not fitting into their system.  In Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood is given shock treatment and forced to spend much of her time in mental facilities because of her inability to behave “appropriately” for a young woman in her time and place.  Lisbeth Salander in the Steig Larsson’s Millenium series is institutionalized because of the threat she poses to the patriarchal powers that be (indeed, the Swedish title of Larsson’s first book translates as Men Who Hate Women).

In The Exorcist as well, the team of doctors strongly encourage Chris MacNeil to have their daughter institulationalized because of her strange disorder and their inability to properly label and deal with her problem.  While The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby utilize demonic possession in their films as a means of eliciting terror, it is through showcasing the status of women in society outside of the movie theatre that really makes these chills hit home.

Stay tuned for more on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby! In the meantime, don’t forget to say your prayers.

Brilliant. Time to talk about our Ten lists once more, so settle in for the long haul and try and keep up. Much discussion ensues as Sam tries to extol the virtues of Ingmar Bergman, praise the magical realism of Billy Liar and attempt to make sense of All About Lily Chou-Chou. John continues the theme, causing slight, though understandable, consternation with his uncensored views on Raging Bull and confessions of multiple tears during Schindler’s List. Tom rounds the night off in business-like fashion with praise for The 400 Blows, controversial dislike for the second half of Stalker and man-crushed love for Le Samourai.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 40.5

Remember to email us, sugarplums!

Editor’s Note: this blog post assumes that you have seen the films The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby and therefore we reveal central elements of their plots. If you haven’t seen them, please:  1) Netflix them, 2) watch them, 3) make me a pulled-pork sandwich and then, 4) return to this post.

A woman becomes pregnant.  A human stranger grows inside of her.  This creature exists in darkness, feeding off of its host, affecting her diet, her mood and many of her bodily functions.

A young woman goes through puberty: an unfamiliar body develops, a strange voice emerges and a new personality is born.  Her desires, thoughts and behavior become very different than those of her prepubescent self.

When viewed from such vantage points, natural human events and processes can appear very odd.  Uncanny, as Freud would have it.  For Freud, the uncanny feeling results when concepts or things feel familiar yet strange; what was once comforting and affirming is now hostile and threatening.  Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is perhaps the quintessential piece of uncanny fiction.  In the beginning of Usher, the unnamed narrator confronts the house of his former friend Roderick Usher.  Poe’s narrator compares the feeling of looking upon this house as the same feeling he gets when coming down from opium – “the hideous dropping off of the veil” as he describes it.

It is by utilizing the uncanny and a “hideous dropping of the veil” that two of the 20^th century’s greatest American horror films gain their respective effects of terror.  Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) deftly craft feelings of the uncanny by using young women as their respective focal points.

Both of these films involve demonic invasions as experienced by two young women during points of biological unrest: puberty and pregnancy, respectively.   Both of these women experience bodily invasion by male demonic entities who take control of their bodies as a means of furthering their own, literally devilish, schemes.  Both of these films utilize bodily orifices and bodily fluid in order to play upon our fears regarding our own bodies.  They also play upon the natural helplessness of women in a patriarchal society in order to cultivate terror, but more on this later.  The point is that although both films involve major aspects of the supernatural, the real terror is cultivated through enhancing and riffing upon elements of terror already found in our lives.

In the first third of Rosemary’s Baby, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a young couple checking out and then moving into a NYC apartment.  The actors, Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, deftly portray young lovers who, although clearly not in the most loving and supportive relationship, are in a relationship that one can relate to.  It’s a relationship that rings true: we can imagine being friends with the Woodhouses.  This verisimilitude is very important, for the feelings conjured by this seemingly real and run-of-the-mill relationship will compose the veil which the remainder of the film works to drop – inch by painstaking inch.

In the first third of The Exorcist, the viewer witnesses the intimate moments of a mother and a daughter as they settle into their new Georgetown home.  Once again, the actors portraying this duo, Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, bring a certain aura of realness to their roles that will come in handy later in the film when we are meant to empathize with them completely as their lives fall apart via demonic invasion.  Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil is a woman who is flawed and vulnerable, just like us.  Her life is messy, but the viewer gets the sense that, even when we can judge her for how she treats her servants, this woman works hard for herself and her family and fights for what she believes is hers.  Just like us.  Except for the servants part.

In both films, and this is the crucial element that many horror and thriller filmmakers don’t seem to understand, the veil is gradually and surreptitiously placed before our eyes.  Lesser modern horror films will dance bloody corpses and fantastical monsters before our eyes as if that were all it took.  Such films amount to B-grade horror porn (horrporn?).  The better modern horror films will put as much craft into the non-scary aspects of their film as the payoff fright scenes.  You have to work just as hard weaving the rug as you do pulling it out from underneath our feet.

What the Exorcist team of director William Friedkin and writer William Peter Blatty and the writer/director of Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski, understand is that very basic aspects of life are frightening, fundamentally, to the human consciousness.  What they realize is that in order to scare the shit out of people, one only needs to zero in on aspects of life that are already scary and then embellish.  Puberty and pregnancy are scary.  Puberty, with its unseen chemical surges and transactions and its utterly transformative effects on the human personality and body, is at the very least creepy for the child as well as his or her parents and siblings.  Pregnancy, with its parasitic invasion of the female body featuring an unseen life form growing and feeding within another human, along with its bloody and screeching arrival, is enough to put anybody on edge – including the baby.

Stay tuned for part II of this post, where I will further explore the sources of terror in these two films, including men in power, the soul/body binary and antagonistic furniture.

by Matthew Groves

There are some films that attempt so much and while doing many things write can sometimes be only partially successful in their goals.  One such film is the indie musical, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.

With an engaging and masterful score, this film is about Guy (Jason Palmer) and a girl he’s in a relationship with Madeline (Desiree Garcia), a relationship that ends in the opening credits.  Guy then jumps quickly to another relationship with Elena (Sandha Khin).  The rest of the story through jazz, dance, and random bursts of singing tell the story of Guy and Madeline and where they go relationally in their lives.  Guy being looser, carefree, and less serious about relationships and more wrapped up in music, whereas Madeline is more focused on having a lasting connection with men.

Shot in black and white and in a number of close-ups with random bursts of music and song, this is special and interesting exercise in a non-traditional musical, but by no means, is this 100% original.  Particularly the cinematic ghosts of Jacques Demy, John Cassavetes, and Jean-Luc Godard are alive and well in the film.  At Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench’s best moments it seems to really be alive and drive by really fun spontaneous action.  Yet more often then not these ghosts also haunt this piece that is so indebted to those cinematic geniuses from before that it comes off merely as style more than something substantively new and interesting and it’s kind of stale.  When you see films like Cassavetes’ Faces or Godard’s A Woman Is A Woman, this seems wholly apparent and almost looks like a carbon copy with a more modern Boston rather than Los Angeles or Paris being the backdrop.

It’s shame because honestly for the moments the actors get, they really try to make something of this story, but whereas Faces or A Woman Is A Woman had a dramatic or emotional thread to lock onto, Guy and Madeleine is kind of just meanders never strikes the match and does something more than films that have come before. I hate to play the what-if game with this one, but it could have been a really interesting study of cross cultural relationships in the Millenial Age with a jazz cultural background for its backdrop, but it kind hopes to be that and never fully accomplishes it.  Despite it’s shortcomings though the film still is trying something interesting and worth a watch even if it doesn’t go too deep or as far as it could and built upon its influences.  If you love jazz and musicals it is a great watch, but it would have been nice if the filmmaker, Damien Chazzelle had decided to take it in a new direction whereas he kind of just hits the mark and nothing more.

Picture Source:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1730317056/tt1337193

SPOILER  ALERT (sorry if this is a little scattered)

Lars has made some very good movies in his time. Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville are all examples of exciting, provocative cinema. And now comes this–thing.

I’m very mixed about this motion picture. Not torn up, not oozing, like after Eyes Wide Shut. There are some beautiful images in this film, the black and white prologue showing an erect penis going into a vagina has to be one of the most gorgeous shots of the sex act I’ve ever seen. The unnamed couple, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, then spend the next hour of the movie talking out their grief (mainly hers) after their young son fell out a window and died while they were in the throes of sex during the prologue. The film goes to color and it becomes a weird incarnation of therapist and patient (Dafoe plays an actual therapist). This interplay continues even as the couple goes to a cabin in the woods, their “Eden.” After a few days there, Gainsbourg says she is cured, but Dafoe does not believe her and continues trying to help her breathe, “Five, four, three…”

At times a David Lynchesque soundtrack comes on signaling something weird is going to happen. (Having just seen Inland Empire and being a fan of Blue Velvet, this touch seemed off-putting, as did Gainsbourg’s request to have Dafoe hit her during sex–another obvious borrowing from Blue Velvet.) The weird happenings are somewhat interesting–a deer running with a dead foetus stuck to its behind, a fox that is eating itself and then speaks English to a seemingly reserved Dafoe. He is the only one having these visions (if they are visions). Then, in the attic of the cabin, Dafoe finds Gainsbourg’s notes for a thesis (called Gynocide) she had been writing that doesn’t come to fruition, (film is fuzzy concerning whether it is finished). Arcane pictures, woodcuts in the manner of Dürer, and three never before heard of constellations in the sky called the Three Beggars–a deer, a fox and a crow (don’t worry the crow is coming).

The couple then have a discourse on violence done to women throughout history and how nature wrecks havoc on women with their cycles. Again in these moments the film creeps to a lull. Motion pictures communicate through images, that is their main function, but Von Trier’s images of two people talking aren’t interesting. They are Dogma-ticized, hand-held shots that have been so ubiquitous on TV for so long as to be übercliche.

But then Gainsbourg gets mad. Very mad. Why do you think she attacks her husband?

A. He is driving her insane with B.F. Skinner quotations?

B. He accuses her of putting her son’s boots on wrong to torture him when he was alive? (Something so contrived its appearance in the film is not unlike it’s sudden appearance in this post.)

C. She is an unstable woman who is not cured, who desires sex (but Dafoe constantly puts her off) and some kind of warmth like all human beings do?

Well…I can’t decide. Probably all of them at that. Therein follows sex with Dafoe but she smashes his erect penis with a log. He is unconscious but she jerks him off and he comes blood. Then, for a coup de grace, Gainsbourg burrows a hole into his leg with a corkscrew and attaches a very heavy grinding stone so he can’t get away. She seals the pipe attached to the grindstone with a giant nut and throws the wrench under the house.

I know I have just been recounting scenes for you. Maybe it is a way of dealing with the film. When watching this sequence, I almost audibly said to myself, “I can’t believe he (Von Trier) is doing this.” But it shouldn’t shock too much. Kidman dragged around an iron weight in Dogville and the murder scene in Dancer in Dark between Bjork and the policeman is much more effective and gruesome. But the images and the very idea of it sticks. Nature is full of violence and violence lurks in us.

In the ensuing scenes, Dafoe escapes (crawling with the grindstone) and hides in a hole near a tree where he finds the crow inside the hole with him. He seemingly kills it but it won’t die. Gainsbourg finds him and buries him alive but then is repentant and digs him up. She brings him back into the house and Defoe asks her if she is still going to kill him. When the three beggars arrive, she says. Then she cuts her clitoris off with an industrial strength scissors. As she swoons and pleads in the corner of the room, the crow starts up cawing and leads Dafoe to find the wrench that will unlock his leg. He finally gets free of the grindstone, but Gainsbourg comes at him with the scissors and chaos ensues before he chokes her to death.

In the black and white epilogue he leaves Eden on a crutch made of a branch, eats some berries, stops on a hill and watches a group of hundreds of women with no faces walk toward him, seemingly ignoring him. THE END

Okay. The film has stayed with me for more than a few days. I woke up one morning with thoughts of it. To me this is the sign of a significant work of art. I wanted to be a film director some years ago and studied film, made them, breathed film, kissed film before I went to bed at night. I still do to an extent. I see films now and many make little impression, like I haven’t seen them at all, but of course I have, but the images and sound doesn’t resonant. Films like Duplicity or 500 Days of Summer, though I enjoyed both to some degree. So Lars has slapped me around a little and if feels good. I recall the effect of Kubrick, Bergman, Haneke, the early Scorsese, Cassavetes, Lynch.

Boarding the Muni in San Francisco after we saw the film I said to my friend who I’d just seen it with: “So I guess the point of the film is men are always going to dominate women.” An off-the-cuff remark. He agreed, but then we discussed the films it reminded us most of and threw out The Shining, where the man fails to kill both the woman and child and they escape. It  couldn’t be this simple of course and a part of me felt ashamed I was reducing the film to these broad generalizations.

I’ve seen articles on Slate and elsewhere about Von Trier’s misogyny. In Breaking the Waves the main character dies a saintly death. Bjork is unjustly accused and is hung. In Dogville though, Kidman escapes her iron and has the townsfolk that did this to her (along with rape) executed. In this film the main female character is weakened from the beginning. Dafoe is repressing her for the entire film, toying with her. In a way he is getting what he asks for. People in relationship challenge each other in subtle ways everyday. As the stakes get higher, he seems more alive, more pleased. That nature rescues him and indeed, has been summoning him to kill since they arrived in Eden, is problematic but plausible. I don’t know what to make of it.

If it’s anyone’s film, besides Von Trier’s, it’s Dafoe’s. Here is a 54-year-old actor with an impish, beautiful face and smile of someone 20 years younger. He played Jesus when De Niro didn’t. He played as gruesome as it gets in Wild at Heart, he bore life into Born on the Fourth of July for about ten minutes. In Antichrist he nobly endures the stone for a half hour and then turns into killer. I don’t think this is an easy thing to do as an actor, but he does. Still, does he have a choice in killing his wife? The three beggars: the crow, the fox and the deer all appear in the cabin at the moment that his wife tries to kill him with the scissors. And she does stab him at least once with it. But then I have to ask, does Gainsbourg have any choice after what she has been put through? No matter how attractive I find Willem Dafoe from a heterosexual  viewpoint, would I want to go back to Seattle with him? He talks like a psychology textbook.

Going over the film now I find it interesting that we hardly see Dafoe’s face in the sex act during the prologue. Close-ups of his penis, ass, but nothing to do with the thing with two eyes and teeth. The only face we see is Gainsborough’s open-mouthed shuddering pleasure. And the ending? I resist answering what the women mean, what they represent. As a writer I get this all the time. “Well, why did that happen?” “What’s the significance of this?” I don’t need that image to mean anything. It’s speaks to something unconscious in me like how Bach’s Cello Concertos touches my soul or Gerhardt Ritcher’s slurring, icy black and white interpretations of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group blissfully trip me out.

I think I started this post aiming to criticize the Antichrist more than I have. But in going over the film, recounting the scenes and images, no matter how despondent the forty minutes after the prologue are, I find it is a powerful film and one I would love to see again in the theater but I doubt the film will make it to Buffalo. It’s unrated and I believe only a few dozen cinemas in the United States will play such a film. Also, despite the sex and awesome violence, I doubt the film will make much money. The title doesn’t help either. I wonder what Nietzsche would think of the dear old Danishman using his title for a film in which a clitorectomy occurs.

Traga-me Alecrim (Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie – 2009 – EUA, França)

A câmera tremida me incomodou (fisicamente até) e passei o filme com enjôo. Mas esta versão masculina de Uma Mulher sob Influência do John Cassavetes tem méritos próprios.

Perseguição (Patrice Chéreau – 2009 – França)

Não deixa de ser um mérito um filme que te faz pensar qual é o propósito dele o tempo todo. Quando finalmente Perseguição se assume como um DR à francesa, eu já tinha perdido o interesse. Mas foi bom ver Charlotte Gainsbourg sem a aparência anoréxica de Anticristo.

DR = Discutir a Relação

A Religiosa Portuguesa (Eugène Green – 2009 – Portugal)

Num primeiro momento, parece que estamos diante de um filme cartão-postal. Mas é muito mais do que isso. O cineasta franco-americano Eugène Green filma Portugal como uma terra de mistérios e fantasmas, onde é perfeitamente possível que uma atriz franco-portuguesa, “de muitos amores carnais” como se define, (Leonor Baldaque, dona de close-ups inesquecíveis) do filme-dentro-do-filme seja tão santa quanto a religiosa portuguesa que encontra orando numa capela à noite; e onde é perfeitamente possível que D. Sebastião esteja vivo e seja mais um pretendente seu. Um filme que praticamente exige uma revisão, já que seus segredos e belezas não se esgotam numa visão só. Um dos grandes filmes da Mostra.

Peter Falk                    Ben Gazzara                    John Cassavetes

I stumbled across this gem from the Dick Cavett show archives so I decided to post it in its entirety for your viewing pleasure. I can’t believe TV used to be like this. What happened? What’s the appeal of David Caruso wearing sunglasses? I don’t get it. I want TV to be like this. Alive, just like a Cassavetes film.

Es la segunda vez que veo esta obra maestra del respetado Roman Polanski y reafirmo nuevamente que es uno de mis directores favoritos. Rosemary’s Baby es una de las películas de terror psicológico que más me han gustado, salvo que los últimos minutos el asunto se floja pero compensa con el aterrador y espeluznante diálogo y adoración.

La historia trata de una pareja de recién casados que se mudan a un apartamento con una historia de tragedias y conocen a unos vecinos un tanto peculiar por su forma de actuar. Las ansias de tener un hijo juegan con la trama principal, ya que es esto lo que conlleva a que la joven pase los peores nueve meses de su existencia. Para mi fue muy impactante como Rosemary (Mia Farrow con una interpretación excelente) va atando cabos sueltos poco a poco bajo su desesperación por llegar al final de su mal. No negaré que me pasé por wikipedia para ver que era la Raíz de Tanis.

Muy bueno el papel de John Cassavetes. Cabe destacar que lo primero que me gustó de la película fue su banda sonora, que de forma muy peculiar se me ha quedado en la memoria y que fue la propia Mia Farrow fue quien la interpretó. Entiendo perfectamente la razón por la cual mi amigo el Dani quedó tan fascinado con la película. Hay dos cameos muy interesantes en la película, y son los de Tony Curtis y William Castle.

Cinéaste indépendant par excellence, John Cassavetes réalisa quelques un des meilleurs films américains des années 1970 entouré par une équipe technique et artistique fidèle composée presque exclusivement d’amis proches. Je ne sais plus où j’ai lu que Cassavetes était considéré comme le plus français des réalisateurs américains. Ce n’est ma foi pas une comparaison usurpée tant il semblait aux antipodes du cinéma hollywoodien qui, au moment où est réalisé Opening Night, assène de manière quasi-définitive ses canons dont les maîtres mots sont “divertissement” et “blockbuster”. A l’écran, Gena Rowlands, sa femme à la ville, récemment auréolée du succès de son interprétation dans Une femme sous influence.

The Second Woman est une pièce à succès dont le rôle principal est tenu par Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands), une actrice très appréciée par le public. Un soir à la sortie d’une représentation, une foule l’attend pour lui faire signer quelques autographes. Elle y croise une jeune fille qui l’assaille, lui crie son amour. Myrtle est une peu secoué par cette rencontre alors qu’elle s’engouffre dans la voiture de l’équipe de la pièce. La jeune femme suit la voiture en marche avant d’être tuée, renversée par une voiture. L’accident bouleverse l’actrice qui sombre dans l’alcool et crée, par son attitude, l’incompréhension auprès de ses partenaires (Cassavetes entre autres), du metteur en scène (Ben Gazzara) et des techniciens. Myrtle commence à avoir des hallucinations. L’accidentée, Nancy, lui apparaît à plusieurs reprises. L’auteur de la pièce (interprétée par Joan Blondell) l’invite à se rendre chez une voyante, puis la conduit chez une sorte d’exorciste. Alors qu’elle semble débarrassée du fantôme de Nancy, toujours submergée par la distance et l’angoisse que suscite son rôle, Myrtle disparaît un long moment avant le soir de la première à New York.

Une des œuvres phares de Cassavetes, Opening Night est une véritable déclaration d’amour aux acteurs et au monde du théâtre auquel il a toujours eu le sentiment d’appartenir. Tout est fait pour que le spectateur vive au plus près la vie d’une troupe avec son cortège de disputes, d’incertitudes, de rapports de force. Le tout porté par la très forte et remarquable interprétation de Gena Rowlands véritablement transcendée par son rôle de comédienne entre-deux âges perdue entre son statut d’actrice professionnelle et son statut de femme. A noter, deux courtes apparitions de Peter Falk, l’autre ami de Cassavetes et tête d’affiche d’Une femme sous influence. De l’avis de Patrick Brion comme du mien, Opening Night est le dernier grand film de John Cassavetes.

Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning, Amy Irving, Fiona Lewis, Andrew Stevens

Thanks to Black Hole DVD for this cool review for my 31 Days of Horror.

Send me your horror film reviews.

Thirty-three years on, Carrie (1976) is a staple of Halloween horror marathons, but the director’s next film continued with the theme of teenage killer telekinetics and could even be viewed as a sequel. What if Carrie White passed on her powers? I’d go as far as to say that it was even hinted at the end of the film, mirrored by a similar scene at the end of The Fury. The link is actress Amy Irving who played Sue, Carrie’s best friend. What if she moved town and changed her name…

Amy plays Gillian, now facing schoolgirl bullies of her own. But what Carrie did with objects, The Fury does with people, channelling telekinesis to manipulate blood pressure and internal organs… They also have limited telepathy, vivid flashbacks, and maybe even second sight.

A bunch of suits from the government are very interested in Gillian’s powers and have already kidnapped Robin (Andrew Stevens) whose dad (Kirk Douglas) is desperately trying to find him. While Gillian’s powers are being investigated, she discovers that she’s not alone and psychically linked to Robin. While Gillian is unaware that she’s in danger, Robin’s father is stopping at nothing to avoid arrest and rescue his son.

But these talented teenagers have to be handled carefully, for if they get stressed, watch out. The Fury can make people bleed. From the nose, the eyes, the fingers, and so on… There’s also a tense, disastrous scene when Robin gets stressed at a funfair.

Secret government agents with dark motives are now more familiar in series like Heroes. Decades ago, I thought that The Fury had been ripped off by the very similar Firestarter – with telekinesis substituted by pyrokinesis. But The Fury lead the pack of telekinetic thrillers, and for my money it was the best of the bunch, certainly far more fun than Cronenberg’s Scanners.

De Palma masterfully uses camera movement and classic slow-motion sequences backed by a rare horror score from John Williams, who provides a lush and memorable theme-heavy score. This combination is showcased in an impressive action scene (the rescue)where the dialogue and sound effects are left out, leaving just the music. The soundtrack was recently remastered on CD.

Why it wasn’t nearly as popular as Carrie, I don’t know. I was shocked that Carrie played to sold-out performances and The Fury didn’t come close. Both were fuelled by a popular novel (The Fury was written by John Farris), but perhaps Carrie was a far bigger bestseller (Stephen King’s first) and the movie’s high school hi-jinks paid off with the target audience. Both are horror films, but The Fury is also a conspiracy thriller. The stories have all the same ingredients, a little less humour, and more politics, a better cast, a higher budget and plenty more blood.

In fact, the spectacular prosthetic effects made it one of the bloodiest uncut films of the seventies, presumably due to the weaponless violence, with an unforgettable climax, attempting to top Carrie’s final moments. The effects were by Dick Smith (The Exorcist) and Rick Baker (before An American Werewolf in London). It was spectacular, early mainstream splatter. I even thought that Andrew Stevens was cast because he could make the veins in his forehead stand out!

The Fury is flattered by a cast of acting heavyweights, with Kirk Douglas (Holocaust 2000) sparring with a demonic John Cassavetes (Rosemary’s Baby). Fiona Lewis rarely played good girls (Dr Phibes Rises Again, Innerspace) and the underused Carrie Snodgress plays an old flame of Kirk Douglas. At the time I thought that Andrew Stevens (Stella Stevens’ son) as the other telepath, would surely have a more high-profile career.

Some De Palma favourites reappear: Charles Durning was also in Sisters, and William Finlay (in a bit part) had already starred in Sisters and The Phantom of the Paradise. Dennis Franz was in both Dressed To Kill and Blow Out, and appears here in one of his earliest of many, many cop roles. Keep your eyes peeled for a teenaged Daryl Hannah as one of Gillian’s school bullies.

A tight thriller, a good horror angle, unusual action scenes, creatively shot, a beautiful and haunting soundtrack… what’s not to like?

The DVD hasn’t been remastered in the UK or US since 2002 and especially needs remastering to make the many darker sequences far less grainy and foggy. Anamorphic? I guess it would be too much to ask for extras. Once again, I’d have thought the director’s many hits, and recent work (Redacted) would have ensured that his back catalogue would be better treated.

Previous 31 Days of Horror reviews: Blood Feast, Paranormal Activity, Braindead, Halloween, Friday the 13th Part 2, Martin, Fright Night, Zombieland

Suzanne Stein | Hole In Space | OMG! | 2009

The poet’s body as a public communication sculpture.

David Larsen, trans. | Names of the Lion | Atticus/Finch | 2009

A pleasure to finally see this text in print after David’s jaw-dropping performance at the Unitarian Center in San Francisco, 2007.

Robert Fitterman | Rob the Plagiarist | Roof Books | 2009

“Why listen to my gut when I could listen to thousands of guts?”

David Brazil & Sara Larsen, eds. | Try | 2008-2009

AKA “Try!” Together with Dodie & Kevin’s “Mirage Periodical,” this little stapled, xeroxed magazine owns the Bay Area. It’s an INDUSTRY.

Lisa Robertson | The Men: A Lyric Book | Book Thug | 2006

“The funny pathos of men – I salute this.” I keep returning to this little lyric book.

Brandon Brown | The Poems Of Gaius Valerius Catullus 1-60 | Unpublished | 2009

Catullus is envious.

Abner Jay | One Man Band | Subliminal Sounds | 2003

Jay traveled around the South in a mobile home and performed as the (self-described) “last working Southern black minstrel.” Hilarious and heartbreaking.

Stephen Rodefer | Four Lectures | The Figures | 1981

News to me. Killed me. Continues to kill me.

Anne Boyer | Art Is War | Mitzvah Chaps | 2008

A new world treatise. Includes the smash hit “Difficult Ways to Publish Poetry.”

Bill Luoma | When the Pathogenic Wind Comes | Unpublished

The looping–“with crooked spring and great pouring”–is trance-making.

John Cassavetes | Films | 1959-1977

Especially “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Faces”—Gena Rowlands is my one true love.

More Alli Warren here.

VERDICT:
7/10 Badass Conventions

Can’t believe it took me this long to get around to this movie, also hard to believe that this was my first introduction to Lee Marvin, but man, just check out that poster, what the hell was I waiting for?

The Dirty Dozen is about a renegade Major in the U.S. military that’s ordered to take 12 soldiers who are either on death row or are serving life sentences and turn them into a mean band of Nazi-killin’ brothers so they can win back their freedom and help win WWII for the good guys in the process.

For those of you who have seen Inglourious Basterds and liked it as much as I did, you might want to give this baby a look, the inspiration is pretty obvious. That is definitely a good thing.

But aside from the whole Tarantino connection, there are probably two reasons one would want to see this movie. The first being the whole “badass convention” I mentioned up top there, and the second being that this is a “badass convention” which also happens to revolve around killing Nazis, and those are two kickass reasons to go see any movie.

So the highlighted members of the Dirty Dozen themselves are Lee Marvin as the Major in charge of the operation (who was actually a military sniper before becoming an actor, just thought I’d throw that out there), Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown (that’s right, football legend Jim Brown) and John Cassavetes make up five of the said dozen, and why not give two bit roles to Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy while they’re at it. If some of these names aren’t ringing any bells, I recommend you go watch this just so you won’t have to lose any more sleep over what you’ve been missing. There aren’t a whole lot of movies out there that can claim to have what is arguably the most manly collection of guy movie legends of all time and also have them turn out solid performances to drive it all home. Kelly’s Heroes is up there, but then again, that’s just kind of a knockoff of The Dirty Dozen anyway. Sorry, Clint, nothing against you, man. You’re still a god.

But the area where this movie starts to slip is the second reason I mentioned, about this being a WWII movie. Now, from what I hear, World War II was some gritty, hardcore, brutal shit, but for some reason I really didn’t get that vibe from The Dirty Dozen. It takes a good two hours for the dozen to get their asses through boot camp and over to Germany, and only then does it start to feel like a war movie, everything else had me feeling like I was watching a group of guys dicking around and getting into various hijinks instead of acting like the hard-as-nails death row mother effers they’re supposed to be. It’s not an issue of the movie being too long or the actors living up to their badass reputations, it’s just that the writing and the dialogue is surprisingly weak and sugarcoated. Maybe it’s just dated considering how much movies have changed over the past 40 years, but it doesn’t feel serious or mean enough to be the war movie I was hoping it would.

It also has a really abrupt non-ending that I was really surprised by. I was this close to giving it an 8…then the credits started rolling. What the hell’s with that?

Anyway, I can’t say that I was blown away by The Dirty Dozen, but I wasn’t exactly disappointed by it either. It’s definitely got its merits and there are a couple great scenes here that really had me on edge and made me forget about some of the more boring parts, and it’s hard to knock a movie that’s filled to the brim with some of my all-time favorite actors. Might not be the best war movie out there, but damn if it isn’t one hell of a guy movie.