The Bridge

Tonight, the IFC cable channel rebroadcast The Bridge, an astonishing, heartbreaking, and brutally honest documentary about people who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The filmmakers secretly staked out the bridge throughout 2004 with multiple cameras, and ended up actually photographing 19 of the 24 people who took their lives by going over the railing. This shockingly unshocking footing is interspersed with interviews with loved ones, and stunning shots of the bridge itself.

But it's much more than that. This movie exists in a place almost beyond documentation, possessing the same weird combination of empathy and detachment seen in Gus Van Sandt's fictional Elephant.

Some have claimed the film is exploitive, but I think they're missing the point: The only way to approach the topic of suicide is with clear eyes and the understanding that you'll never understand it. That is, the more you see, the less you know. And that's the point where The Bridge stops being a movie and becomes something else entirely.

Or as one interviewee says:

I don't have any answers. Just a bunch of observations....

Oh, Snap!

From Josh Levin's review of Meet the Spartans in Slate:

Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, the Zucker Brothers, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it.

I have to disagree. Three minutes of the inside of a bear's disgestive system might be worse than Meet the Spartans. But worse than one of Michael Bay's craptastic blockbusters? Doubt it.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Some see online interaction as a way to engage each other, spread influence, change minds.

Perhaps.

And if that's what you think, I encourage you to hop on over to Salon and check out this discussion of atheism. There were 234 comments the last time I looked. Only two of which have been highlighted by the editors as noteworthy.

Let that be your first warning.

Best Comic Book Convention...Ever

Tony and I spent Saturday morning trolling the booths at the SPX, the small press expo, somewhere in the hinterlands of Maryland. I've never thought of myself as a "comic book guy." Shameless fanboy, perhaps. But comic books--while I understood how cool they could be--never really created any passion in me. This show changed my mind.

The floor was small but crowded. Almost every booth had a pile of objects to look through. Many were handmade or one-of-a-kind. Styles ranged from exquisite hand painted abstracts, to postmodern pen-and-ink cartoons. The artists were super friendly and everyone had a great story. (And by "great" I mean funny, weird, inspirational, and/or insane.)

I bought an autobiographical book called Shirtlifter from a supremely hot bear artist named Steve MacIsaac. He said it was more "artistic-y than pornographic-y." Having cruised through it last night, I guess he's correct. But it still plenty pornographic-y for me. I'm not sure I get the point of the whole thing, but I think that's commonplace among the small press people: Hold a magnifying glass up to the most arcane, commonplace, or otherwise invisible speck of reality (or surreality) and let it speak for itself.

On the way out, I bought a silkscreen of 16 little line drawings of the same dumpy little man in various states of dress.

I'll let that speak for itself, too.

PostSecret

PostSecret.org has been one of my favorite website/art installations for years. We had a chance to see Frank Warren, the artist behind the project, speak at a local bookstore. He's a very earnest, thoughtful, and apparently kind man, but I have to say his description of the project dimishes it a bit--just as one would expect any great work of art to eclipse its creator. There wasn't a lot of insight to be had, but we did get to see and hold a few actual secrets in our hands. That alone was worth the trip. There's surprising power in those little cards.

He Might Be an Evil Genius and All...

Went with the usual suspects to see Merrily We Roll Along at Signature last night. A few things:

• When I turned the corner, I thought for one second I was in a retirement home. I haven't seen that much grey hair since the DC Eagle circa 1990.


• I still hate musicals. Maybe not hate. Maybe...don't get. But I still hate wasting my time.


• My friends and family are funny people. And by funny, I mean random and vulgar.


• Lamb vindaloo is so hot, my saliva becomes poison.


• Stephen Sondheim may be an evil genius and all, but cliche is cliche. There, I said it.

Roxy Music: Jealous Guy

Less elemental (and more truly full of regret) than John Lennon's orginal, you definitely get the feeling Bryan Ferry is singing directly to Lennon after his murder. It's not a love song. It's a eulogy, from one giant to another.

You Are What You Eat (Dumplings)

Last night I watched one of the most disgusting and stomach churning movie I've ever seen. Dumplings, one of the so-called "Asia Extreme" movies that have been getting a lot of recent attention here in the States, is stunning to look at and has an enjoyably campy and operatic plot.

But director Fruit Chan really doesn't know when to stop. The plot? From IMDB.com:

To remain beautiful and young, a woman embarks in a sick and disgusting [quest] for a repugnant menu.

Unlike recent "torture porn" flicks that also push the boundaries of violence and gore, Dumplings doesn't implicate the viewer in the action--fortunately. You might lose your lunch anyway.

My First Time

Earlier this week, for the first time ever, I threw a book in the trash.

I was standing on the platform at the Mt. Vernon Square Metro station, reading Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. I'd been reading it for the last four days, and for those four days, the book had been pissing me off. But when I got to the point where Dubois, Heinlein's stand-in, began to deride the decadencies of twentieth century democracy--for more than 10 pages--I gave up.

Turns out, I could take the endless philosophical debates. I could take the fascistic utopia crap. And I could (barely) stomach the straw men arguments he used to prop up his militaristic house of cards. But all three? C'mon. I'm 44 years old. I don't have time to waste.

Besides, I've never had the patience for the brittle libertarianism common among the most devoted SF fans.

Survey says: Mean, boring, and wrong. Verdict: Compost.

All My Friends

Check out this article on Slate about LCD Soundsystem's song "All My Friends." The song--like every song on Sound of Silver--is fantastic. Like Talking Heads channeling the best drum & bass around. And I have a special place in my heart for anyone who can so devastatingly capture the melancholy of the aging cool guy. (For the serious fans, Franz Ferdinand has released a cover of the song that really does take the piss from New Order.)

Update: Masters of Horror

A few days ago, I provided a tepid review of the Masters of Horror television series on Showtime. I stand by that post. However, I just watched Joe Dante's second season entry, "The Screwfly Solution", and must say it bordered on genius. In fact, I'd say it was fantastic until the surprise ending, which--though cool and appropriate for the genre--sort of demoted the movie into just another SF narrative. For most episodes, that would be step up. But Dante is showing that maybe the limitations of the small screen are just what he needs. His first season show "Homecoming" is still the best so far.

His latest episode did include the single creepiest image in the entire series: A billboard of a woman in a bathing suit vandalized to look like she's wearing a burka. In the context of the plot, it was shocking in that it's not entirely unbelievable for our red state brothers.

Finally, if the masters are too scary for you, check this: The Amateurs of Horror and their tale of Douglas the Zombie.

Last Night

The usual suspects and I went into deepest Virginia to see The Witches of Eastwick at Signature Theatre. I'm no expert, but this seemed like just another mediocre musical to me. The songs were well sung, but unmemorable. And our front-row seats let us see all the cracks and seams in the productions. Surprising for the usually top-notch Signature. At least it had corny effects (like flying) and multiple crotch grabs.

Dinner at Xtra Virgin was also just OK, and only elevated to great heights by our unstable waiter who performed tricks, such as blaming others for his mistakes and trying to pour a martini from one glass to another--very, very badly. The saving grace: A live girl singer performing Pink Floyd's "Breathe" on acoustic guitar. The coup de grâce: A dense and warm chocolate and almond cake that was so comforting and delicious I want furniture made out of it.

Time Capsule Tuesdays: Schoolhouse Rocks

Schoolhouse Rocks is pretty much played out nowadays, thanks to all you lame hipsters out there. But when I was young, these cartoons really resonated. I remember sitting at my grandmother's house and at school watching and singing these songs. That's how ubiquitous they were. And while singing never helped my multiplication tables, the segment explaining how a bill becomes a law actually taught me something useful. Take that, Sunday School!

I'm posting Three Is a Magic Number for no other reason than the line "A man and a woman had a little baby. They had three in the family." My parents were divorced by this time, I had two brothers, and even then was super gay. So this song became one of my first clues that 1) the media lies, and 2) the expressed culture doesn't always reflect the actual culture. Fuckers.

Superstar

Since we seem to be in a 70's kind of mood today, here's Sonic Youth's cover of Superstar, the Carpenters weepie from '71. This particular meeting of the minds creates some exquisite dislocation, and bumps the Carpenters' ever-present creepiness to the forefront. SY thankfully drains the original's sappiness, only to reprocess it into yummy pop syrup!

Masters of Horror

I've been a fan of horror movies since I crept downstairs to watch Fantastic Voyage on my family's new color TV at the age of six. From that time on, I would watch anything, as long it was supposed to be scary or weird or gross. It's been a habit that's hard to break.

Showtime's Master of Horror series would seem to be right up my ally: A-list horror directors allowed to direct whatever they wanted with no restrictions. Except most aren't A-list directors. And there are restrictions. And most were only OK. So what went wrong?

Most of these guys are--unfortunately--past their prime. It happens to everyone. But those who work in the horror genre get hit especially hard. The empathy that comes with age really fucks with one's ability to be transgressive. For example, how many adults hit frogs with baseball bats? Why it that? Now you know why Land of the Dead lacks the bite of Dawn of the Dead.

Most of these guys need restrictions--of time, of budget, of talent--to be creative. Their best work lives in the cracks and subtext of their material. When you can do and show any and every thing, the mystery evaporates.

It is virtually impossible to be scary in one hour. Horror requires rhythm. Establishing rhythm in a hour takes a level of narrative skill these guys just don't have.

Still, some of these master still have the horror in them. Joe Dante's zombie satire Homecoming transcends as both a movie and political rant. Dario Argento heads into psychosexual territory, but ultimately pulls his punches in Jenifer. And Don Coscarelli of Phantasm fame almost hits a homerun with Incident on and off and Mountain Road--but monster design sinks this one fast.

The six-year-old in me hasn't given up. The 44-year-old, on the other hand, is keeping one finger on the remote.

BTW, one thing Masters of Horror does extremely well is start each episode with this inventive and creepy intro.

Sparkling Martini

Went to see world lounge act Pink Martini last night with Tony. I'd seen them once before in an indoor venue, and they were even better this time--despite the sultry temps and overcrowding picnic basketeers at Wolf Trap.

The song list--and, frankly, much of their between song patter--was a repeat, but the acoustics at Wolf Trap were amazing and lent a beautiful huskiness and depth to the sound: The tunes almost sounded new.

Highlights included the Bacharach-inspired Clementine and the swingy, lazy Hang on Little Tomato. Sadly, no Let's Never Stop Falling in Love. Sad because who would want to with a soundtrack like this?

On the Town

Went with the usual suspects to Signature's show Nest. What a strange night. Imagine the Ben Franklin story told with explicit sex, then end it with a hanging. Set to song. Hmmmm. Odd, but also oddly compelling. And the stylizations in the last third didn't grate on me as they normally would. Add the fact that I was able to eat everything on the table at the Thai restaurant earlier in the evening, and the sum is Excellent Night!

The Sopranos

I've been reluctant to add my voice to the endless--and it really seems to be endless--bitching and backslapping around the last episode of HBO's The Sopranos. But who can resist?

I fall firmly into the backslapping category; however, it had to grow on me. At first, the looooong blackout had me thinking the cat sat on the remote and turned TiVo off. But after a good night's sleep I began to understand its genius.

The show itself was intense yet oddly meandering, sublime and perfectly ordinary. Doesn't it make perfect sense that the last few minutes of the series would be all of those things, all at once? To be as ambivalent as any of the characters, plots, or themes?

As for the bitchers, let's chalk it up to rabid, loving fandom. I've seen fanboys throwdown over Star Trek vs. Star Wars. This is no different. Lame, true; but no different.

For the best example of this, read Tony Hendra's review at HuffPo. Clueless and weirdly antagonistic. If he felt like the guy at the party no one talks to, that should be his first clue. For added fun, read the comments to his post. My fav:

I agree. Everything I heard about the Sopranos--killing, cussing, pseudo-psycho-analysis --so turned me off that I never watched a minute of any episode. In spite of being somewhat deprived of such a piece of pop culture, I don't regret it. Such art as this, that glorifies the basest sort of behavior, is little more than scrawlings on the walls of the commode that 40 years of right wing assault on our society have turned our culture into.

Yes, she never watched it. Brava!