Celebration

This week is a time for celebration.  I’m an uncle for the second time, and at long last I’m done with Chemistry.  I know it was only an 8 week course but it felt like a full time job and was absolute torture.  This means one thing in particular, more time for movies.  I’ve seen the amount of movies pile up in my to watch bin without any sign of me catching up.  I aim to change that over the next couple of weeks, at least until the inevitable next classes begin, but let’s not look that far into the future. 

Still from Cosmic Ray (1962)

I haven’t been completely without cinema in this time.  I have been making an effort to tackle a more diverse group of films, in other words more experimental and documentary films, and starting very soon quite a few films from South America.  Of the better films I’ve been watching are the films of Bruce Conner.  For those who don’t know who Bruce Conner is go ahead and google that.  In particular I got to watch A Movie (1958) and Cosmic Ray (1962) which are two of the best experimental films I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey

Less impressive was the Andy Warhol film projects I watched.  First up was Blow Job, which despite its awesome title is simple a shot of a guys face while he’s presumably receiving fellatio.  The fact that the camera never pans down and that’s all we see, it’s just the title and a sort of suggestive idea.  Not a bad concept, a bit of a tease, but horribly executed.  All silent and unnecessarily long 35 minutes it gets old quick.  This is nothing compared to his even longer and more pointless films like Sleep and Empire which are static shots of a person sleeping and the Empire State Building for hours.  He might be considered a genius in the art world, but the man was not much of a filmmaker.  He abandoned directing to Paul Morrissey later on, and they made something of a trilogy with the films Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), and Heat (1972). 

I’ve just recently watched both Flesh and Trash and well they aren’t terrible by some standards.  After all the rather frank depiction of sex and the odd characters make them an interesting if not a horribly chaotic experience.  Trash is in many ways a much, much better film than Flesh.  Don’t think I’m calling it a masterpiece but it achieves something that Flesh doesn’t come close to, which is to say it accomplishes something.  Flesh is a mess of a would be hustler trying to get money for a friends abortion and well it’s a bit boring, and very uneven.  Trash might not have a more coherent plot structure in any traditional sense but the films depiction of drugs is incredible.  Who would think that the greatest endorsement not to do drugs would come from an Andy Warhol film?  Rather than preach about drugs and dramatize horrible consequences instead Warhol/Morrissey allow the film to play out matter of factly.  Joe finds himself unable to get an erection despite the never ending amount of people who want to have sex with him.  He lives with a tranny named Holly (yes the same one from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”) who spends his/her time digging through trash bins and collecting various discarded pieces of furniture. 

Opening scene from Trash (1970)

Joe spends his days trying to get more dope and his days are centered around such.  He meets some strange, and at times horribly annoying females who are looking more for sex but Joe simply shoots up and passes out.  He even gets caught trying to rob an apartment in a very feeble attempt to get money for more drugs.  He’s cleaned up and even still can’t perform after given some heroin to shoot.  There is a fascination that many of the outside people he runs into have for his drug problem.  These people, many of whom are from more affluent backgrounds look at him with curiosity, wondering what it’s like to see someone shoot up, only to be naturally horrified by the experience and openly condemning the man they just watched plunge deeper into addiction.  The film ends with a hilarious exchange with Holly, Joe, and a welfare case worker that needs to be seen to be believed.  I can easily say though this film would do more to discourage people from using heroin than any after school special I’ve ever seen.

The Dark Knight Rises

Ok, of course you knew I saw this, how could I wait more than 24 hours after it came out to check out the most anticipated film of the year, or the last four years really.  Unfortunately some jack ass in Colorado decided to violate everything we hold dear about the cinema and I sincerely, honestly hope that someone mutilates his genitals, peels his flesh off, and makes him eat his own dick.  Unfortunately the Bill of Rights has a thing against “cruel and unusual punishment” so I guess I just have to hope for an angry mob to bust him out, but that won’t happen so whatever I’ll stop talking about it now, because it will only make me more upset.

The film itself was excellent.  I won’t say anything about the plot because what rock have you been living under that you either A:  Haven’t already seen the film or; B:  Haven’t already read enough reviews/commentary online?  Perhaps the only complaint is that Bane was about as hard to understand as I thought he'd be, gonna need subtitles next time. 

MMMMM Anne Hathaway

Now at first I have to sigh because I know this is the end of an era.  Not only will this be the last Batman movie directed by Christopher Nolan, it might very well be the last great super hero movie period.  As the genre keeps expanding the desire to make more crowd pleasing special effects laden films is going to keep anyone from trying to make the dark, philosophical films that Nolan and company were trying here.  DC and Warner Bros are attempting to make their own Justice League movie that they very foolishly believe can compete with the Avengers franchise, so don’t be surprised if Batman is back on the big screen very, very soon in a much sillier environment.  There’s no place for Nolan’s Batman in the DC Universe.  You can’t put this Batman in the same world as Superman or Green Lantern because that would ruin damn near everything great about these films.  Batman is great because he’s a man, an extraordinary one, but still a man, and to add him to that universe can work for comics because it’s always been like that, but it’s going to fail miserably in film.  So expect the next Batman movie to be more like Joel Schumacher than Nolan.

There are some bright spots however.  Another X-Men movie should be coming out at some point.  Mathew Vaughn’s X-Men First Class showed that Marvel can make great super hero movies with plenty of subtext.  I anticipate the next film should be damn good, I hope at least.  First Class was instantly better than all three of the previous X-Men films plus the Wolverine movie combined.  I just hope they don’t fuck it up. 

We can also look forward to Christopher Nolan’s next film.  Inception was damn fantastic, and Nolan has proven that he can not only create original works of art, but actually make a fortune in the process for any studio that wants to back him.  So he’ll probably have James Cameron like control and budgets the next time around and I can’t wait to see what he does (provided it’s nothing at all like Avatar). 

Anyways expect more blogage in the coming weeks, just wanted to post a bit here.