"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"
dir., Cristian Mungiu
2007
The movie about an unwanted pregnancy not directed by Judd Apatow, Jason Reitman, or Tony Kaye.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
first look: 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days
cribs
It has been a little over four months since I moved into my bachelor pad fully realized and I remembered I promised to share some pictures as soon as it was furnished. I ascribe to a less is more design philosophy, but I want my living space to be comfortable, full of function, and have some semblance of the things that inspire me and are meaningful. Essentially, I want to love coming home everyday and I've yet to dread that feeling of opening the door and relaxing, cooking, hosting, or whatever the mood calls. There are still a few more things I want to do with the place, but this'll do for now.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
wanted: whit stillman dvd collection
One of the earliest posts on The Look-See was a dedication, or more accurately an evangelical praise, of Whit Sitllman's superb 1998 film "The Last Days of Disco." I don't have much more to say than already has or needs to be said, but catching the last half of "Metropolitan" on HBO the other month made me realize I need to own Stillman's loose trilogy of hyper-articulate and conflicted urbanites. I couldn't think of a better stocking stuffer.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
breaking news
Some news tidbits:
-The 2008 Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced this morning and it has already got me salivating about award season. Sadly, I am a devoted follower of all the hoopla surrounding the magical time of the year that honors film and although just about ever year I am more and more disappointed ("Children of Men" coming up empty handed last year sticks out almost immediately), I come back for more. Let the self-congratulation begin:
Best Feature
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
“I’m Not There”
“Juno”
“A Mighty Heart”
“Paranoid Park”
Best Director
Todd Haynes, “I’m Not There”
Tamara Jenkins, “The Savages”
Jason Reitman, “Juno”
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Gus Van Sant, “Paranoid Park”
Best Female Lead
Angelina Jolie, “A Mighty Heart”
Sienna Miller, “Interview”
Ellen Page, “Juno”
Parker Posey, “Broken English”
Tang Wei, “Lust, Caution”
Best Male Lead
Pedro Castaneda, “August Evening”
Don Cheadle, “Talk to Me”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Savages”
Frank Langella, “Starting Out in the Evening”
Tony Leung, “Lust, Caution”
Best Supporting Female
Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”
Anna Kendrick, “Rocket Science”
Jennifer Jason Leigh, “Margot at the Wedding”
Tamara Podemski, “Four Sheets to the Wind”
Marisa Tomei, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”
Best Supporting Male
Chiwetel Ejiofor, “Talk to Me”
Marcus Carl Franklin, “I’m Not There”
Kene Holliday, “Great World of Sound”
Irrfan Khan, “The Namesake”
Steve Zahn, “Rescue Dawn”
Full list of nominations here.
-How do you go from working with Werner Herzog, Mary Harron, Todd Haynes, Terrence Malick, and Christopher Nolan to Mc Fucking G? Yeah, the director (or whatever you want to call him) behind those Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray music videos. I'm hoping this isn't true but apparently Christian Bale, perhaps one of the most obsessive and protean actors of his generation, is starring in McG's installment of the Terminator series, "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins." I thought those Batman paid the bills Mr. Bale. What a shame.
-Star in "Ocean's Thirteen" and change the world at the same time? That would be a resounding yes according to the World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates who will honor George Clooney and Don Cheadle for their efforts in raising awareness about Darfur at the upcoming World Summit in Rome. I bet Sean Penn is pissed he didn't get this kind of recognition for showing up in the aftermath of Katrina with shotguns and a boat.
"exploring the six degrees of dylan"
The strength of Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There" is its polarizing and vexing quality, yet there is a clarity and thoughtfulness in the end result. Listen to this interview on NPR where Haynes discusses the issue of identity and transformation in his work, why Cate Blanchett was essential for the film, and what about Bob Dylan inspired him to create such a personal work of art.
Monday, November 26, 2007
first look: the savages
"The Savages"
dir., Tamara Jenkins
2007
Does anyone remember "The Slums of Beverly Hills"? It was a smart, funny coming-of-age movie from 1998 starring a then promising young actress named Natasha Lyonne. I only saw it once but I do remember the film being an honest, amusing, and uncomfortable take on family and what that means to a teenager trying to discover their identity. I'm not sure why it has taken the film's writer and director, Tamara Jenkins, almost a decade to make another film, but her latest film looks like an appropriate and mature follow-up for a filmmaker who is not interested in overly stylizing or abstracting the unease and ever-shifting relationships in a family. It doesn't hurt that it stars two incredibly gifted actors in turns that look like nothing I've seen out of them before. Count me in.
what are you?
Who are you? What are we? Who or what do we represent? Does it even matter? As filtered through the visionary genius of Todd Haynes, the issue of identity on screen is never perhaps as thoughtful, iconoclastic, and mind-expanding. The housewife, the rock star, and the husband with a secret have all fallen down the rabbit hole in Haynes' work thus far, and returns to that gleaming, sensational, permutable rock star again in his latest topsy turvy amalgamation of ideas, ruminations, and head-scratching antics in "I'm Not There." It's not a complete biography, nor should it be because as the film so effortlessly and deftly conveys, its central subject, the one and only Bob Dylan, is not be classified, caged, or suffocated with traditionalism and laudatory praise. His life is his work but how do we know that? Is that true of all artists and thinkers? Haynes navigates these heady waters and breaks down the image and iconography of Dylan in what is surely one of the most personal and puzzling films of the year.
The Dylan that obsesses, confounds, and enamors Haynes is a mischievous figure without definition and canonization; essentially a poetic punk prophet that somehow unknowingly, or to some very consciously, captured the voice of his generation. This rapturous and rebellious voice obviously speaks with great profundity to Haynes and if his own brief but ever revolutionary body of work would suggest, the spirit of Dylan, in the sense of constantly shape shifting and reaching for something more personal, can be seen in the undefinable and provocative career of Haynes. The tension between folk martyr and resentful artiste seems to fascinate Haynes the most. At once Dylan is a singular and important cultural figure and the next he is a louse of a husband and an elusive and pampered prima donna. This isn't a total representation of Dylan and through the theatrics and masks, that is precisely what Haynes wants us to understand. The film is an alchemic cocktail of studied interpretations and adoring fan suppositions of who and what comprises an essential American idol. Although the film never explicitly communicates Dylan's name, that spirit runs rampant throughout, and the audience should be so glad.
One of the most wisest and inspired choices Haynes employs to pull off his convoluted cinematic circus is the arresting and self-conscious visual appeal. Haynes, cinematographer Edward Lachman, and editor Jay Rabinowitz riff on Fellini, Godard, Altman, Lester, and Pennebaker. In the hands of a less able filmmaker, this could be misconstrued as a pretentious pastiche, but the appropriation of other artists and craftsman has been integral to the success and icon status of Dylan himself. Cate Blanchett as the wiry, androgynous "Blonde on Blonde" era Dylan sits alone on the bathroom floor of some posh hotel swimming in a sea of clippings from Life, Vogue, and Look magazines that act as means of inspiration for Dylan's perception of a society gone wrong in all of its glamor and degradation. Dylan's attraction to the consumption and allure of a spiritually vacant society drowning in its own greed and excess could not be more spot-on for the Fellini parallel Haynes so suitably utilizes in this segment of the film. However, Dylan is just as culpable as the oppressed rock star and paramour of a vapid socialite (a knockout but inconsistent Michelle Williams). Blanchett as Jude is all ticks and Ray-Ban Wayfrarers, but the sight of her attached to a string floating above a circus tent is what lingers the most. It's a wonderful punctuation mark on a performance that is brilliant in its boundless ferocity. Blanchett once again she is a formidable screen presence with her pallid and angular face that is only matched by her piercing and committed eyes. She is Dylan and then some. Blanchett attached to a string and floating like a bizarre balloon above its captive owner is the film boiled down to a moment that is seemingly aloof in what it's trying to say but it's a tripy visual proposition from Haynes that implies Dylan became a product for pure entertainment similar to the way a child derives simple joy from a balloon, although that comfortable entertainment in an industry that is just as hallow as a balloon can ultimately be fleeting. Dylan in his many masks can be loved and adored one moment but repulsive and forgotten in the next. He could easily float away and be lost forever but resonate in the not so distant pop subconscious.
The feeling of being forgotten or the sense of loss gives the film note quite the mythologizing tone a typical biopic would normally and lavishly exploit. Richard Gere as Billy, a wandering sort traipses through the town of Riddle where a decay has set in and nostalgia persists with townspeople wearing masks and Halloween costumes. It's the film's most unusual segment but what it does achieve is a great sense of an elegiac mood that seems to be a death of an overly romanticized era that is out of place with the times. Its pastoral beauty is a twisted and late 70s Fellini-esque homage to the Dust Bowl and outlaw days that inspired Dylan although it is clear that Dylan exists in a mid-20th century world where race riots, wars that go no where, and the youth movement are coalescing into a shocking and uncertain time. A town gathers for a funeral service and Billy watches intently but we're never certain what he feels. He's a passerby unaffected by the sight. The segment is tough to read and could easily be deemed too precocious for its own esoteric implications but it is a joy to watch Haynes audaciously go for it.
"I'm Not There" is most appealing in its daring assuredness. In that respect this could be Haynes' most personal statement yet. This film would not have the same curiosity and beauty if it were made from a lesser Dylan fan. That obsession for a figure so revered and misunderstood is perfectly in line with Haynes' own preoccupation with people who are thinking and feeling on the fringes of normal society. Julianne Moore is deathly allergic to a toxic suburbia in "Safe" and attracted to her gardener not for his skin color but the empathy he shows when it's certain her husband is an outcast in their banal and sexually conservative world in "Far From Heaven." Questioning and pushing sexual boundaries befits the glam rock world of his underrated opus "Velvet Goldmine." The radicalism that exists in those films is expertly written, acted, and aestheticized in "I'm Not There." Charlotte Gainsbourg is a standout as a wife abandoned from her womanizing and chauvinistic movie star husband (a wicked Heath Ledger). She watches the trauma of Vietnam on the television as her marriage crumbles. She questions and recognizes something in that harsh reality as she is sidelined and misapprehended in her tony home she shares with her husband who is occupied with artifice and his own celebrity. Indescribable in her own unique sensuality that is always thrilling to watch, Gainsbourg aches with just the right tone of pain and the acknowledgment of something broken and strange.
Lovers of Dylan and Haynes will find great pleasure in this wild work of art. "I'm Not There" is not as avant-garde and impenetrable as the pre-release buzz would have audiences believe, but it is a ride that is to be taken with Haynes and trust that by the end the experience is what will last and delight. There has not been a film in the past few years that reaches so far and so acutely reminds us that for many art is salvation but it can also be the downfall of those who create it.
first look: youth without youth
"Youth Without Youth"
dir., Francis Ford Coppola
2007
The flawed auteur returns with his first film in a decade and although there is quite a bit going on in the trailer, it looks like Francis Ford Coppola is ready to recommit himself to the art that he so fastidiously and epically churned out in the 1970s.
wanted: common projects
Christmas is fast approaching and my list is practically non-existent. Should I ask for things that I need or should I indulge in the things I've been pining after in the most lustful of ways? One thing is for sure, I do need a new pair of shoes and if only Santa were so kind, the Common Projects pictured above would be mine. If only...
Monday, November 19, 2007
"we are such dilettantes."
What happens when The Look-See, Bitch, Please, and Gold Digger wreak havoc in Cincinnati for a weekend bender of boozery, excess, inconvenient bowel movements, trashy cable television movies, boozery, and fine new threads? Something like this. Rough, I know. In the style of a book my first grade class wrote and illustrated, the weekend can be summed up in a manner of unfortunately, but fortunately statements.
Unfortunately Vinyl was closed but fortunately the prix fixe menu at Slim's was the culinary saving grace of the weekend. No joke:
Five bottles of wine, a round of cocktails, and three Jager Bombs later, the night ended too soon for yours truly, but this kind of hedonism is exactly what vacations are for.
Unfortunately the Slim Sack at American Apparel fits like a pair of leggings on my athletic limbs, but fortunately the Tri-Blend Short Sleeve Leisure Shirt in Athletic Blue fits me like a dream and makes me feel like James Bond on the beach circa 1965.
Unfortunately the sale at Urban Outfitters was a bit of a bust, but fortunately I did managed to procure the purple heather BDG t-shirt (sorry no link because it's not available on the website) I've coveted for years that I thought went out of stock. This makes my tenth or so heather BDG t-shirt that I think I can now officially say is the most comfortable t-shirt.
Unfortunately the mammoth sized Party Source in Newport was closed but fortunately there's always next time.
Cincinnati, you are no longer so Cincinasty in my mind and Bitch, Please thanks for letting me crash on your futon (literally). Now back to studying for that damned GRE.
Friday, November 16, 2007
what's sexy?
Do you think the muse is in on the joke?
And speaking of the revolutionary Mr. Jacobs, check out Eric Wilson's profile on the chameleon-like designer in The New York Times. Jacobs comes across more assured than ever but I can't help but wonder if all this self-satisfaction is feigned and a clear marker for someone still weighed down with insecurities and demons. At any rate, you can't deny the genius of Jacobs in that he can lampoon a footballer's wife but make it look contemporary and cheeky.
do you know the soulja boy dance?
Can you imagine attempting to learn a new dance on national television, much less a tricky, hip-hop inspired maneuver that everyone under the age of 16 knows by heart? Natalie Portman, I love you just a little bit more.
Monday, November 12, 2007
get it while it's hot!
What happens when NYC indie rock group The Walkmen and the fashionable singletons of "Sex and the City" converge? Don't ask why but I wish they would have reenacted Carrie exclaiming, pun intended of course, "Okay, you don't have to Challah!", in response to a frazzled and squealing Charlotte, who was preparing a traditional Jewish dinner for her possible and traditionally Jewish husband Harry Goldenblatt. However, hearing these masculine, deep voices worry about what they're going to wear to a Dolce & Gabanna party or kvetch about man problems at Yankee Stadium, all the while merrily laughing at the absurdity of it all, is satisfactory enough.
Click here to listen.
open range
The New York Times magazine this past weekend was devoted to Hollywood's slow return to the western genre with the release of a handful of disparate films this season that either directly explore the genre or redefine its traditions in a contemporary revisionist context. I'm not convinced "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is a strict western in terms of its narrative conventions and tone, but with James Mangold's "3:10 to Yuma" and films that use the west as a template for meditating on American ideals and the promise of possibility the west represents in such films as Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood", it's no denying that perhaps America is still trying to define itself by the eternal unknown beauty and danger of the West. These days the world is a little more violent and ethically undetermined of which can be seen exacted with grim stoicism in John Hillcoat's bloody "Proposition". The genre was turned on its ear and very obviously redesigned with Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain", where the new stranger in town that can't quite fit in is not one specific person but two men who find solace and something painfully honest in each other as their love grows as passionate and deep in a part of the world that doesn't want to understand or accept them. Clint Eastwood's 1992 revisionist western "Unforgiven" imbues the violence as carried out by the quintessential outlaw a new weight with the suggestion that life has supreme value and to take it away there is a moral cost to be paid. The western genre in a post-Vietnam, post-feminist movement, post-sexual revolution, post-9/11 world is not the black and white world of its classic and traditional early days. The same is a truth for America's own narrative.
I'm not a huge fan of westerns in general (although Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is beyond stunning) but the archetype of the misfit who enters town anew and burdened by his violent and questionable past is utterly fascinating and in a way, inherently cinematic. The lone stranger who for all his misgivings and aberrant tendencies can never fully join the good natured society he pines for but therein the great paradox exists in that there is an unspoken tacit agreement between the aimless drifter and his environment where the world needs him just as much as they are fearful and repulsed by him.
From the magazine and definitely worth a read:
Lynn Hirschberg's profile of Daniel Day-Lewis.
Jonathan Lethem on the greatest death scene.
Luc Sante on moral ambiguity as the chief weapon in westerns.
first look: cassandra's dream
"Cassandra's Dream"
dir., Woody Allen
2007
The end of the London trilogy? I'm a little more excited about his next film starring three actors that almost cancel out their sexiness. Almost.
Friday, November 9, 2007
upgrade u
Sing, dance, gaze sensually into the camera, weave flutter from the wind machines just right, writhe around gold set pieces, hawk Direct TV package. Is there anything she can't do?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
three guys and a girl
photographed by Norman Jean Roy
in the November issue of Vogue
Oh my little darling Doutzen, you are back and I couldn't be more pleased. You and Band of Outsiders doing the femme/masculine thing is so hot. Keep up the good work, but could you please come back for fashion week in February? It's my birthday month and it would mean so much to me.
Thanks.
W.
courtesy of the fashion spot
wanted: roberta flack
"Mr. Magic"
Roberta Flack
Unfortunately I can't carry Roberta Flack circa 1969-1975 in my pocket, but I would love to have the entirety of her work from that period on my iPod. "Quiet Fire" is quite possibly the happiest looking album cover ever. I need it in my life.
press pause
I'm officially obsessed.
Click here for more.
Monday, November 5, 2007
have no fear, the camera is here
"Superstar"
Lupe Fiasco feat. Matthew Santos
dir., Hype Williams
I can't tell if Lupe is lampooning celebrity culture or wants to be part of it. He has the quintessential ingredients for a rap video (girls, cars, mythic backlighting, and glitter falling from the sky in slow motion), but the catchy and intensely melodic chorus examines our current obsession and yearning for being famous and posing, not actually being notable for an actual talent or skill. I appreciate Lupe's intelligence and desire to explore issues and concerns in contemporary popular culture but forgetting the words to my favorite A Tribe Called Quest song is definitely deplorable.
the language of film...
Oh the joys of my days off from work and how it feeds my internet addiction. I stumbled upon Giuseppe Tornatore's tribute to fifty years of the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards this year and it remains a very moving look at some of the best of international cinema over the past half century. Yes, Tornatore is an emotional sensationalist but there is nothing cheap about these moments. Enjoy.
wanted: all occasion coat
This may look like an ordinary coat and not worth the price whatsoever, but look at the texture, buttons, and the greatest surprise of it all--a black and white gingham lined hood. Help me out Santa.
the tower above
As if have a distinctly salmon-hued tower and the pixelation of Muhammad Ali weren't enough to impress architecturally of the downtown Louisville skyline, we are now and soon to be the proud future recipients of what will hopefully continue Louisville becoming not known just for some horse race but a real city pulsing with activity and culture. The Museum Plaza is an unconventionally stunning 62 story structure that will host gallery space, lofts, retail shops, and everything else that should entice Louisvillians and people in general to experience the heart of the city. Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, of REX based in New York, concocted the avant-garde (for Louisville and the Southeast) structure that broke ground in early October and should be completed by 2010. The proposal video above makes you want 2010 to come a little bit sooner.
three for the road
On a meticulously art directed train car somewhere in India three brothers with equally finely tailored suits and curious looking noses are the new parts that sum up the Wes Andersonian dysfunctional family in Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited." Anderson's fascination with the flawed and broken family has become a trademark and almost a given in his brief but growing oeuvre. After the indulgent misfire that was "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which painfully showed Anderson's limitations as a writer and filmmaker, Anderson seems reassured and comfortable reigned the theatrics in and exploring the family theme in a different direction. Instead of the claustrophobic fantasy world he typically dreams up where even the mice bear the stamp of a particular Anderson visual flair, Anderson's focus has moved into a more geographically recognizable world, but similarly claustrophobic, that expresses a love for international cinema and a new vision that is desperate to prove he has more in him than style and pastiche. Does he succeed? Not entirely, but his ambition marks a maturity in his work that Anderson desperately needs.
Although the set up is quite simple (three brothers on a train), Anderson is wisely full of a newfound cinematic inspiration and perhaps has been watching a lot of Jean Renoir, Louis Malle, and Eric Rohmer that breathes some new life into his work. All of this referencing can be distracting and almost proof there isn't much to Anderson's pudding, but sometimes I feel like a rip off, especially when it's good and it steals from the filmmakers I appreciate, can be a spark for something more personal and truly cinematic, which regardless of poorly developed characters or plot holes can save a film. "Life of Aquatic" felt like empty ideas and jokes, nothing evolutionary. In "Darjeeling", Anderson gets out of his head and comfort zone to take us to a new landscape for him and material that although doesn't measure up totally, it's a clear declaration of a conscious decision to evolve and challenge. In an odd way "Darjeeling" feels like Anderson's most personal film yet. Even the obnoxious "short film", "Hotel Chevalier", that prefaces the feature feels like it was a nostalgic portrait from Anderson's own nerdy and affluent life. Everything from the music, the slow motion tracking shots, and the beautiful but damned characters are essential Anderson preoccupations but to his own credit, some freshness exists in what he feeds the audience.
Turning his eyes to India is the strongest asset Anderson exercises for himself and the audience. It's a country that doesn't garner too much attention from American filmmakers. I've always thought Anderson's world was too specific in its faux cosmopolitan artiness. However, the natural landscapes of India are sumptuous and inspiring enough to capture without Anderson tinkering with it too much, and he does to a degree. The only piece of art direction he has control over is the titular form of transportation. It might be a bit clunky that the train is a little to symbolic in terms of the personal and geographic journey the characters venture throughout the film, but without that love for creating a hermetically but aesthetically pleasing world, this would not be an Anderson film. The empty and sandy deserts juxtaposed with the bustling and all consuming cities of India are excitedly captured. It's obvious Anderson appreciates a country that is so rich and deeply attached to its history, religion, and culture, but the one concern with this is an over exocitizing of a foreign culture at the hands of a bourgeois American male. Anderson doesn't try to represent the culture, but the women are a little more available (in more ways than one), the primitivism a little too present and purported, and the ignorance of American tourism is at times fodder but at other times possibly indicative of Anderson's own romanticized outlook. Perhaps this only agitates because the three leads come from a background of $6,000 belts, vintage Ferrari's, and Louis Vuitton luggage.
Naturalism is not Anderson's forte and thus what he normally does is almost over compensated and tiresome to watch in the face of his shot at restraint and new territory. How many times can he employ a slow motion tracking shot? I think I counted five or more, but one or none would have sufficed. The esoteric pop music that usually gets his audience going is cheekily referenced by Jason Schwartzman's horndog character cue the music from his iPod that we're all sure must be filled with awesome playlists. The themes of suicide, poor communication between parent and child, and favoritism amongst siblings that are so frequent in his work, gives the impression there is little else that interests Anderson as a storyteller. Sure there are a host of filmmakers that are very comfortable in their own heads, but maybe they just do it better and more convincingly. The characters never amount to much and their supposed catharsis is bloodless and drags the last third of the film. And when will he stop dressing Angelica Houston up in unflattering wigs and underusing her talent? The film doesn't entirely come off as one big piece of decor, but this should be the next step in where Anderson can go as a filmmaker and hopefully fully realize his talent along the way.
first look: mr. magorium's wonder emporium
"Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"
dir., Zach Helm
2007
This looks like some big greasy studio fed the indulgence of everyone's favorite Charlie Kaufman-lite screenwriter. And when will Dustin Hoffman stop being so Dustin Hoffman?
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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