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Post-Hallowe'en sniffling
Nov. 2nd, 2008 08:14 amWell, I've got the sniffles, and they seem to have started hitting me Hallowe'en night. I didn't have the energy to watch any of the movies I wanted to, and I went to bed early. Appropriately enough, just after midnight I got a call from Sharee, who was a bit drunk. It'd been a couple months since we last talked, and she confirmed that she plans to go to the Montreal Worldcon. Asked me to get her a membership, in fact. Yay! How many sleeps until Montreal? Another nice thing was that when I filled out the membership form yesterday, I discovered that because of the surging US dollar, her membership was 25 USD less than the one I bought for myself just less than a month ago.
Anyway, yesterday I watched one of the movies I had intended to watch on Hallowe'en, Phantom of the Paradise (1974). This was one of my favorite movies when I was in college, and I still think it's great. A mix of Faust, Phantom of the Opera, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, with a heavy dose of Alice Cooper and KISS thrown in. The last time I watched it on DVD, which was the first time I'd seen it in years, I felt the music didn't hold up well, but last night I decided it mostly works just fine. It actually covers a number of different musical styles, from Philly doo-wop to California beach grooves to campy heavy metal thunder. It's the '70s-style ballads that seem bland to me now, but there's really only a couple of those. The visual style is pretty eclectic, too, with lots of fish-eye distortions and a reference to German expressionism that I hadn't picked out before. Paul Williams is perfect as the mephistophelian Swan, purveyor of Death Records, with its beautiful dead crow logo that crops up everywhere in the design of the movie. The satire on the hit machine music industry is sharp, oh, and Gerrit Graham as the gay (or at least effeminate) heavy metal singer, Beef, is still probably my favorite character in the whole thing. "I know drug real from real real." It struck me last night that this would make a good double feature with The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which has a similar glam musical and genre mash-up sensibility. Speaking of favorite movies in my college days.
Before that I watched Abel Ferrara's adaptation of William Gibson's New Rose Hotel (1998). I had heard such horrible things about this movie when it came out (direct-to-video, as I recall) that I was never interested in giving it a try, but recently on Dave Kehr's blog Brad Stevens made the case for Ferrara and specifically for New Rose Hotel as one of his masterpieces. I don't know if it's a masterpiece, but it was more interesting than I had expected from other reactions I've seen. It doesn't capture the high tech surface of Gibson's story and in fact barely feels like science fiction at all, but it does get the globalism and corporate conspiracy and Japanophilia. This is the story of a couple of conmen who are hired to convince a Japanese scientific genius to defect from the German coporation he works for. Their plan is to hire a hooker to lure him with the promise of love. So it's a very tawdry film in many ways, with more than a hint of exploitation films about it. (E.g., half-naked writhing girls.) It reminded me of Olivier Assayas' demonlover (2002) in that way, and also in the focus on corporate espionage. There were some similarities to Assayas' Boarding Gate (2007) as well, partly because Asia Argento is in both and because of the talkiness. Christopher Walken is great as Fox, the philosophical song and dance con man with the broken back, and Willem Dafoe is pretty good as the henchman who falls in love with Argento's hooker mole. One of the controversial things about the movie is that much of the story is repeated in the second half. The question is whether the repetition actually changes our understanding of what happens, or whether it just hammers the point home ham-handedly. Not sure what I think on that question myself. I will say that I think demonlover is a much, much better movie on pretty much every level. Still, I'll watch it again at some point, because the structure is something that probably requires a second viewing to fully unwind.
Still sniffling today and feeling run down. Maybe I'll watch more movies and dream of Montreal.
Anyway, yesterday I watched one of the movies I had intended to watch on Hallowe'en, Phantom of the Paradise (1974). This was one of my favorite movies when I was in college, and I still think it's great. A mix of Faust, Phantom of the Opera, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, with a heavy dose of Alice Cooper and KISS thrown in. The last time I watched it on DVD, which was the first time I'd seen it in years, I felt the music didn't hold up well, but last night I decided it mostly works just fine. It actually covers a number of different musical styles, from Philly doo-wop to California beach grooves to campy heavy metal thunder. It's the '70s-style ballads that seem bland to me now, but there's really only a couple of those. The visual style is pretty eclectic, too, with lots of fish-eye distortions and a reference to German expressionism that I hadn't picked out before. Paul Williams is perfect as the mephistophelian Swan, purveyor of Death Records, with its beautiful dead crow logo that crops up everywhere in the design of the movie. The satire on the hit machine music industry is sharp, oh, and Gerrit Graham as the gay (or at least effeminate) heavy metal singer, Beef, is still probably my favorite character in the whole thing. "I know drug real from real real." It struck me last night that this would make a good double feature with The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which has a similar glam musical and genre mash-up sensibility. Speaking of favorite movies in my college days.
Before that I watched Abel Ferrara's adaptation of William Gibson's New Rose Hotel (1998). I had heard such horrible things about this movie when it came out (direct-to-video, as I recall) that I was never interested in giving it a try, but recently on Dave Kehr's blog Brad Stevens made the case for Ferrara and specifically for New Rose Hotel as one of his masterpieces. I don't know if it's a masterpiece, but it was more interesting than I had expected from other reactions I've seen. It doesn't capture the high tech surface of Gibson's story and in fact barely feels like science fiction at all, but it does get the globalism and corporate conspiracy and Japanophilia. This is the story of a couple of conmen who are hired to convince a Japanese scientific genius to defect from the German coporation he works for. Their plan is to hire a hooker to lure him with the promise of love. So it's a very tawdry film in many ways, with more than a hint of exploitation films about it. (E.g., half-naked writhing girls.) It reminded me of Olivier Assayas' demonlover (2002) in that way, and also in the focus on corporate espionage. There were some similarities to Assayas' Boarding Gate (2007) as well, partly because Asia Argento is in both and because of the talkiness. Christopher Walken is great as Fox, the philosophical song and dance con man with the broken back, and Willem Dafoe is pretty good as the henchman who falls in love with Argento's hooker mole. One of the controversial things about the movie is that much of the story is repeated in the second half. The question is whether the repetition actually changes our understanding of what happens, or whether it just hammers the point home ham-handedly. Not sure what I think on that question myself. I will say that I think demonlover is a much, much better movie on pretty much every level. Still, I'll watch it again at some point, because the structure is something that probably requires a second viewing to fully unwind.
Still sniffling today and feeling run down. Maybe I'll watch more movies and dream of Montreal.
