my five year plan. stumbling toward movies since 2006…

Benchline Movies

Here's a concept I want to introduce: the benchline movie.

What's that? It's a movie that should set a middlebrow minimum standard.

The Lives of Others is a benchline movie. It's very good, of course, but there's no reason why every film can't be this good. It's a film that sets out and achieves every one of its emotional and thematic goals and does so in a resonant way. But it's not a formal masterpiece by any stretch. It needn't be. It just tells a good story well.

Here's another: Shattered Glass. It's a thriller -- it happens to be about a rather heady subject, journalistic ethics, but it's a riveting film with interesting characters and an intelligent structure. It's probably the least flashy film to premiere theatrically in the last decade. It's set in the most boring looking office building imaginable, and it's incredibly compelling. I've probably seen it three or four times at this point, and it's always entertaining. Again, a very good movie -- but there's no reason why every film can't have the unity of form and function this one does, or the snappy dialogue and compelling subject matter. Having two of the best performances of the last decade (Sarsgaard and Christensen, above) doesn't hurt.

The Kids Are All Right, which just came out and which you should see, should also be a benchline movie. It's not that the film explodes new territories in cinematic art, but it tells a solid story with deeply fascinating characters in an unembellished, restrained manner. Every formal element is solid, but Lisa Cholodenko minimizes flash in favor of focusing on unique and real character moments. We should all be so quaint!

It's better movies, not better advertising gimmicks or better low-budget equipment, that will save independent-minded cinema.

Two Things That I Saw Before The Kids are All Right

The second was a trailer for the movie Charlie St. Cloud. I don't think I've ever heard an audience react so derisively to a trailer before - everyone started laughing riotously, and the realization that everyone was laughing made everyone laugh even more.

On the other hand, I'm glad there's still a place for the Charlie St. Clouds of American film: this is a drama without any real ambitions to awards or massive critical acclaim. It exists because there's still a market for shameless melodrama and old-fashioned storytelling. It's hokey, schlocky, and almost undoubtedly awful, but I'd trade a dozen cynically slapped-together superhero movies or bromances for a single ridiculously earnest-looking Zac Efron vehicle.

The first was this:

It's by John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition), and it's the newest in Levi's Go Forth campaign, which also brought us those amazing Walt Whitman commercials -- Cary Fukunaga's "America" and M. Blash's "O Pioneers!"  Part of me really loves it, because, duh, and part of me thinks it's the most shameless act of aesthetic thievery imaginable, stealing imagery, ideas, and even direct shots from films by Charles Burnett, David Gordon Green, and Terrence Malick (he even swipes the Wagner piece from Das Rheingold Malick uses multiple times in The New World*).

This post on Blackbook's Deep Focus blog points out the obvious fucked-up quality of Levi's making an ad about a community broken down by plant closures.

Your thoughts?

Oh, and The Kids Are All Right is really boss. You should see it.

*Of course, this piece was also used by Herzog in Nosferatu the Vampyre, but my point is that Hillcoat had to be thinking of Malick when he made this ad, and to use the same piece of music as a means of producing a similar response is pretty cheap.

I know carping about the Emmys is really dumb, but…

The fact that the following people didn't get nominations is a pretty good indicator that the Emmy nomination board is also really dumb:

I just realized I only watch four shows. Nevertheless, these actors are all great at what they do and it bums me out that they aren't getting the recognition they deserve.

Jafar Panahi Update

Panahi is "free."

At least he's been released from Evin, on bail approximately valued at $200,000.

He's still facing the *very* serious charge that he had been making a film against the ruling regime. But at least he's no longer in jail.

These next few months are crucial: we can't let the fact that Panahi has been released on bail fool us into believing he's safe. We need to continue to put pressure on Iran to drop the charges and on friendly countries to allow Panahi to seek asylum, if possible.

As a bit of a side-note, one I might return to in a longer post: another Iranian filmmaker who's in need of our attention is Kiana Ferouz, an LGBT activist whose experimental documentary Cul de Sac has attracted the Iranian government's ire. Ferouz, whose petition for asylum in the UK has been denied, is in danger of being executed for 'unrepentant homosexuality' if she is returned to Iran. You can sign a petition encouraging the British home office to grant Ferouz asylum here, and I'll keep you updated with any further news I hear.

David Ehrenstein on Polanski

What's new? Well, of course, there's the new accusation by actress Charlotte Lewis that Polanski raped her when she was sixteen. She and lawyer Gloria Allred aren't using the word 'rape,' but I will. Because Polanski's a rapist. There's also a new roundup of filmmakers who have decided that Polanski's art trumps his rape of a child and that it's terribly lonely for him in his beautiful ski chalet, so they've signed another petition asking for his release by the Swiss government. They're oh-so-terribly glum he can't go to Cannes. What a shame. Of course, none of these people have spoken a peep about the continued imprisonment of Jafar Panahi. But that's because he's a brown person who makes aesthetically understated movies that aren't designed to flatter their audience's inflated sense of self-worth. He's not part of the club.

What David Ehrenstein, Bernard-Henri Levy, and the rest of the rape apologist "BUT HE'S AN ARTIST BOO HOO" crowd don't seem to understand is that the case against Polanski isn't about some arch-right-wing moral crusade, which I think is how they perceive it: petulant, anti-intellectual Americans seeking blood from a great artist because they hate art, beauty, sexual liberation, Jews, leftist politics, etc. etc.

I fucking love art films. Love 'em. Here's a few I love: Sergei Paradjanov's Color of Pomegranates, Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, Abbas Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherry. Why did I choose those few? What do they have in common? Those four films were made by filmmakers whose work has been censored and/or challenged in their home countries on political grounds by anti-intellectual types. In the case of Paradjanov, he was imprisoned by Soviet officials for nearly five years for making artistically and politically challenging films. Unlike Polanski. Yes, Polanski has made some very good films, but let's not pretend as though his films are especially transgressive, which Ehrenstein seems to think. I know it's very comforting to play like your favorite pop filmmaker is some persecuted genius, but we all grow up at some point.

It's not about his art. It really isn't. Which is something Ehrenstein can't seem to wrap his head around: that his art really is immaterial to his actions. And that his traumatic life is immaterial to his actions as well. Lots of people have had traumatic lives, but they don't choose to enact those traumas onto others.

It's about the fact that Hollywood and the global film communities are by and large very misogynistic environments in which privileged people who commit horrific acts against women and children are given a free pass. And that this is wrong.

In his extended rape apology, Ehrenstein brings up the examples of Florence Aadland and Evan Chandler, who allegedly pimped their children to Errol Flynn and Michael Jackson, respectively. It's obviously stupid to believe their actions would in some way mitigate the moral culpability of Flynn or Jackson.

Just like it would be stupid to believe that Polanski is not morally culpable because of the unsubstantiated claim that Samantha Gailey's mother had pimped her to Polanski in consideration for a part in a movie. Which is part of the pro-Polanski whisper campaign, and which Ehrenstein insinuates. What's revolting about Ehrenstein's line of argumentation is that it basically unfolds as follows:

1. The film industry is a locus of terrible misogyny and violence against children, and historically some parents have been complicit in their children's exploitation.
2. But! Rapists, especially ones who make good movies, aren't culpable if their victim's parents are accomplices to the crime.
3. If her mom did exploit her, then the little slut deserved it.

Ehrenstein is not a rapist, but he is a misogynist. He uses the cover of a 1993 issue of Playboy for his illustration of Charlotte Lewis as a means of undercutting her accusation. It's a very unsubtle decision, roughly akin to saying Look at this loose woman - does this look like a rape victim, or does this look like a lying whore?

It's a really regressive view of women, the sort of thing I'd expect more out of Wahhabist cleric than a putatively enlightened American film critic. Does Lewis' Playboy shoot discredit her claim that she was assaulted a decade beforehand? Of course not. But why would Ehrenstein use this image, as opposed to any other of her? Because he wants to embarrass Lewis. Because he wants his readers not to believe her accusation, and believes that her posing nude in Playboy renders her unreliable.

Or because he thinks she's a slut who deserved what happened to her.

The most aggravating thing about Ehrenstein is that he writes all of this from this dreadfully ironic pose, ending the post with a YouTube video of Gigi's "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," as though he's just the wittiest fucking little person, as though playing glib about rape is cool.

Christ, what an asshole.

P.S. - I don't address above, for the purposes of making a coherent through-line, that Ehrenstein's fucking idiotic diatribe begins with an extended excerpt from Stephen Weissman's work on Charles Chaplin, in which Weissman discusses the episode in which a district attorney made a political show-trial out of Chaplin's relationship with Joan Barry, a consenting adult who suffered from borderline personality disorder. Chaplin, of course, was acquitted of his charge, violating the Mann Act. That Ehrenstein cannot wrap his head around the falseness of his analogy is indicative of his intellectual bankruptcy: Polanski's victim did not consent, was not of an age when she could have consented, but again, even if she were, did not consent.

A Quick Observation…

Split Pea Soup

This is one of the simplest foods you can make that you will want to make over and over again. All it takes is a slow-cooker:

1 bag of dried green split peas
1 packet of baby carrots
enough chunks of chopped, smoked ham to line the bottom of the crock pot
salt + pepper to taste
1 bay leaf

The ham is important, but it can also be the cheapest cut of ham you can find - the fancier grocery near my apartment sold me a large batch of scraps for $1.77. Sear the ham and carrots in a hot cast-iron pot, and then transfer the ham into the crock pot (if your crock pot has a metal bottom, this won't be necessary, but i can't get a sear in my slow cooker).

Add the split peas, then add the carrots, then the bay leaf. Then salt and pepper - it will require more salt than you think it will.

You don't need onion. You don't need garlic. This is a food of comfort, and onions and garlic will not add much to the overall balance of flavors.

Pour enough water to cover it up and set the crock pot to low heat. Stir once an hour for the first three hours, then wake up the next morning to the smell of the best split pea soup you will ever eat.

Serve with a big chunk of yeasty bread OR a grilled swiss sandwich.

Some Good News from Iran

According to a source on the 'Free Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof' Facebook group, Rasoulof and assistant director Mehdi Pourmoussa have been released from Evin Prison in Tehran, leaving Panahi the sole remaining prisoner from the night of his arrest.

We're not in the clear folks, but this is a good sign. Continue putting pressure on Iran to release this important artist and, if you haven't already, sign the petition. It will take twenty seconds at most, and it'll mean a sign of solidarity with the freedom of artists to speak against tyranny.

Mohammad Rasoulof’s The White Meadows

Rasoulof is currently sitting in Evin Prison in Tehran, but his new film The White Meadows was just accepted in competition at Tribeca. The official blurb from the festival:

The White Meadows (Keshtzar haye sepid), directed and written by Mohammad Rasoulof. (Iran) - North American Premiere. Poetry, mythology, metaphor, and the absurd are expertly woven to tell the fable-like story of Rahmat, who sails from island to island off the coast of Iran to collect tears. Moody and elegant, The White Meadows is acclaimed writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof’s (Head Wind, TFF ’08) mesmerizing cinematic statement on conformity, social norms, and the collective condition of Iran. In Persian with English subtitles.

It sure looks pretty:

Latest Panahi Developments

AFP is reporting that Iranian officials have released Jafar Panahi's wife and daughter as well as thirteen others, all of whom were arrested in Monday night's nation-wide roundup of political dissidents.

This means that three of the eighteen detainees from Monday night remain in custody, including Panahi, filmmaker Mohammed Rasoulof (whose Iron Island is a surreal, allegorical exploration of political isolation and paternalistic governance), and Mehdi Pourmoussa, an assistant director who has worked on films by Rafi Pitts and Bahman Ghobadi.

Conflicting reports are coming out of Iran as to the reasons for the arrest, but both conservative and reformist news sources indicate that Panahi was arrested for making a film concerning 2009's sham presidential election and the ensuing protest movement. Panahi's son has denied this claim, but the fact that the two remaining detainees besides Panahi are filmmakers (which AFP didn't pick up on) seems to lend this argument credence.

Added to clarify: The AFP report is rather confusing/confused in its details of the arrests, so I've edited this post to reflect what we know: a total of eighteen people were arrested at the Panahi residence on Monday night, including Panahi, his wife Tahere Saidi, and their daughter Solmaz Panahi. Among those arrested were prominent members of the Iranian film community, including Rasoulof, Pourmoussa, and cinematographer Ebrahim Ghafori, who has worked with Samira Makhmalbaf and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, among others. Only Jafar Panahi, Rasoulof, and Pourmoussa remain in custody.

Dear International Film Community,

Just so you guys are aware, this is a filmmaker you should be organizing international petitions calling for the release of. I know you get mixed up about this sort of thing from time to time.

Thanks,

Brendon

Jafar Panahi Arrested

I know I haven't posted too much lately here, guys, but my friend Evan forwarded me this news item from the AV Club about the arrest of filmmaker Jafar Panahi on Monday night in a roundup of dissidents, and I felt the need to comment.

I don't like using the word 'important' to describe filmmakers, because as important as a given director or a given movie is to the medium, there are very few of either whose work makes a palpable impact on the world as a whole. Jafar Panahi, a maverick Iranian filmmaker whose work is humanistic and political, stands near the forefront of that list of filmmakers whose work is Important. In just a few films, he has outlined in exquisite detail the place of women in Iranian society. He has served as an advocate for a liberalizing tendency in Iranian culture, and as such, his films have all been banned in their home country.

Offside (2006)

But they are essential films, films that you should see - The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Offside, probably his best known film here, the story of Iranian women trying to sneak into a forbidden soccer match by disguising themselves as men. What they are not is boring mindfood: as intelligent and aware Panahi is, his films are also relentlessly entertaining, drawing deeply lovable characters trying to negotiate a society that refuses to tolerate them.

At this stage, there's very little we can do as observers with regard to Iran and Panahi - it's certainly possible that they'll let the filmmaker and his family go, as they did when they arrested him last year at a public memorial for those slain during the election protests. What we can do, though, is raise awareness of this situation and of Panahi's films.

The Circle (2000)