Now I fear that my entire life may be punctuated incorrectly (it is).
Author: greg
WNYC on A Montage Maestro
On WNYC this morning, Sara Fishko trained her typical I’m-lyrical-yet-significant gaze on Slavko Vorkapich, the Serbian experimental filmmaker who became the leading montage editor inearly Hollywood. He sought to create, not just a story, but “pure cinema,” a rhythmic experience of light and sound. The frenetic “flying newspaper headline/oblique tight shot of typewriter keys” style he created became a ubiquitous cliche. Later on, as the head of USC’s film school and through wildly popular lectures in the sixties, he turned a generation of filmmakers, cinematographers, and artists into his pure cinema groupies.
If WPS1 ever streams an archive tape of a Vorkapich lecture at MoMA, I’ll let you know. In the mean time, Fishko’s report, disguised as a tone poem, is on the WNYC site.
Let Them Eat Cake
Welcome to a very special greg.org tribute to lowculture:
And I am an optimistic person. I guess if you want to try to find something to be pessimistic about, you can find it, no matter how hard you look, you know?
– 7/15/04, George W. Bush, talking about what he never promised in the Rose Garden.
“You know what?” she said. “I don’t look at it that way. I’m a very positive person. I really always think positive. I think of good thoughts for people, and when you have a negative thought you know what you have to do?”
(Why do we think she thought we were particularly needful of this advice?)
“You close your eyes,” she instructed. “You dismiss it and you think of something that you love and you know what I think about? You’re gonna laugh. A Hansen’s cake!”
We looked at her blankly.
“This great bakery in Beverly Hills, California,” Ms. Hilton said. “It’s got lots of sugar hearts on it and roses and little butterflies. I close my eyes like that” – here she demonstrated – “and you dismiss it. Negativity only brings negativity around you. ”
– 7/15/04, Kathy Hilton, reality TV star and voice of Barbie, demonstrating how we’ve found the level of the political room in this country at Tavern on the Green.
On Finding Schindler’s List and Making Period Films
In the Guardian, Thomas Kineally tells the rambling, sentimental story of coming across the Oskar Schindler story in 1980, when he dropped into a Beverly Hills handbag shop. Literally.
And in a rambling rant that ranges from the importance of obtaining copyright clearance for period music to the size of Reagan’s bowel movements (Hey, I report, you decide.), John Patterson gives crucial advice to filmmakers trying to authentically recreate the past on a tight budget. So what’s he say? Beats me; it makes almost no sense.
My advice: Do whatever Todd Haynes did in Velvet Goldmine. (Yeah, you could copy Far From Heaven, and almost go bust. Ask Killer Films if $16 million is low budget.)
On Finding Schindler’s List and Making Period Films
In the Guardian, Thomas Kineally tells the rambling, sentimental story of coming across the Oskar Schindler story in 1980, when he dropped into a Beverly Hills handbag shop. Literally.
And in a rambling rant that ranges from the importance of obtaining copyright clearance for period music to the size of Reagan’s bowel movements (Hey, I report, you decide.), John Patterson gives crucial advice to filmmakers trying to authentically recreate the past on a tight budget. So what’s he say? Beats me; it makes almost no sense.
My advice: Do whatever Todd Haynes did in Velvet Goldmine. (Yeah, you could copy Far From Heaven, and almost go bust. Ask Killer Films if $16 million is low budget.)
A Tibetan Sand Mandala Movie
[via waxy] A Flash movie of Tibetan monks making a sand mandala, made by David Hirmes using photos from the U of C.
Also on Hirmes.com, the Lewitt Variations, three Flash animations of possible interpretations of the instructions for a Sol Lewitt wall drawing. [to find it, check the periodic table-looking menu in the lower right corner for ‘Lw’.]
Bloghdad.com/Party_Zone
from an AP report, Coalition’s sealed compound includes a brisk bar scene:
The plushest tavern is the CIA’s rattan furnished watering hole, known as the ”OGA bar.” OGA stands for ”Other Government Agency,” the CIA’s low-key moniker.
The OGA bar has a dance floor with a revolving mirrored disco ball and a game room. It is open to outsiders by invitation only. Disgruntled CPA employees who haven’t wangled invites complain that the CIA favors women guests.
Someone give that woman a development deal–and a date
Not necessarily in that order.
1989: Woman gives birth to baby girl. Man helps change diapers at first, then abandons woman and 10-month old child. Woman laments the lack of real men like her father, moves in with father.
cut to –
2003: Ffifteen hardworking, single-parent years later, woman seeks fame and fortune in the entertainment industry. Ends up writing a weekly column for little conservative journal. Lives in Silver Lake, a raw-but-rapidly-gentrifying city in East L.A. full of “hippies,” “gays, bohemians, and industry types,” and which has one of the few public schools “where the children speak English at home.” In an overwhelmingly anti-war town, woman is a lonely pro-war supporter.
March 2003: Seeking fame and fortune in the entertainment industry that so many of her unshaven neighbors seem to have attained, woman starts blog. Receives, not a script deal, but positive reviews–from “the Matt Drudge of porn,” local warblogger, other Hollywood hangers-on.
First full-length post tells of her run-in at a gourmet grocery store with smug, self-absorbed, peace march-organizing creative type and his 4-year old son. Coins the term “Silver Lake Dads,” which is picked up by exactly one person–the warblogger–to praise the woman’s blog for “baiting hippie Silver Lake Dads”and to announce the availability of $5 wine on his failed Gawker clone.
June 2004: One week after organizing an Entertainment Industry And Political Bloggers In LA panel (still no development deal), woman is decried by writers, bloggers, hippies, creative types for her hatred and exclusion of same on panel. And, she says, for not linking to their hippie blogs.
In need of Father’s Day story, woman recycles 15-month old blog post about self-absorbed hippie in the supermarket. Attempts to reinvigorate failed coinage, Silver Lake Dads, All dads who do not abandon their children and who are not her dad are like peacenik Hollywood writers. Professes admiration for the fictional creation of same, a dad character on TV. Still no script deal. Still single.
Just say you’re going to an architecture film series.
If you’re in London this Father’s Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49′) of film and video works which “examine architecture’s complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states.” It will be shown at the Tate Modern, this Sunday at 15.00 (3:00 pm for the yanks). [via kultureflash]
Half of that time will be taken up by Jean Genet’s long-banned silent film, Un Chant d’Amour. It’s from 1950, the Eisenhower Era, when prison sex and erotic power-tripping guards was still considered an import, not an export, in the US.
It’s one of the landmarks of gay cinema [the DVD Times UK translates: “it contains possibly the earliest images of erect penises seen on a cinema screen.”]. The film influenced Derek Jarman, inspired Todd Haynes’ Poison, and lives on in every Calvin Klein perfume commercial you can think of.
Whether you take your father with you is none of my affair.
And they look so innocent…Elmgreen (l) and Dragset (r)
Related: Press coverage and reviews of Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibit at the Tate Modern through July 4th. They created a tiny animatronic sparrow which appears to be stunned and dying after flying into the window. Favorite stupid quote: “It took two artists to design the sparrow.”
Just say you’re going to an architecture film series.
If you’re in London this Father’s Day: The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have put together a short program (49′) of film and video works which “examine architecture’s complicit role in defining our enactment of psychological states.” It will be shown at the Tate Modern, this Sunday at 15.00 (3:00 pm for the yanks). [via kultureflash]
Half of that time will be taken up by Jean Genet’s long-banned silent film, Un Chant d’Amour. It’s from 1950, the Eisenhower Era, when prison sex and erotic power-tripping guards was still considered an import, not an export, in the US.
It’s one of the landmarks of gay cinema [the DVD Times UK translates: “it contains possibly the earliest images of erect penises seen on a cinema screen.”]. The film influenced Derek Jarman, inspired Todd Haynes’ Poison, and lives on in every Calvin Klein perfume commercial you can think of.
Whether you take your father with you is none of my affair.
And they look so innocent…Elmgreen (l) and Dragset (r)
Related: Press coverage and reviews of Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibit at the Tate Modern through July 4th. They created a tiny animatronic sparrow which appears to be stunned and dying after flying into the window. Favorite stupid quote: “It took two artists to design the sparrow.”
How Farenheit 9/11 Changes EVERYTHING
And this, from just one piece in the Times about the Ziegfeld Theater premiere of Farenheit 9/11:
1. “Can an artist have a luckier break than someone in power declaring their work should not be seen?…It is our belief, seeing the crowd, that HARVEY WEINSTEIN should send MICHAEL EISNER a plant.”
Plants replace muffin baskets as the speed-dial thank-you gift of choice in Hollywood. With all the Atkins going around, muffins are now the f***-you gift. Unchanged: still unsure how to read a muffin basket from a 300-lb monster. The unseen impact: slave wage assistants lose their only reliable source of grains.
2. Standing ovation now comes BEFORE the film.
3. “Yhere was some hissing when CONDOLEEZZA RICE appeared on screen.”
Supersized auditorium, darkness, loosen inhibitions and turn the Ziegfeld into the largest, loudest, most accurate test audience in town. [Oh wait, that stays the same. If you want to accurately predict public reception of your film, just run the trailer at the Ziegfeld. Those people know how to boo.]
4. “LEONARDO DICAPRIO, in a backward baseball cap and wispy facial hair, did group interviews at Mr. Weinstein’s request.”
We now care deeply what celebrities think about politics.
5. “Is it important for celebrities to be public about their political beliefs, a reporter asked.
Ooops – we’re running tight on space. YOUR NAME IN THIS SPACE to the person who can tell us what Mr. DiCaprio’s answer was.”
[stet]
How Farenheit 9/11 Changes EVERYTHING
And this, from just one piece in the Times about the Ziegfeld Theater premiere of Farenheit 9/11:
1. “Can an artist have a luckier break than someone in power declaring their work should not be seen?…It is our belief, seeing the crowd, that HARVEY WEINSTEIN should send MICHAEL EISNER a plant.”
Plants replace muffin baskets as the speed-dial thank-you gift of choice in Hollywood. With all the Atkins going around, muffins are now the f***-you gift. Unchanged: still unsure how to read a muffin basket from a 300-lb monster. The unseen impact: slave wage assistants lose their only reliable source of grains.
2. Standing ovation now comes BEFORE the film.
3. “Yhere was some hissing when CONDOLEEZZA RICE appeared on screen.”
Supersized auditorium, darkness, loosen inhibitions and turn the Ziegfeld into the largest, loudest, most accurate test audience in town. [Oh wait, that stays the same. If you want to accurately predict public reception of your film, just run the trailer at the Ziegfeld. Those people know how to boo.]
4. “LEONARDO DICAPRIO, in a backward baseball cap and wispy facial hair, did group interviews at Mr. Weinstein’s request.”
We now care deeply what celebrities think about politics.
5. “Is it important for celebrities to be public about their political beliefs, a reporter asked.
Ooops – we’re running tight on space. YOUR NAME IN THIS SPACE to the person who can tell us what Mr. DiCaprio’s answer was.”
[stet]
On The Art of Speed
Last night while I was rendering some footage in Final Cut, (“Estimated time: about 2 hours…”) I decided to watch the short films in Nike’s Art of Speed series.
The 15 filmmakers were asked to “interpret the idea of speed.” Well, by the end of the first film, David Ahuja’s Obstacle Course, MY idea about speed was, “Damn, I need a faster processor!” WMP generated so many video artifacts, Ahuja’s film ressembled a futurist painting. As the camera followed the running protagonist, the primary-colored objects in the background created jagged smears across my little video window. The guy would stand up, the video would freeze, and suddenly I’m looking at a pixelated motion study photograph straight out of HE Edgerton. Which, considering what I was watching, worked out just fine.
The Futurist Manifesto declared “that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.” [Umm, what’s that goddess’s name again?]
Moving to my other machine, I watched Obstacle Course as Ahuja intended. And there were still artifacts, this time by design. Digital palimpsests of the character’s movement through space. They were the kind of 1970’s video effect popularized by the likes of WGBH, the public TV station where many video art pioneers first explored the possibilities of technology. WGBH, which was also the home of ZOOM. [O-2-1-3-4 ]
Ahuja’s film was sweet, and my streaming epiphany endeared me to it, but by the sixth hyper-aestheticized, digitally altered racing film, I wondered if the fix was in. Directors’ attempts to portray the abstracted or metaphorical notions of speed that exist (presumably pure) in their heads too often ended up showcasing the chosen technology or technique instead.
This, too, may be by design, though. Art of Speed was coordinated by the interactive & effects agency RG/A; given all these render-heavy images, maybe processor cycles are the most relevant measure of speed here.
Then I saw Honest’s documentary-style film, The Shortest Race, in which they follow an entire actual competition, from the athletes’ deadly serious pre-race strategy soundbites to the winner hoisting a giant check on the podium. The race itself–a 1-meter dash–pokes fun at the sheer arbitrariness of modern athletic contests. Yet it also distills and preserves both the thrilling challenge that comes from competing and the suspense that comes from watching. Hell, it makes more sense than cricket. This is subversion Nike won’t break a sweat over. Or they will. While they’re running.
[update: AOS posted an interview with the Honest team, Jonathan Miliott and Cary Murnion.]
On Gabriel Orozco’s Photographs
Gabriel Orozco usually installs his photos interspersed with other works–drawings, collages, and sculpture. The Hirshhorn show which opened last week is the first time they’ve been shown alone. The show felt instantly familiar, and not because I’ve been a follower, fan, and collector of Orozco’s work for almost ten years. In that time, the artist has published several text-free collections of his photography. The exhibition feels like one of these artist books.
Each image on its own is almost incidental. This is purely intentional. From one of the earliest, most literal works in the show, My hands are my heart, Orozco takes the gesture of the artist as his theme. The gesture, no matter how slight, is at least one degree more concrete than that holy Duchampian standard of Artistic creation, the idea. But that doesn’t mean a gesture is any more substantial, just the opposite.
Traces of the artist’s breath on a grand piano. Condensation inside a recently removed wristwatch. Ripples from a stone thrown into a rooftop pool. Damp, cyclical bicycle tracks on an empty street. Orozco relentlessly experiments to discover the outcome and significance of even the most fleeting, insignificant gesture. That these gestures won’t last even a few minutes is just fine with him.
In some of his work, it’s hard to even tell what, if anything, Orozco’s done; it’s as if he’s playing a game of Where’s Waldo with us, challenging us to find his intervention. And just as often, especially in the photographs, the gesture is in the snapping of the shutter, the framing of the image. Through the camera’s lens, Orozco invites us to see the world differently, to see it through his eyes.
Given the art world’s current penchant for photography–especially for giant Gursky- and Gaskell-sized c-prints–Orozco’s small format photos seem almost quaint. [Only recently has the artist given in to market pressure and printed his photos in larger sizes. Fortunately, none of these super-sized prints are included in the Hirshhorn show.] Their effect on the viewer doesn’t come from easy, overwhelming spectacle, but through the accumulation of small elements over time. As the Japanese saying goes, Chiri mo tsumoreba, yama to naru (dust, too, piled up, can become a mountain).
And this is where the great power of Orozco’s work lies, and where the Hirshhorn show doesn’t quite deliver. Orozco’s evanescent gestures gain cumulative power when they’re manifested across various mediums, an effect which is muted by the photographs’ formal homogeneity. But put the concentric ripples in a pool next to a boarding pass with compass-drawn circles on it next to a video of a soap bubble floating down the street next to–no kidding–a sculpture consisting of a clear yogurt lid pinned to the wall, and, to the viewer’s surprise and amusement, the specific and banal becomes universal and profound. And I guarantee, you’ll never see a bubble or a cue ball the same way again. You’ll be playing Where’s Gabriel wherever you go.
Related: It’s almost two years since I took New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl to the woodshed over his negative review of Orozco’s work. So Tyler, you’re in good company.
Buy Extension of Reflection, the excellent exhibition catalogue, or From Green Glass to Airplane, the even better collection of stills from Orozco’s video works.
Napoleon Dynamite: Oh. My. Heck.
My heart is full this day, and I would be very ungrateful if I didn’t get up and share my gratitude for Brother Hess, who has blessed us all so much this day with his special film, Napoleon Dynamite.
Brother Hess was blessed with the opportunity to make a movie for $200,000, and he was blessed again with the opportunity to sell it to Fox Searchlight at Sundance for a truly special, inspired price, even $3-4.75 million. It’s a truly special and righteous price. And while choirs of angels sing his praises in heaven, choirs of critics are singing praises for the movie, which has touched so many people this day, and this weekend when it began a platform release. Even the Gentiles’ hearts have been touched by Napoleon’s sweet spirit.
Brother Hess shows us how, if we have faith, we can follow in Neil Labute’s footsteps and someday become like him. [Even if he’s gone astray embracing the fleeting temptation of theater instead of the eternal glory of cinema.] He is also an example unto us of the blessings that can come from exercising faith and hitting up your family and friends for your production budget. Families are forever, so I bet Jared thinks it’s a real blessing that he has the opportunity to actually pay them back now.
We should try to liken the movie unto ourselves and take it into our daily lives throughout the week. Napoleon is blessed with the opportunity to overcome the challenges of being a huge dork, and through his words and deeds, he shows unto us what he does with the talents the Lord has blessed him with.
And while I haven’t taken the opportunity to see the film yet, for I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to take care of one of God’s littlest, specialest spirits, who’s only allowed to see friggin’ chick flicks at Loews on Saturday mornings, I want to tell you this day that I know this movie is good, and I have faith that it’ll be funny and touching like unto Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz’s earlier fruits.
The time is far spent, brothers and sisters, but I challenge you to see Napoleon Dynamite and find out for yourself if it isn’t a truly good way to spend an hour and a half. In these latter days, if you tarry too long, it’ll surely be gone from the theater. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the day will come very soon when it’ll be resurrected on DVD.