Y Tu Mamá Tambièn by Alfonso Cuaron
Sexy with gusts of sneaky social commentary, "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is a sensual, quasi-political travel movie through the Mexican countryside, full of pathos and gorgeous vistas. Three characters, two teenage boys and an adult woman, go searching for a beach paradise and in the process encounter much of Mexican society: the poor, the jet-setting wealthy, "Indios", political marches, house raves, military roadblocks. Quiet ruminations on Mexican society ensue. Sexual energy between the characters swells in intensity until it boils over: the film has one of the most organic and sexy menag-a-trois scenes put to film, possessing a life of its own, organic and real. (Potentially starting off a fad!) It was a relief to dig this film as much as I did because I pretty much detested both "Amores Perros" and "The Devil's Backbone", two other recent films from the Mexican "new wave". This was the best "movie" movie I'd seen in a while. Romantic, intense, philosophical, "socially aware" in an unpretentious manner, it possesses what is at heart a banal story brought to life because you really believe in the characters' orientation towards one another. The Mexican vistas in the film are so gorgeous that I nearly went straight from the theater to the airport to get the hell away from New York's freezing steel and concrete. A great film. (Just to show you how odd the filmmaking universe is these days, guess what Alfonso Cuaron's next film is? The next "Harry Potter" movie. What a strange world we live in.)
Punch-Drunk Love by P.T. Anderson
Adam Sandler and P.T. Anderson. Who would ever think it, but spellbinding. Just a glorious, romance du jour. Twisted feel-good weirdo fest with so satisfying a happy ending that people were smiling looking around to one another in the theater I saw it in. A lot of people hate Adam Sandler, and a lot of other people hate Anderson---for their bombast. But "Punch-Drunk Love" finds P.T in chill out mode, toning his sweeping cinematic conceits down a few notches. I don't know a whole lot about Sandler outside of Saturday Night Live but here he gives a deep, nuanced performance that was hilariously painful to watch at times, and I think a little underrated. Where did P.T. Anderson come up with this character? And those sisters? Use of the love song from "Popeye" as a moment defining theme song was brilliant too. Perhaps you have to be something of a twisted, romantic sucker to fall for it.
Nelly La Domatrice by Mario Caserini
This was a silent Italian film made in 1912 that had its first U.S. theatrical premiere last year (yep, Anthology Film Archives). Simply stunningly beautiful. I was so giddily enraptured by the beauty of the images floating across the screen that my being kinda leapt out at it. The title's translation is something like "Nelly, the Lion Tamer". Nelly is a celebrated lion tamer who works with a circus, a very successful act. Although she is happy with Alfredo, who manages her, she allows herself to be seduced by Count Wilhelm, a dapper suitor. She leaves Alfredo and her life with the lions to be with the count who of course before long is on to other women and mad flapper Champagne debaucheries. Nelly attempts to return to Alfredo and the animals she loves-but too late. The photography and staging is so adroit as to be a film and cinematography class in and of themselves. The story is so richly soap opera-ish as to have had some of the dozen or so people I watched it with tearing in the eyes. The subtitles were in Swedish, some old print from the 70's Anthology managed to find somewhere, but were not needed. The actors' skill and the filmmaker's storytelling were so expert and compelling as to make subtitles unnecessary. Only thirty minutes long the film was preceded by another silent Italian film, "L'uomo Meccanico" (about technology, women, and robots!) half of which I missed, but was wonderful to take in also.
Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki
Enchanting. Majestic. One of the finest animated films I've seen in a long, long time, maybe one of the best children's films ever (though surely so metaphorically rich as to be a fine adult film also). This is the film that City of Lost Children wanted to be, as if fused with a Japanese Alice in Wonderland. Spirits abound in this magical world, constantly morphing physically (not to mention psychologically). Parents temporarily turn into pigs (as if lost into that strange world of adulthood, where greed and strange desires lie). In this fantastic world little Chihiro is faced with dilemmas concerning friendship, creativity, morality, and approaching maturity. A couple who sat behind me cried together during some of the scenes and laughed hysterically in others (people always seem to be crying at the movies I see). It was weird. This film is that touching.
Drumline by Charles Stone III
Wow, an exhilarating movie, thrilling musical sequences. Culturally rich, touching, an exploration of a fascinating subculture (collegiate bands at predominantly black colleges). These bands engage in what is almost performance art---rousing, jazz/soul/Broadway braggadocio-like throwdowns, huge in the South. Drumline is formulaic but so smart within the confines of its genre as to almost be structured perfectly. Charles Stone is undoubtedly an assured filmmaker, the pacing here expert (remember those "Whassup" commercials?). In other hands this project might have fallen flat on its face. I am immensely impressed with any black filmmaker who manages to get not one but two films made and released through major studios in one calendar year (this in addition to Paid in Full, a Harlem history-of-drugs-in-the-ghetto film that I am yet to see. Is this some kind of black Guinness Book World Record?). Honest, with funky music, silly romances, and filled with issues relevant to the African-American community, both the young and their elders (and having nothing to do with crime, drugs, or hip-hop, er, maybe a little hip-hop). Perhaps I'm getting old, but this film made me yearn "youth".
The Trials of Henry Kissinger by Eugene Jarecki
Exiting the theater after viewing this documentary, based on a book by British journalist Christopher Hitchens, I halted for a moment in the street. I was angry and overwhelmed with disgust at the mechanics of power, at the arbitrary manner in which life and death, existence and extermination, are bestowed by this great nation of ours (to both individuals as well as other nations). Life is arbitrary. Morality is relative. I walked down Houston Street and thought I would throw up. This is the man who was supposed to head the investigation into the 9/11 attacks? Realpolitik aphrodisiast Kissinger, mastermind behind the appalling doctrine that kept the Vietnam War rolling five years after it most certainly was done, resulting in over half of the American causalities post '68. Mastermind behind the escalation of that war into Cambodia and lord knows how many deaths in that country. (How many Cambodians do you think died as a result? Half a million? More? Perhaps they don't count.) I imagine death is a funny thing. Souls, little dots, die. And then are dead. Cambodia. Chile. Indonesia. Who knows where else. How Kissinger managed to extricate himself from the Watergate fiasco and survive into the Ford administration is beyond me. The aborted attempt to appoint Kissinger as head of the 9/11 panel was so insane a slap in the face to democracy as to be like letting a starving wolf mad with rabies guard flocks of sheep. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. My grasp of how the world really works, of real power, nay, my sense of reality itself was so shaken by witnessing the charges put forth in this film that I just walk the streets afterwards wondering on what planet I live. It all seems some nightmare. Did you know that the last time Kissinger was in France he had to be whisked out of the country because the French wanted to arrest him to stand trial in suits related to Chile? Granted, the complexities of wielding power, of managing nations (churches, corporations, anything, one's soul) can sometimes be a messy business. Okay, granted. But nations, this nation, was built, supposedly, on a set of morals and laws that when flouted so callously, so arbitrarily, seems to eat away at the core of what the nation was built on, at least what I've always been told it was built upon. It was for this reason that I walked through the streets after viewing this film and felt sick.
Morvern Callar by Lynne Ramsay
It is odd how much this film mirrors Y Tu Mama Tambien structurally. They both begin with the "disappearance" of lovers so to speak (and the main characters in each seem to fight acknowledging this). The action proceeds to a road trip (through Spanish speaking "exotic" countries). Raves and drug use. Although there isn't a love "triangle" in Morvern Callar there is a menage-a-trois scene. (Has the trend been ignited?!!) The dissolution of a generation is hinted at in both. They are buddy movies with a twinge of unacknowledged same sex desire. And they both end with the friendships the films were built upon dissolving, or rather, the participants having grown apart and moving on with their lives. The big differences being the undercurrent of social politics running through the Mexican "Y Tu Mama" (one might argue that there is strong social commentary running underneath the Scottish "Morvern" also) and the former film's "cheerfulness". Morvern Callar is a more morbid film, in possession of an astounding performance by Samantha Morton. Ms. Morton has the uncanny ability to relay a whole range of emotions without uttering a word---she's truly the closest we have to a silent film actress. My understanding is that the novel this film was based upon is told in the first person, albeit with a character that reveals very little about herself, nothing about her motivations or feelings. The film possesses nothing that mirrors a first person narrative, no voiceover or reflection. The character never explains why she does what she does. And yet in Morton's face we see all the thoughts, battles, and emotions of a character wrestling with her life. It's an astonishing performance (yet once again). I don't think any other actor could have carried this film with such long stretches of non-verbal action. And Ms. Ramsay is such an intensely visual filmmaker as to create elegiac moments in the most uncanny places---Christmas lights flashing across a dead body, bugs scuttling across a floor and underneath a door (followed by a curious Morton), rivers and flashlights in the night darkness, gorgeous club scenes that are the most realistic depiction of what it's like to be lost under the twirling lights of a nightclub I've seen on film. Morvern Callar is not as impressive a film as Ramsay's debut, Ratcatcher, but is a powerful cinematic experience in a quiet, meditative way nonetheless.
Scratch by Doug Pray / The Freshest Kid by Israel
Scratch, a documentary by filmmaker Doug Pray ("Hype!"), explores the history of hip-hop DJs, scratching, digging (record scavenging), hip-hop production, and the whole "turntablist" music phenomenon. Like all histories of hip-hop it begins in the South Bronx in search of DJ innovators Grand Wizard Theodore (widely acknowledged as having invented vinyl scratching), DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, GrandMixer DXT (who did the infamous scratching on Herbie Hancock's seminal "Rockit", mentioned over a dozen times here as influential to a generation of DJs), Jazzy Jay, and Steinski (not a DJ per se but the producer behind many of the mid-eighties DJ "breaks" records put out by Tommy Boy Records). It examines this rich underworld where serious virtuosos radically change the way we hear, play, and create music. The film features some of the world's best DJs, whether famous for competing in international DJ battles (the DMC), playing for hip-hop MCs or in crews, or just "rocking parties with the most insane records ever dug up". Interviews span New York to Japan to San Francisco with DJs Steve Dee, Q-bert and his Invisibl Skratch Piklz posse, Mix Master Mike (of the Beastie Boys), Rob Swift and the X-ecutioners (X-Men), Cut Chemist & NuMark of Jurassic 5, DJ Craze, Babu of Dilated Peoples, DJ Shadow (who lends the film one of its most poignant and fascinating moments when he takes the filmmakers down to a dark cellar where he scavenges through thousands upon thousands of forgotten old records, searching for beats), DJ Krush from Japan, and the god-like DJ Premier of Gang Starr. The movie is a fascinating chronicle of 21st century beat innovators. The Freshest Kid traverses the same ground, starting in the South Bronx, but approaching hip-hop from a B-boy, breakin' perspective. Hype poppers, lockers, and breakers abound: The Rock Steady Crew, New York City Breakers, "ReRun" from What's Happening?, even a whole cast of characters B-boying back in the early seventies. More New York centered and a little more "real", The Freshest Kid is probably the better of the two films. I know that it sure as hell touched the hell out of me remembering what hip-hop used to be about back in the eighties and early nineties.
Far From Heaven by Todd Haynes
A rich, odd, expressionistic film. A citadel against repression bursting with color. I don't know a whole lot of Douglas Sirk films (of which this is a riff upon), more about them, but I do know that Far From Heaven has a temperance that reminds me of dozens of 50's era films I've seen---the pacing, melodrama, driving-in-the-car-blue-screen backdrops, glorious dresses, "suburban" homes. Instead of father knowing best though, or being a spy, he's a relatively out repressed homosexual. And ma is this close to fucking one of those Negroes. It's the fifties and the NAACP is already knocking on suburban doors. This is the darkness underneath the Americana veneer. Not since Happiness have I found a film so hard to look at because of all of the pain up onscreen. Julian Moore may not have produced the best performance of the year, but between here and "The Hours" she has surely had a rich year.
Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) by Zacharias Kunuk
Despite all the hype, this was indeed epic, spiritual filmmaking. One of the best denouements to a film I've seen in a while though I guess that is the least that should be expected from the oldest legend of Inuit folklore. Not exactly life altering but surely enlightening in a spiritual way. When Atanarjuat decides to forgive his enemies at the end of the film, all of whom are members of his family, there is a sense of cosmic closure, of benevolent forgiveness. I do wish that Atanarjuat had owned up to his own complicity in the tribe's problems though. He had been somewhat vain himself (I don't think multiple wives is ever really a good idea, just invites trouble). Who am I to argue with elements of a tale that has lasted centuries?
The Ring by Gore Verbinski
Man, I don't even want to see the original Japanese movie this version was based upon, can't even imagine how terrifying it must be at over an hour longer without any of the gore or graphic limitations this PG-13 Hollywood version possessed. This movie is crazy scary. I couldn't even go see it alone. When I finally convinced Lori to go view it with me I spent most of the movie screaming and jumping like a madman. I must have jumped out of my seat a half dozen times. Well made, ludicrous but in a creepy, bone chilling way. Mumbo jumbo gruesome suggestion everywhere, allowing the audience's imagination to fill in many of the hideous blanks, which is always far more terrifying than throwing a lot of gratuitous gore at them anyway.
Full Frontal by Steven Soderbergh
I still don't know what actually happened in this film, but I was intrigued. I'm not quite sure what it is about thematically either. I do know that it made me frightened of L.A., of Hollywood, and of calling myself anything near a so-called artist, writer, (or actor, whatever). Scared of sex, scared of women, scared of men (myself). I'm just a fuckin' sucker for Soderbergh, he just gets me, always has, and still does. He can do no wrong in my mind really (or so I thought until I saw Solaris, see below). I thought the little spoken word rap by Blair Underwood in the back seat of the cab (which everyone seemed to hate) was brilliant. And I would go see the "Sound and the Fuhrer" if someone put it on somewhere---that shit was fucking hilarious. (These are the unheralded performances we should be lauding.) I thought Catherine Keener was brilliant. Although the character was a "temperance" she's played often it was maybe the best I've ever seen her do it. This film made me never want to have sex with anyone ever again. It made me lose all desire to ever be a "player" in theater, film, or any of the arts-just go back to the farm I came from and settle down quietly, like a regular human being, be real and sane. (Except I'm not from anywhere near a farm.)
The Hours by Stephen Daldry
The most powerful scenes between a collection of actors it's been my pleasure to witness recently. After some of these scenes, most of them isolated unto themselves, you'd feel a collective gasp rush through the theater. The train station scene? The two scenes with Meryl Streep and Ed Harris? Toni Collette? I had violent discussions about the nature of "darkness" and suicide and all of that for days afterwards, wondering what the thesis of this film really is. I initially found the movie "uplifting" until I started really, really thinking about it afterwards, at which point I wasn't so sure. (It all lives and dies with the perspective of Virginia Wolf, don't you think?) Damn, I'd leave Tom Cruise too if I had chops like this. This cat, John B, huge Nets fan, actually accused me of having grown a vagina for being so into this film. To be quite honest, this shit felt like the most roller coaster ride filled, bombastic action movie I saw all year. Truly it did.
The Strip Mall Trilogy by Roger Beebe / One Mile Per Minute by Bobby Abate
These short experimental films were both shown as part of the "Fresh Film" series curated by Sky Sitney and Oona Mekas Goycoolea at Anthology Film Archives, specifically the "America is. . ." program, shown in early December. Strip Mall Trilogy is an abstract "travelogue" through the parking lot of a strip mall in an unnamed American town. The filmmaker deconstructs the idea of cultural relation to "malls" and shopping by jump cutting from isolated images of the entire area within and without one-portions of the outdoor architecture, the painted lines that grace the parking lot, and specifically the words and letters that make up various retail store's marquees. Shot in vibrant color on Super-8 and video, the film is lyrical to a dizzying degree, punctuated by a wonderful scene where a child sings her "ABCs" while the onscreen images follow her with portraits of the various letters she sings taken from dozens of sources around the mall. One Mile Per Minute is a dizzying computer generated and live action video contemplating the ghost-like hold TV and corporate images play in our conscious (and subconscious) lives. In many segments hundreds and hundreds of corporate logos float through the spatial background of the scene before us, old, new, international, the affect is dizzying. A computer simulated image of what looks like the twin towers with a digital "explosion and fire" circling one of the buildings is panned along until we find a lone, digital man standing on top who proceeds to jump off into the sky. This man later morphs from a computer generated image into a real person (the filmmaker?) who proceeds to look into the camera and recite his favorite television shows, many of these NBC Thursday night "Must See TV" entities. The film finally explodes into a succession of all of these images, scenarios, logos, and sound bites until it is a psychological terror ride throughout modern media culture. Spooky, beautiful.
Panic Room by David Fincher
Fincher, Foster, Whitaker-how can you go wrong? Ok, maybe you can. Fincher tones it down a little bit (just a little), and Jodie and Forest are solid as usual, as you would expect. Didn't really go anywhere, not really, or maybe it did ("Crime don't pay"?). I like the faux-Hitchcockian digital pans through the floors and walls of the house. Jared Ledo was kinda funny too. That old shuffle dance between the wealthy and the poor. Kinda reminded me of bartending on Friday nights at Happy Ending.
Ararat by Atom Egoyan
Somewhere within this film, in addition to a history of the slaughter of Armenian civilians at the hands of the Turkish government, is an exploration of the plight of both twentieth century Jews and Palestinians. An exploration of institutional government oppression as well as forms of faux-imperialism. The Armenians have one of those odd historical narratives that mimic both the plight of 19th and 20th century Jews (the oppressed) as well as 20th century Palestinians (oppressed and consequently "terrorists"). A line of dialogue in "Ararat" repeats the often quoted words of Hitler trying to convince his colleagues of their ability of getting away with an annihilation of Jews, "Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?". The film is an odd historical mirror, a very personal film in which Egoyan manages to conjure up themes dear to him in earlier work (specifically his masterwork, "Calendar") as well as grand and sweeping visions of history, memory, and "truth". Full of dizzying and somewhat confusing subplots, "Ararat" is still a haunting film. Flawed, not one of Egoyan's most eloquent, but important nevertheless. One gets the feeling that something very important is being discussed here, even if execution and development of those ideas is somewhat lacking. How many films say important things?
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Peter Care
A touching movie. Simple, not too much going on, just believable young adult relationships. Romantic. Holden Caulfield meets "Stand By Me" meets "My So-Called Life". The animated comic book sequences are spellbindingly cool, actually held up the release of the film while they were being completed (meticulously done by Todd McFarlane, creator of "Spawn"). The unexplainable, intimate, tortured, secret, shamed, aimless life of adolescents. In a perfect world this would represent "American Film".
ABC Africa by Abbas Kiarostami
What can you say? A documentary about the hundreds of thousands of children left orphaned by AIDS in Uganda (not to mention on the African continent as a whole). Kiarostami approaches the material in the only way he knows how---by filtering through his own experience while filming the story. What can you say? Art and suffering. Perhaps the resurrection of the African continent is the goal of the 21st century?
The Piano Teacher by Michael Haneke
I don't know if I like this movie, but it blew my mind. Last year I complained it was the women of Baby Boy who were wonderful in a film and not recognized at the expense of a whole "European contingent". But of course this year it's a member of that same contingent who I think really took things to another level. The actresses in "The Hours" were incredible, but this performance by Isabelle Huppert reached even deeper into the psychic well. I was bewitched by this performance. The last scene is just amazing, like Dada art bled into a narrative, anger and dementia suddenly made perfectly logical from within the confines of a character's nihilistic emotive display. I don't know what any of that means, but I do know that the last scene of this movie exists in a realm that is distinct from the places many of us live our lives in.
25th Hour by Spike Lee
I worry about Spike. He is a brilliant filmmaker and undoubtedly significant but runs the risk of losing relevancy, denied the chance to make movies. None of his films make money. He is the closest we have to an auteur, practically an experimental filmmaker working in the popular milieu. Summer of Sam was brilliant, and slept on. Bamboozled was pretty bad but was a great idea that had enough highs and brilliant scenes, at least early on, to justify its existence. Ultimately something of a trifle few movies that year were as engrossing an idea for a film. Neither film made money. Spike is in danger of becoming marginalized in the business, which is why so much is at stake with 25th Hour. I didn't particularly think 25th Hour was a great film---slow, plodding, without a center. It reeked of a literary source lacking the spine to really translate well into film. Okay. But it resonated, stayed with me afterwards. Not a whole lot of movies mean anything once you leave the theater. As much as I wished someone would have said fuck you to the structure of the book and cut and cleaned up the narrative, eventually the characters got to me and I cared about them. It seemed to exist in a real New York, the only New York I've seen onscreen since the buildings fell down that resembled the one I live in. Ed Norton was solid, not brilliant, I've seen him play this role so many times now that he almost seemed not to be up on the screen most of the time. Barry Pepper was strong, and funny, but he had the easy, showboaty role. Rosario Dawson is simply a goddess. Why is this film here? Perhaps because failures with subtle triumphs that ultimately stick with you---I was thinking about this film weeks after having seen it---deserve something if not a little recognition. I'm worried that no one will see this film, and I think they should. I'm worried about Spike. (Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader has some fascinating things to say about 25th Hour.)
Secretary by Steven Shainberg
This almost didn't make the list primarily because the first hour or so was so silly, bad really, that I wanted to stop watching. The last 45 minutes is strong and powerful though, gets to the point and grabs the jugular to such an extent that the picture was saved, I think. (Contrast it with Minority Report which had a brilliant first 45 minutes, a great setup, and then nosedived so badly that it gets the award for movie I least enjoyed all year.) The politics of Secretary are a tricky proposition: demeaning to women from a point of view, for sure. From a point of view though. I've heard more than a few people stress this when discussing the film. But I think the author's thesis in the book from which it derives was more along the lines of ultimate dedication and sacrifice (in this case to an extreme) for love (or perhaps "fulfillment"). A controversial thesis to be sure. I thought the first hour was silly to an extreme, and didn't get it. It didn't hold any interest for me. But then I think I got it, I bought into her sacrifice to get at something within herself (and him). Perhaps it's easier for me as a man to view a woman sacrificing herself for the love of someone (the Lars Van Trier syndrome I imagine). I found the James Spader character silly and pathetic, he didn't really seem compelling. I related more to Maggie Gyllenhaal's character, but that may be because I never felt the "psychology" behind his fetish, just witnessed the behavior. Gyllenhaal's character explained to a fuller extent what she felt, and why, in addition to what she wanted. The film was a little ambiguous as to what her character had actually "achieved". Ultimately I found it touching. I wish it had been shorter and gotten to the secretary taking charge of the relationship sooner. At least two people requested that I boycott this movie because they felt it trivialized the power of the short story it's based upon.
What Time Is It There? by Tsai Ming-Liang
Odd in a sumptuous way. To call this film "slow" is a misnomer---like spending 4 hours straight staring at a wall and then deeming the wall "boring". Weird, like an Eastern "Memento" less the violence and sans linearity (shot magnificently by Benoit Delhomme). A narrative that flips in on itself (and by extension other films' narratives too, no, other film era's narratives). Otherworldly. As my old high school friend Billy Williams used to always quip, "What is he sayin'?"
Real Women Have Curves by Patricia Cardoso
Set in East L. A. (and having nothing to do with gangs, lowriders, or hip-hop) this is a nice, plain, almost made-for-cable-ish movie (actually made for HBO but turned out so well it was given a theatrical release). There was no moment in this movie where I was bored, kept a nice warm feeling throughout. Of youth, love, family, cultural devotion. America Ferrera, who stars, is gorgeous, made a brother want to fall in love all over again. Though the story telegraphs its destination from frame one, a tad banal, the earnestness of the players won me over. We need more American movies like this, how many times have I said that?
Maestro by Manuel-Josell Ramos
Manuel-Josell Ramos's documentary on the early New York house music club scene, in particular the legendary Paradise Garage and The Loft clubs. Three years in the making, the film captures the vibrancy of New York's clubbing scene from its infancy in the early seventies to '82 or so. Throughout its ninety minutes the film manages to paint a picture of an era filled with excitement, passion, spirituality, and wonder, for those of us who were barely born during the time period chronicled. Maestro traces the movement that became the dance music scene of today. Filled with throngs of dancing bodies in the wide-open spaces that made up the early clubbing scene, it is an illuminating, educational experience. The dance music world has evolved into dozens of little musical niches that fill clubs and lounges all over the world, but nearly all of them begin here (along with Chicago's Warehouse). Legendary DJs Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, and David Mancuso discuss creating the scene (or are discussed doing so, R.I.P.). A touching film, Maestro is being shown in film festivals across the globe, but is yet to find a distributor here in the states.
Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell
In 1931 Universal Pictures released a movie called East of Borneo with Charles Bickford and Rose Hobart, directed by George Melford. An exotic tale, East of Borneo concerned an estranged wife who travels to the jungle kingdom of "Marudu" to find her lost husband. He's a drunk, off on some "get lost and die" kick. The movie is a hilarious hodgepodge built from arbitrary stock footage of animals in a jungle and really silly back stage intrigues in the "kingdom of Marudu". So bad that it's good? Well, in 1939, experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell, apparently obsessed with the beautiful Rose Hobart, cut and pasted the original East of Borneo until he had what can only be called an erotic homage to the beauty of Hobart herself. The footage was reassembled so that the story simply becomes moment after moment of exotic entrances and glances from the actress. Her co-star becomes the jungle itself (along with the "Sultan of Marudu" who in the original East of Borneo was also obsessed with the character played by Hobart). Manipulating the elements, folks, what one has. It's called "filmmaking".
Okay, that's it, enough.
Almost, but no cigar (and sometimes not even close):
Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore---Truly engaging and illuminating but not his best documentary. (I hope it wins a thousand awards though.)
Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese---As much as I admired the political thesis of this film, about New York (and by extension America) being built on greed, exploitation, racism, and corruption, the film itself was mediocre, only a few rungs above Titanic. And I don't really understand how this happened, I mean, it is Scorsese. It was only after watching The Hours that I was really, really disappointed with Gangs of New York. Scenes. Is it possible for a film to have more underdeveloped scenes and mediocre acting than those with Leo and Cameron Diaz here?
The Cat's Meow, Peter Bogdanovich
Brown Sugar, Rick Famuyiwa---This movie almost deserved the list simply because of the documentary introduction full of interviews with hip-hop luminaries. I got the feeling Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs didn't even really like each other though, all of their "chemistry" seemed forced.
Adaptation, Spike Jonz
Blue Crush, John Stockwell ---(shut up, June).
Femme Fatale, Brian De Palma
CQ, Roman Coppola
Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis
Barbershop, Tim Story
Frailty, Bill Paxton
Eight Legged Freaks, Ellory Elkayem ---Ridiculous.
Éloge de l'Amour (In Praise of Love), Jean-Luc Godard
Undercover Brother, Malcolm D. Lee---Obviously not as good as the online animated serial it's based upon, which was brilliant. Aaron MacGruder of "The Boondocks" fame would probably hang me for admitting to liking this movie.
Storytelling, Todd Solondz---Whose idea was it to use the color bars to cover the sex scene? Idiotic in my opinion. Storytelling was just okay. I hear the longer, unedited version of the film and as originally envisioned was far more interesting.
Signs, M. Night Shaylahan---The only of his movies I've come near to liking. Though I didn't. I think it was a hilariously bad movie. I do have to laud it for that "Brazilian birthday party" scene played out on the television though---what a great way to introduce a character. Ultimately it was way too silly and stupid, headed for the inevitable "Hollywood nosedive".
Talk to Her, Pedro Almodovar
The Isle, Ki-duk Kim
Frida, Julie Taymor
Code Unknown, Michael Haneke---Almost two films on the list for Haneke. The scene with Juliette Binoche and the Arab kids on the train is the best scene from a movie outside of The Hours I saw, and probably better than even any in The Hours.
Films Purposely Not On This List:
Minority Report
The last hour of Minority Report was some of the most wretched movie viewing I have had to sit through since Snatch, which was really a shame in that I thought the first 40 minutes, the setup, was brilliant. It nosedived so badly as to have blown me away. I apologized to my friend Chad for talking him into seeing this with me while I was in Bellingham, he will probably never ever trust me to take him to a movie ever again. (And what is the deal with Armond White from New York Press, is he actually the man Spielberg himself, the Spike thing some lingering resentment over the Color Purple controversy?)
Road to Perdition
Are we there yet? Has a moratorium been passed on Tom Hanks Oscar nominations, so we can tell him to stop "acting" so much? (Jude Law was kinda good, and I'm sure the graphic novel it's based on was great.)
Russian Ark
I slept so hard through this movie that I'm thinking of buying it to fight bouts of insomnia. I love Russian history, and I'm all for beauty, but Jesus Christ, b-o-r-i-n-g.
Solaris
I cannot imagine a more purposeless exercise in filmmaking. Borderline godawful. What was the point? What were they thinking? Possibly the worst Soderbergh film ever (Brockovich, anyone?). How often do you ever get to say this about a filmmaker, but he needs to get back to original material. This movie was painful to watch. Clooney made me hate the idea of George Clooney as an actor to such an extent as to have wiped out all of the integrity he had built up as an actor with Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Thanks for putting the sister in the movie gentlemen, with a meaningful role, but can you now please put her in a movie that isn't a piece of shit?
Friday After Next (Xmas in the Hood)
They got me. Nostalgia for one of my favorite all-time movies suckered me. Um, it's over, Cube, it's over. (Why am I admitting to having seen this? Even discussing it?)
In Praise of Love (Éloge de l'Amour)
Notice this film is under both "almost but no cigar" and "purposely no". It's God(ard)----I need to see it again. Exquisitely beautiful and eloquent, but no. No. I had waited well over a year, almost two, to see this film. It originally played at Cannes in the spring of 2001, pricking my interest, teasing. I missed it at the New York Film Festival during the autumn of 2001---it was an impossible ticket to get. It was supposed to open in New York in January 2002 but post 9/11 sentiments held it back. It was supposed to open in the spring, then June, and didn't, until I thought we'd never get to see it. A big letdown. No "there" there. Has Godard, like Woody Allen, become old and without "relevancy"?
Films I did not see that might have elicited some discussion one way or another:
Narc . About Schmidt . The Pianist . Lord of the Rings (whatever the second one is captioned) . Corpus Callosum . El Crimen del Padre Amaro . 24 Hour Party People . Jackass The Movie . Chicago . The Quiet American . Unfaithful . Catch Me if You Can . Personal Velocity . Interview With the Assassin . 'Rmas . Igby Goes Down . Paid In Full . The Truth About Charlie . Biggie & Tupac . Ichi The Killer . Roger Dodger . 13 Conversations About One Thing . Auto Focus . Murderous Maids . Scarlet Diva . Resident Evil . The Kid Stays In The Picture . My Big Fat Greek Wedding . Tadpole . Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie . 8 Mile . Rabbit-Proof Fence . One Hour Photo . About A Boy . Bloody Sunday . Death to Smoochy . Sunshine State . Antwone Fisher . Germany Year 90 Nine Zero . The Good Girl . Empire .
So Detroit's electronic music festival was handed over to the DJs in 2003. The festival was given to Derrick May (with guided spiritual assistance from fellow techno godfathers Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins) and renamed the Movement festival. They pulled it off. Derrick could be seen bouncing about the festival's grounds at Hart Plaza all weekend long. Although Atkins and Saunderson managed to play sets at the three-day festival, despite all the press conferences and organizational difficulties (they had only a few months to organize what usually takes about a year, and no money from the city), May was too busy organizing to play the festival himself. (He played Movement's official afterparty, but more on that later.)
One of the big differences between this year's festival and past DEMFs (as it was called) was the conceptual focus of the various stages. Whereas previous festivals were comprised of four major stages or tent areas that were earmarked for specific sponsors (i.e. Bacardi Underground, CPOP Stage, Genuine Draft Ministry of Sound Tower, etc.) this year's delineation was conceptually based (though still corporately sponsored). The Underground Stage, similar to past festivals, was filled with experimental musical offerings and more underground, cutting edge DJs. The High Tech Soul Stage put on display many of the festival's live musical offerings with a focus on soul, jazz, hip-hop, and soulful house and techno-"futuristic soul music". The Music Institute Stage, actually a tent at the rear of the grounds, paid homage to seminal Detroit techno club The Music Institute (actually open for only a year or so in the late eighties), which like the Warehouse in Chicago and Paradise Garage in New York was extremely important in crafting the ethos both musically and spiritually by which most of the DJs who built the Detroit scene based their style. The Movement Stage, the main stage of the festival, like past years held most of the festival's headlining acts. Unlike past years the main stage benefited from being pulled down into the plaza with festival goers instead of perching the performers and DJs high above everyone.
But the music (as I experienced it):
Saturday
I imagine that because she was scheduled to jump off the festival so early in the afternoon at 12 o'clock that Stacey "Hot Waxx" Hale, longtime fixture in Detroit techno circles gracing clubs and radio stations since the early eighties, stayed around the Music Institute Stage tent until later when she could join Kelli Hand for a tag team set of slammin' house and techno anthems (and oddly enough the only time I heard "Strings of Life" all festival). K. Hand rocks, it's always a good sign when a DJ finds herself so moved by what she's spinning that she's got her hands swinging up in the air while she jabs back and forth with the crowd. This kicked the festival off with a bang. The Music Institute Stage tent was undoubtedly party central for Movement '03, ground zero. Most of the other stages had their peaks and lulls but every single time one visited the Music Institute tent it was filled with raging partiers of all ages and dispositions doing some serious, serious grooving.
Underground Resistance soldiers Buzz Goree and Rolando spun back to back sets on the Movement Stage, jumping off the night session. Rolando did the hard electro thing to begin with before getting progressively harder, nothing too rattling, just hard techno grooves. They were followed on the main stage by Kevin Saunderson and Kenny Larkin on four turntables-weekend highlight number one: Kenny and Kevin taking turns mapping out their history of Detroit, relentless and smooth. I don't know, it's always weird for me to see these legends up there doing their thing like they can, so effortlessly and heartfelt, and then see all the people out in the square dancing, right here in Detroit (here in America), black, white, old(er), raver kids, gangs of hip-hop kids, families sitting up on the steps. All listening to the groove. I felt kinda good for Kenny and Kevin. At one of the press conferences Kenny Larkin said when asked how he felt about being back in Detroit and having the spotlight so gloriously beamed onto Detroit techno that it felt great, like a vindication. He related the experience of having his mother and family come out to the first festival in 2000 to see what it was he did and it, yes, bringing tears to his eyes. For this reason he would always support the festival and especially now as the focus had been squarely placed on DJs and musicians from Detroit. After Kevin and Kenny played their set Larkin spun alone and a friend called it his favorite moment of Movement '03. I missed it, as did I the live performance by ESG, probably the most talked about happening of the festival. It was ESG's first time in Detroit and Kenny Larkin said they were simply amazed by all of the DJs who had been influenced by the "no wave" electro records they did in the '80s.
At the SPITE afterparty I caught the last half hour of Underground Resistance's Suburban Knight, on decks and laptop (final scratch?). It seemed a continuation of Rolando's set earlier but with the pace picked up, the beats harder. The purpose of doing SPITE was to catch Robert Hood, who rarely if ever comes to New York. After a while Hood jumped on the decks and was very quickly so hard and complex that things felt instantly taken to another level. It was worth it. One would think that with the bpm's pumped so fast the music would lose character, but it did not. Hood is very hard but the music "rich". His spinning is so serious, no-holds-barred intelligent and complex that it's perplexing. It would seem impossible to be both speedy-fast and funky-that defies certain laws. But he manages to do it, hard, hard, rich, speedy-funky beats. Almost like some gabba ghetto shit. It was very, very nice. But then after 40 minutes or so he and someone started talking up by the decks and then Hood just snatched his records off the tables and left. A guy got up on a microphone and said the cops would be there to bust the party "in 8 minutes". The doors opened and the place cleared out. Whether the cop thing was true or not or there some problem with Hood and money or whatever we never figured out (we stayed-the cops never came).
Sunday
All I saw, or rather heard, of Carl Craig's Detroit Experiment (it was too packed over by the High Tech Soul Stage to get anywhere near actually seeing the band) was some MCs spitting over beats while the band jammed. On the main stage I caught the British collective put together by Charlie Dark, Blacktronica, which deserves a little discussion. To quote, "Blacktronica was initially conceived as a forum for black electronic expression. An attempt to reclaim electronic music from its white washed arena and celebrate the contribution of black musicians to the genre.... From Carl Craig to Coltrane and everything in between because there's more to black music than Hip Hop, Garage and R&B.... In effect, Blacktronica is about celebration, celebration of our heritage, our culture, our past and most importantly our future." On stage the collective of DJs spun some broken beat, aggressive soul, 2-Step, garage, a little dub, and massive breakbeats, progressing to a little drum 'n jungle before going back to a little glorious soul music again. Very interesting, a beautiful world: mixtures of beats, complicated but friendly, cool. The dancers liked. Me liked.
I moved over to the Music Institute tent in preparation for 3 Chairs and caught the last 20 minutes or so of Mike (Agent X) Clark ripping shit up, crushing house that would soar into techno and then out again (most of the "Detroit" DJs, like many from Chicago, seem to have little regard for the so-called line separating house from techno, effortlessly zipping back and forth between the two, or failing to acknowledge an esthetic difference to begin with). He came hard, aggressive, funky, and correct.
Three Chairs kicked off with Theo Parrish on the decks playing mid-tempo house, no, disco-soul. By this time the tent had grown thick with anticipation for their set: Theo, Marcellus Pittman, Rick Wilhite, and the infamous Kenny Dixon Jr. (Moodyman)-Three Chairs. (Or should it now be four?) I'm not gonna lie-it felt like the Detroit house equivalent of the Beatles at Shea Stadium in '65-heads were rolling in from the sides of the tent, pushing their way up front, gossiping about who had jumped on the decks yet or not, jockeying for position, dancing maniacally. When Theo took the decks over from Mike Clark everybody jump-kicked into grooving: boogie trans disco, soul, old school party anthems rolling into slamming metallic Detroit techno. Malik Pittman jumped on after Theo and began upping the ante. At some point one of these guys dropped a Shalamar track ("Make That Move"?, "A Night to Remember"?-I can't recall), a strolling bassline re-mixed in, and I myself lost it. Brother's were rolling into the tent in suits and hats with their women on their arms, pushing their way up front to slide in with all the ravers off their heads jumping about, B-Boys breakin', and older cats just checking it out on the sidelines like gangsters. Rick Wilhite hopped on the decks and you just knew things were about to get very, very serious. The area ten yards in front of the stage was one mass of gyrating bodies twisting and jumping. People started shouting, "Detroit!!!" then "East Side!!!" "West Side!!!" and I thought Rick was gonna cut the record and let people just shout and sing. Girls and dudes were thrown up into the air by the throngs, held aloft and passed along, body surfing. (Body surfing?!!) It was crazy. More people began rolling in from the flanks of the tent, coming in from listening to Stacey Pullen on the main stage or Francois K at the High Tech Soul stage, all asking, "Kenny Dixon Jr.?". He had yet to come on. When Theo Parrish jumped back on the decks following Wilhite there was worry that the infamous KDJ was about to stand everybody up. When 11 o'clock had almost rolled around some of the more serious heads began exciting the tent, leaving it to the partiers wilder and wilder by the moment (and none the wiser about the missing KDJ). But then I spotted him behind the stage-he tapped Parrish on the leg to let him know he was there, and Theo visibly brightened, jumping back into his tracks knowing he was about to pass the decks off. KDJ was escorted into the tent by none other than Derrick May himself. Apparently the fourth member of the Three Chairs collective was none to happy at all of the cameras popping away everywhere. He was pissed. Or else it was all some kind of insane drama. (Someone told me later that he had been out at a festival parking lot all day drinking with his boys.) Before he would get up on the decks he wrapped a mask around his face, UR style, and plopped a black hat over his head pulled down low over his eyes. I actually saw Derrick May motion to the PA guy to kill the lights in the tent and aside from a few stray strobe lights the space went semi-dark. KDJ kneeled down on the platform and reached his hand up blindly to adjust the mixer levels before allowing anyone to see him, waiting until the last possible moment before stepping up to the decks. When he finally jumped up behind the decks, in black mask, like some Black Panther assassin, the room just erupted. Hard metallic disco-pandemonium. It was crazy. He didn't even play that long, 20 minutes? 5 songs? And then was off. Wilhite jumped back on the decks and finished the crowd off. They loved it, people were practically having sex on the dance floor-female couples (to keep off the boys?), three-ways, man, people were groovin'. At Movement itself Three Chairs (specifically Theo, Marcellus, and Wilhite) were the most fulfilling event for me, a black barbecue circa 2030: old disco, hard techno, ancient neo-soul, black, white, old, young, the "intelligent" contingent along with those just booty shakin' losing it. At the same time Kenny Dixon Jr.'s set, which I'd practically come to Detroit to hear, was a letdown, great theater for sure, but I'll take beats over that anytime. (But more on KDJ later.)
So the "official" afterparty for the Movement festival was held at an establishment a good ways out from downtown Detroit called the Tangent Gallery, an arts complex filled with galleries and performance spaces. It was the only place that Derrick May was scheduled to play. He was preceded on the decks, surprisingly I thought, by Francois K of New York "Body & Soul" fame. Francois K spins many styles-he presently does a dub party in the meatpacking district of Manhattan-but his forte has always been soulful garage-y house, an odd choice (or perhaps not) to precede Derrick May. Francois surprised though by spinning techno, often hard. He spun Latin house, he actually spun thirty seconds or so of one of those solo Q-Tip tracks. He was good, very interesting, hard, soft-a solid groove. He jumped and bobbed around up there a lot, into his own thing, trying to get others into it, and then got hard again. Some of those present were there with him but most of the crowd more or less seemed to hate it: It was four in the morning and they wanted real techno and they wanted Derrick. Derrick, Derrick, Derrick. Francois didn't get off the decks until sometime after 5.
Out of the dozens of parties you might attend during the festival filled with DJs one has never heard before it might seem an odd choice to choose a party with someone as well known as Derrick May, who you've probably heard dozens of times, or can hear multiple times throughout the year, no matter where you live. But that would not be in Detroit, and it wouldn't be during his own Movement festival when a million people are in town to check out "Detroit". He seemed to play with a vengeance, aggressively so, as if he had something to prove. I don't know if there was something about the festival and all of the work and hurdles that it had to overcome that had him worked up but when he hit the decks you could just tell that it was no joke. There was a lot of fooling around up behind the decks between he and Francois while they made the exchange (I got the feeling Francois had expected to be done well before 5 in the morning-he'd played for 3 hours). There were at least two dozen people surrounding the decks, spying, waiting for Francois to finish and Derrick to start, inspecting every little thing each of them did. You could feel the impatience (the handoff took around 20 minutes). When May hit the decks the place, all of those who had lasted (it was 5:15 A.M.), exploded. And he hit it running, off into some extreme tweakin' trickery from the start-notes and bass and tones dipping and soaring through the air as he tweaked here and there, bobbing his head, stepping back from the mixer like a pimp and then attacking it on beat. Amazing. It was as if the room had been lifted off the ground and raised a few feet into the air. I remembered being exhausted and impatient the moment before he started (like many present I had been going since Sunday afternoon) but then two minutes into his set I felt like this was the only place I could possibly be. Of course. It was the real thing. Heads stood around transfixed. A few of us caught each other's eyes and kind of smiled. There was undoubtedly a new Rhythim Is Rhythim track he dropped (by new I mean unreleased)-I'd bet my life on it, it had all of the strings washing over themselves that you associate with Derrick's production work, bass rolling underneath. Mid-tempo. When the song finished and he went into something else I awoke from a little trance it had put me into and kissed the woman next to me on the cheek. She smiled as if to say, "Why the kiss?" "It was so beautiful." I said, waking. I'm not quite sure she understood. I danced a little but it was hard for me to do so. It was too good. You felt an overwhelming need to spy him up there on the decks. Beyond good. Scary. The music just got completely inside. I remember saying once that it sometimes hurt to hear those 5 hour sets that Sneak does, it just gets so good at some points and goes on for so long that you can't take it anymore. This set felt like that from the very beginning. He played a lot of mid-tempo stuff, which surprised me in how well it worked. He dropped a techno-groove remake of that Lou Rawls song, "You'll Never Find". He played a little of what I'll call "bass" breaks. It wasn't breakbeats-if you played breaks without drums and simply tweaked a bassline itself this is what it might sound like. Built-only-with-a-bassline "skipping" breaks, and therefore techno. Almost angry perfect. Later at some point, I swear to god, he would step away from the decks and look over the room, checking out the effect he was having on everyone (many of us stood in a daze). He looked at people individually and smiled, or smirked (he looked at me). In a way it was a little sadistic, but friendly too I guess. As we exited into the sunlight some of the old black guys who "ushered" for the Tangent Gallery asked us how it was, if it was worth it. "Yeah," we said, "yeah".
Monday
I felt I'd already "gotten what I needed" by the time I made it out to Hart Plaza on Monday, and was just looking to have a good time, hear a good variety of music. I jumped over to the Music Institute Stage and caught the end of Eddie "Flashin'" Fowlkes' set. As usual the crowd there was losing it to his crazy rambling jumpin' beats. Juan Atkins came on after him and was just glorious. I didn't hear a lot of his set but what I did of it was really solid, what else would you expect? He had a few technical problems-at one point Derrick May even got up there with him to help figure out some kind of stack mixer he had sitting on top of the regular mixer. It took him a while to settle down but once he did he was he was his neo-disco wizard self.
Didn't hear enough of Matthew Dear on the Underground Stage to give an opinion but there was a good vibe in the room and he seemed to be spinning serious beats. Magda followed and rocked the room pretty hard, spinning a set that engaged all the little ravers up front, which was good. Usually they are just down there thrashing about to the beat without listening. She had them engaged though, they were hearing her (it should always be this two-way street).
Over on the High Tech Soul Stage DJ Milo was unleashing an all out jammy-jam for all the heads there truly feeling his vibe. It was a regular riot, he was all over the place-disco, James Brown, 1st generation hip-hop, 70's soul jams, house anthems, and the people were just in front of the stage eating it up, dancing up a storm, "Wild Bunch" style I guess. To show you how crazed things got I spotted Theo Parrish amongst the crowd dancing his ass off too. He had someone who looked like a young nephew of his or something and was swinging the kid around dancing. He and his boys were having a blast, I think they all knew Milo. I guess DJs dance too. It was the best, carefree vibe I felt all weekend. Following him was another DJ who I never ID'd (the lineup over on the High Tech Soul Stage just got mauled as the weekend progressed) who came with some murky, weighty hip-hop (trip) soundscapes. People were still dancing but he was in danger of scaring them, crushing the stage under the weight of a thick murk. He'd play some slowed heavy industrial beat murkiness and then kick it up with some straight out roving hip-hop beats and then come with some dub. He was having massive problems with the mixer and then the channel he was using to shoot the CD vocals he was trying to drop along with everything. Milo tried to help him, the technical people tried to help him, things just wouldn't go right. The sound shut off for almost five minutes. He looked frustrated; whoever the guy was in charge of running technical things had not a clue. When he finally did get it going the band for Slum Village had started setting up behind him, virtually chasing him off the stage 40 minutes before he was due, he looked a little shaken. I wish I could have caught a proper set by him, whoever he was, without his being under such duress.
I got back to the Music Institute Stage tent in time to catch the last half hour of Atkins, everybody had made their way inside the tent to check him. He was straight up hard techno by then. I feel that I am slighting by not drooling over him in detail but when someone like Juan does it so often (and you've by that point heard so many good sets) it's hard to say anything other than he was "glorious". When he finished there was a mass exodus from the tent as heads moved to the Movement stage for Jeff Mills, abandoning D. Wynn. Wynn and his people didn't seem to mind, getting their Detroit house thing on and more than willing to leave the other heads to their "German Mills". D. Wynn stuck a few incense in the mixer and went into a sneaky groove.
During a tiny break from Mills I caught some of Grand Wizzard Theodore on the High Tech Soul Stage. He was spinning hard beats, though all fairly common (that's not meant as a diss). Thing was that he wasn't playing any of the vocals, just allowing the crowd to supply them if they wanted while he cut and sliced and scratched the shit to shreds, a constellation of sliced beats. He had an "MC" whose sole purpose was to make sure everyone knew who Theodore was and what he was actually accomplishing up there on those darn decks. He started with "My Adidas", and I know played the beats for both "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't (Nothin' to Fuck With)" and "M.E.T.H.O.D. Man", vocal-less but the words supplied by all. I was surprised by how hard the Grand Wizzard brought it really. Jazzy Jay usually comes all party correct, but Theodore was head slapping hard, scratching relentlessly, I guess living up to the M.O.
At the Underground Stage with DJ Godfather & Shortstop there was complete and utter pandemonium: slamming 190 bpm's, people running around in gas masks, girls doing that "booty shaking" thing, and about 30 people standing up on the stage with all of them. Security was going crazy trying to get people from crowding the ramp leading down to the stage, which was mobbed. It was crazy. There is no doubt in my mind that the next crazy thing that goes down in the scene drawing mass negative attention will be Ghetto Tech speedy breakbeat related. I'm not sure if that' s a bad thing or hope for the future.
At the Movement Stage anticipation of Mr. Mills was intense. Derrick came on and introduced Jeff and alluded to something of an unacknowledged competition between the two of them back in the day. Mills started with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, acappella, and then segued into "Jaguar". It was kinda magical. But then the sound was all fucked up and low and there was obviously something wrong. Before long there were technicians all over the place and Derrick was back on the mike saying that Mills was so hot he had blown the mixer. It took them a little while to get him back up and running again but when they did a little had been lost. He jumped right in with some old school electro that had a bunch of the crowd going, and many of us surprised. It was cool. He went mad old school for a bit-electro, hip-hop (all pre-'87, I remember a Run-DMC track), and old school house jams. I remember saying to myself at one point, "Jeff Mills is playing a straight-up soul song". He did some scratching and turntable trickery. It was beautiful. He played "Rapper's Delight". I spotted an old African-American woman behind us mouthing all of the lyrics, as was I. Eventually the electro and hip-hop disappeared and he got harder, giving those there to hear "Jeff Mills" what they wanted, but only a little. He jumped on his 909 and rocked out-the people up front going crazy. He went back to some electro and old house (it was weird hearing the crackling of the old records booming out of Hart Plaza's sound system, coming from Mills). Harder again, back to the 909, and then he was off. Barely, if even, an hour and a half. Now, he really had the crowd jumping. I have to admit that the idea of seeing old school heads, families and the such out in Detroit grooving to Jeff Mills was a pretty cool sight for me to behold. For me. But you could hear the grumbling from the hard techno heads before he was even finished playing. (One guy I know got so disappointed by what he was hearing that he just up and left and went back to the hotel.) Sure, Mills had a couple of mixing mishaps, "crash and burns" as they call them (yes, he did), records skipped on at least two occasions (yes, they did). That coupled with the mixer burning out debacle and he definitely seemed to struggle at times. Of course the Mills cognoscenti hate hearing him play any tracks they have heard him play elsewhere before. He wasn't hard and euphoric: "Jeff Mills". But so what? He came back to his hometown and threw down some beats for the masses, had them shaking their asses, and that had to have been good for him and many in Hart Plaza, for all of us. The record skips made him more human to me-I was beginning to think he was some kind of techno cyborg or something. He surprised me, was flesh and blood. (I hate to break it to some of the "purists" but there is a whole school of mixing that jumps, abruptly, between tunes, shouting itself out to the audience. It's very ghetto. Not everyone always wants invisible, "seamless" mixes.) He was exhausted, probably overwhelmed with emotion (his family was in the wings as he played). It was a really a great vibe.
So that night I caught Paul Johnson at Panacea. He was supposed to be "versus" Colette or something like that but I only caught him grooving. He was hot and jumping and though I usually hate this kind of thing he had a live trumpet player who actually jammed along with the groove, adding something in a meaningful manner instead of getting in the way of the music. I rushed to the Global Encore thing at The Works 'cause someone SMS text messaged me that Mills was the "surprise guest". Jeff was actually in the house when I got to the club but he wasn't playing, just hanging out in Detroit for a night. For some reason there was an unbilled Juan Atkins in the front room (was he meant to be the "special guest"?) jamming on as he had been doing hours earlier at the festival. (Again, I feel like I'm slighting Juan by not going on and on about how good he was-here classic techno, not banging bangin' hard, disco or house, but just "Detroit", it was crazy good.) In the back room there was Todd Terry, rocking out, the best "strictly house" set I heard all weekend. Kevin Saunderson came on after Terry and rocked for a bit, very solid. (Have I slighted Saunderson too by not gushing?) When Ron Trent walked into the back room I figured I could catch him in New York and got ready to leave. It was 4:30 or so. There was a changeover going on in the front room and I figured Atkins was handing the baton over to Junior Sanchez (who was on the flyer). There were about seven people on the dance floor. The guy taking over behind the decks (actually an area off to the side of the bar) for Juan wasn't a big heavy dude though but a relatively skinny brother. Intrigued before taking off back to the hotel I asked someone standing near the booth who it was. "Kenny Dixon Jr."
So I got another Red Bull, flabbergasted, and sat back to take him in. It was kinda incredible, initially I thought he was fighting the crowd, not mid-tempo house, not even that smart disco shit, but straight up soul tracks he was playing, and not even obscure ones-I knew practically every track. He wasn't mixing, simply cutting from one song to another (that again) and then letting the song play out. You know, like they do at barbecues. I just laughed, it was so ghetto it was beautiful. I thought, "These people want some bangin' beats and he is playing old slower-than-mid-tempo soul tracks, commencing his set with them, at 5 in the morning. But then I guess word spread through the place and people started hitting the dance floor. People never stopped streaming into the front door of the joint, always a tell-all sign. Before long dozens were dancing. And at some point, maybe it was 40 minutes or so, he dropped some rolling disco bassline shit and it was on. You could feel it coming and if you were there to bear witness you were 'bout to get it. What is Kenny Dixon Jr. on? Some futuristic black family backyard party shit? The Stylistics meet Kraftwerk? And then he got to that hard metallic disco and it morphed into roving Detroit. He was mixing by then, sliding his way to serious techno and it all made perfect sense, people, a few dozen now, were on the dance floor losing it feeling his vibe, streaming in from the back room. I had some KDJ, it was intense. It was true.
I decided to walk through the morning streets back to the hotel, past old Tiger Stadium, past the street people huddled up against buildings sleeping. The streets were empty, they always seem to be that way in Detroit, that perfect of industrial wastelands.
peace,
Worthwhile events that I missed:
Liquid Liquid ESG Wax Taxin'Dre/Rob G/Baby Daddy/ Kid A etc. afterhour Pole Akufen Speedy J (@ Paxhau afterhour Amp Fiddler Anthony "Shake" Shakir Carl Craig and Detroit Experiment Detroit Techno Cabaret afterhour Cannonball afterhour
Note: this Movement 2003 review was initially published on the Sheffield DUST's LittleDetroit.com.
Hard to figure exactly what to feel about Gerhard Richter's work on display in his retrospective at MOMA. I went through both floors of the show twice and found it hard to be bowled over by much of it. Sift through the layers and layers massed within the work and by floor two it begins to hit you, to resonate, but you have to work with it, listen to the insightful whispering around you. Of course as the work begins to sink in you become disconcerted, for a number of reasons: Allied fighter planes (he was born in Dresden), smiling Nazi uncles, dozens of black and white portraits of old Caucasian men, meticulously recreated classical paintings, youthful ideologues murdered, Vermeer-like reflections on family, burning candles (that's it, a series of them), the smiling victims of future murder sprees. All so quaint, quiet, beautiful-no commentary. (Or no commentary?). The work is ultimately disturbing because you realize that not only is nothing as it seems, but nothing is anything, or is exactly what it seems, simply what is right there before your eyes. The subtext is terrifying. The lack of subtext is even more terrifying. When the multi-layered, "dimensional" nature of his work sinks in it is like tripping on acid and serenely "realizing" the true nature of existence, of the universe. Traditional, wild, plain, fantastic, un-dogmatic, dogmatic, strange, without any meaning whatsoever. Should one have to work through "layers" to understand an artist's work? Who is this man? Why within a space of years jump from abstractions, colorful, vibrant, wild, on to mundane, extremely mundane, realistic painting, and then back again to abstraction, and then yet again back to photo-like representational painting, all within the space of a few years. You would think such herky jerky meandering would induce a painter to vomit, the heart and soul melting under the vacillating weight. Then again, why even painting itself? Disturbing. There, that word again. You get the feeling sometimes that Richter is laughing at the subjects of his paintings, people who actually allow themselves to feel something, however foolish or virtuous those things might be, that he is simply flabbergasted that people are actually stupid enough to allow themselves passions in such a perplexing world. He has been accused of secretly, deviously, trying to map the futility of painting, of trying to "kill painting dead". He not only denies this but finds it simplistic, patronizing and contemptuous (of both himself and art in general), perhaps rightfully so. The play's the thing, no more, no less. There can be no mistake that the Museum of Modern Art chose Richter as the last major exhibition in their present space, a 20th century historical landmark as far as the art world is concerned, for a reason (before moving to Queens for two years to enlarge and completely restructure the midtown space). There is something about his otherworldly work that attends to a reflection on modernism and even that before modernism, not to mention the post-modern aftermath we all struggle to live with. And then there's the future, because in many ways Richter strikes me as not really a painter or two-dimensional artist at all but something of a performance or video artist. He approaches his work in an "omni-dimensional" manner, as work in the future will have no choice but to do-personal, historical, by nature quiet virtual reality-like experiences. I believe Richter when he claims not to be completely aware of what his art means or where it comes from. He is so much "of the future" that surely MOMA must have wanted him as a symbol of where they had been as an institution and where they are going. Richter reminds me of hip-hop: sampling (from himself and others), constantly cutting and pasting, warm and histori-classical but also cold, mechanical, and futuristic. Does he prove that painting can still be relevant? Or that it is dead? I don't know, I don't even think of him as a painter really. The "paint" on "canvas" has little to do with what his work is about. The truth is that when the "end" of "painting" comes, and it will, be sure of that, it won't be because of medium "esthetics" (or even some kind of philosophical medium considerations) but because of the very plain evolution of creative technologies on to some new multi-dimensional media, naturally, without dogma, because sensibilities will demand it-it will be the only way we perceive stimuli. A time will come when painting will seem like horse drawn carriages in a world of high-speed trains, elevators, and helicopters. Carbon paper in a world of multi-media attachments filled with sound, images, and "movie" media. No one will even notice the death, or care.
The last paintings in the exhibition are a series of portraits titled "Mother and Child" and are simply chilling. Some are soft and "realistic" while others veer into abstraction. The image, subject matter, is always the same-Richter's wife Sabine holding their child, Moritz, breastfeeding in some. The paintings are lovely. As he progresses (regresses?) into abstraction it seems as if the artist is juggling his own perception of and orientation towards his family-soft and loving, then questioning, to threatening almost, and then back again. It is like some virtuoso schizophrenic jazz soloist. The abstractions lose all sign of realism, become a blur, but if you stare you can find a trace of his wife and child still there, broken up, scratched away, mutilated almost. The effect is chilling. Two of the abstractions look almost like bad television reception, breaking the image into lines and "noise", like video, they look like video images, not painting at all. All of this in the space of 7 paintings. Chilling. Richter steps into the 21st century and doesn't even seem to care, does so simply because it is the role of the artist (modern/ "post-modern"/whatever) to do so. It is a scary, beautiful place.