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I am afraid the only movie I watched over break was You and Me and Everyone you Know.  I didn’t like it much.  I mean, it was lovely- but I cannot stand movies where children are threatened.  In real life, horrible things happen to children all the time.  I guess I like to forget about that.  When a decent movie puts a kid in danger, I get tense and sweaty and worried and it doesn’t matter what happens to the kid anymore- I am mad at the movie.

 But I didn’t mind Beth dying.  Perhaps because my mental-Beth is so different from any of the actresses playing her, I never felt that Beth was truly threatened.  Or maybe, I don’t connect with poor little Beth like I should.   Am I just callous? 

What do you think?  Kids being hurt in movies- does it make you mad?  Glad that it raises awareness?  Do you really like it because you can’t stand the little buggers?  I don’t know.

My theory of matching as the basic art of cinema (I don’t know a damn thing about the art of cinema):

 So, to make a movie you need lots of people.  Hence, we watch credits for a really long time.  But to make cinema, you need lots of artists.  I’m not into film enough to know the great costume designers or computer animators etc, and only have a superficial understanding of great actors, directors, producers.  But it seems to me, that a great movie will happen when either a bunch of artists work together or an artist coaxes the best out of a bunch of technicians.  We’ll concentrate on the bunch of artists.  We’ll need a writer/screenwriter who doesn’t stink.  Maybe a few.  The words usually come first, I bet.  You need someone to shoot the movie in a meaningful way, an interesting way.  If you don’t have decent actors, it will be very hard to make a good movie, so we’ll say some good actors too.  For some music we’ll recruit a whole sub-bunch of artists, someone to write the score and people talented enough to do it justice with thier instruments.  I think it’s easy to forget that it takes talent not only to write a score, but to play it, too.  Then there’s all the details I don’t know about, lighting, makeup, costume, etc.  But you can have all these things and still flop, if they don’t cohere.

 The coherence comes through ‘matching’ as I understand it.  The power of the cinema is the ability to convey the same emotion through several coextant forms of art, making a greater art.  The actor, the camera, the dialog, the music- when they all come together, cinema happens.  Like a good band, they will each have their solos, while the other parts step back for a moment and provide the rhythm section.  But the overall effect is bigger than the parts. 

 Maybe that’s obvious, reading over it.  But the matching, that’s what I wanted to point out.  There are so many forms of art happening, and they are each carrying the same narrative, the same film.

Ok so I’ve been thinking about beginnings in movies.  Not too much, but I have.  Here’s what I’ve thought about.

The opening music changes everything.  A good score can even get people into the credits.  An example might be The Good the Bad and the Ugly” (thanks Craig).  In that film, we see monocolor stills from the movie, and cheesy animations of people getting blown up by cannons.  But the score is so intense, I thought it was awesome.  Star Wars is the same way.  Imagine the explication in A New Hope scrolling off into space to Beth playing harpsichord.  The beginning to Star Wars is especially interesting.  The old movies had that epic in media res opening, where the story starts in the middle and ends before the end.  I suppose Return of the Jedi gives us plenty of closure, even down to glowing Yoda.  But it was cool while it lasted.

 There’s a big difference between a movie that starts with a long credit reel and one that saves all the credits for the end.  Too much or too little opening credit can be disturbing. Usually, I like to settle in to my surroundings during a brief but informative opening credit sequence.  If I have to wait forever to see the movie, I’ll admit getting a little bit grumpy.  But when it starts right up, like they do sometimes with those pre-credit bits, I am almost always caught off guard. 

 Gonna go finish getting ready to present today, see you all later

I was wondering about Little Women and its impact on the women who read it.  Based on Dr. Campbell’s reading of some famous female comments on the book, it would seem that the only daughter anyone bothers identifying with is Jo.  I think that might not be true.  Perhaps we only hear from the Jo-people because of course we’d never hear from the Beth-people and the Meg-people are too busy.  It would be difficult to prove, but perhaps Little Women is an important feminist text because it liberates multiple lifestyles, rather than just pushing Jo-feminism on everyone.  Jo’s noise drowns out the silent ones, the Beths and Megs and Amys.  Little Women would then be a moderate feminist text, one that declares each sister viable.  I mean, we all know people who are like Jo and are like Amy and Meg, and I happen to know a Bethlike person.  Not to say that all women fall into one of those categories, but many women have to choose one or some combination of the sisters’ decisions in life.  Therefore, the sort of people who love Jo are going to be writing about Little Women while the ones who love Beth might be just quietly being good and rereading the novel after charity work. 

My roommate listens to gansta rap.  It’s all about black people shooting each other and selling drugs and, when it is happy, driving cars and sleeping with hos.  It doesn’t appeal to me, but he is from the inner city and I understand that it appeals to him.  Little Women, to me, is like gansta rap.  The lyrics in some songs are great, my favorite: “I wear a gun like a girtle/ My bullet proof car got me feelin’ like a turtle”-Lil’ Wayne in “I’m a G.”  It’s clever and funny.  Little Women is also clever and funny, but serious too.  It’s a wonderful story about wonderful people doing wonderful things- but even Jo seems too good to be true.  It seems like a morality play, to teach women how to be good.  I suppose where it might be revolutionary, would be that part of this good is strength.  The most interesting parts are when Jo rejects Laurie or remembers him with mixed emotions.  But let’s face it, Laurie’s a bit of a loser. 

 I think the film caught the “feel” of the novel.  It’s a story where the people never dissapoint me, which is kinda boring.  I’ll edit this later, or comment on it, as I’m sure class will start to change my mind.

Alright, so I gotta put down my steamin’ blues harp and write a little FTC before bed.  I’m no great blogger, but Stephanie has called me out on it so now I gotta get back into things.

 SO the spear danes in days gone by… no that’s not right.  SO the most interesting thing from the last class (better) for me was the thought that the cuts in a film are the film’s meter.  I’ll say right up front that I’m a scansion geek, I will smile if you speak in iambs for more than a few feet.  I’ll have to investigate it closer, but I think it might be right, the beats of a movie are the cuts.  Being a poor movie-watcher, I tend to get caught up in movies to where I miss most meta-clues that I assume are scattered around when they are in film specific wrapping.  But I’ll try to pay some more attention to cuts and then I will get back to you about what I think of movie-meters.   Tonight I watched Dead Ringers by Cronenberg and though it mostly made me want to hide my eyes, I did notice the film-iamb coming into play.  It seems a staple of dialog, to break up a speaker’s words by looking at the other guy (or in the case of Dead Ringers, the same guy).  One guy talks-look at the other (maybe he says a little).  First guy talks some more- cut to other guy (maybe says a little).  After a while, they might switch. 

 Of course, meter and cuts are just analogous, not exact, but the analogy allows me an entrypoint into understanding the art of cuts.  So bear with me.

Blogging is tricky- it didn’t seem like it would be so hard to keep current, but I always fall behind and never read as many as I should.   I wonder if anyone else is having trouble adjusting to the new century?  Should figure out that RSS thingamabob, I guess. 

 Should go to bed.  But maybe a little more blues, first. 

I thought the old man in Yojimbo was pretty interesting.  As with most of the movie, he fills an archetype of the old and good man who cannot perfectly understand the hero.  I think that he is the only human in the film.  The rest of the characters are divorced from their humanity, whether because they are evil and we can’t accept them because they are evil, or in Sanjuro’s case, because he is a force of nature.  The old man is the only decent human being in the movie.  Even the family Sanjuro frees makes him sick, as the husband lost his wife through gambling.  And when they mess with the decent old man, that’s when Sanjuro gets really pissed off.  I think Sanjuro goes to save the old man immediately because the old man is the only person Sanjuro encounters that doesn’t make him sick.  The town is his toy until the innocent and the good are threatened: then Sanjuro gets deadly.  The old man reveals Sanjuro’s morality.  I’d like to be a little weird and go on to say that the old man is most directly tied with the audience.  He often says exactly what we are thinking, things like “you fool!  you shouldn’t do that!”  Of course, we are thinking something more like, “you fool!  you shouldn’t do that!  But I’m going to really like watching you do that!”  Our faith in Sanjuro and the action movie makes us less human than the old man, wanting to see Sanjuro go lay down some slayin’ on the evil men of the town.  Because really, the old man is the only one who seems to want the town to heal.  We the audience are like Sanjuro: only interested in watching the surgery without sticking around to watch the slow recovery. 

Yojimbo was such a good movie.  Toshiro Mifune is probably my favorite actor.  It seems to me, in my unschooled opinion, that some of the best face actors come from Japan.  They are great at expressing themselves through looks and through voice.  Subtitiles are almost a formality during certain scenes.  And Kurosawa, he takes some interesting shots.  I can’t quite figure out how to put my pictures in here, because I’m a Luddite and not quite willing to figure it out. I’ve uploaded some of Ben’s pictures, but can’t seem to get them up here.  I’ll ask him on Wednesday. 

 More about Yojimbo.  As Mary-Carolyn says, it is hardboiled without really being a detective novel.  Compared to The Glass Key,  there is no Janet, no Henrys at all.  Sanjuro kills everyone who dies- and kills almost everyone. 

I’ve seen A Fistfull of Dollars  and really, Leone jacks it all from Kurosawa.  Only, Eastwood’s Man With No Name uses fire to break out of captivity, like Ned Beaumont.  So maybe Hammett influences them both beyond the obvious Kurosawa influence in Leone’s film. 

 A word on the music in Yojimbo.  Wasn’t it awesome?  Trumpets and thumpy drums.  Minimalist, yet effective.  Mr. Tarentino really steals everything he’s got, even the trumpets and drums.  Not to mention the samurai swords.  If you made Sanjuro a tall blonde woman, and made Yojimbo into an exploitation film, you’d get something like Kill Bill but far less violent. And better shot, too.  Sorry, Robyn, I’ll take my authentic samurai any day. 

Tired, better go get some other work done.  Goonight goonight.

Ok, this movie is done but i’m still not quite finished.  I’m not sure about bloggin’ either, this is my first one and i can’t decide what’s the proper captialization policy. is it more a paper, or more an e-mail?  Sometimes, I write like the blog is formal.  Other times, i write like i write to my friends.  haven’t decided.  bear with me for now, please. 

 Alright, to the film.  The best part had to be the part at the end with Jeff and Ed in Jeff’s room.  All of a sudden, there was acting!  Well, for Jeff at least.  He played the part so ridiculously well, his character suddenly came to life like some frankenkingkong.  Bendix’ face moved from and angry drunken lout to a mask from a Greek tragedy and back, glorious.  What a guy, Jeff.  Only in Jeff did we get to see some of Hammett’s Freudian, psychological themes coming out.  Sorry, sorry.  He is so obsessed with Ed, like someone else was saying, (I don’t know how to link yet, it was on the blog “The Woman Who Could Handle Them All”), Ed dominates everyone.   Jeff might just want as good a friend as Paul, might be jealous… or it might be something more primal.  His homoerotic and sadistic attraction to Ed makes him the only tormented character in the story.  Ed just uses him.  It’s hard when the story isn’t in the main characters.  I’d like to see Jeff the Goon or something.  That said, I find that the homoerotic and sadistic are unfairly paired in many characters in literature and film.  Just those old morals still hanging around, but it is exhausting.  My friend is about to show up here in the ol’ Bushnell, so I’ll wrap this for now, and maybe add some technical observations later.  Another real question remains: Why is eveyone obsessed with Alan Ladd’s Ed?  He’s boring.  It would take a heck of an actor to do the part justice, someone with real charisma.  It doesn’t make sense that everyone is crazy about such a stonefaced, bland character.

Ned is Ed but Ed isn’t quite Ned in this movie.  I miss my old Ned.  This one is a little too cool without being so brutal.  His gambling isn’t as important, and he definately had a different thought process when he found that razor in the bathroom.  In the book, Ned’s first idea is to kill himself, cutting his throat with the rusted blade.  In the film, Ed finds the razor and, suddenly, thinks to go get his lighter out of his coat pocket.  Ed is just a little bit too clever.

 Scenes are out of order.  It is a much more straightforward mystery.  Paul is crazier, more unbalanced. 

 One part I did like was the toothbrushing scene.  Brian Donlevy plays Paul Madvig very well, if  a little differently.  I don’t know, I feel like the movie is more noir than the book.  Which is why they call it film noir, I guess.  It is very caught up in its noiress, its noirocity.  The book was bigger than the overcoats and cigarettes. 

Jeff is pretty funny, eh?  And Nick is Shad.  Looking forwards to finishing and then I’ll say more.