I saw 300. Only about half a year late. This delay puts me in the strange position of having no need to enumerate the film’s many flaws and historical inaccuracies. Nor do I have to belabor its oddly homophobic (esp. considering the manboy love of Antient Sparta) portrayal of the Persians. Nor does one need to critique the bad acting. All of this has greased the gears a million times over. Thanks a bunch, blogosphere!

However, I do think a point in particular needs be made: Frank Miller is an idiot.

Most adaptations are too loose; this one is too faithful, and suffers for it. The film clocks in at about 2 hours, when it could have been about 1 1/2. The direct cause of the bloat is thus: Miller’s dialogue and narration have survived completely in tact. The viewer suffers through about one thousand and thirty definitions of what Spara is (everything but a Hellenic city-state) and about 1500 speeches about the birth of reason and Greek freedom.

The end of the film infers that Sparta defeated the second Persian campaign by leading the unified Hellenic forces into an enormous land battle. In fact, the Battle of Salamis, at which the Persians suffered their most significant defeat, was naval and lead by the Athenians. This directly contributed to the rise of Athenian preeminence amongst the Hellens, which in turn lead to chicanery with the Delian league, which in turn lead to the Peloponnesian War. This is the war in which, briefly summarized, the Spartans destroyed the Athenians and set the development of Western Civilization back hundreds of years.

300 casts the Spartans, whose society was structured atop a caste system utilizing slaves called Helots, as the defenders of freedom and noble warriors fighting for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is akin to making a film about World War II that depicts the Nazis sitting shiva.

One could blame the nonsense on director Zak Penn, but Penn’s direction is the film’s saving grace. As a giant mindless spectacle of war & blood, 300 is great. This is the kind of goofy extravaganza Hollywood has been cranking out for almost 100 years– the only things that change throughout the decades are the faces and the technology. Some, like D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, are less stupid, some more.

300 is really dumb. Again, we come back to my central point. Frank Miller is an idiot. I remember being in my friend Andrew’s bathroom, trying to read the original graphic novel, and giving up around the point where a Persian emissary is thrown down a well. The scene itself, based on an incident in Herodotus, was not objectionable– it was the tone and delivery. It was clear I could keep reading and (a) find the cutting edge of Superheroic Graphic Design (yawn), (b) be entreated to a lot of garbage about Men being Men and (c) somehow, somewhere find a woman being a whore.

For 20 years, Miller has written only one story. Much like the aforementioned cinematic spectacles, the only differences are place names (Gotham, Sparta, Sin City) and proper nouns (Batman, whatever the Sin City characters are called, Leonidas, Batman). So long as Miller kept amping up the art, no one really noticed– sure, someone could point out that the Yellow Bastard book is pretty much the same thing as the other 6, but c’mon, it’s got a dude that’s yellow! In a series that’s black and white! But times change and Miller stumbled– the sequel to Dark Knight Returns looked like crap, so people ended up reading the story. Big mistake. Some of the more brainy folks took DK2 as a parody, but then came All-Star Batman and Robin the Wonder Boy. The dawning realization: either Miller’s serious, or, if this is parody, it’s unfunny. Which ends up being the same thing as serious.

One wouldn’t even complain if it were a good story.

The sad thing about the graphic novel, and the film, is that Sparta was one of the most fascinating cities in the Ancient World. The structure of the society, its relative lack of achievement in any arena but war, its sexual progressiveness, and its destruction of the birthplace of philosophy all make it incredibly compelling. Even the heart of 300, the Battle of Thermopylae, is incredibly fascinating and nuanced.

But the film and book squander opportunity in favor of Freedom.

At least in 2007 that’s something to which we’re accustomed.

Got around to screencapturing some of Performance. See this post for more background.

Here are the significant appearances of Martin Sharp’s artwork within the film. The first image contains a reworking of Sharp’s famous Bob Dylan poster. The last three are of the reworking of OZ #15’s cover, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the other images have direct antecedents as well. The last capture is the only place where we learn the name of Turner’s band. Turner’s Purple Orchestra. Well, yes. It was, after all, the sixties.

P.S. Buy the DVD! Ignore the hideous box art!

In a previous sycophantic post, I mentioned that I think Eddie Campbell is the single smartest person, both as an artist and a writer, to have ever worked in comics. Bacchus (under its 200 different titles of publication) was possibly the only character based series of the go-go B&W era that managed to achieve profundity, however fleeting, and the Alec books, individually and as a whole, are my favorite comics, period.

Whenever I feel like I’m throwing my life away, which is at least once a day, I think about How To Be An Artist. Read a certain way, the book tells the impressionable reader (me) that it’s OK to go ahead and bury that bastard in the dustbin. Thankfully, Campbell also published what I consider a companion volume, After the Snooter, demonstrating that once you have done, things work out all right. As long as you know Alan Moore. Which I don’t. You’re so going to Hell, Campbell.

Which says nothing about either of the two books’ artistry. Simply put, they’re masterpieces. Buy them while you can. More recently, Campbell released The Fate of The Artist, which everyone loved. Except me. Usually I’m all for pretentious gobeshit and Examinations of Art and Its Role but for whatever reason I couldn’t get into it. Anyway, I’m probably wrong, and I certainly recognize the book’s intrinsic merit. Just not for me.

Now Campbell’s got a new book out, The Black Diamond Detective Agency. I’ve only read one or two things about its genesis but I gather that it was a previously existing screenplay which Campbell was asked to adapt. If I’m correct, this is the thinking behind such a move: movie executives, being exceptionally stupid, are much more likely to buy a film if they get a package of pretty pictures and dialogue balloons instead of a bunch of INT. EXT. DAY. EVENING. printed across a page. This may well be true!

Campbell’s art is top notch and entirely on the ball: lots of experimentation with form and content but never so much as to distract. This leaves the reader’s focus on the story. Ah, yes, the story. Therein lies the rub. It’s by the numbers detective investigation set in the fin-de-siecle (one before last) American midwest. Whatever else may be said, from the characterization and plot development, it’s rather clear that this tale began life as a screenplay.

This point is important– screenplays, even detailed shooting scripts, are weird beasts. The format is designed for the intense collaboration of film making. A line of dialogue on the page allows for the impact (negative or positive) of the actors, the cinematographer, the foley artists, the scoring, and finally, the director. While not every screenplay is bereft of, say, characterization, it’s also much, much less necessary than in other storytelling mediums.

To put it another way, think of a film like the overrated Goodfellas. Think of any one of Joe Pesci’s hilariously psycho monologues. Now imagine them delivered by Bill Pullman. Directed by Uwe Boll.

Either way, it’s the same screenplay.

Campbell has taken on the unenviable task of filling each major (and minor) role himself: he’s the gaffer, the director, the actors, the DP, and the caterer. It’s Eddie Campbell’s personal vision of someone else’s post-Watergate detective story set in a random historical milieu.

The most bizarre aspect of this book is Campbell’s status as possibly the least cinematic major artist in comics. Under every other imaginable circumstance, I’d count this as a truly great thing. But presently it compounds the problem, and we are left with the barebones of a screenplay developed into a visual medium sans any of the technique for which it was intended. It’s not bad, per se. It’s just strange.

I’ve never bought into the idea of Comics as Incubator for Cinema, but at least Marvel and DC provide existing product envisioned first as comics and then adapted. Black Diamond’s reverse-engineered approach has only made me more suspicious about the perceived relationship between the two mediums. (It’ll be interesting to see if Marvel’s bet the farm on the wrong horse.)

But before you think it’s all crying & boo-hoo and Campbell what have you done, let me hit the positives.

As I’ve mentioned, the art. It’s great. The colors, the figures, the landscapes– all wonderful. Generally, when I think of Campbell’s work, what comes to mind are scraggly drawings of the artist playing fetch with his dog or a murder victim being pulled from a dodgy London gutter. Don’t get me wrong: these are always lovely. But in Black Diamond, there’s a real grace to much of the figures and coloring that I don’t remember seeing previously. Secondly, for what the story is, Campbell’s handled it as admirably as he could. Third, huzzah for the choice of full-bleed! It works well. (A minor complaint is the gutter: I feel like I’ve lost about 1/20th of most pages to the binding.)

So. All reservations aside– I enjoyed the book, it’s an affable way to spend a few hours, Campbell is a master, and if I weren’t embarrassed to recommend comics, I’d tell people to buy it.

Yay for the Wayback Machine– it allowed me to find the now dead transcript of Bertolt Brecht’s HUAC testimony during the first wave of Hollywood Blacklist hearings. Unlike the ten who refused to testify, Brecht, rather concerned that he might miss his plane back to Europe, faced the music– and promptly outwitted, mystified and wore down the entire Committee.

A particular highlight:

MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Brecht, since you have been in the United States, have you attended any Communist Party meetings?

MR. BRECHT: No, I don’t think so.

MR. STRIPLING: You don’t think so?

MR. BRECHT: No.

THE CHAIRMAN: Well, aren’t you certain?

MR. BRECHT: No-I am certain, yes.

THE CHAIRMAN: You are certain you have never been to Communist Party meetings?

MR. BRECHT: Yes, I think so. I am here six years-I am here those-I do not think so. I do not think that I attended political meetings.

THE CHAIRMAN: No, never mind the political meetings, but have you attended any Communist meetings in the United States?

MR. BRECHT: I do not think so, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: You are certain?

MR. BRECHT: I think I am certain.

THE CHAIRMAN: You think you are certain?

MR. BRECHT: Yes, I have not attended such meetings, in my opinion.

During Fall/Winter ‘96 I was living in Union Square, next to the building where Andy Warhol got shot. This wasn’t one of the happier periods of my life. My free time was split evenly between watching endless Classics of Cinema at the media center in NYU’s Bobst Library and attending book readings at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. In a sad comment on my own crap memory, despite having gone to tens of these things, the only two I remember are an appearance by Kenzaburo Oe (with his famous son and wife) and one by Michael Moore, in support of Downsize This!

That was over a decade ago, but whenever the dread spectre of Moore reemerges to haunt America, I never fail to think of the reading. The crowd was fascinating– comprised of protesters (who wanted Moore to fund independent cinema or something), a couple of people who liked his work, and an incredible amount of upscale media elites, it was a like a lion being thrown to the Christians. There were about 3 friendly questions and 30 angry ones. For me, the most revealing moment was an at-length discussion of Friends (a show I’ve still never seen, but my Mom liked) and how Moore forced himself to watch it every week, as a way of keeping in touch with the trends and currents of Popular Culture.

This was a really strange time for Moore. I think by & large he had been written off as someone who’d made one interesting film and would now fade into obscurity. For god’s sake, he was reduced to doing book tours. I remember being turned on to Moore in 93 or 94 by my friend Dave Asselin, the world’s preeminent Smashing Pumpkins bootlegger (really, I think he hangs out with Billy Corgan), and in those halcyon days it wasn’t even conceivable that Moore would become what he has. Clinton was in office, and George W. Bush, the bete noir, had yet to emerge. It is strange to think that the ascendancy of Bush brought Moore screaming so hard into politics (of course his hands were already dirty with the Nader fiasco.) It’s also a misdirection of ability, because Moore is far more effective when he’s engaged with media & corporations, and their influence on the political process, rather than simple critiques about why George Bush is a dick.

Yesterday I saw SiCKO. Let’s get it out of the way: this is unquestionably Moore’s masterpiece. It’s also the best piece of American agitprop I’ve ever seen, effective enough to worry me that people in the theatre on the verge of a riot. I’ve been to hundreds of movie screenings, and I’ve never been to anything like this. The sheer outrage! A whole audience yelling and crying. It freaked me out. This was like May 68. Maybe it was the neighborhood.

Which isn’t to say some things in Moore’s bag of tricks haven’t grown stale. The condescension and mock innocence of the voice-overs are unnecessary and reveal an insecurity on the director’s part to let the work stand on its own. It’s a crutch. Plus, come on, can you honestly believe in the naiveté of a man wearing these frames?

I’ll make a deal with you, Michael Moore. After a career of 20 years documenting the stuff, you can pretend to be surprised still by corporate malfeasance, or you can loose the metrosexual glasses. You can’t have both. Sorry!

The’s film great asset is Moore’s willingness to put the working poor and middle class on the screen. This has always been where Moore shines, and it has never failed to cause the New York/DC echo chamber to bristle with discomfort. Even in the days of 24/7 reality tv, there’s something shocking to see people that look a lot like the folks from wee old Warwick, RI taken seriously as intellects & allowed to be articulate for their own selves. I was trying to think of the last time I had seen anything like this– and I couldn’t.

So bully capital there, Mr. Moore.

Excerpt from An Interview With Jarett Kobek by God,

Discover’d in a Dream,

on divers & sundry topics, but concerned mainly with

Michael Bay’s Transformers (2007)

God: So, Jarett, how’m I doing?

Jarett: Well, I gotta say, you know, given the fact that I’m so angry about Michael Bay’s Transformers that I’m resorting to the overly cutesy technique of posting a fake interview between myself and God, you ain’t doing so great there, pal.

God: But Jarett, why can’t you write a regular review?

Jarett: It’s like this. Transformers is possibly the stupidest film I have ever seen projected in a theatre. It’s certainly the worst. Granted, I am a man given to hyperbole & that I won’t deny, but holy holy crap, Transformers is awful. I’m so angry I can’t even put together paragraphs. You really dropped the ball, pal.

God: But can I be held responsible for the actions of man?

Jarett: Given that I was raised Roman Catholic, I’d say no, generally I believe in free will. But I’m angry enough to go Calvinist. It’s your fault, God. You let Michael Bay direct a film after Team America: World Police. You gave those Hollywood bastards the money, the drive, and the audience. It’s your fault, pal. You did this to me. I feel like I was held down and given the Ludovico Technique for two and a half hours. Where do I start? Oh, I know: let’s start with every single frame of that film screaming SOCAL GROUPTHINK SOCAL GROUPTHINK SOCAL GROUPTHINK. Hey, God, we should take a memo to future historians. If they want to distill the political, social, comedic, and dramatic thought of hack Hollywood in 2007 down to a single text, they only need watch Transformers. Where the disingenuous worship of The Troops combines with a profound discomfort at addressing, you know, actual War, where they can find a pathetically inept caricature of the sitting President (he’s from Texas and dumb), where every animated media property has to speak like a 55 year old man’s idea of a Valley Girl, and where comedy is reducible inevitably to fart jokes, piss jokes, nerds being nerdy, jocks being jocky, and a jive talking Negrobot. This film has it all.

There is no single phrase more vile, nor more embarrassing. It will be the lowest moment of your life. And yet, you say it still:

“I’d like a ticket for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”

Each of the last few years has had a strange cycle of Bob Dylan frenzy, generally culminating in a Significant Fall release. 2007 is no different and November offers Todd Haynes’s gimmicky biopic I’m Not There.

It’s hard to imagine a less necessary work. Dylan has long been a master of destroying his public persona through the medium of film. Remember: this is the man who gave us Eat the Document, Renaldo and Clara, Hearts of Fire and Masked and Anonymous. Rumor has it that Dylan kicked around the idea of an adaptation of “Rosemary, Lily, and the Jack of Hearts” and went so far to commission a screenplay. God. If only.

Anyway, the only significant thing to come from Haynes’s project is the commercial release of Dylan’s “I’m Not There (1956)” on the film’s soundtrack. This song was recorded by Dylan and The Hawkes/The Band during the so-called Basement Tapes sessions, and has been available previously only through bootlegging.

Having heard this news, I went looking for internet transcriptions of the song. Each one that I found was atrocious. As such, I’ve gone ahead and put together what I think is about the most reasonable and accurate rendering of the lyrics that can be found, along with explanations of the weirder lines. Words and phrases surrounded by double question marks indicate unresolved confusion on my part. Lines followed by asterisks indicate firm judgment as to what’s being said. Here:

“I’m Not There (1956)”
Bob Dylan

1 Ev’ry thing’s all right
2 And then she’s all the time
3 In my neighborhood
4 She cried both day and night
5 I know it because it was there

6 It’s a milestone but
7 She down on her luck
8 And she day makes her lone (*)
9 And but ??to make too hard to buck??
10 I be then (*)

11 I believe where she stopping
12 If she wants time to care
13 I believe that she’d
14 Look upon deciding to care
15 And I go by The Lord in ways (*)
16 She’s on my way
17 But I don’t belong there

18 No, I don’t belong to her
19 I don’t belong to ev’rybody (*)
20 She’s my prize-foresaken angel
21 But she don’t hear me cry
22 She’s a long hearted mystic
23 And she ??dare?? carry on
24 When I’m there she’s all right
25 But when she’s not when I’m gone

26 Heaven knows that the answer
27 She’s don’t calling no one
28 She’s the way, a sailing beauty
29 For she’s mine, for the one
30 And I lost her, hesitation (*)
31 By temptation less it runs
32 But she don’t holler me (*)
33 But I’m not there I’m gone

34 Now I’ve cried tonight
35 Like I cried the night before
36 And I’m leased on the highs
37 But I dream about the door
38 So long, she’s foresaken
39 By fate, worse to tell
40 It don’t hang ??proclamation??
41 She smiles fare thee well

42 Now I went out ??(undecipherable)??
43 I was born to love her
44 But she knows that the kingdom
45 Weighs so high above her
46 And I run, but I race
47 But it’s not to fast to ??slim??
48 But I don’t perceive her
49 I’m not there I’m gone

50 Well it’s all about diffusion (*)
51 As I cry for her veil
52 I don’t need anybody now
53 Beside me to tell
54 And it’s all affirmation (*)
55 I recede but it’s not (*)
56 She’s a ??lone hearted?? beauty
57 But she gone like the spot
58 And she want

59 Yes, she’s gone like the radio (*)
60 That shining yesterday
61 But now she’s a-home beside me
62 And I’d like to here to stay
63 She’s a bone forsaken beauty
64 And it’s dont trust anyone
65 And I wish I was beside her
66 But I’m not there I’m gone

67 Well it’s too hard to stake-in (*)
68 And I don’t far believe
69 It’s ??all bag?? for to musing
70 But she’s hard, too hard to leave
71 It’s alone, it’s a crime
72 The way she won’t be around
73 But she told for to hatred
74 But this ??long forsaken?? clown

75 Yes I believe that its rightful
76 Oh I believe it in my mind
77 I been told like I said
78 When I before carry on the grind
79 And she’s on bet to told her (*)
80 Like I said, carry on
81 I wish I was there to help her
82 But I’m not there I’m gone

Notes:

8. “makes her lone.” Lonely would be better, but alas, that ain’t what the man sang. The -ly suffix is dropped.
9. Fairly certain that “to make too hard to buck” is accurate but can’t be sure.
10. “I be then” is what’s sung. Given the structure of the other verses mostly ending with some variation of “I’m Not There,” it’s possible that this was improvisation gone awry.
15. 95% certain this line ends “in ways.”
19. Other transcriptions have Dylan singing “to anybody.” An accurate listen offers “ev’rybody,” a contraction used throughout his work in the 1960s and at the beginning of this song.
23. “dare” seems reasonable here, but isn’t the sound being made. Update: Sam Tregar suggests “deign.” It’s closer than dare, actually, but still not right.
30. I’m willing to render the final word as “hesitation” because this sounds more like a vocal stumble than a nonsense placeholder.
32. “Holler” sounds closest. Could be something else but I’m hard pressed to say what.
40. “Proclamation” is how everyone else transcribes this. I can’t tell.
42. Absolutely no idea.
47. Absolutely no idea, but it does sound a lot like “slim.”
50. A rare instance of a complex idea tracking from one line to the next. Dylan makes a sound a lot like “diffusion” and this makes logical sense, as the next line ends on “veil.”
54. “Affirmation” sounds right. Could be different. Makes sense with the following line.
55. “Recede.” Dylan starts singing “receive” and puts an “-ede” sound on the end.
56. Best guess.
59. Other renderings have this as “rainbow” instead of “radio.” Rainbow would be nice, as the next line would then inform this one, but sorry. He sings “radio.” Welcome to the world of Bob Dylan.
67. Definitely “stake-in.” No idea what it means.
69. Almost certain this line is as rendered. “All bag” is too difficult to say for sure, but “to musing” sounds right.
74. If anyone knows what kind of clown, please, please, please, email me.
79. An accurate rendering of ungrammatical English.

Spending halfway of your life halfway insane isn’t a bad way to live– reality has a way of knowing who can handle the weirder stuff and you end up with a greater amount of bizarre experiences than most. The downside is that, very occasionally, you’ll do something that really does qualify as nuts.

Letters can be read symbolically or as words– i.e., one can see words and recognize them from their shape as an identifiable symbol, or read them and gleam their meaning from context; I confess that I often slip into the former, especially when looking at a glance, so when I saw the words “Jane Austen” on the marquee of my local crap movie theatre, I was fairly interested– I’d heard good things about this movie, a biopic starring Anne Hathaway as the famed author. So I go and buy a ticket for the “Jane Austen movie.” I sit myself down and suddenly I’m getting this weird vibe off the rest of the audience– I’m the only male and everyone’s over 50. But that’s fine, I think, who else is going to go see a movie about Jane Austen?

Trailers and advertisements roll. The film begins.

“How odd to use a sans-serif typeface for the credits,” thinks I. “But perhaps this is the way of things.”

The first shot rolls and it is clear, very very clear, that the narrative is not in the Romantic Era; good lord, it’s not even Edwardian. It’s 21st Century Southern California. What the hell has happened?

I’ve bought a ticket for The Jane Austen Book Club thinking it was Becoming Jane.

Like I said. Crazy.

Don’t you believe the bad reviews & merciless critiques of this week’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I assure one and all that it is a glorious, splendid mess.

In its luridness, the film comes very close to mirroring the sensationalist and gory popular entertainments of the Elizabethan era. These were the years that gave the world The Spanish Tragedy and Kit Marlowe, a man who penned Tamburlaine braining himself against his bars and the Jew of Malta boiling to death. Decades later and John Ford, the last great playwright in the tradition, would author The Broken Heart, in which our protagonist opens his veins and bleeds out on stage. There’s a whole spectrum of red hues and coagulate gore in them years and I would argue that Golden Age functions exactly and properly along those lines.

Once one gives up cherished notions of What a Costume Drama Should Be and accepts Golden Age as something else then it’s easy enough to like. I shall be interested to see how it plays in jolly old England itself– another analogue to the film is perhaps the bounty years of Hammer Studios, a style seemingly still cherished on the distant island.

Sitting one seat behind Roky Erickson at a screening of Creature With The Atom Brain, watching him watch the movie. And having the crowd’s laughter remind me of the rising tides of angst and embarrassment of Anthology Film Archives days. B-Movies and urban sophisticates mixing like vinegar and baking soda.

There’s probably a very dense and boring book published by Fantagraphics tracing the development of Cinematographic Technique in comics– beginning surely with E.C. and the endlessly flogged “Master Race” of Krigstein– but I think it’s fair to say that the major recent milestones were the massive success of the first X-Men and Matrix films.

Together, these films represent the moment when the Great Beast of Hollywood realized that CGI had made flying dudes credible & when the Great Beast and the world’s various mainstream comics artists, writers, and publishers glommed on to a new truth: that action oriented comics could be used as idea incubators for massive media rollouts. Storyboarding itself is nothing new, but with the technology to render on film anything that can be drawn, comics present the novelty of having a completed product which has been, in theory, market tested.

This gets us to 30 Days of Night, the comic most recently adapted for the big screen. I haven’t seen the film, but a few guinea pigs have assured me that it’s terrible. One might note that the original comic series is also trash & is a work that embarrasses its readers by forcing them to think that somewhere, somehow Grown Adults put endless hours into its production– yes, one could, but one will not. For if nothing else, a work should be embraced on its own terms, and judged as to whether or not succeeds in its own purpose.

Therefore, discussing 30 Days of Night as though it were a comic is unfair. Better to recognize the thing for what it is: a visual outline, a treatment conceived for an eventual screenplay, developed entirely around a relatively high-level concept (Vampires in Alaska with No Sun and All Fun) and employing a condensed visual staccato in support of the concept. To expect character development, plot intrigue, coherent storytelling or even an ounce of depth is a great folly– the thing is what it is and nothing more.

Read as a pitch intended for the nancy boy personal assistants of Studio Executives here in the fiery city of Los Angeles, 30 Days of Night makes a perfect semiotic sense. Each panel reinforces either certain prevailing cultural stereotypes– the basic building blocks of genre filmmaking– or reminds the reader of nighttime or vampires, its two major motifs.

In terms of greater trends, 30 Days of Night is fascinating– as it was published in 2002, relatively early in the comic adaptation boom, I wonder if this is not the first book published entirely with the eventual film adaptation in mind. It’s a fascinating harbinger of the dark years ahead. 30 Days also speaks to an often abused aspect of comics– the incredible elasticity of the medium. Like cinema, comics can be anything and incorporate everything.

I’m reminded of late 60s Godard where 1/3 to 1/2 of any given film was guaranteed to be youthful Parisians reading Mao. Boring as it was, and perhaps not the intent of their creator, these films demonstrated that you can shove anything in a film and it’ll at least function. 30 Days of Night reminds us of the same thing in comics. You could shuffle the pages across its three individual issues and still have a functioning work. As much a quality of the artwork as of the writing, the books must be read as little more than extended riffs on the same three ideas: VAMPIRES. NIGHT. DEATH.

Given its intended function, 30 Days works perfectly. Yet if we went back and judged the series on its merits as a comic– keeping in mind our previously Idiosyncratic Ideal– we find that 30 Days of Night is entirely a failure, an unnecessary story ineptly told, existing without any purpose or reason. Is there a single person alive who needs 3 issues of one-dimensional vampires terrorizing one-dimensional humans? Did anyone enjoy the, ahem, Spartan attempts at a human interest love story? Was the art so compelling in its astounding approach to its rarefied topic that it changed forever how we, as readers, would think about vampires with no sun and all fun?

If there’s any love for comics in your heart, you could almost develop a Townie attitude and want to defend your home from the fancy fellas who’ve come in and mucked up your village green with their rotten litter.

Sweeney Todd: Tim Burton’s best film in years. Even without the “Ballad.” I like the musical, so I may be biased.

Juno: If you self-consciously inject class into your narrative– contrast cars, homes & attitudes!– and self-consciously model said narrative as a quirky, yet sensitive and oddly Real look at teenage pregnancy, don’t mess up my head by then having all of the consequences of pregnancy happen for the upper middle class adoptive couple. Don’t screw with my mind, man, by having the baby daddy fly home to the lower middle class empty nest and do an acoustic number.

I read a New York Times article about Juno’s screenwriter, Diablo Cody, before I saw the film– but even without the data therein, I would have been able to pinpoint the screenwriter’s age at somewhere between 28 and 32. Only a crumbling, decaying hipster would write teenagers This Cool while being totally clueless as to how The Kids Talk. One sees the project’s genesis in a single image: a heavily-stickered Macbook Pro with a window opened to the screenplay and a second resolutely stuck on urbandictionary.com. And, c’mon, really? Iggy & the Stooges and Patti Smith? I can’t suggest any plausible alternatives for the favorite musical acts of a Unique, Weird sixteen year old girl in 2007, but there’s a reason for that: I’m old. Whatever retro-wave the current crop of freaktards are riding, it sure ain’t the same one as 1994.

Wizard.

Walk Hard: Not exactly funny but astonishingly wry, with an obsessive level of detail. If you’re an idiot like me who loves stupid music biopics and documentaries, then this is your film. Sam Tregar, I’m talking to you. You gots to know, Trick loves da kids.

There Will Be Blood: Other than dating Fiona Apple, I consider all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous efforts to be amongst the world’s worst mistakes, but the trailers for There Will Be Blood had me anticipating this film. It was clear that something had changed. And I was right. The first two hours and twenty minutes are about as good as this type of filmmaking can get. Much has been said, rightly, about Daniel Day Lewis’s performance, but I found something completely genuine and realistic about the tone of the character interactions. Dang, it was great, and more importantly: it was like Paul Thomas Anderson had matured & shed his lapdog hangup about needing to be coddled and stroked by his master.

Then there’s the final twenty minutes in which one can smell the artistic self-doubt about what’s come before, including the film’s natural ending, and the director falls back onto his D.O.A. bag of tricks. Suddenly we’re in a Paul Thomas Anderson film. The only thing missing is Philip Seymour Hoffman singing and dancing in Katamari Damacy cosplay.

Gross.

–

Special Bonus, The Brave One: It was raining so hard that I had to do something to take my mind off the flood, so I picked this. One of the most racist and paranoid films in a really long time. Awful.

Fritz Donnelly (on the right.) Filmmaker, writer & apparent Gollum impersonator.

Williamsburg bridge rising up behind. Mix-n-match mojo master. Man, that dude’s a mystery. Just go here.

Age: somewhere between 25 and ?

December something, 2007.

–

Previous Donnelly Action.

A film that would have appealed to me at the age of 19– but so did John Woo’s Face/Off.

I’m fairly certain that it’s because of the dextromethorphan in my cough medicine, but at this very moment I am convinced– and am willing to throw down over my conviction– that 21 is the single finest achievement in ten thousand years of recorded human civilization.

At this very moment I am convinced– and am willing to throw down over my conviction– that 88 Minutes is the most heinous and shocking of mankind’s many, many crimes. A worse thing has not been known. An affront to human dignity. And I am fairly certain that the dextromethorphan in my cough medicine has nothing to do with my opinion.

Truth be told, the only feasible way in which a person could sit through the entirety of this film is to: (a) have a half-insane freak cough all over you a week before the screening, (b) develop a cold that’s not serious enough to impair fully but serious enough to debilitate and (c) drink a lot of disgusting medicine to fight the illness, thus creating an unpleasant high that makes the world appear through an opaque haze, as if one was in a 1930s screwball comedy and a hapless DP had smeared vaseline across the camera lens for the big kissyface.

And even that will not be enough. Even that will not protect you.

Afterwards, I checked: 88 Minutes runs one hour and forty minutes, but in my present condition, I felt as though I had lived from the Dawn of Time until the End of Eternity– from Genesis to The Revelation of St. John the Divine, and not even Alicia Witt, Notable Ginger, could help.

Please let this sickness pass, O Lord.

Truth in advertising. Two hours later and I remember nothing. Something about Hawaii and the Ukranian chick from That 70s Show. Veronica Mars? Fat guy from Superbad. That’s it. No material to work with, no half-cocked witticisms or sarcasm. Of course I’ve had a blend of coffee called High Octane, several mouthfuls of cough medicine and am suffering from massive head and lung congestion.

Oh right, Russell Brand.

Tomorrow, I’m feeling better.

Kenneth Anger is my Grandfather. He is upstairs in my parent’s bed and I bring him his breakfast. He’s feeling better but restless and anxious to get out again. He’s planning his escape. I’m in charge of watching him, of serving him, but also making sure he does not get away. Over the next few days we get to know each other, really, for the first time. We laugh and joke, he begins to open up to me and I’m excited to make up for lost time.

I walk up the stairs one fine summer morning into his room to find an empty bed, sheets disheveled, pillows on the floor. From the bedroom window I watch as he rides off on what else but a motorcycle. At this point I become Anger and I drive through off road trails into the backwoods of the country. I slow down, get off the bike and walk, full of dread, toward my destination: prison.

The prison is some distance away. But I can tell things have gotten out of hand long before I arrived. A huge battle is being waged on the verdant fields of this stone Bastille. Full riot and a jail engulfed in massive flames of blood and steel. As I walk towards the flaming prison, an old man cries out among the sheiks firsts and smoke, “This is where you belong, isn’t it, Kenneth!”

When I awoke it was noon.

I remembered what I done last night. Cinema Dance Eros. I had come to see the good Dr. Kenneth Anger at Anthology Film Archive. To see what he had to say since last I’d heard him, live and direct from the Whitney Museum, some 2 years ago. I also came to see the new films, films many people did not believe even existed. But I had faith, the faith of a child that sees death grinning before the eye of the moon.

Lonely Christopher and I arrived early. I bought a ticket for my friend Colette. She arrived looking resplendent as always, her beautiful hat of crystal amaranth and her dress of white light. After I bought the ticket I heard, what I feared, and had not yet read on the giant sign in front of the ticket window: “We regret to inform you that Kenneth Anger will not be attending tonight’s program.” The man in person had been replaced by a taped interview conducted by, who else but, the French.

Of the new films, first up “Surfing Lucifer”, began with the Universal Studio logo and theme song, with a slight change in text, reading, “Piracy.” What followed was amazing footage of luciferian cowabunga man-boys riding hard gargantuan waves, on super 8 film stock, to the thick Cali beat of “Good Vibrations.”

The first program ended with the video taped Kenneth Anger interview. The great Anger began describing some Renaissance looking painting, obsessing over the unusual presence of a “negro.” He discussed his illness, Manic-Depression, with somber grace, and I felt a stir of empathy. He made stabs at his bastard Hollywood disciples, “I used Blue Velvet in a movie way before David Lynch did. In fact he got the idea because he liked how I used it. At least that’s what I heard.” He discussed his disgust with the politically correct and his disregard of any concern over the misunderstanding of his Nazis imagery in “Scorpio Rising.” “I like shock and I like controversy.” His face was blurred as he denoted the folly of Francis Ford Coppola, whom he called a great example of Hollywood waste, and gave good examples of such wasting, “He bought 800 Nagras and handed them out to the Filipino children to go around recording jungle noises. They couldn’t use any of it!” He ended these comments with a lesson of how demonic providence works its way against the Hollywood Goliaths, citing the disasters that beguiled the shooting of the motion picture “South Pacific”, “Nature gets revenge on Hollywood through natural disaster. If they had shot in a studio none of that would have happened.”

The second program began with the long anticipated new work, “Foreplay”. The standard pop song soundtrack was replaced with the natural sounds of balls smacking against feet and balls shot into goals after being dribbled on dirty knees and sock covered hairy ankles. An interesting take on the absurdity of competition and an ironic look at the latent homosexuality underlying modern athletics.

The great treat of the evening was the final act of the new works, “I’ll Be Watching You.”

CAUTION BEWARE SPOILERS!!!

“I’ll Be Watching You” begins with a handsome security man hidden in the booth of an underground parking garage clearly bored but focused, watching intently at the security camera monitor. The ironic ’80s pop hit with the stalker lyrics and romantic tune bopping against the images. Then in drives a stallion of a man behind his delectable Dodge Neon. As the man in the booth watches in the monitor, a man who looks just like him comes out to greet the man in the car. But how can he? He’s in the booth! He can’t be two places at once! Is he watching himself? is this a dream? A fantasy? The audience ponders as Anger cuts to a close up of a security camera. The eye of Horus camouflaged by modern technology. What ensues is an actual hard-core porno reedited but not censored. Cars roll out, parking garage doors close. Those who know Anger in laughter, those who don’t befuddled. End. Anger, Paris, 2007.

This is the perhaps final period of Kenneth Anger: the piracy period. He appropriates footage and reedits it. Kenneth Anger as cinematic pirate. I for one think the new guise entirely appropriate. There is a touch of humor and intentionality that makes these works entirely acceptable and rather, well, cute. I told all this to a friend, she remarked, rightly so, “Well, it is very modern.” And as the good Dr.’s main man said, “I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.”

Jason Tallon is a New York based Artist & Filmmaker. He has been invited to post whenever taken by whimsy. His mind is over-dedicated to the Harsh Science of Poetics. Tallon was born in the woods of Vermont. This is his grim vizage:

Jason Tallon (c) 2008 by Colette