The Lunch Movie

From Friday, January 11, 2008.

In French w/ English subtitles
Written & Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean Belmondo, Jean Seberg and Jean-Pierre Melville.

Michel is a small-time car thief who becomes a big-time criminal when he murders a policeman. No master felon, Michel is an impetuous young man more focused on presenting a Bogart-style tough guy image than in actually learning the ropes of being a tough guy. His Hollywood dream wouldn’t be complete without a girl on his arm, so rather than fleeing the country after the murder, Michel sticks around to convince a young woman to fall for him and escape with him to Italy.

The French New Wave directors of the 1950′s and 60′s began as a group of critics who deconstructed Hollywood film style, helped define it as an art and a science, and coined the phrase “Film Noir.” Several New Wave luminaries helped create BREATHLESS: Godard adapted his script from a treatment by Francois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol is credited as “technical advisor.” Jean-Pierre Melville, playing Pavulesco in BREATHLESS, directed some of the best French noir thrillers of the 1950′s. BREATHLESS was the end of French emulation of Hollywood, and the beginning of challenging new shooting styles and story structures that would have a lasting effect on America’s Film School Generation — Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg and all their 70′s pals.

It’ll finish Thursday.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT (with Spoilers!) from 12.31.2011

The moment we meet Michel, he introduces himself as “an asshole,” and then spends a significant portion of BREATHLESS proving it. Michel enjoys presenting his Bogart-style image, endlessly repeating Bogey’s pensive Sam Spade gesture of rubbing his lip with his thumb. What his Bogey impression lacks is Sam Spade’s control of a situation, Rick Blaine’s calculating foresight, or Philip Marlowe’s confidence with women. Had Michel studied THE MALTESE FALCON, he would have known when in his own story to cut his losses and get out alive. Bogey’s Rick in CASABLANCA might have taught Michel who he can really trust, who would double cross him, and how to play both.

A closer read of Bogart’s persona in THE BIG SLEEP might have encouraged Michel not to whine and plead with his former lover Patricia to escape with him to Italy. He would have been decisive rather than manipulating, which would have made him the Bogey he wants to be, as well as the Romeo she longed for. Indecisiveness is Michel’s fatal flaw. He doesn’t know what he wants or who he wants, and even if he did, he doesn’t know from one moment to the next what he is willing to do to get it. He wants to avoid being caught with a stolen car enough to kill a policeman, but when the dragnet is closing in around him, he is incapable of making the choices required by his man-of-action front.

Within the first few minutes of BREATHLESS Godard turns crime movies, and the very idea of a movie, inside out. Voiceovers are a staple of the Film Noir genre. After Michel steals a car, he drives around describing what he enjoys about France, but before long we realize this is no ordinary voiceover. He is not simply thinking out loud for the sake of exposition; he turns and addresses the audience, as if we are riding shotgun. This would be a standard breaking of the fourth wall, but BREATHLESS doesn’t stop there. Michel both addresses the camera and directs its gaze along the Pontoise road, pointing out hitchhikers, farm houses, annoying drivers, and highway police. Further, Godard allows interaction between the camera and passersby that would cause most other directors to cut and reset their shot. In scenes where Michel and Patricia walk through Paris, people stop and turn to watch the filming, some looking into the camera as well. Godard requests no suspension of disbelief; his story is fiction, but it coexists with and occasionally collides with reality.

Inasmuch as Michel is a vicious brat disguised as a dangerous man, BREATHLESS cloaks its examination and inversion of the tools of cinematic storytelling in the suits and trappings of crime drama. Michel’s desire to live like he is in a movie virtually wills into being a movie of his life and death, but he has no more control over Godard’s film than he does over his own story. Michel would love it if you had bought a ticket to see him outgun the cops and out-con the cons and drive off into the sunset with plenty of money and Tinkerbell incarnate. Godard will have none of it. He will allow you to visit with Michel just long enough to feel like you got the story of guns and glory you paid for; and he’ll allow you just enough time with Patricia to get a sense of romantic intrigue. In between teasing those expectations Godard may test your attention span with protracted conversational sequences, which do very little to further the story, but greatly reveal his characters. Moments like these were virtually unheard of in Hollywood films before the France’s La Nouvelle Vague movement; later their influence could be seen in American films by Hal Ashby and Robert Altman. When Godard is not exploring his characters, or allowing Michel to explore his personal Film Noir, he is just as likely to use BREATHLESS to wander Paris like a painter, equipped with a camera in lieu of a canvass. He photographs Paris not as a tourist showing us what we have already seen in countless other films, but as a patriot in love with his city and seeking to share its sidestreets as much as its landmarks, the way Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese would do with New York in ensuing decades.

My earliest encounter with BREATHLESS made me think it was an art film disguised as a crime drama. Now that “art film” strikes me as vague and generic a term as “action film,” I come to realize the BREATHLESS is a fully realized artistic happening disguised as a movie. It is opening night at a photography exhibit, a jazz session on a rainy afternoon, a staged actors’ reading, and a heated debate amongst coffeehouse poets all tied up in a celluloid bow.

Thursday November 10, 2011 at the Regal Fenway Stadium, Boston, MA.

Directed by James Bobin, written by Jason Segel & Nicholas Stoller, starring Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, and The Muppets.

I love the Muppets. When I was in preschool I was too preoccupied with SPEED RACER and JOHNNY QUEST to notice SESAME STREET. I was aware of SESAME STREET, but I didn’t watch it. My first real connection to Jim Henson’s characters came when I entered the first grade, and they entered prime time. Eventually I grew to appreciate the Disneyesque optimism of SESAME STREET, but I always preferred the Looney Tunes rambunctiousness of THE MUPPET SHOW. Because I love the Muppets, I hold them to a higher standard than entertainment for which I have less of an affinity; happily their first feature film in twelve years is worthy of that standard.

The script for the new film apparently had an extensive development period. It helps to have writers who are true believers in the world Jim Henson created a generation or two ago. It helps even more that one of those writers is an established television star who also has a string of mostly very successful films to his credit. Jason Segel‘s puppeteer character in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, which he also wrote, hinted at his affinity for The Muppets. If someone loved the work of Robert E. Howard and John Buscema as much as Segel clearly loves Henson’s work, this summer’s revival of CONAN THE BARBARIAN would have been an amazing movie.

The core story of THE MUPPETS is shrewdly cobbled together from several archetypes of both cinematic style and classic story telling. Segel’s character Gary has a brother named Walter who is straight out of BILLY ELLIOT or RUDY. Walter so loves the Muppets that the greatest possible joy he could imagine is the chance that he might one day meet them. What separates Walter from Billy Elliot and Rudy Ruettiger, and indeed from Gary, is that Walter actually is a Muppet! This is part of what makes Muppet films unique: even as they embrace archetypes, like the underdog runt searching for his place in the world, they turn them on their head and subvert them to the Muppets’ own rules. In this story a human man and a Muppet can be brothers — and no one notices this as odd!

A staple element of ensemble buddy movies ranging from Frank Sinatra’s Danny Ocean up to, well, George Clooney’s Danny Ocean is the reunion of old friends for a new purpose. It worked in THE WILD BUNCH, it worked when Jake & Elwood Blues got the band back together, and it works for Kermit. In fact, it works doubly so for Kermit. Kermit’s quest to round up his stray friends propels this basic story of the Muppets’ rallying to save their old theater from their 70′s variety show days. The reunion angle simultaneously allows for the introduction of the Muppets to audiences too young to recall their last theatrical entry while addressing themes of aging and imposed obsolescence that resonate with anyone old enough to have watched the original primetime airings of THE MUPPET SHOW. Reminiscent of how Kal-El must have felt upon reading Lois Lane’s editorial on a world without Superman in SUPERMAN RETURNS, this film finds Kermit realizing that television has knocked the Muppets to the rock bottom of the hip-n-trendy scale. Kermit’s reunion with Miss Piggy culminates in a stroll through Paris, poignantly acknowledging that Muppets have to work as hard as humans to make love and friendship last, in a scene that would seem very much at home in a Woody Allen film. Each of these moments manage both the easy fix of keeping the pace moving, and the difficult trick of perfectly nailing the tone for each scene to keep audiences of all ages engaged.

All of this classic film structure aside, it’s wonderful to see the Muppets have not lost their touch for lunacy. They were expert practitioners of metafiction before that term was applied to film or television. Probably the best example of this is the song “Man or Muppet,” sung by Gary and Walter. As the man and Muppet brothers explore their existential void in the song, they cross into each others crisis, and transcend the film in a sequence reminiscent of some of the more groundbreaking 80′s music videos. Segel’s over the top Meatloaf-esque operatic wailing both parodies heart-on-your-sleeve pop songs and gives this oddball tune a ring of truth. I saw this movie in a screening geared toward college students. The general mumbling and rampant texting around me during this scene left the impression that this audience was more laughing at this moment than with it. This was a sequence worthy of The Marx Bros or Mel Brooks, but unless you are schooled in Groucho and Mongo, the absurd hilarity and sincere subtext of this song will not fully resonate.

Rumors on the internets about a “surprise cameo” were apparently referring to a moment in “Man or Muppet,” though the entire movie is laden with cameos, from Mickey Rooney to Rico Rodriguez. I’m glad that these cameos were not strictly reserved for celebrities, but also for lesser known characters from the Muppet universe. Personally I was a big fan of MUPPETS TONIGHT, the mid 90′s attempt to revitalize the Muppets on primetime TV. One of the characters from that revival, the dimwitted and overly confident lounge singer Johnny Fiama, appears during this song as Jason Segel’s Muppet doppleganger. The only thing that could have made Johnny’s appearance better would be if they found room for his angry monkey bodyguard Sal Minella; here’s hoping there’s room for Sal & Johnny in the next Muppet movie!

I’m a fan of divisive movies; I’ll always prefer a movie that folks either love or hate, even if I’m among those who hate it, to a movie that we are all equally ambivalent about. If you follow the IMDb message boards, you’ll see that THE MUPPETS has no shortage of detractors who bemoan nearly every Muppet effort since the passing of Jim Henson. I’m also a die hard STAR TREK fan; just as I acknowledge that the primary mission of the most recent STAR TREK film was to acquire a new generation of fans, such is the case with this film. My audience full of college kids texting each other were mostly born after Jim Henson died. If you grew up wit THE MUPPET SHOW on TV like I did, you’ve already had your fair share of Muppet films. These are the classic Muppets for a new generation, and they accomplish that job with characteristic style and surprising grace. THE MUPPETS will not change your life or make you a better person, but it just might open your kids’ minds the way SESAME STREET and THE MUPPET SHOW did yours.

From Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Written & Directed by Spike Lee, starring Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, Joie Lee, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro.

24 hours on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, NY.
On the hottest day of the summer, racial tensions simmer between residents of a predominately African American and Puerto Rican neighborhood, and the Italian American owners of a pizza parlor. And then they explode.

Spike Lee had touched on racism earlier in SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT and SCHOOL DAZE, but following what became know as The Howard Beach Incident, he decided the gloves needed to come off. This is the script than earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and the film that earned him a Palm D’or nomination at Cannes. It also earned him the fear of critics like newspaper columnist Joe Klein, who wrote “Spike Lee’s reckless new movie DO THE RIGHT THING … opens June 30 (in not too many theaters near you, one hopes).” The controversy surrounding DO THE RIGHT THING in the summer of 1989 cemented Spike’s reputation as a voice who demands to be heard.

It’ll finish Friday.
Love, Jim

P.S. Come early, or you’ll miss Rosie fightin’ the power with Public Enemy!

AFTER THOUGHT from 11.20.2011
I don’t know if Spike Lee still does this, but in the early days of his feature directing career, he used to do college tours with his films in the weeks before they opened. My brother Ed & I used our Emerson College IDs to see him present DO THE RIGHT THING at a theater in M.I.T. This was just a few months after MISSISSIPPI BURNING, a fictionalized story lacking any significant African American characters despite its civil rights themes, received 7 Oscar nominations. Ed and I arrived fairly early; we were among the first 100 people into the theater, in what turned out to be a packed house with many people turned away. Waiting for the movie to start, I spotted a young man with a t-shirt featuring a parody of the MISSISSIPPI BURNING logo: “Brooklyn Burning.” I approached this guy to ask him where he got this shirt, and I realized it was Spike Lee! I immediately forgot the shirt and became tongue-tied. I managed to introduce myself and thank him for this screening; he shook my hand and thanked me for coming out to see the movie. During his introduction to the film, Spike acknowledged early critics who predicted DO THE RIGHT THING would incite racial violence, balancing their concerns with his personal mandate that “the gloves come off” following the aforementioned Howard Beach incident. In aspiring to directly address an elephant in the room that had been ignored for years by mainstream films, he calmly and humbly set the bar very high for himself and an ensuing generation of film makers.

I rolled DO THE RIGHT THING nearly two decades later in our agency conference room. It was generally well received, but to my younger coworkers who were raised on the generation of filmmakers who followed in Spike’s footsteps, they found the story overly episodic without enough of a narrative through-line. While that is a fairly accurate point, I submit that it is irrelevant, as DO THE RIGHT THING is not a standard three act structure with a protagonist and an antagonist. Oh, it’s very well disguised as one, enough so to make it marketable. If you want to pick a “good guy” and a “bad guy” out of this bunch, Spike’s pizza deliverer Mookie is a funny and likable enough hero, and Danny Aiello’s pizzeria owner Sal is frequently bombastic enough to be a villain. You can even find a story arc over the course of the single day storyline in that Mookie begins the film as an apathetic quasi-irresponsible kid, and through a sequence of events beyond his control, emerges as a man who makes a stand and takes control with an irreversible decision that affects his entire neighborhood.

Yes, you can say that DO THE RIGHT THING is about Mookie and Sal, and the general racial tension that I used to pitch this film to my coworkers. On further analysis though, I don’t think this is that kind of movie, and I submit that the title alone tells you what type of movie this is. Let’s look at two other titles: TOMBSTONE (1993) and WYATT EARP (1994). I like both, I am in the minority that prefers WYATT EARP, but I think it is notable that their titles alone tell us that these are very different movies. TOMBSTONE is about one event, the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral, and its effect on the lives of many people. It begins shortly before October 26, 1881 and ends shortly after, padding its running time with some fun western cliches, plus a level of historical inaccuracy required to make These Guys heroes and Those Guys villains. WYATT EARP is about many events in the life of one man, who lived from 1848 to 1929. Since it follows this one man’s life, WYATT EARP is able to give us a more nuanced portrait of Wyatt Earp than TOMBSTONE, examining positive and negative aspects of Earp’s life and personality. DO THE RIGHT THING does not belong to any one character, but there is also more at work than a single event in the lives of many people.

A title like DO THE RIGHT THING has less similarity to TOMBSTONE or WYATT EARP, and more to do with an intangible like THE RIGHT STUFF (1983). It’s probably no coincidence that when I screened THE RIGHT STUFF, some viewers preferred APOLLO 13, again because of its strong central characters an singular story arc. THE RIGHT STUFF and DO THE RIGHT THING are titles that tell you that this is a movie about a specific idea or value. As a pilot you either have THE RIGHT STUFF or you don’t, and only fellow pilots can really discern who possesses that quality. On a sweltering day in Bed-Stuy, with a continuing heatwave expected the following day, you can either DO THE RIGHT THING or not. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) pointedly admonishes Mookie to “always to the right thing. That’s it.” He does not tell Mookie what the right thing is, or how to do it, only when to do it (always). This is a film about each character’s decision to do right or not, and what happens when one person’s decision collides with that of another. ***SPOLIER ALERT — skip to the next paragraph if you have not seen the film*** – Spike Lee has observed that more have criticized Mookie’s decision to through a garbage can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria than have objected to the N.Y.P.D. character’s decision to use a lethal (and now illegal) choke hold on Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn).***

To some of my former coworkers, and maybe to some who read this, DO THE RIGHT THING plays as a little outdated. If this is so, it is because we do not make as many films these days about intangibles like the Right Stuff, the Right Thing to do, or faith and doubt. [Spike Lee addressed faith and doubt in THE MIRACLE AT ST. ANA in a manner rarely seen since THE MISSION (1986) and other films written by Robert Bolt.] Because DO THE RIGHT THING wrangles that quality of a single person with the inequality of races in a neighborhood and a nation, the story is able to show examples of each across its spectrum of characters. Sal is not a villain through and through; early in the film he treats Mookie with the same stern affection as he does his own two sons, and embraces his position in this neighborhood, even over the objections of one of those sons. Mookie is not a hero through and through, but don’t take my word for it, ask his girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez). Da Mayor tries to live by his own advice, and be a good guy, but he is mostly seen as a bum by those around him. Good intentions go wrong. Decisions are often hard to make, and often have unintended consequences. Inaction comes with its own consequences. As long as these things are true, DO THE RIGHT THING will be one for the ages.

INLAND EMPIRE, written & directed by David Lynch, starring Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, and Jeremy Irons.

Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE “A Woman In Trouble,” by Michael Lidstone.

Discussing a film as loaded as David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE requires one to place a few cards on the table first. I do not enjoy this film, but I assume entertainment was not its top priority, and I accept that. I had long admired David Lynch’s imagination, and his ingenuity with the tools of expression, be they the tools of film making or painting or sculpture or any other medium he chooses to work in. Ever since my dad took my brother Ed & I to see THE ELEPHANT MAN at the SoNo Cinema in Norwalk, CT I’ve understood that this was a man with a unique perspective. Where INLAND EMPIRE is concerned, I respect the ambition of Lynch’s riddle within a maze storytelling style, and I appreciate that he trusts his audience enough to challenge them at nearly every opportunity in this 3 hour film.

The first time I saw INLAND EMPIRE, with my friend Sahara at The Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA, we were utterly confounded within the first act. We both trusted Lynch to take us somewhere we’d never seen; a significant portion of the audience didn’t share our trust, and walked out within the first 2 hours. When it was over, Sahara & I went for our customary drink (in my case, 2 or 3), during which we share our thoughts on a movie while it is fresh in our minds. Usually during these drinks we point out cool things to each other that the other might have missed. This time all we came up with was an expanding list of questions. I assumed that my understanding of INLAND EMPIRE would grow a little bit each time I saw it, but that I would never fully grasp it.

Then I met Michael Lidstone. With his study “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE ‘A Woman In Trouble’,” Mr. Lidstone has explored an impressive bibliography in a consummate effort to decipher the most beguiling film Lynch has released to date. We’ll return to Mr. Lidstone’s book in a moment, but in order for me to explain how surprising his effort is, I need to tell you how thoroughly I misread INLAND EMPIRE.

On its most literal face-value level, INLAND EMPIRE is about an actress named Nikki Grace (Dern) starring as a character named Sue Blue in a film called “On High In Blue Tomorrows.” It is revealed by “On High” director Kingsley Stewart (Irons) that his film is a remake of an unfinished German film called “47,” which was never completed because the production was considered cursed. Some have called INLAND EMPIRE a companion to Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DR. since both feature women in jeopardy in Los Angeles, and a story-within-a-story structure. Other than those similarities, I have not found anything in either film that helps explain the other, any more than Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO illuminates THE HOLY MOUNTAIN.

For a significant portion of the film, Nikki becomes her character Sue Blue. As Sue Blue, Nikki crosses paths with a group of prostitutes, also characters within the film in which Nikki stars; later we meet Polish prostitutes, who may be part of the story of “47″ or may be genuine, but either way someone has been murdering Polish prostitutes. Given Lynch’s use of soul transference in LOST HIGHWAY, it didn’t strike me us too unusual that Nikki could become Sue Blue, or that characters in one film may have counterparts in another film, or reality, or both. The reason I say that I misunderstand all this is that I cannot explain to you what it means. I get what is happening, and maybe even one level of subtext, but my inability to explain it to someone else is enough to tell me that I remain mystified. Truth be told, the feeling being mystified is part of why I like seeing Lynch’s (and Jodorowsky’s) films; I like knowing that I can spend the rest of my life figuring them out as my own understanding of life, the universe and everything grows.

Michael Lidstone was not willing to sit back and wait for life or Lynch to explain INLAND EMPIRE to him. “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy: Understanding David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE ‘A Woman In Trouble’” reads like forensic detective work or the crafting and testing of a theory via the scientific method. He begins by offering a more clearly defined set of questions than I had ever considered. With a few well chosen moments in the film, he explores possibilities for their meaning, and unlocks potential meanings for other moments and themes. At first his research seems as elusive as INLAND EMPIRE, but when you reach his conclusion, you sit back and realize how logically he progressed through the entire story. I want to be very careful not to give away too many of the epiphanies delineated by his study. I would hate to be that guy who tells you about this great comedy film you have to see, and then tells you all the best jokes in the movie, know what I mean?

One major clue that Mr. Lidstone’s research jumps off from is the word “AXXoNN,” which Nikki sees written on a door, through which this would have been a short movie had she not passed. Anyone could look at that scene and know AXXoNN must mean something significant, but how many of us bothered to look it up? Mr. Lidstone found it to be a formula used in 1928 by Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp to analyze folk tales and legends. Further exploration down this track gave insight into potential allegorical meaning of a family of humanoid rabbits that appear early in the film, a sequence regarded by many critics as nothing more than a bizarre nonsequitor, as well as several other key scenes that might have bee similarly dismissed. Aaah, but how to know which folklore to analyze? Like a good detective or literary rabbit, Mr. Lidstone starts at the beginning. The film opens with an image of a record needle playing an LP, and a voice telling us that we are listening to “the longest running radio play in history,” before we realize we are in a hotel room in Poland. Mr. Lidstone exhaustively researched stories from Poland and Eastern Europe, via folklore as well as history. Using what he learned from those stories, combined with what he read in Lynch’s own website and his 2006 book “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity,” Mr. Lidstone was guided toward other history, other legends, and even spiritual texts. I was ready to look at “AXXoNN” and think “that’s odd, what happens next?” Mr. Lidstone did the footwork to realize that this formula holds the master key to Sue Blue’s subconsciously journey.

Some may take issue with Mr. Lidstone’s final interpretation of INLAND EMPIRE. Again attempting to avoid spoilers of either the film or the study, he finds a very topical and timely political subtext to the film’s spiritual allegory that could be rejected by viewers who see the movie on as singular a level as I first experienced it. He concludes that the film is an warning to the soul of America, against following the George W. Bush administration too blindly, specifically in regards to The War on Terror and the expansion of what some pundits have referred to as The American Empire. On Lynch’s own Facebook page fans have argued and debated whether his artwork is political or socially conscious, with some citing interviews in the past where Lynch has said he is not a political person. I have two responses to this. First, I think it is a mistake to take David Lynch too literally at his own word, when so often in his career he has enjoyed an almost Bob Dylanesque tendency to tamper with our expectations. This is after all an artist whose contribution to New York’s series of public art installations, Cow Parade 2000, was rejected. Lynch followed the rules of the show to the letter, but his piece challenged the spirit of the entire enterprise. Second, for me to reject Mr. Lidstone’s conclusion that INLAND EMPIRE is a politically themed spiritual allegory, I should probably have my own equally reasoned assessment of Lynch’s meaning. I do not have that.

I will not say that I take Mr. Lidstone’s interpretation as some dogmatic gospel of what INLAND EMPIRE can only mean, but no one else I have read or spoken with has done nearly as much work to make his or her case. In speaking with Mr. Lidstone, he mentions artists beside Lynch who had not considered themselves political, until the events of a Post 9/11 America. Those artists aside, I would point to others who recognize that a certain point some aspect of their work becomes the provenance of the fans. An artist creates a work and that belongs to them, or to whomever commissioned the piece, be that an art patron or a film studio. As I have suggested in earlier articles and may a nerdy debate, a viewer or participant brings their own perspective, based on every moment of their life up until their experience with the art in question. Clive Barker has said for years that he no longer owns the Cenobites of his HELLRAISER films; fans and other artists have brought so much of their own perspective to that world, that their originator regards them as something in the ether. If one disagrees with Mr. Lidstone’s analysis, one must nonetheless acknowledge both how deeply within his own experience he was willing to plumb, and how far beyond his experience he was willing to research in order to connect with Lynch. That effort in itself is more than forensics or scientific examination, it is a creative endeavor in its own right.

When my mother was in law school, she told me about professor who had assigned his class a heavy reading assignment to be completed before their first class. On that first day, he asked them how the reading sat with them; the entire class admitted confusion. He told them “The law will never be clear but stick with me, and when we’re done you’ll be confused, but you’ll be on a higher plane of confusion.” I will continue to try to grow with INLAND EMPIRE as I increase my experience with the medium of film. Having read and reread Mr. Lidstone’s book, I will now approach this film and all of Lynch’s work going forward on a higher plane of confusion.

To his mind, Mr. Lidstone has thoroughly unlocked Lynch’s film, and I suspect he is probably right. Whether he is right or not, he has provided us a polished shiny set of keys to encourage our own further exploration. In a perfect film geek world, an adventurous publisher like Taschen or Phaidon would accept this initial study as a treatment and provide Mr. Lidstone the means to interview Mr. Lynch and the cast and crew. One of these publishers could combine Lynch’s photography and Lidstone’s analysis, interviews, and conclusions into one of those snazzy heavy-bonded hardcover books that movie nerds give each other during the holidays. Until that day comes, you can got to Amazon and download “Old World Politics, New World Prophecy” to your Kindle.

From Monday, January 21, 2008.

Written & Directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie, Donald Pleasance, and Sid Haig.

In a bizarre future, the last remnants of humanity survive in a subterranean city. To keep the population from exceeding the limits of the city, everyone takes a regimen of drugs to control their thoughts and emotions. Keep the people doped up and thinking they’re happy and they’ll keep working rather than making more babies than resources can provide for. Wouldn’t ya know it, THX (Duvall) goes off his meds, and experiences love and sex for the first time in his life. In doing so be becomes a fugitive from an army of RoboCops.

An expansion of Lucas’s thesis film, THX-1138 was the first feature made under Coppola’s American Zoetrope banner. Coppola and Lucas created Zoetrope to counter the corporate take-over of the studio system. They made THX-1138 to counter what they saw as an impending and dehumanizing commercialization of society.

It’ll finish Wednesday.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 8.22.2011
The Cold War provided no shortage of post apocalyptic survival movies, from Robert Altman’s beguiling QUINTET to George Miller’s visceral MAD MAX trilogy, with a legion of forgettable exploitation movies in between. H.G. Welles’ screen adaptation of his novel THINGS TO COME remind us that tales of who would survive, and how survival would look, have been around nearly as long as the movies themselves. Modern audiences regard the epic scale modest proposal of LOGAN’S RUN as seminal. How closely these films mirror reality, when the future in which the film is set comes to pass, often becomes a chief barometer of their quality. I hesitate to support this theory since we tend to focus on minutiae rather than the soul of a story: Atari may be long gone, and I doubt we’ll have flying police cars by the end of the decade, but these minor points don’t make BLADE RUNNER any less impressive.

We are certainly not living in the underground maze in which THX-1138 is set. We are also, as recent bedbug infestations and E.coli food recalls illustrate, not living in the antiseptic environment Lucas imagined. This film is prescient however, in areas pertaining less to production design, and more to Lucas’ aspiration to examine the steady homogenizing of our existence. THX-1138 has more to say about language, how we will interact with each other and how we will see ourselves, than the vast majority of speculative fiction films. I don’t mean we are there yet, but we are on our way.

BRAVE NEW WORLD introduced us to SOMA in 1932 and the Rolling Stones outed Mother and her Little Helper in ’66. THX-1138 foresaw widespread use of stimulants and sedatives, fertility drugs and chemical castration, and anti-depressants. Lucas also imagined a society where criminal prosecution is used to enforce a drug regimen. We may be heading in that direction when paroles and probation have hinged on citizens being court ordered to accept prescriptions. Sometimes we say this practice is necessary. Sometimes we hear about drug recalls when unexpected complications arise. Daily we see drugs advertized with side effects that sound as bad or worse than the ailment which they are marketed to cure. A handful of multinational conglomerates make money faster than we can print it by selling us drugs designed to help us achieve some elusive zone of normalcy. We have not only stepped knee deep in the dehumanizing commercialization of society we are co-paying for the privilege.

The inhabitants of this particular city are know by a sequence of letters and numbers rather than traditional names. Robert Duvall is THX 1138, his lover is LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie), and LUH’s coworker is SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance). For years I accepted fan speculation that these designations were an extension of the numbers tattooed in Nazi concentration camps. Co-writer Walter Murch has suggested that THX was chosen for is resemblance to “sex,” SEN to “sin,” and of course LUH to “love.” Lucas offers an even more mundane interpretation: THX-1138 was his phone number.

Over the last generation we have seen varying phenomena relating to names echoing those in THX-1138. The music world has given us KRS-One, O(+> and J-Lo. Supermarket tabloids attempt to make conventional names similarly unusual: K-fed, Brangelina, Bennifer. (Why is the guy’s name always first? JenniBen has a ring to it!) I didn’t pay this much mind until news reporters got into the act. Pundits hoping to appear the least bit hip will now refer to The President and the First Lady as POTUS and FLOTUS. For years the terrorist with the dialysis issues has been known simply by his last name but recently he has become OBL. If I mentioned bin Laden you would have no doubt who I am talking about; OBL sounds like a large tampon or an airport code. The final straw for me was the recent hotel sex scandal involving DSK, a French financier whose born name is far less known than POTUS or OBL. Ask someone in the street six months ago who Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn was and a significant percentage would probably guess he’s a guest judge on PROJECT: RUNWAY. We’ve gone beyond hip to flat out laziness.

THX-1138 saw all of this coming, not only the manipulation of identity via the maximization of controlled moods and the minimization of our names, but even the reclassification of where we live. In the film we hear that THX works in “operating cell 94107″ which is coincidentally the zip code of Zoetrope’s offices during production. People around the world recognize the zip code 90210 and the area code 212. We can identify where in our neighborhood, city or nation we live by a hand signal of three fingers representing a single letter. We live in a world that has seen borders fall by the power of LAN, 386, 486, 2.0, DSL, 3G and 4G all as fewer and fewer of us actually like to read. THX-1138 saw this all coming as far back as when IBM became HAL.

Saturday August 6, 2011 at the AMC Boston Common.

Directed by Rupert Wyatt, starring Andy Serkis, James Franco, Freida Pinto, David Oyelowo, Tom Felton, John Lithgow & Brian Cox. My favorite living film composer Patrick Doyle provides the score.

The gateway to wildly imaginative movies for most nerds in my demographic was STAR WARS. I would never deny the profound influence George Lucas’ 1977 spectacle had on my childhood, but my indoctrination into nerd-dom came in 1973, by a double feature of CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. The Apes had been to my early childhood development what Sesame Street was to most other kids. Roddy McDowall played two of my earliest heroes, Dr. Cornelius in the first three Apes films, and his son Caesar in my double feature. I never missed an opportunity to see the Apes films on TV; a live action PLANET OF THE APES CBS TV show continued new stories through 1974, with NBC’s animated RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES concluding the Apes saga in 1975. STAR WARS came along right when I needed it, though the Apes remained integral to my sense of wonder.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is the happiest surprise this summer. This story is essentially a bridge between ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, which ended with Caesar’s birth, and CONQUEST updated to the 21st century.
Opening on a jungle hunt wherein Caesar’s mother is captured for lab use, RISE moves to the Gen Sys laboratory in San Francisco, where Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) attempts to develop DNA altering treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Will’s big-pharma supervisor Jacobs (David Oyelowo) sees Will’s lab as a potential gold mine, but Will has a more personal stake in his research: his father Charles (John Lithgow) is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Caesar’s mother undergoes Will’s latest attempt at a cure shortly before Caesar is born. The therapy alters Caesar’s DNA; since Caesar does not suffer Alzheimer’s debilitating effect on the brain, the therapy enhances his healthy brain. We follow Caesar’s formative years, raised away from the lab in the Rodman’s home, as he learns to communicate via sign language. Will’s veterinarian girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto) helps the two generations of Rodmans raise Caesar. Another father and son (Brian Cox and Tom Felton) who run a primate sanctuary round out the major human characters. Humans play an important part in RISE, but Caesar is front and center in this story, as he was in CONQUEST and BATTLE. Caesar’s quest takes him from birth in captivity, through education in the Rodman home, to incarceration in the primate sanctuary following a series of misfortunes. His advanced mind perceives both injustice at the abuse of his fellow primate inmates and a plan to end their suffering.

Most critics unhappy with this film cite a common (and increasingly tedious) complaint that has been aimed at genre films in general, and Apes films in particular, any time these films expand an area of special effects. Say it with me: “The human characters are not as well developed as the ape characters!” It shows a disappointing lack of imagination, and understanding of what the film medium is capable of, to assume that human characters must be the best developed for a story to succeed. Submitted for your approval, two magnificent films by Jean-Jacques Annaud: THE BEAR (1988) and TWO BROTHERS (2004). I don’t know about you, but when I went to a LASSIE or BENJI movie as a kid, I went to see the puppy not the humans.

Annaud’s films and the dog adventures show us what can be done with well trained animals, but two advances in the film medium further the notion that human actors can play powerfully evocative non-human characters. The first of these advances is motion capture technology, which allows a human actor to be filmed, and then a digital character of anything imaginable to be animated onto that human’s performance. The second, and I would suggest equally important, is an English actor named Andy Serkis. Genre fans recognize Serkis as the man who, working with motion capture technology, was able to perform the 3 foot tall emaciated Gollum in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy as well as the 60 foot ape Kong in the 2005 remake of KING KONG. When you see rage of fear or sorrow or valor on Caesar’s face, that is not simply clever CGI, that is Andy Serkis emoting and the technology making him appear simian. Serkis is either at the forefront of something very new in acting or something very ancient. Either way he will soon be as recognized for changing the face of film acting as significantly as Meryl Streep did a generation ago and Marlon Brando did two generations ago. When I see an Apes movie, I am only passingly interested in human characters, I want more apes! Andy Serkis delivers a charismatic and intelligent Caesar that quite possibly surpasses even Roddy McDowall for creating an eager suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. This alone is worth the price of a ticket.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES tampers somewhat with the chronology of the Apes canon, most noticeably in how Caesar acquired his increased intelligence, and the circumstances of his interaction with humans. Nonetheless the story embraces the entire previous saga, with bold gestures obvious to most viewers, as well as subtler references apparent only to core fans. Tom Felton gets to deliver a few cutely placed quotes from Charlton Heston’s Taylor in the 1968 film that will be caught by anyone familiar with pop culture. Devoted fans are treated to the fulfillment of a legend, recounted by Cornelius (McDowall) in ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, to explain how apes rose to the top of the food chain. I am resisting like hell to share a Spoiler; suffice it to say that we actually see Cornelius’ parable played out, and it is even more intense than I imagined all those years ago. I nearly jumped out of my seat. With the possible exception of HARRY POTTER the normally stoic 10 a.m. Boston crowd cheered this scene like nothing I’ve heard for another film this year.

Among the recent litany of remakes (or reimagined reboots) RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is most similar to Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN. These films begin with a story with which we are already familiar, but distill the focus to a single character, treating the new film as a true biography of a fictional character. Zombie’s HALLOWEEN expands the first ten minutes of John Carpenter’s 1978 original to nearly a full hour, focusing entirely on how Michael Meyers came to be a serial killer, before condensing the bulk of Carpenter’s story into the action filled third act. The first two acts of RISE explores Caesar’s previously unseen life between the third (ESCAPE) and fourth (CONQUEST) Apes films of the 70′s, with the final act taking story liberties with the whole of CONQUEST. Inasmuch as this film alters the Apes timeline, it maintains the APES film tradition of social and political commentary. Eric Greene’s excellent 1996 book “Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture” examines reflections of 1960′s and 70′s unrest and upheaval in each chapter in the Apes saga. RISE offers insights into the science vs. commerce equation in medicine, the marginalization of the infirm, and even prison reform via the ape sanctuary. As a lifelong fan of the earlier films I wholeheartedly enjoyed this new vision of The Planet Of The Apes. I anxiously await the next battle in Caesar’s revolution.

From Wednesday January 24, 2008

Directed by Wim Winders, featuring Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Susan Seidelman, Monte Hellman & Michaelangelo Antonioni.

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders rented out a hotel room and set up a camera inside. He invited a crowd of directors to go into the room one at a time and ponder the question “What is the future of cinema?” For each guest, one reel of film was in the camera, giving them about 8 minutes to answer. It was a neat idea in 1982, and it’s more fun now a generation later, to see who came closest to reality.

Wenders is as well known for documentaries (BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, LIGHTNING OVER WATER) as he is for narrative films (WINGS OF DESIRE, UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD). Not much “film making” going on here, but the idea to do this experiment almost in the manner of a Confessional booth is pretty cool.

It’ll finish Friday,
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 7.31.11

As intriguing as this film continues to be, watching the 2006 Anchor Bay DVD affords the benefit of Wenders’ own commentary, which itself has already become something of a look into past expectations of the future. The term “visionary” gets tossed around by any critic who admires a director’s pretty compositions. Wenders’ brief list of questions becomes a litmus test for artists truly worthy of “visionary” praise, versus those who have made themselves a perfectly respectable career, but who have not yet reflected on that career and their place in the film medium.

We see for ourselves why certain directors who visit Room 666 do not fall into the visionary category through their limited stumbling answers; in a few cases Wenders corroborates that assessment by expressing his own disappointment on the DVD commentary track. There are directors whom he had clearly hoped would offer greater insight, though in fairness to those less eloquent, Wenders acknowledges difficulty sitting alone in a room pondering the questions he himself posed.

Wenders comments on his calculated design for the experiment, not only in his sheet of questions, but his preparation of the room. He left the TV on in case its presence might spur conversation, and provided a chair and table, yet set the camera far enough back to allow one to pace the room should they choose. The more interesting directors react with at least one aspect of Wenders preparations.

Jean-Luc Godard opens the conversation with a philosophical bang. He almost immediately notes the television in the room, on which a tennis match is being played, and pouts that the position of his chair impedes his ability to watch the match. He does not bemoan this issue, but rather quickly launches into a matter of fact comparison of the film aesthetic versus the television aesthetic, without ever again acknowledging the TV. Wenders notes with awe and some affection that as stream of conscious as Godard’s thoughts seemed to be, he was instinctually cognizant of how much time he had to answer. Godard ties his spider web of an answer up with enough time to light a cigar, rise, and limp on an injured left leg out of the frame.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder gives a similar but far more succinct answer compared to Godard’s. On a personal note, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the original enfant terrible of 70′s European cinema answering questions posed by a fellow German, while the goofy Filmation animated TARZAN Saturday morning cartoon plays on TV behind him. Fassbinder’s answer does not expand much beyond Godard’s, however being as this was among Fassbinder’s final interviews before his untimely death by overdose, Wenders reveals a hint of soul within this intellectual exercise by including all of Fassbinder’s comments. We continue to hear Fassbinder’s voice and read his subtitles as Wenders fades to a Lebanon cedar tree near the Paris airport and then back to room 666. That tree, which also opens and closes the film, is presented to us as a reminder of humanity’s existence long before and hopefully long after film’s relevance as an artistic medium. Wenders’ treatment of Fassbinder’s answer, including his commentary on the relentless and reckless pace under which Fassbinder worked, suggest that an artist purely giving their absolute best for as long as they are physically capable may prove a detriment to the artist and the medium if that artist burns out before his or her time.

Werner Herzog’s interview is a personal delight for me. Before responding to Wenders’ list, Herzog says that one must take their shoes off to answer these sort of questions. He not only takes off his shoes, but his socks, and also is the only director to turn off the TV. Before Herzog even begins to answer, he alters factors of the experiment to suit himself.
This is a visionary. If making himself comfortable regarding his shoes and socks are not enough evidence of his uniqueness, Herzog’s observations take two transcending steps, one of which was too far sighted to even be acknowledged by Wenders in 2006. Herzog presages the rise of the internet, which Wenders addresses by commenting to the effect that Herzog in ’82 would be impressed by how far technology had advanced by 2006. But here’s where Herzog’s vision goes a step beyond: he even suggests that we will be shopping for vegetables with our phones. Herzog foresaw 4G smartphones in 1982, which as recently as 2006 was not yet assumed to be the next phase beyond the internet. Herzog also ruminates on how film itself as a medium may soon come to pass, but he regards the tools of filmmaking as vital to whichever of these new media will drive the final nail in film’s coffin. If you know Herzog, you know this is about as close as he comes to being optimistic.

The rental on Room 666 wraps up with Michelangelo Antonioni. We hear from the tone of Wenders’ commentary that he has as great affection of Antonioni as he does Godard. It is easy to see why. Antonioni is equally as profound as Godard, but focused in an entirely different direction; where Godard’s concern is the evolution of his chosen means of expression, Antonioni considers his responsibility to an audience to be of primary concern. Antonioni was also among the few who did not feel threated by TV and video, even suggesting the rise of “high definition video,” a foresight so ahead of its time yet so casually delivered that it barely registers in 1982. Antonioni is such a warm and intelligent gent that watching him here makes me want to re-watch all of his films immediately.

ROOM 666 concludes with Wenders reading a prepared statement from Yilmaz Güney. Güney was a Turkish writer/director whose film YOL won the Cannes Film Festival that year, but who remained in hiding outside of Cannes throughout the festival, as he was wanted in Turkey as an escaped political prisoner. This vital conclusion reminds us that even as film changes to video, and then to hi-def internet, the true visionaries of the form will always find a way to get into trouble with their stories. That’s a lot to pack a 46 minute running time, huh?

From Friday, January 25, 2008.

Directed by Ridley Scott, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, James Hong, Joe Turkel and M. Emmet Walsh, featuring a score by the mad Greek, Vangelis.

Los Angeles, 2019: Androids, herein called Replicants, have taken the place of humans performing hazardous occupations. Among those occupations is the colonization of space. Four replicants mutiny in space, return to Los Angeles seeking their creator, and leave a path of violence in their quest. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a burnt out detective who specializes in hunting down rogue androids, leaves his own pretty grim wake trying to keep the mutineers from their goal.

While BLADE RUNNER is stylistically the most fully realized dystopian nightmare sci-fi movie this side of METROPOLIS (1927), its story is pure Film Noir. It took me several viewings to get past the stunning visuals and understand that Deckard is following up real clues like a proper detective, and not merely stumbling from cool action moment to cooler action moment. After I noticed that, I started noticing other colorful subtleties (like the fact that Deckard is an alcoholic) that a lesser movie that didn’t trust its audience would have beaten them over the head with.

Why are we watching this, haven’t we all seen it already? I missed this new Ridley “Final Cut” when it played at The Landmark last November, and I dunno about you guys, but my TV at home is nowhere near as big as the one in the 8North conference room. If this version contains differences from the 1982 Theatrical and 1992 Director’s Cut versions, I want to be able to spot them on the best screen available! If you’ve wondered whether this new DVD is worth buying, come check it out.

It’ll finish Wednesday.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 7.26.11
I tend to prefer movies that attempt multiple levels, even if they are not entirely successful on all of them, to movies that attempt and succeed on only one level. BLADE RUNNER is a favorite among science fiction movies plus it resonates as an existential quest film. In addition to this being one of my favorite film noir detective movies it is, at least in my estimation, the quintessential Los Angeles movie. This movie fires on all burners and the end result is delicious.

I was fortunate enough to be born within the wake of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY where suddenly it was no longer enough for science fiction movies to simply be about robots and rayguns. Movies like SILENT RUNNING and LOGAN’S RUN and Charlton Heston’s trilogy of doom (PLANET OF THE APES, THE OMEGA MAN, SOYLENT GREEN) used science fiction as a framework to explore political instability, environmental degradation and nuclear annihilation. Though STAR WARS proved that it was more profitable to turn that frown upside down, this did not spell the end of future fear; 1982 blessed us with THE ROAD WARRIOR and BLADE RUNNER. BLADE RUNNER envisioned a future of of haves and have-nots where a few live in fantastic opulence, like Replicant creator Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), and the rest exist in squalor.

This is a cautionary tale at its most pointed; virtually every promise of a “brighter tomorrow” is balanced by a glimpse at the failure of that promise. Replicants are not the only technology having the reverse effect of their intended design. Plumes of fire shoot into a permanently sooty sky as a by-product of generating the power necessary to run the city’s massive high rises. Modern conveniences in Deckard’s home, including a lightning fast elevator and voice activated amenities, do not make the place any less of a dump. Sure there are flying cars, but seemingly few for a city this crowded; most are exclusively for police surveillance.

It is rare that an existential quest is handled as directly as it is in BLADE RUNNER. Films where human characters confront their perception of their deity or search for meaning in their life tend to be ponderous, what supporters would call deliberately paced, and detractors dismiss as tedious or boring. The search of the Replicants, led by Nietzcshian superman Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), is somewhat less complicated in that they know where they were manufactured. They only need to find their chief designer, the aforementioned Dr. Tyrell. Deckard’s hardboiled voiceover in the original theatrical release explains that Batty and his crew simply want the same answers the rest of us want from life. Where human characters questioning their existence struggle to define the questions they wish to pose to their chosen higher power, the Replicants have precisely defined questions, but face the task of locating the intellect who designed their minds to find their answers.

***SPOILER: Please skip to the next paragraph if you have not seen the film*** A debate has raged among fans as to whether Rick Deckard himself is a Replicant. In Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the novel on which BLADE RUNNER was based, Deckard is revealed to be artifical. Ridley Scott has been cagey over the years, but his answer tends to support Dick’s novel. Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer prefer to believe that Deckard is human. Such a conflict of ideologies could have wrecked the story, and allegedly did cause considerable tension between Scott and Ford, but I think it makes for a better film. Since nothing is implicitly revealed as to Deckhard’s humanity, his own spiritual identity becomes a more gnawing mystery than that of the known Replicants. The Replicants may hunt, fight, and kill their way to their maker. Deckard continues to search for the vocabulary to even question his existence, or else quiet his soul with that great melodramatic indicator of human weakness and suffering: booze.

Deckard’s alcoholism is one of the time honored traits of a Film Noir antihero but it also humanizes him compared to his virtually flawless Replicant opponents. Deckard is not one of the MAD MEN drinkers who make viewers nostalgic for frequently slurred-speaking, occasionally falling-down drunks, who barely manage to do their jobs. He is more the alcoholic typified by Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in DOUBLE INDEMNITY; return home from work? Pour a drink. Saying goodbye? One for the road. Shot a Replicant woman in the back on a crowded street? Don’t bother phoning it in promptly like a good cop, go buy a bottle first. The very notion that the hero cop is, in his own warped way, as twisted as those he pursues makes BLADE RUNNER stand shoulder to shoulder with other 80′s noir like Kasdan’s BODY HEAT or Eastwood’s TIGHTROPE.

The production and costume design take their cues from film noir of the late 1930′s to 1950′s. Before exaggerated shoulder pads became a staple of power suits for executive women in the mid 80′s, Sean Young sported classic Joan Crawford hair and Lauren Bacall / Katherine Hepburn style as a Replicant so perfectly constructed that she does not know she is artificial. The smudged makeup, spiked hair and fetish clothing of the renegade Replicants suggests a trajectory where the L.A. punk scene, pioneered by The Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys during BLADE RUNNER’S late 70′s early 80′s development, had continued to spawn among an angry proletariat. Beneath Roy Batty’s punk surface we find an unexpected collision of two noir archetypes: the cold and calculating villain, and the wronged man seeking revenge. While Batty toggles between punk and noir, existential and visceral, everything about Rick Deckard’s world clings wholeheartedly to noir ethos. His shadowy Frank Llyod Wright tiled apartment, the dilapidated Blade Runner department (filmed in the Art Deco former splendor of L.A.’s Union Station), and the easy going unguarded racism of Deckard’s boss Captain Bryant belie the unsupressable decay of those clinging to a buttoned up 1950′s normalcy.

The finale of BLADE RUNNER plays out within the Bradbury Building, a downtown L.A. icon that has been featured in noir classics from D.O.A. to CHINATOWN as well as multiple episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS. The Bradbury has such a signature look and name that its mere inclusion becomes shorthand for the world we have entered. When I saw BLADE RUNNER in Westport, CT on opening weekend, you could spot the true sci-fi fans in the audience by who reacted when Captain Bryant informs Deckard to continue his investigation “at the Bradbury apartments.” I had not yet visited Los Angeles, didn’t know this was a real building, nor do I expect most of the audience did either. We simply took it as an invocation of sci-fi saint Ray Bradbury. As much as a nod to Ray elicits credibility in the fantasy realm of the incredible, it also enables the film to establish its L.A. reputation, Ray’s position being as solid as Chandler’s in the pantheon of L.A. writers. The very use of the Bradbury building and its name confirms that this is not New York or Chicago, San Francisco or Off-World, this is the City of the Angels.

BLADE RUNNER is a like a snow-globe representation of the past, present and future of Los Angeles, violently shaken so that 100 years of the city collide at once. Past Los Angeles is referenced via architecture and a shared history with film noir, with the present acknowledged by massive neon advertising for Atari, RCA, and Pan-Am, which in 1982 seemed like corporations capable of global dominance. The future of Los Angeles is evinced by more than Replicants and flying cars, more than electronic music and punk rock fashion. No less than the language of the people has evolved. Early in the film we were introduced to what Deckard’s voiceover in the original cut described as “city speak, gutter talk. A mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you.” I remember thinking this prediction of racial and ethnic mingling must strike your average Klansmen as the scariest vision of the future any movie has ever created. In 2019 there is no Chinatown or South Central or Beverly Hills, no Boyle Heights or Koreatown or Little Tokyo; every community has overflowed its banks such that the language of Los Angeles encompasses elements of every ethnicity.

BLADE RUNNER is most often regarded as science fiction, but as with the sociological implications within METROPOLIS or the spiritual secrets of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, science fiction provides the foundation on which the rest of this experience was built. Is it an existential quandary with gunplay? A pulp mystery with a Kraftwerk style groove? One of the eight million stories in the cybernetic city? It hits me differently each time I revisit it. The one constant is that the words “Blade Runner” have become as loaded as the name “Bradbury” was in 1982, summoning immeasurably more than a film that was coldly received by critics and ticket buyers, to stand for the the kind of story for which you are not prepared but should have seen coming.

From the Landmark Kendall Sq. Theater, Cambridge, MA on Thursday June 9, 2011.

Written & Directed by Chuan Lu, starring Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Wei Fan, Hideo Nakaizumi and John Paisley, featuring cinematography by Yu Cao.

Whether as a lunchtime gathering between coworkers, or online as a movie blog or social media community, The Lunch Movie’s raison d’être is to celebrate the good stuff. There are too many good and great movies out there to bother writing negatively about movies that do not spark my enthusiasm. I make an effort to resist generic hyperbole of the “best” or “worst” variety. Once the provenance of know-it-all nerds, like THE SIMPSONS’ Comic Book Guy, these words have been made nearly redundant by critics more adept at synopsizing than analysis. Nonetheless CITY OF LIFE & DEATH stands apart even among a list of movies I love. It is the most profoundly haunting war movie I’ve encountered since APOCALYPSE NOW.

CITY OF LIFE & DEATH was shot in color and printed in black & white suggesting, at first glance, news reels of the era similar to Movietone news. The first hour details the Japanese invasion of Nanking in 1937 where thousands of Chinese soldiers were quickly cut down while fighting to hold their nation’s capital. That initial newsreel sense of the battle sequences expands rapidly to an awareness of extraordinary artistry. We’ve seen this more in still photography from war correspondents than we have in motion pictures. Composition within each frame is as strikingly beautiful as the subject matter is unnerving. “Epic” is a word that has become as squandered as “best” or “worst.” The massive scope of these street-to-street battles, on the scale of A BRIDGE TOO FAR and the finale of FULL METAL JACKET, should serve as a reminder of the true definition of “epic.”

As imposing as this widescreen doomscape is Chuan balances an intimacy with his characters, reminiscent of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, with the urgency of hand-held vérité style as claustrophobic as THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. In the crush of battle we rarely catch the names of the combatants with whom we become acquainted. Still they become familiar to us even amid the chaos. The few detractors I’ve come across find only the pace of this film to complain about. Everyone acknowledges the breathtaking photography, and compelling performances, but some find certain parts of the story too slow. It is in these quieter moments that the plight of the characters is seared into your soul. There is very little music here, just the dull tap of bullets and hollow thunder of grenades, followed by pin-drop silence. You may find yourself catching your breath along with the soldiers for fear that breathing too deeply could give away their position. The sincere humanity imbued in the Chinese defenders and even some within the Japanese assault, soldiers we may know only briefly before they are killed, draws us ever deeply into this tragic story. The audience is placed in a position similar to the participants by the story’s ensemble structure; any character we embrace could die at any moment, regardless or even in spite of our hope that they may emerge as the protagonist.

The second hour, spanning early 1938 after Nanking has fallen, is where CITY OF LIFE & DEATH may become too much to bear even for those who consider themselves aficionados of war films. Perhaps even more than the Nazi Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide, Nanking is notorious for an unfathomable number of rapes perpetrated within the first few months of the siege. The film manages to be as harrowing for its depiction of broken and battered women, attempting to comfort each other after being assaulted, as it would have been had it lingered in lurid detail of the crimes as they were committed. Yuanyuan Gao plays Miss Jiang, a character inspired by Iris Chang, whose book “The Rape of Nanking” is among the better known accounts of this battle to have been translated into English. Miss Jiang stands, often alone, as the last line of defense against sexual aggression. She tries to warn Chinese women how to avoid drawing the attention of Japanese soldiers. She is tasked with negotiating which women and children will be spared and at what cost. Through Miss Jiang we experience how each woman was forced to sell pieces of her soul for one more day breathing, with only so many pieces to her soul to spare, and so many days she can survive these conditions.

John Paisley plays John Rabe, a true life German businessman, who helped establish the Nanking Safety Zone to protect civilians from Japanese soldiers. In the film Rabe works with Miss Jiang, as well as his own Chinese assistant Mr. Tang (Wei Fan), to protect his workers and their families. John Rabe has been called The Schindler of China; that coupled with this being a black & white film has drawn inevitable and somewhat appropriate comparisons to SCHINDLER’S LIST. Rabe remains an important secondary character, but Miss Jiang and Mr. Tang emerge as the civilian opponents to the invading army, and it is through their steps and missteps that a traditional tale of redemption is carved from all this random sorrow.

The brutal majority within the Japanese forces is embodied by Captain Durdin (Sam Voutas) while Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi) represents the dwindling core of Japanese soldiers who feel their souls diminished with every day they occupy Nanking. Most of the Japanese soldiers are seen as happy to rape and pillage and wipe the Chinese off the face of the earth. Kadokawa stands for a few who realize that they will never be able to return home and think of themselves as human.

Much as I admire CITY OF LIFE & DEATH for having the spirit to be artistically ambitious, and the technical skill to realize those ambitions, it gives me hope on a more practical level as well. Let’s face it, the average American viewer thinks Karate movies and Kung Fu movies are the same thing, and wouldn’t be able to spot the samurai movie between 13 ASSASSINS and RED CLIFF. Euro-centric American audiences seldom recognize that the history and culture of China and Japan are as disparate as Italy and Germany. While pundits like Donald Trump and Lou Dobbs sound alarms about China, younger characters in this movie remind us that there are many Chinese still living who remember Nanking, or who lost family there. The perseverance and determination of Miss Jiang, Mr. Tang and legions of nameless soldiers reveal a Chinese national character that might be less concerned with Soviet style world domination and more concerned with making sure no one is ever again able to threaten them as one neighbor had done. In the end whether you are Chinese or Japanese, Italian or German, or any hyphenate American you will be humbled by this story’s answer to the question “What price survival?”

I thoroughly understand how excessive it sounds to place a recent film in the pantheon with not only the most legendary war films but some of the more significant achievements in the film medium. This is no exaggeration. CITY OF LIFE & DEATH gave me that sense, which occurs a handful of times per decade, that I was experiencing something that would alter my perception regarding cinema and war and the value of life itself. It accomplished this within the first act.

From Friday, February 1, 2008.

Written & Directed by Jared Hess, starring Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, Tina Majorino and Jon Greis.

If Apathy had a poster-child, it’d be Napoleon Dynamite. He spends his days going to school to avoid his weird family, and his nights avoiding his classmates by hiding in his home drawing mythical beasts. His complacency is shaken when circumstances force him to experience two classic high school rites of passage: ask a girl to a dance, and help a friend run for Student President.

Between the bigger studios and the indie world, we get a handful of movies like this every year. Most are deservedly forgotten. Every so often, a performance comes along to set one film above the rest, becoming the prototype for the next generation of characters cherished by nerds as “quotable:” Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, Jason Schwartzman as Max Fischer, and Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite.

It’ll finish on Tuesday – CALIFORNIA PRIMARY DAY!! If you’re at a loss who to vote for, write in Pedro Sanchez.
Love, Jim

AFTER THOUGHT from 6.15.11
I have pondered my statement above from three years ago that studios release movies like this. I now recant that statement. Maybe ten or twenty years ago NAPOLEON DYNAMITE would have a chance at a major studio, but not anymore; this film is living proof of the necessity of the film festival circuit. If this script were submitted to any of the major studios it never would have passed through the first round of readers. The characters are too passive, development execs would say, and the story is too challenging to market. If the script were submitted to a talent agency, Hess’s quirky dialog might have been enough to get him signed as a client, but he would have quickly found himself farmed out to the latest Fox, WB or UPN teen/tween show. Certain movies will only get made if a committed crew makes costumes out of their own clothes, borrows locations from neighbors, rents a camera and shoots it with no guarantee that anyone other than friends and family will ever see it. Where the studio marketing team sees a product that does not fit their target demographic paradigm, the audiences who seek out film festivals will take one look at Napoleon, and say “He looks weird, but I know a guy like that; I wonder what this kid’s story is?”

I like NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, but I do not love it, and I do not regard it as a cult classic. Then again that may be because I am not part of the cult! When we screened it over two days at the agency, the first day drew one of our best crowds ever, with all chairs at the conference table filled and some dragging their desk chairs in from outside. Only my pal Sammy showed up on the second day. Everyone else jumped ship, including a few people who had urged me for weeks to show it, and with whose lunch schedules I had coordinated the screening dates. This led me to a new theory about this movie: it worked initially because it was a surprise. Just as a studio story department can’t draw up a character like Napoleon by design, the film loses something if you plan to see it; it’s one of those movies that you may own on DVD but never watch. When it runs on cable after midnight you’ll stay up late to watch it. You could have planned to watch it at 8pm with your own DVD, but when it pops up as a surprise, that is when the charm shines through. Just a theory; I’ll have to test that by catching it unexpectedly, like I tested my “studios give us movies like this every year” notion. What do you think?