Random Reviews - September 18, 2012 - Lost, Fringe and Person of Interest

Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest

I recently finished watching all six seasons of the television show Lost (2004-2010) - thanks to the wonderful technology of video streaming. For the sake of those who have not seen show, I have tried to avoid listing specificities that would ruin the plot. In a nut shell, Lost tells the story of a group of survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 marooned on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Lost is clearly one of the top television shows of recent years. The show covers many themes, such as science, religion, and family. But probably the topic given the most attention is the question of fate.  Here, the writers do a great job keeping us wondering if there is a greater purpose for the survivors of flight 815. Lost's puzzle narrative structure helps to underscore this notion. Some random notes (after all, this is a random review): Michael Giacchino's beautiful score; the diversity of characters; and cinematography, editing, and acting-all work very well. Lost deservedly won a bunch of Emmys. But I was surprised that none of the women were nominated for their work. Lastly, there are some fantastic stand-alone episodes. I particularly loved "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," which some critics, apparently, did not like.

I find myself drawn more and more to J.J. Abrams' fictional Universe. I recently started watching Fringe - another great show of Abrams'. Fringe is like the scientific version of the Twilight Zone.  If Rod Serling gave us existential reasoning for the show's strange happenings, Fringe attempts to scientifically solve them! Topics covered are telekinesis, shape-shifting, spontaneous combustion, and suspended animation, to name but a few.  Walter (John Noble), the eccentric scientist, does a convincing job to prove the scientific validity of these strange happenings. Noble's humorous antics also help to balance out Fringe's graphic imagery.

All of these shows strikingly share a commonality: a depiction of a post 9/11 society of paranoia. These shows, in many ways, are a microscope into our culture of rapid technological innovation, speed, and surveillance. Abrams and Matt Reeves really tune into these features in their frantic, science-fiction, disaster, monster, digital cinema film Cloverfield (2008).  I guess in certain ways these shows can be compared to the paranoia films of 1970s, such as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). This is not meant to be a generalization.  But I like that the writers of the show address these issues. Finally, I recently read that Star Trek 2 is heading into production which begs the question: does J.J. Abrams sleep?

Random Reviews - September 7, 2012 - The Dead and 49th Parallel

More random reviews...why not?

The Dead, John Huston, 1987

John Huston's last three films before his death in 1987 is a tour de force.  Under The Volcano (1984), Prizzi's Honor (1985) and The Dead - three outstanding films made respectively within a period of three years.  I highlight his final film - The Dead which is based on James Joyce's short story from The Dubliners. The film closely follows Joyce's story, providing viewers with vignettes of the yearly gathering of the Morkan sisters in January of 1904, which include singing and dancing, a piano performance, and recitation of poetry. There are many wonderful moments in The Dead, particularly the serving of the goose and all the different courses of foods during dinner.

The Dead is a beautifully slow and meditative non-narrative film.  It takes place when the western world was beginning to witness social and economic changes due to modernity.  Of course, Joyce's style of writing would later become associated with the broad movement of modernism. The film hits upon a number of issues, such as the political tension between Ireland and England, conversation about opera, discussion of about literature and clothing fashion of the time. There is also a sense of loneliness that pervades the story.  We eventually find out that what lies beneath this gathering is an unspoken tension between Gabriel and his wife Gretta, performed wonderfully by Huston's daughter Anjelica Huston, who had recently won a supporting Oscar for her supporting role in Prizzi's Honor.    

This is extraordinary filmmaking from man who began his career in the golden age of Hollywood - a time when a film like The Dead and its non-narrative style of would have been hard to find. The ending of The Dead has to be one of the most beautiful and power passage of prose I have ever read.   And Huston wonderfully captures this ending sequence of Gabriel self-reflecting on the fleeting nature of memories, the cosmos, "and the living and the dead."

49th Parallel, Michael Powell, 1941

This is a compelling propaganda war film made by one of Britain's finest filmmaker, Michael Powell, who also directed films with Emeric Pressburger, such as A Canterbury Tale (1945), Black Narcissus, (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and Pepping Tom (1960).   

After the sinking of their U-boat in the Hudson Bay, six Nazi sailors must evade capture as they travel across Canada. They meet different groups of people that challenge their Nazi rhetoric. One scene in particular is the Nazi speech by Peter (Anton Walbrook), the leader of the group, who tries to spread Nazism upon the peaceful Hutterite community--a group of people who happened to be of German descent.  Peter's speech literally scared me to the bones.   

This is a powerful film made during the time before U.S. entered the war. The final sequence of the film clearly alludes to this - a strong message to America to break with its isolationist stance. The poignancy of film's title addresses this as well: the geographical divide between the U.S. and Canada (the 49th parallel) - a divide that may have had no meaning or purpose for both countries if America did not join the Allies.

Most of the film was shot on location, which gives the film a realist quality.  Laurence Olivier plays a great role as Johnnie the trapper. 49th Parallel also deservedly won the best screenplay Oscar in 1941. This is clearly one of top films of the war genre.  It is great that Criterion released this one.

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.
 

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 Pandemic.  These 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.

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.

All Out War - Sum of All Fears - 1992 Demo Release - Hardcore

Its been almost twenty years since I left All Out War.  Out of nowhere, I found out that a small record label called Organized Crime Records re-released AOW's first album "Truth in the Age of Lies."  And, to my surprise, our first demo "Sum of All Fears," recorded in the summer of 1992, is included with the re-release as bonus tracks.  Also available is a very cool limited 10 inch record of the demo.

All Out War was influenced by both hardcore and thrash bands of the 1980s.  Back then, fusing these musical styles was something quite new, which only a hand full bands attempted. My memories of recording "Sum of All Fears" was hot, sweaty, and brutal.  A garage converted into a studio in Garfield, NJ, all five us packed inside and everything had to happen in one shot.  No digital machines for us!  If you made a mistake, missed a cue...start over.   My only regret was that we did not record the original version of "Witness The End."   We had other songs written during that period as well, including an aborted "Sum of All Fears" which we played a few times in the Hudson Valley in 1992.  One memorable show was at a pizzeria in a mall in Wappingers Falls that booked local bands at night...that's upstate, NY for ya! I also posted some video clips on YouTube from a show we played in Albany, NY in 1993 - sorry for the sound quality.

"Destined to Burn," "Struggle Within," "Fall From Grace," "Stuck Inside," and "Day of Judgement," these five songs are the roots of All Out War. The only one to go through significant changes was "Stuck Inside." I can only speak to this period of time since I had the left the band at the end of the summer of 1993. And there isn't really much I can add to what Mike already wrote on the sleeve for the 10 inch.  One thing I can state is that I believe that our identity was solidified in the extremely slow and grinding riff in "Destined to Burn" that opens the demo.  Hardcore bands often started with fast riffs, we took a different road that is still being explored by the band twenty years later....

The Aging Movie Star in the Horror and Sci-Fi Genres

A recurring theme of the horror/sci-fi film genre is the figure of the old and wise character who is often performed by the aging star actor. This character is typically a doctor or scientist, and holds knowledge of the monster, alien, and/or of character's superpowers. These characters are often highly educated, speak very intelligently, dress professionally, and have a calming presence for spectators. They often arrive in the narrative with pivotal information that motivates and drives the plot forward.
 
Consider the movie Them! (1954) one of the first atomic-age monster films, which casts aging star Edmund Gwenn as Doctor Harold Medford, an entomologist, who discovers that the mutant ants are powerless without their antennae. Even though the scientific discourse in the film seems be a bit obvious, the knowledge of the mutant has to pass through Medford as the figure of knowledge to legitimatize it's narrative exposition.

In the 1970s and 1980s, there seemed to be a plethora of horror/sci-fi films with the aging star as the figure of knowledge and reason. For example, John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) starred Donald Pleasence as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Michael Myers' psychiatrist. It is Dr. Loomis who knows Michael's condition and intentions that he will kill his sister and believes he is the only one knows how to stop him.

 

In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), it is the Overlook Hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann (played by Scatman Crothers), who discloses to Danny's that they both have the gift of "shining," the power to telepathically read each others thoughts as well as seeing premonitions. In this case, Hallorann is not a scientist or doctor, but the figure who has a direct pipeline to the Overlook hotel's past. 

 

In David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), Herbert Lom plays neurologist Dr. Sam Weizak as the figure of the older erudite man who provides knowledge to viewers about Johnny Smith's (Christopher Walken) power of seeing a person's future through physical contact. 

As a side note: The Dead Zone has a fantastic and creepy opening credit sequence where the lettering of the title's typography slowly appears on the screen over images of the town of Castle Rock, Maine. Here the title sequence emphasize the letters' negative space, which reflects the concept of "the dead zone," a void in the future that Johnny cannot predict-such as the ending of the film. 
 
We also find the casting of the aging actor as the conveyer of knowledge in fantasy/science fiction films. Most famous is the casting of Sir Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). Ben plays the figure of the aging Jedi Knight who explains to young Luke about Darth Vader and the Clone Wars.

Even the political sci-fi thriller Children of Men (2006) casts Michael Caine as an aging hippie cartoonist, Jasper Palmer.  Palmer as the conveyer of knowledge and comic relief helps propose the plan for Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) and Theo Faron's (Clive Barker) escape.

As such, the icon of the aging star plays an important function in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres as the communicator of knowledge, wisdom and reason.

The role of the aging star actor also raises the question of science fiction and horror films as occupying a B-film status. Certainly many sci-fi, superhero and horror films are produced with high quality, especially given the power of today's special effects. And many of these fables and story worlds are well written, and inform us about our own experiences of everyday life on planet earth.

But given that the overall body of work of these older actors is not often associated with fantasy and horror films suggests how the presence of an aging star can help legitimize a film's exploration of topics such as mutant bugs, telepathy, monsters, and other forces beyond the everyday world.