The Whistler

Media: Old-Time-Radio on CD
Title: The Whistler

Tonight I listened to another fantastic old-time radio show. The story was called "Whirlpool" first broadcast in 1948 on The Whistler radio program. But I do not want to talk about the fine tale of suspense. What struck tonight me was the advertising – in particular the idea of a single advertiser sponsoring a program. When I hear the title The Whistler I also know that Signal Oil is the advertiser. That’s amazing because I had never heard of Signal Oil before I began listening to The Whistler. The ad may be 20? 30? years too late for me, but I am a fan of Signal Oil. I also know all the advertisers for the other 50 and 60-year-old radio shows I listen to, even though they are produced mostly by companies that no longer exist. For example:
The Whistler – Signal Oil
Sherlock Holmes – Clipper Craft Clothing for Men
Dragnet – Chesterfield Cigarettes
Suspense – Roma Wine
The Great Gildersleve – Kraft Margarine
The Shadow – Blue Coal
And something even more interesting: do you know any company that advertised on any show you saw last week?
So besides being higher quality entertainment, old-time radio had more effective advertising as well.
“The Signal Oil Company brings you . . . The Whistler”.

The Year in Film

Media: Film
Title: The Year in Film

Updated 2/20

My Best Film of the Year: The Great New Wonderful

Sadly I do not think this subtle, beautiful and significant film was screened outside of New York. I almost avoided it myself given the subject matter: exploring the emotional impact of September 11th on a disparate group of characters through five separate New York storylines. But no, the actual events of September 11th are never seen or spoken of explicitly; rather we explore the inner struggle of each character as they quietly ask themselves: how do I live now that I see and feel everything differently? One character expresses the inner disequilibrium at the film’s core when she confides in Maggie Gyllenhaal. They both make cakes which sell for many thousands of dollars. Distraught she asks, how can we go on doing this frivolous work “after what happened”? The other characters have been denying this acknowledgement of change in their selves, and the film intelligently and powerfully explores their moments of acceptance. It is all so quiet, so well performed, and so significant. (jerromano.blogspot.com under August 2006 for more)

The Most Fun I Had: Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine was the one film of the year where I could have walked right back into the theater and watched it again as soon as it ended. (Last year it was Napoleon Dynamite.) In fact Napoleon Dynamite is an apt comparison. Little Miss Sunshine’s delight is equal to your love of the quirky characters, the ridiculous story-lines (though stealing the body went a bit far) and the stomach-aching laughter from the final dance sequence. I’m sitting her smiling just thinking about it. Not to mention that Olive and her grandfather portrayed the sweetest relationship of any in film this year. And Olive herself is my film hero for 2006.

The Second-Most Fun I Had: Dreamgirls

To quote The Stranger’s review: This is not a good film. That said, if you approach Dreamgirls as a dollop of superficial, spectacular fluff there is an abundance to enjoy. For instance, I enjoyed watching Eddie Murphy more than I have in 25 years. Don’t expect character development, don’t expect real emotion, don’t imagine that there is anything beneath the shiny surface. The best musicals are sweet frosting slathered over an empty hat box, and that’s what you get from Dreamgirls.

Most Visually Beautiful Film: Marie Antoinette

With Marie Antoinette Sofia Coppola made my “Directors Whose Films I Will Not Miss” list. (Woody Allen, Francois Ozon and Robert Altman, who sadly will have nothing more to show us, are also on that list.) Now Marie Antoinette is not a great movie. It goes nowhere and the ending simply lies down and dies. Antoinette, as played by Kirsten Dunst, undergoes no growth, no catharsis – rather she spends the film finding new and different ways to relieve her boredom – first opulence, then sex and then seclusion at a pastoral retreat. Lucky we in the audience are not similarly bored even as we are unsatisfied. It is the stunning beauty captured by Coppola's camera that is worth the price of admission. I will even go as far as to compare Coppola's visual art with Kar Wai Wong’s (In the Mood for Love, 2046). At just about any point you can stop the projector, pull out the frame and be brought to breathlessness by the image’s composition.

Most Intelligent Film of the Year: The History Boys

The History Boys was one of those films that I did not appreciate fully until I started to write about it. Then all the complexity and thoughtfulness that went into the story started to spill out. The plot: this ensemble of lower and middle class prep-school Britons study for their A-Level tests to gain admittance to Oxford. But the heart of the film is a mediation on the purpose and meaning of education. Do we use education to listen for the magnificent voices of the poets and artists whose eloquence describes an understanding of existence parallel to our own? Do we challenge our own artistic gifts to strengthen to their potential? Or do we work to beat the test, reap the reward and stock pile the treasure? It is a rare film where you should turn the questions right around and ask yourself: what have I chosen?

The Long List of Disappoints

These the films either I anticipated would be great based on the directors’ past work (Science of Sleep, The Departed, Little Children) or films that are on the hyped critically acclaimed list (The Departed, Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth, Little Children, Notes on a Scandal, The Queen, Letters from Iwo Jima) but which ultimately disappointed. To not prolong the dissatisfaction, I will be brief with each.

Letters from Iwo Jima: I just don't like war films and this one certainly didn't change my mine.

The Queen: Very fine acting, but I was not interested in the subject matter.

Science of Sleep: Director Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless was near or at the top of my 2004 film list so I hoped for great things from Science of Sleep. Admittedly Science of Sleep offers truly marvelous, even breathtaking visual experiences as the director captures moments of pure imagination on film. Yet ultimately Gondry had the same shortcoming as the film’s main character, he cannot generate the necessary emotional connection to make his playful experiment a satisfying experience.

The Departed: I liken The Departed to The Aviator. Scorsese is able to keep you utterly captivated for over two hours without a moment of let-down. Yet, like The Aviator, once you awaken from the world of the film you realize there is not much there beyond the perfect execution of a riveting plot, which hardly sounds like criticism, but we know Scorsese is capable of providing something more significant.
Beyond that backhanded criticism, there are number of moments when the film feels like a caricature of a Scorsese film rather than the real thing – for example, Nicholson coming out from an ‘interrogation’ all covered in blood, and the trite concluding symbol of the rat on the deck. Come-on Marty!

Babel: OK, after Crash last year and Babel this year I must scream: There is nothing innovative about a film exploring a theme through a number of seemingly unconnected stories and various points of view! D.W. Griffith created this structure in 1916 with Intolerance, and he did it better! So cut it out, Crash and Babel are mediocre and good respectively. Now Babel does has many masterful elements. In particular the editing which often cross-cuts from one story to the next allowing a necessary exhale at moments of unbearable tension. Also, Iñárritu has superbly captured distinct visual signatures for each of the various settings.

Pan’s Labrinth : Pan’s Labyrinth is half fairy tale and half military movie. I loved the fairy tale, told in the pre-Disney understanding that fairy tales are about a child’s psyche confronting death, parental abandonment and impending sexuality. I did not care for the film’s reality, a military story set in fascist Spain. Here del Toro uses his abundant visual talents to makes us squirm anticipating torture and looking at gore (from which I chose to look away). As you may imagine, loving only half a film is ultimately unsatisfying.

Little Children: At about the half way point I thought to myself, yes, this is the best movie of the year. I wasn’t surprised because Todd Field’s In the Bedroom was one of the best films of 2001. Little Children, a film about suburban alienation, depicts the supremely unsatisfying lives of Sarah and Brad. Each was married in their early 20s and they suddenly awaken, with 30 approaching, to the suffocating reality of their suburban lives. The title, Little Children, refers to the suburban ideal that life should center around children, but neither Sarah nor Brad can find meaning taking their children to the park and the pool, so they try an affair imagining love. Little Children is also overflowing with smart literary and film references, the best of which is the homage to Jaws in the ‘child-molester goes for a swim’ scene. So what’s the problem? The ending is so unsatisfying that it taints the brilliance and insightfulness of all that came before it. It is not just that we are left with unresolved storylines, the unforgivable sin is that the final choices Sarah and Brad make are entirely out of character; and the change in tone from drama to horror film is both idiotic and ineffective.
Yes, another disappointment but probably the best disappointment of the bunch.

Notes on a Scandal: I loved the first 20 minutes of Notes on a Scandal. You hear Judi Dench, as the omniscient narrator, providing dry, intellectually superior, hilarious commentary about the students and teachers in the school where she is a history teacher. Soon all the comedy and eventually all the empathy is squeezed from the film. When you have a pedophile on the one hand and a deranged human vampire on the other it is difficult to care what happens to either, and easy to tune out emotionally. Plus- like Cate Blanchett is really going to live with Judi Dench after she has just viciously tried to blackmail her – give me a break!

Best Foreign Film: Time to Leave

This did not surprise me. Director Francois Ozon is on my short list of directors whose film I will not miss. After last year’s awful 5X2 Ozon has created a quiet, contemplative film on death and the psychological role children play in one’s idea of living beyond one’s death. It has one rare, transcendent moment – a quick 5 second close up of a crying baby beginning to nurse. I cannot explain it, but the image was so unexpected, so pure and sweet I actually shed a tear. It was the most perfect moment in film this year.

Asphalt

Media: Film
Title: Asphalt

The reason lovers of film and film history should see Asphalt (1929) is to discover one of the first film noirs. If you were to throw this film up at SAM during the Film Noir Series this autumn it would be accepted as noir with little argument, though many may be unhappy with its silence. So once again Silent Movie Mondays has not only provided another fantastic film with perfect musical accompaniment via Dennis James, it has shown me yet again that most film innovations occurred in the silent era. The talkies merely added, well, talk.

What about Asphalt is prescient of film noir? First the look, Asphalt is set in a teaming city mostly shot at night. The city is large beyond a single human’s comprehension. It is active, loud and uncontrollable. And no one is to be trusted, especially not the gorgeous woman in furs who flirts and then robs you blind. Bringing us to the femme fatal, looking beautiful and played beautifully by Colleen Moore imitator Betty Amann. She tempts the innocent young man (still living with his parents) to accept sex instead of bringing her to jail. He accepts, after a quite well performed inner battle with his sense of duty, and becomes sexually obsessed with and sexually possessed by Amann. This fall into the urban underworld from a position in honest society is yet another noir theme. As the film begins we see the young man directing traffic (in the daylight), naively believing he is in control of the uncontrollable city. By the end he has murdered for Amann, the ultimate sign of love for the femme in the twisted moral code of the noirs. Finally, you will see echoes of much of the cinematography in later noirs. There are the shadows and darkness (perhaps most notably in the scene where the criminals are tunneling into the bank, and for a good 30 seconds the frame is almost entirely black), and the use of camera angles and shots up crooked stairways to convey inner turmoil.

This is a film that calls for multiples viewings because of all that is packed into it, or, perhaps more importantly, once you realize all that has been unpacked from it in film history.

Babel

Media: Film
Title: Babel

Oh no, another of this year’s critically acclaimed films turns out to be a disappointment.
OK, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu lost me when Gael Garcia Bernal’s character runs from the boarder patrol officers and drops his aunt and the children out in the desert in the middle of the night. There was nothing in Santiago’s character development to justify these drastic, insane actions. Plus, as the children now wander near death in a desert their mother, who has been accidentally shot from a mountain top, is near dieing in Morocco. Talk about a bad day for a family! It is enough to make you roll your eyes and say “come on!” and “give me a break!” Which I did, and no drama can fully recover from the eye roll.

Despite this terrible, disappointing turn in the storytelling, in all other film making aspects Babel may be the best made movie I’ve seen this year. The stories wove beautifully together to create a complex mediation comparing the ever closer interconnectedness of our globe with people's growing alienation and inability to form meaningful relationships. Also, the editing masterfully allowed for an exhale by cutting from one story to the next just when you could not bare the dramatic tension any longer; and Inarritu skillfully captured the distinct mise-en-scene of each distinct setting. You walk away thinking, that was fantastic film-making.

Ahh, too bad for that eye roll. I could have loved this film.

Pan's Labyrinth

Media: Film
Title: Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth is half fairy tale and half military movie. I loved the fairy tale, told in the pre-Disney understanding that fairy tales are about a child’s psyche confronting death, parental abandonment and impending sexuality. Guillermo del Toro’s visual effects creating the fairy tale world are fascinating, spectacular and a compelling reason in themselves to see this film. This imagined world was so wonderful I kept hoping to get back to it each time our little girl heroine had to step back into the film’s reality. I did not care for the film’s reality, a military story set in fascist Spain. Here del Toro uses his abundant visual talents to makes us squirm anticipating torture and looking at gore (from which I chose to look away).
If del Toro had decide to make the fairy tale alone I may have loved this film. But sadly, it is yet another disappointment in this year of disappointing films. As you may imagine, loving only half a film is ultimately unsatisfying.

Where the Reading Takes You

Media: Books
Title: Where the Reading Takes You

This past autumn I began a reading project I first heard on KUOW public radio. You start with one book. The second book you read will be inspired by some idea, theme, character, etc. in the first. Qualities in this second book inspire a third title, and so on until the project ends or you start again from a new book. I am now beginning book seven of the project: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Here is the run down of where the reading has taken me.
1. American Movie Critics: this is an anthology of film criticism.
2. The Immediate Experience by Robert Warshaw: I chose this book because Warshaw’s essays on Chaplin and on gangster films were two favorites in American Movie Critics.
3. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller: Warshaw had a surprisingly negative essay of Death of a Salesman in The Immediate Experience.
4. Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I chose this novel because Rabbit is a character like Biff Loman, a middle class man living in quiet desperation whose best days were in high school on a sports team.
5. Rabbit, Redux by John Updike: I was taken with Rabbit and wanted to know what happened next.
6. W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography of Race: I chose this biography of Du Bois because race relations played a major role in Rabbit, Redux set in the summer of 1969.
7. Now I begin Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. – since there is a direct line from Du Bois as leader of black America to King.

Charlie Chaplin

Media: Lecture
Title: The Fool in the Frame: Film Comedy and 20th Century America

Professor Bean is teaching this 5 session course and she began this week with a quick history of the beginning of film and then focused on its first big star Charlie Chaplin. I’ve done a good deal of my own reading on the subject but this class is helping cement my understanding of early film. A few facts I enjoyed:
The first exhibition of film for an audience was in France 1895. (Edison had motion picture machines first but they were one person arcades.)
The first fictionalized film was slap stick comedy (most early documented real events like a train arriving). Its subject, a kid tricking a man to look into a hose and getting a face filled with water.
Chaplin entered film via Max Sennett at Keystone studios, the gold standard of early film comedy, just as film was about to explode in popularity. Chaplin rode atop that explosion for a good 15 years becoming the first international film star, and the richest. There is no real comparison for his fame until Mickey Mouse.
Chaplin started with Sennett 1914-15, worked with Mutual 1916-17, worked with First National 1918, and started United Artists in 1919 which he was involved with until his death.

I'm anxious to get to the next class, I wish I didn't have to wait two weeks.