Un Prophète

I want to go to prison in France! There the lady guards say "please" as they order you around, everyone gets his own baguette with every meal, and dudes on the playground wear fitted brown suede jackets, while others sun themselves with reflective tanning devices.

Everyone's talking about Un Prophète. Jacques Audiard's follow-up to 2005's The Beat My Heart Skipped is indeed good, but I fail to see how it merits the extent of the critical acclaim that it's received. It's such a masturbatory boy-director Tarantino/Doyle/Godfather-esque etc derivative bit of aimlessness in many ways, that I would write it off were it not touching and illuminating in other ways. I like the matter-of-fact and poetic way Malik (Tahar Rahim) is haunted by the fellow prisoner he is forced to kill, for example. And this might not be an indication of it's greatness, but every mention of literacy in the first half of it made me tear up uncontrollably. I'm loving the films coming out of France (and Europe in general) over the past decade dealing with immigrant populations and the richness and realness that gives lives and stories. Watching the prison interiors of Prophète evoked for me Steve McQueen's Hunger (2009), and Manijeh Hekmat's Women's Prison (2002), and I think that has as much to do with the common cinematic depictions as with the foreign depictions of prison-life. But each of those films was dealing with prisoners quite different from the straight-up criminals depicted here, and it's this glorified corruptness- even with the unjust truths it also portrays- that keeps me from really buying the film.

Andréa described this film as "powerfully depressing" as we left the theater.  I think that's saying something, right?

I hate Scarlett Johansson

For lack of absolutely anything better to watch at Andrea and Mark's one night, I found The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick,  2008) on their DVR. Watchable? Yes. Worth it? Questionable. It's always somehow titillating to see sexuality depicted in far off history. But this is so Hollywoodized, I could not tell you whether it's at all accurate.

I guess one of the main draws might be the costumes, one of which Lucas and I saw on display at the Landmark on Pico a while back (this green number depicted above). But I guess that brings me back to...fluff.

Plus, I hate Scarlett Johansson. So it was kind of fun to see her Mary Boleyn get destroyed by Natalie Portman, I mean Anne Boleyn. But then, of course, she got to get all self-righteous in the end. Damn.

alice in wonderland, 3D

The latest adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Tim Burton, is in 3D and aesthetically at full throttle. I took Micah to see it, mostly for the air conditioning and cocoon of a movie theater, and thus arrived with few expectations. I left feeling surprisingly inspired, empowered and thoroughly entertained.

Mia Wasikowska plays a superb 19 yr old Alice. She embodies an unlikely mix of tomboyish insistence, adolescent insolence, and a coming-of-age intelligence that is, in sum, refreshing to encounter in a big budget film. Of course her best lines are lifted straight out of the texts, but they are perfectly believable coming out of Wasikowska's mouth. The other strong acting highlights are Helena Bonham Carter, as a most fitting evil but vulnerable Queen of Hearts, and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, who does, literally, steal the show in almost every scene he is physically in. The nearly tactile nature of Wonderland that Burton and all his massive team managed to effect allowed for a magical experience of that other world of lore.

Special effects aside, the "moral" of the story that especially moved me was the transformation of Alice from an uncertain, yielding teenager to an empowered and discerning young woman. The question, "are you THE Alice?" echoes throughout the film, as Alice gets thrown into an adventure that feels like someone's else with the same name. She can't believe that she could possibly be the protagonist of a prophetic slaying of the Jabberwocky story, and yet, by the end of the film, she realizes that she is much more than she thought, and that she has not, in fact, lost any of her "muchness". As is so often in life, girls do lose their sense of innate confidence and agency through the vagaries of adolescence and adulthood, from the immense societal and familial pressures to be selfless, to caretake others at all costs and, above all, to accommodate men. When Alice returns to the original world, she knows exactly how to politely but firmly decline the offer of marriage by a man she does not love, and sets off to pursue an unmarried career in the unknown. It may have been the especially susceptible day I was having, but I found this to be a much needed reminder of the work I have yet to do to remember how much power I have to make fearless choices.

Daddy Longlegs

Having been a second parent but not a dad for the last five years makes me an unusual watcher of films about fathering. Daddy Longlegs, directed by brothers Josh and Ben Safdie, is an autobiographical film about their incompetent and delinquent father, Lenny, who is played by Ronald Bronstein. I found myself constantly chagrined and irritated throughout the film, as I watched the hopelessly narcissistic and negligent dad attempt to parent his kids for 2 weeks out of the year. As is often the case, the single father is represented as the absolutely magical vessel for FUN, while he simultaneously fails to create all the most basic structures and boundaries that are foundational to a happy childhood. The Safdie brothers and Ronald Bronstein were extremely defensive of any gender based readings of their film in the Q&A that followed the screening, but Emily and I could not find any other useful lens through which to interpret the film. It was terribly problematic in its "vilification" of the mother as an older, less attractive bitchier version of Lenny's girlfriend, despite the Safdie brothers' vehement denial of any such negative characterization of their mother. Overall, the three of them were shockingly bad at discussing the film and the questions that came up in the sense that they seemed really offended and unable to really engage with any of the questions that any of us had, probably as a result of it being such a personal project. In a certain light, the film is about custody, which has become an increasingly loaded and hot button issue (eg., the Fathers' rights movement). From another angle, it's about lionizing and romanticizing a selfish and inept father figure. Either way, it's a self-referential, insular aggrandizement of a tired brand of masculinity and paternity.

Sunset Community Film Festival

I've been a fan of Wayland He's Life of Wayland since Rebecca Devlin first shared it with me a few years ago. At the 6th Annual Sunset Community Film Festival, held at Ulloa Elementary School in San Francisco on March 5, He made dozens more fans. His latest short, a funny animation called Worm War I, won the audience award for best film, and I heard many a serious discussion between 6th graders and uproarious laughter from the 3rd graders sitting behind me about the video.

The entire program, chosen and compiled by youth media group SCREAM members, was very good and it was professionally well presented. The best part was sitting in a theater full of an audience of young people, watching a program entirely made and presented by young people, and experiencing the extreme pleasure of everyone involved. Half of the time I had no idea why they were laughing, but they sure were having a good time.

Barbara Hammer and Silas Howard at the Hammer

What a great night. I wish this conversation could have lasted a lot longer- they were just getting started. But what an excellent combination, whoever thought this one up!

WTF

I can't believe I finally finished it. After three viewings over the course of two weeks I have finally finished watching David Lynch's enigmatic Inland Empire (2006). Clearly (well, I use that word loosely...), this film is about Laura Dern's character Nikki Grace's psyche. It's about psychology, movies and reality vs. make-believe in a hodge-podge of visual styles and genres, but mostly horror. I bet if I watched it again I'd get it, but I can't imagine I will ever, ever be driven to do that. If you know me, you know that I'm all about film and media that make you go, "WTF?!" But WTF?! And Whatever.