windowlesskino

[windowlesskino]

Chapter Four, Top Ten

There was that poll from the New York Times for the Top Ten Movies of the quarter century, which I responded in the most neurotypical way possible by making a 64 movie double elimination bracket, and my top ten movies are:

In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar Wai (2000)

2. Yi-Yi: A One and a Two - Edward Yang (2000)

3. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch (2001)

4. Paprika - Satoshi Kon (2006)

5. The Life Aquatic - Wes Anderson (2004)

6. Pan's Labyrinth - Guillermo del Toro (2006)

7. Punch Drunk Love - PT Anderson (2002)

8. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 - Quentin Tarantino (2004)

9. Man Without a Past - Aki Kaurismaki (2002)

10. Mad Max Fury Road - George Miller (2015)

I include the dates of when the films were made because I thought it was interesting that none were from 2016 to 2025, and that 70% were produced before 2005. I think there are two things in play here: one -- the Aughts were just an incredibly rich time of movie making that puts the last two decades to shame. There's the beginning of the franchise movement but that's just one genre right up against a decade stuffed with every genre ever invented. Likewise, every director on this list was hitting their prime in this decade. Even though six from this list are both alive and active (Wong Kar Wai is the only living retired director on this list) with terrific stuff within the last ten years, their movies vaguely feel like royal processions, and not movies that were made with their elbows out, competing against a crowded multiplex. The second reason is simply that 2003 through 2008 was a time when me and and my brothers were smashing the history of movies like it was a piggybank. Where behind each door was a new Metropolis, with a century of treasure hidden throughout. Even the movies that are from the time but saw a half a decade later were still important in that process of looking deeper. While I'm still interested in discovering movies that are new to me, it feels less like a giddy treasure hunt in a neon city and more of a pilgrimage to a distant monastery.

[windowlesskino]

Wes Anderson

Chapter 3

I think Wes Anderson is the most misunderstood artist working now, closely rivaled by Miyazaki. Both are known for their aesthetic cliches but with the depths of their themes treated with ignorance.

every single one of his movies revolve around lack, loss and death, and the degrees we go to avoid confronting these things, with the last three moving from loss felt throughout the world to loss felt throughout the galaxy to loss felt throughout eternity. Meanwhile, what seems to be whimsy represents our rigorous attempts to escape that reality -- that if we do everything just right we can escape it, and the "whimsy" has only escalated over the last half-decade because our attempts to outsmart and obfuscate the great equalizer have only multiplied.

[windowlesskino]

Asteroid City: Chapter 1

The chief criticism from the VOD rabble is that the color grading looks funny, looks weird, looks garish looks not right.

But look, this is where criticism begins. If you look at a foundational part of a film and count it as a strike against the work, you're on a quick downhill slide. Rather, these devices serve as the door to the work. Sometimes these framing devices do not work, but first you must go through that door.

I think here the oversaturated colors work in a similar way to the jaunty zither of The Third Man, which mirrors Harry Lime's cavalier attitude towards his crimes against humanity. Here the gaudiness replicates the artificial optimism of the early atomic age, while also stressing the artificiality of the performance, which is in memory of the late writer.

It also suggests that it is impossible to look at reality dead in the eye, but rather we need it refracted to even acknowledge it, like a trio of kindergarten witches planting their mother's ashes in the desert sand within eyesight of nuclear tests.

[windowlesskino]

Asteroid City, Prologue

Asteroid City was preceded by The French Dispatch, which was loved in theaters but hated on streaming, which is probably a perverse sign of quality. Watching at home is fine and the only way many of us can see anything, but the overwhelming force of the cinema is neutered at home, and requires more work to pick out particular visual markers that are intuited in the theaters. Likewise at home personal preferences move to the front and screen the viewer from the work. Thus to many people at home they watched a twee tribute to a snotty magazine, and not what I saw which was a tribute to the retiring actor who made Anderson's career possible: Bill Murray. Murray is the memelord of internet folklore and Anderson is the pale king of twee, but what they both saw in each other is human creativity (these two are not the right words but are the only words that can even bracket what I'm trying to get at) in the face of grief.

I think this is why his haters get so tied up on the minor signifiers in his movies, because his major themes are so overwhelming--staying alive is a scam and grief is a prism that refracts us all.

[windowlesskino]

obligatory first post

I'm starting a movie blog here that's focused on writing because a. twitter is a sinking ship and kinda sucks for movie posting anyways and b. i fucking hate letterboxd. I want to blog about movies with more of an emphasis on writing, and as antithesis to my original aesthetics blog. Maybe through this process we can arrive at a synthesis.

I've been thinking about Asteroid City a lot, and I think that could be good in fleshing out my thoughts on movies and the dialectic. I have a draft saved on my other blog about The Gangs of New York and folk tales, and I would like to sketch that one out some more. I also have another idea about the relationship between film and phones, social media and other current technology.