the Whole Garden Will Bow

Any movie viewed in the year 2013 that I haven’t seen before qualifies for the list.
I balance artistic merit with a swinging good time.
In order of importance I rank artistic brilliance, “re-view-ability” and only then “a swinging good time”.
I do twelve top movies. Consider it cinema calendrics.
I never agree with my rankings three months down the road, but this list is at least a first impression ranking.

1. To the Wonder (2013, Terrence Malick)

To the Wonder is not the visceral punch that Tree of Life was, but it shows that Malick is still at the top of his game. Click here for my review.

2. Gravity (2013, Alfonso Cuaron)

Gravity is perhaps the most perfectly constructed action film of all time. It is the climax of the genre. Click here for my thought on it.

3. Prince Avalanche (2013, David Gordon Green)

I once said “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice and shame on Paul Rudd for making more movies.” I can happily separate this film from Rudd’s typical fair. My review is here.

4. Eternity and a Day (2003, Theo Angelopoulos)

1312229967Eternity_and_a_Day_3

Theo Angelopoulos, whose The Weeping Meadow is among my favorites of all time, is a master. Every image is haunting, mythical, rich and worth as many eyes as the world has got.

5. Francis Ha (2013, Noah Baumbach)

Woody Allen once said “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” Francis, I am pleased to add, laughs with him.

6. Los Cronoscrimenes (2007, Nacho Vigalondo)

Timetravel movies are tricky particularly in making us care since Time is a key aspect to drama: exactly what the genre tinkers with, but Los Cronoscrimenes shifts the focus to freedom and morality. It’s a sticky and sinister film.

7. [TIE] The Bling Ring (2013, Sofia Coppola),

and The Virgin Suicides (1999, Sofia Coppola)

As a fan of Eugenides (who wrote the novel on which the movie is based) and as one who is mesmerized by whatever Coppola films, The Virgin Suicides has been on my must watch list forever. It is a testament to Coppola’s skill that I don’t hate her movies despite using protagonists that I wouldn’t care about at all.I don’t know why The Bling Ring is sticking with me. It doesn’t matter how shallow Coppola’s characters are or how far they descend into stupidity, she does magic before your very eyes.

8. Much Ado About Nothing (2012, Joss Whedon)

Whedon is always good for some fun, but his take on the Shakespeare comedy was surprisingly thoughtful. Nearly every shift from the source text was fruitful and enlightening. Some of the staging was off, as was some of the goofing, but overall a pleasing remake.

9. After Earth (2013, M. Night Shyamalan)

It’s cool to bag on M.N. Shyamalan now, but I found After Earth to be a tightly wound flick. With so many big action flicks clueless about the use of a flashback (Pacific Rim, Man of Steel) it was nice to see one tied nicely to the macrostory.

10. Attenberg (2010, Athina Rachel Tsangari)

I have a thing for Greek filmmakers. The awkward, funny, bizarre, heartfelt and soulcrushing Attenberg by Tsangari (producer of the grotesque, terrifying, hilarious, sad Dogtooth)

11. World War Z

A competent popcorn flick.

The Malick-Lubezki Dogma

Posted on December 23, 2013December 21, 2013 by Remy

•    Shoot in available natural light
•    Do not underexpose the negative Keep true blacks
•    Preserve the latitude in the image
•    Seek maximum resolution and fine grain
•    Seek depth with deep focus and stop: “Compose in depth”
•    Shoot in backlight for continuity and depth
•    Use negative fill to avoid “light sandwiches” (even sources on both sides)
•    Shoot in crosslight only after dawn or before dusk; never front light
•    Avoid lens flares
•    Avoid white and primary colors in frame
•    Shoot with short-focal-length, hard lenses
•    No filters except Polarizer
•    Shoot with steady handheld or Steadicam “in the eye of the hurricane”
•    Z-axis moves instead of pans or tilts
•    No zooming
•    Do some static tripod shots “in midst of our haste”
•    Accept the exception to the dogma (“Article E”)

Prince Avalanche : a Review

Posted on December 19, 2013December 20, 2013 by Remy

David Gordon Green, with his debut feature George Washington ensconced in the Criterion Collection, seemed poised to be the next great American filmmaker. His second feature, All the Real Girls, built on that promise, launching careers and further superlatives, and his third, Undertow, was produced by his hero and reigning American auteur Terrence Malick. His career as the next serious filmmaker seemed set until a string of studio pot-smokin comedies, Pineapple Express, Your Highness and The Sitter, befuddled those following his career. In Prince Avalanche he has returned to his indie roots, eschewing the loud zaniness of the likes of Seth Rogan, James Franco and Jonah Hill for the more subdued antics of Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch.

tumblr_m1lwv7iDO71r8vcffo1_500

Prince Avalanche, based on the Icelandic film Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, is set in central Texas in the summer of 1988 after a forest fire requires the repainting of traffic lanes along interminable and winding country roads. Alvin, played by Paul Rudd, has taken the dull task with aplomb, filling the hours with German language tapes and reflections of solitude. His partner, and potential brother-in-law, Lance (Hirsch) is far less enthused at being away from the city and its “fresh” parties and increasingly becomes an irritant to his sister’s boyfriend.

The movie is shot by Green’s collaborator Tim Orr whose eye is constantly being drawn away by rabbit trails: shots of charred forest, blossoms and bugs. This habit gives such a focused and simple story a wider scope, a beckoning to the grander scale. Hinting at a renewal of life all along the margins despite destruction.

The tale, ostensibly, is a coming-of-middle-age story, wherein the two characters grapple with love.; Lance, in his flighty post-teen adulthood, is keen on the physical act. At the beginning he complains how horny he is in nature. He questions his own ability to go the entire summer without having his “little man squeezed” whereas the slightly older Alvin is stoic in his abstinence. He is happy to spend his free time reflecting on himself, planning the future and “doing right” by those he loves. He diligently sends home money in the letters he writes to his girlfriend, supporting her and the child she’s had by another man.

The fire at the beginning injects a sense of loss that is carried throughout the film. Love, we know from ancient sources, is fire; whether destructive or constructive, whether cleansing or clearing, love sets us aflame. That the loss in fire signals the loss in love is depicted in a scene in which Alvin reenacts a homecoming on a burnt out foundation.

The ground is covered in ash, drywall, warped plastic and glass. Alvin looks dismayed. He ascends the stairs and opens an imaginary door. He calls for the wife, the quotidian comments: Honey? Sweetie? where are you? smells good in here… He opens the oven, he fiddles with charred knick-knacks, he jogs up imaginary stairs. As he does this there is a tension that grows. What started out as a cute bit of pantomime becomes ominous. At the beginning there was no house, his play began and a house leapt to life, but the wife was gone: had she left? was the marriage over?

He finds her upstairs, in the bedroom on the phone. He apologizes for interrupting her, tells her not to hang up and trots back downstairs. There is a relief, he’s found her, she wasn’t gone, she cannot speak to him, but she’s there. He finds a surviving chair and sits, the pater familias at rest, his domain secure, while sitting there he says, “That was nice.” And the home life so recently created comes down again.

Complimenting this is a quiet ghost story. Whether any real ghosts appear is debatable, but a woman moves through the film, a figure of loss, both seen and unseen, embodying love. The unseen love interests of Lance and Alvin also operate as ghosts. They are spoken of, but not seen. Early on Alvin concludes a letter to his girlfriend with: “True love is just like a ghost, people talk about it but very few have actually seen it.” Alvin talks about love plenty, whether he has seen it is debatable.

Paul Rudd throws himself into the serious work of stifling his own laughter in his role as the taciturn Alvin. Emile Hirsch, best known for his role in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, is earnest and convincingly numbskulled. Their easy mirth as they interact goes a long way in driving the narrative forward, built upon the steady rhythms of the score from Explosions in the Sky, neighbors of David Gordon Green and fellow Texans.

The curious title, while haphazardly chosen by Green, draws together the Dionysian challenge of Apollonian order that Alvin and Lance embody. Alvin delights in the strict duty of lines and the manly outdoor activities, while Lance prefers wild parties and the presence of ladies. Like the threat of riot to rule and the cliff of hubris over humility, the prince of lines must be careful or else be buried under the hotmess of human conflict.

While the crisis is never resolved and catharsis comes through drunken revelry, the call of “doing right” has been sounded, and the movie ends with Alvin and Lance in high spirits and renewed vigor. Like the slow recovery from the fire, the lesson seems, that life recovers perhaps with scars, perhaps with regret, perhaps haunted with ghosts.

Perfect Picture

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Remy

Poetry Magazine : December : 2013

Posted on December 13, 2013December 12, 2013 by Remy

via

Always tempted to make a top ten list of Ange Mlinko’s extensive vocab. Some more gems in Epic.

Eileen Myles’ Prophesy is crass and necessarily so.

It’s uncivil of me to suggest, but Alex Dimitrov’s poem Together and by Ourselves is much better if you start in the middle: from “we must have been lonely people…”

A devious, but wonderful poem, Rebecca Hazelton : Trying Fourleggedness

Tomas Q. Morin evokes quite a lot in Nature Boy

Michael Dickman : Where We Live

Both poems by Patricia Lockwood are full of biting humor and dark forboding: Government Spending and The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks

You must always read Rae Armantrout with interest: Geography

Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction : Flannery O’Connor

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Remy

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”

via

One of the Most Perfect Pictures Ever

Posted on November 27, 2013November 25, 2013 by Remy