Why don't I care about Movies anymore???

An Early hero

I Studied film in college.  It wasn't film school mind you.  It was just your run of the mill liberal arts school for lesser minds.  Well, at least my lesser mind.  For whatever reason I had a thirst to learn and double majored and carried max credits.  The English and Sociology majors were neat and all.  But any chance I could sneak in a funky elective I did.   Women and Film and a semester long independent study on Martin Scorsese were academic highlights.  I would spend afternoons catching art films at the glorious Kirby Theatre.  On any given Sunday I wasn't watching the NFL, but hours of hours researching the film canon.  All About Eve into Mean Streets into Satyricon into Wings of Desire.  Brando into Pacino into Kinski into Cusack.  Lots and lots of movies.  My early "writing" career included stints in a college paper and local gay zine.   The movies consumed me and for a while it appeared I might find employment in the entertainment industry.

That was a long time ago.

Now, in the Golden Age of TV- and lets be honest, it is, I could care less.

Is it the overpriced and overhyped theatre experience?  $15 to get in.  $5 for a water.  Noisy theatre goers who do not understand that silence is golden?

Or is it the product itself?  Teenage angst and retread family cartoons.  One Smurf film is too many.   Doe we need three Twilights?  Three Hunger Games?  How many Harry Potter's are there anyway?  I lost count after 2.

Super Heroes or monster remakes- A Spiderman, even with another actor, is still Spiderman.  Godzilla is, I can assume, gonna wreak some havoc before either dying or setting up another sequel if the receipts are good.  X-Men, King King, Marvel whatever...  played the hell out!!

Editing is an issue too.  Judd Apatow has made some good movies within his overrated movies- if only he knew how to splice a bit.  3 hours or so for Funny People.  Well over 2 for Knocked Up and This is 40?  Not needed.  Some scenes don't work.  It's really ok- promise.

The few times I have bought into the hype recently I was deeply burned.  PT Anderson's The Master was a boring turd and clinic on how NOT to edit.  Silver Linings Playbook had an epic third act collapse.  Dance contest?  Really???  Those films are from 2013 aren't they?

I took a look at last years Best Oscar noms and I think it marks the first time I haven't seen a nominated film since before I hit puberty (so, like 5 years.)  No American Hustle.  No 12 Years a Slave.  No freaking interest.

Typically these arts films and award seekers arrive for our consideration from September through March.  Now that there are 10! nominees who has the time to catch them all?  How much time and money is required for such an endeavor?   When it was 5 nominees I suppose I could rationalize it.  

Documentary filmmaking still has some compelling ideas.   But do I need to go to the theater to see opinions on the food industry or war in Iraq?

It is almost June and I have not been to the theatre once this year.  What happened?

Is it just part of the maturation process?  Things change, friends change, life changes.

I used to love NL baseball and then my team moved to the al.  So now I have no interest there either.  The steroid debacle sure has not helped.  I prefer get them on, get them over and get them in.  The subtleties, if you will.  While monster HR's are nice, especially late to win a game, most of the time its the grunt work that leads to success.  A timely walk, a hit and run, or, dare I say, a nicely turned double play.

But I never watched CBS Sunday Morning with such devotion (as I do now.)  Or got my news from the internet rather than newspapers either.

Perhaps it is simply the eb and flow of life and I am simply navigating through it.

It is sad though, that something that I had so much joy for is now simply gone.  And it's funny, I read my favorite film reviewer every Friday.  I am aware of what is out there.  A new Adam Sandler movie?  Ugh.  The start of the summer blockbusters.  Yawn.

What will it take to get me back?  Do I even need to try?

And don't get on me for being stogy either.  Those who read this blog know I love seeing new, often unknown bands.  I am up for unique, and adventurous.

Baseball got too loud, and too explosive.  Bigger is better.  We now keep distances on home runs.

But it's roots lie in deep thought and stoic gamesmanship.  "Are they going to bunt here?"  "What will he pitch on a 2-0 count?"  "How long should we give our starter to get out of this mess?"

While films throughout history have relied more on action and mesmerizing special effects, it too has its roots in silence.  The first movies had no sound and yet they captivated the World.

Today each frame tends to be crammed with loud actors, with loud clothing, pontificating loud thoughts.  No silence.  No nuance.  No imagination.

The Seth Rogen/Zac Efron movie Neighbors exploded the box office last weekend.  It was the 3rd biggest R rated comedy opening in history.  But for me, someone who not too long ago laughed my ass off watching Step Brothers, I am indifferent.

Something tells me I have seen that movie.  And I don't care to see it again.

I can't even commit to all the amazing television there is.  And as mentioned, this is televisions finest hour.  Over the past 5 years I have missed, in its entirety, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men to name a few.   Judging by ratings, social media and basic pop culture 101 those shows are life changing.

I will take your word for it.

Cause for some reason it has all escaped me.

What will fill this void?  Has it been filled already?  Am I missing anything???

Theoretically I will have more free time as I get older.  Am I getting enough culture?

Something is amiss.  Or maybe everything is wonderful.

I am not certain which, but I am confused nonetheless.  

What's Old is Old Again - A Cinefile's Response to Hank B

Hank B's thoughtful and passionate blog post What's Old is Old Again (read here) got me to thinking.

Hank laments the loss of "edge" or "guts" that comes with age. He sees both manifested in aging superstars' revisiting classic rock or pop standards. He also sees it in music consumers' laziness in allegedly preferring these efforts to the raw, fresh energy of the struggling bands to whom Hank B admirably devotes so much of his time and passion. And he takes such folks as Paul McCartney (whom one could argue has nothing left to prove to anyone) to task for getting stale and playing it safe.

I agree with Hank's deeper point ---  that we all struggle with how not to get stale, and to age gracefully. And perhaps we use artists as a metaphor for our own struggle.

I have always been passionate about what was newly called in the late 1980's and early 1990's "Independent Film". I was religiously devoted to IFC and  Sundance Channel, pored over Film Comment magazine, and worshiped at the altar of the Weinstein Brothers Church of Miramax.

I vigorously and stridently took people to task for preferring typical Hollywood schlock to gritty, challenging, bold films --- films that grew out of a writer, director or even an actor's soul and vision rather than a marketing study.

I never toured the film festival circuit with the same discipline that Hank tackles the NYC nightlife. I did, however, frequent local theaters that attempted to bring "Art House" films to suburbanites, such as Montgomery Cinemas in Montgomery NJ, Doylestown's County Theater, and Easton PA's (now defunct) Cinema Paradisio. My own brush with grittiness came with the opportunity, via my wife's cousin who was in The Business, to act as an extra in a low budget independent film Falling For Grace, where I danced to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" with B.D. Wong and Margaret Cho.*

Somewhat because of marketing and the vagaries of the film business (recall that, with the best marketing, an entirely subtitled film like Life is Beautiful, or an entirely silent film like The Artist, can grab the attention of the American masses), no one has ever heard of ninety percent of those independent films of the 1990s.  But most of these films are forgotten today not because they were too edgy, but because, frankly, they were not very good movies.

They were movies full of raw, edgy energy for sure, but the appeal was often the "anti-marketing marketing" back story of the making of the film, with highlights typically along the lines of  "working outside the studio system" or "used my bar mitzvah money and maxed out my credit cards" or  "had to shoot in 2 takes tops because we didn't have permits" or "developed story through actor's improv" and so on. What often resulted was meandering dialogue, gratuitous but un-artful sexuality, and pornographically exploitive violence.

But the ten percent of those films that we do remember forced Hollywood to reinvent itself , led by what I consider to be Generation X's  Citizen Kane, Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

For me, the long lasting benefit of my devoted following to now famous directors Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho), Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused) , Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman), and Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), was realizing that what made their work truly engaging and energized was not simply a Zen-like "beginners mind" although that certainly played a role.  All of these filmmakers had a deep and broad knowledge of film making and a true love of films from far away decades and cultures. In interviews, when they listed their favorite movies and influences, they inspired me to delve into film history, introducing me to Kurasawa, Fellini, Truffaut, Cassavettes, Bertolluci, Antonioni, Renoir, Leone as well and a new appreciation for the directors of the 1970s -- Scorsese, Coppola, Cimino, Lumet, Spielberg, and even Don Siegal.

So are our former independent mavericks to be criticized for looking backward? I think not.

Van Sant returns to the 1970's and the birth of the gay rights movement in Milk.  Tarantino reinterprets the midnight movies in Grindhouse, and the "Guys on a Mission" war movie genre with the extraordinary Inglorious Basterds.  Linklater takes on the classic backstage drama (aided by an uncanny performance by Christian McKay as the legendary maverick director) in his excellent Me and Orson Welles. And Ang Lee has embraced the conventional western in Ride With The Devil, and subverted the same genre with Brokeback Mountain.

Even Kevin Smith ( who perhaps will never surpass Clerks and Chasing Amy), after numerous variations on the slacker romance woven through the eyes of Jay and Silent Bob (his anarchic and profane version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), takes a wild left turn with his uneven but challenging view of religious fundamentalism in his 1970's style exploitation homage Red State**.

So perhaps it is part of the artistic process of aging gracefully to dip back into one's own history, and the history of one's craft, examine the roots of one's influences, and re-interpret them anew.

Because sometimes what is old is old yet again, not because it is safe, but because it is true.

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*Due to change of director and re-shoots, I ended up on the cutting room floor. But my wife's cousin kindly burned a copy of my two scenes for me as a keepsake!

**Last year while visiting a friend in Los Angeles, I got to see a screening of Red State at Tarentino's New Beverly Cinema, followed by a Q&A with Smith, who is a skilled racounteur and was, true to the independent spirit, promoting the movie on his own dime. Alas, the Q&A was much more interesting and thought provoking than the movie itself.

AWOL Nation, Webster Hall, NYC 5.9.12

AWOLNation

Aaron Bruno stage diving during "Jump on My Shoulders"

Back in November, California band AWOL Nation commanded and dominated Webster Hall supporting its high energy and well crafted debut album Megalithic Symphony.  A review can be found here: GTS AWOL Nation Review.  Last night frontman and leader Aaron Bruno brought a very similar act to the stage that for whatever reason lacked the pop and electricity the November evening provided.

Was it the relentless touring the band has been on since early last year?  The soft, and rather mellow crowd that failed to fill the venue?  Bruno's reluctance to sing every note (rather allowing the crowd to help out whenever they could?)

All of the above?

It's possible.  But that is not to say the one hour set is unworthy of your attention.  Bruno, on his worst day, is still a formidable leading man.  Think, a somewhat muted and shirted Iggy Pop with a hint of pop star thrown in.

As the band played its encore Bruno commented on how his band refuses to play to a label, or classification.  "We play all kinds of music."

It's true.  And the setlist is full of strong and diverse numbers.  "Not Your Fault" is an edgy, anti-love song that mixes humor and angst.  It's sweeping synths flow nicely with Bruno's grunt and howl.  The ballad "All I Need" is rooted in southern Gospel.  Last night it was a highlight.  As was the trippy and electric bass explosion called "Kill Your Heroes."  It was the biggest sound of the night and most rewarding.

The problem is that track, "People," "Guilty Filthy Soul," and "Jump on My Shoulders" were all played during the first half.  Other than mixing up the setlist this show had all the same elements of November, with less, as the French might say, "I don't know what."

A very good time indeed.  But perhaps new content and some time off might benefit this likeable, talented, and very promising band.

AWOL Nation "All I Need"

AWOL Nation "People"

AWOL Nation "Kill Your Heroes"

More info here:  AWOL Nation Official Site

AWOLNation Setlist

NYC band Bear Hands (http://www.bearhandsband.com/) opened up last night and they have a little something going for them too.  Aside from being another in a long line of bands with the word "Bear" in it, Bear in Heaven, Panda Bear, etc...  they also happen to have an 80s synth inspired content with a lead singer channelling his inner Robert Smith.   Unsure if he was putting on an affect on his voice or if that was the authentic live voice.  From track to live act the two sounds are quite different.

Their set was tight save for some slower songs that require a bolder stage presence to pull off.  All and all an agreeable band that would fill in quite nicely on your new downloads list.  Take a look/listen to "High Society" which is streaming on their website.  Their new album is forthcoming.

Bear Hands.