Last year was not a busy one for movie-viewing, especially within the last 6 months.  Altogether, I saw a measly 19 films, a far cry from my usual 50+ count.  It’s not all been a wash, though.  I saw Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest in a little Parisian art house, saw The Shining again on the big screen, and watched several noir films to add to my ever-growing list.  I also managed to get out to three new releases, two of which were well worth the ticket price.

Since my list is so small, I’ll combine my top 2008 picks to a mere five, as follows:

1. The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008)

An obvious choice–which is why I refrained from writing up an entry after I saw it some months ago when there was still a glut of reviews.  I am not sure if I would have included it if I’d managed to watch more films this year, not because I dislike it, but because it has flaws I thought fans and even critics glanced over.  To its credit, it’s a better, more complex, film than its predecessor, and I was glad that Gyllenhal replaced Holmes, the weakest link in Batman Begins (though her presence is a bit of an afterthought).  Nolan lends a gravitas to the typically campy superhero genre and makes it work.  Part of this is because Batman is one of the most believable comic book heroes (not really a superhero), his story initially arising more out of the pulp crime fiction genre than fantasy or science fiction.  Part of this is a credit to the way the Nolan uses the story as a means of exploring the notion of justice, as well as his usual thematic and narrative explorations.
Ledger is also quite brilliant as The Joker.  Certainly more memorable than Bale, an actor I am sometimes very fond of.

2.  In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)

I debated for a while as to which noir film I would include on this list, since I enjoyed all the films I watched so much.  In the end, I decided that the story, along with Bogart’s and Graham’s wonderful performances, spoke to me the most.  While much of this film lingers on the verge of melodrama, it manages to rein the story in with some disturbing subtext.  All in all, it’s a beautifully made, touching film.

3. The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2003)

When Cinema dreams or when she remembers, I often imagine that she sees everything in the form of a Guy Maddin movie.  Thus far, this is my favorite of his films, perhaps because the plot remains focused throughout and the results are succinct and accessible while retaining the style and themes that make him such a special filmmaker.

4. Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman, 2008)

After seeing this well over a month ago, I intended to type up some commentary, but various circumstance–not to mention the holidays–prevailed and prevented me from doing so.  As confounding as it is, I love this film.  It lacks the cute whimsy of Kaufman’s previous script, due perhaps to the absence of Gondry or Jonze at the helm, or perhaps by virtue of the subject matter.  Death and mortality are not easy subjects, especially in this rather light age we live in, but Kaufman in his directorial debut manages to infuses new life in the old “carpe diem” tale of woe.  It’s multi-layered and tangential in the fashion of many great novels and fascinating to watch and moving, if not necessarily thrilling.

5. Box (Miike, 2004)

I knew I had to include this short film by Takashi Miike, which appears on the anthology Three…Extremes.  Unbelievably beautiful and haunting, it is a perplexing dreamscape with a rather vexing denoument.  Perhaps the most memorable film I’ve seen all year.  It astounds me that Miike can make such a quietly powerful film like this or Audition and then without a blink go on to make such a bizarre high concept mess like Sukiyaki Western Django.

Here’s a list of films I’ve watched this year, with links to the associated entries:

Angel Face (Preminger, 1952)
Beyond the Forest (Vidor, 1949)
Choke (Gregg, 2008)
Control (Corbijn, 2007)
The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008)
Foolish Wives (Stroheim, 1922)
The Illusionist (Burger, 2006)
In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park, 2005)
Laura (Preminger, 1944)
The Lion in Winter (Harvey, 1968)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinneman, 1966)
The Man You Loved to Hate (Montgomery, 1980)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (Turteltaub, 2007)
Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 1950)
Rififi (Dassin, 1950)
The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2003)
Le Samourai (Melville, 1967)
Synecdoche, New York (Kaufman, 2008)
Three… Extremes (Chan/Park/Miike, 2004)

I’m looking forward to a new year with hopefully more film-viewing than the last.  Here’s hoping the same for all you faithful readers!

(P.S.  You may have noticed big changes in the layout here.  There may be further changes in the coming week, depending on what I decide needs returning, but the site should at this point be fully functional.  If you run into any kinks, please don’t hesitate to let me know!)

Brad William Henke and Sam Rockwell having a seedy good time at the strip club in Choke.

Since I haven’t posted any film entries in well over a month, I thought I’d take a moment to comment on a new film I saw a couple weeks ago, Choke.  If you are one of Chuck Palahniuk’s rabid fans, chances are you’ve already read the novel and are planning on seeing the film adaptation, if you haven’t already.  Personally, I wouldn’t consider myself a Palahniuk fan; I find his penchant for gimmicky plot twists and the sameness of his hard-boiled tone from story to story a bit suspect.  Having not yet read the novel, I can’t tell you how closely the film follows its source.  But I can tell how well it worked as a film.

Basically, it’s a mess.

A lot of things in Choke work.  The acting, for the most part, is solid.  Even when the writing is somewhat lacking and one feels there could be more insight into the character, the actors are natural and engaging.  Rockwell in the role of Victor Mancini manages to balance the character’s arrogance and sex addiction against his vulnerability and need for love.  Huston, as his mother, is as usual entrancing and seemingly perfect for the role.  Choke is also pretty funny, though not mind-blowingly hilarious.  The humor is less built around gags than absurd and ironic situations, some relating to Mancini’s sexual exploits, some milking (so to speak) the humor out of historical reenactment and mental hospitals.

The problem with Choke is that it’s adapted and directed by a first-timer, Clark Gregg (who also plays the lord of the colonial theme park Mancini works).  Gregg bypasses the narrative arc that would have strengthened the story and instead allows the film to meander from one episode to the next.  It all connects, but not in a way that’s terribly potent.  I hesitate to call the film uninteresting, since it did hold my attention throughout, but it doesn’t really go anywhere.  There is even a potentially interesting subplot that is dropped after the climax (to Palahniuk’s credit, a few fans have said that this subplot is futher explored in the novel).  There are, in typical Palahniuk fashion, some very odd ideas thrown into the mix and a plot twist that is not intensely shocking.  None of this is enough to make the film anything more than OK.  The writing meanders, and the editing is uninspired.  In the end, Choke turned out to be one of those films with plenty of potential and mediocre execution.

For a synopsis of the plot and more, check out the entry for this film on IMDb:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1024715/
I didn’t have time to invest in more detailed commentary, but there should be plenty more at that link.

I had hoped to post some entries within the last month, but truthfully, it has been over a month since I have watched any movies or read any book worth noting in this blog. And while I have debated writing about two of the films I did see over the summer, I have simply not had the desire or inclination to do so. I have been to some galleries in that time but have not been motivated to write about that subject either. I have also not been keeping up with my blog reading at all.

Apparently, August just flew right by.

For any matter, I hope to get out of this funk soon and find the time to write about film, art, or literature. At the very least, I would like to watch the fresh dvd’s sitting on my TV stand before the month is through.

In an effort to be more interactive, what films have you watched over the summer? Anything that really excited you? Anything really terrible? I’m sure that many of you, like me, watched The Dark Knight (judging by sales at least), but was it worth the accolades and hype? Moreover, what else did you see released this year? Did you watch any classics or foreign/art fare? Did rewatch a film and discover something new? I’d love to hear about it.

I’ve gone ahead and expunged this blog of past entries featuring my own artwork. These pieces had not received a great deal of feedback and detracted from the central focus. If you’d like to keep up with my visual art and illustration, I still post work to my main online portfolio when I can, and I am currently posting sketches to my LiveJournal and deviantArt scrapbook. Feel free to bookmark whichever link is most convenient for you.

As far as my fiction and poetry are concerned, I am choosing not to post any of this online for the time being, as I am focusing on having this work published.

This summer has not been terribly fruitful in regards to film-viewing, but last month I did catch up on my study of silent films by watching Erich von Stroheim’s classic Foolish Wives. While not regarded as his best film, Foolish Wives does showcase Stroheim’s lush visual style, mature subject matter, and the precisely manipulated persona of Euro-decadence he is best remembered for.

In the film, Stroheim plays one of a trio of grifters posing as Russian ex-pat aristocrats vacationing in Monte Carlo and looking for the next con. They find their latest mark in the form of a U.S. envoy and his young wife. They are also involved in a counterfeiting scheme, gambling with fake money to win the real stuff, which we know must end badly. Stroheim recreates Monte Carlo in rich detail, and perhaps the most memorable aspect of the film occurs in scenes as above, where we feel that we are in a real place, exotic and decaying and wholly tempting. The content has much in common with European literature of the 19th century and the fin de siècle in its obsession with decadent aristocracy and dark, naturalistic tragedy. Apparently, some critics of the time were not altogether pleased with the depiction of the naive Americans abroad, easily dazzled by the fake glamor of the sophisticated European con-artists.

As far as films go, I found Foolish Wives fairly enjoyable, if fatty in places. During the silent era, many directors were experimenting with running time, and the original cut of Foolish Wives is said to run 6 hours, though it was eventually cut by the studio down to 130 minutes. It’s hard to say whether this extra would really have been useful, though a certain rediscovered scene included on the KINO dvd illuminates the cruel pathology of Stroheim’s Sergius. Running only a couple minutes long, it was likely not included so as not to offend the audience.

Foolish Wives is at best a wonderful showcase of Stroheim’s seductively wicked Count Karamazin, a great character who offers a certain spin on the Stroheim persona. In the screenshot above, we see the scalawag eying the idiot daughter of Ventucci the counterfeiter, a move that will eventually, in the course of the film, lead to his demise. On the KINO Deluxe Collector’s Edition of the dvd is included a documentary about the life of Erich von Stroheim, The Man You Loved to Hate. Though the production values of the documentary are lacking (it was produced in 1980), it does offer a detailed look at Stroheim’s very interesting life and attempts to dissect some of his public persona. For anyone interested in Stroheim’s work, it is a fascinating and necessary resource.