This weird mix between animation and live action has been considered controversial from the day it came out. Every stereotype from the seventies gets used, abused and turned on its head, but for the most part it’s the writer and director Ralph Bakshi’s view on the state of affairs in ‘70’s America. Barry White has a part in it and so does a very young Philip (Miami Vice) Michael Thomas, but the live action is just a lead-in for the story-in-the-story, the animated parable about social injustice and racism set in dark and dirty Harlem. One thing that stands out are the dialogues and voice-overs; the lingo is over-the-top blaxploitation, political incorrect, sure, but from the beginning to the end tong-and-cheek. The other thing amazing is the technique involved in making the movie; the mixing of live action and animation is fluent and the animation itself is great. The camera work is a bit low quality, but that suites the movie. I see that the score is by Chico Hamilton, will try to get my hands on it, but it’s a very obscure soundtrack. So, good music and a movie that is still surprisingly relevant today.
I think I have a new favorite movie villain in Javier Bardems Anton Chigurh, the psycho-killer who operates with surgical precision throughout the Coen brothers’ movie ‘No Country for Old Men’, and sports a fancy hairdo in the process. This movie slots in nicely in the Coen brothers filmography, in which the hilarious are succeeded with the gritty. This is a gritty one, make no mistake about it, but as always, the violence is somehow matter-of-fact. There are three main storylines; Josh Brolin is the hunter who stumbles upon a suitcase of drug money and tries to make a run for it, Javier Bardem is said hired killer and Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff. These storylines are running parallel to each other; sometimes they (almost) cross. Through all the sometimes graphic novel-like violence there is a contemplative mood, which has a strange overall tranquil effect. Good story by Cormac McCarthy.
Last weekend of the Joel Meyerowitz exhibition in the Nederlands Fotomuseum, caught it just in time. There were photos from different series, out of which I liked best the ones shot in New York in the mid seventies and the ‘from the car’ photos. Joel Meyerowitz is one of the first to use color in art photography. It’s weird to see those street scenes of everyday life in America in these beautiful colors; it gives the photos something magic and naïve at the same time. There is no other meaning than what you see, but still the scenes feel special / extraordinary. Most of the scenes are accidental, however, the eye of the photographer always seems to catch the abnormal in the normal. He makes you look.
This is a small gem. There are a lot of familiar faces in this movie: Keri Russell from ‘Felicity’, Jeremy Sisto from ‘Six feet under’, Cheryl Hines from ‘Curb your Enthusiasm’ and more. I like the smallness of this movie; a compact story about ordinary life in America, with a quirky undertone. Congrats to the late Adrienne Shelly.
Jazz, Brazilian folk and electronics, does that sound promising or not?! Jack DeJohnette’s latest project mixes these genres into one and with overall great results. He did four songs last night, all of which grew from small individual contributions into great, groove driven, exclamations. Sure, sometimes a musician wandered of in a too different direction, but all got corrected by DeJohnette and an excellent Jerome Harris on bass/guitar, pulling everybody back in a solid groove. DeJohnette’s play was masterful; it’s so fluent, he goes from complex avant-garde to African to Latin without effort. It was great to see such a giant still experimenting, not relying on proven material but finding new sounds and embracing new techniques. Not everything was successful, but on a new road, not everything you’ll find will be interesting. On this night, most of it was.
Jack DeJohnette - drums
Marlui Miranda - vocals
John Surman - clarinet, saxophone, flute, synthesizer
Jerome Harris - bass, guitar
Ben Surman - sounds
Een selectie van zes architecten is in de tweede ronde van de NAI / Ymere prijsvraag gevraagd een bijdrage te leveren aan de discussie wat te doen met de Bijlmer, in de vorm van het ontwikkelen van een visie voor het complex Heesterveld in de H-buurt. De resultaten tonen het failliet van de Nederlandse architectuurpraktijk. De bijdragen ontstijgen zelden het niveau van ‘een leuk plannetje’, ik mis een vertaling van de (historische) context in originele ideeën hoe de sociale problemen aan te pakken. De plannen zijn grotendeels contextloos, anoniem, terwijl de Bijlmer juist schreeuwt om een nieuwe identiteit. Misha de Haas zijn plan is wel de terechte winnaar, aangezien hij in zijn nieuwbouwcomplex wel een originele herinterpretatie geeft van de gescheiden (verkeers-)niveau’s in de Bijlmer in combinatie met de tegenwoordige vraag naar grondgebonden woningen. Zijn visie om een deel van de bestaande Heesterveld blokken onberoerd te laten en tot ‘broedplaats’ te laten verworden, is echter weer armoe troef. De Bijlmer en haar fragiele sociale structuur verdienen meer dan nog een blok met zichzelf zoekende kunstenaars.
Two girls are being trafficked across the Mexican-US border to be auctioned off through an Internet bidding contest. From the outset this isn’t going to be a happy story. Trade uncovers the grim reality of the sex trade by telling the story of Weronika, a Polish girl lured to Mexico under false pretenses, and Adriana, a 13-year-old Mexican girl abducted from the streets of Mexico City. Their journey together is one never-ending chain of abuse, corruption and violence. This part of the movie is strong, however, this being a Hollywood-coated movie, there is a second storyline telling the story of the brother of the Mexican girl, looking for his sister and teaming up with an American (Kevin Kline) to find her, this all in a desperate effort to spin this story (and this subject) towards a happy ending. This buddy-couple has to be one of the worst in cinematic history; the dialogues are like cardboard! This aside, Trade is a good movie, although hampered by a somewhat over-present social agenda of the movie-makers. This trade is grim, and, more shocking, a reality for hundreds of thousands.
A nameless man in a room, that is the outset of this latest novel by Paul Auster. The book tells the story of Mr. Blank, confined to a room, with few to no recollections about his own identity and actions. The people who care for him and a few visitors trigger his memory but it is in no way certain if he will ever get a clear perspective. The book reads like a play, not only in the sense that the action is confined to a single room and the main character’s head, but mainly because it feels somewhat constructed. It’s not as fluent as earlier stories I read from Auster. The situation drawn isn’t coming to life, a lot is insinuated, but the suspense doesn’t lead to anything. All in all, a pleasant read, but a little less satisfying.
A sculpture for a large vertical interior space. Thomas Heatherwick experimented with the conduct of form in water by means of pouring liquid metal into a water vortex. These experiments resulted in a series of small objects, one of which is translated in this amazing structure. The small piece is represented in the final sculpture by 142,000 glass spheres hanging from wires. The result fascinates me; it’s like a swarm of bees or a bait ball of sardines. This project is already a few years old, but for me it’s a great example, not only the result, but also the way Heatherwick approached the commission, first by experimenting freely and next by translating this in a concrete proposition.
Today it’s hard to fathom what the position of sexuality in society was in 1972. When I see the stories about Deep Throat and how it was conceived, it all sounds so innocent and idealistic. There seems to have been (in part) a genuine motivation to explore sexuality beyond one-dimensional male gratification, but for the most part it was just a group of swingers, screw-ups and one Godard-wannabe who each ventured into this for their own reasons, most of which being considerably less romantic than the sexual advancement of society. Whatever the motivations were, the movie set in motion an incredible storm of events, which were not based on the movie’s quality, but more on its notoriety. Here was a movie openly, shamelessly showing (female) lust, no longer confined behind the doors of private homes. This for the people in power was too controversial (the movie was ‘indecent’) and they acted by closing down movie theaters and tried to persecute the people involved. Of course this lead to the film being more in the spotlights and resulted in a stampede to the cinemas.
Although it’s 35 years ago, it’s still incredible how deep the divide is (in the US) between Liberals and the (religious) Right. It would have been nice to look at this story as a historic anecdote, but the documentary painfully illustrates that since then nothing has happened; the prosecutor in the case against the lead actor now interviewed would still persecute. The imposing of one’s own believes upon everybody else and subsequently trespassing of the right to personal freedom and expression, is still (or more than ever) common practice.
It is not that the fairytale had no dark side, though. The (unexpected) success of the movie Deep Throat attracted organized crime, which were involved already in the financing of the movie, but now monopolized the distribution as well. The realization that there was a lot of money to be made with adult movies, along with the introduction of video, killed off the last notion of anything romantic affiliated with making erotic movies. Porn, however some people wanted to see it differently, ensured a guaranteed return. The insatiable hunger for pornographic material (no law can alter that) and the monetary implications of that fact, have resulted in that in financing porn, things have shifted from the sleazy and shady moneymen behind Deep Throat towards blatantly open money-hunger, almost mainstream, financing, without eye for personal tragedies or any moral questions whatsoever. In the moneymaking industry that Porn is today, true obscenity is seeing what people are willing to do for mere money.
