RECENTLY RATED MOVIES #13 (MIYAZAKI EDITION)

You might notice, after finishing the reading of this post, a trio of Hayao Miyazaki films beginning the listing of Recently Rated Movies; likewise, you will also find a pair of his films in the last posting of this regular feature (#12). I know it sometimes sounds as if I were some sort of publicist for Turner Classic (and it would be nice if I were, for I hear sometimes people get recompense for such activities), but clearly I am just some sort of unhinged movie nut who simply uses Turner as the default station on his cable box (if such things were possible, it would be so). As such, I have spent the last couple of weeks immersing myself in TCM's Miyazaki festival, a compilation of nine films either directed, written or produced by the Master Animator, and hosted by both Ben Mankiewicz and John Lasseter, of PIXAR and Toy Story fame.

The first time that I saw a Miyazaki film happened long before he became a known entity to me. This would be , known here in the colonies as My Neighbor Totoro, and while I enjoyed the film immensely, believing it to be one of the most pastorally charming movies that I have ever encountered, because I did not possess a proper pipeline for anime at the time, the film wandered off in my memory. And so did Miyazaki... until I met Tatsuya.

A friend that I met through the social circles of the theatre department at the local university, Tatsuya, due to a variety of circumstances, ended up needing a place to crash for a month. As I had just recently lost a roommate, and was still undecided as to whether I would pursue another boarder, I let my still rather recently acquired friend stay with me. And with him, he brought Hayao Miyazaki back into my life. Tatsuya, as I recall it, had a copy of Mononoke-hime, which I and a relative handful in America would come to know as Princess Mononoke, sent to him from back home in Japan. For several months up to that point, I had eyed with great interest a figurine that hung from the rearview mirror of Tatsuya's car. It was of a kodoma, one of the spirit folk that populates the deep forests in Mononoke-hime with a head that looks like a melted bowling ball, and set slightly tilted to one side. I would ask him on occasion the name of the film from whence it came, and he would tell me, but as I never thought that I would actually see the damn thing, so the name just passed ghost-like through me.

But here, in my own household, was a copy of that film, with tiny cute kodoma set all about the cover, though from the copy, entirely in Japanese without a word of English in sight, I knew that the film was solely in the language of his birth, and that I would be viewing it sans subtitled translation. But view it I did, and from the opening scene with the giant forest boar-god tearing through the farmland, with his flesh being devoured from whatever had taken purchase inside of him, and Prince Ashitaka being infected with a curse set loose and named by the boar-god, I was captivated. I would occasionally turn to Tats and ask him what was being said, to which he replied, "It's...it's complicated."

It is a point of great humor amongst my friends, and Tatsuya is aware of this, that in moments of needed translation, he responds with "It's... complicated." (It often gets shortened to simply, "Complicated.") The truth of the matter is, it was complicated. The tremendous of translating subtle emotional or metaphysical concepts that have been captured in language via the process of a sort of cultural shorthand is complicated business, no matter how well you translate. Tatsuya tried very hard to outline some of what was happening, but some concepts just don't travel, and need to be felt more than explained. This is what I derived from that first viewing of Mononoke-hime, and after that initial half-hour, I simply settled into watching the gorgeous film, and picked up on the bulk of the meaning merely from the feel of the piece.

I watched the film once more that night on my own, and about ten more times the rest of that too short month. (I greatly enjoyed having Tatsuya as a roommate.) I didn't see Mononoke-hime again until it was released in late 1999 to American theatres. It wasn't the same. Most of the voices were fine, but, while I am a great admirer of Billy Bob Thornton's acting, he was clearly the wrong choice for the voice of Jigo, his Southern accent not quite jibing with the obvious and overwhelmingly Japanese background and setting. (A friend of mine joked that he "was from the South of Japan.") The film was still great, and it was a sublime pleasure to see the incredibly intricate animation set loose on a movie screen. I did see the film three times more that month, so, American dubbing or not, I was clearly hooked on it. but it wasn't until the DVD came out that I got what I truly craved: subtitles. Hearing the film in Japanese just seemed so right, and I could read the story as I watched the film; though, more often than not, I don't even run the subtitles.

After all, I had already felt the movie. Who needs subtitles?

The List of Doom:
Mimi wo sumaseba [Whisper of the Heart] (1995) (TCM) - 7; Kurenai no buta [Porco Rosso] (1992) (TCM) - 7; Tonari no Totoro [My Neighbor Totoro] (1988) (TCM) - 8; Il Conformista [The Conformist] (1970) (TCM) - 7; Genevieve (1953) (TCM) - 7; The Most Dangerous Game (1932) (DVD) - 6; Shura-yuki-hime [Lady Snowblood] (1973) (DVD) - 7; Oliver Twist (1948) (TCM) - 9; Dig! (2004) (DVD) - 7; Amazon Women On the Moon (1987) (Sundance) - 6; Solaris (2002) (IFC) - 6; El Espinazo del Diablo [The Devil's Backbone] (2001) (IFC) - 8.

Recently Rated Movies #12: Drowning Open Water

Those of you who know me well out there will be shocked by this news, but I disliked Open Water. 

It is widely known that I am a shark enthusiast. Not to the point where I want to make out with one of the fearsome but lovely creatures, but I do love them. Shark Week is much anticipated every season in my household ( I, and I only, am the target audience of Shark Week); if I am cruising with the remote and I happen upon some random show with a shark in it, no matter how horrid, even if it starred the Olsen Twins in all their troll-like pre-pubescent horror, I would stop and watch the damnable thing; and the only person that I know that has seen Jaws more than I have is my buddy Tony. If I see that Shark Attack, Shark Attack 2 or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (where a 60-foot shark swallows an entire boat!) are showing on the Sci-Fi Channel, especially all in a row, then I am staying on that station for the duration, no matter how truly terrible all three films actually happen to be. The execrable Jaws: The Revenge? A mere walk in the park for me.

So, you would think that Open Water, a film about an annoying couple who get left behind in the Caribbean by their dive boat and then are left in the open water for hours facing the dangers posed by sharks, jellyfish, hypothermic exposure and dehydration, would be a natural film for me to love. The problem is that, while this is based on a true incident that happened off Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the story behind the making of the film is far more intriguing than what actually ends up on the screen. My favorite part of the DVD was the behind-the-scenes documentary, and I kept watching the film thinking about what Hitchcock could have done with such a scenario.

This is actually pretty unfair to think regarding a filmmaker making only his second film; really, its unfair to compare any young director to the Master. And I do think that Chris Kentis has some legitimate talent and certainly a lot of chutzpah (I will be interested to see what he comes up with next), but his film never really got me caught up in the two main characters (which is bad because, outside of the sharks that torment them, they are the only two actual characters in it). If you are going to be stuck watching two people for eighty-odd minutes, and pretty much two people only, you have got to be engaged by at least one of those people. Surprisingly for me, the male is the more sympathetic of the two (I tend to take the side of women in most films, because men really are, as a gender, assholes), but he is whiny, and I didn't like him even if he is the only person who seems to watch Shark Week as much as me. And his female counterpart? Well, she's a movie producer, so she is a lost cause from the start.

As for the shark scenes, they are well-staged, and are the strongest element of the actual film (apart from the short running time); but because of the organic nature of the film (no CG effects; live sharks baited or fed to react in certain ways), one expects the suspense level of the shark attacks to be amped up a little more due to the rule of "less is more," that being a way of expressing that the more that is left to the viewer's imagination, the more effective the thrill delivery level. Perhaps it is the somewhat amateurish acting, perhaps the overall staging of certain scenes, but I never really bought into much of what occurred in the story, even with live actors splashing about in the ocean with a bunch of actual sharks. It is entirely possible that because I had heard so much about how the scenes were made, that it sunk the picture for me. Perhaps I would have liked it more if I had seen it in the theatres as soon as I heard about it. (I did have plans to see it at one point, but they were quashed at the last minute.) Consider it a lost opportunity...

Numerous people have asked me for my opinion of Syriana. This is all you need to know, and you will have my answer in a nutshell: I hate cars. I hate car culture. I believe that anyone who even thinks about buying a Hummer should be castrated to prevent their further propagation. I believe our country would be better off with monorails and increased bus systems. I believe in the immediate and focused development of any cleaner burning and more eco-friendly energy sources. And I despise all oil companies, and those individuals and institutions who line their wallets with "soft monies" and political "contributions" gained from their time spent making out with these companies in the backs of air-polluting, gas-guzzling automobiles. Too extreme? Too bad.

Now, ask me again what I thought of Syriana.

The Ratings:

Syriana (2005) - 7; The Matador (2005) - 7; Kaze no tani no Naushika [Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds] (1984) (TCM) - 8; Open Water (2003) (DVD) - 5; The Machinist (2004) (DVD) - 6; Cat People (1982) (DVD) - 6; Tenku no shiro rapyuta [Laputa: Castle in the Sky] (1986) (TCM) - 8.

The Kollege of Musical Knowledge

I highly recommend that if you have a mother that can't sing, and she insists on singing to you constantly throughout your childhood, that you get rid of her immediately and trade her in for one that can vocalize to a sufficiently able degree.

My mother sang to us often as we were growing up, and, luckily for us, she could sing. It's not as if she walked around the house regaling us with song after song at all hours of the day. She certainly did not do such a thing. But she would pick her moments, and when the mood was right or the song had some sort of topical relevance to whatever mischief was going on at that particular moment, she would start in on some song from her childhood and sing a few bars (or sometimes more). I always found this pleasant, for frankly, she never sang enough.

One of the songs she would do a little of now and then was "Three Little Fishies (Itty Bitty Poo)", and was especially fond of saying the line "...and they twam and they twam all over the dam." Because we never had a recording of this song, I only knew it from my mother's singing it to us, and it would be several years before I actually heard the song on the radio (KHAR Easy Listening in Anchorage) and learned the name of the man who made it a #1 hit back in 1939: Kay Kyser.

From what I understand, he was a bandleader who didn't really lead his band, except as a figurehead, and had little to do with the arranging or producing of the records on which his name appeared as the artist. That's fine: Walt Disney could barely draw, didn't actually create most of his characters, or even write his name in the scrawl in which it famously appears, but Disney was still a genius. I'm not saying that Kyser was a genius, far from it, but he was an able comedian, was exceedingly popular in the 30's and 40's, had 11 Number One hits and over 35 hits in a span of 15 years, and had one of the most popular radio shows in the world: The College of Musical Knowledge. Kay Kyser was actually an academic, and he carried this posture over into the character that he used to portray himself to the world: the grand professor of all things musical, he spoke in a weird mix of Southern politeness and hipster lingo that were an especially odd combination coming out the mouth of a man that you swore never took his nose out a book.

But this professor was so popular that Hollywood just had to come calling, and Kyser and his orchestra made seven starring features (and were featured in two cameos in other films) throughout the 40's. None of them were ever going to win any awards, at least not for quality, but that really wasn't supposed to be the focus anyway. (Most would say they were made to be fun entertainments, but a cynic would say they were simply made to make money. Though I normally side with the cynics on these lines, I will walk this particular line and say that they were made to be fun entertainments and to make money, like most Hollywood pictures of any generation. Now, is everybody happy?)

I first encountered a Kyser film when I tuned in to what I presumed would be a horror film, since I knew very little about the film called You'll Find Out (1940) beyond the fact that it starred Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre. That combination alone was enough to send me to the station for a viewing, but when I looked the film up in my Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, it said that the real star was Kay Kyser, and referred to the horrific trio as being "wasted". I took this to mean that were underused, but you never know with the Psychotronic.

The truth is that the scaremeisters are underused, though they do have some good moments, but the film really does belong to Kyser and his band, and most especially to the strange deadpan comic stylings of trumpeter Ish Kabbible (born Merwyn Bogue). I knew Ish's name from "Three Little Fishies", where it is mentioned at the beginning of the song, but I always thought he was the singer. It turns out that the voice actually belonged to Harry Babbitt, who figures prominently in the film, along with singer Ginny Simms and saxman Sully Mason. But Ish turned out to be my favorite part of the film, and because of this movie, I started hunting down any Kyser I could find on CD. But I didn't see another Kyser film until two weeks ago.

Home for New Year's vacation, I ventured onto TCM to find a pair of Kyser films showing back to back, and both from 1943: Swing Fever and Around the World. Swing Fever is an odd attempt to turn Kyser into a solo comedy star, with the band clearly relegated to the background, and used mainly in musical sequences. The film is rather unsuccessful, and would have been better as a Danny Kaye trifle in a couple of years. Kyser just doesn't quite fit in to this mold, though he is rather pleasant to watch. Around the World is a far more enjoyable effort, even if the film itself is rather slapdash and constitutes mainly of hijinks surrounding the Kyser Band's USO Tour during WWII. Stops all around the world (hence the title), numerous stage appearances in front of the troops, a lot of corndog jokes from Ish Kabibble, and some seriously haphazard slapstick involving Kay and fellow tour resident Mischa Auer (playing himself). My favorite parts of the film involve Auer sitting down at the piano and then playing his selection using a series of grapefruits, and any of the scenes utilizing the comic talents of the marvelous Joan Davis (a favorite of mine since seeing her in Sun Valley Serenade and Hold That Ghost).

As I said, these films are not Citizen Kane, nor were they meant to be. For a pleasant three hours, though, I was transported back in time to an era that I never knew, and only can know when I visit the entertainments or histories of that time. Personally, I'll check out the entertainments...

Paging Mr. Psychotronic... Paging Mr. Psychotronic...

A quick jaunt up the coast this past weekend to Santa Rosa for a Capricorn party has left me practically movie-less for the past week (with one awesome exception), but not without some unexpected gains to my film library. And by "film library," I mean my actual library about film, not DVDs or videotapes. I'm talking books, people!

An unplanned side trip into Treehorn Books, a used bookstore in Santa Rosa, left two dog-eared -- but in far better condition than my original edition -- copies of Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in my happy little hands. Long out of print (to my knowledge), I cannot stress enough how important this 1983 book was in developing my love of outré cinema, and while I still have not seen every film mentioned in its interior, I have made a pretty good run at seeing most of the pictures contained within its covers. (One of these copies is getting shipped up to Anchorage immediately to my fellow movie nut Aaron, who will appreciate its lurid cover, wonderfully descriptive film entries and black and white reproductions of a host of crappy movie posters greatly.) Weldon also started The Psychotronic Film Guide Magazine, and he doesn't so much review a film, as he does give you a list of all the reasons that you should see a film, whether or not it is a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper. Horror, sci-fi, juvenile delinquent, rock n' roll, jungle, and gorilla pictures, beach and surf flicks...really, exploitation of any sort. If you like any of these genres, this book is a must-have for your collection and further cinematic edification.

I also discovered a gorgeous hardcover copy (with protective book cover) of Astaire Dancing by John Mueller from 1985, and also long out of print. I have yet to break into its text, but much of the book is devoted to frame-by-frame breakdowns of many of the dance sequences from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical series, covers the majority of Astaire's career, and will be great fun to go through in conjunction with the DVD set that was recently released (and which Jen and I will naturally now have to purchase).

A not-unexpected gain, since I left the book behind on my trip to my brother's in November, was a hardcover copy of Cut! Hollywood Murders, Accidents and Other Tragedies that Mark and Marci passed on to me. I've already noticed that they left Marie Provost out of the book (nothing like being devoured by dachshunds!), so I am unsure as to how complete the research is in the book, but I will wade into it the next time I am in a particularly gory mood. Maybe it will keep me from cracking my ancient copy of Hollywood Babylon again.

A two-hour wait in the San Francisco Airport left me with time to wander about Compass Books, where I snagged a copy of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy - The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy. I am about a third of the way through this very concise history of the boys, and even if the author (Simon Louvish) gets a little too lavish with his historical overview of comedy in the beginning, I am finding it a most intriguing read.

Didn't really have time to read on the flight, though... the flight is only an hour, and by the time the beverage service shows up and leaves, you are pretty much landing, so it is hard to really get into anything heavy on such a short zip. 

And don't get me started on that crappy little bag of pretzels that they term a "snack". Grrrrr...

Recently Rated Movies #11: We Just Let You Think We're Part of the Human Race...

A pleasant surprise this weekend was taking a remote control stroll past the Orange County Public Access channel late Saturday evening and discovering that some dementedly wonderful person was running Teenagers from Outer Space, a zero-budgeted and profoundly terrible movie from 1959. 

I came into the film about five minutes in, so I had to wait until they showed it again later that evening to find out if it was some yuckster's regularly scheduled bad movie show, hopefully graced with cheesy host segments before and after. It turns out that the latter wish was not to be, but neither was I able to ascertain whether it was a regular show either, as it was not actually on the scrolling index for the channel that runs between every program. So, now I will just have to wait until next Saturday night to see if they roll another science fiction anti-classic.

Ray guns that disintegrate clothing and flesh but not bones (portrayed by cheap plastic skeletons), a cute ingenue with a cross between a Louise Brooks and Bettie Page wig-do, the most stiffly, sub-community theatre acting level uncle in the history of the cinema, and lobster shadows that grow to gigantic proportions (though they are called "Gargons," they are undisguisedly lobsters in form) are unleashed upon the viewers. I was in "B" movie heaven.

The last few times I have seen the film was on the late, lamented MST3K, and I had not seen it in its non-robot puppet version since I was a teenager. Poor Sparky the dog, reduced immediately at the beginning of the film to a pile of bones; and yet, he becomes the chief proponent of the plot as his dog license tag survives the ray gun blast (but somehow his collar does not). [A side note: many good friends of mine will remember the dog-frying scene from our numerous viewings of It Came From Hollywood on video in the '80s.] The rebellious teenager from outer space, who goes by the popular interplanetary monicker of Derek, surmises quite correctly that this creature must have been someone's pet, and goes off in search of the owner. Luckily for him, Sparky's owner is a hot girl, and then the intergalactic whoopee commences!

Sure, the film is unintentionally funny enough to fill 27 movies and is inspiringly amateurish in every single regard; yet, it is still weirdly compelling, and it doesn't really require the Mystery Science gang to get you through it. I was delighted to run into the film in the middle of the night on a nothing station, as it reminded me of how I used to find my science-fiction and horror thrills as a teenager: almost completely at random, never knowing what film you were going to see, and without having any choice in the matter. You just tuned in and watched whatever you got, and also wherever you happened to tune into it. I really miss that feeling.

A planned viewing that I had this weekend was finally watching my recording of Seven Men from Now, which sounds like a gay porn title, but is actually a quite intriguing and enjoyable western from Budd Boetticher, for whom this film was the first of seven consecutive team-ups with Randolph Scott. Of their films, I had only seen The Tall T and Comanche Station previously, but had read about this film quite a lot over the years. So when TCM showed Seven Men for the first time a couple weeks back in conjunction with a documentary about the director and bullfighter called Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That, I made sure to set the DVR up for its recording.

It seems a generic western until you get deep into it, and then you discover a couple of well-choreographed gun battles, some excellent camera set-ups and location usage, a fun dose of sexual suggestion, and a scene of Scott suffering severe psychological torture at the hands of the conniving yet charismatic snake-in-the-grass Lee Marvin, who completely swipes the picture out from under the stoic Scott. I'm sure Scott could have cared less, because once the film is finished, there is a shot of him with gun drawn that resonates deeply with the viewer, and I have had it stuck in my cranium since I finished watching the film, which I now believe to be a piece of subtle, unshowy genius. It is now the next film that I shall purchase on DVD.

The List:
The Goldwyn Follies (1938) TCM - 5
Jaws (1975) DVD - 9
Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) PUAOC - 2
Kingukongu no gyakushu [King Kong Escapes] (1967) DVD - 4
Batman Begins (2005) DVD - 8
Gojira: Fainaru uozu [Godzilla: Final Wars] (2004) DVD - 6
Kingukongu tai Gojira [King Kong Versus Godzilla] (1962) DVD - 4
Seven Men from Now (1956) TCM - 7
Around the World (1943) TCM - 5
Swing Your Lady (1938) TCM - 4
Swing Fever (1943) TCM - 5
Night Must Fall (1937) TCM - 6
Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That (2005) TCM - 7
The Producers (1968) TCM - 8

Cinema 4: Further into the Future!

Happy New Year, everybody!!! And a Happy Bastille Day to my brother Chris!! (I need not explain...)

I am beginning this new year by not going to the movies, a statement that many of you who have known me forever will find most shocking. I normally try to attend anywhere from three to four films on New Year's Day, with my all-time record in one day being an amazingly well planned-out five several years ago. But this year is different. The weather, my girlfriend's undue illness, and my desire to remain untouched by said illness are forcing a cancellation of my normal day of cinematic lounging. My planned third viewing of Peter Jackson's King Kong and also of Memoirs of a Geisha were cancelled by the rainy, rainy, rainy weather (Pooh would call it "blustery"), and a talked-about evening showing of Rumor Has It became exactly that: a rumor, due to the aforementioned illness.

But I did not pass the time at home in a completely idle fashion. I spent much of the afternoon setting up a second blog site, which is, instead of the focused concentration on all types of movies here at the Pylon, entirely dedicated to stuffing the internet to the gills with my musings on every animated film that I see in the next year. The site is called Cinema 4: Cel Bloc and can be checked out by clicking here. (Or click on the actual title, too. I like to cover my bases.)

Another feature that I added today, which many of you will realize because you are probably looking at this because you received an email today pertaining to it, is a mailing list for the Pylon. Until today, while I had spoken of the site to a handful of people and shown it to a few at work, I had not sent out the location of the site to most of my friends and family. That has all changed as of today. I have also added a mailing list subscription box at the bottom of the page to facilitate this process. (Much thanks to Lindsay of La La Lamarland for helping me set all of this up today.) Now, all members of my mailing list will receive an email informing them anytime that I put up a new post to this page. However, as there should be about 86,000 posts in the next year to the Cel Bloc, I will not send update emails for that new site to the mailing list. I didn't want to bother everyone each and every time that I decided to watch a Porky Pig cartoon. Of course, it could very well have turned out to be a lot of fu-fu-f-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-f-f-fu-fu-uh--a g-g-good time!

And for Pete's sake, people, start up your own blogs! It's so easy, I can do it! Let's go, Bohemians!