I Thought Nought: The Essentials

The decade's finally over. Me talking about it? ...Not so much.

Moments and Thoughts on

the Best of the Noughts

-THE ESSENTIALS-

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Directed by David Lynch

David Lynch's deliriously fascinating and addictive fever dream aloft the City of Angels boasts an epic breakthrough from a sexy/scorned Naomi Watts. One of Lynch's finest cinematic experiences and artistic expressions. Gorgeous, ominous and wholly original; it's an impossible puzzle with all its pieces perfectly in place.

In the Mood for Love (2001)

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

Sensuous longing of such exquisite craft and resonance. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung spark one of the most haunting and passionate romances to grace the silver screen, without even allowing their romance to ignite. Wong Kar-Wai's enveloping aura looks back on a love in full bloom stifled in its time and place. Painful and majestic in its emotional and visual restraint, it's one of the greatest love stories ever told, and yet barely spoken.

Before Sunset (2004)

Directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater's sequel-de-resistance picks up the love connection of Jesse and Celine with startling ease from its predecessor Before Sunrise, then adds to and extends it with a poignancy, maturity and immaculate sense of possibility. One flirtatious, funny and sobering stroll through Paris reveals characters that feel entirely real, with a spark that lingers even stronger nine years later. Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke bring immeasurable authenticity and charm to their romantic reunion, no cutaways to the Eiffel Tower necessary. Finally a romantic comedy that makes love and connection seem like more than a requisite ending.

Y tu Mamá También (2002)

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Bawdy sex comedy and coming-of-age drama gain a dose of maturity, melancholy and cultural perspective -- not to mention a deeper understanding of characters initially driven by getting their dicks wet. Alfonso Cuarón's film feels like a journey of the unexpected, taking one by surprise with a light, naturalistic, and pulsating energy underlined by heavy, unspoken emotions. By the time the film and its characters reach their climax, there's a whole new way of looking at things.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Directed by Ang Lee

Like Ang Lee's best films it's both sparing and superbly grand - if not in the majestic mountain vistas than in its thematic and emotional reach. Steeped in repression and yearning, it toys with its American West origins to reveal a love story that's both roped in tradition and completely free rein. Like the inner turmoil of its doomed lovers, the film has an ache at its center that remains long past its misty-eyed final frames, much due to the deeply felt performances of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It's classic romance with a literal bent, with an elegant restraint matched only by its raw passion. "If you can't fix it, you've gotta stand it." Lucky for us, this one's pretty flawless.

Dogville (2004)

Directed by Lars von Trier

Lars von Trier bares his teeth, chains you to your seat and smashes your Hummel figurines. This audacious and inventive approach to stripped-down cinema is about as big-scale in its ideas as anything this decade -- another vicious think-piece to follow von Trier's equal parts stunning and savage Dancer in the Dark (another decade favorite). Dogville looks into a seemingly sweet small town and the sourest sides of human nature. It's not the anti-American tirade many have criticized, rather a worthwhile indictment of society as a whole. Its satire is scathing, funny and sensationally dark, told with remarkable innovation and yet another daring and devastating turn by Nicole Kidman. A bit like a cinematic Our Town, populated by Depression-era scum of the earth.

More I Thought Nought (Best of the Decade) entries here.

This is a Winter Weather Advisory

All area key parties have been postponed until further notice.

Election Excitement with Christina Ricci

2009 and Beyond the Infinite: Part 2

A look into the films of the future.

Part 1 available here.

Dark Shadows

Release: 2010 (?)
Director: Tim Burton

The soapy sixties saga from creator Dan Curtis about time-shifting vampire Barnabas Collins and his dark legacy is always ripe to be drained of its blood. There was already the nineties' short-lived revival series, and this decade's botched teenage spin, but now it's Tim Burton's turn to revisit the Gothic mystery of Collinwood Manor. It sounds unexpectedly enticing! Naturally Johnny Depp's set for the lead, but this time it's as much about good casting as it is Burton's friendly obligation. The series had a tone of playful fantasy that can be Burton's specialty, although Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seemed like manufactured whimsy more than inspired streams of his imagination. See Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejuice for that. John August is writing the script and we can probably assume it will stick to the core story of Barnabas falling for the beautiful visitor Victoria Winters, who bears a striking resemblance to his long lost love Josette. It's all about witches, werewolves and Barnabas Fucking Collins! (John August is welcome to use that line in the film.) Burton's off doing his version of Alice in Wonderland first, also starring Johnny Depp, but we'll wait and see if he can recover some of that old black magic.

A natural progression.

Enter the Void
Release: 2009 (Cannes Film Festival)
Director: Gaspar Noé

If you've got a strong stomach or a substance abuse problem, this one's your golden ticket! Shocking and innovative French director Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone) takes us on a psychedelic trip through the mind of a man on the brink of death. Noé says the film, which was recently completed in Tokyo, will be an exhaustive experience blending dreams, memory and startling streams of consciousness. He mentions his primary influence was the mind melding 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he already made direct connections to in the bold and controversial Irreversible. The trippy, "melodramatic" plot concerns a brother's efforts to save his sister while having a near death experience. It sounds radically visual with an inventive narrative, and there's no doubt Noé's got a little shock left in his system. Check out the film's striking poster art and more of Noé's thoughts here.

"Someone in here!"

Satisfaction
Release: 2009 (?)
Director: Miranda July

Me, you and everyone I know loved Miranda July's indie/performance art debut. Her follow-up is a modern romantic comedy that, according to Variety, "turns on a young couple: Jason, goes off on an ecological mission; Sophie starts an affair with an older man. Both events threaten the relationship." Some threads of the film might even connect to July's recent short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You. Expect big heart, inoffensive quirk, and possibly some small kids chatting poetically about scat.

))<>((

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
Release: 2009 (?)
Director: Don Roos

Am I actually looking forward to a movie starring Jennifer Lopez? To that I say, "Enough!" But then I look out the window and hell hasn't frozen over. It's just her good luck to be paired with a hilarious queer director and his perfect sardonic muse Lisa Kudrow. Don Roos, who gave us The Opposite of Sex and the undervalued Happy Endings, is back with another take on the perils and promise of modern relationships. According to the (far too spoilerish) synopsis here, the film follows an aspiring lawyer (Lopez) whose flirtation with a married senior partner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) quickly spins into marriage, pregnancy, and dealing with a difficult stepchild. Did you just nod off? Well it takes some darker turns from there which sound like they'll definitely reap the heavy drama. It's based on a novel by Ayelet Waldman and could be more in keeping with Roos' 2000 feature Bounce. I'm not making this sound good at all... But Lisa Kudrow everybody!

Antichrist
Release: 2009
Director: Lars von Trier

Previously discussed here. While we wait on Washington and pray Nicole Kidman frees up her schedule, we get this equally drool-worthy prospect. Lars von Trier is fusing his notoriously horrifying take on humanity with a more genre-based horror. It's got a cabin in the woods, a demonic pregnancy and Willem Dafoe, all working their way under your skin. Do yourself a favor and gear up for this one by watching von Trier's miniseries spectacular The Kingdom (Riget). Because where else can you see Udo Kier's adult head emerging from a womb?

Rosemary had it easy.

Taking Woodstock
Release: 2009
Director: Ang Lee

Recently discussed here. I lust for any new Ang Lee film, devoid of caution that it could ever disappoint. (Covering my ears as you say The Hulk). Gay themes, Emile Hirsch and Jeffrey Dean Morgan! ...Oh, and something about music... or some kind of festival... maybe?

"Bring on shirtless Emile Hirsch! ...Oh, and the band. We should probably hear the band."

Margaret
Release: 2009
Director: Kenneth Lonergan

Kenneth Lonergan's second feature has been a long time coming. It was way back in 2000 that he warmed indie-loving hearts with the magnificent You Can Count On Me. Stars of that film Mark Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick (plus your standard Culkin kid) are joined by Matt Damon and Anna Paquin for this morality based drama. The film follows Lisa Cohen (Paquin), a high school student witness to a horrible traffic accident. She feels as though the tragedy may have inadvertently been her fault, and in efforts to make things right with herself she brings about complications with those around her. It sounds like another richly rewarding character piece from Lonergan, and if it's anything like his debut we can expect some wonderfully natural dialogue and subtly affecting humor.

She's too depressed to be fucking Matt Damon.

Part 3 coming soon.

Milk Does a Gay Cinephile Good

Below is the first trailer for Gus Van Sant's promising biopic Milk, based on California's first openly gay elected official and all around gay rights activist Harvey Milk. It looks distinctly less mood-driven than Van Sant's more recent films like Paranoid Park, but his conjuring of seventies-era Castro Street and similar-era pornostaches looks to create an altogether different atmosphere. We're in assured hands with the always contemplative Van Sant and a solid cast that includes Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch.



Which ties into one of next year's likely highlights: Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. It also happens to have Emile Hirsch on the sidelines and yet another gay-themed historical bent. Lee's making the film alongside longtime collaborative partner James Schamus, who produced something called Brokeback Mountain. Maybe you've heard of it... The true story follows Elliot Tiber, a gay interior designer (redundant) in the Catskills who helps make Woodstock the counter-culture event of the decade. Notable elements include an encounter with a transvestite played by Liev Schreiber, and Tiber's affair with a closeted married man, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Lee's casting agent knows exactly what we want to see!

That's all very good news, right? Now for the bad news.... Poor Emile, the ads were wrong!

Milk DOESN'T do a body good.

Ang Lee and the Negative Zone

"To find yourself in the negative zone, as the Fantastic Four often do, means that all everyday assumptions are inverted. Even the invisible girl herself becomes visible and so she loses the last semblance of her power. It seems to me that everyone exists partially on a negative zone level, some people more than others. In your life it's kind of like you dip in and out of it: a place where things don't work out quite the way they should. But for some people, there's something about the negative zone that tempts them and they end up going in -- going in all the way."

This quote from The Ice Storm sums up its many repressed, longing and confused characters. It also works as the conflicted core to many of Ang Lee's accomplished films. Each tragic figure is tempted by something that would ideally lead them closer to some kind of happiness, be that true love or self-realization. At first it seems as though the world would never allow it, but eventually the world opens up and makes it possible, and ultimately it's the individual that refuses it or accepts it only moments too late.

How true to life... How depressing, gorgeously shot, and true to life...

Happy Wednesday!

Life Lessons: The Ice Storm (1997)

Mikey Carver: Molecules. Because of molecules we are connected to the outside world from our bodies. Like when you smell things. Because when you smell a smell, it's not really a smell, it's part of the object that has come off of it: Molecules. So when you smell something bad, it's like in a way you're eating it. This is why you should not really smell things, in the way that you don't eat everything in the world around you. Because as a smell, it gets inside of you. So the next time you go into the bathroom after someone else has been there, remember what kind of molecules you are in fact eating.

Best of 2007: The Top 10

The Esteemed Top 5

Already two months into 2008, and it's still a challenging task. Here are the five films that really left an indelible impression on me. Note: I still haven't seen The Hottie and the Nottie, so things could change...

1) There Will Be Blood

I feel the same way about church, and mine served donuts!

The first shot of the film- a harsh landscape accompanied by eerie orchestral strings- could just as easily be the surface of the moon, mimicking the ominous discovery of the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. To Daniel Plainview it might as well be the moon; he'd be just as willing to pillage and plunder, if it meant his own well-being of course. In those first glimmers of this monumental character study, blood is coursing through Daniel's veins like the oil beneath his feet, and there's no clue as to if or when he'll ever find solace in his success. Then again, that title certainly doesn't bode well.

Daniel Day Lewis provides Plainview, and the whole of the film, with a furious lifeforce; an energy and pull to a sinister and greedy soul. There's an extreme sense of exhilaration in watching a consummate actor dig into the recesses of such a truly dark being and have so much fun with it. Paul Thomas Anderson's work carries the vision, scope and personal signature that has already made him a reputable auteur. Anderson's fifth film is of a remarkably different breed for the young master, whose Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love are already audacious modern classics with his singular voice at their center. With There Will Be Blood, the clashing of oil, greed, religion and human misery are startlingly relevant and serve to further Anderson's playing field. If he continues on his delirious hot streak, he'll be just as infamous as Stanley Kubrick, or his mentor Robert Altman.

2) Once

What's Czech for "withholding"?

It's a musical drama so light on its feet and so effortlessly touching that it picks you up and leaves you feeling inspired, even if you're still in tears. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova make a startling romantic pair, especially given that they're first time performers and their on-screen romance is relegated primarily to the beautiful music they create together. It's a rare treat in musicals when the songs actually linger past the runtime, and part of that comes from the incalculable chemistry within these sequences; as if the songs really are being stripped from these character's insides before our very eyes.

Credit should go to John Carney, whose subtle control and economy of scenes can so easily go unnoticed. Given it's pared down nature, it's uncompromising, heartbreaking ending, and its invigorating low-budget aesthetic, there's truly something to be said for the strengths of this offbeat musical. Unlike studio venture Hairspray, or Dreamgirls the year before, the magic comes not in the precise choreography, stunt casting or A-to-Z plotting, but in the simple, transcendent power of song.

3) Eastern Promises

And Tweety Bird's on the left cheek...

Who knew the Russian sex trade and bathhouse knife fights were too mainstream? That's a claim many have leveled against David Cronenberg's latest thriller, which fails to acknowledge the closeness to his fascinations and barely scratches the surface of a film built upon layers. Eastern Promises constructs another small-scale thriller with unexpected emotional heft, not unlike A History of Violence, wherein characters' motivations mutate and identities dissolve. The plot itself is relatively simple, but the implications and undercurrents are anything but.

Viggo Mortensen once again carries the weight of the film, transforming this time into a Russian mobster with a secret; using each sigh and inflection as sharp detail and signifier of his experiences, much like the tell-all tattoos adorning his body. The intrigue of this character, alongside the melancholy narration of a deceased 14-year-old Russian mother, makes for a dark and essential entry in Cronenberg's filmography. The ending leaves many threads open, but it's not to the fault of its otherwise tightly-wound script. Instead it allows the characters a promise of a new life, once again without any guarantees.

4) Lust, Caution

She did it all for the jewelry.

One of Ang Lee's most detailed and dazzling juggling acts masquerades as a simple espionage tale, but quickly weaves into a stirring collage of identity, performance, and tragic romance. Like Lee's earlier films, these characters are all carrying the burden of repressed longing, wanton lust, and the desire to transcend their beginnings, but there's a strangely unique flavor this time around. Tang Wei gives a stunning, undervalued debut that takes into accounts all aspects of "performance" as Wong Chia Chi, a burgeoning actress who finds herself part of the resistance in a spy game to seduce and destroy the corrupt Mr. Yee, played by the always captivating Tony Leung.

The complexity of the relationships, the scope of its revolutionary story, and the combined sensuality and danger make for an extravagant think piece. It haunted me long after seeing it, not unlike Lee's Brokeback Mountain, largely because it leaves so much undefined and yet oddly finite. This is as unlikely a romance as I've ever seen and I almost hesitate to call it one, with the "controversial" sex scenes serving as surprising development of character and narrative intrigue. It all leads to that crucial scene where each deception and heartfelt emotion collide with a single line of dialogue, leaving everything forever changed.

5) Grindhouse

Shake it while you got it!

Easily one of the most fun times at the movies this year, with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez throwing us back to the days of drive-in, bad ass bombshells and all. With the missing reels, uproarious faux trailers, editing flubs and scratched reels, it's easy enough to understand why some audience members weren't in on the joke. Thus it died an unfortunate death at the box office, but I say it's all the more appropriate. This is cult cinema, meant to kiss the celluloid ghosts of underground gods like Russ Meyer and Roger Corman. Granted it's all made flashy and well cast for these director's devoted fans, but the inspiration and fanboy love positively bleeds off the screen.

Rodriguez's Planet Terror is the more slapdash, excessive of the two, and probably the less authentic in terms of the grindhouse vibe. Cherry Darling, a go-go girl with a machine gun leg, is already iconic, and this is brainless fun from start to finish. It's George Romero meets John Carpenter meets Rodriguez's own sensibilities, and it doesn't take itself seriously for a second. Tarantino's viciously enjoyable Death Proof uses it's extensive dialogue and character build to play on conventions and invoke the aura of both the slasher and chase film, all the while forming its own unique blend. It pulls a great feminist reversal and some smart modern tricks so as to not to make it merely an homage picture, and Tarantino films scenes with such unforgettable flourish and intensity. If only more filmmakers credited their inspirations with as much love and go-for-the-gut affection.

The Remaining Top 10:

(6) Margot at the Wedding

Don't even bother complimenting her hat.

A bruising study of treacherous characters and fractured families, with a uniquely sour streak from Noah Baumbach. Nicole Kidman scalds as an emotional vampire, and Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a refreshingly lived-in return.

(7) I'm Not There

Musical chameleon or shape shifter?

A mutating, ambiguous, and bold biopic that discards convention for the absolute essence of an unknowable icon. It's free flowing, inventive work from the always intelligent Todd Haynes.

(8) 2 Days in Paris

Woody Allen finds Adam Goldberg a tad neurotic.

A funny farce in which neuroses give way to a couple's true nature. Julie Delpy shines again, furthering her immense range of talents with a sharp naturalism and cross-culture perceptiveness.

(9) Away from Her

Uh-oh, someone forgot to make reservations for the ski lodge...

A poetic, elegant and unexpected story of life beyond memories. Sarah Polley's assured debut tinges with heartbreak, renewal, love and loss, and Julie Christie is a fragile wonder.

(10) (tie) Knocked Up / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Seth Rogen's baby or Mr. Bebe? Abstinence, kids.

2007 was certainly the year of the pregnancy (Juno and Inside included), each with a uniquely different approach. One is light Hollywood fare that refuses to confront real issues, but makes up for that with a sharp ensemble, big laughs and plenty of heart. The other is harsh Romanian arthouse fare that pushes buttons and cleverly holds its focus to the point of sheer discomfort.