Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The Big Screen: 5/22/07
So remember that column I posted about Noel Lawrence and Other Cinema? Noel sent me an email over the weekend announcing that he'll be in L.A. this week to present a few screenings. Tonight, he'll be at The Hyperion Tavern, screening weird stuff at the Club Ding-A-Ling night hosted by L.A. punk legend Don Bolles. Tomorrow, he'll be presenting weird found film at Thrift Store Movies, an event taking place at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater. And on Friday, there will be a rare screening of J.X. Williams' film Peepshow, (which I wrote about in the above-linked column) along with some rare Williams shorts and a slide show presentation on Williams' life, at The Showcave on Temple Street downtown. More fun screening information can be seen by clicking on the clickety thing!
The Billy Wilder Theater is also the home of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which will be presenting the documentary A Pervert's Guide to Cinema on June 4. The title is enough to sell me, but it sounds like a fascinating documentary, with philosopher Slavoj Zizek deconstructing films and examining the psyches of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch from key film locations.
Guy Maddin's newest film, Brand Upon the Brain, will screen for a week, from June 8 through June 14, at The American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Seeing one of Maddin's flights of cinematic fancy on the big screen could be a lot of fun, but if you go see it over the weekend, you'll get what promises to be a fantastic show. To quote the ad copy, "In an unprecedented act of faith in the enduring power of the theatrical experience, Brand Upon the Brain! is being presented as an expansive live event in select cities, featuring an 11-piece "live" orchestra, a 3-person "Live" Foley (sound effects performed onstage) team, and a "live" celebrity narrator, and onstage Castrato supplementing the filmic image, to comprise a one-of-a-kind cinematic spectacle." Yes, it says "castrato." Apparently they still exist. Maddin will be there in person to introduce the film. If you aren't familiar with Maddin's work on features like The Saddest Music in the World, check out his short film The Heart of the World:
...or The Eye Like A Strange Balloon:
Cinespia has started up their summer season of graveyard screenings. If the idea of seeing classic films projected onto a crypt in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, surrounded no doubt by the ghosts of the Hollywood legends buried there, appeals to you, this is the series for you. Vertigo screens this Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Conservancy continues its Last Remaining Seats series through June. This is a rare chance to see some great movies at the city's classic movie palaces, including The Orpheum, The Los Angeles Theater, The John Anson Ford Ampitheater, and The Alex in Glendale, where Howard Hawkes' 1932 version of Scarface will screen on Saturday, June 27. Here's my suggestion: get a cheap steak and a couple mai tais at one of L.A.'s last surviving vintage tiki bars, Damon's, then spend an hour or so shopping for used books at Brand Books and Bookfellows, then go see Scarface in this magnificent theater (see above), and finish up with the insanely tasty dulce de leche crepes at El Morfi. Sounds like a great night out to me.
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Labels: Brand Upon the Brain, Noel Lawrence, Peepshow, Scarface, The Big Screen, Vertigo
Continue reading The Big Screen: 5/22/07Monday, May 21, 2007
The Day The Clown Went Goth
So the first image of perennial Batman nemesis The Joker as he appears in the sequel to Batman Begins has appeared online. So nerds have now mobilised 50 odd years of continuity for the purposes of analysing both the fuck and all the fun out of one poor jpeg. So I like it. So?
What I like about it is the reversal of the standard Joker interpretation. Instead of a laughy, hyper clown character who happens to kill people, here we have a dead eyed thug, whom I shall assume doesn't laugh at pictures of cats, who's face has been mutilated into a perverse approximation of a clown's grin. The disconnect between inner and outer personality, as well as the idea of a mask you can't take off and how a character would react to having a face that is a cruel mockery of who they really are, all seems ripe with potential. The grin is not his, but he can never get rid of it. I like that. It is, if nothing else, an excellently visual expression of the unreliability of appearances, and of the nature of a conflicted personality.
Whether those themes are particularly explored in the film, or whether it's just an 'edgy' way of re-interpreting some pre-subscribed character signifiers, remains to be seen.
Now, 'edgy' is evil marketing speak for the lack of perspective that leads heavy metal bands to put blood and demons on their covers because they think it will shock people. 'Edgy' is, essentially, 'embarrassing in five years'. However, in and of themselves, I don't have a problem with related buzz-words 'darkness', 'realism' or 'post-modern re-interpretation' though.
A story of two highly intelligent but utterly psychopathic masked killers in a deadly cat and mouse game played out over the rooftops of a city at night would be pretty cool, would actually justify an 'R' rating and would be a legitimate re-interpretation of the Batman tropes.
The problem is that it just isn't Batman, is it?
It's not a playboy millionaire who dresses up as a bat to beat up the baddies. Batman, just as with any other superhero, has a much more goofy appeal. You can layer on psychology and neurosis in as complex or nuanced a fashion as you like but there will always be a disconnect between that and the simple worlds of 'heroes' and 'baddies', not to mention the worlds of spandex capes and circus-themed criminals.
So how do we solve this? There is only one way - and that's not to care anymore. We have to simply stop reading and watching these superhero stories.
Yes, I know it's just a bit of fun, that they're just cool characters and there's nothing wrong with liking them. While I could argue that this is just excuse making for a regressive tendency in our choices in entertainment, I'll stick to a more pragmatic argument: while us over 20's and, for that matter, over 30's are buying up this stuff, the stories will be tailored to appeal to us. And that means realism, post-modern re-interpretation, psychological complexity, moral ambiguity - all things that, while potentially awesome, don't fit with the strengths and appeal of super-hero stories.
While it's us watching these stories, the stories will be skewed towards us. Even if you claim to want innocent, goofy adventures, an adult understanding of those things is different from a child's, so a goofy story aimed at an adult will be different from one aimed at a child. There's no value judgment needed here. One need not be better than another, only that an adult view of innocence will, inevitably, be different from an innocent's view.
So if we abandon the superheroes, the writers will be forced to appeal to kids, and the stories will change. Assuming that kids these days aren't all serial killers (and I have no evidence either way, what with avoiding them as much as possible), this will be a good thing.
So we can blame the 'them' for the slightly chintzy darkness that these superhero films are adopting all you want - the rabid fanboys, the emos, the goths, the basement dwelling functionally autistic - or whoever. The problem is us. While we're exerting our pull on these characters, even if we're doing it with the best of intentions, they're getting twisted into shapes they shouldn't really go into.
Sorry.
Anyway, I'll see you next year to argue the toss over The Dark Knight, right?
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Labels: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, The Joker, What Nerds Are Saying
Continue reading The Day The Clown Went Goth
