November 2004 Archives

Unlike that otherart rock band, Fischerspooner, Maxi Geil & PlayColt are actually still around. Also unlike FS, you might actually like hearing them play. [Other ways they differ from that flash in the 2002 pan: they're smart, but not in a stupid way; knowing, but not in an annoying way; they actually perform, and not in a lipsynchy way; and they're not tired; oh, and they don't blowwww.]

Anyway, they've got a date coming up at their old haunt, Joe's Pub, November 29th, so mark your calendars. WTH? That's TONIGHT. [thanks for the heads up, Beck.] Screw your calendars, just go stand in line.

Maxi Geil & PlayColt site

[Oh, this is under "making movies" because, although she probably denies it now, MG&PC singer Rebecca Chamberlain was in my first film.]

For those who wondered, after watching The Cremaster Cycle, if Matthew Barney was really a top...

For those who want to top Matthew Barney yourself...

Have I got a site for you: CremasterFanatic.com

While there's plenty of Cremaster-related material, including fan photos and videos [!!], I like the news section the best. It's got reports on Barney's latest film, de Lama Lamina, which opened last month at the Sao Paolo Biennial.

de Lama Lamina was shot documentary-style during this year's Carnaval in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, on a Barney-created float surrounded by 1,000 Barney-clad samba dancers. Two actors representing deities from the local Candomble religion rode the float, a mud-covered clearcutting tractor hauling a torn up tree trunk.

Did someone say trunk? Since one role involved an "auto-erotic scene filmed under a slow-moving vehicle in an extremely confined set," Barney's people ran an ad, hoping to cast someone from local "porn/stuntman" stock. Yow, documentary-style indeed.

Links:
CremasterFanatic.com
Local Male Pornstars Wanted [AIN]

Issue of 2004-12-06
Posted 2004-11-29
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
COMMENT/ GOING DOWN/ John Cassidy on the declining dollar.
THE CULTURE WARS/ WHY KNOW?/ Daniel Radosh on a group of Kinsey debunkers.
DEPT. OF DETERRENCE/ FOR THE BIRDS/ Ben McGrath on the latest anti-pigeon efforts uptown.
CLOSET-SPACE DEPT./ HOME ALONE/ Rebecca Mead on empty nesters.
TOP THIS DEPT./ WHOíS COUNTING?/ Lauren Collins attends a Guinness Book of Records get-together.

FROM THE ARCHIVES
EXCERPT/ The Second Decade: 1935-1944/ Nancy Franklin/ A portfolio of old cartoons and an essay published in The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker [which would make someone an excellent holiday gift, don't you think?]

I've admired Hirokazu Kore-eda's films since seeing Maboroshi at New Directors/New Films in 1995. His 2000 film, After Life and Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I were what finally stoked the fire under me to get me finally start making movies myself.

Of course, After Life's got much more recommending it than inspiring my ersatz film forays. It shows the development of Kore-eda's highly evocative documentary approach to narrative fiction, for example, a technique he refined in the understated--and underdistributed--Distance.

This, combined with his expert direction of non-professional actors, resulted in the masterful--and Cannes-winning--performances by his child actors in Nobody Knows, which will be released in the US in January.

Anyway, it's all reason enough for The Reel Roundtable to invite me to introduce a screening of After Life on Monday, December 6th, at the Millenium Theater. It's part of the Roundtable's Blogs and Film series, which is organized by the incisive and intrepid Elizabeth Carmody.

When: Mon., December 6, @7:30pm
Where: Millenium Theater (66 E. 4th St, betw. Second and Bowery)
How Much: $5
More Info: Reel Roundtable [Reelroundtable.com]
Who's Crazy Enough To Ask My Opinion: Elizabeth's blog at IndieWIRE

Related links:
Midnight Eye's interview with Kore-eda.
Kore-eda's official site.

The debut live performance of Pierre Huyghe's puppet opera was last week at Harvard's Carpenter Center, Le Corbusier's only building in the US.

While it's not quite a review, Ann Wilson Lloyd's report in the Times gives more details of the production/exhibition, which runs through April 2005.

The synopsis: it's Team America: World Police meets Adaptation meets My Architect.

Says Huyghe,

"I found myself in the same position as Le Corbusier," he said recently, "of someone invited to do a project and formalize it in a specific context. I felt overwhelmed by the conditions of this predefined context. Then I found this book by Sekler and Curtis, and I realized it was a parallel situation. The difficulty in coming up with an idea became the idea."

Jason's got some discussion/speculation about Wes Anderson's so-far monogamous relationship with Futura in his films, which continues into The Life Aquatic.

Futura and Wes Anderson [kottke.org]

Related:
new The Life Aquatic trailers at Apple.com
Talk about control: Anderson's next project is stop-action animation (what, no puppets?)

Sorry, your entire Sunday morning isn't enough. Now the NYT Arts & Leisure section wants your whole weekend. Jan 7-9, 2005, to be precise, far enough in advance that you can't pretend you have something else planned.

Some program highlights:
Sat (1/8), 6:00-7:15 p.m.
"Bigger Roles, Smaller Films" Patricia Clarkson and Hilary Swank tell rockstar editor Jodi Kantor what it's like to work with Katie Holmes, ["that Oscar-nom-less little scene-stealer."]

Sunday (1/9), 4:00-5:15 p.m.
"The Prophet of a New Modern Architecture"
Nicolai "Herbie Who?" Ouroussoff interviews Rem Koolhaas. Doesn't say who they're talking about. Huh.

a couple of the things I would've missed had I not actually read the printed version of the Sunday Times:

Issue of 2004-11-29
Posted 2004-11-22

FROM THE ARCHIVE
CARTOONS/ The First Decade: 1925-1934/ A selection from the recently published The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker.

Is it a Hollywood perk trend, or just a by-product of working at The Directors Bureau? Whichever, director/artist Mike Mills is the latest auteur to attain that most incongruous of filmmaking achievements: his own blindingly trendy store in Tokyo.

Humans by Mike Mills, located in Harajuku, right by the massive Roppongi Hills comples, is actually a "store cum gallery" [eww. there goes my Net Nanny rating...] and "more a conceptual experience than a shopping trip," according to Casa BRUTUS, one of a million Paper-like magazines in Japan.

From the limited Japanese writeups I'm finding, that means t-shirts, cd's, and window installations by the likes of Susan Cianciolo and her Japanese doppelgangers.

From Mills's Humans Manifesto: "I don't trust people who are very articulate. The only way to be sane is to embrace your insanity. When you feel guilty about being sad, remember Walt Disney was a manic depressive. Everything I said could be totally wrong."

Yep, sounds great, now get back to work.

Humans by Mike Mills near-empty official site, Casa BRUTUS mention, and 06/2004 launch week info (in Japanese)
The Directors Bureau
Coincidence? Fellow TDB'er Sofia Coppola's Japanese fashion line, Milk Fed
Related Mike Mills posts on greg.org

So now some guy's drinking only Pepsi for 45 days and blogging about it?

45 days? Call me when you get to three years, pal.

This entry, like the 1425 before it, was brought to you by Diet Coke. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pee. Again.

Here we are, the week before Thanksgiving, stuffed and groggy from consuming so much MoMA-related press, which we probably have to regurgitate on Thursday for our out-of-town relatives.

Then comes this new angle for the MoMA-weary: Turns out Yoshio Taniguchi's other silvery, $400 million-plus, urban planning tour de force, tourist mega-destination has recently opened in Hiroshima. It's the Naka Incineration Plant, a 490,000 sf waterfront waste processing center that's open for public tours, in order to encourage Hiroshimans to consume wisely. [and while they're there; Taniguchi threw in a bar.]

Like its sister building in Manhattan, the NIP [hmm. let me confirm that acronym, -g.] features Taniguchi's clean lines and meticulous attention to detail. No word on the ticket price.

Hilton Kramer, you cranky old deluded bastard, consider this an early Christmas gift. And for the rest of you MoMA critics, don't say I never gave you anything (besides a drubbing over some of your flimsy and/or hysterical arguments, that is). As for me, I think it kind of looks like the Tate.

Beauty in Garbage: Naka Incineration Plant by Yoshio Taniguchi [Fred Bernstein in ArchNewsNow, via life without buildings]

First, a shoutout to all the advertisers, incluging WesAnderson's new joint, The Life Aquatic, Sharp's intriguingly opaque More To See (which contrasts with the crystal clarity of their flatscreens, I'm sure), and the ever-brilliant Daddy Types (ahem).

With that out of the way, we should hurry and put The Grey Automobile on our calendars for Sunday night. 7 PM. Queens Theatre. It sounds like a fascinating, not-to-be-missed film experience.

Enrique Rosas was the Mexican Feuillade, making wildly popular crime serial films in the Teens and Twenties. Made in 1919 with a style we think we discovered ourselves--of verite, documentary footage, staged scenes, and actual historical figures playing themselves alongside professional actors--The Grey Automobile was based on an actual gang of robbers who terrorized Mexico City in 1915.

It was the made-for-TV miniseries or the torn-from-today's-headlines Law & Order of its day, except that it starred the real investigator in the case and it features footage of the criminals' executions by firing squad, shot by Rosas (the footage, that is, not the criminals).

The Grey Automobile survives only as a disjointedly edited feature from the thirties; it's a remarkable-looking but hard-to-follow important artifact of Mexican cinema.

Turning these weaknesses into strengths, however, is director Claudio ValdÈs Kuri, who applies an ingenious solution from the Japanese silent film tradition.

Benshi were voiceover/storytellers who gave their own colorful narration to hard-to-follow imported films. For The Grey Automobile, Kuri directs benshi Irene Akiko Iida, accompanied with translation and an original score. It's a cinema-meets-theatre spectacle that's gotten bewildered-but-ecstatic reviews all along the festival circuit. You shouldn't miss it, but unless you get your butt to Queens Theatre tomorrow night, you will.

See El Automovil Gris/The Grey Automobile at Queens Theatre, 11/21/2004 at 7PM.
Either get baked or study up before you go: The official El Automovil Gris site.

When we went to DIA Beacon last fall, we gave the Gerhard Richter gallery a cursory glance on the way in, and then were transfixed by it on the way out. It's the kind of thing you have to be in the mood for, attuned to, and that seems to take some time.

Felix Salmon feels similarly, but he writes about the experience much more clarity.

Richter at Dia [felixsalmon.com]

I heard there was art at MoMA. Here are some highlights:

One, (Number 31, 1950), 1950, Jackson Pollock: One of the iconic works in MoMA's collection, it now feels more closely situated with the of the artist's work; you easily take in several paintings at a time. [One page]

In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Damon Runyon was the most widely read journalist in the country, and his movies like Double Indemnity and Broadway plays like Guys and Dolls were hits. Runyon held court nightly in Lindy's Restaurant on Broadway and 51st Street, which, even in May 1949, three years after his death, was the fabled realworld haunt of many of his thinly fictionalized characters: Dave the Dude, Harry the Horse, Izzy Cheesecake.

In his Times' May 22, 1949 profile, Leo "Lindy" Lindemann told of a "timid, well-dressed" older woman who came to the restaurant asking after "some of those quaint persons Mr. Runyon writes about." Lindy pointed her to a regular, who he identified as Morris the Schnook. "She was delighted. She pressed his hand when she left. When she reached the siewalk, the Lindy habitues roared with laughter. Morris the Schnook was their invention. Their butt was really Abe Lyman, the orchestra leader." And thus, the Times saw fit for the first time to print the term "schnook."

Now, 55 years later, and just months after self-hating Jew Jerome Robbins was quoted calling himself "a schnook from Weehawken," I'm as surprised as an orchestra leader to offer up the 86th appearance of "schnook" in the paper of record. Frankly, I'm a little verklempt.

What Is the Value of Priceless Art? Debate Continues on $20 Admission [NYT]

Needless to say, he's in a bad mood.

Related, I'm guessing, from Christopher Knight in the LAT: "It will also drive some people nuts, which is another reason to applaud. At a preview, one notoriously fusty critic was heard to shriek, in reference to what he imagined was being done to Barr's legacy, 'This is patricide! Patricide!'"

Oedipus on 53rd St [Observer]

Now! From television's acknowledged experts in adultery, profanity, lying, and covetousness!

According to Variety, FX SVP Gerard Bocaccio dreamed up the concept for 'The Ten Commandments,' a series of 10 one-hour TV movies which will "explore the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America."

Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section Eight will exec produce, and the two will be joined by eight other "A-list directors [sic, Clooney's A-list? how about 'up-and-coming'? Seriously, people]," and each will tackle a commandment.

I wonder who gets "Thou shalt not steal?"

Related:
FX gets serious about Bible study [Variety, via Yahoo, thanks to GreenCine]
Read like a million posts about Kieslowski's Decalogue, a ten-hour made-for-TV exploration of the spiritual and moral issues faced by modern America Poland.

As part of a settlement in a discrimination suit, Abercrombie & Fitch will create an "Office of Diversity."

$50 million buys a lot of waxing [SJ Mercury News]

While a few "right on"s and "elitist"s trickled in over the weekend, and my favorite--"MoMA is a corporation, the new building is a corporate HQ. You are a foot soldier"--just arrived yesterday morning, the quality of the responses to my little MoMA admissions price challenge did not improve with time.

I should've wrapped this up and posted the winners a couple of days ago, but I've been too busy hobnobbing with a bunch of MoMA bigwigs (10%) and a kid (99%, Yeah, it doesn't add up. Tell me about it.)

"Artists from Abbas Kiarostami to Shirin Neshat to Ousmane Sembene have confronted the misogyny of conservative Islam in ways that are at once more damning and less willfully profane."

Still, just because it was at once outrageously incendiary and a lackluster piece of filmmaking, it's still chilling and despicable that Van Gogh was killed for Submission.

The Day I Became a Martyr: Islam Protest Brings Fatal Fatwa [Village Voice]
Related: greg.org entries for Theo Van Gogh

Was it Documenta where I was taken in by Raghubir Singh's quietly masterful color photographs of India, which bring an artist's eye to documentary photos. Gabriel Orozco meets Cartier-Bresson.

There was a great show at the Smithsonian last year, and now his work has come to Sepia International. In his review, The Voice's Vince Aletti tries to gently correct the art historical record to reflect Singh's early(-er) and powerful use of color. Scoot over, Egglestone, and let Singh up there on the dais, too.

A Windshield View [Village Voice]
Raghubir Singh: A Retrospective, through Dec. 30 [Sepia International]
Singh Books at Amazon: A Way Into India, River of Colour

Jonathan Glancey gives an invigorating description of Sir Norman Foster & Co's Grand Viaduc du Millau, an awesome bridge on the A25 running from Paris to the Cote d'Azur.

Come fly with me [Guardian UK]

Issue of 2004-11-22
Posted 2004-11-15

FROM THE ARCHIVE
LETTER FROM EUROPE/ Jane Kramer/ Liberty, Equality, Sorority/ On the political parity law in France/ Issue of 2000-05-29

Architect Chad Smith plays Scarlett Johanson in his own remake of Lost in Translation: he's tagging along to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo on his boyfriend's business trip. The only trouble is, he's not lost, he's not depressed, and he's not confused. And presumably, when he gets back to the US, people at the Golden Globes won't think he's a bee-atch.

Stick your nose into his diary at littleminx.com.

The artist Olafur Eliasson will be speaking at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC about his work, including last year's The Weather Project at the Tate in London.

Olafur Eliasson, The Demetrion Lecture: Wednesday, Nov. 17 at 7pm. [Hirshhorn.si.edu]

This afternoon on WNYC, Jonathan Schwartz was reading an underwriter plug for Zankel Hall, when he stopped and said, "Some of you may remember that Zankel Hall is in the site of the Carnegie Theater, a movie theater with--well it was very small and down a windy staircase--with personality. So many theaters with personality have closed."

That got me thinking, while Schwartz rattled off a dozen theaters I'd never heard of, of the theaters that have closed since I moved to New York:

A round of applause to the advertisers who keep greg.org swimming (ok, maybe wading...ok, maybe slightly damp) in MoMA tickets. Please show them we're not ALL poverty-stricken Marxist anti-consumerists:

Just what's been on my mind:

Thanks for the response so far. I should say that while I think Kurt Andersen's idea for the federal government to pay for all the country's museum entry fees is a good one, I see two problems with it:
1) the problem in the White House, and
2) it's Kurt Andersen's idea, so if you'd like me to send him the passes...

Related:
Free Museums for All [Studio 360, 7/28/2001]
My diatribe supporting Billionaires For MoMA which, if you make it to the end, has an offer for free passes.

Fimoculous has an excellent collection of articles, interviews [including Rex's own], and links for the premiere last week of Chuck Olsen's film/site/project Blogumentary . Check it out.

Blogumentary [mitochondria at fimoculous]
Blogumentary production blog

From the team who ruined BMWFilms.com comes a new collection of dependent shorts, just in time for the holidays. Amazon Theater is a series of five short films "featur[ing] products you can purchase at Amazon."

Someone's not getting it in a very deep way. On paper, Amazon Theater should be an ad/film/shoppertainment convergence dream-come-true:

Scott MacMillan has a wide-ranging, disturbing roundup of the violent aftermath of Theo Van Gogh's murder and public cremation, including the 5-hour standoff--complete with gunfire and grenades--with militant terrorist suspects in The Hague.

[Slate] Holland in Flames
Religious violence and terror arrests stun the Netherlands in the aftermath of filmmaker Theo van Gogh's murder.

[Update: I would point out this is my own opinion; I do volunteer work for MoMA, but I don't speak for the Museum or any of its officers. I wrote this in direct reaction to FreeMoMA.org, which makes a lot of assertions about MoMA that, in my experience, don't ring true at all.]

And that's why it's $20. When the MoMA's Film curator presented the story of the new building, as told through a series of silent movie title cards and film clips, three scenes got way bigger laughs than the rest:

Glenn Lowry discusses the building with the curatorial staff was the scene from Babe where docile sheep, doing exactly as they're told, march in formation.

What those curatorial meetings were really like was a shot from Twelve Angry Men where the jurors confront Henry Fonda and tell him why he's wrong.

But Mike Margitich quickly meets his goal for the capital campaign brought down the house. A 1930's tuxedo'ed man locks the door, walks over to an elegantly dressed woman, grabs her by the shoulders, and shakes her violently until a wallet drops on the floor. He picks it up, and the two sit down to dinner.

If the last cremation you watched was in Diamonds Are Forever, now's your chance to get up to speed and stick it to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism at the same time.

In the event one of the many death threats he received over Submission, his short film decrying abuse of Muslim women, panned out, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh said he wanted a public cremation. Unfortunately, he's getting his wish today at 1700h Amsterdam Time, CET, (or 1100 EST).

The Nederland 2 TV network is carrying the event live online, starting at 1650h, which is in like an hour.

Related [??] [Montgomery Advertiser, via Defamer]: "Hagman has stipulated that upon his death, he wants his body to be ground in a wood chipper and scattered in a field, where wheat is to be harvested for a cake to be eaten by his friends and family one year later...." [and if that's not enough to make you want to live forever, read on...]

Why else would you exhibit the same work in two different places?

The Museum of Modern Art has this stack, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, in two galleries--the Prints Galleries and the Contemporary Gallery. I'm trying to think of any other artist whose work could be shown in two places at once.

Meanwhile, the new building is literally awe-inspiring. My biggest fear was that the gargantuan galleries would dwarf the art. It's not even close.

I remember during the OK trial, when Margaret Cho ran into Johnny Cochrane at the Mondrian, she gushed, "I love your show!" The only reason I didn't use that line with Mike Ovitz was because his case wasn't on TV. Still, we had a good time trading war stories from our days workin' for the Mouse.

Oh, wait, I think I dropped something.

This is better than pirates. Modernartnotes reports that the Whitney is preparing to realize Robert Smithson's work, Floating Island, a landscaped barge which will be tugged around New York Harbor.

I've been waiting for this since Spring 1997, when Brian Conley and Joe Amrhein talked about doing it after their successful recreation of Smithson's Dead Tree at Pierogi 2000.

Related:
Whitney gossip at Modern Art Notes
Artforum reviews Dead Tree at Pierogi 2000, May '97
Dead Tree and Floating Island at RobertSmithson.com
Man claims Governors Island for several minutes with pirate flag

Huh, what're the odds? I just finished a piece for an offline publication about machinima, and the first thing I see at this year's Margaret Mead Documentary Festival is Beyond Manzanar, a video game-based exploration of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and political attitudes toward Iranian Americans during the 1979-80 hostage crisis. It was created by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand.

Fortunately, America has moved beyond the dark era of racially based policies, into the crystal clear dawn of religion- and nationality-based detention and discrimination. Why not celebrate our progress this Saturday?

Beyond Manzanar, presented somehow at 4:15, Sat. 11/13 at the AMNH
Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Nov. 11-14 and 20-21, at the American Museum of Natural History
Beyond Manzanar's site
Ansel Adams' photographs of Manzanar and its internees

Issue of 2004-11-15
Posted 2004-11-08

FROM THE ARCHIVES
THE SKYLINE/ Lewis Mumford/ Growing PainsóThe New Museum/ The Magazine's first architecture critic discusses The Modern's new building/ Issue of 1939-06-03

After the stunning success of Team America World Police [Hey, turns out they got the US political climate right after all...], puppet projects are breaking out all over.

At Harvard's Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, the artist Pierre Huyghe is staging a puppet meta-opera that tells the stories of Le Corbusier's design for building and Huyghe's production of the opera. [That's the "meta-" part. And yes, the puppets have puppets.]

The performance is November 18th at 6pm; a filmed version will screen in a blobular theater attachment until April 17.

Huyghe & Corbusier: Harvard Project [VES, Harvard]
NYT story with rehearsal stills

ICM's Man in New York, Bart Walker is going to CAA. Walker is known for making it happen for filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola. His "Jarmusch-style" foreign presale fundraising helped Coppola keep the copyright for Virgin Suicides and maintain final cut over Lost in Translation. [via filmmakermagazineblog]

Related:
Translating the deals into a movie [greg.org]
Tokyo Story [fall 2003 Filmmaker Mag]

In addition to the shooter/stabber, Dutch police and intelligence officials have arrested eight other men ages 19-26 in connection with the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Several of them had been detained before in terrorism-related investigations.

Meanwhile, the man caught at the scene is being questioned for terrorist ties; he reportedly had a testament with him, "indicating he anticipated being killed in the attack."

Both politicians and the Dutch public are agitated over what may be the country's first incident of Islamic terrorism. The AP reports a public cremation is being planned Tuesday for Van Gogh, which seems like a pretty showy sendoff. Should placate the Hindus, though. [According to Dutch news, he talked widely about having a big funeral party in case any of his numerous death threats panned out.]

See the map of Linnaeusstraat in eastern Amsterdam where Van Gogh was killed. [nu.nl]
Police Arrest 8 Tied to Suspect in Killing of Dutch Filmmaker [NYT]
Radical Questioned in Filmmaker's Death [AP/NYT, 'Radical'? How about 'Suspect'?]
Van Gogh bereidde weken geleden eigen uitvaart voor [nu.nl]

No, that doesn't mean they're now recruiting Bush dodgers. It means they're promoting the country as an up-and-coming alternative location for film production. Here's a partial list of benefits to shooting in Iceland:

For those keeping score at home, "a year later" is this year:

The U.S. troops said there was little they could do to prevent looting of the ammunition site, 30 miles south of Baghdad.

"We were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out," said one senior noncommissioned officer who was at the site in late April 2003.

"On our last day there, there were at least 100 vehicles waiting at the site for us to leave" so looters could come in and take munitions.

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots," another officer said.

...

Despite the stockpiles at the site, no U.S. forces were specifically assigned to guard Al Qaqaa ó known to U.S. forces in Iraq as Objective Elm ó after the 101st Airborne left the facility.

...

"There was no plan to prevent these weapons from being used against us a year later."

David Nash, described by his mother as an "aspiring artist," seized control of Governors Island in New York Harbor yesterday and held it in the name of the Blue Tulip Party, at least until 6:40AM, when somebody spotted the pirate flag he'd hoisted on the island's flagpole.

Being a non-cutthraot sort of pirate, Nash ordered the harbor patrol cops who arrested him to "Put [their] weapons down, and go in peace."

He has been exiled, at least temporarily, to his own personal Elba, on the Island of Bellevue.

Man tries to seize Governors Island [NYDN, via TMN]

A while back, I filled by DVD rental queue with over 100 movie suggestions from greg.org readers. Even combined with some of my own ongoing additions, I've depleted my queue completely. More suggestions are welcome,

In the mean time, here are some short reviews of DVD's fresh from the queue:

Unknown Pleasures (2003, Zhang Ke Jia) The wrapper says, "think a Chinese Slacker, but it's more a Chinese Reality Bites directed by Mike Leigh.

Super Size Me (2003, Morgan Spurlock) I wanted to play catchup, but it felt like most other things from SoHo these days--played out. If this were an order of fries, I could've done with a small.

Shadows (1959, John Cassavetes) Rewatched in the wake of the fleeting appearance of Cassavetes' first version. It's like an American Unknown Pleasures. My kid's first movie (the B&W is good for their visual development, right?)

The French Connection (1971, William Friedkin) I confess, I got it because Nick Nolte loved it, and it's a spare, elliptical classic. Felt like it had less dialogue--or a shorter script, anyway--than even Lost in Translation.

Capturing The Friedmans (2003, Andrew Jarecki) The DVD experience is so different than the film BECAUSE THERE'S CLEARLY EXONERATING EVIDENCE ON THE EXTRAS DVD. It's like only finding out the secret of The Crying Game on the director's commentary. Oh, and clowns disturb me.

Ridicule (1996, Patrice Leconte) Very very funny, but there's a closeup of (pardon my French) a fat, uncut queue in the first scene that might make the rest of watching this movie with your inlaws rather uncomfortable.

The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola) Yeah, yeah, I just got it to study the editing of the baptism/massacre scene. You should see this in a theatre.

Tigerland (2000, Joel Schumacher) Joel Schumacher's Full Frontal, Of course, Full Frontal was made in the wake of Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and Oceans Eleven and paid us back with Oceans Twelve [and, granted, K Street], whereas Tigerland only gave us Phone Booth.

Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant) Even better the third time (I'd put it on the queue before I got it for my birthday), but with a positively Third World selection of DVD extras: i.e., almost none. Have someone read my interview with producer Dany Wolf to you while you watch it.

Faces (1968, John Cassavetes) Impressively depressing.

Come Undone (2000, Sebastien Lifshitz) For a brief moment after I turned it off, I planned to look up who the Stephane Rideau fanatic was who recommended this meandering gay French teen soap opera (as wel as Francois Ozon's Sitcom) to me, and chew them out. Now that they have much bigger worries, I'm glad I didn't.

Sign yourself up for DVD rentals at GreenCine.

That's the gist of just about every pundit I've heard today: those pesky gays and their persistent existence cost Dems the election.

Sounds like it's going to be a long, hard, punishing four years for gay folk in this country. At least the submissive bottoms will make out alright...

A very talented art director/designer friend is interested in moving to an agency position (he's currently inhouse at a hip lifestyle/fashion company).

If you either work in an advertising agency in NYC or know people who do, and you're game to share your insights with him, please drop me a line.

Thanks, I appreciate it very much. [And I know it's a lot to ask, especially coming on the heels of last week's "hey, check out my advertisers!" request and all...]

Scott, you got me again. I first marveled at photos of this event: "Day-um, Sforza's advance people got in there and repainted that fine barn with that rustic typeface. And here, I thought the entire state had been turned into an industrial hog factory."

All images are AP via Yahoo, from inside the Journal Pavilion in Sioux City, Iowa.

But democracy starts at home.

VOTE.

Dutch filmmaker and great grandson* Theo Van Gogh was murdered on an Amsterdam street today, ostensibly because of his short film, Submission. [That's the title.] Since Submission was broadcast on the VPRO TV network in August, Van Gogh and the film's writer, an "ex-Muslim" member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had received numerous death threats and accusations of blasphemy.

Seriously, what is up with these people? I can't believe anyone not related to the filmmakers actually watches a short film, much less gets mad enough to kill over one.

[There was that one time when MVRDV got death threats over their short animated film, Pig City... And the guy who got them in that trouble, Pim Fortuyn, did get assassinated himself...]

Of course, if you make a movie with verses from the Koran painted on nude women's bodies, which are visible through a translucent chador, I guess you might piss some of the wrong people off. So is it the offended militant Muslims who are crazy, or the Dutch?

Watch several minutes of Van Gogh and Ali's film, Submission at VPRO.
A BBC profile of Van Gogh calls him "the Netherlands' Michael Moore." [talk about kickin' a guy when he's down...]
Reuters just reports, thank you very much.

* [update: When a guy's named Van Gogh, you figure he's related. When he's named Theo, you should figure he's related to the brother. He is. He's Theo's great-grandson, i.e., Vincent's great grand-nephew. Vincent didn't have any kids. That we know of.]

Issue of 2004-11-08
Posted 2004-11-01

THE CRITICS
BOOKS/ Louis Menand/ Ask Not, Tell Not/ Anatomy of an inaugural.
A CRITIC AT LARGE/ Meghan O'Rourke/ Nancy Drew's Father/ The fiction factory of Edward Stratemeyer.
BOOKS/ Peter Schjeldahl/ Masterpieces for Sale/ How Lord Duveen turned millionaires into art lovers.
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ The Fury and the Jury/ Women, and men, make themselves heard.
MUSICAL EVENTS/ Alex Ross/ America, the Baleful/ Sounds of protest in New York's downtown music scene.
DANCING/ Joan Acocella/ New Heights/ An A.B.T. dancer defies a ballet convention.
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ Night and Day/ "Ray" and "Birth."

Don't know quite where to file this. It's from the Detroit Free Press. [via The Revealer]

Whenever they go to a foreign country, the Bush-Cheney people like to show respect for the quaint local culture, and Hawaii is no different.

Dressing the natives in their colorful local garb and dressing the stage with indigenous plantlife? That's just like their trip to Africa.

And thoughtfully providing a caption to let us know what country they're in? Just like their visit to Romania in 2002.

Related, on Gothamist: Dick Cheney laughs in the face of Death