On 3D digital projection at the Ziegfeld with Lucía, Chris, and Mai, on 29 May 2009 at 21:30.
One remarkable thing that Up and WALL•E have in common is that they both open with almost entirely dialogue-less expositions. The opening of Up, in particular, is a something of a charming but sad short film. Indeed, Up must have a record for having made so many people cry so quickly. Everyone at the Ziegfeld was sniffling at the end of it when a young child asked out loudly, “what happened?”, and the entire theater burst out laughing. It was quite a moment.
That opening short film was a masterwork in its own right.
From there, the film is in turns funny, fantastic, exciting, cute, and more than a little ridiculous. Certainly it was a notch above your average Pixar film (and that’s high praise indeed).
I don’t think this film compares so well to Ratatouille in terms of its inventiveness or WALL•E and Monsters Inc. in terms of sheer imaginativeness. Despite the fact that it’s an immersive, imaginative film, it does seem almost somewhat conventional compared to a lot of the other Pixar films. Archetypal egomaniacal bad guy, running jokes with talking dogs, uninspiringly predictable action sequences (it is a children’s film, after all, so these are pretty easy to forgive). That said, the portrayal of Fredricksen is so human that it goes beyond anything else Pixar has ever done and I can only really compare it to Miyazaki. The other characters aren’t more than paper-thin, but really, other than Russell, the only other main characters are a talking dog and a large bird (they provide little more than plot movement and comic relief), so that’s understandable. The film is really about Fredricksen.
Fenton’s is probably the biggest props to Emeryville (well, Oakland) that Pixar has given since The Incredibles action scenes along San Pablo and around the Embarcadero. Pretty awesome.
I guess for me there’s no one great Pixar film. There are those with remarkable storytelling (Ratatouille, The Incredibles), those that are truly imaginative depictions of an alternate world (Monsters, Inc., WALL•E, Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and even Cars), those with memorable characters and relationships (Monsters, Inc.), those with something to say about the world (WALL•E, The Incredibles), etc. In combination these films represent a truly remarkable output, and the fact that many consider Cars to be their worst film illustrates the incredibly high standard they’ve set for themselves (I would take Cars over all but the finest of Disney films, and over pretty much anything from Dreamworks or Sony’s animation studios). But somehow I feel they never quite reach the profound level filmmaking that Miyazaki’s better films represent. Up represents something of a new direction (a little less focus on imaginativeness and fantastic visualization), and despite what I perceive to be its flaws, it does give me hope that their films will continue to be as fresh as ever for some time to come.
Up was a wonderful film that carries on the Pixar tradition in a splendid way, and I’m sure I’ll see it many more times and have more opportunities to reflect on it. But it wasn’t quite the film I wanted it to be.
Lucía: A+
Jun-Dai: B+
On DVD at home with Lucía on 28 May 2009, pretty late at night.
I’ve seen Jean Gabin in a number of films now, and while he plays a wide range of characters, he always has a sort of self-assurance about him, much like Humphrey Bogart. This is the first film I’ve seen him perform in English, and it kind of makes me wish he’d done more of them.
Moontide is a most unusual story. Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino are both excellent, as is Claude Rains, although the film takes certain awkward twists and turns, and there is something sort of incomprehensible about all of the relationships.
Lucía: B
Jun-Dai: B-
Pinjar (Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, 2003)
On DVD at home with Lucía on 21 May 2009 at about 22:00.
I know so little about Partition that for me Pinjar would have been interesting even if everything else in it was not. Pinjar gave me some small taste for what that period must have been like (although I certainly don’t know enough about the period to know how well Pinjar speaks to that experience), and from my perspective the characters and story were pretty interesting, partly because they are so far removed from anything I know.
I like how Rashid becomes one of the most sympathetic of all the characters, despite how horrific his original crime. Manoj Bajpai gave a memorable performance in that role as a crazed stalker who transforms into a burdened and tortured soul who waits and waits for an opportunity to undo or make up for what cannot be undone.
Jun-Dai: B-
Lucía: B-
We’ve seen a couple of live performances in the past week or so:
- Thao at the Bowery Ballroom on Thursday, 14 May 2009.
- Angela Lansbury in Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre on Wednesday, 20 May 2009.
Awesome.
On DVD at home with Lucía on 16 May 2009, late at night.
An interesting note: I just got a projector last week so that we could have something to watch movies on in our new apartment. As it turns out, by total coincidence, of the first three movies we watched, the first two had a major actor in common, Michel Simon, and the last two had the cinematographer in common, Boris Kaufman.
12 Angry Men is a high-concept film. The film relies on a lot of stereotypes, and using those, seems to make some pretty strong judgements about its ‘everyman’ characters. The film also becomes increasingly contrived as it progresses, and manages to become fairly ridiculous by the end. Despite all this, however, it’s an excellent film.
The premise of the film is great: An entire jury is convinced that they are dealing with an open-and-shut case of a slum kid that murdered his father, except for on juror who feels that the defendant’s lawyer was fairly incompetent and that there were certain gaps in the evidence set forth by the prosecution. While the rest of the jury impatiently tries to persuade him that, no, it really is an open-and-shut case, they manage to work larger and larger holes into the evidence until more and more jurors become convinced that there is a reasonable doubt. This premise holds a huge amount of potential. We can work through each juror’s personal history and biases and motivations, and we can watch the jurors work through the various facts of the trial that were laid out before the film began.
Almost the entire film takes place within the confines of the deliberation room, with a few side conversations in the very spacious lavatory that adjoins it. We are meant to feel the heat and humidity of that room as the characters, in additional to commenting on it, continually mop their foreheads and carry large sweat stains on their shirts, particularly around their armpits. As the characters become tenser, they become sweatier. They become tenser as they begin to doubt the open-and-shut nature of the case, or in some cases as they amplify their personal biases in their desire to convict the defendant seemingly without regard as to what the evidence really is or even whether he really committed the murder.
Most of the performances are very compelling, despite the caricatured nature of many of the characters. Henry Fonda’s character, unfortunately, seems rather pedantic/didactic, and once his character is finished creating the momentum for the film, he becomes pretty boring to watch. Lee J. Cobb, on the other hand, is for the most part riveting.
Lucía: B+
Jun-Dai: B
On DVD at home with Lucía on 15 May 2009, late at night.
I’m not really sure what all the fuss is about. L’Atalante is surely one of the most highly regarded films that I hadn’t seen yet (until last night, that is), and while it is a very nice film, it’s a bit hard to see why it is held in quite such high esteem. Perhaps the New Yorker Films DVD doesn’t do the film justice.
If The Children of Paradise is poetic realism at its most sophisticated, its most advanced, or its most baroque, then L’Atalante must be poetic realism at its simplest, perhaps even at its most poetic. In fact, in many ways L’Atalante is really a silent film. There isn’t much dialogue, and most of the dialogue sort of takes a back seat to the visual storytelling—more ornamental than essential. The sparse dialogue could have been trimmed a little and put up as intertitles with only a little change in the mood of the film. There’s really a much stronger relationship between the music and what’s going on on-screen than there is with the dialogue. It never really occurred to me before, but perhaps this is what distinguishes poetic realism from a lot of other filmmaking from the 30s and early 40s: the poetic realists never quite left the silent era behind, keeping it alive until the it seemed too archaic to go on.
I didn’t recognize him during the film, though he looked familiar, but I had just seen Michel Simon in another film earlier in the week: Le vieil homme et l’enfant (The Two of Us). He’s really something. As is Dita Parlo.
Lucía: –
Jun-Dai: A-
A.k.a, The Two of Us
wikipedia
On DVD at home with Lucía, on 11 May 2009, late at night.
An amazing film. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it. Le vieil homme et l’enfant is about a Jewish boy, Claude, taking refuge with his landlady’s anti-semitic parents. The object of the game is to make it through to the liberation without revealing his real name and without letting anyone see his penis. Over the course of six months or so, he develops an incredibly close relationship with the older man, Pepe (played by Michel Simon), and among other things continually prods him for more information about what makes Jews so terrible.
The occupation itself and its terrors are mostly left in the background. It’s not hidden, but these characters are in the countryside where the effects of the occupation are not quite as omnipresent as in the city, especially from a child’s perspective. Pepe, despite his horrid prejudices and opinions, is portrayed in a very affectionate light.
Beyond this, it’s a bit hard to describe the film. Claude has a very hard time relating to children his age, both in the city and in the countryside, and it’s much easier for him to sink into the embrace of Pepe. His awkward advances on a young dairy girl go nowhere, or rather, lead to humiliation when, on the recommendation of a drunk Pepe and his drunk son, he sends her a love note on a postcard. The radio is our main connection to the rest of the world, but it’s through the voice of anti-semitic rightists on the radio that we get those glimpses.
The liberation itself is a bit anti-climactic. The whole thing is a bit tinged with sadness, as Claude knows that with the liberation comes parting, and the rest of the world is just a little too serious.
On DLP at the Ziegfeld Theater with Lucía, Dave, and some of Dave’s friends, on 9 May 2009 at 22:15.
Star Trek is a fun, funny, action-filled romp of a re-imagining of the characters from the original Star Trek series in their youth. There’s some kind of story about a Romulan terrorist blowing up Vulcan and trying to blow up Earth, but the less you think about that story, the better. Really. Most of the characterizations are pretty flat—only Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock are really fleshed out in any sense. Mr. Spock, attempting to be a purely logical creature learns to pay more mind to his emotional side, and Kirk as a raw, emotional character learns that he needs to heed his better judgement.
For some reason Kirk looks a lot like James Dean (and in the very opening, acts a lot like him, too). Also, Captain Christopher Pike looks like a spitting image of James Mason. Not really sure what that was about.
Every so often through the film we are re-introduced to the new versions of old characters: McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty—each time I felt like the director was sort of winking at me.
On the one hand, this film was a celebration of the original Star Trek characters. On the other hand, this film was very little about Star Trek. It has a little of the ridiculousness of the original show, but mostly the action sequences and the settings could have been taken from anywhere (young Kirk’s earth seems a lot like Tattooine, the main fight scene on the Romulan ship (”I’ve got your gun”) seems a lot like the Death Star, and much of the space between the tendrils of the Narada seem more than a little like the ship fromIndependence Day). The plot itself is just a simple framework to hang the film on and seems more like an excuse for the film’s peculiarities than anything worth thinking about.
On 35mm at the Angelika Film Center with Lucía on 8 May 2009 at 21:30.
The Limits of Control is definitely a Jim Jarmusch film, there’s no mistaking it. It has some of the characterization from Ghost Dog, some of the mood from Dead Man, and bits and pieces of his other films. The film has Christopher Doyle at the camera, rather than Jarmusch’s usual collaborator Robby Muller, but Doyle definitely keeps Jarmusch’s low-key stylings. The film is beautiful in an understated sort of way.
The main character has a peculiar trait: he likes to order two espressos in separate cups. This is a lot like the Dude’s white russians in The Big Lebowski, Goro’s love of the smell of boiling rice in Branded to Kill, or heck, Bond’s preference for vodka martinis, “shaken, not stirred.” It’s an arbitrary characterization designed to make the character or performance more memorable, or to somehow make us more engaged with the character or film. It has a similar function to the chorus in a pop tune, and in the case of a cult hit (or just a hit, in the case of Bond), it allows us to carry out our appreciation of the film beyond the theater and into the bar or café. There must be a word for this device, but I really don’t know what it would be.
The Limits of Control is at its best when nothing is happening. The unnamed main character is a man of simplicity and repetition, and we watch him go through his routines: two espressos in separate cups, some brief tai chi movements, a Schubert quintet, and lying in bed with his eyes open. Over the course of the film, he moves from swankier living quarters to more decrepit ones.
The plot is more cyclic than linear. In some cycles we learn a little more about what’s going on than in others (or we think we do), but overall we learn very little, and that suits me just fine. There are peculiar monologues and repetitious phrases in English and in Spanish (reminding me more than a little of Mulholland Drive), but they all seem a little pointless.
Somewhere towards the end, when our main character reaches the most decrepit of accommodations, and there’s nowhere for him to order his two espressos, the plot starts to pull itself together in what seems like an obligatory movement towards a conclusion. In this sudden lurch to action, the film sort of sprains itself. Not only does the film completely reveal its pointlessness, in the process of shooting its load, it somehow manages to drag down the rest of the otherwise fine film. I think I would have enjoyed the film much more if it had left us without any conclusion at all.
– The difference between a bad cappuccino and an adequate cappuccino is usually in the espresso.
– The difference between an adequate cappuccino and a good, or very good cappuccino is usually in the milk.
– The difference between a very good cappuccino and a great one is usually in the espresso.
– If you see the barista spooning foam onto your cappuccino, you’re in trouble. If you see the barista tapping the milk pitcher against the counter while peering into it, it’s a good sign, and at the very least you know he or she is trying.
There are three places in New York that I typically get my cappuccinos (cappuccini?):
* The VBAR on Sullivan near W 3rd St.
* Abraço on E 7th St near 1st.
* Fika on Park Ave near E 28th.
* * * * *
My interest in cappuccinos really started when I was working at WaMu in Emeryville. We had inherited a swanky office space from evolve.com, into which they had poured millions of dollars in renovations before laying everybody off and moving back into the city. Aside from the chainmail-enclosed, neon-lit spiral staircase, the pool and ping-pong tables, and the two SubZero refrigerators, we had a La Pavoni espresso maker. After not paying much mind to it the first couple of years, I had decided that I would take it upon myself to pick up some Illy espresso and some whole milk, and figure out how to make a cappuccino.
While I never mastered the art of making a fine cappuccino (I was able to make a fairly drinkable caffè latte), I did learn that none of the cappuccinos I’d had in San Francisco could really be considered good. In my spare time, I read articles like this one and this one (there are now many more around the Internet, along with a plethora of YouTube videos) over and over again. I also browsed the coffee forums to find out where in San Francisco I could find a good cup of coffee, but only found that many considered San Francisco to be a “cruel joke” when it came to coffee, offering many fine cafés to pass time at but no good espresso drinks to consume.
At some point, I noticed a mention of Bluebottle Coffee Co. in Hayes Valley as a good place to get a cup, but before I could venture over there I happened to meet some friends at the VBAR during a visit to NYC. For the first time, I encountered a caffè latte where the milk had been steamed perfectly: no foam, no dryness, no wateriness. I had given up on believing it was possible, but here I encountered for the first time milk that had been steamed in such a way that it actually tasted quite sweet. Not sugary sweet, mind you, but a kind of sweetness that blended naturally and harmoniously with the flavors of the milk and the coffee, much as the sweetness of a perfectly ripe peach enhances its juicy flavor without overpowering it. I think I drank some four or five espresso drinks that day.
After that experience, I began digging up places where I could find a decent cappuccino in the Bay Area. Bluebottle opened a new store near the old mint building, I made a pilgrimage to Barefoot Café in Santa Clara (during a trip in which I was searching for the best ramen in the Bay Area—a topic for another post), and I ventured to a few places in Marin and in the East Bay. During subsequent trips to NYC, I always made a point of stopping at the VBAR multiple times, and it never disappointed. After returning from Tokyo (where I never managed to find a good espresso drink), I discovered a Bluebottle stand in the neighborhood farmers market, which I found to produce the best and most consistently excellent cappuccinos I’ve had to this day. I also discovered a coffee stand at One Jackson Square around the corner from the Tacit Knowledge headquarters (where I was working) that made good cappuccinos.
Sadly, since I’ve moved to New York, I haven’t had a good cappuccino from VBAR. Fortunately, my cousin introduced me to Abraço on 7th St, which I always visit whenever I’m anywhere near the East Village. It’s not much of a hangout (standing room only, and it’s crowded), but they offer the best cappuccino in town, along with some excellent snacks (olive oil cookies, french toast with cream and a hint of orange-blossom water), and despite the cramped interior, the owner manages to keep his difficult-to-reach turntable spinning with Brazilian music from the 60s.
I also encountered Fika, a Swedish coffee chain that is conveniently located between Penn Station and the Tacit Knowledge NY office (where I work). While they don’t offer the most consistent cup around, they always provide me with a drinkable cappuccino and usually an excellent one. Their interior is like a mini black-and-white IKEA, complete with Swedish nametags for every cookie and sandwich they have on display. Everyone that works there is very friendly, and they’ve already learned to start making my daily cappuccino to-go as soon as I enter the store. They appreciate my loyalty and I appreciate their excellent service.