Best Movie of the Decade (Two Years Ahead of Time!)

So before we reach 2010 (and my goodness, I still have my little Y2K paperweight close by; isn't time a bitch?) and we have the endless obligatory lists of 'Greatest' this and 'Best of' that of the first decade of the new millennium, let me go out on a very small limb and make a prediction that, I assure you, will not be overturned in the next twenty-four months.
Mullholland Dr. by David Lynch was the best movie of the past ten years, and in another ten years it will rightfully hold its place as an American classic, perhaps the last one for a long time to come.
Now, I see very few movies nowadays. Pitifully few. And that's not because I don't want to see movies anymore. It's simply because nothing, and I mean nothing, has the ability to get me excited about going to a movie theater. I bring that up because, just this past weekend, a whole nation of young and probably dangerously gullible women jumped for joy at the release of the Sex & the City movie.
I envy them so much. Honestly. I wish I could get that excited over the big screen version of a second rate television show, but alas, even though I was a HUGE fan as a kid, the new Get Smart film just ain't doing it for me.
Seriously, I want to get excited over an upcoming movie. I remember that feeling as a youngster, that torturous counting down of days until Saturday came (my family were strictly weekend movie goers), the anxious anticipation, the bliss of seeing a thirty-second commercial clip on TV to whet my appetite.
I adored that feeling.
There have been some movies over the past few years that have impressed me considerably. George Clooney has directed a few very interesting films (who'd have thought?), and stared in quite a few more. And the documentary genre has at least been revived in the public's mind, if not always for the better.
But only a few, in my mind, really stand out.
Last years Zodiac was a fascinatingly dark, unpleasant film about an equally dark subject, brilliantly shot on digital camera, and Mark Ruffalo was done a huge disservice by not receiving an Oscar nod for his understated, nuanced performance. Robert Downey Jr. of course should just be nominated for every damn thing he does. The guy is a freakin' genius (Jake Gyllenhaal, the only true weakness of the movie, not so much).
Another film that left an impression on me, though it lacked the originality of Zodiac, was 1999's fictional portrayal of porn star John Holmes' decent into murder, Wonderland. Much too bleak to reach wide popularity (and any film that features a cameo by Paris Hilton must automatically be deducted a few points just on general principle), it nevertheless used the classic Rashomon structure to nice effect, and Val Kilmer was the perfect choice to flesh out one of the sleaziest lead characters in a mainstream movie since Travis Bickle. Josh Lucas flat out stole the film playing Ron Launius, one of the baddest bad guys to come along since James Remar and Sonny Landham played 'Ganz' and 'Billy Bear' in 48 Hours.
But while I respect both of those movies, and think that Zodiac's reputation will increase in stature over the coming years (unless the man the filmmakers pegged as the most likely suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, is definitively discovered to have not been the killer, which is more likely than one would imagine), neither of those films came close to achieving anything near the mythical title of a 'Great Film'. And looking at the increasingly downward spiral that Hollywood is taking, it doesn't require a cultural genius to predict that we're likely not going to be getting anything better anytime soon.
And thus, Mulholland Dr.
David Lynch's greatest film, bar none, and one of the most bizarre, disturbing and just flat out eerie experiences of my entire life. A film that left it's warped aura hanging around in my head for a full week after seeing it, like a tormented ghost stubbornly clinging to ones senses.
Like everyone else who's seen the film, I couldn't make heads or tails out of it at first. Hey, that's how you know you've seen a David Lynch creation, right?
The character change midway through baffled me, the blue key, the box, the laughably incompetent hitman, the cowboy, the young director and his terrifying superiors, the beautiful amnesiac...what the hell was this thing? And yet there's just enough of a continual thread, provided mainly through the cheery character of Betty, played exquisitely by Naomi Watts, to keep you thinking you're on some kind of pathway, albeit through a very convoluted maze.
It makes no sense to try and explain the officially recognized interpretation of this movie (and many might be surprised that there was one to begin with). But I will say that once the main plot development of that interpretation is realized, it's absolutely devastating, one of the most tragic elaborations of what is, at heart, a simple and all too familiar story - the innocent hopeful with stars in her eyes, naively walking into her own destruction.
I can't recall a film whose aftermath stayed with me like it did with this movie. As a literal theme, which is how any other director but David Lynch would have filmed it, the plot would've been horribly depressing on its own, and no doubt full of Hollywood's love of sanctimony and faux self-immolation, a ritual they undergo quite willingly but also condescendingly. It is a form of confession and condemnation that historically they have applied only as a talisman to absolve themselves of guilt, or perhaps more accurately, to hide their complete lack of guilt from their own eyes. The myth of 'classic Hollywood', once the far away land of magic where the glamourous pagan gods of cinema resided in palaces and the Makers of Dreams wielded power akin to the deities of ancient Greece on Mount Olympus, barely exists anymore. The sacrament that was once almost the sole possession of these priests of Old Hollywood - fame, celebrity - is now dispensed on every street corner, as diluted as the grape juice passed around in a Protestant church. It no longer contains any divine attributes at all, if it ever did to begin with.
Mulholland Dr., for all its Lynch-ian surrealism and magic-show diversionary tricks to distract your eye and mind, is at its core an old fashioned tale of a girl who still believes in the rituals of Classic Hollywood, and who learns the hard way about the judgment and damnation that awaits those who attempt to resurrect gods best left dead.
Magical in its barely concealed misery, almost ethereal in its ability to lure you into the dream world of both its main character and its director, gorgeously photographed (Lynch has since swore off film altogether, vowing only to work in video), it is a movie that flirts with the kind of cinematic perfection that nearly disappeared after the 70's, and the more times I see it the more perfect it becomes.
I would imagine that Kenneth Anger loves this film, given that Hollywood Babylon is practically its Siamese twin.
By far the best movie of the decade and, I imagine, of quite a few decades to come.

Talk About Losing Track of Time...

So why did I even start up a blog if I was only going to make additions to it once every thirty days or so? I guess that's what happens when you forget your password, go searching for it through all your papers and can't find it, then stop looking and tell yourself you'll get back to it later, then forget about it, and then forget you even have a blog to begin with.
Even sadder, the only thing that's really happened since early March that's worth mentioning is that I bought the Avett Brother's CD, Emotionalism.
I haven't listened to it yet, though.
Oh, and I saw Kissing Hank's Ass on YouTube, which was very funny. Sums up my thoughts on religion perfectly. And...ummm...oh, the South Park tribute (of sorts) to the 1981 classic Heavy Metal was awfully cute. I remember that movie well. Best animated boobs ever.

GodDAMN I need a life.

A Night With Jackson Browne

Had the snow arrived in Louisville just a few hours earlier than it did then I'm sure the concert would've been cancelled. Hell, the city was nearly shut down by the time the concert was scheduled to start as it was. So last Friday, I spent all day checking the latest wether updates, preparing for the worst. But mercifully it held off - barely.
And I'm still saying prayers of thanks for that.
I was just a really young kid when Jackson Browne was creating one masterpiece after another in the 70's, a baby almost, and although I heard his music on a regular basis growing up (my mother was and is a hard core fanatic) I can't say that any of it ever had an effect on me back then. It's certainly not kids music, after all. It wasn't until many years later when, just by chance, I was shuffling through her old vinyl collection, came across The Pretender and put it on, more to relive old memories than any desire to hear the record itself. That was when, for the first time ever, I listened to those words.
And that's when I became every bit the devout and evangelical devotee that my mother had always been.
The brilliance of his lyrics, like any creation of complexity that attains the title of 'art', requires a certain understanding from the viewer or listener. It's pretty easy to know when you're experiencing something that doesn't condescend or reach for the bottom; it's having the willingness and the ability to completely immerse yourself in it that can be more difficult. And you know you've found something remarkably unique when that art can uncover intimate areas of your own life and beliefs, your outlook and world view, in ways that you yourself could have never given voice to. Accenting some universal truth is rare enough, but to do it through the most personal of explorations, rather than grand sermonizing, is the mark of a brilliant creator.
I still recall quite vividly how I reacted when I heard the final line of The Pretender.

Are you there?
Say a prayer
For the pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender

Never has a more succinct line ever been written about the compromises we accept in our lives, willingly or not. It's a hard, unpleasant truth for anyone who has reached a point in their life where they've found themselves a world away from where they once thought they'd be. And granted, The Pretender was criticized upon its release as being far too cynical, a sort of last dying testament of the sixties generation who found nothing to be gained from their naive optimism of a decade earlier. Considering the tragedy Browne had experienced himself at that time with the death of his wife and mother of his young son, its relevance survives precisely because of its inward focus, not because of any direct social examination. Browne would move in that direction in the eighties, along with another brilliant songwriter Kris Kristofferson, and both would take their lumps as a result with diminishing audiences and record sales, and and increasing conservative backlash. Both would also rebound from creative slumps with wonderful albums in the 90's and beyond.
But there was simply no way that Browne could ever outdo the young genius who penned some of the most articulate songs ever recorded. Poets of renowned reputation would be proud to say they penned jewels such as -

Let the disappointments pass
Let the laughter fill your glass
Let your illusions last
Until they shatter
Whatever you might hope to find
Among the thoughts that crowd your mind
There won't be many
That ever really matter

- from 'The Only Child', or

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
That you'll never know

from the heartbreakingly beautiful 'For a Dancer'. Or one of his best,

You were turning 'round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes

from 'Fountain of Sorrow'.

So when Friday evening came and the snow had stopped just enough to trudge my way downtown to the Brown Theater, I was like a giddy little school kid on the last field trip before summer break. And I certainly wasn't the only one who made the effort. The place was jam packed.
He came onstage sporting a graying beard, one of the few indicators of his 60 years, and an old sweatshirt that appeared to be a longtime friend, sat down with his guitar and started playing. I'll tell you how enthralled I was - I had made a mental note to remember the songs he played in order. I'd forgotten it twenty minutes in. I know he started out with 'The Barricades of Heaven', and 'The Pretender' came surprisingly early in the set, either the third or fourth song. But his set list was obviously loose. A running joke all night was his intent to start one song, then suddenly change to another after a request from the very vocal audience (who were clearly in heaven the whole time) which necessitated changing guitars from his collection of 15 onstage. Late in the set he remarked that one of his guitars was only used for two particular songs.
"Isn't that decadent?"
And it's truly revealing how much quality exists in his catalog when you consider that he spent three hours onstage and yet left with some of his classic songs left out of the set. I truly regretted not hearing 'For a Dancer', but it did occur to me later that, having been near tears when he performed 'Late For The Sky', there was no way I would've made it through that song without losing it. I mean, some poor guy sitting directly in front of me came very close to weeping during 'The Naked Ride Home', of all things. Perhaps Browne wanted to spare us a mass outbreak of sobbing. I also would have loved hearing a solo acoustic version of 'Linda Paloma', 'The Late Show' or 'The Times You've Come'. But honestly, if he did all his best songs he'd probably still be there. One song that I've since discovered is lambasted by even Browne's diehard fans is 'I'm The Cat', which he did perform. Unfamiliar (I'm ashamed to admit) with both the song and the album it appeared on, Looking East, I must say that, yeah it's silly and slight, but damn it I absolutely loved it!
Another benefit of such a stripped down performance is how it made some of his more, shall we say, commercial music achieve a new identity beyond their well known radio versions. I've always adored 'Running on Empty', but it's a whole different song without the drums and backing vocals, and such an intimacy helps break the curse that comes with being a classic FM staple. Even one song I previously never cared for at all - 'Somebody's Baby' - sounded infinitely sweeter than it ever could have as part of a movie soundtrack.
Of course, one of the best things that comes when you have just a singer and a guitar (or a keyboard) is the looseness of knowing that it's not intended to be a technically perfect show. And it certainly wasn't. Besides changing instruments after every song and following the lead of the crowd in deciding what to perform next, another humorous element of the show (and I mean this in the best possible way) was the fact that Browne's memory was not exactly stellar, and he forgot the lyrics at certain times to nearly as many songs as he remembered, at one point even slowing down to a near standstill until someone in the audience helped him with the next line. It was never annoying, just endearing, and perhaps only to be expected for somebody who came of age in the blur-inducing 70's.
He ended the night with Little Steven's 'I Am A Patriot', resisting the desire of many to have him finish with 'The Load Out' (hey, I guarantee I wasn't the only one), and after the fastest three and a half hours of my life, quite probably the best concert experience I've ever had or ever will, I returned to my car, now covered with six inches of snow, cleaned it off, and made my way home. By morning there was an additional foot of snow on the ground, the city was buried and closed for business, the streets impassable.
The only thing to do was sit in the warmth of the living room and listen to music.
You don't even have to guess...

Weather Gone Mad

Last week - Tuesday if I'm not mistaken - the high here in Louisville was 71 degrees. Two days later the low temperature for the evening was in the low 20's. This past Monday evening there was a massive snowfall, several inches of accumulation and, this morning, freezing ice. The high tomorrow will be around 50. Now I know the oldest and most irritating thing in the world is to hear somebody bitch and moan about the weather, but damn it I'm sick of this. Either be hot or cold, but just be consistent. It's always been a joke around these parts that if you don't like the weather just wait a few days - it'll change. That joke has since been modified to 'wait a few minutes'. It's maddening. What I need is a nice, huge insular bubble in which I can live out my days, like Hef had back in Chicago during the golden years of Playboy. A massive enclave under my complete control, where the outside world is utterly irrelevant and terms like 'summer' and 'winter' are meaningless. Oh, I have my own house of course, but it's much too small for that purpose. I need leg room and architectural variety. Plus, a deluxe sauna with a jacuzzi that seats twenty Playmates would be nice too. But really, I've looked at other locales around the country for more suitable weather conditions and as you might expect, where there's really good weather there's also far too many people around to go with it, 'people' being very high up on the list of things I despise. Maine happens to be the least populated state in America. Surprise, surprise. Where there's 30-below winters and eighteen feet of snow there fewer folks around. Great. I'd consider Western Europe except I have no interest in living amidst so many bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics. I'd sooner move to Dubai than London at this point, but my fair skin balks at 120 degree mid-mornings. Plus, I just read where the Netherlands is getting rid of the Red Light District on top of everything else. Middle Eastern radicals in, bikini-clad damsels standing provocatively in windows out. So to hell with Europe.
For my money. global warming can't turn northern Canada into a springtime oasis fast enough.

Remembering...

It's hard to believe that five years have past since the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart and disintegrated over Texas, but today is indeed the anniversary of that tragic event. Perhaps because it was the second shuttle disaster (lacking, I guess, the shock of the new that was provided by Challenger in 1986), or maybe because it happened early on a Saturday morning, when fewer people are watching television, I've nevertheless always thought that it was a tragedy that faded from memory far quicker than most. Anyway, the names of the seven astronauts killed certainly deserve to be remembered today.

Rick Husband
Willie McCool
Michael Anderson
David Brown
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon.

God bless you all.

Your Moral Guardians At Work

Bill Maher lost his job at ABC because of 'insensitive' comments made after September 11th. Don Imus lost his job at MSNBC for comments considered racist, though he rebounded quicker than any decent human being would've hoped. So let's see what, if anything, happens to the resident Aryan Brother of the Fox News Channel, John Gibson, in light of his mocking and nauseatingly hateful radio attack on Heath Ledger even before the young actors corpse had cooled. Don't hold your breath for anything significant to happen at all of course, because in the world of right-wing radio hatred is not only next to godliness, it's considered an acceptable substitute for God himself. Hate is the central motivating factor behind these societal jihadists. If there is no hate, there is no existence for them. I'm not going to repeat a word of Gibson's descent into nihilistic pathology, but suffice to say Roger Ailes is as happy as a 500lb blob of vomit-inducing sewage can be at all the free publicity FNC will be getting. These are the same ultra right-wing stormtroopers who lament the liberal 'culture of death', mourn our vanishing morals, castigate and condemn all non-fanatics for our secularism, and lay at our feet the blame for every ill imaginable. Will we hear any of them come out against Gibson's staggering contempt for human life in this instance? Please. Being a right-winger means never having to obey the standards by which you mercilessly judge others. Sure, there was the obligatory 'Hey, I'm sorry if you were offended by what I said' non-apology Gibson offered up on his Thursday TV show (while sitting next to vapid and soulless Stepford Host Heather Nauert), but then Maher and Imus both gave the same PR-dictated pleasantries as well. It didn't do them any good and hopefully it won't in this case either, but talk radio and Fox News are not known for their concern for public decency. They appeal to the rabid fringe of American life, the losers who think that being a white, Republican, born again male is a ordination to rule by decree. They are concerned with one thing and one thing alone - maintaining their own power over the minds of the mindless. By all accounts, Gibson's hatred for Ledger was motivated by a single role in the actors career - Brokeback Mountain - which Gibson slammed in 2005 as a 'gay-agenda movie'. Sound clips from that film were played while Gibson callously snickered about his death. One can only imagine how Gibson would have responded if Ledger had actually been gay. The good Christian folks who follow the honorable Fred Phelps see little distinction either. They've already announced their intention to protest and picket his funeral, holding up their infamous 'God Hates Fags' signs. And while John Gibson may not be there in person, he will certainly be with them in spirit. A very dead and heartless spirit.

Just A Thought For The Day

I wonder just how much turpentine and mineral spirits one must inhale before neurological alteration begins, and at what point such mutations become permanent? Did you know that pancreatic cancer is a risk you take for lacquering or varnishing a piece of furniture? Check your dusty old cabinets thoroughly. Anything with the word butoxyethanol in it is an enemy. Either dispose of it in an environmentally safe manner or secretly empty out its contents into the house of someone you despise. But for God's sake, Roscoe, get rid of it. Thank you.

To Praise 'Contempt'

While rummaging through a drawer in the 'junk room' the other day (you know, that room in your house that slowly accumulates piles upon piles of stuff until you just finally give up on ever cleaning it and declare it to be 'the junk room'; every home in America has one, I honestly believe) I came across one of the very first DVD's I ever bought, one that I had nearly forgotten about. It was the Criterion Collection's 2-disc release of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 classic Contempt. I hadn't seen it in years, and I was so excited when it just sort of reappeared that I made some time for myself to sit down and watch it all over again. Now, I'm always hesitant to recommend movies to other people. Books are one thing - you will immediately weed out people who don't read by discussing a book. Movies are different. Everybody watches them, although most people, being idiots, tend to watch movies geared towards their idiocy. Contempt is a movie that a lot of people will not like, and a passionate few may even despise. It has little in the way of an active plot line. It moves at a pace that will torture the ADD generation (not that they don't deserve to be tortured in the most grisly manner possible anyway). It has the kind of 'arty' aesthetic that was a calling card of European movies of that era (and hell, maybe of all eras). And yet, watching it all over again I realized why I once called it my favorite movie ever. It is the most visual film imaginable; widescreen Technicolor portraits of paradise in Capri, Brigitte Bardot looking more majestic than she ever did before or after, cinematography that makes emphatically clear how far the standards of filmmaking have plummeted over the years. It's one of the very few films that ravish your eye without letup. I don't know if I'd bring this movie up in a casual conversation or not. In a way it's almost too special. But if you ever have the chance to see it (in its original aspect ratio, of course) sit still for a while and give it a chance. It is not a movie like other movies; Godard couldn't do that if he tried, and he probably did try at least a little with this one. What it is however is one of cinema's great testaments to a time when movies stood shoulder to shoulder with novels, art movements and noted intellectuals as harbingers of a living and at least somewhat healthy culture. It didn't last long, and it doesn't exist at all now, but for a while there was glory to behold indeed. Contempt was among the most glorious.

Recommended: David Cronenberg - Author or Film-Maker? by Mark Browning

One of the best Christmas presents I received this past holiday season was Mark Browning's fascinating examination of the career and influences of David Cronenberg, perhaps the most overlooked and under-appreciated filmmaker of the past several decades. With the exception of 1986's The Fly, few of his movies have been box office smashes, and yet taken as a whole they constitute a virtually uninterrupted 30-year streak of intelligence and excellence that, in my humble opinion, cannot be matched by any of Cronenberg's peers. While his hardcore fanbase has grumbled about his last two 'mainstream' films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, it was his earliest works that instantly divided audiences into blissful devotees and repulsed detractors. As a kid, I vividly remember how it actually meant something profound to say you saw one of his films. Of course, we were just suburban teenage boys impressed with exploding heads, armpit parasites and stomach vaginas, not really aware of the deeper significance of his plots, but then again there were all kinds of horror movies we were eager to see back then that you couldn't pay me to watch nowadays. I own all of Cronenberg's movies on DVD; I could watch them all back to back with no problem. Clearly, something was there far beyond the now-dated special effects.
And that is what Browning's book delves into, taking several key films from Cronenberg's career and exploring not only their themes but also their (perhaps uncredited) inspirations. I won't attempt an official review after just one reading, but Browning delivers the most penetrating look at Cronenberg's creativity in action (albeit the creativity underneath the surface - clearly a risky and subjective task) that I've ever encountered. Of course, Browning has himself mentioned that his is only the second English-language book devoted to such an attempt; there is hopefully much more to come, but Browning does set a very impressive bar to reach.
For someone like me, unfamiliar with J.G. Ballard until Crash was filmed, and unaware of the 1977 novel Twins by Bari Woods and Jack Geasland even years after I saw Dead Ringers, discovering the literary parallels to Cronenberg's work was interesting just in its own right, but it's the ambiguous relationship Cronenberg seems to have to the source material that makes for an intriguing read. Browning provides ample evidence of filmmaker-as-frustrated-novelist, and perhaps frustrated just enough on occasion to resort to a subtle plagiarism that seems quite odd in light of Cronenberg's uber-intellectual demeanor. And while I find Browning's closing line a bit too harsh, I admit it isn't something that can be easily refuted despite my knee-jerk desire to do so immediately upon reading it. (And no, I won't quote it to you here. Treat yourself to your own copy.) But Browning is definitely not one of the repulsed detractors of Cronenberg's films; quite the contrary. And one of the things that makes this such an impressive and entertaining book is the respect he maintains while probing deeper into the flesh of Cronenberg's movies than has ever been done before.
If all goes according to plan (and the plan goes according to press release), Cronenberg's first novel will be published by Penguin Canada in 2010. While Browning may have to write a new afterward, everything else will remain relevant for a long time to come. And while I'd be a bit reluctant to recommend this to someone unfamiliar with the movies themselves, this is obviously a must-have for anybody who might chuckle at the realization that the guy that made Shivers wound up becoming one of the most brilliant minds in modern cinema.