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February 28, 2012
At the Movies
The Muppets. Unexpectedly, the level of silliness was below par. It was probably the mixture of nostalgia pangs and "misfit identity crisis" plot which, while never reaching a stage that could be mistaken - not even remotely - for serious psychological or social analysis, did hinder the full blown Muppets surreality somewhat. To sum it up, too much batrachian pathos, not enough nonsense. Still, I loved it.
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(We're having a private Jim Jarmusch festival.)
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Night on Earth, Jim Jarmusch. I first saw it when it came out. I was a teenager and I loved it. I've never stopped listening to the Tom Waits soundtrack ever since. But what did I love about it? It would have been impossible for me to understand it - there are too many cultural references, socially significant accents and national stereotyping in-jokes. I'm assuming a polyglot teenager stuck in a provincial backwater in pre-internet days must have been dazzled by the cosmopolitanism of it. I still am.
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High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar. Another one I watched when it first came out. Teenagerhood must have limited my attention span and all I could remember from it was both Miguel Bosé in drag and Miguel Bosé practically naked. Teenagerhood, or rather, the lack of critical sense that comes from inexperience, must have prevented me from noticing how flabby Bosé's buttocks are. Not that it matters but it comes as a good excuse to my teenage self to say that I fear that is all I'll remember in the future from this non remarkable standard Almodóvar plot with a brilliant kitsch soundtrack. (I also failed to identify the Mexican interior decoration in Marisa Paredes apartment the first time around.)
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Ghost Dog, The way of the samurai, Jim Jarmusch. It combines two of my favorite things: it nods to Asian mafia gang war movies and winks at cheap philosophy. Thanks to Ghost Dog, my quite belated new favorite thing is the Wu Tang clan, much to R's chagrin. He has been trying to convince me of the artistic significance of vintage rap or hip hop or whatever it is for years. Well, he should have played The Rza to me a long time ago.
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Coffee and Cigarettes, Jim Jarmusch. After a while you start noticing black and white checkered patterns everywhere. It feels a lot like an intimate production done with friends which you are allowed to peep in to try and discover the recurrent themes in the vignettes. And it features the underground icon Taylor Mead who starred in Andy Warhol movies. To turn this post into a homage to C&C's structure of inter-vignette hints and imagining Almodóvar will read this:
Taylor Mead's Ass (1964) is a film by Andy Warhol featuring Taylor Mead, consisting entirely of a shot of Mead's buttocks, and filmed at The Factory. Warhol came up with the idea for the film after reading a review in The Village Voice which said of his previous film "Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of" that "... people don't want to see an hour and a half of Taylor Mead's ass."
Posted by claudia