Rezeptor

End of the Line

2006-05-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

This Blog has been moved. For more current entries, see the new location. Thanks.

Max Färberböck - Aimee and Jaguar (1)

2006-04-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

It is one of the secrets of the creative process that a bunch of people who sound like they haven't the first glimpse of what they are doing, or why, can produce something profound and moving. Comparing, in this case, the cast and crew interviews on the DVD with the movie itself, the dichotomy couldn't be greater. Where the movie is a masterpiece for so many reasons and in so many ways (and in spite of its occasionally stilted acting in the tradition of the German Kleines Fernsehspiel), the comments of the people who made it fall amazingly short. Most telling was Maria Schrade, who in the space of under two minutes mentioned no less than six times that the fact that it was a lesbian lovestory didn't matter at all. Form and function, quite at odds, but thanks for the effort.
When Brokeback Mountain made it big recently, some German critic complained how utterly unthinkable a like movie would be in a German setting - two male blue collar workers in the Ruhrgebiet getting it on - the opposite of cool and moving (I'm transcribing liberally here)(which, funny enough, is just one little typo away from literally, as I just discovered). But Aimee and Jaguar is that movie, and both the fact that it tells a true story, and the backdrop of the apocalyptic insanity of Berlin during the end of the Second World War, heighten the intensity of its message. I don't want to compare Brokeback Mountain and Aimee and Jaguar to each other, both movies are great achievements in their own right, but I do think they should have the right to marry each other and have lots of kids. I'd love to see them.

Oliver Stone - The Doors (2)

2006-04-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

When I get tired while watching one of Oliver Stone's docudramas, is it because my attention span has been lamentably brought down from what would be a decent standard, or because Stone tends to overload his movies with too much information about his ever intriguing subjects? In this case, the effect was exacerbated by Stone wanting to show Morrison's death as a sudden event and an abrupt ending, rather than a conclusion, which means that - unless you knew when he died, in which case the occasional chapter-like caption indicating the time of the action would give you a hint - you'd be well into the third hour until you felt the end approaching. By that time it had become my friend, indeed. Kilmer's acting, however, the amazing script, and, of course, the soundtrack all make this a wonderful treat. The cliche notion of the artist as a messianic figure, burning brightly so the audience doesn't have to, yet gets to enjoy the warmth vicariously I didn't care too much about, but Stone doesn't push it too hard, and Morrison's particular blaze drowns the light of reasoned argument in his great balls of fire anyway. Oops, wrong band.

Robert Towne - Tequila Sunrise (3)

2006-04-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

The plot of this odd movie about the unlikely friendship between a drug enforcer cop and a big time coke dealer doesn't make too much sense, and the love story thrown in doesn't help either. The script at times seems incoherent, as though the writers didn't quite know where to take it. The hairdos and dresscode are a vivid reminder of everything that was bad about the eighties, but the single worst thing about this movie has to be the signature Sexophone that starts whining every time romance lurks in the shadows. Puh-lease. The highlight of the movie is Raul Julia as the mexican druglord Carlos. The plot surrounding him, especially the supposed eight years of covertly working with the DEA, without them knowing that he wasn't a Mexican official, diesn't make any sense, but his acting does.

François Ozon - Swimming Pool (2)

2006-04-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

About halfway through the movie I realized that I was waiting in vain, and that the strong sense of tension probably wasn't going to be relieved by some big event. Turns out I was wrong, but I'd still say that this is a movie about ideas more than about events. An aging, repressed and puritan writer of mystery novels is sent to France to find inspiration, finds her missing psychological counterpart instead, in a young promiscuous and hedonisitic woman, and embraces her worldview, to return to her editor with a book that reflects her maturation. How much of the plot truly happened, and how much of it just reflects the story she writes is anybody's guess, but the cinematography and design is consistently geat and very subtle, and the atmosphere of unresolved tension is almost palpable throughout.

Alex Gibney - Enron (2)

2006-04-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

The biggest corporate scandal of our time, explained. Before I saw this, I feared to see the ruthless and ingenious machinations of evil people would get me agitated without offering a way out. But to see the ruthless machinations of evil people leaves me incredulous for their lack of ingenuity, and the problem turns out not to be a few crooks, but a fundamentally flawed system. None of it should have happened, but scores of investment bankers and brokers fell for the nude emperor, because they had stock in non-clothing. Sure enough, there are a few monstrous moments, as when the Californian energy grid is played for money, but overall, it's just business as usual. How horrible.

David McKean / Neil Gaiman - MirrorMask (2)

2006-04-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

Neil Gaiman's work is a bit of a paradox to me. I like his storytelling and inventiveness - if sometimes reluctantly, for excessive use of pathos -, but visually he consistently seems to be balancing on the fringes of a realm of exuberant quirkyness and fantasy running wild that gives me the creeps for all the wrong reasons. This movie is no exception, with a neat twist on good/evil dichotomies, a likable set of characters, and oodles of visual frills. But several of the ideas here are so enjoyable (the birdmonkeys, sphinx/cats and the pair of giants being just three of the more memorable), that the flaws don't much matter. Maybe I can even bring myself to read the Sandman one of these days. Why? Because it's there.

Kenna - New Sacred Cow (3)

2006-04-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

Talk of this album constitutes almost an entire chapter of Galdwell's Blink. Apparently, many distinguished figures in the music industry heard Kenna's music and were deeply impressed, but when focus group testing was done, the audience was unimpressed, and radio stations were very reluctant to play Kenna's stuff. Gladwell uses this as an illustration of the fact that focus group testings aren't as meaningful as the judgments of experts and can be very misleading, but I beg to differ. Maybe the fact that one of those impressed experts was a member of U2, those toe curling dogooders, should have tipped me off - I am absolutely with the focus group on this one. This is lifeless, uninpsired music and doesn't speak to me at all. Maybe an entirely different argument could be made from this - about how too much expertise can drive you into the obscurity of private passions no non-expert can understand or appreciate. Or maybe U2 is just full of shit. I like that theory.

Malcolm Gladwell - Blink (2)

2006-04-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

With the Tipping Point being so entertaining to read, the momentum just carried me right into Gladwell's newer book on the importance of subconscious snap judgments for all aspects of our lives. Of course there is quite some evidence saying that even when we make seemingly rational decisions, our brains may just be bullshitting us profoundly (in Gazzanigas famous experiments on split brain patients, for example, subjects readily report completely bogus reasons for an action, because the half of their brain speaking, having no clue why the other half did something, makes up a story - without the subject being aware that he's being conned by the gooey stuff in his head. But I digress), so the phenomenon that the resons for our decisions and actions aren't always available to our conscious self might just be the tip of the problem that we actually come up with explanations for our actions after the fact by default, and the only reason it tends to make sense so much is that we have been around ourselves long enough to generally know what we will be doing, and have a fairly good theory of our own minds. The most important part of this book I found to be the notion that we are able to shape how our subconscious makes its decisions, and the chapter on how requiring conscious justifications messes up and changes our judgments - unless we're experts and already know what we're talking about. Next time somebody asks you why you like something, think twice about thinking about it - you suddenly might not like it any more.

Hayao Miyazaki - Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (1)

2006-04-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

I still remember being blown to pieces by Mononoke-hime, and it's hard to imagine anything ever will surpass Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, but Hauro ranks a close (Totoro!) third in the Miyazaki charts. While the plot becomes impenetrable in more than one place, the mysteriousness of what's going on just adds to the dreamlike quality of the story. The fire demon is a delight, the design a visual triumph, and the characters, in their moral murkyness typical for Miyazaki, likable even when they are the closest anyone can come to evil in his universe. I could maybe have done with a little less screentime for his usual themes of the evils of war and industrialism, but since even those looked good, I won't bicker. See it if you haven't, see it again if you have.

Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point (2)

2006-04-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

Friends tell me I've read this book several years ago and liked it, but try as I might, I can't remember it. Upon (re?)reading it now, I have an explanation of why that might be. The general theme - social phenomena are subject to nonlinear mechanisms that mean minimal causes in the right place or time can have enormous effects - is of the variety that is so obvious once you get it, you immediately forget the person who told you. Something that obvious doesn't have an author, or a form, it's just an impresonal truth. The book is an entertaining and insightful read, but I can already feel the particulars fading in my mind. In a few years I'll be ready to read it again.

Sidney Lumet - Network (3)

2006-04-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

A justified message hardly ever gets better, when it is preached instead of told subtly, and Network makes no difference. This drama of a unscrupulous bunch of network executives turning TV news into a quota hungry travesty akin to a televangelism sideshow would have been much stronger if there weren't several droning monologues of the main character about the evils of television. It is somewhat ironic that a movie that accuses audiences of blindly gobbling up sensationalism and following any and every leader, if he shouts loud enough, and the executives of ruthlessly exploiting this lack of maturity, resorts to propaganda to try and get its message across, not trusting its own audience, either. Just who, one wonders, are the writers trying to talk to here, and what do they really want to say? As it stands, the message seems to be that since audiences are dumb sheep, the producers of media need to be responsible shepherds. That message is snobbery so close to the opinions held by the films villains as to make it hard to take its scathing criticism of western society seriously. Network has its nice moments - some of Peter Finch's madman preaching is quite cute, as is the cinematography and the acting -, but overall, it disappoints.

Rockstar Games - Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (2)

2006-04-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

The only reason this excellently designed and written killer game doesn't get a top rating from me, is all the killing. I'm all in favor of frying Doom's demons, hunting evil unreal aliens or shooting down robots in the Descent series, to name just a few of the blow'em'ups I've played over the years, but the stark realism of the environment do make a difference, I think. When you can just jog down a street, whip out the gun and shoot a few people in purple tees, just because they wear purple tees (and would soon start shooting at you, anyway, since you're dressed in green), or jacking weapons from a National Guard depot is accomplished by shooting the protecting soldiers, it all feels a bit too much like real life for complete comfort. That said, the gameplay is terrific and the scenery breathtaking - and I've only seen the quarter or so of the game world that is modeled on Los Angeles so far. The only annoyance concerns saving games, which can only be done at the players home base, and only between missions. With some of the missions having tricky parts that you only get to after sometimes minutes of driving, having to repeatedly do all of one of them just to figure out the tricky bit can be a bit of a drag.

Kathleen Meyer - How to Shit in the Woods (3)

2006-04-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

A subject certainly worthy of discussion, the discussion of how to excavate properly in the great outdoors and the health and environmental hazards connected with it, may be stretched a bit thin over the length of an, albeit short, book. A chapter in a general book on life outdoors would have been more appropriate. Even so, Meyer's tone is refreshingly unconcerned with propriety - she explains about the difficulties getting it right in the introduction - and the stories she has collected can be entertaining. The biggest value for me was to learn about history and mechanism of the diseases - like Giardia - that make drinking unprocessed surface water such a hazard these days. The practical tips seemed nothing common sense wouldn't have you know already, though maybe it's a good thing to see them spelled out.

Battlestar Galactica (2)

2006-03-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

While parts of the second season of the new Galactica drag just as badly as the first - in particular the plot elements concerned with the Cylon masterplan and the impending birth of the child of doom are stretched so thin as to be practically impreceptible. Also, the density of journalists and the political and social structure of the fleet still don't make much sense other than as commentary on the US today. On the plus side, the acting, set design and the general military mood are great, and the writing, which is generally quite good, of the last few episodes of the second season in particular was excellent. Partly because the main plotline, stalled by the arrival of the Pegasus and its semifascist admiral, finally started moving, but also because the usual seriousness was spiced up with some nice humorous elements. A welcome relief from the heavy handedness which some of the political and moral issues were presented with. The explanation for how the humans were detected (the atomic blast was picked up a year later and a light year away) is a nice nod to physics (though you have to wonder where this nebula clad planet is located for there to be something of interest just a lightyear away. Ah, well). I'm looking forward to the next season, which is slated for airing starting October.

John Wyndham - The Kraken Wakes (1)

2006-03-25T23:32:00.001-08:00

How refreshing, after reading a lot of idea driven, gimmicky SF, to discover this. I found it in the bookstore run by the Friends of the Berkeley public library, among pulp paperbacks, and though I'd never heard of Wyndham, was intrigued by the cover art and the fact it had come out on Penguin. The story is a crossover between Capeks wonderful War with the Newts and Well's War of the Worlds, with an extraterrestrial menace, quite possbily flying in from Jupiter, settling in the deeps of earths oceans, and proceeding to exterminate the bothersome land mammals. The story is gripping - though the solutions's alomost perfect parallel to Wells' is a bit disappointing - but the true strength of the book lies in the two main characters, a married couple of radio documentary writers, who witness most of the events from close up, but have hardly any active part in the matters at all. This viewpoint lends the story enormous credibility, based on the one hand in the strong execution of characterization and background, but also in the familiarity of events unfolding on a large scale that one is powerless to stop or alter, yet keeps reflecting upon and discussing as though one did. Finally, the acerbic depiction of cold war diplomacy at the height of madness is the crowning piece on a very nice cake.

Robert Altman - McCabe and Mrs Miller (1)

2006-03-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

The meticulous recreation of buildings and social networks of the little digger town somewhere in the cold American Northwest is enough to make this gem worth watching, but the story of McCabe and Mrs Miller that Altman set against this backdrop is in itself touching and rewarding. A very unusual Western, if you want to call it that, with an uncompromising ending. Very interesting to watch the special features, too. Some documentary on the making of the movie, and a movie trailer, both not badly done, but horribly, horribly dated, to the point of being hilarious, while the movie itself is timeless. must be the difference between art and craft.

The Sopranos - Season 6 (2)

2006-03-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

My favorite family of criminals is back, but so far I'm none too sure about how happy I should be about it. The first episode caused mostly consfusion, for its lack of continuity - for instance how come Tony and Carmela are as harmonious again as we see them, was there any fallout from the horrible murder of Adriana that made last seasons second to last episode so intensely hard to watch - and for its lack of direction. Nothing is happening we haven't seen many times before, no plot is advanced, right up until the moment Tony gets shot by Junior, who seems to be truly demented by now, but also might be scheming again. The second episode then has us all watch Tony linger in limbo, while his spiritual and bodily fate are being decided. The metaphorical, dreamlike sequences are nice to watch, but once again the episode doesn't advance much. Except maybe for AJ's promise of a revenge killing.

Myst IV: Revelation (2)

2006-03-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

The Myst game series has an odd quality about it. Some of the puzzles are frustratingly complex, and hardly make any sense within the stories, which in addition tend to abound with psychological cliches. But of course the strength of Myst lies in the design of the worlds, called Ages, in which it is set, and Revelation is no exception to these rules. The cliched story is accompanied here by some pretty horrific acting efforts, and the difficulty of at least one of the puzzles verges on the ridiculous, with another one being bad enough for a character within the game to suggest that if you get too frustrated, you should go away and try again later. But, oh, the Ages. Tomahna is a cluster of buildings in a sheltered cove that I wouldn't hesitate to move into in an instant, Spire a marvellously desolate and forbidding hovering crystal tower, Haven a lush jungle full of strange creatures, and Serenia a cool looking mix of several stone masonry cultures. Just walking around in these environments would be a pleasure, and the occasional riddle adds to that a nice sense of involvement.

Dan Simmons - The Rise of Endymion (3)

2006-03-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

While certainly better than it's two predecessors, this final installment in the Hyperion story still subtracts from the original book. Why do sequels always fall so badly short of truly adding to a work, and why do creators still have the urge too do them? The Shrike was a mythical force, the future a mysterious place, the present hardly comprehensible when Hyperion ended. Now all that is dissolved in an action feast full of explosions, a quaint patchwork of worlds the size of small villages and populated by caricatures of foreign cultures and a badly contrived plot. While it is challenging for an action driven plot to have a practically omniscient character, his solution of "I know but I won't tell you yet" is infuriating. The fall of the Pax at the end is a complete Deus-ex-machina, and the twist ending makes no sense whatsoever. But the biggest failure of all three sequels lies in the delivery of what Hyperion wisely withheld - answers to the philosophical and ethical questions. Simmons goes on at great length about how utterly and fantastically otherworldly the Ousters are, yet their behavior, thinking, language and mores are indistinguishable from today's middle class America. I also find the revelling in violence, torture and death on an enormous scale slightly disturbing. For someone proposing a culture of empathy and universal love, Simmons shows an odd fascination with intense cruelty and suffering.

Jim Jarmusch - Broken Flowers (3)

2006-03-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Amazingly, having a wrinkled and depressed Bill Murray in a jumpsuit drive around coloring tress does not a good movie make. Who would have thought? In fairness, I was probably having my expectations too high, since I'm an admirer of both Jarmusch's (Dead Man!) and Murray's previous work. But even after correcting for that, I did not feel a connection with either Murray (who played essentially the same character, only much better, in Lost in Translation) or any of his former girlfriends, and the neighbour gone detective, as a grotesque caricature, doesn't even qualify. Watch About Schmidt instead, it's a much better movie.

Dan Simmons - Endymion (3)

2006-03-15T15:07:00.000-08:00

When I reviewed Fall of Hyperion in this space, I said that I wanted to wait a substantial time before continuing on. Unfortunately I succumbed to the temptation. While I don't really regret having read Endymion, it is yet another step down from Hyperion's brilliance of vision and design. While Simmons world continues to amaze with its complex design and rich tapestry of culture and science - which, once again, becomes thinnest in the attempts of creating a cultural history of the future by combining ficticious future classics with actual ones - his characterization, plot and dialogue are bordering on the horrid. He often falls into the trap of having to tell us justifications and motivations instead of showing them, and the whole book has the wearisome feeling of being but a prequel to the final volume. The adventures of Aenea, Endymion and Bettik on their way to Old Earth seem arbitrary and unconnected, and while the multiple death ordeal of the Pax crew charged with tracking them down is chilling, their near success in the face of incredible odds is silly, and can in the end only be explained by the near omniscience of the dei-ex-machina in the TechnoCore. I'll hold off final judgment until I've read Ride of Endymion, but so far I strongly feel Simmons should have stopped after Hyperion.

Michelangelo Antonioni - L'Avventura (3)

2006-03-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

This was praised and much discussed when it came out in the late sixties for its refreshingly novel cinematic way of storytelling - or so the Netflix cover blurb tells us. The story is that of a bunch of rich people, bored to glassy stares byu their eventless lives, vacationing among the Aeolic Islands. One of the women vanishes, and her best friend and her lover embark on a quest to solve the mystery and find her, and get close in the process. Or the equivalent of closeness in artsy cinema overcharged with undertones and cranked up to a maximum of meaning with a minimum of substance. That might seem unfair, but I find it unfair to have to watch beautiful women and great cinematography without plot or point, so I guess we're even, Mr. Antonioni.

Sergio Leone - Once Upon a Time in America (2)

2006-03-13T15:28:00.000-08:00

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the story of Noodles, the way it's woven together with prohibition history, and the final plot resolution. But this movie is just way too long. I don't really recall much from seeing the original version, but even that might have been a bit on the tedious side, but this reedit is excruciatingly slow. In addition, the way past and present are intercut doesn't really work all that way in several places. But the biggest problem is that this ultimately fairly simple tale of betrayed friendship doesn't justify taking up almost four hours of my time. I'd much rather watch Once Upon a Time in the West twice.

Andrew Horvat - Japanese Beyond Words (2)

2006-03-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

It's always hard to get a feeling for a foreign culture without being immersed in it, and it's probably even more difficult when the gap is as large as it is sure to be between so called western countries and Japan. I find the insistence of most introductions to stress the quaintness and formality of Japanese customs a bit irritating, for the blind eye it turns on equivalent behaviours in the reader's home culture. Generally, a big deal is made for instance of the different distinct levels of politeness or about set phrases for different social situations, as though neither of these existed in other cultures. While this issue crops up in this book as well, much of the specific information in it is really helpful, and it is a nice read to boot.