Snow Angels

A new David Gordon Green movie is just such a gift. He's so good and his work is so vital; I hope everyone is giving him his due now as one of the defining filmmakers of the aughts rather than waiting to fawn in retrospect. Anyway, as this might lead one to believe, I saw Snow Angels this weekend, and, yes, it's remarkable. Sad and funny and terrifying and thoughtful and lyrical. Everything you'd expect. Based as it is on a novel (about which I know nothing), it has a bit more of an internal engine to it than his three previous features (which is a retarded way of my saying that it's ever so slightly less meandering and more explicitly plot-based and narrative-driven; in different hands, it could have ended up as one of those middle-class, middlebrow prestige pieces Kate Winslet does from time to time when she's keen to rack up another Oscar nomination).

It's shocking, but also quite nice, to see a film in which a bunch of characters are genuinely angry. Not just filled with self-righteousness or vengeance or generalized bile of the "fuck me? no, fuck you" variety like characters in most of the loud, ugly movies Hollywood attempts to feed us on a regular basis, but real, everyday, bone-deep anger. That band director's monologue about having a sledgehammer in his heart was a fucking brilliant way to open the film and set that tone. (When's the last time you've seen a high school teacher yell at a bunch of students in a movie in a way that's not just "ooh, what a jerk" or "ah, it's inspirational tough love that will lead them to victory in the end"? Many of us denizens of Wrestling Entropy know from being yelled at by high school teachers, especially in the context of extracurricular activities, and it was usually fueled by plain old unreflective anger, with maybe the merest shell of motivation painted on if we were lucky.) And, what's even more beautiful and shocking and almost exciting in its truthfulness is the way that the eruptions of anger don't serve as any sort of cue to judgment here, especially when it comes to the Kate Beckinsale character. Her flashes of rage made my stomach churn, but only because I recognized how they were such dead-on accurate manifestations of the frustration and impotence and regret and selfishness that I've felt in myself on many occasions--but we were never supposed to judge her harshly for these rages the way so many of the other characters (incl., often her own mother) did.

And though we were never being baited into judging her, I think the movie is asking us to consider how and when anger becomes unproductive and, therefore, its own prison, rather than, as it's intended to be, a tool to air out wrongs and resentments that otherwise would have festered internally, in an effort to achieve greater compassion for oneself and better relationships with loved ones. I think that scene when the main kid (the wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Michael Angarano) yells at his dad about abandoning their family is one of the most important ones in the movie. Both because we get to see that kid--who is absolutely the film's moral center--practice using an additional set of adult emotions (on the heels of his mother's gentle imperative that he let himself live and breathe through his feelings instead of bottling them up like most people do, including, she freely admits, herself) and because the dad closes the door to the college lecture hall they've been sitting in. It's a subtle, but absolutely necessary, cue, that family business should stay private, not go exploding into front lawns and other public spaces like the rage and violence we constantly see around the Sam Rockwell character especially (which implicitly includes Nicky Katt as well, not to mention the way the entire high school gets enlisted in the search for the missing child). Angarano's character, at his core, clearly has a pretty solid sense of self, and he's being equipped, however fumblingly and imperfectly, by his parents with the tools he's going to need to become a more complete and self-actualized adult, the kind of adult that's clearly in short supply in the small town they all live in. This--this is a heroic, subtle, mature, uncommodifiable message, my kittens: that despite growing up in a dead-end town with separated parents and (the horror!) occasionally indulging in some clandestine beer and weed consumption, it is still entirely possible to become a good person. Life may try to guide you to fall into formation like the marching band does, but a willingness to be open to your emotions makes a part of your soul inviolable. Not to mention that he willingly goes down on his high school girlfriend when they spend a lazy morning in bed together, which is one of the very few instances of female-directed heterosexual tenderness in the entire movie.

Also, this is exactly the kind of role I didn't even know I was referring to when I mentioned last fall that I didn't know what kind of a career Sam Rockwell was supposed to be having. He's similar enough here to the kind of charming, nervous fuck-up he was as Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind that I hope he doesn't get typecast in that sort of role, but, that all being said, he's really, really perfect in this movie. Nicky Katt likewise has been somewhat pigeonholed as the clueless, butch guy who fancies himself sort of sensitive and enlightened, but he's just so hilariously good at it that I can't complain. And Amy Sedaris, who usually kind of bugs me, could not have been used better here, her off-kilter sensibility not coming off as an end in itself but as an arresting bundle of legitimate personality traits in a truly fundamentally decent character.

This film is highly recommended, my kittens. A strong early(ish) start to the '08 movie year.

All the cool kids are doing it: I made you a Muxtape. I know you're probably so over such a January 2008 tracklist by this point. What can I say; I'm just not that hip. I mean, I put the fucking uncool as all get-out Kings of Leon on there, fer cryin' out loud. Um, but enjoy? Oh, and because it's apparently mandatory to link to now when referencing Muxtape: Catbird's list. It's kind of the same joke as the "Top Ten Best Ever" I linked here, but it's still worth it for the scroll-down punchline laugh.

DS makes a girl (that girl = me) blush over at the recently un-hiatus'd Overthrown Device. Being respectfully disagreed with by the likes of him is one of the highest compliments I can conceive of. Not to mention that he's also turned me around on some stuff (like The Life Aquatic and Michael Haneke) that I otherwise would have remained contentedly stick-in-the-mud about if left to my own devices. (Ha ha, y'like that pun?) Go, read, poke around for a bit, and be enlightened while you're there.

I haven't seen it in a number of years, but I'm glad to read Scott Tobias speaking out over at the Onion AV Club on behalf of the deeply, gorgeously weird Babe: Pig in the City, which I love unreservedly.

"Your momma ain't name you no damn Barack."

Kick-ass collection of pictures of knuckle tattoos and the stories behind them (via).

Malkmus, Miss Pettigrew

So, you know those accidentally perfect, Virginia Woolf-esque dinner parties that you have once or twice a year, if you're lucky, with good friends? The kind where all the planning comes together effortlessly, everyone looks fantastic and says wonderfully astute and witty things, the food is tasty and satisfying, and everybody goes home a little bit drunk, if not on alcohol then on the joy of companionship? That's how the Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks show at the Vic felt to me on Friday night. It didn't rock my face off or blow my mind the way shows from young, hungry bands sometimes do. It just felt warm and full and good. Malkmus was occasionally (slightly) physically demonstrative as a guitar player, but I kind of liked it best when he just turned in profile and played his solos like he was standing there brushing his teeth. He's also, I needn't remind you, an astonishingly beautiful human being. Joanna Bolme has this cute little shuffle-back-and-forth walk that she does when she's really getting into her bass lines. She's also funny as hell with the audience banter. Mike Clark wore a gold lame track jacket, which was slightly disconcerting, but I have mad respect for anyone who plays both keyboards and guitar with equal facility. And Janet Weiss...holy hell. I was never into Sleater-Kinney when they probably would have meant most to me in my early/mid-twenties, so shame on me for that, but that just means I get to discover her now with fresh ears and eyes. She's phenomenal. So foxy and so fierce. I feel like she could play the part of the lady pilot in Neko Case's song "Lady Pilot." Or, perhaps she could be the den mother for a troop of cub scouts composed of actual bear cubs.

NI and I caught an early evening showing of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day tonight and both agreed on the way out that it felt basically equivalent to a frothy bit of piffle we could have done as a play in high school. The editing was a bit lax, and it got weirdly slow in some parts (as if waiting, as NI said, for Boss to call "bllllllllllllackout!"), but it picked up enormously whenever Shirley Henderson was on screen. She's such an interesting actress, with so many shades of mournfulness that she's capable of portraying so economically, though I wish Hollywood would learn how to use her the way the Brits do, which is to say as more than just the bitchy, sniping friend. Amy Adams--charming, gorgeous, etc., etc. She oversells the part a leeetle bit, esp. at the beginning, but I guess that can also be chalked up to character decisions. Though I love Frances McDormand to bits, she felt oddly miscast in this. I think it was a bit of a waste to cast an actress with sooo much joie de vivre as such a repressed character. I guess it was all gesturing toward the end when she eventually learns (yawn) to live and love again, but some of her full-faced smiles in the final minutes of the movie felt so brain-smashingly beautiful that I wished she hadn't been just tottering about politely for the preceding ninety minutes or whatever. Though, because I am apparently a basket case who will cry at everything, if given the opportunity, these days, I have to say that I forgive anything questionable in this film for the moment when she's telling the Amy Adams character about a man she'd loved who died in WWI and she says, "But he smiled every time he saw me, and we could have built a life on that." ::quietly weeping:: Though Indian-born director Bharat Nalluri has mostly English-language films to his credit on the IMDB, I sensed a bit of Bollywood splendor in his direction, esp. when he started using those vertigo-inducing swirling camera shots in the party and musical sequences toward the end. Those shots, weirdly, helped contextualize the movie for me a little better, as far as reframing it as, basically, an elaborate dance between camps of female and male characters as they eventually find a way to merge in matrimony.

Did everybody read that amusing article in Esquire where they get George Clooney to Google himself? It's nothing earth-shattering, of course, I just felt like it was kind of a clever conceit.

"As he struggled to edit his story down to just *three* words, Hemingway's frustration grew. '"For Sale: Baby Shoes...." FUCK!'" --Merlin Mann

From Malkmus to the Bee Gees in Two Paragraphs

So, Malkmus and his Jicks made an entire album full of songs that sound like Face the Truth stand-out "No More Shoes," and I am head over heels in love with it. Oh brother, do these jams sound good to my ears right now. Though, in typical contrarian fashion, on an album full of relatively stretched out running times, it's tiny little "Gardenia" that rules the roost for me. Brilliant song. I have a ticket to Friday night's show at the Vic and am quite looking forward to seeing him rock out with a full band.

Speaking of full bands, you know who I always forget that I really, really like in between times I put their stuff on my iPod? TV on the Radio. Hot damn those guys are good. Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes album-closer "Wear You Out" came up on shuffle during my morning commute late last week and it was another one of those "holy shit, what the fuck is this sexy, gorgeous racket?" moments. It took everything I had not to start pole-dancing right there on the train. Hot-hot-hot-hot-hot stuff.

You know who else rules? The fucking Bee Gees, motherfuckers. I downloaded, like, five of their bigger hits last weekend, thinking I'd listen to them once through for nostalgic kicks, but guess what: now I can't stop listening to them. They sound freaking fantastic. The Bee Gees, honkies, I'm tellin' ya: the motherfucking Bee Gees.

Which, of course, makes me think of Jimmy Fallon's amusing but also weirdly hostile Barry Gibb Show sketch from Saturday Night Live, which in turn leads me, somewhat incredulously, to ask, rhetorically, hasn't SNL been really quite surprisingly good since the show came back post-strike? Even this weekend's Jonah Hill-hosted episode had me genuinely laughing out loud several times, especially with the "I'm Fancy" musical number monologue. I love musical number monologues (and not just when it's hot guys in dresses).

Oh, and, continuing with the video links, Britt Daniel plays "I Summon You" for the Black Cab Sessions. Britt may demur that he's "just a dude," but I defy just any dude to sit in the back seat of a car, and, using nothing but his voice and an acoustic guitar, make a sound as full and as huge as a freight train headed straight...for your heart.

UPDATE: RIP, Anthony Minghella. Whenever those cheesy online personals sites ask me to fill out lame questions like "what's your favorite movie sex scene?" I invariably will answer "the dirty wall sex in The English Patient," because that scene is both hilariously over-the-top in ways that never fail to make me crack up, and, well, because it's pretty genuinely sexy too.

Movie-wise, Music-wise, RIP-wise

Movie-wise: I cried like an idiot through a large chunk of The Savages. In a good way! I really heartily enjoyed it. Performances are great, it deals with race in a lot of subtle and interesting ways I wasn't expecting at all, and, yes, it totally nails the swirling vortex of emotional hysteria one feels when one is forced to care for an infirm, belligerent parent.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was extraordinarily aesthetically pleasing. I don't really care how accurate it is or isn't in its portrayal of the events that transpired after Jean-Dominique Bauby's stroke, but all the arty, impressionistic stuff it's doing does sort of stake a flag in the territory of his life in a way that turns the story, as it's presented here, into this irreducible unit that has to be swallowed whole if it is to be swallowed at all. Which is kind of a weird way of saying I found myself curiously emotionally unaffected by it, though it was inarguably beautifully made. I don't believe it was built to be a tearjerker by any means, but I feel like I spent a fairly significant portion of the movie thinking about what a risky move it would be for a publisher to put out the autobiography of a person with locked-in syndrome when, instead, I should have been contemplating the catastrophic personal ramifications of actually having locked-in syndrome and what that medical condition means for the essential nature of one's own humanity, blah blah blah. (Not to turn this blog into a Javier Bardem fan site or anything, but I remember loving The Sea Inside when it came out a few years ago. It goes for a more straight-ahead narrative treatment of a similar situation and, while probably a bit more talky, it's also certainly no less poetic and, for me, quite a bit more touching and thought-provoking.)

Be Kind Rewind was, perhaps inevitably, a bit of a letdown. For as much as I love him, Gondry needs equal-strength creative opposition. He needs a Bjork or a Charlie Kaufman to keep him sharp and to give his whimsy more of a solid central point from which to spiral out and back and around. He can't continue to direct the movies that he's also written, no matter how much he allows the actors to improvise. It just ends up being fluff on top of fluff. Highly enjoyable fluff, but fluff nonetheless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most intense reaction Be Kind Rewind elicited in me was a desire to finally see the Block Party concert film he did with Dave Chappelle. (Equal. Strength. Creative. Opposition.) There's all this cool stuff Be Kind is doing (or, attempting to do) with ideas of the importance and vitality of self-made, self-sustaining, improvised street-corner culture that seems like it was probably directly inspired by his experience of directing that film. Also, Mos Def is sooo ridiculously charming it left me convinced that he's one of the most underutilized actors in Hollywood right now. I don't know if I actually believe that in the cold light of day, but I definitely believed it during the film's 101-minute running time. And, all of my griping to one side, the final few minutes of the movie, when you see the crowd's faces illuminated by the reflected flickers of the film they're watching projected on a bed sheet hung across the wall while some faintly jazzy piano tinkles on the soundtrack, fucking destroyed me. Beautiful stuff. Oh, and as predicted, Gondry's hilarious self-made version of the trailer has popped up on YouTube here.

Music-wise: I was listening this morning to a mix that J. Ward made me last spring, and wow, Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" still sounds really great. Remember when everybody was still excited about that album? Good times.

Also, I've finally found the perfect way to enjoy Bloc Party: put the albums on my iPod, forget they're there, then flip out with excitement when some pounding drums and burbling bass come up on shuffle, and I'm all "holy crap, this sounds great, who the fuck is this? Oh, it's Bloc Party--awesome!"

RIP Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons. There was a nice piece on Gygax and the D&D gaming systems in The Believer back in September 2006. Check it out.

While perusing my bookshelves this weekend, I noticed that my Virginia Woolf section was looking a little thin. Does anybody out there in Wrestling Entropy-land have my copies of Jacob's Room and/or Mrs. Dalloway? It's no big deal; just let me know so I don't start putting ads on milk cartons.