Link Round Up: "Painless and Perfect"

Another near the end of year massive link round-up, covering everything I wrote (sans the book) since September.

I made my debut in Sight & Sound Magazine in November with a piece on Steven Soderbergh's TV series The Knick, which may not be the best series to grace the non-theatrical medium, but damn it—Soderbergh proves all my stray observations about how just because it's television doesn't mean aesthetics should come second. 

In lieu of New York Film Festival, Los Angeles provides us with the bigger, perhaps a bit more eclectic AFI Festival. Since most of the major titles were already at Cannes, I wrote about Joel Potrykus's recession-bro comedy Buzzard, the modestly quirky coming-of-age meanderer Tu Dors Nicole, the latest WTF from Takashi Miike Over Your Dead Body, and JP Snaidecki's The Iron Ministry. Plus I spoke about Lav Diaz's From What Is Before on a recent podcast.

Another recent film festival visit—New Orleans! I graciously served as a juror for the Louisiana Shorts section of the 25th Annual New Orleans Film Festival, and also wrote about the wonderful experience at RogerEbert.Com. 

Wrote about some movie called Interstellar. You may have heard of it. And also this other thing called Gone Girl.

Also wrote about two other new movies of relative merit: Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip (which is of great proportion) and Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (which deserves at least some consideration).

In the canonical masterpiece territory, on John Ford's My Darling Clementine, and finding a postwar poet of cinema.

And on The Cinephiliacs, New Orleans local Angela Catalano on starring a popup cinema and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Alex Ross Perry on his idiosyncratic approach to independent cinema and Husbands and Wives, and Kim Morgan on Marilyn Monroe and Something Wild. 

And on Letterboxd...
Hitchcock: Suspicion, Foreign Correspondent, Vertigo
Expressive Esoterica: Dark Passage (Daves), Cure (K. Kurosawa), The Blue Gardenia (Lang), Chicago Calling (Reinhardt), Notes on the Circus (Mekas), Whirlpool (Preminger)
Far Side of Paradise: Papillon (Schafner), The Country Girl (Seaton), Baby Doll (Kazan)
Contemporary Stuff: Abuse of Weakness (Brelliat)
Marxism: Class Relations (Straub/Huillet)

Evidence and Processing: The Social Network and Computer Chess

       “This is our time!” screams Justin Timberlake at a pertinent moment in The Social Network, a moment meaningful within the context of the film, but also a moment many viewers latched onto for perhaps the wrong reasons. Do a Google search of reviews and think pieces and you’ll find countless words dedicated to how The Social Network is a film of its moment.  “It is a moment in time that befits our time in a way that no other film has achieved in a decade,” exclaimed one blogger. “A pungent examination of how it changed all of our lives overnight” is how another put it, while further resorting to a classic party line about technology by intoning, “The more connected we are technologically, the more disconnected we become in terms of actual discourse.” One couldn’t escape 2010 without thinking that no other film besides The Social Network spoke to “the way we live now,” without defining what that even meant.

        Computer Chess, the newest film from Andrew Bujalski, approaches “the now” through antiquated technology in a historical setting. It’s a film so psychologically manic and almost Lynchian in terms of its logic that on its surface, it might appear impossible to decode.  But it’s all there—the telling statements of computer vs. man (man as computer, really) and the changing role of technology in how we think. You want a movie of the now? Look no further. 

The Cinephiliac Moment: Zodiac

            The Cinephiliac Moment is a weekly series in which I choose a moment in a film where cinema reaches transcendence. This moment may be inspired by anything – the composition, the score, the edit, the narrative – but it is a moment in which cinema becomes something more than entertainment and possibly more than art. Read more about the original inspiration to the project here.

Blank Check - Zodiac (2007)

            Like all of David Fincher’s work since entering the digital era, Zodiac uses compositions within his frames that are tightly wound and filled with layers. Details are never just casually thrown together, though unlike his 90s-auteur counterpart, Wes Anderson, Fincher never emphasizes them. They are often the background, but they mean everything. There’s not a wasted moment or image in Fincher’s tale of three men driven to obsession by an elusive serial killer – even the film’s breathtaking avant-garde three minutes of darkness illustrates the passage of time for these men. So as Robert Graysmith and Inspector Toschi meet for the last time, we’re in so deep to every detail that our eyes are glued to the screen as the final clues are set into place, literally, as Graysmith uses various diner objects to lay out the groundwork for why he has identified the killer. As he lays down his final clue, a waitress comes over and drops off the check. Why? Why would Fincher throw in this random detail – especially one that may distract from our obsession in the case – to have of note that a check has been thrown down? Because it’s the film’s joke on these characters. The total has been added up. And what does it mean? Nothing. It’s just a total. We’ve watched this film for 160 minutes and Fincher has made us as intent as his characters searching for the truth. And what do we get? A small check that shows the total of their efforts. Unlike The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, in which Fincher de-emphasizes the clues of his case by dislocating the dialogue from the visuals, Zodiac does everything in its power to make us look as much as listen (consider the film’s breathtaking interview with Arthur Leigh Allen). So we notice something as mundane as the waitress dropping this check, and immediately question it in its validity in the case. And then we realize it has no meaning - as the final clues come together, why look at the total? It’s a meaningless total.

Much thanks to Jim Gabriel for the screencap above.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: A Twisted Hero for Twisted Times

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Directed By: David Fincher

Written By: Steve Zallian, based on the novel by Stieg Larsson

Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, and Robin Wright

Director of Photography: Jeff Cronenweth, Editors: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, Production Designer: Donald Graham Burt, Original Music: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Rated: R for hard violence, rape, and all the other stuff to support your anti-holiday cheer.

            The pitch-perfect sequence in David Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is also one of the most unmemorable sequences in the film. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is led around the yard outside the mansion of millionaire Henrik Vagner (Christopher Plummer), who has changed Blomkvist with investigating his family. Henrik explains each member of his family, where they live, and who talks to who. But Mr. Fincher’s camera refuses to let our eyes process this information. He cuts to shots of each home of each family member, and refuses to orient the spatial relationship of these homes to each other, just that they all surround each other. This reflects not only the script’s suggestions that the closest people to us are often the ones that hurt us the most, but more so, Fincher’s deconstruction of the investigative process. The textual information is displayed concretely and without flourish, but because the director refuses to reinforce each detail with visual information, we remain lost to the mystery.

            If Zodiac, Fincher’s cult classic masterpiece about the true-life serial killer in San Francisco, was all about making audience as obsessive as the characters solving an unknown case, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo does the opposite. The answer to the central mystery is slapping us in the face, but because Fincher constantly disorients us with his bold and anti-genre compositions, it remains more of a character piece. And thus, the American director of Fight Club and The Social Network has done the best job he can in adapting the tepid, international best-seller by Stieg Larsson. Why the Swedish novels became an extravaganza still remains something of a mystery—the narratives are built on the same twist-heavy lackluster prose that launched Dan Brown, but include intense violence and rape as well. Perhaps thought, that comes down to the film’s titular character, here played by Rooney Mara (last seen breaking up with Mark Zuckerberg in the opening of The Social Network).

Margaret and the Dragon Tattoo: Or Recent Going-Ons in Film Criticism

            Two big stories relating to film critics are once again bringing up questions about the role of film criticism today. Because the world needs another piece on the state of film criticism, I found this a most dire subject to write on, though I think one story highlights the other, so bear with me. The two stories individually have been getting a lot of notoriety, one for its complete idiocy and the other for its idealistic advocacy. I’ll start with the more banal story first.

            If you picked up a New Yorker yesterday and flipped to the movie section, you may have read David Denby’s review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the highly anticipated adaptation of the Stieg Larson novel from Social Network director David Fincher and produced by Scott Rudin. In publishing the review, however, Denby broke perhaps the one big rule film critics have to follow: don’t publish your reviews until the studio says so, a so-called “embargo.” A series of emails, published by The Playlist, follow the back and forth between Denby and Rudin, which highlight the triviality on both sides. 

            To be frank, the whole thing feels like a schoolyard dick-measuring contest. But Rudin’s point to Denby that the film “has been badly damaged” by the early review is something to really scoff at. When you have a huge blockbuster like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, one knows people are going to go to it, whether or not reviews are good. How many teenage girls decided to skip out on Twilight: Breaking Dawn because David Edelstein gave it a middling review? Embargos on films let studios control the press on their films to give it the most exposure, but when it comes to a film that is going to be plastered on billboards everywhere, Rudin’s anger seems misplaced. 

            However, that doesn’t mean film critics don’t have their place, which brings me to the story of Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan’s ambitious masterpiece that came and went without much notice when released in September. Because of the film’s legal troubles, the distributor, Fox Searchlight more or less dumped the film, while the few major trades that did review somewhat dismissed it. But soon, other critics—Ben Keningsberg, Alison Wilmore, Matt Singer, Richard Brody, and Glenn Kenny, among others—caught up with it during its release and herald it a masterpiece, or at least something of merit worth more than two weeks and little advertizing. I managed to catch up with it during the second-to-last day of its theatrical release and went particularly over the moon as well.

            As Margaret disappeared from existence, however, #teammargaret, a Twitter hashtag to fight for the film’s existence was born. The whole thing played like an inside joke for film critics until last week, on the eve of the film’s UK release. With raves coming from London film critics, including a pair of five star reviews from The Guardian and The Telegraph, Slant film critic Jamie Christley launched a petition to Fox Searchlight to get the film back in discussion by making the film accessible for critics for their end-of-year awards. While that doesn’t necessarily help people who don’t get press invites, the wave of buzz led to staggering numbers in the United Kingdom--The Guardian reports a weekend gross of £4,595 ($7,170). “That number gave Margaret the highest screen average of any film on release, by some margin. This, despite the film only receiving one evening showtime per day (at 8pm), due to its hefty duration of 150 minutes.” Next weekend, Searchlight has decided to expand the film to ten screens in the UK, which rivals the entire number of screens it played in the United States.

NYFF Review: The Social Network

The Social Network

Directed by David Fincher

United States

            During the day before I saw the premiere of David Fincher’s The Social Network, I ended up not having my phone. I was disconnected from the world: No Internet, no Twitter, no texting, and certainly not Facebook. And on the verge of sounding cliché, I did in fact start to notice the details around me: the sounds of the subway car, the subtle choices in architecture, and the smiles of the people around me. Being disconnected was a way of connecting, and although its become a trite argument against the nerds like myself that write on a computer and rarely make it out into the sun, it’s the driving force behind The Social Network, and the film brilliantly displays that.

            Yet before I jump into a long rant on the joys and wonders of the new David Fincher film, which has been written on earlier (and better) by many other critics, I’d rather focus on my stray observations on the film, which I find more illuminating that a particularly standard review. Yes, it’s a masterpiece—so let’s move on beyond that and find the real choices that make that happen.

            But to basics first: Mr. Fincher, known for films that are much more visually dynamic such as Se7en and Zodiac, directs this film written by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin, who has one of the best constructed scripts, scene for scene, put together here. A lot of it isn’t probably true, but I don’t believe we are supposed to see it fact for fact, but as a story of a culture. It’s 2003, and young Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, outstanding), is a programming student at Harvard. He’s just broke up with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara, soon to be sporting a Dragon Tattoo with Mr. Fincher), and decides to quickly create a scandalous Internet site in retaliation, which gets him some spite as well as attention. Soon enough, Zuckerberg is propositioned with an idea of connecting the students of Harvard together, but decides to take it further. With the help of his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) starts thefacebook.com, and it’s an instant hit. But whose idea is it? The film flashes from location to location, as well as through temporal space to a pair of depositions, where people fight Mark not only for his money, but to strip him of his pride. Yet does Mark care about this fight? Or even the money that made him a billionaire?

            The Social Network has been compared to Citizen Kane, The Great Gatsby, and other titanic cultural works that display great obsessive men, yet there are some differences that define Zuckerberg, especially at the mile-a-minute speech Mr. Eisenberg gives him (Mr. Sorkin’s script stands at 160 pages, yet Mr. Fincher squeezes it into a two hour film). Early in the film, Mark discusses the idea of fashion and how it’s changing, always evolving, and thus always lucrative. Its interesting how the film approaches the subject that is under scrutiny, almost like an organism that has been genetically engineered, unsure of how to treat it. Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) tells Mark, “We don’t know what it is except we know its cool.” That statement rings out like a motto of the 2000s, not to have to throw the word “zeitgeist” on this film, as one inevitably must. In the age of the Internet, we don’t understand the objects we have, their meaning, their application, but simply their cultural worth, and understand that means something.             

           Visually, some have commented on Fincher’s restrained style here, yet in many ways, his compositions and editing structure have never been better. After that dire first scene, Mark runs along campus, and we get some of the very few exterior shots of the film—we get the world of Harvard as it stands. As the film continues, we are given no establishing shots and simply interior spaces, as if the universe is slowly folding over, and the disparate spaces that leave people so distant, are closed away. Mr. Fincher’s focus on windows and glass leave that idea hanging, the actual frames that separate us, and how transparent those have become. Instead of giving us space, Mr. Fincher simply cuts between spaces as if he were shooting them in the same room, using simple directorial cues to act as if these spaces blend together. The dark, dreary, and drab lighting scheme, as well as the often-frightening score by Trent Reznor, give this film its alienating atmosphere, in which what matters is not how we connect, but the fact that we connect, and that we’re able to do it as much as we want.

            A very few sequences don’t exactly work. In a strange joke, Mr. Fincher films a crew race in the United Kingdom in extreme high definition, in what reminds me of the classic work of Mr. Sorkin’s attempts at parody (the brutal Charlie Wilson’s War had one as well). Another one, a late sequence between Mr. Garfield and his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, spells out the themes and ideas of the film a little too obvious, especially for a film that is so subtle.

            The final shot of The Social Network, showing Mark hitting refresh over and over, is one that grounds the film in its human emotion, which Mr. Eisenberg displays with such reserved audacity. It is quite brutal to see a man who just wants to be recognized by a few individuals, but does so by building an empire. Genius is often led by madness, and as Mr. Fincher and Mr. Sorkin see it, and it’s often an accident led by an emotion more than an idea. The film seems to comment that instead of confronting our issues, society has made it easy for us to instead run behind a veil and assert our fears and desires so passively, without any idea of consequence. Mr. Timberlake screams that “This is our time,” and that emotion reverberates throughout The Social Network, but I think it’s a message of fear for what we can become, more than what we’ve accomplished. 

New York Film Festival Gives Into Hollywood: 'The Social Network' Chosen as Opening Night Selection

            Perhaps taking to some of the criticism it received last year, the New York Film Festival announced its opening night selection today, promising a big Hollywood-like premiere. This year’s New York Film Festival will begin with none other than David Fincher’s The Social Network. The film, written by Aaron Sorkin, stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and the trials and tribulations to get the website started, including the lawsuit from his former friends (played by pop singer Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield, who will be taking over duties in the new Spider-Man film). The choice of Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) is certainly a curious one, but might be a strange gamble that works out for an excellent film. The Film Society also get its hands on a new trailer, which you can see above.

            The film is a swift turn from last year—besides Willem Dafoe (Antichrist) and Penelope Cruz (Broken Embraces), few big names came out for the show last year, and not a single Hollywood film was on hand. A number of critics and fans blasted the Film Society for the selection, and ticket sales were thus subsequently down. With an extremely lackluster Cannes Film Festival this year, one can bet Richard Pena and the rest of the selection committee (which now includes Todd McCarthy) will be turning their eyes toward some of the bigger American releases of the year. The big question remains though: Will they get a chance to screen Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life?