My name's Ferdinand

Kimberly over at Cinebeats has some lovely screenshots from the new Godard DVD, PIERROT LE FOU! If you never buy DVDs, this is the DVD to buy this winter. It will fill you with the glorious summer and discontent of... shit man, I aint feelin' well today, so go to Kimberly's site and let her fill you in on its goodness.

Random Oscar Thoughts

Oscar is over - as always it's exciting and relevant while it happens and the minute it's over seems to drift into who cares-ishness.

Some Acidemic highlights--

1. HIGHS:

a. The deadpan "Salute to Periscopes and Binoculars" draws only nervous titters from the irony-deficient audience. A small but glorious instance of humor too dry and abstract for the common masses being allowed to stand.

b. The orchestra assumes older, taller, louder Glenn Hansard is speaking for both himself and demure, younger, smaller Marketa Irglova and burst into cues and commercials right as she's stepping to the mike. We figure Oscar moves ahead two squares for indie power but back three for maintaining the young boy network status quo, BUT then Irglova actually gets brought back after the commercial and is allowed to really speak up on behalf of the indie underdogs she and older boyfriend Glen Hansard represent. I was stunned!

c. Josh Brolin clearly wincing having to mouth dated tough guy lines when co-presenting actually apologizes for doing a bad Jack Nicholson impression, then looks down to the front row to apologize directly to Nicholson! It was a fine moment of off-the cuff connection that caught Nicholson clearly off-guard. The Oscars have always tread in a weird murky water where the artists pat themselves sore over their own tired catch phrase cliches, killing them deader than dead in the process. Here, Brolin partially transcends smarmy Hollywood onanism by addressing the original speaker directly. A small and not particularly successful gesture, but a testament to Brolin's willingness to risk face in the name of "keeping it real."

d. The condescending, wordless smirk of Ethan Cohen

2. LOWS:

a. Jerry Seinfeld's "Bee" of the forgotten and non-nominated "Bee Movie" gives out an award, bores us with hackneyed antics and offers a "bee" montage that comes too little too late after the spectacular "Salute to Periscopes and Binoculars." Someone over at Dreamworks PR must really be givin' up the Academy payola.

b. In a similar vein, what's up with "Get Smart" theme music for the arrival of Ann Hathaway and Steve Carell? Pretty shameless plugging for a film not even released yet that's bound to get no Oscar notice next year. Someone slipped money to someone somewhere... that's for sure.

c. All those damned ENCHANTED songs, but on the other hand, they didn't win. At least there was no Robin Williams.

d. The condescending, wordless smirk of Ethan Cohen.

Drop it!

I'm mildly afraid that BE KIND REWIND wont "reach" some Americans, the hipster ironics in particular, who may be wrapped too tight to admit they're wrapped too tight. Gondry's got the same playful in the moment spirit as Godard, and it's best exemplified in a scene from the film I will now describe.

In this scene, old man proprietor Danny Glover grabs a tough guy black kid bully and forces him via a half-nelson to go over to a monitor and look at some footage of Fats Waller, to "teach him" a lesson. "But what does this have to do with my lesson?" the kid asks after the bit of dubious footage passes by. "We changed the subject," Glover answers.

Exactly! That's the initial key to playing with children, to playing in general, to life... how fast can you let go? Let go of what? Exactly!

William S. Burroughs once described it in terms of a pretty poisoned helium balloon attached to a string, someone gives it to you to hold and you instantly start rising. As the safety of the ground below you exponentially vanishes, how soon does it take you to let go? Most "adults" will keep hanging on, until they're as bedraggled as the dance marathon contestants at the end of THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY?

The sad thing about the dance marathon is just this ridiculous level of elevation. The couples who drop out early are the smartest. To admit defeat is sometimes to win. The long-term players suffer from long-term investment obsessiveness, the very thing that kept us in Vietnam so long, that keeps us in Iraq so long, the very thing that emotionally cripples so many adults--the very thing Gondry and Godard try, in their way, to rescue us from.

As Gig Young notes in HORSES as the brilliantly modulated MC, "Isn't that what America is all about?"

Or as I've been saying all week in the dog run when Inga steals someone else's ball, "Drop it!"

Celebrating Dr. Clarence Muse

For Black History Month this year I'd like to talk a bit about the great Clarence Muse. You can read on Wikipedia about his life and work in theater and TV and in films such as BROKEN EARTH and WAY DOWN SOUTH.

However, I don't know Muse from those films. At the risk of stepping into deep waters, I'd like to talk more about the films I know Muse from, which tend to be hoary old UHF monster movies, in several of which he played a butler, coachman, porter and preacher. From a historical standpoint as well as to do justice to the efforts of these early actors, I think it's important to make the effort to peer past the broad caricatures these sorts of roles sometimes are pigeonholed as, and see the finer shadings. To dismiss all butler roles as racist is to fall victim to an easy sort of reverse prejudice. The fact is, Clarence Muse brought a lot to each of these potentially demeaning roles. Even in such hoary stuff as Monogram's THE INVISIBLE GHOST (1940) or the Halpern Brothers' WHITE ZOMBIE (1932), Muse lent his stock parts such dignity and quiet strength that the entire film benefits. Muse doesn't kill the "fun" or "make a statement" - he simply does his work with a level of grace and intellect that anchors the sketchy hamming around him. No matter how bad the rest of the film is, when Muse is onscreen, you believe .


So this February, as we rightly celebrate African American artists of the past and present, let's not forget thespians like Dr. Clarence Muse, pioneers who slowly, quietly, steadily chipped away at Hollywood's racist stereotype machinery from within, weakening the structure so it might one day topple in a glorious explosion of Poitier and Cosby-style intellectual energy.