February 25, 2008
Movie Nite
I'm biased, but this NYTimes.com feature is lots of fun to play with. It shows how movies have done at the box office for the past two decades with an interactive graphic (with search capability, no less). D pointed out that movies in the 80s that were successful had more "legs" -- that is, the runs lasted a lot longer -- than they do today. It's a bit of a trip down memory lane to look at the 80s and 90s movies -- click on a blob for the title, then click on the movie overview link and you can watch old trailers. I'm disappointed that one of my favorite movies, The English Patient, didn't do so well at the box office.
Posted by csageday at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2006
Four Movies and a Home-Improvement Tip
We've managed to spend ample time in air-conditioned movie theaters recently. Here's a recap of what we've seen.
A Prairie Home Companion: Eh. It was like the radio show, so it was entertaining, but on the whole it was uneven as a movie. I loved seeing Garrison Keillor, though -- so damn likable, that man.
Wordplay: Have you ever done a crossword puzzle? See this movie. It has a nice balance of celebrity interviews, explanation, and tournament drama. It's fun and funny. Crossword puzzle people are astounding to me, because, as I recently explained to someone, I have a crossword puzzle deficiency. I just don't think of or see the words I need to. I can be staring at C_T with a clue of "Feline friend" and not get it. After having read half of Word Freak, I realize that this is related to my frustrating inability to anagram. Lately I've been on a little crossword crusade, trying to work on this linguistic disability of mine, but it's torturous. Someday, someday!, I'll be able to finish that little Sip and Solve "Easy" Crossword puzzle book.
Why We Fight (saw this one on DVD): Top of the list recommendation, simply because it finally provided a feasible explanation for the Iraq war and the administration's baffling behavior. I know it's not exciting to rent a movie about the military industrial complex, but everyone should be very familiar with the bigger picture issues presented here. It's fascinating and frightening and should have implications for how you view U.S. policy in general.
Superman Returns (3D): Okay, so the nostalgia kicked in for me and I loved seeing the new Superman -- the whole clumsy Clark Kent and classic 50s flying save-the-world gentleman in shiny tights and underwear completely won me over. The familiar score and sets helped. I reverted to age 8 or so. It was weird in some places with the whole crystal business, but satisfying on the whole, again, because of the classic Superman-ness of it all. We saw it in IMAX 3D, and although the big screen was cool, the 3D-glasses portions were a little nauseating for me and weren't really worth it. Regular screen is fine. I'm afraid if I saw this again I might realize that it wasn't such a good movie.
On a somewhat unrelated topic: Installing pull-down shades in our sunny windows, and leaving them down during the day, has done wonders for the temperature level in our apartment. If you have accidently rented a sauna, you should know about this. You should also know that Lowe's has a machine that can cut the shade to whatever width you want it to be. Who knew?
Posted by csageday at 12:50 AM | Comments (2)
May 07, 2006
Match Point
I am very impressed with Woody's Allen's latest film, Match Point. It didn't seem like a Woody Allen film -- it didn't explore relationships ad nauseum through endless conversations, and the cast is small. Visually, it's very satisfying, and the acting is fantastic. It's the best movie I've seen in a while.
Unfortunately for the audience, it makes you anxious from the very first scene -- which makes perfect sense because they story is filled with anxiety of different sorts, but it's hard to sit back and eat popcorn while you're tearing your hair out. You're anxious in a way that you'd be on a daily basis -- it's not artificially generated by cliffhangers. You feel anxious for the main character and for others, and the tension builds. Later scenes seem more charged because of this. Toward the end, I got up and paced just becuase I couldn't take the stress, but my reaction enhanced my experience of the plot and brought me into the story.
Match Point requires a bit of a leap of faith at one point -- I find it hard to believe the main character takes the action he does. Still, it's worth renting if you haven't seen it. The characters are all extremely well cast, and Woody Allen will do a great job of messing with your head as you watch it.
Posted by csageday at 12:41 PM | Comments (2)
March 05, 2006
Most Adorable Oscar Recipients (So Far)
First Prize: Wallace & Gromit winners, who wore huge bow ties and brought a little one for the statue
Second Prize: The March of the Penguins men, who all brought stuffed penguins, said thank you in "penguin" and had cute accents
Third Prize: George Clooney. Just because.
Posted by csageday at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2006
Mad Cute Kids
We saw Mad Hot Ballroom last night -- the documentary about the annual elemetary-school-level ballroom dancing competition in NYC -- and loved it. Ten-year-olds can be so precocious. They're on the cusp of adolescence but resemble little adults more than teenagers (especially when they're ballroom dancing). They're self-assured and talk philosophically about life, love, and dance -- the director caught some great moments. It's so endearing that I kept interupting the movie to tell Derek how amazing the kids were. They make these serious grand pronouncements about life that just make you want to melt -- it's so sad and cute and true to that age. I'd forgotten what it was like to be 10 and feel so mature (and then have something crushing happen and cry and get all flustered).
Posted by csageday at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
The Squid and the Whale
We saw "The Squid and the Whale" today, finally (synopsis, NYT review). It was filmed in Park Slope (and is now playing in every theater nearby), so I've been itching to see it, if only for the scenes of the old neighborhood and brownstone interiors. The plot follows a mid-80s divorce between a self-involved, formerly-successful writer and his wife, who is just beginning to find some success in writing. They have two boys, aged 12 and 16. The characters, with the exception of the mother, are all well developed -- almost painfully so. Both boys are at vulnerable ages of a different sort, and the extent to which they are influenced by their parents' neuroses is a major theme.
There's a lot of great, funny dialogue and humiliation. The whole experience of divorce is chronicled, from the anger the kids feel to the bad-mouthing parents do of each other. It's painful to watch the scenes where the kids are clearly looking for direction and comfort that neither parent seems able to provide. Each character's vulnerability and shortcomings are obvious in nearly every scene. When the younger boy runs away from his father's house to his mom's, his mother, instead of figuring out what's wrong, explains that it's not "her night" and she needs time for herself sometimes. The father treats the older boy, Walt, as if he's a carbon copy of himself, and encourages him to "play the field" of women when the kid is barely handling his first relationship. Walt is happy to have his father's attention and confidence and adopts his father's philosophy wholesale. He ends up practically divorcing his mother, yelling at her for having an affair and using phrases clearly not familiar to him. This creates some comedy, since the audience can see what's going on -- the teenager looks a little ridiculous with his righteous, accusatory look and his talk about "bringing men into the house right under our noses".
All in all, I enjoyed watching it -- it may be a familiar theme (the disfunctional family), but the characters were believable and interesting. The time-frame was also familiar to me, since I was growing up at the same time -- I think we might have had the Burger King glasses that show up in one scene.
As for Brooklyn scenes, the father is continually losing his parking space and having to drive around the neighborhood looking for a new one (we know ALL about that). There are shots of subway stations from 7th Ave to Ditmas Park, and there are a couple of scenes from a Chinese restaurant in the Slope (still not sure exactly which one). I like the inside of the family's brownstone -- the kitchen, the bookshelves, the staircase bannister. I'm a sucker for Brooklyn brownstones. The family seemed to live on a block in the North Slope near the park (now known as TwoMillionDollarBrownstoneVille, or, alternatively, Bugabooville or NannyLexusStockbrokerVille).
In other movie news, we saw and loved "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" and have been saying "Cheeeeeeese. I love cheeeese. Gorgonzooola, limburger, monterey jack!" ever since.
After the movie we headed over to Sugarcane for some Carribean food -- Derek has been wanting to go there forever. It was a little loud and crowded, but not bad. The plantains, shrimp on sugarcane skewers, and the roti were all great. Not sure I'd want to put up with the noise again, though. I'd advise against the sugarcane mojito, too -- regular mojitos have enough sugar as it is.
Posted by csageday at 01:38 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
The Force of Nostalgia Is Strong In This One
Oh, George Lucas. Horrified as I am by the awful love scenes, I can't help but smile like an idiot when I see "Lucasfilms" and then ... after a pause ... the huge STAR WARS taking up the whole screen with that opening music and receding into the starry background, followed by the scrolling story and inevitable pan down to a droning ship. I am a geek at heart. These things appeal to me. Especially when plot lines developed over decades are finally resolved.
We saw Episode III at the Ziegfeld tonight (the PROPER place to see such a movie) with a huge tub of popcorn and hundreds of other people. Cliche after cliche should have worn us down but there's something to be said for Jedi fighting -- no matter how bad the dialogue is or how much of the plot is borrowed -- those robes and light sabers are awesome. And it's a damn good story.
The audience tended to laugh at the goopy stuff -- Annakin-Vader's "Nooooooo!!!!", for instance, and the soap opera love scenes (I could barely watch it was so embarrassing). The nostalgic tie-ins to other episodes were satisfying -- Chewbakka makes an appearance, twins are stashed on separate planets, yoda speaks bad English, epic battles are fought. And of course, Darth Vader gets his famous headgear, at which point I had a vivid flashback to Space Balls and Dark Helmut ripping it off and saying, "I can't breath in this thing!"
Posted by csageday at 02:03 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
Spring, Finally
We saw The Big Lebowski at MoMA tonight and laughed our asses off. I'm no good at movie reviews but this is a must-see. Go. See it. It's awesome. MoMA has lots of other good films to see, too (we might try to catch the shorts this weekend). And one of these days I have to get myself to one of these Brown Bag Lunch Lectures.
The weather this week has been very therapeutic. My impending tenth high school reunion (more on that later) and other annoyances are making me extremely anxious these days, so getting outside for lunch is a necessity. It takes the murderous edge off so I can actually talk to people instead of gritting my teeth and spitting. Today I sat on the Fordham lawn, where a giant dogwood tree was fully in bloom and already shedding petals. The dogwoods and cherry trees around Park Slope are also in bloom and lately I've stopped just to smell them. There's a fleeting moment in early spring where dogwoods, cherry trees, and forsythia are all in bloom at once and it always feels like a gift. It's definitely worth celebrating next weekend at the Cherry Blossom Festival (Sakura Matsuri) in Brooklyn.
Posted by csageday at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2005
The Nomi Song
Note: This isn't really a blog entry but a long-winded essay on Klaus Nomi and The Nomi Song, a documentary we saw on Friday. We discovered Klaus Nomi when we saw "URGH! A Music War", and I've been interested in him since then. His outer-space aesthetic and operatic voice make for an interesting dichotomy. I went on a bit of a Nomi kick over the weekend and wrote what I thought would be a longish blog entry but turned out to be a mini-dissertation. Here it is, if you're interested. And if you can, get over to Cinema Village to see The Nomi Song, or at least let us lend you a copy of URGH.
URGH! A Music War
In the middle of the early-80s new wave and punk band performances in the movie URGH! A Music War (which chronicles that genre), a very odd-looking singer takes the stage and provides a unusual vocal performance. The band members in the background have long hair and the venue is a standard dive. But the signer, Klaus Nomi, has a unique voice and an outlandish appearance and he forces the audience to experience his performace on different terms.
The opening shot of his performance starts with his shoes: shiny black heels with long, pointy toes. The camera pans up to black spandex and a plastic triangular top with the white V of a tuxedo. He is in white face, with black lipstick and perfectly styled hair. His movements are robotic and unnatural. The song, Total Eclipse, begins with staccato lyrics, and Nomi's style is to place Shakespearean emphasis on each syllable. His wide-open, heavily-lined eyes fixate on something intently and then move suddenly to something else. For the chorus, his voice unexpectedly switches to an impressive countertenor (falsetto). The switch enhances the sense that Nomi is foreign and unusual, but it simultaneously draws the audience in because he hits each note perfectly.
Derek and I saw URGH! at Anthology Film Archives before Christmas and loved it for various reasons. The early and intimate performaces of bands like Devo, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Gang of Four were fun to watch and made us nostalgic for music we barely knew. The songs seemed fresh and you could tell the bands were having fun with the punk mindset and music. We went to a tribute concert at The Knitting Factory, but while we were watching the video of URGH between sets, I realized I was just waiting to see Klaus Nomi again. There's something very satistying about listening to him sing, and watching him pull off the costume and character is entertaining in its own right.
The Nomi Song
We found a bit more information about Nomi online. Mainly, he was a cultish figure with some avid fans, but he was one of the first victims of AIDS. His career was cut short right after he had made it big and found his ideal medium: the music video. We also found out that a documentary was being made about him called The Nomi Song. It opened at Cinema Village on Friday, and we were able to see the show when Andrew Horn, the director, was there to answer questions. The film and the Q&A afterward gave us a crash course on Nomi's life and I left with the impression that he was slightly more than a vocalist with a wacky costume.
Though slightly uneven at times, the film shows parts of nearly all the footage available of Klaus Nomi. Friends' interviews provide the narrrative for the film and help set up shots of Nomi's early work. The sense that Nomi's career was cut short and is not fully understood is enhanced by the film artifacts left in the documentary -- the director leaves blank spots (where salvaged film runs out) and blotches of dust on old cuts. The Nomi Song begins and ends with a very appropriate, low-quality 50s shot of a U.F.O landing and taking off, with group of bewildered spectators huddled nearby ("The world just wasn't ready.").
Klaus Nomi grew up in Germany, spend seven years in Berlin (some training to be a tenor), and arrived in the West Village at the same time many Andy Warhol types were heading there for the scene. There is one interview with him in German where he comes across as a very warm person. He tells a story of getting some money and rushing out to buy an Elvis album, only to have his mother exchange it for Maria Callas. He uses the story to explain his taste in music -- he's stuck somewhere in between those two disparate influences. He combines the drama and music of opera with the anti-authoritarian flash and energy of rock music.
Nomi does more than than invent a music genre all his own. Early Nomi shows were performance art pieces. In some, his head and arms are made to seem like they are not attached. His own movement seems to suprise him. He borrows from the Kabuki aesthetic and the stiffness of 60s space-age aliens in sci-fi movies. In effect, he has combined classic theatrical styles with modern ones in an alarming way. Many of these stage theatrics play on standard themes: the artist's relationship to the audience, the dislocation of the artist on stage from reality, and the struggle of the audience members to reconcile the artist's representation of reality with their own.
I like the use of Nomi's extremely unusual profile as his logo -- it evolved out of the shadow created by his profile in the spotlight on a striped set. The resulting image is an alien head in a circle with bars on it. It suggests a performer's restrictions: his confinement to the public personna he has established, the fact that the public personna is only a shadow of real experience or identity (see Plato's cave, any postmodern interpretation of anything, etc.). The lyrics of The Nomi Song demonstrate this struggle as well: "If they saw my face, would I still take a bow; Will they know me, know me, know me, now." (The play on words there with "know me" and "Nomi" is clever, too). One of the journalists interviewed for the film explains how he felt after a show by saying "[Klaus] is art. We're not."
You can see from the first two videos Nomi made that the format was perfect for him. Special effects, close-ups, and abstract backgrounds heighten the sense of an other-worldly presence. The stark contrast of the dark makeup and hairline against the white, washed-out face, which can be superimposed on any sort of background, drive home the same point.
Nomi's trick was to make these concepts available to the minds of punk rock audiences. They're unsure of how to interpret his alien appearance and mannerisms, but when he serenades them with an operatic arias, they can't help but appreciate the music. Nomi makes us aware of how beauty can bind the audience to a performer and influence a reassessment of the visual aesthetic. The wierdness accentuates the art. Hearing opera out of context enhances its beauty, and the extreme contrast of Klaus to everything around him brings a surreal, transporting quality to the moment. Eliciting this type of conflicted reaction is one that few artists achieve. It makes us aware of the art itself AND the artist's manipilation of his audience.
More Information
First album: Klaus Nomi
Second album: Simple Man
Is it live, or is it Memorex?: A Flash tribute site
Posted by csageday at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2005
Fire, Anime, Chocolate, and a Dead Camera
Saturday, since family-related events have been cancelled, there's a Church of Craft thing at Yarnivore, and Princess Mononoke at MOMA.
Princess Mononoke. 1997. Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With the voices of Gillian Anderson, Billy Crudup, Claire Danes. Miyazaki's lush and fantastic animes use a subtle blend of hand-drawn cels and computer-generated images to create an extraordinarily vivid and imaginative universe populated by amazing landscapes, people, creatures, and, well, things.
Last week's New Yorker article about Miyazaki, Japanese animator extraordinaire, made us anxious to see some of his work. Renting Spirited Away would have been the logical place to start but going to the new MOMA theater is much more fun. Miyazaki seems to have a unique appreciation of the fantastical creatures and ideas that appeal to children. Unlike the Disney machine, he also shows scepticism about marketing to children, encouraging kids to watch movies, etc. So he's brilliant and original and he actually cares about his audience.
On Sunday, we're heading to this Hot Chocolate Festival with a portable ice rink -- I'm not even sure how that works. If the ancient digital Olympus that I've resurrected keeps working, I'll take pictures. They'll be fuzzy and low quality, but that's all I can offer. Here's what the Kodak looks like:
Diagnosis: Lens malfunction. So D took it all apart and got the lens to move in and out, but only sometimes, and I sincerely doubt we'll ever figure out how to put this back together again.
(Note: I split this entry up to move these photos to another page.)
Here's one of the reasons I never want to move out of our apartment:
Other reasons: Derek has his own space to make a mess in. There are two bathrooms. There are thirteen permanent bookshelves. There is a washer and a dryer, and a hallway. There's something about having a long hallway that makes me feel grown up. Even more than having green wine glasses.
In other news, I need to stop writing blogs at one in the morning so I can sleep and not act like a complete idiot.
Posted by csageday at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2005
The Uncle Floyd Show
If you've never heard of The Uncle Floyd Show, you must, must buy this DVD (or borrow it from me). It's supposed to be a kids' show but it's more like an extremely low budget, barely scripted SNL with puppets and kids' drawings on the walls.
In one sketch, "Liberal vs. Conservative," the camera cuts between a bearded, professorial liberal making some valid point and Floyd in a checkered suit, yelling nonsense like "That's what you are! Bimbo Schmimbo!"
D used to watch this and got the DVD for Christmas, but the irony is that this show was filmed in West Orange, New Jersey, where I grew up. The studio was a couple of miles from my house, and I had never heard of it.
We just watched a clip and it's even funnier the second time around. Floyd does a great Don Goomba (Godfather spoof) and an even better Julia Childs. One sketch is in fake Polish. I don't get why this isn't a huge cult classic. It think it once was, but it's still funny today.
Posted by csageday at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2005
This Guy Needs a Life, Job, Girlfriend...
From Boing Boing: Someone is already waiting in line for the next Star Wars movie (yes, it's five months away). At least he has a couch to sit on and something to read. Five months of sitting outside (in rain, sleet, hail, snow) for a two-hour movie. Oh, and he has a blog. Maybe that explains it.
Maybe Microsoft Tipped Them Off
People are getting arrested for the stupidest things today. Some 9-10-year-olds got charged with a felony for drawing stick figures, and some poor guy using the Lynx text browser got busted by a SWAT team because they thought he was a hacker.
Posted by csageday at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Bollywood Basics
Here's a Bollywood FAQ that explains the various Indian traditions that pop up in Bollywood movies. In a nutshell: Wearing a bindi on your forehead actually doesn't mean anything (they're just pretty), vermilion in your part means you're married, and relatives will wag their thumbs at you if you try to kiss your husband in public. Even at your own wedding.
Plus, BollyWHAT??'s Top Ten (Bollywood) Films. I really, really need to rent all of these and devote a day to this stuff so that the next time Bollywood is in the news I won't feel like I'm missing out.
Posted by csageday at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)