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American graffitti

One of the nicer things about sitting in on the noir class that meets just before I teach is getting a student's-eye view of things. Oftentimes, this involves watching kids IM or shop on their laptops under the guise of "taking notes," thus confirming I was right to institute a blanket ban on laptops in my class.

But the other day I came in late and got stuck sitting behind some sort of structurally necessary projection. It'd been decorated by countless bored students with the usual stuff about So-and-So smoking pole and the like. Pretty standard. Then I noticed the faint "Charles Kane Kane" graffitto captured above. Film tags, woo-hoo! Was it from my class last spring? Some other teacher's? Whatever its origin, I was glad to see it.

Later the same day, a student of mine who's also in the noir class showed off his Night of the Hunter-stizz knuckle art, also drawn out of boredom. Sadly, I'd used up my cameraphone memory, but just imagine F-I-L-M on one hand and N-O-I-R on the other. Good stuff.

Enjoy the weekend.

Did people ever really dance in bars? I thought that was a myth.

A confession: The cinetrix really kinda wants this affiche. Hell, she'd settle for just seeing The Last Days of Disco again. Her irrational fondness for the mannered Whit Stillman flick stems, no doubt, from having spent her own early 20s as an underpaid cog in publishing, toiling for the Man by day and going out to the Plough or Delux with jmac et al. most nights.

Plus, there is something so joyous and free about the final frames of the film, helped in no small part by the OJays "Love Train," that haunts me to this day. But then you know how I get about pop music in film.

Days has been out of print longer than any of the usual DVD-by-mail suspects have been in business, so if any of you nice people have a less-than-bank-breaking line on a copy, do let me know.

I forget what 8 was for

While the cinetrix gets back up to speed, consider reading this droll little listicle over at the Onion: 8 Films Illustrating the Oral Sex and Cars Don't Mix. [Incidentally, you are all more than capable of making the same bad blowjob puns the cinetrix is valiantly trying not to. If you can't keep them to yourselves, well, that's what the comments are for.]

One astonishing omission does come to mind, perhaps because the film [but not the scene] came up in the noir class I audit: Scarlett Johansson's jailbait turn in The Man Who Wasn't There. There's not a straight man alive who saw that movie and didn't make a note to self, so to speak, to follow young Scarlett's career. Are there any others? Or is "8" inherently funnier than "9" somehow? Discuss.

On the pedogogical front [how's that for a segue?], the cinetrix managed to stagger through the second half of the documentary unit this week. It wasn't pretty, but I got through it with the help of Werner Herzog. If you need to vamp, he's your go-to guy for sheer entertainment value.

Showing Grizzly Man sure did get the kiddies talking, which was nice for me. [OK, and doing "I love you! I love you!" Timothy Treadwell impersonations.] One student, G-d love him, even asked whether this film really should be considered a documentary at all. Yes! This was unprompted, mind you, and it made me feel slightly less irresponsible for showing it. Small victories.

What else? We spent a little time divvying up the film between its two filmmakers--Timothy Treadwell and Werner Herzog--and discussed how the latter deploys familiar doc techniques like talking-head interviews, home movies, and still photos in a way that is anything but "objective." I asked what it does to your experience of the film to know from the beginning [thanks to titles] that Treadwell is dead. And what about the mysterious girlfriend?

And then there was my ace in the hole. At the screening I'd asked that they consider Grizzly Man in terms of the idea of an unreliable narrator [or narrators]. So today I gave the kids a glimpse of one of their unreliable narrators in situ: Herzog complaining about the savagery of nature in the middle of a South American jungle nearly 30 years ago in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams. Sure, it could be considered more vamping, but I think it really helped them puzzle out what Herzog's agenda might be in taking on Treadwell's quixotic story. And that nonfiction isn't always the same thing as reality, or truth.

A fine line between clever and stupid

Me, I got nothing, but do go over and check out my pal Mark Olsen's LA Times piece on the latest crop of "seemingly lowbrow, secretly smart" comedies like Borat.

Also well worth a read is Sac's review of a movie he does not intend to see (The Departed), which was one of the only things that has made me laugh in the past 10 days. Here's a taste:

There will be a montage. There will be gratuitous use of 60s anthems. There will be a voiceover. There will be cocaine. There will be moral ambiguities illustrating that cops and crooks are just two sides of the same coin.

Amen to that.

Going dark

We lost my father-in-law last night, quite suddenly. He was a lovely man who could not abide violent movies but had no problem with a little skin. Only this summer I learned that he'd been a film critic for the Harvard Crimson when he was an undergraduate in the 1950s. I can't believe he's gone.

Keep the 'Fesser and his mother and brother in your thoughts, won't you? And call your loved ones today and actually tell them that you love them. Tell them why you're doing it, too, if you want.

Dangerous minds? Hardly.

The cinetrix had the sort of weekend that makes her want to dismiss the collected corpus of inspiring teacher flicks with a scornful "fuck that noise." There is nothing like plowing through the first batch of student papers to make you reach for a bat, Lean on Me stizz, rather than clamber to the top of your desk for a little life-changing Barbaric Yawping 101.

This is what students forget. Yes, you're getting slammed with midterms, but guess who gets to read your deathless prose? When I told my poetess pal about my exciting weekend plans, she responded

The film Casablanca is a movie in which many various themes and ideas are explored.

 

Good start, no?  I was going to write a whole paragraph, but my brain started to hurt.

Precisely.

It's not all gloom and doom, though. After discovering my first choice--The Basketball Diaries--for a Banned Books Week reading on campus was not among the library's holdings, the cinetrix opted to read a few definitions from Merriam Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary that had gotten various municipalities in a swivet. After opening with "sexual intercourse," I proceeded to drop the f-bomb and the c-word. In a library. Mic'ed. It was so good I wanted a cigarette afterwards.

D'oh!

Excuse the cinetrix for her Susan Powter moment [kids, ask your parents], but stop the insanity, already. She's chided A.O. Scott before about making semi-obscure pop culture references to demonstrate how "down" he is , but so far she's kept silent about the undercurrent of Simpsons references punctuating his prose. Well, no more. Not after this, from Scott's review of Film Snob David Kamp's latest book, The United States of Arugula:

(The cover depicts Lady Liberty clutching a bunch of greens in place of her torch, proving that Kamp’s publishers have turned a deaf ear to the wisdom of a leading American gourmand, Homer Simpson, who once observed that you don’t win friends with salad. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the Lisa Simpson of American cooking and a central figure in the book, would obviously disagree, but that’s between her and Homer.)

Question: Does anyone know whether ol' Tony is pals with Simpsons staffers from back in his Harvard dizzays, cuz his Simp-session is beginning to feel like some sort of in-joke at the expense of NYT copyeditors and readers. Think I'm kidding? Scott also name-checks America's favorite cartoon family* in reviews of Sorority Boys, something called Cyberworld, and--wait for it--The Passion of the Christ.

If you have a line on whether this is the work of some sinister Harvard cabal, pipe up in the comments.

*Incidentally, fuck Family Guy. As I said to someone only last night, if you're thirsting for a cartoon featuring a power-mad midget with the voice of Orson Welles,  Pinky and the Brain wins hands down every time. Narf.

Punk'd pedogogy

Now that I am in my second semester teaching this film class, I sometimes get that flight attendant feeling. You know, the thing where what you're saying is news to your auditors, but to you it sounds like you're repeating the locations of the safety exits over and over again, in a muffled, Charlie Brown-adult squawk.

So, my account of teaching Singin' in the Rain last spring basically covers what happened again today, only with the added excitement of a tenured member of the department observing me teach as part of my personnel review. Eeeesh. Discussing the concept of bricolage in terms of the musical's mise-en-scene might have been construed by some as pandering to the observer's post-modern sensibilities--and it did seem to go over well--but it was legit, too. The cinetrix did this even when no one was evaluating her.

And I also had a pedogogical secret weapon:

But then I had to blow the kiddies' minds a little. I couldn't help it. See, I was rereading Peter Wollen's bfi monograph on the film last night when I stumbled across a little item I'd somehow forgotten. Debbie Reynolds, who plays the plucky songbird Kathy Selden, wasn't much of a singer--or a dancer--in real life. So the filmmakers dubbed her voice in all those numbers. Yes, even the sequence where we see her looping Lina's songs.

So whose voice is it really? Uh, Jean Hagen's. It's true: that squawking Judy Holliday manquee sings beautifully. So this means that in the big comeuppance number where Lina performs "Singin' in the Rain" live in front of the curtain while Kathy actually "sings" from behind the scenes, both Jean Hagen and Debbie Reynolds are lip synching to Hagen's voice.

Bam! Gotta say, watching the tops blow off the students' heads was just as satisfying the second time around. Now if you'll excuse me, the cinetrix wants to savor the moment a little longer before getting back to work.

Build my gallows high, baby

Another week, another film noir screening. This time around it was Jacques Tourneur's exceptional Out of the Past. Such dialogue! When duplicitous [and how] Kathie Moffat comes to Robert Mitchum's Jeff at night on an Acapulco beach, you know he's in trouble when you hear his voiceover:

And every night I went to meet her.

How did I know she'd ever show up? I didn't.

What stopped her from taking a boat to Chile or Guatemala? Nothing.

How big a chump can you get to be? I was finding out.

And then she'd come along like school was out...

... and everything else was just a stone you sailed at the sea.

As I sat in the dark thrilling to Mitchum's laconic delivery, I realized I had first watched the film literally half a lifetime ago for another film class. Robert Mitchum was still alive then, and he'd recently appeared on Saturday Night Live, where a sketch called "Out of Gas" parodied his hard-boiled classic. Astonishingly, it hasn't hit You Tube yet. But their first meeting has. Travel to La Mar Azul here and marvel at the quality of the light and shadow.

Enjoy.

Pop will eat itself

The cinetrix feels so fuckin' old.

I enjoy being a girl: special new releases edition

The Hollywood Reporter ran a pretty weak trend piece on the unremitting maleness of today's new releases. Because, as we all know, the first Jackass movie made all that money by appealing only to half of the movie-going population. Riiiight.

MaryAnn Johanson brings the snark:

The crack journalists at The Hollywood Reporter uncover the conspiracy that drives the studios:

Between "Jackass Number Two" and "Jet Li's Fearless" this weekend, young males are again the primary target of the domestic boxoffice. The question is, can they possibly support both films plus last week’s holdover, Sony Pictures' "Gridiron Gang"?

Add on the fact that "Flyboys" is targeting older males and "All the King's Men" is out to reach adults, and one must wonder what teenage girls will be doing this weekend because there sure isn't a new movie out there for them.

[from The Hollywood Reporter]

Young men? Targeted by Hollywood? How could we not have seen this before? Oh, the humanity! Who will think of the girls?!

If my local Netflix queue is any indication, the girls will be busy catching up on the third Bring It On movie and practicing their jazz hands.

Your friends and neighbors

The LA Times has a fascinating little slideshow that looks at Netflix's Local Favorites feature, which shows you what unique titles are topping the charts in your--or any--zip code.

At first glimpse, I was all ready to have my prejudices confirmed about the people in my neighborhood. Yep, RV, Larry the Cable Guy, some Tim Allen crap.... Then I saw no. 12, I Heart Huckabees [arty what-does-it-all-mean undergrads, perhaps?], and no. 24, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Is it wrong of the cinetrix that she might have something to do with the flick's local popularity? Cuz then I don't wanna be right.

What's the most astonishing local favorite in your hood?

The Mona Lisa's sister doesn't smile

True story. The 'Fesser recently had lunch with a young woman who was astonished to learn that Wellesley College, which she knew of only as the setting of the treacly Julia Roberts vehicle Mona Lisa Smile, was a real place.

Granted, it's not as heavy on the Cherries in the Snow lipstick and circle skirts these days, but Wellesley is still real, and still admits only women. But the cinetrix can understand why this woman thought it was fictional. Fewer traditional women's colleges have been able to stay afloat without admitting men. Today's Times reported that tiny, fierce Randolph-Macon Woman's College is the latest casualty, and the cinetrix died inside a little.

For some young women it's still very important to know that places like Wellesley and Randolph-Macon exist in real life, not just in the movies.

You're my meat

FOC--oh, OK, and noted Phoenix scribe and former curator of the Harvard Film Archive--Gerald Peary tumbles to an interesting bit of nomenclature.

As y'all know, films noir weren't called thus when they were being produced. The name came later, courtesy of a bunch of French movie brats who saw movies like The Maltese Falcon and Laura all in a bunch once the postwar distribution floodgates opened up again.

So, was there a name for these flicks, you know, in house? Here's what Gerry found...

A new academic book, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir (Johns Hopkins University Press), offers a dizzying new term for “noir” scholars to ponder, one gleaned from author Sheri Chinen Biesen’s first-hand research. Biesen asserts, “By 1946 Hollywood publicity and critics had identified these innovative films as a bold new trend called the ‘red meat crime cycle.’ ” Red-meat movies! Biesen assures the reader that the term was “circulated widely.” What a pungent phrase! If she’s right, here are grounds for a significant revision of thinking about “noir.”

I pored over Blackout, eager for Biesen’s proof. She quotes one Fred Stanley in the New York Times in 1944 as saying, “Hollywood will depend on so-called ‘red meat’ stories of illicit romance and crime for a major share of its immediate non-war dramatic productions.”

Okay, that’s a start. And? And? Alas, that’s the only example in speech or writing from the 1940s she can muster. My harsh conclusion: Fred Stanley alone was the “red meat” man, in one article. Biesen’s claim that by 1946 the term “red meat” was “circulated widely” seems spurious.

Red meat or thin gruel, the cinetrix will be watching Mildred Pierce tomorrow afternoon. Cue Sonic Youth....

Payin' the cost to be the boss*

I was 28 and would serve coffee to the crew one day and the next call them to staff up for an art film I was producing. The experience of simultaneously being the lowest person on the totem pole and a producer has made me think about the filmmaking process from the point of view of everyone I work with.

Helping run Focus Features can be overwhelming. At the same time I am an associate professor at Columbia University, teaching film history, theory and aesthetics. I find that my academic life provides a space to explore and imagine outside the day-to-day pressures of the business.

Ang and I are working together on our 10th film in Hong Kong. I first met him in 1990, and over the years we have come to see more similarities between our upbringings than differences. After all, Jews and Chinese both love to eat and both have guilt about family.

Yadda yadda James Schamus yadda Focus Features yadda Ang yadda yadda associate prof of film studies at Columbia.

Yeah, the cinetrix could do a whole lot with an army of PAs and TAs to do my scut work, too.

*What can the cinetrix say? The 'Fesser recently picked up the Black Caesar soundtrack, and our lives are the richer for it. Next, Dolomite, if I'm good.