I've had several people ask about the studio that I've just moved in to, so here's a look (not that there's a whole lot to see)...
Into the kitchen.
Through the hall into the bathroom.
It's essentially a glorified dorm room, but the photos don't really do it justice. Plus it's just three or four blocks from my favorite coffee shop in San Diego! I couldn't be more pleased.
This year I approach that annual ritual of the previous year recap with particular trepidation—not only do I lack the time but also any inclination to follow up last year's extended top ten countdown. No, for some reason lists and involved write-ups seem particularly distasteful as I approach my take on the state of cinema in 2006, even though from the very start I thought it was a particularly strong one (in fact, one of the very first ones I saw, back in March, was never toppled from its position as my favorite film of the year). So instead I present a quick look at highlights of my 2006 movie watching experience.
...
As the nation and world in general finds itself increasingly splintered, from two minority groups—the black and gay communities respectively—emerged two films that made a very blatant attempt to cross over dividing lines and find some underlying points of basic human connection. In Dave Chappelle's Block Party the attempt was made through the communal experience of concert-going and the universalizing quality of music in general; more controversially, in Shortbus sex (and unconventional sexual expression at that) was the vehicle of choice for discovering and celebrating human connectivity. Even if both films ultimately got tripped up by their own good intentions, the mere attempt proved to be exhilarating, giddy, unexpectedly poignant, and finally, deeply uplifting.
"A Time for Love," the lovely first third of Hou Hsio-Hsein's unfortunately uneven Three Times, was a look at the first love and oncoming maturity filtered through the hazy patina of melancholy nostalgia; Linda Linda Linda is a talented young director's unexpectedly insightful ruminations on the bittersweet experience of having to grow up and move on, whether one wants to or not (and it matters not to me that it got a mention on last year's list).
But perhaps more effective at examining adolesence was two films that kept all the drama and emotional turbulence of the young adult experience but stripped them from their typical trappings entirely, opting to place them instead within highly-artificial narrative constructs. In Brick the fusing of the typical teen films and film noir conventions at first seemed little more than a clever narrative ploy, but it quickly becomes obvious how the loneliness, frustration, and social instability of adolescence eerily mirror the world of back-alley detectives and manipulative femme-fatales; less-well received but just as effective was the misunderstood Marie Antoinette, its almost lurid ornateness nailing the the self-consciousness and self-infatuation of the teenage mind.
Both The Fountain and Le temps qui reste (Time to Leave) offered up very moving articulations of having come to grips with death, the indescribable pain of absence and loss and perhaps most importantly, the ability to find some sense of peace beyond it.
There were more than a handful of notable performances to be savored in 2006 (though I'm not of the opinion Helen Mirren's Oscar-approved turn as Queen Elizabeth is one of them), but as time passes it becomes increasingly clear to me what the best acting job of the year really was: Ted Haggard's now infamous appearance in the documentary Jesus Camp. Raving against sexual sin, homosexuality and whipping his large, fawning congregation into a general frenzy, this…act (which blurs indecipherably the line separating performance and non-performance) inspired revulsion on my part until just several weeks he was revealed to be—surprise, surprise!—a practicing homosexual. The irony is so delicious simply because the "true story" proved to be so utterly pathetic.
But returning to the realm of traditional performances, the most memorable were also among the most unexpected: in Casino Royale Daniel Craig managed to seamlessly recontextualize and broaden one of his intense, inward-obsessed indie performances into the role of James Bond, one of the most recognized and extroverted cinematic characters of all time; in the otherwise forgettable Black Dahlia, Mia Kirshner managed to infuse a rather beside-the-point character with such a wild-eyed ferocity that her brief moments on screen have stuck with me long after memories of many other impressive performances have faded.
My apologies to Friends with Money, which I loathed while watching, but with the passing of months has taken on a nuance and poignancy in my mind that I admit now I initially failed to give it credit for.
And in a category all its own is L'Intrus which leaves me feeling utterly bewildered and generally inarticulate. Watching this film, it feels like Claire Denis has ushered us into another, unexplored playing field of cinema altogether. Where are we going next?
The films I haven't seen that I feel had the biggest chance of making this list: The Science of Sleep, The History Boys, Duck Season, Half Nelson, Changing Times and Gabrielle. I look forward to catching up with them in the future.
(And because I know I'll be asked, here it is:)
01) Brick (Johnson) 02) Linda Linda Linda (Yamashita) 03) Casino Royale (Campbell) 04) Dave Chappelle's Block Party (Gondry) 05) Marie Antoinette (Coppola) 06) Shortbus (Mitchell) 07) The Fountain (Aronofsky) 08) "A Time for Love" from Three Times (Hou) 09) Le temps qui reste (Time to Leave) (Ozon) 10) Volver (Almodóvar)
Yes indeed, the woman who you all will be voting for to be the next President of the United States! She was a top-secret VIP who arrived at the hotel this last weekend at nearly two in the morning the day before the California Democratic Convention, and a whole wing of the hotel was filled with secret service men, security cameras and the like. I played bellboy and loaded luggage into the caravan of minivans, and got to meet Hillary herself before she was whisked away to go make her speech.
Oh, and pay no attention to the hideous uniform. Though I have to admit, it has proven quite popular with the over-60 set who stay at the hotel. Which says everything. :p
Sometimes hotel life isn't so very dull after all.
Thumbing through a copy of URB magazine, a quote by Charlotte Gainsbourg caught my attention, as it's an incredibly articulate expression of something in myself I've known for a long time:
"What I notice is that I have no imagination. For the piano I can't improvise, and for acting I need a director and text. I have no ability to create from my own imagination, so all I do is follow other people's ideas."
And the thing is, I'm finally beginning to be okay with that.
Currently
reading
:
Men in the Off Hours
By
Anne Carson
Release date: 13 February, 2001
God, I love Amy Winehouse (and yes Rebecca, you can take all the credit). I just came across the "Back to Black" video on YouTube:
But read this little gem in the Pitchfork review of her album:
"Oh, she'll talk, but there's no guarantee what she'll say. (Our favorite is her heckling of Bono at last year's Q Awards: "Shut up, I don't give a fuck!")"
That made my night. 'Bout time someone told Bono what we're all thinking.
Currently
reading
:
A Wrinkle in Time
By
Madeleine L'Engle
Release date: 15 March, 1973
I did these occasionally a few years ago on another journal I keep, and recently I've been playing around with the idea of reviving it for this blog. Basically, it's a short list of things--songs, books, films, poems, experiences--that I'm most passionate about at this moment in time. This is basically how it works...
This week:
-Gal Costa's Baby (the current song on my page)
-Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good (that it's the iTunes free single of the week is a bizarre coincidence...)
-Nina Simone's Sinnerman (music's equivalent to Dante's Inferno)
It's been an interesting year, folks--a sprawling, tangled collection of weeks and days and months and moments that have branched into unexpected directions. Did I really expect that graduating would actually cause me to read less, rather than unleashing an unquenchable thirst for literature of my own selection? That I'd actually enjoy holding a full-time job where my talents aren't particularly necessary to succeed? That I'd come to the realization that shared interests and common experiences and countless treasured memories still aren't enough to ensure lasting friendship?
No, of course not. Which is why 2006 was as an important year as it was.
Last year during this time I pondered over nine things that had particularly imprinted the preceding year, that had defined and encapsulated all the things that had to be left otherwise unsaid. For some reason, I can't do that with 2006—whatever the reason, the things that defined my 22nd year of life are more vague and shapeless, less attached to objects and things. Of course, there were those "things"—the buoyant discoveries of music and Yé-yé and Owen Pallett in particular, Cunningham's The Hours Heim's Mysterious Skin and Hartley's The Go-Between, Egon Schielle's twisted take on humanity, the particular, peculiar sensations of fine photography, the thrill of rediscovering L'Eclisse, of quivering at the intensity of seeing Beautiful Thing so beautifully staged… but what made 2006 so relevant had much more to do with the intangibles, with isolation and conversation, unexpected formation of friendships and newfound vulnerability, with letting go and coming clean. That fiery sword that is truth is a tricky fucker, as painful as it is purifying, and I really experienced its reverberating impact for the first time.
That said, a recap of 2006 could not go without its defining moment, which was actually a two-week string of seconds and sensations that composed my two-week return to London. The return to the location that has become the fantasy world of my memory unsurprisingly inspired what my dear Ms. Woolf called a "moment of being." I remember it vividly—walking with my dearest and deepest friend to the Tufnell Park Tube Station and talking about initial impressions, and that on one of our first mornings realizing with a shock how neatly things had come full circle, how I had effortlessly managed to let my conflicted feelings go, and the realization one chapter of my life, which began with my study abroad experience two years ago would not only be completed and closed, but that the next one, blank and beckoning, was set to begin.
And so with pen in hand I set to work on that set of pages that will comprise of 2007. It's set to be the most perilous yet, but at the same time it's also showing early signs of being the most satisfying. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it yet, but that's besides the point—it's already here.
