Friday at Blueberry Hill

So I usually just write about movies, but I can't help but mention the immaculate pairing of Smog frontman Bill Callahan and Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg for a show at Blueberry Hill Friday night. For the record, Shearwater's Palo Santo for Matador last year was my pick for album of the year. Totally mesmerizing.

The brilliance of such a pairing has only seen its equal in that David Bazan/John Vanderslice tour in 2004 and maybe in that Bob Dylan/Paul Simon double bill, but they were both pretty crusty by then.

See you there.

Michel Gondry in The AVClub

Be Kind Rewind may look like an innocuous comedy at first. It is, after all, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. But add guru Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) as director and you've raised the film's potential by approx. 3,104%. Who knows if it'll be any good, but Gondry is, if nothing else, a guy with great ideas.

In the AV Club's recent interview with Gondry, he muses on some media consumption issues that are very near and dear to me:

Of course, [the film] is a comment on the idea that people fabricate what you are supposed to like, and to spend your spare time [caring about]. I find it particularly shocking that people work all week long, and then on the weekend they give their money to another big corporation. I remember reading an interview with Walt Disney, and he said how he got the idea to create Disney World. He saw his grandson playing in the sand in a little park, and he assumed he was bored. And he said he could provide him a better alternative...And I truly believe his grandson was having a great time when he was playing with the sand.

I wish there were more film directors with that attitude toward media literacy.

Read the rest of the article here.

star wars: the clone wars (2008)

Allow a guy to snark a bit at the recent press release from Lucasfilm regarding a full-length animated Star Wars commercial and subsequent TV commercials (I'm lifting these right off the AP):

Though the "Star Wars" films have been extraordinarily lucrative, the force won't be expected to be as strong in cartoon form. The film and series are clearly aimed at younger viewers, though Filoni hopes to also entice the many "Star Wars" die-hard fans.

"An animated series always appeals more to a younger audience," said Filoni. "But at the same time, we've tried to do some sophisticated things and ensure that we are going to satisfy the broad spectrum of 'Star Wars' fans."

Though Lucas farms out various "Star Wars" projects in what's known as the "'Star Wars' expanded universe," Filoni says that Lucas ensured "The Clone Wars" has "that 'Star Wars' feeling."

So this Star Wars film is aimed at younger viewers than the movies? Are we talking prenatal appeal here, because it would be difficult to aim lower than Attack of the Clones. The threat of throwing in something more sophisticated for older audiences is troublesome as well. This is coming from a creator/producer/director that managed to make Pearl Harbor look like a master class in the subtleties of narrative film. Maybe The Clone Wars will feature more belching and farting jokes, a high water mark of the Star Wars experience.

That being said, the final quote really takes the cake: "that Star Wars feeling." This either refers to the look and feel of the film, which means wooden, abrasive and creatively stunted in its juvenilia; or it means the feeling the audience has of being beaten over the head by plastic toys featuring characters borne of very suspect racial and gender stereotypes.

The Empire Strikes Back is the singular example of how George Lucas could have succeeded in making a simple, fun swashbuckling serial without being offensive. Heck, there is almost a decent female character in it. Instead Lucas' legacy of homage to old 1940's serials will ultimately rest in the blatant celebration of their outdated social attitudes, not the fun we might have had watching them.

juno (2007)

Could there be a film that opens so abysmally and yet ends up being such a good film? 20 minutes into Juno I was ready to leave. I should preface this by saying that I am not a fan of the TV show The Gilmore Girls. I simply don't believe rapid-fire, name-dropping perpetual banter is funny, or even smart. It is noisy and very very false. No kidding, Juno begins with nearly 20 minutes of absolutely miserable dialog and characterization. It is as if the film is being strangled by the hip irony that it eventually frees the main character from. Every line, every move, every character is a cookie cutter of what 50 year old executives think 'indie' and high school should be. But then something happens...

By the end of the scene where Juno, her parents and the adoptive couple meet, something resembling reality sets in. The mis-en-scene is still a direct lift of Wes Anderson's handmade aesthetic (aren't all indie films?), but director Jason Reitman doesn't employ Anderson's intellectual and distancing camera work. Instead he fumbles through a few false starts by trying to introduce a voice similar to Thank You for Smoking's first person narration with quick cut post-modern asides, and then abandons it entirely, creating a film which retains very little narrative artifice.

In fact, once it hits its stride, Juno is just what a film should be: completely effortless. There are all sorts of moments in the film that threaten to be sentimental or preachy or cliche, but somehow the film finds a way to escape its worst tendencies. I believe this all to be a function of dichotomy. With characters that are mired in artifice as revealed by speech, music, relationships, the only way to succeed is by placing them in a story conflict that even the most composed or false characters must react genuinely to. Juno is simply the story of a character who is forced to be real, and to reevaluate what and who around her has actual value.

I didn't think much of Juno as a comedy, but as a character-driven story, I enjoyed it immensely.