The 2013 Oscar Award Nominations were announced at 8:45 (EDT) this morning, some of which were sadly predictable (12 nominations for Lincoln), some happily not (No Best Director for Tarantino, Bigelow or Affleck) and some more good, bad and ugly than the rest.
The Good: This is apparently the year of Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild and Michael Haneke’s Amour.
The Bad: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master wasn’t nominated for Direction nor Cinematography, despite the fact that it is certainly one of the most visually striking films of the past several years. The Ugly: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film wasn’t nominated for anything. The failure to recognize this film for its cinematography and profound social commentary underscores the mind-numbing ignorance of Hollywood. Like every year, it is best to just breathe and remember that the Oscars are not so much about recognizing filmmaking as they are about promoting the Hollywood machine. The idea is to get more people to pay their $12 at the theatre – $26 with drink and popcorn – and leave it at that. Baa.
Transferring cassettes to MP3 files is an arduous process. The technical aspect is easy enough; it’s the labeling of tracks that’s confusing. My printing is faded and obscured. There are distracting icons in the background of the paper, what looks like some sort of skeletal figure, holding eggs maybe. The title for one song is clear enough: Malcolm X extract…but I can’t make out the name of the composer. I remember finding the album in the dollar bin of a secondhand record store many years before; I can picture it well, a bright cartoonish lake. But I can’t remember the name of the composer. I remember the piano music. And then I remember that it is from the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. I was very excited about discovering that in the record store because I had just been in Montreux on a bike trip with 15 others. We had seen B.B. King at the festival and listened to Trio’s Da Da Da in the disco clubs across Europe. I bought the album on impulse, and everyone on the trip signed it. I must admit to going kind of crazy in those summer weeks. I pedaled right off the road. Furniture was dumped into a pool. A hotel door was burned with 160-proof rum. I even refused to visit a concentration camp because I didn’t want to be depressed. There was wine – and rum – involved in all of that. And I remember getting into a long discussion with a friend I had made through these travels, Adam Davidson, about everything from literature to the Holocaust. I pontificated nonsense while Adam was personable and good-humored. I really enjoyed his company and then lost touch with him as soon as the trip had ended. He was playing college football in Ohio; that was all I knew.Years passed, and I was watching the Oscars Awards, and Adam Davidson’s name was announced as a nominee in the category for Best Short for a film called The Lunch Date. I knew it had to be another Adam Davidson, but then The Lunch Date won, and Adam Davidson, the Adam Davidson I knew, was thanking people on stage. That was really weird. I wanted to make contact but I didn’t know how to go about it, and I thought it would seem like I was just calling him because he was famous…which I probably was. I later rented the film and used it in my teaching.
It was some time after that again that I mused with a friend about wanting to get in touch with Adam. She worked at the D.A.’s Office and put together a print-out of his home address and phone number. That was too weird – and probably illegal – and so I tore it up…which brings me to now, me working on this blog.
Adam Davidson’s name comes up as the director of a number of television shows, including Grey’s Anatomy and Lost. However most of the Google images for Adam Davidson are not of the Adam Davidson I know, but of a NPR radio host who has been accused of journalistic corruption. That definitely isn’t him. I just had to scroll down further to find an image of my Adam Davidson. And another from a 2006 wedding announcement in TheNew York Times. I have consider trying to contact him now, but I know that would really be weird. It’s been almost 30 years. I would look like a stalker and he would probably be polite but then file an injunction or something to make sure I didn’t bother him again.
And so I get back on task and google what I was supposed to be googling: Malcolm X Jazz Montreux…and there it was, the same album I had found in the dollar bin of the secondhand record store years ago. The composer’s name was Don Pullen. And then I realized I didn’t have the track name correct. It wasn’t Malcolm X. It was called Dialogue Between Malcolm and Betty. I typed that into the iTunes box.
I was in an electronics store yesterday looking for new pair of headphones and stumbled across an interesting device: a cassette-to-MP3 converter. I was dubious, but it was only $30. And there was only one left. I took it home and dug out my stack of long-forgotten cassette tapes – 25 in all – and began the transfers. These took real time; a 90-minute cassette takes 90 minutes to download, almost like the old days of making tapes, timing the starting buttons and checking levels. Some of the cassettes have that bad warbling sound but many of the songs are pure nostalgia: Mr. Love (Vehicle),Zoolook (Jean Michel Jarre),Alibis (Moev),Uncertain Smile (The The)and Now Nothing (Penguin Café Orchestra).Ah, yes, cassettes…I wonder how long this will hold my attention. (The 45s would be next if I’d hung on to any of them.)
With the Yang, there is always the Yin. Science fiction filmmaking is replete with painful, awful work, and so I will not scour the depths and cite Plan 9 From Outer Space nor any superhero films, nor any of the B-movie messes concocted in the ’50s and onwards. And so my apologies, but no Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.No Empire of the Ants. And no Barb Wire. The science fiction films I have selected for my Bottom Five actually seem to have tried to tell a story of some kind and failed…miserably. 5. Damnation Alley (1976) Okay, I admit that this film is essentially a B film, but they had a lot of money – $17 million in 1976 dollars – of which they invested almost half a million in the Landmaster vehicle. It’s a journey through the post-apocalyptic desert. What could be better than that? (Apparently a lot of things.)4. Avatar (2009) Talk about money and time wasted! $237 million and 15 years in production… all for a world of blue people who live around a magic tree. It seems that the film was a parable for something. I guess it went over my head. 3. Dune (1984) Sorry to say it, but the book isn’t very good either. There is nothing in this world except sand, worms and spit suits.2. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace (1999) Three words: Jar Jar Binks. Thanks a lot, Mr. Lucas, for ruining a great franchise.1. Event Horizon (1997) There is nothing good to say about this film. It is just gross and violent and stupid and gross. (Probably sounds fun to you young’uns. It isn’t.)
I have always been a sucker – like a Christmas Tree – for Science Fiction films. I was insanely hyped for Prometheus (2012), Sunshine (2007) and Event Horizon (1997) and, 15 minutes after the opening credits, let down by a predictably dull and stupid story. And I expectOblivion (2013) will be the same. However every once in a while, there are films that follow through past the set-up, that actually have a thought-out story with characters who are interesting and a plot that intrigues to the end. Here are my Top Five:
5. Planet of the Apes (1968) The costumes and sets might be dated, but the concept and characters work very well. The relationship between Taylor and Zira challenges us to this day. 4 Alien (1979) This film has everything in it, from the typical military conspiracy to grumbling union guys and, of course, the alien’s retractable punching bag jaw. Signourney Weaver’s Ripley is one of the great female leads in science fiction. 3. The Road Warrior (1981) Mad Max is a great ant-hero, and the villains have ever since been used as prototypes for the post-apocalyptic films that followed. Max’s dog provides the tragedy.2. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) The human – and alien – aspect is developed beautifully with some unsettling moments of alien sexuality. It is a contemplative film that makes great demands of the audience.1. Blade Runner (1982) This is at the top of many lists not only because it is a well-constructed film with a strong setting, story and cast of characters, but also because of its fidelity to the tenets of the Film Noir genre.
Christmas Tree, you are such a loser. You come into our homes every year, and you think we care because we decorate you with lights and kneel beneath your boughs. You actually think you’re the centre of everything, the glowing hearth of the holidays. And then we drag you into the street and dump you there. We don’t even notice you anymore. You’re like all the other garbage.You’ll be sawdust by the time we get that warm feeling again. And we’ll go after your saplings. Yeah, that’s right, Christmas tree. Fuck you.
Resolution is an over-used word not only on New Year’s Eve, but also in times of conflict and television watching. Resolutions on New Year’s Eve are harmless enough: I’m going to quit smoking. I’m going to stop eating junk food. I’m going to be a better person. They’re said late at night, under the influence (of drink or good intentions) and are rarely remembered. The problem with resolutions is that, when they are maintained, they result in conflict. Be it the NRA’s resolution to keep all of their guns, the Republicans’ resolution to not raise taxes, or the Syrian government’s resolution to win at all costs, nothing good ever comes out of this determination.
Republican House Speaker Jim Boehner is reported to have told Democratic Senator Harry Reid, “Go fuck yourself.”
Resolutions need to be compromised so that a, um, another resolution can be created. Rather than resolutions, I propose that we follow the simple philosophical theory of Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. A good example of this is found in French history: Monarchy + Revolution = Republic.
French President Sarkozy with wife Carla Bruni
My New Year’s Synthesis is a simple one: Talk + Listen = Think.
Barbarella offers everything in Science Fiction film-making, all that is bad, and equally so, the good. Widely known but little seen, the 1968 film directed by Roger Vadim, is notorious for Jane Fonda’s sexpot character in various stages of undress. There is more to this film than vague eroticism; the costumes and sets – including Barbarella’s shag-lined spaceship – are awkward and clever at the same time, yes, campy, wildly so. The lines of dialogue are equally outrageous; the characters are vapid and the plot pointless and confusing. At one point, Professor Ping (played by Marcel Marceau) tells Barbarella that the angel Pygar no longer has the will to fly and so cannot get her out of the labyrinth of evil in which she is trapped. Barbarella solves that by making love to him; and off they go. It’s as simple as that. The film begins on a fantastical note, mocking the violence of man: “Why would anyone want to invent a weapon?” Barbarella is genuinely confused; after all, anything is possible in science fiction. The answer is overtly stated throughout the film – all you need is love – and resolved in the same way. Pygar rescues not only Barbarella from certain death but also Tyrant, the evil queen. His explanation, much like the logic of Chihiro in Miyazaki’s anime film Spirited Away, is that, “An angel has no memory.” Barbarella herself is enigmatic. She repays everyone who saves her life with sex. The President prefers to share matters of state when she is naked. The Mad Doctor tries to destroy her with a sex machine – only to be foiled by Barbarella’s remarkable sexual threshold. She dresses like a space whore, but she isn’t. Why, you may ask, does she not do battle with clever tricks and big guns? As trite and misogynistic as it might sound, she is above it all. She is an innocent who wants to help mankind. Rumor has it that a remake is in the works with a budget of $80 million and Rose McGowan to star. I am dubious about a 21st Century Barbarella. I envision a multitude of bikinis and an excess of CGI. Fonda’s half-begotten Barbarella, in all of her wide-eyed stupor, is sure to be lost.
The Ugly: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film wasn’t nominated for anything. The failure to recognize this film for its cinematography and profound social commentary underscores the mind-numbing ignorance of Hollywood. 
Like every year, it is best to just breathe and remember that the Oscars are not so much about recognizing filmmaking as they are about promoting the Hollywood machine. The idea is to get more people to pay their $12 at the theatre – $26 with drink and popcorn – and leave it at that. Baa.
