| |
 |
Friday, July 04, 2003 |
Masked and Anonymous
So I saw this thing with Blair the other night, and as it was with T3, was surprised that it beat my expectations. In each case, my expectations were pretty low. This movie worked much better than I thought it would; John Goodman and Jessica Lange, not surprisingly, acquit themselves well, with parts large enough to let them turn them into real characters. Most of the other actors, from Cheech Marin to Christian Slater to Ed Harris, struggle to make their dialog sound like something a real character might actually say. For most of the lines in this movie sound as if they come from Dylan songs. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- Dylan songs are so extraordinary, so unique -- but this is a movie, and a movie is a different beast than a song. So many of the lines don't resonate the way they do in a song, or even the way certain lines do in movies. Instead, they just sound aphoristic or pretentious.
Another disappointment was the Dylan performance. I don't mean his "acting" but his performances doing what he does best: singing. He seems very wooden when filmed singing and playing, without the smiles, or animation, or give and take with the musicians that we see often in concert, and that must be there when playing casually. Instead, he's stone-faced. But his singing is, typically, just fantastic, and when talking with some others on BART after the movie, it seems like I might be in the minority with this opinion: others loved the music.
Even with the problems of the movie, it was really enjoyable. It is a layered thing, and though the dialog doesn't really arise out of the drama or push it along, it was loads of fun for me to watch. It's well photographed, the actors do bring a lot to the movie (they are great actors), the "story" does have some energy it to it. I will look forward to seeing it again, and have to recommend it.
9:48:32 AM Permalink
|
|
The Ultimate Hillbilly Autodidactt
A great piece by Steve Earle on Woody Guthrie:
Woody arrived at his social conscience organically, over a period of years. Socialism made a lot of sense in the Great Depression. Capitalism had, after all, essentially collapsed and wasn't showing any significant signs of reviving in Pampa, Texas, where Woody spent his late adolescence. The ultimate hillbilly autodidact, he divided his time between teaching himself to play several musical instruments only tolerably well and frequent marathon sessions in the public library, where he clandestinely educated himself. He followed his own haphazard curriculum, one book leading him to another in an endless scavenger hunt for answers that invariably posed even deeper questions. An acute interest in psychology segued into medieval mysticism and from there he stumbled into Eastern philosophy and spiritualism. He went through a poetry period, a Shakespeare period, even a law book period. When, a few years later, he began to travel around the Southwest by thumb and freight train, his mind was wide open when he encountered crusty old radicals who handed out copies of The Little Red Song Book and preached the Gospel of Union. It was only natural that when he began to make up his own songs, he drew on the despair and pain he had witnessed all his life and the lofty ideas that ricocheted around in his head for inspiration. He became the living embodiment of everything a people's revolution is supposed to be about: that working people have dignity, intelligence and value above and beyond the market's demand for their labor.
... Does all this mean that the world would be a different place if Woody had dodged the genetic bullet and lived? You bet your progressive ass! Just imagine what we missed! Woody publishing his second and third books! Woody on the picket lines with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers singin' "Deportee"! I could go on forever. I have imagined hundreds of similar scenarios, but then at some point it always dawns on me how selfish I am.
Let him go. He did his bit. Besides, as much as we need him right now, I wouldn't wish this post-9/11 world on Woody. He hated Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" more than any other song in the world. He believed that it was jingoistic and exclusive, so he wrote a song of his own. It goes:
This land is your land
This land is my land
From California
To the New York island
From the redwood forest
To the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
9:36:56 AM Permalink
|
|
T3:Rise of the Machines
I saw the new Terminator movie the other night. All in all, I liked it better than I thought I would. Mostly for the first big, long, chase scene in which so much stuff gets destroyed so spectacularly. I also liked the new female Terminator who seeme to echo the bad one in T2 very well, and also I enjoyed Clare Danes though she didn't have a lot to do. Arnold was OK, but I got very tired of the echos of lines from the old movies. And the writers seemed to be searching too hard for new versions of "I'll be back," such as 'you're terminated." Finally, the CGI machines were unrealistic and very out of place. Still, it was rip-roaring, and if it wasn't quite as human, or as clever in use of the time-travel tropes as the other movies, I'll forgive that.
9:17:41 AM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
