Seeing Lost In Translation on the Upper East Side

Lost in Translation soundtrack, image:amazon.com

Context isn’t everything, but it counts. We just got back from seeing Lost In Translation with a multi-generational crowd, in the movie theater around the corner from Holly Golightly’s brownstone. As they say, it’s the little differences:

  • “Gorgeous sheets.” –Woman of a certain age behind us, upon the cut to Bill Murray sitting on the Park Hyatt bed. [300-count egyptian cotton? Nice, but could be better, lady. Now pipe down.]
  • “hahahaha.” –me, laughing alone at the previously unrecognized 4:20 reference.
  • “nice soundtrack.” –me, wondering if the limited edition soundtrack is out yet.
  • “soundtrack’d be better if the idiot in front of us’d stop proclaiming Shinjuku landmarks to his mother/sugar mama. It ain’t no Harajuku, pal. Now pipe down.” – me.
  • “I loved it.” –adult children of the sheets woman, after it was over.
  • “I hated it.” –the sheets woman.
  • I Report, You Decide: Speaking with a former WTC juror

    Friday, I met an architecture professional who was on the LMDC jury last summer to select the architects for the World Trade Center site design study. We spoke about the Memorial Competition, details of which were familiar to this person.
    The juror was deliberately cagey, but said the Memorial jury was down to ten proposals: “And when it gets down to ten, the lines start to sharpen.” Asked about the timeline, this person said, “very soon,” but when I bounced the rumored names of finalists, the response I got was, “you know more than I do, then.” (Which is so clearly not the case, it’s almost embarassing.)

    about making films, really.

    I’ve been very quiet about my actual filmmaking activities of late, mostly because they’ve been pretty sparse. My efforts to re-edit Souvenir November 2001 have been stymied by Final Cut Pro for a while, and I’m coming to grips with the idea of re-building it from scratch. Well, from a late-stage EDL (Edit Directions List), actually, which is the cut-by-cut source code of the film. That’d mean dumping all 80Gb of my media, so it’s an irrevocable decision, which I’ve been avoiding making.
    But this week, I’ve been invited to show and talk about my work in November (More details to come.), so it’s about time to pull the trigger. Of course, movement on that will also impel movement on the re-scoring effort, too. Sometimes a deadline can be a very helpful thing.
    Beyond this non-working on film, I’ve been researching and began negotiating for the film rights of a novel. It took a while to trace the rightsholder (the book had been out of print in English for many years and was recently reissued.) and to fill in the backstory of the book’s creation. The writer’s estate is represented by a small but very sharp agency in Europe, so my very early mornings have been full of iterations on the contract points, a lot of phone calls, etc. Makes me feel productive, but exhausted. It’s very interesting and exciting, but not something I can really post about in realtime detail, you understand. As soon as it closes, you’ll be among the first to know.
    But enough about me. (Heh. As if.) POV points to a new (to me) filmmaker weblog, Nyurotic, which is quite engaging. Ang Mito is a documentarian, whose film screened in the Work In Progress section of this year’s IFP Market to very positive reaction. Mito posts her rollercoaster experiences at the Market. Definitely check it out.

    Discussing Mystic River

    The first rule of Mystic River, on the other hand, is don’t discuss Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil.
    The director of both films, Clint Eastwood, talks largely of the former with Michael Parkinson in the Guardian.
    Not at all related: my examination of the unexamined similarities between Midnight and Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. [Buy Adaptation on DVD. Whatever you do, don’t buy Midnight. Rent it if you insist, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.]

    Discussing the WTC Memorial

    The first rule of the World Trade Center Memorial Competition is don’t discuss the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. OK, technically, it’s the second rule, and it actually applies to publicly identifying your own design proposal, but whatever.
    Many entrants and many more followers of the Competition are discussing it, though, on multiple venues online. Most voices are earnest; some are a bit weary or cynical. Some are pained, or painfully critical; some are self-aggrandizing to a disturbing degree. For my part, I try to stay engaged but circumspect (except for an occasional lash out at the hearts-and-minds-numbing involvement of a shill like Peter Max).
    Here are some sources for unfiltered WTC Site Memorial Competition reading:

  • Wired New York has very serious forums, including “Memorial Guidelines,” but most WTC-related posting happens in “Ground Zero Developments.”
  • DesignCommunity.com’s “How did your WTC Memorial Turn Out?” is less intimidating to post in, which is both good and bad.
  • Posts on The NYTimes Forum, “Redeveloping the World Trade Center Site,” may hint at what the paper’s Letters editors have to deal with on a regular basis.
    A recurring theme across all the boards: exuberant comments by one William Stratas, a web developer/Competition entrant from Toronto. For undiluted, effusive Stratas, check out his site, Planetcast.

  • On DVD’s

  • POV looks at The Film Movement, which moves, um, films–indies and foreign films, mostly– through a combination of theatrical release and subscription DVD’s. Interesting but not ideal, she finds.
  • Felix Salmon looks at Directors Label, which is launching with DVD collections of music videos by Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry. It’s all very RESfest, as it should be, since it’s the same company. [On the same day my video art bootlegging article ran in the Times, Kelefa Sanneh interviewed this directin’ trio. You can either buy or bootleg the interview.]
  • DVD’s turn out to be the arbitrary driving force in (some) fashion. If I could have any less tolerance for the supercilious pretenses of designers, I’d be Guy Trebay, who bursts some bubbles in the Times: “John Galliano often has some canned hoo-ha he uses to deflect attention from the fact that, like everyone else at a certain moment in fashion, he bought a DVD of the documentary about the San Francisco drag troupe, The Cockettes. At least another stylist cops to copying 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • Remember, Soderbergh’s Schizopolis is finally coming out on DVD this month, thanks to Criterion.
  • No DVD link list would be complete without a plug for GreenCine, the thinking person’s Netflix. Sign up today.
  • Look over here! (while I don’t post)

  • Making money with micropublishing: Matt Haughey & PVRBlog (via Anil)
  • Making money with macropublishing: OJR on Time, Inc. & AOL (via mediabistro.com)
  • Micro vs. macro idiocy: Indiewire on “unprecedented in-person meeting of Indiewood chiefs” convened to write a letter to Jack Valenti (via TMN)
  • Grant’s slow descent into karaoke (also via Anil) (My own theory of karaoke: more than just Japan’s revenge on the world for losing WWII, it’s v2.0 of Japan’s own New World Order, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
  • ‘Kickers

    I recently informed a disappointed Allen & Co. that greg.org is not considering a bid, and my reasons for not getting plastic surgery have nothing to do with not knowing where Stephanie Seymour gets her fat harvested. But thanks to Elizabeth Spiers, I now have an excuse to visit New York Magazine.
    Though she explained the origin of her new weblog’s name, The Kicker, on her own site, where I come from, um, down on the farm, ‘kickers are boots, boots that connect up from time to time with piles of dung. This may explain why Spiers put a connection–or link, as they say ’round here– to my site.
    All of which led me (via Google, the indie’s Lexis-Nexis), to Lillian Ross’s 1995 New Yorker hangout with her 10th-grade, Manhattan private school girlfriends, “The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue.” You all must read it. And not just because now, eight years later, these are the women making notes for a vapid tell-all book about the publicist industry when they should be dolling up Lara Shriftman’s invitations with a “cute stamp.”)

    Pentagon Memorial: S.N.A.F.U.

    Peter Max, who presumably made art protesting the Vietnam war during his cosmic 60’s hippy days, clearly found alternate paths to self-actualization, paths which lead to becoming The Official Artist for any and every sense-free bureaucracy he could find.
    Peter Max's treacly WTC fundraising poster, image: petermax.com
    With all the service he’s given the Federal Government–including the INS and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission–perhaps he was under the impression that he didn’t need to pay income taxes on that $1.1 million. [And when you realize Max’s sentence was teaching art to schoolchildren, you wonder who really paid for his crimes: the artist or the kids?]
    Anyway, now that that pesky expert jury has disbanded, the talent-blind administrators of the Pentagon Memorial project got back to business as usual, namely, commissioning an Official Piece Of Crap from Peter Max. According to the WashPost, the Peter Max Pentagon Memorial Fundraising Poster will be available for sale at http://www.att.com/mil [Q: Isn’t that page’s title, “AT&T Military Headquarters,” exactly what Ike warned us about?], which is unusual, since Max’s most widely distributed recent work was the cover of a Verizon phone book.
    The most annoying thing: At one time, the Military Industrial Complex did produce some amazing art.
    [thanks, Tyler, for just ruining my day]

    “Kieslowski Season!” “Tarantino Season!” “Kieslowski Season!”

    To explain how I came up with my Souvenir series of ultimately inter-related short films, I went into an extended discussion of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog with someone recently. Now it turns out Riverside Studios in London is screening the entire Dekalog starting Sunday as part of its Krzysztof Kieslowski Season.
    It’s not like it used to be, when you could only see Dekalog in festival screenings. Now there’s a 3-disc DVD version available, marginally better than the 2-disc set released briefly in 1999. There’s also a boxed set of Three Coleurs out now. Still, Kieslowski’s films can be visually mesmerizing; see them on the big screen when you can. [Unfortunately, I’m getting to London on the 15th, three days after the Season ends.]
    At the opening of his discussion of Kieslowski‘s work, the Guardian‘s Derek Malcolm reminds us that Pulp Fiction closely beat out Three Colours: Red for the 1994 Golden Palm at Cannes. What kind of world would we live in if Kieslowski, not Tarantino, had won? Hint: Tarantino describes his latest films, Kill Bill, as a “duck press of all the grindhouse cinema” he’s ever seen. If it’s all the same, I’m going with wabbit.

    Links which don’t entail writing long essays

    Alana’s wonderful Venn Diagram, “Compleat Diagram of Strange Persons 2003” inspires me to refine the similar universe I have post-it noted on foamcore under the bed. Stay tuned. [via TMN]
    As befits a Washington hipster, Listen Missy posts in near-realtime about K Street and her friends&fans post back. We all post because we care, Steven. Because we care.
    Coming yesterday: A limited-edition Lost in Translation soundtrack CD, complete with on-the-set pictures by Sofia Coppola. [via Fimoculous]
    TMF, TML runs a piece on covering the death of George Plimpton that his a little close to home. “Jacob Weisberg, Editor, Slate: Well, it’s a no-brainer. Really, what do you do? Call a couple of people up and then transcribe their responses verbatim? And, you know, failing that, cut-and-paste quotes from existing interviews. Probably one of the easiest forms of journalism there is.” [Jacob, have I got a story for you. via Gawker]

    Australian Mall out, Architecture Mall in at WTC Site

    A couple of weeks ago, the Port Authority bought out Westfield America’s lease for the retail areas of the WTC site, temporarily emptying one chair at the master plan negotiating table. The square peg mall developers from Australia just couldn’t accept that South Street Seaport, SoHo, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Lincoln Center were all the mall Manhattan needs right now, thanks.
    But as the Observer reports, yesterday uber-leaseholder Larry Silverstein announced deals with three of the biggest brand names in the architecture business to “collaborate” in designing the office towers envisioned in Daniel Libeskind’s master plan. Norman Lord Foster, Fumihiko Maki, and Jean Nouvel will each design an office building, which will sit alongside Santiago Calatrava’s train station and the David Childs/Libeskind Freedom Tower, creating a veritable archipalooza of classy-ness. Larry’s bubba‘d be so proud.
    There’s been alot of anxious hyperbole about what the WTC site will eventually look and feel like, how the process is going, and the supposed failures associated with Libeskind “losing control” over his “vision.” More and more, this process–and the proposed greatest hits list of architectural statements–reminds me of the master plan for Berlin’s historic hub, Potsdamer Platz.
    Renzo Piano created the master plan, which was divided, charmingly, into the Sony Center and the Daimler Center (which Piano also designed). Related: An exhibit, “Planning Potsdamer Platz,” was at the National Building Museum (among other places) in 1999. And The Potsdamer Platz: Urban Architectures for a New Millennium, a book by Yamin von Rauch.