by
A S Hamrah
View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
Twice each month on Friday nights, the leaflet said, the Harmony Center for the Joyful Spirit hosts movies at the “Home of Gwendolyn and Daniel.” The mission of Oakland’s Harmony Center is to bring “Joy and Inspiration into our lives.” “What better way to do that than to get together with friendly people for an informal meal, enjoy a great film, and then have a lively discussion of the ethical and spiritual lessons of the film?” the leaflet asked. It described Gwendolyn and Daniel’s “24th floor penthouse apartment with a ‘top of the world’ view” where “movies are shown on our 58-inch plasma HDTV with Dolby Digital Surround Sound.” Instructions followed: “If possible, please call or email with your choice of pizza, meat or veggie. Please note that we maintain a shoeless household.” Now I knew I was in California. And I knew what being in California meant: no matter how spiritual the discussion, the pizza would suck.
kill me
California is death haunted compared to New York. Everything is still and spooky, the grass along the highways north of Oakland is dry and brown. New York moves in the frame-skip fast-forward of digital video. One thing replaces another, they build an IKEA in no time by paving over cobblestone streets in Brooklyn, and they demolish buildings from the 1850s to do it. In New York, even the ghosts get priced out. In the quiet counties of Marin and Contra Costa, they linger.
It never occurred to me that I’d rather see Lynndie England in a movie than Norah Jones. Nothing works in My Blueberry Nights. Even Wong Kar-wai’s famous ability to pick music deserts him. Regardless of what’s playing on the sound track, it’s “After Midnight” you hear — the film looks like a ten-year-old beer commercial starring Eric Clapton.
What has Wong Kar-wai been doing for the last eight years? None of it makes sense. He seems more lost than any of his characters. Today we live off revivals of Days of Being Wild or As Tears Go By, but when In the Mood for Love came out in 2001 it was a film you pressed close, you looked into its eyes, it was tragic, true, and hot. Its sound track got us through many nights or car rides home — “Quizás, quizás, quizás.” Seven years later, it’s over. The thrill is gone, the nights are cold.
ouch
I can’t say anything about Juno because I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it because I hated Little Miss Sunshine so much. After I saw Little Miss Sunshine I really wished I hadn’t. I refuse to make that mistake again. If that’s what a feel-good movie is, I can’t stand to feel that good. It’s physically painful for me to feel that good.
Before and during the festival, about fifty films are screened during the day for the press. I saw forty of them. I missed one because of a therapy appointment. (Even though I am a film critic, I hope to be able to have normal relationships someday.) I missed another because I had a hangover and couldn’t face the hour-long trip to Lincoln Center from my apartment in Brooklyn. Two I paid to see, and went on Sunday afternoons after buying tickets using the festival’s complicated and anxiety-inducing website, with its countdown clock.
i love him
Lately the acting in TV commercials has gotten really good. The other night I saw an ad for some company that helps people get rid of timeshares they don’t want anymore and I thought, Man, that was great, really affecting. That could have been an episode of Togetherness on HBO, if that was still on. Car commercials are particularly satisfying these days. Thirty-second-long one-acts with movie-level production design and cinematography, each one is a humanist masterpiece featuring quality acting that fits right in with streaming drama. In one, a wedding party gets caught in the rain and they can’t walk to the outdoor altar so they have to jump in their mini-SUV to get there. You really get a feel for the relationships between these four people in that thirty seconds. Car manufacturers know our little victories are hard-won. Automakers just get us. In other ads, the family drama of auto insurance plays out just as insightfully.