|
Friday, May 09, 2008 ::
4:00 PM ::
film club XXX: ghost in the shell
Note: the seventh image in this post is Not Safe For Work. Scroll at your peril.
So. As the first of two (delayed) Sans Soleil follow-ups, Film Club opted to watch Mamoru Oshii's 1996 anime Ghost in the Shell (based on a 1989 manga by Masamune Shirow). Marker's interested in the ways that technology and media manifest in the Japanese cityscape, although he's interested in it from an outsider's perspective: we thought it might be appropriate to see how those topics are tackled by folks who are actually from Japan.
Turns out it's not actually that different. There are no shortage of shots in this film that one can comfortably imagine being slotted somewhere into Sans Soleil:
Both films are pretty deeply interested in the boundary line between the contemporary present and science-fictional future. Oshii's film, of course, actually is science fiction, so it gets the opportunity to allow the visualization of speculation in a way that wouldn't quite be admissable in Marker's film. It reserves its most inventive speculation for the futuristic body:
It's hard to imagine that Marker wouldn't be intrigued or even delighted by the sublime forms that Shirow and Oshii have concocted for us, even when they surge into extremity:
As for what, exactly, he might think that they indicate about the present, I cannot say.
Anyway. We're still waiting on Funeral Parade of Roses to arrive from freakin' Bangkok, and I'm going to bo travelling for a bit, so it might be a while before we proceed to the second part of our Sans Soleil follow-up. It's likely that we'll be finishing up with the Production Design Blog-A-Thon first... Labels: body, media commentary, science_fiction
url for this entry |
0 comments
Thursday, May 08, 2008 ::
8:24 AM ::
blue like the fingernails she wore
I'm generally a believer in the idea that artists should grow and change through time, continuing to experiment and try new paths. So the fact that the songs that Mark Kozelek is currently recording in Sun Kil Moon are essentially indistinguishably compatible with the songs that Mark Kozelek was recording ten years ago with the Red House Painters should at least theoretically come as a disappointment.
On the other hand, in times of great change and personal upheaval there's a certain reassurance to be found in constancy, and the fact that I'm going through such a time right now should suggest that I could find these new songs to be a comfort.
But then again this is Mark Kozelek we're talking about, whose songs, although often calm on the surface, are not known for their psychologically uplifting qualities.
Listen: Sun Kil Moon, "Moorestown" Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary
url for this entry |
0 comments
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 ::
12:59 PM ::
film club placeholder notice
It's been a little while since the last Film Club viewing, Sans Soleil... the reason for this is that Skunkcabbage's choice of a follow-up, Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), has been a little bit hard to track down, given that it appears to have never enjoyed a US domestic release. We eBayed a copy, but it's been taking a while to make it from Bangkok to Chicago, so it may be a while longer before we can continue with our normal progression. (Oh, and it is maybe worth mentioning that Film Club views its non-Region One DVDs on the Philips DVP5140 Multiformat DVD Player, an affordable domestic player easily hackable to be region-free.)
As a placeholder, we will likely watch Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell (1995) sometime this week, and I'll write it up, even though it may not be an "official" Film Club pick...
And I've got some other non-Film-Club related content which I'll be posting here soon. For now, take care. Labels: personal
url for this entry |
0 comments
Thursday, May 01, 2008 ::
3:36 PM ::
production design blog-a-thon: call for participation
At this stage in the development of the discipline, I think we're all prepared to recognize the benefits that auteur theory has bestowed upon film studies. However, critics of auteur theory are quick to point out that any theory that champions the director as "author" also has the unfortunate tendency of eclipsing the deeply collaborative nature of film production, and will inevitably underplay the contributions of other people such as the screenwriter, the editor, and the cinematographer.
Perhaps even more maligned in this hierarchy is the production designer: the individual responsible for the overall "look" of the film, coordinating set designers, property masters, and costume designers to create an overall visual "feel." With a little effort, it isn't difficult to think of films where we have been delighted by the product of production designers' labor and aesthetic, but they have nevertheless received a saddening lack of sustained appreciation, even from the most attentive of critics.
Film bloggers may not be able to change this state of affairs permanently, but I'd like to call for us to take just one week to focus our collective attention on the role of these under-recognized creators. So for the week of May 19-25, I am inviting your participation in the Production Design Blog-A-Thon. During this week, I will use the Film Club blog to collate posts in which you write on any aspect of production design or art direction. Use this week to celebrate your favorite production designer (or lambast one you can't stand). Inspect your DVD collection for the most striking costumes and sets. Look for recurring interests in a production designer's overall body of work. Have fun with it.
If you're thinking about participating, either comment below or send me an e-mail at projects [at] imaginaryyear.com so I know to check your blog during the week; if you could also ping me once you've got something up that would be helpful.
Here are some banners I whipped up today (while at the laundromat), including a tall one for sidebar use:
If you wish to display these images on your blog (as well as a link to this post), and you aren't too hot with the HTML skillz, just follow one of these links and cut-and-paste the snippet of code:
The red one (Hero, 2002, production design by Tingxiao Huo and Zhenzhou Yi)
The blue one (Punch-Drunk Love, 2002, production design by William Arnold)
The green one (Alien, 1979, production design by Michael Seymour)
Looking forward to seeing what people come up with! Labels: media commentary, projects
url for this entry |
0 comments
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 ::
7:10 PM ::
depression in comics (part one)
One of the oft-repeated truisms of the comics world is that part of the appeal of Marvel Comics is that their heroes are flawed in ways that their target audience can appreciate. Spider-Man has to deal with financial worries and social geekiness, the X-Men are basically hated pariahs, etcetera.
And then there's Daredevil, who has the flaw of being handicapped (he's blind), but who also, throughout his run, has struggled with some pretty serious depression. The recent Ed Brubaker issues on Daredevil have been like a fucking case study:
(Clicking on the sample panel here will take you to a scan of the entire page, if you want to see it in context. It's worth a look to get the full impact of the example.)
Sheesh. Looks like Daredevil could use a good therapist. But is this even the best example of depression in comics? Stay tuned for Part Two! Labels: comics, mental_illness
url for this entry |
0 comments
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 ::
8:39 PM ::
film club XXIX: sans soleil
So this week, Film Club decided to follow up Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera with Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983). As with Man With A Movie Camera, you watch Sans Soleil and you're given the feeling that you've seen everything in the world at least once. Here's a random assortment from the film's opening minutes:
Of course, neither film is really about the whole world, and this is where an illuminating contrast can perhaps be made. Vertov is a Russian, making a movie about Odessa, Kiev, and Moscow: some variety there, but at the root it can be said that he is making a movie about his own homeland. (This is part of what contributes to the overall atmosphere of "boosterism" that seems to vaguely surround the film.) Marker, by contrast, is a Parisian, making a movie about Japan, Guinea-Bissau, San Francisco, and Iceland, among others: and so at the root it must be said that he is making a movie about places that very precisely aren't his homeland.
So, on one level, Sans Soleil can be said to belong to the tradition of the ethnographic documentary. Certainly the film's emphasis on festival and ritual belongs squarely within that tradition:
Documentary in general, and ethnographic documentary in particular, carries with it a variety of tricky ethical problems, ones which have been ably recounted elsewhere. For portions of its runtime, Sans Soleil risks falling into some of these traps. For instance, it's problematically interested in the most alien and exotic aspects of the cultures it looks at. For instance, here's the shrine devoted to cats:
To its credit, though, I don't think that Sans Soleil is interested in committing the other ethnographic sin, that of recasting its subject as "primitives." Tokyo in particular is one of the most hyper-modern cities in the world, and as much as Marker seems interested in the "quaint" spiritual traditions of the Japanese, he seems equally interested in the quasi-futuristic aspects of the Japanese media landscape:
Even Guinea-Bisseau, with its photogenic squalor, is a site that Marker is interested in for its postmodern aspects—the film explicitly remarks upon the challenges involved with completing, taming, or fully articulating the partial industrial infrastructure left behind by the European colonists that revolutions forced out.
But Soleil ultimately wants to subvert the ethnographic documentary even more directly, going straight to its core principles. The film remarks repeatedly on the inevitable distortions that time introduces into our perception of reality. Our memories, of course, have massive powers of distortion, but Marker seems to feel that the meaning of images, too, shift through time, that our ability to treat them as "proof" diminishes with the passage of time and the loss of context, if indeed this ability ever existed in the first place.
There's another film that famously deals with the fallibility of perception: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which manages to get shoehorned in to the final third of Sans Soleil in order to underscore this point:
So, ultimately: Our direct perceptions are incomplete, faulty, and subject to the ravages of time—and perceptions we might obtain through, say, film, are not more permanent impressions of "truth," but rather are even more dubious because of the absence of context and the introduction of the distortions inherent to mediation. "Sunless" indeed! This is not exactly the underlying message of most documentaries (although it's not, in fact, a far cry from the underlying message of American Splendor (Film Club XXII)). As messages go, this one may seem bleak, although the film seems to accept these ideas with something like hope. In the end, the unknowability of other people (including Marker himself, and the extra-enigmatic figure of this film, Sandor Krasna) seems to be a source of joy and wonder.
That, at least, appears to be a pleasure that endures. Labels: media commentary, representation
url for this entry |
0 comments
Monday, April 21, 2008 ::
2:03 PM ::
about that skrull
So, those of you who read my blog at the Raccoon page (instead of somewhere else) may have noticed the Skrull / McCain PSA over on the left-hand side of the page.
Skrull-related humor is pretty much the province of comics geeks only, but for the benefit of the non-comics readers in the crowd, I thought I'd try explaining.
Skrulls are an alien race in the Marvel Universe, with the unique evolutionary advantage of being able to shape-shift. (In their natural form they're green, with a ridged chin.) They've been standard-issue Marvel Universe villains for close to fifty years now (they made their first appearance in Fantastic Four #2, 1962).
Anyway, this summer's big Marvel Comics crossover event is Secret Invasion, a plotline that involves a Skrull infiltration of various super-teams and powerful organizations. So any Marvel Comics character could (until the end of the plotline) secretly be a Skrull in disguise. And it got Skunkcabbage and I to thinking... if it could happen in the Marvel Universe, could it happen here?
Which brings us to John McCain. I've never really been a "fan" of McCain's, but it seemed like, years ago, he at least occasionally took stands that caused him to break from his party's ranks, and thus at least earned my respect as a man of principle. But in recent years that seems to have changed. For those of you keeping score, McCain's voting record made him the 45th most conservative Senator in 2001... and the 8th most conservative Senator in 2008. Has he sold out his principles in the name of wooing the party base? Has he simply dedicated himself, as never before, to the key tenets of conservativism? Or is he not "himself" at all?
In conclusion: John McCain is a Skrull. QED. More here. Labels: comics, politics
url for this entry |
0 comments
archive >>
|
