Holiday Viewing Diary 12/21-12/30

At the Kuersten Xmas is a time for marathon TV watching and (for some) drinking. The commentary from the couch flows fast and free, and eloquence gets waxed like a candle burning at both ends. In my brother's Arizona house there's a big screen but it's not plasma and it's not anamorphic, so you have zooming and stretching instead of correct aspect ratios. My dad and bro both get wicked pissed if I change the size of the screen; neither cares if everyone looks wide like a house or thin like a bee or has their heads cut off, so it can get exasperating. Still, that's family, right? Imagine if you will the family dynamic, slightly shuffled of LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (same amount of siblings), so that the older brother is the gloomy poet and the father isn't cheap, and the mom's a Christian Scientist and not a junky, then come with me now as we blaze through a rundown of what was watched in between football games:

 12/22

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1967)

This got a lot of fun poked at it by my now drunk family, and my dad's along enough in years that Raquel Welch's stunning fur bikini draws no moans; I was the only one salivating over her and the Harryhausen dynamation dinosaurs, and the Martine Beswick catfights. I reminded my dad that this was a favorite back in the 1970s when he and I would watch Saturday afternoon horror films on UHF local TV and try to make each other laugh with our dry, witty quips, and that my childhood was thus well planned to suit this blog, but to everyone but me the dinosaurs here were like plastic toys, and Welch only a babe, not the true goddess she is/was.

BAD SANTA (2003)

Terry Zwigoff was no fool making a film like this, as Christmas movies have a long shelf life if they have some kind of a hook, such as badness. Films like A CHRISTMAS STORY and SCROOGED play almost nonstop alongside IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and so forth this season, so here it was again, my brother's attempt at an Xmas tradition. This film tries a bit too hard to be bad (see my coverage of OBSERVE AND REPORT below for a truly 'bad' film) as far as acting goes, it's impeccable. Lauren Graham is a hearthrob for the working man and Thornton a loveable, genuine roustabout.

12/23

Ho bloody ho. Where's my blasted beard?

DEAD RINGERS (1989)

Because nothing says Xmas at the Kuersten house like a pair of junky brothers futzing over wombs in Canada. Image quality was bad, but the acting was solid, you had to continually remind yourself Jeremy Irons was playing both roles because the editing was so seamless you'd forget otherwise. Still, the icy clinical aspects kind of throw off the dynamic, which happens at times with Cronenberg. But am I complaining? Uh uh. More than anything, this film made me want to go deeper into the world of pharmaceutical enlightenment, even if the whole gynecological instruments for mutant women thing seemed tacked on, like Cronenberg thought he had to weirden it up for the fans, to make sure it got included in the lucrative midnight movie horror section instead of dreary old drama. 

 

THE WICKER MAN (1977)

Aside from my mom we're all pretty much heathens at the Kuersten house, so we cheered and danced and lit the fire when it became clear to the first timers what was happening to poor old Richard Attenborough. Edward Woodward. Too bad the IFC formatting was off and the print lousy and the reception foggy and the nude witches stretched to obesity. Still, the message was clear enough and holiday revelry ensued amongst we Kuerstens as the flames soared higher amongst the pigs and chicken.

 12/24

SCROOGED (1988)

David Johansen rocks as the ghost of Xmas past, but damn that loooong ending of Bill Murray lecturing the TV audience on holiday cheer carries less and less emotional catharsis as the years go by. Now he just looks like a self-centered prick who thinks the whole world should stop and celebrate the fact that his head's finally out of his ass. Dude, they all knew how to celebrate, it's you who were the problem. Go lecture to the mirror! This need to convert the already converted is what starts holy wars and makes people call you an ass behind your back. You can respect a prick, he gets the job done, but an ass is just that and no amount of cheer can change it. You don't know how much smarter and more holy your audience is than yourself, give them the benefit of the doubt. Then again, it was the 1980s. 

12/25

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG (1961)

Hadn't really seen this all the way through before. Got the DVD for my dad as he kept ranting about it and how much he wanted to show it to us. Then he kept ranting about how great each performance was all through the movie. I agreed with him about Monty Clift's jaw-dropping performance as a sterilized laborer -- his sheer intensity made my eyes well up with admiration, but I felt like spray painting "Why so Serious?" on Spencer Tracy's guest room wall. And my dad's comparison of the film to Picasso's "Guernica" was repeated in great Wellesian tones three nights in a row, with the same cues of admiring laughter, until I told him he'd said the same thing earlier, and he got sulky. But I still love him!

REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

Speaking of why so serious, it was great to tune into on SpikeTV late Xmas night and find this, in HD and filling up Fred's screen like a shiny computer game. I find Hayden Christensen surprisingly inoffensive as far as pretty boys go--maybe it's his deep voice--and Natalie was a delight. Still, every scene was so full of fanboy detail it was first exhilarating, then exhausting, then annoying, then deadening. This film is clearly meant to be seen over and over again by the hardcore fans. Like the other two in the second trilogy, I got really into it for about 20 minutes, then lost interest, my eyeballs saturated, my dad gone to bed. It definitely helped coming into it halfway through, as I tried to watch it once before long ago and didn't get too far, turned off as I was by the queen bitch crankiness of Ewan's Obi Wan.

12/26:

 TRUE GRIT (2010)

As a kind of apology to Fred for the joyous dysfunction of our family holiday, I kept repeating that line from the commercials for this film--played ad nauseum one very channel we watched--where Jeff Bridges looks down at the dying hombre and says, "I can't do nothin' for ya, son." The movie was good, too. The language was flowery and really well-gummed by ole Jeff (see more about the film in my top ten of 2010 list)

FARGO (1996)

The impact of TRUE GRIT inspired us to dig out more Coens. This was a big hit all around the Kuersten tree, with minimal commentary. We all agreed that Peter Stormare was our favorite --the Nordic ice truck killer most like our family. Now though I still have the voice ringing in my head of the dopey husband of the Sheriff McDormand saying: "I love you Margie" in that zombie infant voice...

12/27:

VALHALLA RISING (2010)

The second film I saw in two days about a child following a one-eyed warrior into the unknown wilderness. While Fred's buddy came over to watch football, I sulked in my room and watched this on Netflix streaming for the second time to see if I could add it to my top ten list. I always try and keep my top ten manly and subversive and VALHALLA more than exceeded my expectations... great post-rock score! No women! Jim Jarmusch meets CONAN! 

BIG LIEBOWSKI (1998)

I tried to explain to my dad how this was a 'modernist' meditation on THE BIG SLEEP times Nordic mythology, and he sneered, but then suggested I would have a lot to write about with all the weirdness in the film for my blog. I told him there was no fun to be had writing about Coen Brothers films since they come to you already deconstructed, and he actually understood that, and I saw my star rise a slot on the slick icy ladder of his esteem. Still, I wrote about one Coen Brothers film, for Bright Lights, here.

 

12/28

OBSERVE AND REPORT (2009)

Of course that wasn't the end. I wound up stuck at Fred's for two more nights due to the east coast blizzard. What we watched aside from this film, I haven't a clue, but I knew Fred would love it as, like Ronnie, my bro is armed and dangerous and has a lot of love to give. Fred, you're the best. Here's a sample of some writing I did on this fine film from last year, comparing it to the aforementioned Thornton film:

OBSERVE AND REPORT is the film that Terry Zwigoff is too inherently decent to make; the highlighted tantrums of his BAD SANTA--a similarly mall-bound film--errs on the side of decency and thus undoes any attempt at genuine subversion. It's one thing to threaten children and then "come around," it's another to bash them into pulp with their own skateboards and then go even deeper into darkness from there. In BAD SANTA, we watch a man behave badly, but OBSERVE AND REPORT itself behaves badly. (A Travis for Our Times, April 13, 2009)

Then, on the plane home, I saw GET SMART with Ann Hathaway looking awfully hot. She's clearly meant to wear buckets of black eyeliner! The film was much better than it had any right to be, though maybe it was because I flew first class for the first time (the only ticket I could find after my initial flight was canceled). Worth a look if you have to entertain a diversified age group with no tolerance for subtitles, though the film prefers complicated and goofy stunts over everything else and Hathaway is stuck with maybe two sentences of dialogue in the whole film. Still, that eyeliner....

ACIDEMIC TOP TEN 2010

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Acidemic Xmas Special: Santa Vs. Lacan

Ho Ho Ho! And Merry Xmas. Via Lacan's tenet of the objet petit a, Erich in claymation explains why no present can compete with its wrapped potential, for desire's fulfillment is never the energy equivalent of its unfulfilled state. So give up seeking gratification and find fulfilment in the spirit of Xmas, and booze!

Ms. Icarus Risen: BLACK SWAN

Kiss Me Deadly (1957) happened to be on TCM as I was suiting up to go see Black Swan at the Brooklyn Academy of Music today, and something I hadn't noticed before caught my attention: the "Swan Lake"-ish classical background in the scene where Ralph Meeker rummages through Chloris Leachman's boarding house room. Coincidence?

Then I got home, The Eye remake starring Jessica Alba was on Lifetime: Jessica Alba looking in the mirror and seeing someone looking back who, while a lot like her--hot, damaged and mildly Mexican--is not her. Coincidence, tambien?

There was a moment in the crowded matinee BAM theater when the black swan Portman looked down at me with malevolent intensity (I sat in the fourth row center) and her eyes were like two white opals, her eyes they were like two white opals, coming together in a shaman bouquet and I thought of how weird I'd felt all last week while sick and hallucinating and possessed with a medicine-spiked serenity, focus, stillness and the ability to listen to Patti Smith's "Birdland" on endless repeat. The black swan of Birdland possessed me through the miracle of fever dreams, down on that New England farm, now walking down 5th Avenue towards Atlantic-Barclay Center. I'll go up. Or down. Don't give a shit for my feet have wings like a florist.

Movie audiences these days can drive me nuts with nonstop blue lights of cell phones and people whispering loudly but I can hear every word --but this time--emboldened--I merely hissed, like a swan might at a tourist without breadcrumbs (but who still wanted pictures) --and, having so hissed-- I let it go. They may have yelled the whole time I wouldn't have noticed after that, for I'd spoken up. I'd done my part. I felt the liberation and the intensity of the swan (along with the DXM) My insane rage at their uncouth bourgeois unconsciousness brought me closer to the Blanche Dubois-meets-Ms. 45 gonesville of Portman! Portman! Bravissima! 

I could go off in multi-hued directions about Black Swan in comparison with Aronofsky's last film, The Wrestler (see "Mess with the Horns"): together they are the his and her fictional artist career capstones, Oscarbait elegies to artists caught in amber at that pivotal acrobat swing from the arms of Ben Vereen to Jessica Lange's in All that Jazz (1979). They are Icarus--amber-frozen in the Led Zeppelin Swan Song label instant--the war-face grin of true freedom and anticipation affixed, dissolving like wax in the blazing sun, like the final mylar shield between the priceless comic book and the greasy thumbs of gravity's unclaimed child. They move beyond viewer and screen so that even the distractions become part of the whole--the screen in front of you, the seats below you and the Exit sign behind you--even the blue cellphone glow and whispers of the annoying latecomers--it all incorporates beautifully into the complex soundscape of scratching black swan wings fluttering like the rain of pine cones on ANTICHRIST's tin roof. The
whoosh 
of feathers and clatter of feet on squeaky floors, the horse-feather hoofs of long-maned and nice-legged ponies and cute girls in raincoats and blonde bobs--one dead, one missing-- one masturbating while her hysterical stage mom pounds on the door, boggling Mike Hammer's sadistic mind in KISS ME DEADLY colors; the beeping of its hideous heart-monitor and the applause of the crowd. As Smith's song goes, I'll go up /up / up / I'll go up.

Is Aronofsky the Patti Smith, then, of his generation, and Swan his Horses? Going fearless into the two white opals whiteness of credits with nary a pause of regret or doubt, at the end I burst into slow applause a few seconds as wild applause rang out on screen, and the people around me started to applaud by reflex, and then caught themselves--shot me waves of accusation in their gun-like glances. Why do we applaud in movies that aren't premieres, i.e when cast and crew aren't there to bow? Are we applauding ourselves for 'getting' the morbid black comic gut punch of it all? Are we applauding because our moms would hate it? To salute the projectionist for keeping it all in focus? No, we're applauding because we've forgotten we're watching a movie, and so we've shared a collective dream; we're applauding the machine because we hear the applause in the sound mix and we are trained to respond. We applaud because finally we're in the movie, too. That's how Aronofsky tricks us, and it's the best of tricks, the trick of only the greatest art, where it bleeds out of the screen and all over your lap, then follows you out the door, precedes you like a giddy, tumbling herald.

As I walked out of the BAM and headed up towards Park Slope again I felt free, the reality behind the screen, the audience of the world in rapt awe looking up at me, and me swimming through a thin walkway past the godawfulness of the still-under-construction Barclay Center, feeling safe in coat and iPod against onrushing lights and tires up Flatbush avenue past desperate storefront Xmas lights, the diva swan sculpture chrysalis-talizing into Sofia Coppola twirling the ribbon in Spike Jonze's acrobatics video for that Chemical Brothers song whoisthisdoin'thissynthetictype-a-alpha-beta psychedelicfunkin?  Coppola's trophy case the same as that Buffy the Vampire episode with the cheerleader mom witch getting trapped, a la bruja en ámbar... in her own trophy after trying to literally live through her daughter. Hershey as the mom with no life but to micro-manage her tortured daughter's each breath, Norma Bates harming the fly, the filly... Sophia Coppola going on to direct a film about suicidal virgins - "Cecilia was the first to go."  Trip Fontaine reaching through the suffocating lather of Catholicism that binds them only to run after mistaking orgasm/conquests' hollow aftermath panic for a real emotion; Sinead O'Connor ripping her papal way to persecuted freedom from popularity on SNL; Tyra Banks looking through light blue cellular eyes back out the TV at the pictures of her model contestants behind you on the wall; Annie Hayworth's bird-beak-busted skull eye sockets hidden by picket fences in THE BIRDS; Marlene Dietrich covered in ink black feathers slashing the Shanghai Express screen open with her swan talons, letting the rotten corpse fruit come sagging out.

Virgin Suicides, The

In SWAN, Natalie Portman plays the ideal mix of perspiration and inspiration. Hers is a cloistered life of rigid discipline and striving for perfection, necessarily without freedom or any experience of decadence. She knows no outlet for passion and vice or even an orgasm--living with a crazy mom and no bedroom or bathroom door locks--so when finally released from bondage into supernova orgasm because she's required to, finally, for the very pinnacle of her art, be the black swan instead of just the white, the freedom of ecstatic release is a Pandora's box-cutting moment that makes the whole cinema tremble with aftershocks. The good, the bad, and the naked rotting corpse underneath the lobby are exposed to the angel's pecked-out sun orb eyes at last, and all pain and fear and work revealed at last to be only ever the flimsiest of veils for this one inescapable moment, the melting wing flutters into applause.... the cheering like a distant hawk.

And if death not ends it, why bother starting? As Oscar Jaffe said: the sorrows of life are the joys of art. Knowing this and accepting it gives us a way of preserving those sorrowful joys in celluloid amber, of letting our artsy life fade and wither like an en verso Dorian Gray: Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Natalie Portman and now Mila Kunis - a single line of frozen youth unwillingly dragged into the middle ages, thence to become self-mutilating corpses. But first the bloom. If her name wasn't so reminiscent of Milan Kundera I'd like Mila more, but it is, and so I think of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and 20 years ago in Seattle trying to watch it on VHS with my platonic girl friend-friend, when I was still too young to realize that one can't not masturbate or have sex or any kind of orgasm forever and not get sullen and irritable when living in close quarters with a beautiful intelligent blonde woman and no locks on the doors, watching some European art film rank with perfume ad sex and cocksman swagger... I wouldn't mention all that, except that it fits the BLACK SWAN to rushing, headlong, screaming "It is Accomplished" Tee.

But when the eye is for art and not for pornography, when 'I' stands for love and not for base desire, when a heart yearns for naught but is complete just to watch movies and pound Rainers and Red Hooks then Milan Kundera can go to hell. I've always been one to appreciate the purity of a chaste love... but it's so hard to find free time to take care of yourself when you're living in a commune, or with Barbara Hershey, or Isabelle Huppert's mother in THE PIANO TEACHER or Lux's parents in VIRGIN SUICIDES, or Piper Laurie in CARRIE. If you're feeling like you need to invade Iraq, or give up on your dreams in a fit of whiny depression, why not first try Seroquel, or see your Lexus dealer or give yourself some 'you' time-- as they euphemistically like to say.... Psychedelics can save your soul just as masturbation can save you from regretful decisions, art can save your life but only death shows the true color of the light behind the curtain and only it is unavoidable. They can't arrest people for successfully dying, much as they'd like to. Some of us peak behind the curtain, but most are content to wait for the curtain to come to them. Oh! It hangs like a CGI vibrator, all for you Damien! That signpost up ahead - it's your life's credits--quick check to see who played you. I'll go up! I'll go up! 

Don't listen to a word of it. There are no words to Swan Lake, nor sex --just violins reflected in the inky blackness of its surface, and inky feathers in the sprockets overheating the projector until the bulb explodes in a shower of black swan Bergman's PERSONA blood:. You can live to be a hundred and never dance or you can blaze out by nineteen and never stop, but to find peace in sobriety you must first get drunk. You must become besotted to ever be bereft. You must first know MONSTER ugliness to be Oscar beautiful. You must first know fame before becoming eclipsed by your own empty spotlight. Like Moira Shearer in the Lermontov RED SHOES, like Lazarus risen from the dead, like Mike Hammer risen from the dead, the tortured barefoot husk of Chloris Leachman at his feet. Mikey! Brrrrrm! Pow! Swan-eee how I love ya / how I love ya.

 I love you Patti, Chloris, Natalie. Natalie... Nat? Nat. Nat, pour me another.... take the sandbags off and take thy waxy wing to sky and go up / go up /up

And.. suddenly--just like that--you're old.

POW!