The Great Nations of Europe

"Hide your wives and daughters
Hide your groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through." --Randy Newman (Bad Love)

If you're as art-drunk from the greatness that is THERE WILL BE BLOOD as I am, then man, how  about that raw roar of actorly masculine power that was Daniel Day Lewis? It can invogorate me just by thinking of it. So if you're like me you're now thinking you need to see it again, but Union Square theater is a freakin' smelly wombfull of NYU film students, and it's likely to be months before it comes out on DVD. What's a jaded urbanite pushing into middle age--but hip and agorophobic-- to do?

I don't blame those kids though. I'd be there every day. That movie has all the dark power of the father you needed but never got; and you're getting it now. You drink from it, it's nourishment from the father to the son, on a mythic level. This movie fills a void that's been gaping in the collective consciousness since they laughed the 1980's men's movement back into the shrubbery.

The trick to it, why it succeeds so well, is the father is not good, but he's inspiring anyway. He has the thing we lost as men somewhere back around the turn of the century, and almost got back in the 1970s, and we need it. We need it to undo the damage this dark father has done. We need the guts to look down the black pit and make snap decisions; we need access to our inner hellfire, the valve that once is open unleashes a geyser of flame that only stops with more violence.

When Danny D. Lewis feeds that kid this glass of milk and whiskey, he holds it at crotch level, but it's not some weird incest symbol, it's a freakin' Aborigine initiation; I could tell you what they do, but I'd have to kill you. Suffice it to say, this is as close as I've seen. And I've been writing about this subject for years! I've been sifting through cinema like a miner for bits of gold, the gold from the shattered grail. The return of the king isn't some hobbit thing, it's a black hole being filled; it's the black hole left by JFK's assassaination. We've had almost nothing but Macbeths upon the throne ever since. The return of the true king will be bloody, but this movie announces it's coming. Arthur! King of the Britains!

Like all our best movies, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a myth come to life. There's not a drop of sex in the film and in the total power of that decision, Anderson throws down a gauntlet that makes all these "a little sex in it" pictures of foppish men wooing dizzy gals cringe in the corner. Keep drinking, boys!

I forgot where I was for a minute. oh yeah: If you're left hungry for BLOOD's dark satiric truth telling, may I recommend Randy Newman's "Bad Love"? With chipper songs about 16th century slaughter, Karl Marx, and the general injustices and humiliations of living under someone else's power, it's the sort of thing that can keep that candle alive.

Man, how about that roar of flame that was Daniel Day Lewis?!

Morning Morning

This is "Morning Morning" an avant-garde play by Robert Snyderman, staged at the debut evening of the Pratt Institutionalized Theater in Brooklyn, Nov. 2007. Starring: Mandy Richichi, Robert Snyderman, Katie Przybylski, Scott Vornado. Producer: Jody Buchman; Special thanks: Gabe Sorell, MaryKate Chillemi, Rae McIntyre, Lonely Christopher, Joshua Furst, Knina Strikheartz, and Hillary Frisbie. Music by Chanelle Bergeson, Fareed Sajan, Cartoonland

Edited, filmed and effected by me - you can dig the overlapping happy accidents of random meaning generation and color symbolism... if you dare!

Part Two:

TEN BEST DVDs of 2007

1. THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1972) - dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky. -- All the rest of this boxed set really does is show you the genius Jodorowsky's progress towards this amazing film. EL TOPO was the original midnight classic, but it looks like just a dry run compared to the wild LSD-saturated brilliance of HOLY MOUNTAIN. Basically a surrealist exercise centering around a hippie thief who gets mistaken for Jesus and eventually comes into contact with a really out-there sorcerer who takes him on a journey to said mountain, it's pointless to describe the plot further. Sometimes the sophomoric "penis and vagina" symbolism gets old, but regardless, wade it through and eventually you'll want to wade into his even earlier, cruder works. But if you want to be frugal, you really could Netflix the others; HOLY MOUNTAIN however is a must own, if only for the beautiful flower entrails and war toys. If I'd seen it 20 years ago I'd be a different person now. It was worth the wait though, as I'm sure it never looked better than it does projected on my groovy canvas screen. No matter how many times I see it over the coming years, I can't imagine THE HOLY MOUNTAIN ever getting boring.



2. The 3 PENNY OPERA (1929) Dir. - G.W. Pabst. If ever there were a time and place where decadence truly reigned supreme, it would be post-WWI, pre-WWII Berlin. And here we have a great cross section of German filmwerkers and actors all seething with that mix of Teutonic health, righteous arrogance and truly decadent relish for vice, corruption and pleasures of the flesh, all tempered with Bertolt Brecht's acidic worldview. There's a feeling of revolution and dehumanization under the heel of industry like all good expressionist works of the period, but Brecht (and Pabst who later had to wrest control of the screenplay) also keeps the existential derring-do and free-spiritedness of John Gay's original. It's the sort of winking gallows humor and anarchic good spirit that would live on through the Marx Bros, the Goon Show, John Lennon and Richard Lester - and hence there's music, lots of great music from Kurt Weil: "Mack the Knife" of course plays uber alles but the highlight is Lotte Lenya singing "Pirate Jenny."

3. THE LADY VANISHES (1938) Dir. Alfred Hithcock
Kudos to Criterion for going ahead and re-releasing improved versions of their earlier discs this year. In addition to LADY there was THE THIRD MAN and M. I can vouch for the new THIRD MAN looking pretty nifty, but it always looked good. THE LADY VANISHES, on the other hand, always looked pretty bad. A public domain wreck with a hissy soundtrack and fade-to-white blurs, it was a foggy mess that the previous Criterion edition tried real hard to clear up. They did the best they could but with this new double disc all other versions recede into the distance. Adding to the allure is a second disc with CROOK'S TOUR, a sort-of sequel starring the two chaps who are always on about cricket through the main attraction. I took a peak at it so I can at least tell you it looks sharp, but as I say, the real corker is LADY, who finally sparkles like a shiny new farthing: the fur coats glisten and the sound of the steam whistle rings clear and proud. Now if Criterion will just pick up the slack and dare to do what all the other companies are too lazy too: clean up all the public domain British Hitchcock and give us equally zesty transfers of currently dust-caked gems like SECRET AGENT, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and YOUNG AND INNOCENT.

4. THEY LIVE BY NIGHT / SIDE STREET - the first of the Warner Brothers Film Noir sets was packed with classic gold; the second two were mixed bags of b-filler and minor gems. Volume Four got it oh-so-right, doubling the films, two on each single-sided DVD, and delivering the goods as far as releasing only great (or at least riveting) crime films. Most notable: the double feature of Farley Granger- Cathy O'Donnell pics: THEY LIVE BY NIGHT and SIDE STREET. To watch a beautifully restored print of THEY LIVE BY NIGHT is to understand why the French New Wave fell over itself over old Nicholas Ray. And I never understood Farley Granger's appeal before-- having only seen him cling to his foolish morals in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. After digging his weird electric chemistry with the feral young Cathy O'Donnell, I'm a straight man swooning.

5. MATADOR (Almodovar Box)
I was itching and scratching to finally see Almodovar's amazingly lurid MATADOR in US DVD release, and now, after my heartache was all mended and I'd moved on, Viola! This nine-disc set includes not only MATADOR but LAWS OF DESIRE, FLOWER OF MY SECRET and a bitch-slap-fest of others. 


6. PERFORMANCE (1968) - Everyone remembers this as the one with Mick Jagger mixing it up with James Fox. They're both great, but what the widescreen brilliance of this DVD reveals is an amazing set design, and the great overload of sexual-intellectual current that is Anita Pallenberg. This is the chick that steered the Stones from being skiffle-nosed punters to being the toast of cool 60s London. First Anita duded up Brian Jones, then when he couldn't keep the pace, she dumped him for Keith. She was dating Keith while sleeping with Mick in this film. Only God and her dealer know what she was on during the shoot, but she's blazing, sexy and brilliant. Clear-eyed views into a persona-warp of this magnitude don't happen often. Thank god this one was saved from the producer anxiety scissor and censorial fuzz.

7. W.C. FIELDS BOX Vol. 2 - It's great to finally see POPPY for the first time, too bad it's such a bupke. At least it's got a talking dog! And the great line of wisdom from Fields' soused croquet playing carny to his adopted daughter who turns out to be the heir, etc: "Poppy," he says. "Never give a sucker an even break."

8. UNDER THE VOLCANO (1984) - John Huston. Even a fearless death-eyed drunk like John Huston clearly didn't quite now how to bring fellow drunk Malcolm Lowry's harrowing novel to the screen: moments of chilly alcoholic embarrassment and rationalization are treated as if Merchant Ivory auction items, with lavish attention to period detail and all sorts of blazing symbolism. Finney is dynamite though, and the film is better seen under the influence, as I hazily recall. It's steeped in death.


9. LA CAJONE DEL KUBRICK STANLEY - Pointless to write about this in just one blurb. It would take whole sites of furious scribble! There's nothing better...to sober one up... than beer. Oh wait, that's the other movie.

10. FORD AT FOX - This is important too, though the more I see of Ford's films the more I realize that he's the culprit behind American society's double-faced accommodation of alcoholic macho behavior and shameless heartstring tugging. See the accompanying documentary to learn what a mean drunk he was! But all is forgiven with the sterling brilliance of his best Fonda work, such as: MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, GRAPES OF WRATH and now, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (though Claudette Colbert is clearly uncomfortable in her frilly bonnet and technicolor.)

Did I forget anyone? So sorry! Runners up include of course the 10 best films of 2007 nominees, not included here for sake of not boring them who read lots of film blogs.

Special shout out to the under-served BLACK SNAKE MOAN, however. One day that's gonna be "the" American Christmas movie, you wait and see. Even if there aint no Xmas in it, it's a gift from all cinema to all us sinners! Hallelujah!

2007: The Year of Apocalyptic Texas Cinema & The Death of the Fixed Narrative Perspective

Finally I saw NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN last night, after four frustrated attempts (where I got spooked by the disorganized pandemonium of the 14th St. Union Sq. theater). Even getting there 20 minutes early, my date and I had to sit in separate seats, luckily we grabbed the wheelchair-man-alone ones along the aisle, and passed our smuggled stuffs back and forth as if the aisle between us was some U.S.-Mexico drug border of the mind. I had some vague feeling of pleasure when I saw the outrage and dismay on the faces of those who came in after us when they saw all the empty seats covered, sometimes barely, with coats and hats. I saw them try to refrain from yelling--especially the long term couples--and hissing at each other to maybe just leave and duck into something else and/or see the manager, knowing full well there would be no manager, and no other films about Texas..with Texas and the Coen's million dollar mcguffin a fine but ignored metaphor for picking up the coats left as markers on the best seats and just hurling them into the front row.

This is the state of America: Apocalypse, Texas. Texas has become shorthand for a nice Road Warrior-sense of lawlessness, the "grab land from a Mexican and marry Liz Taylor"-style wildcatting of our most gas-conscious American fantasies. All big empty horizons and harmonicas in the wheezing mouths of skeletons, the Coen's are back on familiar ground, as I'm sure has already been written. They love big empty canvasses and then close-ups of cramped, mercilessly tacky interiors and hands with money and screwdrivers, and most of all they love circles... lots of circles. The thrill left for me this late in the game was in deconstructing the impression the film made on all my fellow audience members. By now we've been innundated with NO COUNTRY's critical praise. No man has escaped bearing witness to NO COUNTRY's late-inning sprint to greatness in the mediated collective consciousness. At any rate, I haven't. So seeing it now in the theater is not like you've latched onto a sleeper. But is NO COUNTRY even a real film? It seems more like a crossroads, a destination at which to wait for Godot, a diner filled with a unique cross-section of America, waiting for the birds or the mist, or the blob to come attack. Only in this case it's not a monster, but the apocalypse itself and there's no defence, no walls, no borders.

The weird ending of NO COUNTRY is like the hand of your soon-to-die or already-dead father or grandfather reaching out of your own heart and pulling you into the screen and letting you know you never really lost it to begin with. There's no place like home, even if home is a movie theater where not even a pretty hipster couple can find seats together in the same time zone. You'd run, but there's no place to run...a sniper's scope or a pop-up ad will find you. America, where you thought yourself so safe from things like buckshot and coat-seat-markers, has become a tomb; worse than being walled up with your decomposinng father or a yowling black cat, you're walled up with a Dodge Ram truck commercial on endless loop.

What makes NO COUNTRY great really, in the end, is that it paves the way for THERE WILL BE BLOOD. The wild west eulogies are open for business and uber alles looms Kubrick (another big circle lover), his SHINING blood will be flowing and mixing with Upton Sinclair's black-sperm vengeance. The way's been paved and it's a half-pipe, so your kids can snowboard you to Valhalla (or hella). Word. Woot. Happy New Year, you old savings and loan, Zodiac watch-wearing scythe swiper of time! The fixed-positioin viewer-narrator is dead, long live the CSI "omnarrator!" The very old and the very new have found each other. Your kids have cobbled together a grandfather out of bits of old microfiche and silent cinema boxes, and they've cut you out of the loop. Where you gonna look now, scarecrow?

Let 2007 stand as the year the Coens showed us how death really works, just as Tarantino showed us how being DEATH-PROOF no longer works, not even for old men who have nothing left to lose but their center aisle seats. Now raise a glass of the bio-diesel and let's ring in the new automorphic new year!