Good Morning...

On finding that a.) I had accidentally bought frozen pancakes instead of frozen waffles, and b.) they seal frozen pancakes in packages of 3 instead of any sensible number for something that is so obviously toaster bound, I looked to take it a step further.
Microwaving the three on a plate to rid them of their initial chill, I then removed them and placed them on an already hot frying pan to crisp them in to wondefullity. Noting that there was still room on my frying pan, and having once upon a time tried the exception that is the McDonald's McGriddle breakfast sandwich, I threw some deli sliced ham on the there as well for a little protein. Still didn't seem like enough. I continued and have thus far ended here:

That's a bottom pancake with cream cheese spread on it (actually neufchatel, but it's basically the same), another pancake with butter heaped upon it, two slices of deli sliced, frying pan warmed ham, the third and final pancake layered with now-melted butter and all topped with too much syrup.
Good morning, indeed.

Update: 5 hours after eating this, I feel sluggish, hungry, light headed, my fingers are shaky and I hope I can make it up stairs to eat my lunch.

Movie Tuesday: My Big Fat Jewish Weekend

I was keeping it kosher to the extreme, and mostly by accident:

Rape of Europa (October 2009) - This is another documentary about stolen art. This art was systematically taken by a political power taking over europe in the 1930s and 1940s. The Nazis were really terrible. Surprise! This documentary shows the history of the Hitler led infatuation with fine art, to acquire what pleased him and destroy what was inferior. Starting in Vienna and moving then to Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Russia and all over, this movie shows us the path of theft and destruction that the Nazis took until the downfall. Of note were the sections on the Louvre and the Hermitage, where people from all over the areas came to each museum to help empty it out before the Nazis arrived and to stand guard when they attacked. Such sacrificial dedication shown and not just for the sake of pretty pictures. The Nazis weren't only seeking to end the cultures of those they deemed inferior, they wanted to undo their existence and rewrite history so those people never had existed and this documentary, through interviews and narration and vintage footage, shows this extra step in a harsh and real light. One of the most indiscriminate offenders shown in this was Hermann Goering, he was just a funny looking guy, hard to put it any other way, but how they painted his personality, as this uneducated dandy who sought only the appearance of sophistication without the other trappings, really fit with how he looked. He was like a clown in every picture shown. Also shown was some rarely seen video of groups of Nazis following Hitler around art museums which is a weird thought, but it happened, and was a signifier of the longer-lasting damage done to a people and culture. The happiest part is when the German collector, who spends his time tracking down the bells that adorn the torahs at synagogues, travels to America to reunite the disparate scroll with its intended decor.

A Serious Man (October 2009) - The Coens know how to get it done. They really do. In the Jewish suburbs of Minnesota, Larry Gopnick's world is crashing down around him. His wife is leaving him, he's up for tenure and someone is sending letters to his superiors about him, he is under threat of lawsuit from a student for an unjust grade, his brother is living in with him, his neighbor is encroaching on his property, it's just about the bleakest movie one can imagine, bleak enough that it took two to imagine it. All these terrible things are happening, and no one can account for their meaning or what they may all add up to, the beginning is an all-yiddish tragedy of farm life, then after three rabbis who prefer non-sequitor to actual help, Larry is perhaps best served by smoking pot with the sexy neighboress. All one can do is react to the world given here, and it's a wonder to think about, and though bleak and dark and sad, still holds on to being funny in the face of that, though most of the humor arises from the absurdity of the situation becoming worse and then even worse. It ends in an unbelievably paced crescendo of tragedy stepped up from everything else presented.

On the way home, I picked up Max Richter's album The Blue Notebooks, which is a collection that borrows from Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks. Then, on Sunday we studied the book of Nehemiah in class.

Movie Tuesday: The Big 80s

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (August 2009) - The cultiest of cult classics. Peter Weller plays the title man about town who succeeds effortlessly in any of his endeavors. He is a neurosurgeon, test pilot, musician, bujitsu master, marksman, smooth talker who is constantly surrounded by the (male) leads in their own techincal fields. On a routine test of some inter-dimensional jet car, the same technology that did his parents in, Buckaroo is transported into a mountain, throught the 8th dimension and back out. What he's seen, no man can forget. His eyes are opened to the dangers of aliens among us, best played by Christopher Lloyd, with the help of an electrically charged phone call from a rebel sect of the aliens. There is such a mythos built around the character in this world, that when a boy overhears a call for help on the radio, he runs to tell his dad that, "Buckaroo Bazai is in trouble," His father's reply is to gas up the helicopter, no explanation for why he should care, the world just loves Buckaroo Bonzai. One element I liked was the disavowal that this is the first or last adventure to happen to Buckaroo and the Hong Kong Cavaliers, other characters and stories are alluded to throughout. Also, Orson Welles is blamed for the aliens infiltrating our society, maybe more in this world or science fiction should be blamed on Orson Welles ("The guy from those wine commercials?"). I didn't expect Goldblum, especially in big furry chaps, and Lithgow was a pleasant surprise, even if his alien/russian self couldn't decide on an accent.

Repo Man (July 2009) - "Repo Man's always intense!" The Aquabats sample this line for their song CD Repo Man, and that is where my inquiry started. Repo Man is the story of Otto, a punk New-waver who won't take it from anybody, and gives it out plenty. Young Emilio Esteves plays the punk, that you wouldn't want to be around for too long, especially if you're his boss. He meets Harry Dean Stanton when he is recruited into the Repo gang after losing another job. Stanton brings on a faux sincerity and shares his wisdom about the game in his inpenetrable quotes like the one above. What starts as a good set-up for a crime movie told from the legal vigilante side turns into a science fiction punk rock story. The supernatural element is centered on the Neutron Bomb, a suitecase sized bomb that destroys all living matter in its blast radius but will leave buildings standing. Each of the Repo-men have interesting characteristics to enact, and throughout the story we follow the driver of the high-price-on-its-hood Chevy Malibu, whose every line delivery is ripe for the picking. The other source I've heard Repo Man sampled is from hip hop artist Busdriver, he took a line from the conspiracy theorist who rides the bus, 'because the more you drive the stupider you get.' Stanton is good, and I'd like to see more of him. The extra features on the DVD are led by the director, recently, as he talks to the cast of the film today, he also speaks with Samuel Cohen the inventor of the actual Neutron Bomb and watches deleted scenes with him. The 'creepy Malibu driver' Fox Harris appears in character as J Frank Parnell to rehash some lines of his long dead self. This movie came out the same year I was born and has an edge to it that I wouldn't expect in a punk rock scifi adventure made today, it would probably try to skew more of a PG-13 demographic for the $$.
Well, well, I just heard that Alex Cox is premiering a sequel called Repo Chick at the Venice Film Festival.

The Monster Squad (October 2009) - Back when kids got to swear and get into real trouble. Sean and Patrick are two troublemaking kids whose extracirricular 'monster club' is getting in the way of their school time. But when Dracula makes an appearance in their hometown, calling all his monster friends, they get called to take action with their intimate expertise on the chilling subject of the disposal of monsters. Starring all of the classic Universal monsters, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Wolfman and Frankenstein, this is an 80s adventure where cool kids really do smoke cigarettes and the 'fat kid' (not a minor character) is named Fat Kid. Of course, there is a rap over the credits, called 'Monster Squad', performed by 'Monster Squad'. It's one part Goonies, another part Ghostbusters but mostly just senseless fun.

Somewhere 'round the 32nd hour of Tuesday

Andrew O'Hehir's article is here.

Mumblecore the Genre. Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com made an announcement in his review for Andrew Bujalski's latest film, Beeswax. "Mumblecore is Dead." Being that I've spent so much of my Netflix queue with the makers of these films, I feel compelled to respond. It's an interesting proposition, though I can't believe it's entirely accurate. His stance is that the members of the group, this 'collective' of filmmakers who coined the style and (ab)used the term aren't making that type of film anymore, and that may be so. But this low budget, low scripted, intelligent and intimate type of film never felt like an end.

Would Bujalski film such a small idea movie such as Funny Ha-Ha, (the story of a girl getting a temp job, and trying to remain friends with her best friend who ran off and got married without telling her) if he had the funding and the time to make a much bigger film? While integrity says 'Yes! of course, he's the same artist, why should he change his vision!?' Pragmatism says, 'He's playing for an audience now, and with wider reception comes bending to convention.' That is not to say he's made a film to please investors, as I'm sure the ending is sudden in unresolved. But to say that he can make movies of his own vision within the more traditional media and diction of bigger films. Mutual Appreciation is a wandering narrative about complexities in relationships, and it could be said that its climax comes fairly early on in the film, with the concert. He has spent his time and his money up to now making great films with what he has and about what he knows. And now he's bringing his sensibilities to a larger audience with more traditional means.

I like Bujalski, I really do, but I think Joe Swanberg might be the dark-horse-golden-child-chosen-one of this class of filmmakers. He takes risks and builds on motifs like they are refrains. He tells formulated stories with beginnings, middles and endings that are beyond satisfying. All this while at the same time maintaining a cast of his friends dealing with relationship problems but told through different lenses.

The Duplass brothers have, to this point, been more in the realm of the typical genre films. They made The Puffy Chair, that was a road movie. They made Baghead, that was a horror film. Both of these with the producers own weird twist on the formula to make it their own. Recently Mark Duplass starred in Humpday, a movie that was openly compared to an Apatow film in reviews. But still they are considered a part of the 'Bedhead cinema' group. They give us emotionally bare characters often in intense and sometimes unlikely situations, thus even adding their own twist to what has been called the 'genre' of Mumblecore.

That last sentence is the bulk of the picture I've been painting here, I don't think Mumblecore can be called a genre. It tells intimate stories of different events and focuses chiefly on the people that make up the stories, not the plot. Dance Party, USA focused on a guy coming to grips with some terrible things he had done to a person, Quiet City was a getting to know you film in the vein of Before Sunrise. There aren't single types of stories that are told by the Mumblers, but they are told in a certain way. I can't listen to this compression of something so much more complex into something so simplistic. It's an ugly world in Hollywood, and the dream is that anyone can be included in what it does, that it presents stories through pictures and sound to make us feel and experience certain things. What Bujalski, the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg have given us a glimpse of is possibility. The idea that by bending the conventional rules and upsetting expectations on a small, often technical scale, each of us has a chance to be heard.

O'Hehir, I doubt that Mumblecore can ever be pronounced dead. (Unfortunately, the public's perception of a label is out of anyone's control.) But its headlining and originating directors and stars are being given access to more traditional forms of filmmaking because they took the time to hone and concentrate their styles and niches with these smaller films. It could well be that they have moved on from their 'Slackavetes' class of films, but for those of us who are fans, we will follow the people we like and keep an eye on the incoming freshmen.

Keep on Trucking!

My friend Naomi, ( here ) had some pictures taken with her husband, Jamey,



and accidentally made up a new dance craze. Here's how it goes, make yourself about six inches shorter than usual, arms akimbo (almost punching stance, or 'like you just don't care'), as far as I can tell there are two steps: Knees in, and knees straight. Here's the most important part, do your best, try your hardest to look only mildly excited about what you're doing. It IS great, let me tell you, but the best part of this dance is not to let anyone know how spectacular it is.



You can do it anywhere! Harlem!



Cambodia!

Hop on the train! Make it happen! Other Catchphrases!