January 1, 2007
Happy New Year to family, friends, acquaintances, and anyone who stumbled onto this page by accident. Since there seems to be (inexplicably enough) actual demand for it, here is my list of cultural items that stuck in my head in 2006. Thanks to all those who introduced me to the items listed below!
Aaron Caplan
(206) 624-2184
This compilation of shows originally broadcast on Bravo contains interviews with really interesting people: the cryogenicist who freezes his late mother's head, the autistic slaugherhouse designer (whose life story has proven difficult to set to music), the Unabomber's pen pal, the crime scene cleaner, the spy, and the artist's model who kept re-enrolling for his senior year in high school until he finally got it right. To name just a few. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
I had previously known Lon Chaney only for films where he had heavy makeup, like Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925). But he's even better when you get to see his face.Chaney mania began with a SIFF screening of The Unknown (1927) with a live score performed in person by Portastatic. Alonzo (Chaney) is in love with Nanon (Joan Crawford), but she has a pathological fear of men's hands. Nothing should interfere with their true love -- since Alonzo is an armless circus performer whose act involves throwing knives with his feet. No hands to muck up this budding romance, so all's well with the world, right? Not so fast! Whose horrifying man-hands are terrorizing the circus with their homocidal rage and extra thumbprints? This movie has more anatomical surprises than The Crying Game (1992), and enough subtext to keep a thousand Freudians busy. Chaney is mesmerizing and always believable, no small feat given the outlandish plot. Click here if you want to read a summary that gives away the plot, but rent it instead to enjoy the surprises. The DVD includes an excellent Chaney biography that whetted my appetite for more.
Turns out the armless knife-thrower may have been type-casting, since Chaney previously played a legless (well, shinless) crime boss who vows revenge on the inept surgeon who was too quick with the saw in The Penalty (1920). For those who think America's fear of domestic terrorism began on 9/11, there's The Ace of Hearts (1921), where Chaney is part of a sinister political cabal that wants to destroy capitalism as we know it. But underneath he has a heart of gold, so he learns soon enough that anarchy (at least the bomb-wielding kind) does not pay. For comic relief, there's a heist movie, The Unholy Three (1925), where a dwarf, a goon, and a cross-dressing ventriloquist plan the perfect crime. The story presages the lesson of A Simple Plan (1998) and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948): disposing of the loot is always the hardest part. Or at least it is when the dwarf gets greedy and the goon gets trigger-happy. Click here for spoilers.
Speaking of robberies, my other favorite acting discovery was Lino Ventura, the ex-wrestler who made a splendid gangster on the run in Classe Tous Risques (1960) and anti-Fascist on the run in Army of Shadows (1969). Lino for President! Or perhaps Jean Gabin in Touchez Pas Au Grisbi ("Don't Touch The Loot") (1954), or Alain Delon in Le Cercle Rouge (1970) or Le Samouraï (1967).
A fellow could get to like that internet. One afternoon I idly wondered if it was possible to find a copy of Ulcer At Work (1957), where the Oklahoma Department of Health explains that men with ulcers can't be trusted on the job, but that it's their mothers who caused their productivity problem in the first place (as explained in a dreamy fantasy sequence set in the ulcer-sufferer's tortured memory of a childhood that led him to an adulthood plagued with excess stomach acid). One google search later, and up pops a place where you can watch or download the masterpiece any time you like! Thanks to the Prelinger Archive, I now know much more about the educational films of the Mental Hygiene Division of the Oklahoma Department of Health. The havoc the subconscious can wreak is the subject of Time Out For Trouble (1961). Narrated by a talking clock, the film reminds us that "it's people who bring on accidents -- the kind of people who don't know how to handle their emotions." Get a grip on your inner self and your outer self will stop spilling the soup, tripping on the stairs, falling off ladders, and wandering into traffic. (I'm not making this up.) The scriptwriter for these opuses is Dwight V. Swain, who (assuming this is the same person) has published several volumes on the general topic of How to Write Good. Swain is surely an auteur whose ouevre is sadly overlooked by mainstream cineastes. What's Ed Wood got that he ain't got?The Archive also has other masterpieces of the era, with a standout being Design for Dreaming (1956), a famous promotional movie showing us how in the bright utopian future awaiting us in 1960 we will drive Edsels on celestial elevated highways that whisk us to masquerade balls--and we will have plenty of time to attend because our automated kitchens have taken all the drudgery out of housework.
Two studies of the personal dynamics of colonialism. Can there be genuine friendship between the colonizer and the colonized? The American movie says yes, but the French one has a guilty conscience.
Bond. James Bond.
Lee. Spike Lee.
Who's infiltrating who?
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Children of Men (2006)
The Descent (2006)
The Prestige (2006)
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
13 (Tzameti) (2005)
Spirited Away (2001)
The Electric Company (1971)
Online disc-trading service. List what you're willing to trade away and what you'd like to receive, and the service pairs you up and provides the envelopes.
Scottish pop-folkie. I started with the up-tempo numbers, but then the ballads started to grow on me, too. Click here and then select "Album" to hear samples. Be sure to watch the live video.
Brainy Canadian.
Music to eat Dolly Madison Zingers by.
Super-smart historical fiction graphic novel. Part courtroom drama, part gangster epic, part romance, part history, part musicology, and part sociology. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!
Nicola Tesla started following me around about four months ago. Scientific genius? Crackpot? Symbol? All of the above. I didn't learn until this writing that UNESCO had declared 2006 to be "Nikola Tesla Year" in honor of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Perhaps this explained why he kept turning up unbidden: in Mike Daisey's monologue about monopolies, in The Prestige as a secret weapon of duelling Edwardian stage magicians, or as a caped crime-fighter in The Five Fists of Science. Throw in a new statue in his honor at Niagara Falls for good measure. More Tesla info available from PBS, Wikipedia, and Hinduism Today, for starters.I fully expect next year to find some other inventor popping up unexpectedly. Benjamin Banneker seems worthy.