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Pass It Like a Stone
Mar. 14th, 2011 12:13 amWhat happened in Japan is simply overwhelming, as was the fact that I tripped across those first images during yet another horrifyingly sleepless night--it almost seemed like an hallucination, yet another of those endless dreadful blood-and-fire-and-muck dreams I keep having. Tomorrow I have an ultrasound scheduled anyhow, so I'm going to spend the morning at the doctor's, trying to figure out just what the fuck's going on and how best to make it stop. And I'll spend as much time as I can tonight inputting notes, et al; I did some good work on Friday night, then spent last night recuperating, enjoying having accidentally stumbled on Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind.
If you've never seen this odd, eccentric little comedy, then do. It begins as a slightly wacky neighbourhood flick (think early John Sayles, around his Brother From Another Planet era) set in a mainly-black part of Passaic, New Jersey, before morphing into a weirdly moving parable about maker culture, fanfiction and low-budget narrative control. Mos Def works in his Fats Waller-obsessed adopted father (Danny Glover)'s video store, intermittently wasting time with his friend Jack Black, who lives in a trailer next to the local power plant and believes he may be developing a brain tumour; after the building is condemned, Def is left in charge while Glover takes a "research trip" to figure out how best to upgrade his business, and Black (suddenly magnetized while trying to sabotage the plant) wipes every videotape they have, necessitating a crazy scheme: They'll take requests (Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, The Lion King, etc.), then spend the rest of the day shooting "replacement" copies of the movies in question over the wiped tapes, so they'll be available the next morning.
Naturally, the production stuff is hilarious on its own (I particularly love that they seem to be cutting every movie they "Swede" this way in-camera), but it eventually becomes just as much about the relationships behind and around the viewfinder--audience members are invited to participate, to become the "stars" of films they particularly love. (After Def can't reconcile himself to playing Hoke to Black's Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy, Mia Farrow's addled social worker and Glover's septagenarian playboy take over the roles, rewriting them from vaguely racist stereotypes into a method of charming, sexy flirtation.) And by the time the neighbourhood's chipping in to shoot a completely fictitious "biopic" of Fats Waller in a week, just in time to screen it in the hour before the building's scheduled to be demolished, what they come up with is as surreal, deadpan and inventive as any Guy Maddin flick--My Passaic, or maybe Fats' Passaic, with a side-order of Cowards Bend the Knee. Pretty good, for a movie which also contains an extended joke about magnetized urine.
Later the same night, meanwhile, I ended up re-viewing my own VHS copy of Po Chih Leong's Immortality, based on the novel The Wisdom of Crocodiles by Paul Hoffman. Steven Grlscz (Jude Law), a medical researcher in modern London, is either a sociopath with a very specialized degenerative genetic disease or (more likely) a centuries-old Bulgarian vampire who feeds not just on women's blood, but the trace-elements of love for him he can taste in that blood. Driven by the knowledge that his body will decay unless he continues this cycle, he romances and murders lady after lady, endlessly seeking a love unleavened by the usual jealousies, insecurities, malice, anger and disappointments he expels painfully afterwards in the former of a ruby-red crystal spike, somewhat like a personality-bearing gallstone.
Eventually, Simon runs across Anne (a painfully beautiful, just-post-Nadja Elina Lowensohn), and falls as much in love with her as he's capable of being--so much so that he genuinely seems to consider letting himself die, betraying his own reptilian drive for survival. Law's performance in incredible, especially in terms of his physicality; his movement is gloriously inhuman, especially in moments when he basks on the rocks near a body-drop site with his jaws wide, or sinks down into a four-legged crouch--elegant and ritualistic yet unrestrained as any Butoh dancer--before leaping on an unwary thug. But Lowensohn, too often an opaque, elliptical presence, meets him halfway--here she's the humanizing influence, intelligent, passionate and complicated, her every emotion immediately accessible through the eyes, the mouth, the movements. They compliment and complete each other perfectly.
So, anyhow. I need to do that prep work, then try and knock myself out, so I can get up at a quote-quote normal hour. And I still have those reviews, don't I?
It'd be nice to be able to just crap things up sometimes, wouldn't it, no matter how bad it hurt? Especially if you could do it straight onto the screen.;)
If you've never seen this odd, eccentric little comedy, then do. It begins as a slightly wacky neighbourhood flick (think early John Sayles, around his Brother From Another Planet era) set in a mainly-black part of Passaic, New Jersey, before morphing into a weirdly moving parable about maker culture, fanfiction and low-budget narrative control. Mos Def works in his Fats Waller-obsessed adopted father (Danny Glover)'s video store, intermittently wasting time with his friend Jack Black, who lives in a trailer next to the local power plant and believes he may be developing a brain tumour; after the building is condemned, Def is left in charge while Glover takes a "research trip" to figure out how best to upgrade his business, and Black (suddenly magnetized while trying to sabotage the plant) wipes every videotape they have, necessitating a crazy scheme: They'll take requests (Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, The Lion King, etc.), then spend the rest of the day shooting "replacement" copies of the movies in question over the wiped tapes, so they'll be available the next morning.
Naturally, the production stuff is hilarious on its own (I particularly love that they seem to be cutting every movie they "Swede" this way in-camera), but it eventually becomes just as much about the relationships behind and around the viewfinder--audience members are invited to participate, to become the "stars" of films they particularly love. (After Def can't reconcile himself to playing Hoke to Black's Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy, Mia Farrow's addled social worker and Glover's septagenarian playboy take over the roles, rewriting them from vaguely racist stereotypes into a method of charming, sexy flirtation.) And by the time the neighbourhood's chipping in to shoot a completely fictitious "biopic" of Fats Waller in a week, just in time to screen it in the hour before the building's scheduled to be demolished, what they come up with is as surreal, deadpan and inventive as any Guy Maddin flick--My Passaic, or maybe Fats' Passaic, with a side-order of Cowards Bend the Knee. Pretty good, for a movie which also contains an extended joke about magnetized urine.
Later the same night, meanwhile, I ended up re-viewing my own VHS copy of Po Chih Leong's Immortality, based on the novel The Wisdom of Crocodiles by Paul Hoffman. Steven Grlscz (Jude Law), a medical researcher in modern London, is either a sociopath with a very specialized degenerative genetic disease or (more likely) a centuries-old Bulgarian vampire who feeds not just on women's blood, but the trace-elements of love for him he can taste in that blood. Driven by the knowledge that his body will decay unless he continues this cycle, he romances and murders lady after lady, endlessly seeking a love unleavened by the usual jealousies, insecurities, malice, anger and disappointments he expels painfully afterwards in the former of a ruby-red crystal spike, somewhat like a personality-bearing gallstone.
Eventually, Simon runs across Anne (a painfully beautiful, just-post-Nadja Elina Lowensohn), and falls as much in love with her as he's capable of being--so much so that he genuinely seems to consider letting himself die, betraying his own reptilian drive for survival. Law's performance in incredible, especially in terms of his physicality; his movement is gloriously inhuman, especially in moments when he basks on the rocks near a body-drop site with his jaws wide, or sinks down into a four-legged crouch--elegant and ritualistic yet unrestrained as any Butoh dancer--before leaping on an unwary thug. But Lowensohn, too often an opaque, elliptical presence, meets him halfway--here she's the humanizing influence, intelligent, passionate and complicated, her every emotion immediately accessible through the eyes, the mouth, the movements. They compliment and complete each other perfectly.
So, anyhow. I need to do that prep work, then try and knock myself out, so I can get up at a quote-quote normal hour. And I still have those reviews, don't I?
It'd be nice to be able to just crap things up sometimes, wouldn't it, no matter how bad it hurt? Especially if you could do it straight onto the screen.;)
