Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Random Reviews - August 29, 2012 - Collateral, Drunken Angel, and Mother Night

Here are some random reviews of a few movies I had recently seen.

Collateral, Michael Mann, 2004.

Michael Mann is known for his film noir/gangster films such as Thief and Heat as well as his 1980s postmodern television show Miami Vice. Collateral fits nicely with these clutch of films.  The story occurs during one night and is about a taxi driver (Max) who is forced to drive a hit man (Vincent) throughout Los Angeles. The films stars Jamie Foxx (Max) and Tom Cruise (Vincent), in one of his finest performances.  

Collateral is shot in high definition, which was kind of big deal when it came out in 2004.  Although there were slew of films that had been shot on digital video, this made a splash for its big budget and big stars. Collateral demonstrates that digital video can depict vast landscapes through deep focus photography. This is, in particular, what stands out in Collateral: namely, the film's emphasis on empty spaces of Los Angeles in order to create atmospheric tension.  I was reminded or Alex Cox's cult masterpiece Repo Man, where cars traverse lonely highways, bathed in a panoply of washed out neon colors of Los Angeles (see image below). Of course, one of the great filmmakers to depict empty space and loneliness is Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni.



There is also great use of popular music and score in Collateral.  Mann is known for his hypnotic and majestic use of the synthesizer.  And it all works here.  An element that I have been focusing on in my own research is the soundtrack or popular song as narrative digression. We found many moments of musical digressions in Collateral in order to build atmosphere and moods that reflect character interiority. This is a way of moving the narrative without overt causality.

Lastly, the final moments of the film is classic Michael Mann, where Vincent philosophizes the code or life of the gangster. This scene, in particular, calls our spectatorship into question. We begin to question Vincent's motivates as a killing machine--even sort of feel bad for him. It returns us to a question Vincent poses to Max earlier in the film: "Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and a speck on one in a blink...that's us. Lost in space. The universe don’t care about you. The cop, you, me? Who notices?"



Drunken Angel, Akira Kurosawa, 1948

Drunken Angel is widely known as Kurosawa's first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, an actor he made many movies with. The film tells the story of gangster, Matsunaga (part of the yakuza), played by Mifune. Matsunaga is diagnosed with tuberculosis by an alcoholic doctor and will die if not treated. The doctor cares about Matsunaga and believes he can both cure his disease and free him from his gangster life.  Matsunaga, however, is stuck between these two worlds, uncertain if he can truly escape the yakuza. But does he really have a choice or is it his fate to die? Of course, fate is a central tenet of film noir.

The setting of the town is located near a contaminated lake, possibly the cause of illness among its inhabitants. One of the most striking scenes in the film is Matsunag's ocean dream, where he encounters his own death, filmed hauntingly in slow motion. Kurosawa seems to be channeling German Expressionism in this sequence--especially Mifune's excessive gestures and over the top expressions. One wonders if Ingmar Bergman was influenced by this scene when he shot the fantastic dream/death sequence in Wild Strawberries? This is an extremely fine film made by Kurosawa during the time when U.S. had occupied Japan post WWII.  Mifune's performance is outstanding and does a terrific job embodying the character of Matsunaga.


 Mother Night, 1996, Directed by Keith Gordon

Mother Night was released during the surge of Independent cinema in the 1990s. This is a gem of a film and surprisingly not mentioned among the great films of the 1990s. Mother Night is a story about Howard W. Campbell Jr. (Nick Nolte), an American Nazi playwright living in New York city. We find out that Campbell was a spy and sent undercover to transmit special codes during his Nazi propaganda speech during his radio program. Only a few people know  about Howard. One person in particular was an agent of the U.S. War department, which Howard refers to as his "blue fairy godmother" played by John Goodman. Howard chooses to live in New York City after the war.  After meeting his neighbor, George Craft (Alan Alda) things become complicated for Howard, eventually leading to his imprisonment in Israel. The film moves back and forth through time, during Howard being locked up in a jail in Israel (filmed in black and white) and the recounting of his life until his imprisonment.  

This is an intentionally slow moving film with fine performance from Nick Nolte, John Goodman and Alan Alda. Like the novel, the film brings forth complex questions of morality, with a bit a black humor.

As a random note, although the film closely follows the book's narrative, it does not attempt to match the film's aesthetics to Vonnegut's fragmented writing style. I always felt there is a bit of the absurd in Vonnegut's brilliant prose. And I believe there has only been one filmmaker who captured the absurdity that Vonnegut depicts in his works - and that is George Roy Hill and he is dead.  For this reason, I also highly recommend Slaughter House Five - one of Hill's best films alongside The World According to Garp.
 


Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Edgemont, Lipstick and Cigarettes, Fear Report

I wanted to give a shout out and support to my friends who recently released music this past summer, including myself.  Overall, I was blown away by the music on these three releases.  The sound quality and musicianship are all excellent here.

First up is my friend Anthony's band Edgemont, from Minneapolis, who released their EP entitled Like It Is.

Anthony and I have been friends for a long time and have shared tons of music that we have written over the years. I was very excited to hear about the release of his EP, which was a long time in the making.  There are many musical influence the make up the seven songs of Like It Is. There are traces of Coldplay, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. What I really enjoyed about these seven songs is the hypnotic sound and poetic lyrics.  My favorite tracks are "Uncomfortable Comfort" and "Things I've Known."

Second is my friend Erik's band Lipstick and Cigarettes from New Jersey.


Like Anthony, Erik and I have been good friends for a long time.  We were both drummers and played in hardcore bands in high school. Erik and I use to share my drum set and played in a band together called Harsh Reality.. 

I just downloaded Lipstick and Cigarettes' new release entitled About Last Night. There are so many styles happening in these songs. The Killers mixed with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol and a spice of Goth.  I love the 1980s pop sound, especially the Ric Ocasek influenced vocals.  Stand-out tracks are "About Last Night" and "Alibi."  I also highly recommend their first EP self entitled Lipstick and Cigarettes.

Last is my friend Dan's band Fear Report.  Dan and I met in film school on Long Island. Dan runs a great website called IndieTalk.  He also wrote and directed an excellent short film called To Skin a Cat - shot on beautiful black and white film. So one day Dan tells me he started a band.  I never knew Dan had the chops for singing!


I highly recommend his new album PandemicThese 13 songs encompass a range of styles - Chevelle, Stone Temple Pilots, Cold, and Faith No More.  There's even a flavor of punk thrown in.  I really enjoyed the tracks "Wasting" and "5 Dirty Cents" - overall, a great batch and diversity of songs on Pandemic.

Edgemont, Lipstick and Cigarettes and Fear Report are all available for purchase on Itunes.  And visit their websites for shows and updates.  I love that independent bands use the Internet as a source to circulate and promote their music independently.  This is not to suggest that the Internet is solely responsible for their music - it just makes it easier to share and transmit their music.  

But getting reviews and comments can be challenging for independent artists.  So I hope I can help support them with this posting.  Congrats to my friends for continuing to write and record great music.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Postcard Book Trailer and Thoughts on Quadrophenia

This is a trailer I made for my book The Postcard.   




For the past year and a half, I have been independently selling my book as both e-book and book format.  I have been exploring different ways to promote my book and thought: why not make a trailer?  I recently saw a documentary on The Who's Quadrophenia  (one of my favorite albums) and was inspired by the photos in the CD booklet (taken from the album).  


The photos narrate the experiences of Mod youth Jimmy in 1964. The images reflect the ephemeral and fleeting nature of Jimmy's memories.


The photo below of Jimmy and The Who is one of the most striking images of the story.  To the left, The Who leaves the Hammersmith Odeon during the present time (1973); to the right, Jimmy (1964) watches The Who.  As pointed out in the recent documentary on Quadrophenia, the space between these two planes of action mark a gap of time.  Jimmy, in a sense, is looking into the future and angry about that The Who as big arena rockers, which is depicted in the song The Punk and the Godfather.


Looking to Quadrophenia for inspiration made me think about the significance of album artwork and its combination with music (also see my posting on Archibald Motley and Jazz).  The album's artwork is something to study as one listens - a fusion of image and sound. In addition, albums can evoke memories of the listener - this is something I tried to depict in The Postcard when James buy his first Iron Maiden album.  Also, see my friend's YouTube postings about his experiences on collecting vinyls.

The Quadrophenia photos gave me the inspiration to make the trailer for my book.  I found this to be a great experience in terms of trying to capture the mood and feeling of the narrative.  More so, it made think about the importance of music and album artwork, and how CD and MP3s have changed this relationship.


Images for Ebooks - Amazon KDP Publishing

My first book, THE POSTCARD, has a bunch of images, and I had a hard time figuring out how to incorporate them into my kindle book when I pu...