I forgot to thank the Reel Thing team for giving Reza, Aaron
& me the chance to talk about the SCI-Arc Media Archive. It was an honor,
and the audience couldn’t have been friendlier. This is definitely the nice
part of Hollywood. I gather the video of our talk will be available online later.
As usual I left the event with a long list of movies I need
to see. Albert Goldman’s Nicholas Brothers tribute was exhilarating. Besides scenes from the feature films, he showed clips from their home movies, featuring cronies like Fred Astaire, Carmen Miranda and Judy Garland. Amazing.
Lee Kline presented the saga of
Criterion’s upcoming restoration of Heaven’s Gate. The images were breathtaking. I know some Kris Kristofferson fans who will need to be in theaters when this restoration is released later this Fall.
Ralph Sargent from Film Tech, talked about early television
sets, uttering one of the great lines of the
conference, “I don’t need to remind this
audience about early color television technology ….”
[A 1938 AC television and radio, by the Murphy Radio company, designed by R.D. Russell]
Jonathan Erland introduced me to Louis Le Prince, a pioneer of motion pictures who I had never heard of. In 1888 he captured this scene in a friend's garden. And then two years later he disappeared, never to be seen again.
Isuzu Yamada died. She was in a lot of memorable movies, but for me her performance of Asaji, in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, established her as the greatest Lady Macbeth.
It is not Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, it is not Shakespeare at all. The adaptation is so perfect that the characters seem more Japanese folklore than Elizabethan art.
Of course it owes a lot to Kurosawa, and Asakazu Nakai’s cinematography, and Toshiro Mifune’s contrasting explosive violence. But Yamada was the one in front of the camera, and you can’t take your eyes off her.
The obituaries all mention her manic energy in the “Out damn’d spot” scene, but it’s in the quieter moments that she sears the screen. She convinces her husband to murder their lord without raising her voice above a whisper, without moving a muscle of her face, all the while staring at the floor. There are scenes where the only sound was the rustle of Asaji’s robes as she hurried about some crime.
Rickie Lee Jones’s voice commands attention. When she’s on stage, swaying and gliding around, you can’t focus on anything else. She mutters, slurs consonants, howls, groans, wails, slowly enunciates syllables with perfect clarity. She deforms the words and the tune to make you pay attention; she’s always delineating an expressive form.
Last night she performed only one of her own songs, “The Moon is Made of Gold,” accompanying herself on guitar. It was so good it was frustrating; we wanted more.
However the event at CalTech last night was not a Rickie Lee Jones concert, but a concert by Rachael Worby’s Muse/ique Orchestra, featuring Rickie Lee Jones in five classic American popular songs.
Moreover it was that most horrifying of musical forms, a Pops Concert, complete with inane patter and a tribute to John Williams. It began with performances of the national anthems of the USA and South Africa. This was not what we signed up for; it was a mean trick to play.
Still, even inadequate quantities of Rickie Lee were better than nothing. And frankly I was fascinated by her take on The American Songbook. She’s been working through this material since her 2000 album It’s Like This, and we got the benefit of her insight and expertise.
Selecting “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “My Funny Valentine” might have been predictable, but the vigorous way she took hold of them was not. Other talented singers turn “Valentine,” into a cry of despair. Rickie Lee gave full measure to the pathos—it was unforgettable the way she sang “unphotographable”—but didn’t forget about the “Funny”-ness aspect.
Also the choice of songs was refreshing. She began with a performance of “On the Street Where You Live” that exorcised the booming Bill Shirley version from the movie. “I Won’t Grow Up” was another nice shock. But nothing prepared you for the “Jet Song” from West Side Story. She totally made it her own: “When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way / From your first cigarette / To your last dying day …”
You get the idea. Rickie Lee was fantastic. Unfortunately we weren’t permitted to hear much of her. Instead we had the Los Angeles Children’s Choir warbling, “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” I don’t even know where to begin.
What a waste. It was a lovely venue on the lawn in front of Edward Durrell Stone’s Beckman Auditorium. CalTech should apply some of their famous vision and intelligence to their summer music programming.
At the land art survey at the Geffen it was fun to re-encounter Michelle Stewart’s giant 1973 graphite drawing “Kingston,” which I remember seeing at the Art Institute of Chicago shortly after it was made. Fun, and full of memories, but I can’t say it’s a deeply compelling work of art.
Which was my response to the bulk of the show. It was another of MOCA's revisionist global histories, exactly like their earlier surveys of body art and conceptual art: room after room of photos, drawings, instructions and videos from hitherto uncelebrated artists in Israel, England, South America, Eastern Europe, …. Obviously there was an attempt to be polemical and ignore canonical names like Michael Heizer or Walter de Maria, but for that to work they needed to find some work as interesting as theirs. The international survey was informative, but unfortunately none of the stuff they rescued from oblivion was very compelling art.
This was a disaster, because even the best things in the show lacked visual appeal. The nature of the work meant that most of what was exhibited was documentation about work rather than the work itself. The moment when you could generate a transgressive frisson by exhibiting notebook pages, crude snapshots and typed pages has passed. Instead of a fresh new world of possibilities, it now seems to express futility and deadness. A display of receipts from an imperfectly-remembered party.
There were a few exceptions. The main one was Alighiero Boetti’s 1971 Dodici forme dal 10 giugno 1967, 12 engraved copper plates. Each plate reproduced a map of Israel from the front page of a newspaper, minus all the text except for the date. This was the moment of the Six Day War, and so all the maps were different. The wall of shining copper plates was a delight. The content was at once concretely visual and intellectually demanding. It provided the mix of austerity and sensuality that conceptual art is supposed to deliver, but almost never does. Was this piece in the 2002 Zero to Infinity show? I feel like I’ve seen it before.
Other than that, the best thing in the exhibit were the movies. I'm astonished to be writing these words, but there you are. Film & video seemed more relevant than those foxed scraps of paper. Certainly more engaging.
The exhibit started brilliantly with a presentation of the Eames’s 1968 Powers of Ten. It established all the important tropes: space, geometry, nature, cartography, fantasy, discovery, a dispassionate tone, clear methodical procedures, acceptance of whatever the procedure generates (or the appearance of accepting it), ….
Robert Smithson’s 35-minute 1970 film, Spiral Jetty might be the best thing he ever did. It gave him an opportunity to make explicit all the links with cosmology, paleography, science fiction, construction. He threw in his personal business, his grand vision, his issues, his hang-ups. And he even has sly self-critical moments where he makes a joke of the act of representing his sculpture. It’s the greatest student project presentation of all time. None of his other works have anything like the depth and scope of this.
There was also a room with Michael Snow’s La région centrale (1971). It was mesmerizing, and I sat through a lot of it. A mechanized camera surveys a grim mountain top in North Quebec, left to right, up and down, slashing sideways, spinning around. The soundtrack, which I didn’t realize existed, was rather sweet. Yes, it’s unbearable (3 hours!) but it’s not unwatchable. It completely messes with your perceptions. Large sections blur into unintelligible forms and colors. And I admit after a while I became fixated on the hairs that popped up in the lower left and right corners. When the camera is swinging around like mad, they’re about the only thing in focus, so they’re hard to ignore.
Since MOCA went to the trouble to create little theaters for screening the Smithson and Snow movies, did they really have to use DVD versions? Was is really so impossible to screen 16mm prints? Especially since they took the trouble to create a projector for Mary Kelly’s worthless coal installation.
In a totally different key, there was also CBS’s 1962 documentation of Jean Tinguely’s End of the World, II project in the desert. Hilarious and touching. The cart of dynamite creeps toward the shopping cart full of footballs, but fails to explode.
Instead of a museum exhibit, Ends of the Earth should have been a film series.
[A bad repro of the Boetti piece]
[Detail of Meleko Mokgosi, Pax Kaffraria: Sikhuselo Sembumbulu, 2012]
It’s telling how irrelevant all that work was to the talented kids in Made In L.A. across town at the Hammer. Fifty years on, this energetic proliferation of alterative art practices has led to … more paintings, sculptures and drawings. Contrary to the best efforts of very talented people, art not only did not become free activity accessible to all, but has become a even more of a commercialized luxury commodity industry than ever before. Perhaps it is question of no longer beating your head against a wall. I enjoyed Made in L.A. more than I thought I would. I particularly liked:
David Snyder’s video installation featuring fake music videos, a police helicopter poised mid-screen, a campy vampire hand fumbles for the crosswalk button in Hollywood, plus a dozen other nutty things. It was cacophonous and alive.
Karthik Pandian’s slide projector installation that evoked Grove Press editions of Jean Genet, brainy articles on alternative theater in the Sixties.
Meleko Mokgosi’s magnificently painted epic of African grandees.
Vishal Jugdeo’s eerie HD video installation centered in a haunted apartment in Mumbai.
Roy Dowell had a menagerie of funky, funny abstract sculptures that were like exceptionally cheerful kindergarten projects.
Liz Glynn’s beautifully crafted recycled wood interventions. One was rough wood on one side, and new-fronted drawers on the other.
Doing Rigoletto without staging the action is an excellent idea, if only because it eliminates the impossible task of making Gilda’s kidnapping believable: even if it was very dark that night, wouldn’t Rigoletto recognize his own house? And a concert performance also doesn’t have figure out a way to stage the conclusion, where the poor woman playing Gilda has to crawl out of a sack before singing her tragic farewell. At the Bowl they didn’t worry about any of that, and just sang Verdi’s shattering and overwhelming music.
They had everything you needed: an arresting Rigoletto (Željko Lučić), a vocally attractive Duke (David Lomeli), a compelling Gilda (Irina Lungu). Even the hitman Sparafucile (Alexander Tsymbalyuk) sounded great, and Monterone’s (Ryan McKinny) curses rang out menacingly. Dudamel extracted maximum precision, variety, animation from the orchestra. For the first time I actually got a sense that there might be something to the hype.
Unfortunately all this spectacular music was wasted on the numbskulls in our section who sustained a conversation throughout the entire first half as if they were sitting by themselves in a bar. It must have been important, but I haven't noticed any breakthroughs in the Mideast, or cures for cancer in the news. We gave up and relocated to a less populated section, where we only had to contend with the rave on the other side of the hill and the helicopters. But there were also people with following the music with scores. I know I am becoming an old grouch, but I think I can tell the difference between people caught up in irrepressible high spirits and people who are too self-absorbed to surrender their attention to anything other than themselves, even after paying money to do so.
We haven’t been to California Plaza in a long time. Our first discovery was that they no longer permit alcohol. This is a pointless precaution because the audience is obviously not there to cause trouble, but to carry on loud conversations throughout the performance and let their kids run amok while maintenance workers incessantly push trashcans with clattery wheels from one end of the venue to another. Later the police sirens started howling and never let up.
Despite the unpropitious circumstances, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Kekiu’s precisely synchronized undulating and gesturing was mesmerizing and beautiful.
As is probably appropriate for a company that is not exclusively Hawaiian (and maybe even mostly haole), they are not hung up on authenticity. The dances ranged from the earthy old-school recreations to the glitzy (Propellerheads “History Repeating,” complete with drag Shirley Bassey impersonator). Probably my favorite moment was when a group of the women barely moved to some trance electronica by Way Out West.
The men were very nice looking, and, as the company is based in San Francisco, it was hard not to take most of the male dances in a deeply gay sense. I know this is probably a wretched misunderstanding based on cultural ignorance, but there you are.
Dear Na Lei Hulu, please don’t be offended by the obnoxious L.A. audience. You put on an amazing show and we loved it.
We saw the National Theatre broadcast of the Danny Boyle/Nick Dear staging of Frankenstein a few weeks ago. It was an exciting evening: the Downtown Independent was buzzing—totally sold out.
It must have been amazing to see live. The lighting alone would have been worth the price of admission, with a ceiling completely covered with an Annette Messager-ish assemblage of antique lights that throbbed patterns in response to the action.
It was amazing, and I’m glad I saw it (and it made me finally get around to reading the book!) but I kept getting tripped up by the contrast between the supersophisticated visual spectacle and the pedestrian language. Only at the very end, when Elizabeth talks to Victor and the Monster, did the dialog become interesting. And even then, instead of Mary Shelly’s nuanced arguments, Nick Dear telegraphed mythic talking points.
Boyle and Dear were right to dispense with the idea that it’s a myth about technology run amok, and focus more on the tragedy of a creature denied love. That emerged from the spectacle intermittently. But while turning it into a tragic love story is probably the one sure way to make it understandable today, it also dispensed with Mary Shelly’s nuanced dramatization of how different kinds of desire for different kinds of knowledge and power can be humanizing or dehumanizing. That didn’t quite make it through all the wham-bang-pow, about which Mary had clear opinions:
A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
According to NASA, the newest Mars rover was named as the result of a nationwide contest among school children in 2009. “Curiosity” was proposed by Clara Ma, of the Sunflower Elementary school in Lenexa, Kansas.
We’ve been hearing a lot about Curiosity lately. NASA is beating the Public Relations drum like mad. It’s what you have to do these days. If it reminds people how amazing the space program is, then good.
But every time I hear the name “Curiosity,” I can’t help think back exactly 20 years ago, when Congress was killing the superconducting super collider project in Texas. If you wondered why the Higgs-Boson wasn’t discovered in the USA, the reason is because Senator Dale Bumpers ridiculed spending Federal money to “satisfy scientific curiosity.”
[Image: Mars viewed by the Hubble Telescope, which was almost but not quite killed]
The jump into horror was an unpleasant shock, and I didn’t enjoy watching it. But it’s haunted me, and I’m slowly starting to acknowledge it.
On reflection, I see that almost all the elements of this movie are familiar tropes of Almadóvar's other movies: twisted obsession, the weirdness of doctors, hospitals and medicine, voyeuristic surveillance, rape, kidnapping, enslavement, unending grief, reunion with Mama, the dark view of life.
And above all, the dismal view of men. Whenever Almadóvar makes a movie about women, the melodrama is relived by moments of friendship, family, and humanity. But Almadóvar’s men do nothing but create disaster and unhappiness, while flashing their tushes. At a minimum they are self-absorbed idiots, and at worst they are psychos.
Here the men are all creeps. I suppose it was inevitable that PA would try his hand at making a horror movie, or at least a David Cronenberg movie. And, yes, it can be a form of camp and therefore appropriate. And beyond all doubt it included many marvelous things: The magnificent Marisa Paredes as the mother/servant. The sly references to Louise Bourgeois and Alice Monroe. Lunkhead Zeca’s tiger costume. Buika shining as the wedding singer. The utterly imperious jumping backward and forward in time. The outrageous revelations of identity, one after another, until the Big One. A breathtakingly quiet, puro Almadovar reunion with Mama at the end. …