My good friend and Film Fest buddy, M., and I disagree quite a bit about Pink Ribbons, Inc., our penultimate film of the weekend. I really liked it. M. liked parts of it, but disagreed with many of their conclusions and with a good deal of their presentation of the issue.
Full disclosure: My mom had a couple rounds of breast cancer when I was young (as was she), and due to that, I've recently started my own ritual of yearly mammograms. I also worked with and for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for a good portion of the aughts, and while there some of my co-workers when involved in Komen grant work involving breast cancer education and screening.
I have also, for the past few years, started to become more and more bothered by the trend of pink, pink, pink everywhere to raise money "for breast cancer" and to "raise awareness." Breast cancer is very serious, but it is by no means the biggest health risk that women face. It's just the one with the best marketing campaign.
Sometime around 2000, I heard, in error, that Maurice Sendak had died. I was sad about this, but did not discover that it was a false report until years later, in 2006. I wept Tuesday morning when I heard, once more, that he had died. I knew that this time, I wouldn't be getting him back. I wasn't as heartbroken as I was when Jim Henson died, but Henson died well before he should have. I knew from recent interviews with Sendak that, at age 83, he was starting to get pissed out about still being alive. He seemed ready to go.
However, it wasn't just Wild Things. My sister and I had a cassette of the Off-Broadway production of Really Rosie that we played over and over, memorized, and performed on our own. (I was particularly fond of "The Awful Truth.") We had copies of Pierre and Chicken Soup With Rice that got their share of wear. We also loved listening to Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, There Must Be More to Life on tape, as read by Tammy Grimes.
Unsurprisingly, this week I have spent a great deal of time reading other people's memoriesof Sendak and revisiting my own. We remember and we carry on.
Look into that face, those eyes, and tell me that it is "just" and animal. James Mollison has taken portrait photographs of 40 different apes, of a variety of species, from Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. Each one shows a different personality, a different intelligence. Assembled together, the effect is rather striking.
I had to be talked into getting tickets for this one. I am not a fan of the monster movie/horror genre, and usually don't even really enjoy the loving send-ups. (Ask me how much I hated Scream. Shaun of the Dead was always the one, notable exception.) But compromise is part of the process in picking out films, so when my longtime film buddy, M. was really excited about The Amateur Monster Movie, I decided to give it a go. I'm so glad that I did.
(Warning: the trailer kind of has spoiler. At the same time, really? It's The Amateur Monster Movie, not Inception. Are you really worried about spoilers? I thought not.)
Hilarious. I laughed harder during this than at any film I've seen in a while. There were a couple of sequences that really didn't work at all, but over all it was spot on. As you can guess from the trailer, it has some...language. I left the theater saying "muther feckin' wer-wolf" at the drop of a hat.
If you are a fan of monster movies or B-movies in general, you ought to get a kick out of this one. And I can attest that you might enjoy it even if you usually can't stand that genre. The Amateur Monster Movie is a winner.
I don't know exactly why, but I find this video strangely mesmerizing.
It could be because I am lousy at ironing and avoid it whenever I can. It could be the blueish lighting, the steady camera angles, and the lack of soundtrack beyond the quiet, incidental noise of the activity. But seriously, watch that man iron and tell me you wouldn't want to wear that shirt. (Or maybe not *that* shirt, but it's equivalent in your size and style.) Even mundane chores can be beautiful when practiced with skill.
I'm starting to sift through my photos and pick out what I might want to print for the WisCon art show. Some of these might work, but I'd love second opinions.
My. God. I have never, in all my 36 years on this earth, undertaken a project even half so grand as what these kids did over the course of their teenage years. Certainly never did anything like it when I was actually a teen. The movie was a love letter to Raiders of the Lost Ark and a love letter to cinema. I was amazed at what they were able to pull off, and was rather bummed that we weren't able to stay for the Q&A after the film.
If you grew up on Indiana Jones and you get a chance to see this film, you should not pass up the opportunity.
I didn't see any films on Friday night, since I was at the Overture Center singing in Verdi's Requiem for most of the evening. But first thing Saturday morning, we were off to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi at the Orpheum.
During the pre-show announcements, they mentioned how many sushi restaurants there were within a five minutes walk of the theater. Good thing they did, because I'm pretty sure everyone left the theater dreaming of sushi as well.
While the film wasn't quite as meditative as The Meaning of Tea, it was very peaceful and refreshing. I have an admiration for people like Jiro Ono, who thrive on simplicity and order, and who can do the repetitive work needed to achieve excellence at something. I don't work that way myself: I like the idea of simplicity, but I tend towards complexity, variety, and a wee bit of chaos. But the contrast between my way of life and Jiro's made it particularly pleasant to watch.
The visuals were great. If you didn't want sushi by the end of the film, you probably never liked sushi to begin with. Piece after piece of perfect nigiri was lovingly filmed in lingering close-up shots. Mouth watering. Trips to the fish market were slightly less mouthwatering, but far from disgusting. It is easy to forget how crazy huge tuna are. It's rather a shame how divorced we get from what and where the food we eat comes from.
In some tiny way, I was reminded of Great, a webcomic by Ryan Armand (KIWIS BY BEAT!). Jiro doesn't seem to have much in common with Lyle Phipps (who is often an angry sad sack) but I found myself thinking of Lyle's drive to create the greatest ramen in the world. (I also found myself wanting ramen.)
Later in the day we stopped at T. Sushi, to give the newest sushi restaurant a try. It was good, but definitely no Sukiyabashi. I might go there again, but it won't be at the top of my list of Madison sushi restaurants. (I have a hard time taking a sushi restaurant seriously if you order tea and are given a cup of hot water and a generic food-service tea packet.)
Nuit Blanche (Sleepless Night) was the second stop on our festival journey. It was also at Sundance Cinema, so we got to take a brief intermission at the Great Dane Hilldale.
(The trailer lack subtitles, but the subtitled version I found also featured a terrible American movie trailer voice over. Too awful to link.)
The festival write-up describes this as "a thriller with all the boring parts cut out" and they were not lying. My adrenaline was elevated from the first scene to the last, and even though it was very late when I left the movie, I was very keyed up.
There are some very important details that would be spoilers for the very first scene, but I can say that the majority of the film is a tense, high-stakes game of cat and mouse in a loud, crowded nightclub. They skip right over many of the usual cliches that make up the slow moments in action movies and keep you right in the midst of the actual action. I'm sure that they inevitable American remake will have some sort of goofy comic relief and a love interest. I'd recommend seeing this, and not bothering with any Hollywood follow-up.
Our Wisconsin Film Fest journey for 2012 began on Thursday night at Sundance Cinema in Hilldale and a sold out screening of the documentary We're Not Broke and a local short, Wisconsin.
I'd seen Wisconsin when it was first uploaded to YouTube in March of last year, but it was great to see it again. So much has happened since then. Cold, snow, crowds, mud, pizza... Show me what democracy looks like: petitions, boxes and boxes of petitions.
It isn't the best of the little films that came out of the protests (the uncertain focus and camera angles was a bit maddening) but it was great to see and hear a variety of faces and voices.
We're Not Broke was well made, and if there was a person in the theater who didn't find themselves getting furious while watching it, I think they might have been asleep. It detailed the lengths to which American multinational corporations will go to avoid paying taxes in the U.S. and the ways in which they do so. They are literally willing to spend millions of dollars on lobbyists, campaign contributions, lawyers, and accountants in order to reduce or eliminate their tax bills. The things they do *may* be legal at this time, but they are in no way right or ethical.
As is often the case in documentaries like this, there were occasional moments where the protesters came off looking a bit silly, but that was mostly due to the fact that they are not professionals. But it was corporate America that came off looking like jackasses at best.
I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Lee Shephard., who was incredibly droll with a dry and acerbic wit.
I ended up sitting next to two older women, whose sotte voce comments I could overhear during the course of the film. If I was seething internally at the nefarious practices of the corps, they were visibly (and audibly) bristling with indignation.
It was rather a good thing for me that it wasn't the last film of the night, because if it had been, I'd probably have seethed all night long. As it was, I had about an hour after the end to glower about corporate tax dodgers, after which I was plunged into French action sequences, and it was my adrenaline being raised, rather than my blood pressure. It has stayed with me, though, and I will definitely recommend it to other people, if they get the opportunity. This is something we should be made about.
The ensemble includes a 175-voice chorus, and 85-piece orchestra and 4 soloists, and has a sound that fills the hall. The "Dies Irae," in particular, features an explosion of sound, with a particularly wrathful chorus and an extra large bass drum ushering in the judgment day.
Tickets are still available and priced at a number of levels ($10, $15, $20, and $25). You can purchase tickets online, by phone (608-258-4141), or at the Overture Center box office.
I was of two minds about even linking this, but here are my thoughts:
Yes, this is a collection of ridiculous, dated photos. Glamour Shots and it's ilk had/have some very silly things going on. As a photographer who really strives to capture my subjects in the best possible way, this hurts my aesthetic sensibilities.
And yet, the mockery of the photos was also a mockery of the women in them. I don't know them, maybe some of them are/were genuinely mock-worthy people. But neither do the people doing the mocking. It may be just a random collection of silly pictures to them, but each one is a photo of an individual woman, who may very see this (or someone who knows her might.) What did they do that deserved to be mocked? Try to live up to society's demand for feminine beauty...for glamour...and fail. Shame! Point them out and let them know how stupid they look.
This collection is mean-spirited and cruel. I'll bet many of the women (and girls) in those photos went to have their portraits taken so they could look at the image and feel pretty, something that the world around them went out of its way to deny them on a regular basis. If your beauty doesn't completely conform to the basis of what society is celebrating that minute, someone is always going to tell you how you need to improve. You hair is too flat, too mousy. You need to lose a few pounds. Your boobs should be bigger. Your teeth are crooked. You're too old.
So you go to the place that promises to make you look like a model. They do your hair, they do your makeup, they give you something to wear. They make sure you have fun. Now, the photo stores in the mall probably aren't employing the best hair and make-up people, the top-notch photographers. They are hiring folks for a little bit above minimum wage and then instructing them to sell, sell, and up-sell. They get a small wardrobe to work with, and a set of poses they like (it saves a lot of time). Which means you get some silly end results. But I'll bet that most of the women looked at the photo they got and felt happy, felt pretty, even if just for a little while. Until society started reminding them how much they fail at looking like an ideal. How plain, how fat, how old, how silly.
And then we come along, a decade or so later, to point and laugh at their aspirations to glamour.
Yesterday, I finally got the opportunity to see< a href="http://www.pina-film.de/en/">Pina, which I have been waiting for since December. I was not disappointed in the least.
I saw the 2D version, so I couldn't say whether the 3D aspect was used effectively, but I don't really care for 3d, so that was a feature, rather than a bug.
Overall, I thought it was brilliant. I am not a dance connoisseur, modern or otherwise. I had not heard of Pina Bausch until I first saw the trailer for the film. That being said, it really spoke to me. The dance was a constant juxtaposition of the graceful and the awkward, the beautiful and the homely.
The version of The Rite of Spring that basically opened the film was a violently powerful display of sweat and dirt and fear. It set the tone for obvious effort and exertion.
One thing that struck a chord with me was how many of the movements and gestures reminded me of things I do when I'm feeling a little silly. Pina took that silliness and pushed it to the edge, stretched it, exaggerated it, and it became art.
The soundtrack was also a big winner for me. I think it was the use of Jun Miyake's "Lilies in the Valley" in the trailer that first grabbed my attention. It all really worked.
One more thing: I don't know much about Wuppertal, but man, I really want to ride on their tram now. Wouldn't you?
First off, if you ever have the opportunity to try the cheesy pub fries at Laz Bistro and Bar in Stoughton, WI, do not let the moment pass you by. Those are some amazing, tasty chips. However, unless you plan on making a meal of nothing but them, plan to split them with at least one friend. While it may be found in the "tapas" section of the menu, there was nothing "small" about this plate.
Secondly, the Stoughon Opera House is remarkable beautiful venue, both in terms of looks and in sound quality. Even though it was a bit of a drive to get there, I will gladly go again. (And now I am extra sad that the Carolina Chocolate Drops show there last fall sold out before I got tickets. It must have been an astonishing show in that space.)
Finally, even with a hint of laryngitis roughening up her voice, Dar Williams remains as luminous and buoyant as ever. It was an intimate show, just Dar with her guitar and a piano accompanist on some songs. The last few times I'd seen her she had a band along. As nice as the bands were, I definitely prefer her solo (or almost solo) sound. I have always been fond of the way she interacts with the audience and introduces the songs with little stories. It's that kind of thing that gets me to live shows.
She also looked fantastic, and gave me a great idea for what to do with my hair when it gets a bit longer. I think I've always had a tiny girl-crush on her unassuming hippy-goddess rockstar style. She never goes over to top in any direction, but nails it with confidence. Considering her severe stage fright in her early career, it really inspires me.
Japan's Wrecking Crew Orchestra performs an amazing routine with the help of a darkened stage and costuming that features electroluminescent wire. It's like watching something from a video game or a sci-fi film.
Kirby Ferguson, a New York-based filmmaker, created an interesting and engaging 4-part short video series called Everything is a Remix, in which he discusses the process of creativity in which we build on the work of others to make something new, and in turn have our work built upon by others. He also talks about the original intentions of both copyright and patent, and the effect that the modern ideas of intellectual property are having on the process of creativity.
It is well worth a watch. He also has a new project in the works, called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, which is going to be about politics. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with it.
Not practical. Not practical at all. And yet, how fun would it be to have a lovely wall display of your CSA bounty? Perhaps if you were also making sure to eat what you have very regularly. After all, refrigeration is a fairly new concept.
Jihyun Ryou doesn't seem to actually be trying to replace the fridge, so much as to get us to think about the role of technology in our lives, and how we interact with the world around us through that technology. In what ways does it help us, and in what ways does it keep us from connecting with that world.
I guess the poster for Walt made a bit of a stir around the net, as people thought perhaps it was real. I'd certainly go see it, if it slipped out of that alternate universe into ours.
I sing in a large chorus (over 150 people) that performs large works for chorus and orchestra. Over the years, we've sung a number of Requiems. I've developed a fondness for the Dies Irae movements.
Tonight I was thinking about the Dies Irae from the Benjamin Britten War Requiem:
It is anything but comic, yet it reminded me of the type of scene that would appear in a 1930's comedy, like the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, when characters are sneaking around at night, tiptoeing through the dark, only to have their stealth interrupted by something crashing down.
In this Dies Irae, the chorus is tiptoeing up to Judgement Day, only to have all that wrath come crashing down on them in spite of their best efforts. Voices, brass, and percussion all explode into fortissimo, and nothing is going to stop it.
Needless to say, I really like this piece of music.
Recent Comments