IN 2000, when I first got a Handspring Visor (rival PDA to the Palm) I started keeping a log of all the films I saw because I obviously frequent the movie house. Few were rentals though I broke down a month ago and started a Netflix queue. Ten years went by awfully fast. Some years I probably kept better track than others. This year I think I missed a few and they are definitely not in order. But here are the 1130 films I did keep account of:
Log for 2000
1. Passion (Godard)
2. Messiah
3. Erin Brochovitch (Soderberg)
4. Black and White (Toback)
5. Titus (Taymore)
6. Andre Rublev (Tarkovsky)
7. Sans Soliel (Chris Marker) (french)
8. La Jetee Chris Marker (french)bb
9. Joe Gould’s Secret
10. East is East
11. The City
12. Light Keeps Me Company
13. Sawdust and Tinsel
14. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
15. Tumbleweeds
16. Sex Annabella Chong Story
17. Virgin Suicides
18. Gladiator
19. High Fidelity
20. Filth and the Fury
21. Judy Berlin
22. Timecode
23. Small Time Crooks
24. Mi3
25. Restoration
26. Flawless
27. Chutney Popcorn
28. Criminal Lovers (french)
29. Children of the Century (french)
30. Keep it Quiet (french)
31. Color of Lies (Chabrol)
32. Girl on the Bridge (Patrice LeCompt)
33. X Men
34. Sunshine
35. 3 Women
36. Funny Bones
37. Pecker
38. The Opportunists
39. Tao of Dave
40. Aimee & Jaguar
41. Chicken Run
42. Shadow of the Vampire
43. Perfect Storm (wolfgang peterson)
44. Nurse Betty (Niel LaBute)
45. Harry, He’s Here to Help (French)
46. Two Family House
47. The Yards
52. The Contender
53. L’Ennui
54. Hype
55. Joe the King
56. Almost Famous
57. What Lies Beneath
58. Cafe Vendome
59. West Beruit
60. Beaver Trilogies
61. Time Regained
62. Venus Beauty Institute
63. Billy Elliot
64. Enlightnment Guarenteed
65. What’s Cooking?
66. Bamboozled
67. This is What America Looks Like (Seattle Protests)
68. Dancer in the Dark
69. Requium for a Dream
70. Goerge Washington
71. The Wind Will Carry Us
72. You Can Count on Me
73. Red River (Hawks)
74, Meet the Parents
75. Quills (Phillip Kaufman)
76. Pola X (Leos Carrax)
77. House of Mirth (Terrence Davies)
78. Ratcatcher
79. The Tourist (bio-document)
80. Solas (”Alone” – Spanish)
81. American History X
82.The Big Kahuna

Movies 2001 – Log
1. Traffic
2. State & Main
3. YiYi
4. Privilege
5. Punishment Park
6. The Pledge (Penn/Nicholson)
7. Castaway
8. Crouching Tiger
9. Snatch
10. Experimental Films Series
11. Numero Duex (godard)
12. Sons (Zhang Yuan)
13. Faithless (Bergman & Ullman)
14. The Boiler Room
15. Harry Here to Help
16. Unfinished Symphony
17. Always a Bridesmaid
18. Pollack
19. Chocolat
20. O Brother Where Art Thou?
21. Short Films
The Courier
The Crossing
22. Spy Kids
23. Blow
24. Bridget Jones Diary
25. The Circle (Iranian)
26. Sound & the Fury
27.Films of Jay Rosenblatt include
Human Remains
Smell of Burning Ants
King of the Jews
28. Home Fries
29. The Golden Bowl
30. Southern Comfort (Kate Davis) documentary
31. Center of the World (Wayne Wang)
32. Chinese movie
33. Satyricon
34. Spring Forward (Tom Gilroy)
35. Moulin Rouge
36. Tailor of Panama
37. Citizen Kane (over and over)
38. Searchers (over and over – every year)
39. AI
40. Holy Grail
41. Amoros Perros
42. Sexy Beast
43. The Closet Read more…

Also screening at BUFF was New England Institute of Art professor/musician/actor Tim Jackson’s feature documentary Radical Jesters, which Feder described as a look at “outsider, prankster artists… people who use humor and shocking tactics to put their point across.” They’re also called “culture jammers.”

Radical Jesters investigates the media hoaxing and culture jamming of artists such as Alan Abel, who convinced HBO that he had the smallest penis in the world; the Surveillance Camera Players, who put on full plays in front of public surveillance equipment; Boston-based art activist Milan Kohout; Improv Everywhere; artist Ron English, and comedian John Hargrave, among others.

Even the screening of Radical Jesters brought unexpected surprises. Before the film began, a “Mr. Cockburn” representing “Fox Searchlight Distribution” stood before the audience in a full suit to warn against the use of recording devices. When Mr. Cockburn finished his speech, he made his way up the side aisle and forcibly ejected a “patron” with a video camera. As the film began, there were several camera flashes from the back of the theater, adding to the crowd’s amusement.

Director/producer Jackson was on hand to answer questions after the screening, and two of the jammers profiled in his film joined him at the front of the theater.

Jackson explained his hope for the film: “I wanted to do something that would be interesting for art students so that they could see what sort of work was being done outside of galleries. I also wanted people to be amused and also a bit angry while at the same time raising questions about media credibility and public gullibility. The short profiles serve to keep people entertained, curious, and inquisitive in the hopes that they find out more on their own.”

Given the recent exhibition of artist Shepard Fairey’s work at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, public interest in raising awareness via guerilla tactics is high, and it was high the day of the screening, when discussion heated up regarding when culture jamming becomes commercialized. Does the selling of hats and t-shirts change Fairey’s message? How does the culture jammer who unexpectedly finds commercial success/acceptance continue to define his or her own legitimacy as an artist against the establishment?

“A lot of it is becoming more mainstream as marketing agencies step up their own guerilla efforts,” observed Jackson. “I’m surprised by how few people in general are aware of interventionist practices, where you intervene on the streets, in the media, or in the general spectacle of things. The shorts that preceded my film dealt with graffiti and stenciling, and they’re definitely in the same vein. But those are also definitely illegal, while the practices I document are not necessarily so. They’re on the edge.”

As for future plans, Jackson has one front and center. “I’m making a documentary on the life of singer-songwriter Robin Lane. I wanted to do something about art and struggle and women. Robin and I worked together in the group Robin Lane and the Chartbusters. We were the 11th song ever aired on MTV back in 1981, and were at the top of the heap of the new wave punk scene. She’s working now with women trauma survivors doing songwriting. She’s very gifted, and that hasn’t gone away. There’s going to be a great soundtrack.”

In terms of how he will get this film made while teaching full-time Jackson said, “I’m just a do-it-yourself guy,” joking that his first career as a musician made little money and adding, “I worked as an actor for little to no money, I worked as a teacher in which you never make what you want to make, so I decided to try something in which I could actually lose money. You put them all together, that’s how you make a life.”

RE: Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology
A readily available picture like this forces into high relief the deep visceral prejudice at the base of discussions on race in this country. I have heard stories of figures in high authority referring to the First Lady as an ape. I am offended, but not surprised, that reactions on racial difference are reduced to merely the physical. The body politic in America’s talk about race is covered with boils and here is one more we have to lance, dress, and from which we will move on. Ms. Obama’s intelligence, graciousness, power, influence and beauty makes white men jump. I doubt it is worth a passing glance by the first lady herself. Whatever someone can do in photo shop will be done. Everyone can look laugh, gasp, gag, shudder, and create their own. George Bush as a limp phallus? Dick Cheney as a…, well the name says it. Would we be slightly amused if the same treatment were aimed at Clarence Thomas? We’ll survive this latest ubiquitous improper global internet moment. No need to shoot the messenger.

If asked, “Did you like it?” careful how you respond. You could be accused of taking pleasure in watching delicate body parts compromised with household items and garden tools. And maybe you’ve never even seen the Saw or Hostel series. But with chapters labeled grief, pain, and despair the word “like” becomes relative. Anti Christ is audacious film-making filled with arresting and poetic images and provocative questions about the politics of power and sexuality. It imagines whether grief, pain, and despair are states of mind or whether they exist in nature itself – a question that supports Lars Von Trier’s own peculiar romanticism.

The inciting incident is a beautiful set piece: an artfully photographed and very graphic, black and white, slow motion, lovemaking scene during which the couple’s child escapes from a crib, clears from a table three statuettes – labeled grief, pain, and despair – and climbs up on the table and over to a window. Then, in exquisite slow motion, like an angel ascending to heaven, – the child falls to its death.

“He” (Willem Dafoe) is a psychologist whose dominating and inappropriate counseling of his own wife “she” (Charlotte Gainsbourough) ) Dafoe leads her to the place where she is suppose to confront the thing she fears most – the deep, dark forest. “Nature is the devil’s playground” she says. She ought to know. She’s written a thesis on witchcraft in ancient times with a collection of prints depicting inquisitional torture – mostly of women. She has come to the interesting conclusion that perhaps women actually can be truly evil, that women with their carnal desires and potentially wild natures are inherently dangerous creatures. Thank you Lars Von Trier!

From Breaking the Waves to Dancer in the Dark to Dogville and Mandalay, statements about Von Trier’s own misogyny are old hat. He also doesn’t like America much. It’s not a place that embraces his eccentricity and provocations. America also doesn’t like to be criticized. Is it possible he is actually protesting demeaning and oppressive attitudes toward women, maybe with particular emphasis on American patriarchal values? It’s not Von Trier who abusive, but the social circumstances in which his women find themselves.

At one point early in the film the wife, as if suddenly possessed, no longer fears the woods. She becomes liberated and healed. But “he” and his psychotherapy won’t let her go. His “scientific” approach has to dominate. Big mistake. Horror ensues.

Being America, the story is a lot more reminiscent of Hester Prynne and Pearl than it is simple misogyny. I remember being told in college that when Hawthorne’s wife finished reading A Scarlet Letter she went out and threw up. This liberation, this nature business was all too much! Women’s “nature” begins in Wicken (Hester Prynne), which is defined as evil by society (the Puritans, Inquisitions), and descends into madness and delusion (the suppression of their nature). Von Trier who converted to Catholicism says “Perhaps I only turned Catholic to piss off a few of my countrymen”. But if the Anti Christ does exist then there are horror movie consequences, complete with mortification of the flesh, redemption, souls released from purgatiory. Checkout the amazing final unexpected image.

Von Trier has moved from the theatrical sparseness of Dogville and Mandalay to real woods replete with portentous talking animals, hideous nature, hailstones, constellations, heavy fog, and a reappearing fox, deer, and crow that I assume might represent man, woman and death. They echo a statement about children’s stories made earlier n the film. It’s a huge stylistic change and with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire)he has created some fabulous images. They swing between fairy tale and the fantastic, between Shelley Duvall’s Fairy Tale Theater and Saw.

In a particularly horrific/child-like moment, the ‘fox’ intones:” Chaos Reigns”. Perhaps – but “Anti Christ” churns chaos into poetry.

Occasionally a movie comes along from Hollywood that sweeps you away with the breadth and scope of its sheer awfulness.
True story – a hank of hair at the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland thought to be Amelia Earhart’s was recently discovered to be, in fact, just thread. This movie is the cinematic equivalent. This movie, thought to be about Amelia Earhart is, in fact, a threaded bundle of cliches and overwrought soap opera moments. If Hilary Swank gave one more brave toothy grin, I thought I was going to have to leave. But I stuck it out to see which was worse, the unconvincing acting, the poor casting, Richard Gere, the costumey looking costumes, or the dreadful Peter Pan soundtrack. But the winner, I think, is the screenplay, which rattles off one maudlin insight after another alternating with scenes of stunning mediocrity played without conviction or chemistry.
If some of this is based on Earhart’s real words, then maybe she’s just not that interesting a subject for film. My guess is that the forever overly earnest Hillary Swank, as executive producer, buoyed by research and good intentions, convinced Mira Nair that her poetic approach to film-making would be perfect against the pilot’s own words of inspiration. The result is a disaster. When you’re sitting in the theater having shelled out your ten bucks and you can’t wait for Amelia Earhart to die, you know you’ve gone to the wrong movie.

I was sent one of those ‘challeges’ on Facebook – quickly name 50 concerts you can remember. I steer clear of most events where a mob responds in unison. I know that’s wrong. I should go to more sports events and see more live music. While the Triumph of the Will part of sports makes me nervous, concerts make me envious. I’d rather be performing. Neverthless, in my few years on the planet I have seen a few remarkable shows that attest to a particular Forrest Gump like relationship I’ve had with live music. This Facebook challenge was a memory jag.
I had to start with the Beatles premier on ED Sullivan because it is unique and amazing that I was in the audience. I went with my best friend and our respective middle school girlfriends. One of their fathers worked for CBS. The next 30 acts or so (with asterisks) are concerts where I was in the opening band – starting in high school and onward 40 plus years.
Growing up in proximity to R.I. and NYC and being older (I mean, experienced) facilitated some of the others (James Brown, Dylan’s first electric, Yardbirds, and the Café a GoGo) – so I have annotated them. The folly of youth and other tools may have blurred some dates.
However, these are all true.

1. Beatles (IN the studio audience of Ed Sullivan Show!)
IN THE OPENING ACT:
2. Young Rascals * (Hartford and Westport 1966)
3. Grand Funk Railroad * (Boston 1969)
4. Iggy and the Stooges (The Jail in Providence 1969)*
5. Jay Giels Band *
6. Manfred Mann *
7. The Chambers Brothers *
8. Buddy Miles *
9. Bruce Springsteen * (in a high school auditorium in R.I. 1972!)
10. The Youngbloods * (Central Park)
11. BB King ** (Montreaux Jazz fest)
12. Chambers Brothers*
13. Buddy Miles*
14. Guess Who *
15. The Turtles *
16. Herman’s Hermits *
17. NRBQ * (at Max’s Kansas City)
18. Go Gos *
19. Mahavishnu Orchestra *
20. Split Enz* (tour)
21. Ramones*
22. Irma Thomas * (touring with LaVern Baker)
23. Jimmy Buffet *
24. Peter Paul and Mary *
25. Joe Jackson *
26. Ramones *
27. Split Enz ***
28. The Wailers * (for a week at a Palls Mall in Boston)
29. Little Feat * (for a week at a Palls Mall in Boston)
30. Bonnie Raitt *
31. The Cars * (Wang Center)
32. The Kinks * (Providence Civic Center) Read more…

They died with a year of one another and Betty Pages’s (d. Dec. 11 at 85) liberated 50’s chick schtick seems to me about 6 degrees from Sky Saxon.
Sunlight Saxon of the Seeds was also a member of The Source family led by Ya Ho Wha or Father Yod. On June 25th at 71, Sky Sunlight Saxon, as they say, “passed over to be with YaHoWha”.
Sorry. I live on the east coast and this shit is a little weird, but lovely. But if you’re not familiar with it – get a load of this history.
The Source was funded by a successful Veggie restaurant. Father Yod (Ya Ho Wha) had been a marine and then a member of the Nature Boys. eden ahbez (no capitals) wrote the song ‘Nature Boy’ and had a hit when Nat King Cole’s recorded it in 1947!

eden ahbez

That’s how America discovered the first real hippie/back to nature movement!

Nudists worshipping the Sun, 1926
And its roots were from Germany! From The German Roots of Hippies:
The expression “Lebensreform” (life-reform) was first used in 1896, and comprised various German social trends of the 19th and first half of the 20th century. I mean check it out!!
1. vegetarianism
2. nudism
3. natural medicine
4. abstinence from alcohol
5. clothing reform
6. settlement movements
7. garden towns
8. soil reform
9. sexual reform
10. health food and economic reform
11. social reform
12. liberation for women, children and animals
13. communitarianism
14. cultural and religious reform: i.e. a religion or view of the world that gives weight to the feminine, maternal and natural traits of existence

The one Nature Boy to pass the torch from the old era to the the 1960’s hippie generation was Gypsy Boots.

Gyspy Boots

In the 1940’s Boots lived wild in Tahquitz Canyon with all of the Nature Boys, bathing in the cool mountain water, eating fruits and vegetables, sleeping on rocks or in caves, hiking and selling produce in Palm Springs. In the early 1960’s he appeared on the Steve Allen show over 25 times to an audience of some 25 million households. He appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s TV show You Bet Your Life. He was friends with Kirk Douglas. His son directed the movie Life Drawing.

I discovered just yesterday that Richard Griffith, aka “Groovin’ Gary” from The Beaver Trilogies passed away at age 50. If you don’t know the film, or what a wonderful character he was – try to check it out.

A resident of Beaver, Utah, ‘Gary’ was caught outside a cable station by videographer Trent Harris where, in an informal interview, he performed for some impersonations of more than dubious quality. His barking laugh, custom car, and joie de vivre were contagious. If we are to believe the film – Groovin’ Gary Griffiths, excited by his brush with fame (Am I on TV? Gollee – this must be my lucky day! Ha!”) later wrote to mention to Harris about a talent show in which he would be appearing as Olivia Newton John. It is one of the worst impressions on film. But his enthusiasm, along with the wonderful awfulness of some of the other acts, is infectious.

Trent Harris went onto to duplicate the entire 20 minute episode in a re-enactment by a very young Sean Penn who had simply auditioned for the short role. The sequence borrows some of the talent show acts from the first section, recreates exact shots and lines, and becomes a little more cinematic, but not by much. It does however have a tragic/comic ending of foiled suicide. The new “ending” raises all kinds of questions about Gary’s initial response to the first video sequence. Why the new ending? Why re-do it at all? Is this psychology motivated by anything other than to tell a story? What would Gary think of this license taken with his own life. Sean Penn is brilliant, his performance a Olivia even more terrifically horrendous.

If that weren’t enough, it’s recreated a third time as a kind of mini movie. Now we have reaction shots, character motivations, sub-plots, and an incredible performance by Crispin Glover in all his eccentric weirdness. The psychological profile of Gary in the new segment, now titled “The Orkly Kid” (changed from “The Beaver Kid”) is deeper, the actors are more professional, sequences more staged, and sub-plots more developed. The filmmakers continue to play themselves as they were, or as they imagine themselves shooting the piece, but they are becoming really complicate in Gary’s “exploitation”. Still, basic scenes and lines remain the same. Gary still puts on ‘Olivia’s’ make-up and wig at the local funeral parlor. The interview (Am I on TV?) still starts the piece, this time time after a dramatic impressionistic opening of Gary on a cliff in sillouette, the wind in his hair. Aha! A theme of strength and empowerment. The same Newton-John song is sung. Many of the same lines that Gary spontaneous are reinterpreted, but Glover throws it over the top, demonstrating what a brilliant intuitive actor he is. The new ending, still addressing the suicide idea, has Gary deper in remorse at his embarrassing drag performance becomes about courage and individualism. It’s surprisingly moving.
Filmmaker wrote an article about Griffiths appearance at Sundance.

The question of Gary’s exploitation and identity now hovers over the film. Time Out London wrote an analysis of the film, which asks about his homosexuality. It would be the Brits who ask. For my money it’s just a film blessed by circumstance and serendipity that ends posing some interesting ideas on up reality vs. art, narrative vs. documentary and allows us to meet a sweet and ingenuous guy along the way.

,

You know Mike Tyson is no saint, so expect a rough ride. There’s no doubt that James Toback has real affinity for Tyson as a subject, given Toback’s similar penchant for doing things his own way and that his recent films have dealt with race and relationships. He even cast Tyson in his 1999 film Black and White. So it seems perfect that he should take on a profile of this multifarious, great fighter.
The film has a lot of split screen and layered images. I expected this would get tedious – that it would be a cheesy way to keep our attention and hide too much reliance on the interview. But that turns out not to be the case at all. His quirky approach becomes like a documentary confession. Obviously Tyson had great trust in the director. There are a lot of hard close-ups on Tyson. Much of it does seem to come from one interview. The effect is that the audience becomes father confessors, or maybe psychologists for Tyson. As such there are bound to be radically different reactions to the boxer as a person, as a subject, as a man, and as an athlete.
What is clear is that he was a mighty, mighty boxer and a very troubled person. Despite his power as a fighter, there is little of the artistry, grace, and intelligence of anyone approaching the stature of Mohammed Ali. For better, and definitely for worse, Tyson is a brutal man in a brutal sport. But Toback in his respect for the man has revealed the poetry beneath the surface. That isn’t to say he lets him off the hook for some really bad behavior, but he doesn’t judge him. Tyson literally speaks for himself. I also don’t think that Toback would want to exploit Tyson who, it seems, has been exploited enough. Tyson’s contradictory, sometimes inarticulate, attempts to come to grips with his past life are filled with a lot of humor, shock, and honesty. He is not an educated man, but he is a blazing example of a superstar as anti-hero.
All the emotional confusion and ambivalence that are part of his colorful life are well served by Tobacks’s audacious style. There’s a lot of laughter at the sheer daring of Tyson’s claims, but also revelation at the emotion he has telling about his own life, his mistakes, his losses. So many questions, even at a psychological level are not commented on and are speculated on only in passing.
There are plenty of pre-conceptions about Mike Tyson, or maybe about boxing, in general. But the great archival footage makes the rise and fall of this chubby, short Brooklyn kid, afraid of getting picked on, and with little family to fall back on, to the “most feared man on the planet” worth millions and millions is clearly a compelling and very American story. Ultimately the brilliance of the film is that Toback commits his vision to the street poetry of Tyson’s own soul.

Jim Jarmusch begins his new film The Limits of Control with this quote from The Drunken Boat by Rimbaud

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers

And so it is in Jarmusch’s film. We will slowly drift through this story of a secret agent, played by the ultra cool Isaach De Bankolé as he goes on an undefined mission in very specific places with an indefinite sense of urgency. He encounters a series of indeterminate characters played by Tilda Swinton, Gael García Bernal, John Hurt, Paz de la Huerta and the big bad guy, Bill Murray. Directors and perhaps even stories themselves are what mediate and guide an audience through a film – finally providing some kind of catharsis. There’s no such guidance here. It is a collection of unhurried unfolding, seemingly important details that lead to the unsettling fact that you will, in the end, have to put together your own damn story.

As I understand reader-response theory, it is the reader (or viewer) who is the one who causes art to exist, that it is the audience interpretation that gives life to the work of art. That seems to explain the Limits of Control as much as any anything. Jarmusch has artfully employed all the elements of genre, plot, character, event, symbolism, and even climax – just not in a way that leaves the audience in the same place about what has happened. He attends masterfully to important movie moments like lingering on beautiful stars and beautiful spaces. He dwells on De Bankolé’s face as a work of art. He catches the ambience of the Madrid’s architecture, cafes, museums, and streets. He explores the exact light of Spanish mornings and afternoons. It reminds me at times of Antonioni’s The Passenger, but with even less of a narrative thrust. Narrative clues abound, but they are less clues than random genre situations, and you make what you can of them. I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of the slowly and randomly delivered genre moments, but they are great fun.

By deconstructing his film to pure cinematic and movie elements, without a cohesive narrative, he has created a wonderfully patient and surprising absorbing work of art. As he says in the screenplay “Everything is subjective,” and “Reality is arbitrary”. But there is more going on than that. The decision to resist the ‘manipulation’ of a narrative is, of course, wickedly anti-commercial. Fans of the director’s minimalism will probably have the patience to bask in the formal compositions and wonderful cinematography by the great Christopher Doyle(paranoid Park, In the Mood for Love). Small events read like a series of arch noir and spy movie clichés – the naked beauty he finds on his hotel bed (“I never have sex when I’m working” he tells the naked women, who reappears several times in a transparent raincoat) codes and messages appear in box matches, in the café he always orders two cups of espresso in the same café each day. Is this a clue to people he is meeting? The secret to whether you are ‘one of us’ seems to be the phrase “You don’t speak Spanish do you” . But who are “us”!?
The pace is languid, the details clever, the humor intentional. It’s a different kind of movie experience. You just need to be prepared to write it yourself!