Some Came Running

Ford/Lincoln

Three views:

Lincoln the Visionary—signing into law that act that will build a trans-continental raildroad, despite the protests of those arguing that such a further expense cannot by borne in a time of war. Played by Charles Edward Bull, The Iron Horse, 1924; directed by John Ford. 

Lincoln the Martyr—felled by assassin John Wilkes Booth. Played by Frank McGlynn Sr., The Prisoner of Shark Island, 1936; directed by John Ford.

Young Mr. Lincoln. Henry Fonda, 1939. Directed by John Ford. 

Was William Frawley ever a YOUNG man?

Here he is, almost 20 years before teaming up with Vivian Vance (whom he once referred to as "look[ing] like a sack of doorknobs") for I Love Lucy, chatting up Gary Cooper in Frank Borzage's Desire. I suppose this, for Frawley, was pretty much the height of his middle-age sex appeal. As I mention in today's Foreign Region DVD Report, even he can't spoil the utter loveliness of Borzage's sole collaboration with Ernst Lubitsch. But perhaps I'm being unfair to Frawley here. He doesn't look that bad. That's a pretty nice suit. I guess I've just read too much Drew Friedman...

There are far more attractive screen caps awaiting you at The Auteurs. There's quite a bit of kick-ass Berlinale coverage over there too. 

Get out of my head.

As you are no doubt aware, I am NOT in the habit of posting trailers, Red-Band or not, on this blog. So my reasons for doing so in this case have nothing to do with my fondness for Seth Rogen, or my much, much, much greater fondness for Anna Faris. What I wanna know—and maybe some of my more film-industry plugged-in friends can help me out—is who is the depraved genius responsible for putting Patto's "The Man" on the end portion of this Red-Band trailer, and can I sue him for illegally inhabiting a portion of my brain space? Because I'm almost entirely certain that nobody in the Continental United States besides myself and Manny Lunch and a couple of the other guys at Downtown Music Gallery even know who/what Patto is/was and/or even give a damn. (Not to go all Rock Snob on you.) (And you know what, I'll bet real money that Patto isn't even in that fucking "Rock Snob" book, or mentioned on its website. Fucking amateurs.) Just ask My Lovely Wife, to whom I drunkenly subjected the track in question multiple times on one of our earliest dates. 

So what I'm saying is, either give an accounting of yourself/selves, or GET OUT OF MY HEAD. 

In all seriousness, "The Man," by Patto, with the astonishing Ollie Halsall on lead guitar, is a genius track. I do hope that the survivors of this band, who do not, alas, include Halsall or founder/vocalist Mike Patto, are getting a few dollars off of this. They certainly deserve the dough. 

Anger Management, or, Here Comes The Nice

Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens in Palm Springs Weekend, aka Troy Donahue Takes The Stairs, Taurog, 1963

Remember when cinematic treatments of the romantic travails of 20-somethings looked like this? Whoa. I'll have to ask my mom about the whole verisimilitude factor here...

Polemicizing is fun, but it can be exhausting, too. While I'm happy to pick up whatever threads continue to require tending in some of the below posts, I believe I'll devote most of this week's postings to fluffy puppies and stuff, in anticipation of Valentine's Day, and what not. Keep the blood pressure down and all. 

Some dogs, Space Buddies, Vince, 2009

Although now that I think of it, I wonder what a Swanberg-directed Buddies movie would look like?...

Things we like

Without qualification, except as noted: 

Preston Miller's Jones.

Aaron Katz's Dance Party USA and Quiet City. 

Kentucker Audley's Team Picture (despite being slightly annoyed by its characters).

Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation (despite feeling somewhat about Justin Rice's face as we feel about Kent Osborne's).

Ronald Bronstein's Frownland (in certain specific respects). 

Discuss, if you like. 

"Man's Castle" Alert

To any readers of this blog who are going to be in Manhattan or its general vicinity today, February 8, and/or tomorrow, February 9, I implore you: get thee to Film Forum to catch Frank Borzage's 1933 Man's Castle, starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young. If you've been looking at my stuff over at The Auteurs' Notebook, you'll know that the recent Fox box has put me on something of a Borzage jag; this particular picture was made for Columbia, after William Fox left his own studio. Set largely in a Manhattan shantytown—a.k.a. a Hooverville, although the place in the film is never referred to as such—the film reteams Borzage with Tracy, with whom he worked the year before for another film of social consciousness, Young America. Tracy plays Bill, the bluff, wise-cracking would-be vagabond who develops a soft spot for Young's Trina, a jobless, homeless teen he rescues from the streets...and eventually impregnates. Yes, this is a pre-code picture, and it more than delivers from that angle. But where it really delivers is in poetry; here is an example of Borzage working at the height of such expressive powers, and it's breathtaking. "This is almost as good as Vigo's L'Atalante," I said to myself at one point. The print is new, and glistening. The co-feature is Capra's exhilarating American Madness. Castle is not yet on DVD. Go, I tell you, go!

Never mind that s**t, here comes Henry Cow...

Bow down, puny mortals, to the great Dagmar Krause, here singing with Henry Cow, Vevey, 1976

In case you're wondering about just which micro-budgeted artistic aggregation your humble blogger has zero reservations about getting behind, well, I have two words, and I'm sure you've guessed them by now. In one fell swoop—a swoop that I understand cost Mr. Chris Cutler more than one decade—the monumental band Henry Cow pretty much trebles its official recorded output, with a box set of nine CDs (ten if you're one of the faithful subscribers, as I was—we happy few are gifted with an odds & sods bonus disc) and one DVD. 

I am beside myself with happiness. The Cow has been one of my very favorite bands ever since Fred Frith's brother Simon tipped me off to his guitarist sibling's genius in the pages of Creem oh so many years ago. The box arrived today, and I'll need some time to process it, but I'm getting on it now. No less a personage as the estimable Girish Shambu has requested more music postings on this site, and here's a perfect opportunity. I'm sure it'll send my traffic through the roof, too. Watch this space. But don't fret, there'll be more cinema stuff, too...

A point, conceded, up to a point (Updated)

In the extremely contentious comments thread to the post "The Cinema of Contingency: Notes on Swanberg," Don Lewis of Film Threat, a Swanberg defender, states, "I think that Joe's point in a lot of ways...i[s] that the camera is only capable of capturing truth...[A]nd maybe the truth is, the camera makes you lie?" Don was addressing my criticism of a take in Swanberg's Hannah Takes The Stairs in which lead actress Greta Gerwig appeared to be staring at something which was clearly not part of the space in which her character was existing. Don continued, "Is it possible to NOT be conscious of the camera? I mean, isn't this the question posed by several people over the years?"

Well, yes, it is. And it is a question posed quite frequently in the work of Jean-Luc Godard. There are more than a few moments in his early films with then-wife Anna Karina in which she looks directly into the camera, as if in search of encouragement, succor, or some just plain answers. As in, for example this screen grab from Godard's 1964 Bande a Part. 

Do I believe that Swanberg's aims and methods in the here and now have much to do with Godard's aims and methods in the early '60s? That's actually a tough one, but I'm going to commit myself to "no." Nevertheless, I do see Lewis' point as one worth grappling with. So. Let's continue grappling. 

UPDATE: Tom Russell has posted his lengthy comment in response to "The Cinema of Contingency" on his Son of a Seahorse blog, and I recommend it highly. In other news...hey, Mom, I finally made it into The New Yorker. Sort of. The magazine's Richard Brody puts in his two cents on the Swanberg perplex in his New Yorker blog, and as it happens, he is firmly in the pro camp, which may well be a source of some...well, I won't presume precisely what, for Swanberg champion Craig Keller, who's no fan of Brody or his Godard biography. Strange bedfellows, indeed. In the meantime, over at Spout, Karina Longworth drew some analogies between Swanberg's work and Steven Soderbergh's upcoming Girlfriend Experience, which made this GFE cast member go all "What you say?"

Some e-mail correspondents have promised further commentary, although a couple wonder whether "it's not too late." Craig's prediction that the fiery comments thread on my initial Swanberg post would soon "euthanize itself" may be true, or may not be. In the meantime, I'm still making notes on the below-gushed-over Henry Cow box for a future post (sure to be a traffic builder!) and going through Watchmaker Films' wonderful DVD presentation of Eagle Penell's The Whole Shootin' Match for a piece for the Auteurs. So I'm a bit otherwise engaged. Brody's citation of Philippe Garrel—a filmmaker I worship—as a director "whose work Swanberg's resembles," in that "Garrel film[s] his own stories, starring himself, his families, and his friends" is extremely provocative. To my mind, it's an object lesson that seemingly similar methods can yield wildly different results. Also that the vision one ends up depends—not ultimately, but quite a bit—on the vision one begins with. I believe Garrel's conception is considerably more, er, profound than Swanberg's. But I might table the discussion, at least from my end, until about a month from now, when Swanberg's latest feature, Alexander The Last, premieres at SXSW and IFC's Video on Demand. Perhaps I shall be pleasantly surprised.

Conundrum

I understand that I have no one but myself to blame for this predicament, but the idea that everyone who stops by this blog will be first greeted by the sight of a particular slack-jawed face (see the post below this one) is a little too much for me to bear. By all means, scroll down and read the pertinent post, but before doing so, enjoy this much more companionable image, of Claudia Cardinale, from Visconti's The Leopard. Thanks for your support.

The Cinema of Contingency: Notes on Swanberg

Joe Swanberg as Tim in LOL, Swanberg, Bewersdorf, Wells, 2006

I: Apologia

Why Swanberg? Why now?

Blame it on my snark.

In January, in the midst of some armchair commentary on the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, I noted Mr. Joe Swanberg’s pronouncements at a press breakfast at which IFC announced a partnership with the film arm of South By Southwest, in which IFC would provide VOD screenings of varied SXSW premieres simultaneous to those films’ screenings at the festival. One of the films is the latest from Swanberg, the young filmmaker whose works (frequently tagged as components of a not-quite movement dubbed “Mumblecore") are noted for their improvisational “realism” and the unusual candor of their depictions of sexual matters (e.g., Swanberg himself and varied other members of his casts engage in unsimulated sex acts therein). Swanberg’s musings on where the “interest” in his films began and ended solicited this rejoinder from your correspondent: “I think I speak for myself, and for many others, that when I hear about a new Swanberg picture my first question is "Does he show his schlong in it?" and if the answer is "Yes," my "interest" shrivels up like a Pac-Man that's just gotten it from Inky, Winky, Blinky AND Sue.”

Now, those who know me even slightly, or read this blog with some regularity, probably understand that when it comes to cheap jokes I pretty much have no superego. And my Swanberg joke was pretty cheap. But it elicited some impassioned defenses of Swanberg’s work from, at first, Craig Keller, a cinephile of great passion and erudition and one of the more forceful and tenacious arguers I know. I hadn’t been aware that Craig was such a, as I put it, “Swanbergian.” I was aware that at least one other formidable film writer on the Internet, Dan Sallitt, held Swanberg’s work in pretty high esteem. With Keller on his side, a potential front was coalescing. My post also received some intelligent comments from Tom Russell, a young independent filmmaker who’s both a Swanberg fan and associate.

If I’m going to come out and say that I for the most part reject the work that Joe Swanberg has put his name on thus far, it occurs to me that individuals such as Keller and Russell are entitled to some fuller accounting. I also wanted to take up a kind of formal challenge: to construct a rejection of Swanberg that would avoid the sort of snark I used in the above-mentioned Sundance post, and steer clear of the too-easy ad hominem attacks that Swanberg (some would say rather bravely) leaves himself open to. Before doing so, it’s incumbent on me, with my old-school journalistic ethics and all, to lay some cards on the table.