Watched: Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (The Merchant of Four Seasons)

I really like Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I remember seeing this documentary about him and his contemporaries which really painted him as kind of a junkie egomaniac lunatic, but then again, what artistic genius isn't at least a little bit of one of those things? While he did come of like a bit of the tortured genius, he was also a funny guy. For me, his movies' sense of humor, their steady pacing, their extremely careful and deliberate use of music and ambient noise, and their heavy symbolism strikes a chord. Plus the guy knows how to use a pan. Really well.

I can also appreciate his constant reusing of the same actors, something plenty of directors I love (David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Guest, Sergio Leone- off the top of my head) do. Do directors this because they find actors (and crew, too- just look at Lynch's collaborations with Badalamenti or Aronofsky's with Mansell) who just work for them? I think it makes Fassbinder even more interesting because he was such an incredibly difficult person. Just look at his relationship with Hannah Schygulla, who has showed up in so many of his films (including this one). Apparently for a while she refused to work with him because he was so insufferable. But like Herzog and Klinski, she and Fassbinder made amazing, wonderful movies together. Was it because of, or in spite of their troubled relationship? Or were these relationships so tumultuous because of the work being wrung from them? I'm sure someone has written more about this, and I'm just being intellectually lazy. Maybe I'll spend the day doing some research.

Another one in this film who pops up again and again in his stuff is Irm Hermann, who plays the condescending, sort-of sexy, ambivalent wife to pretty great effect here. I think I liked her better as the masochistic assistant in The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, just like I liked Schygulla and Klaus Löwitsch better as the doomed Hermann and Maria Braun than as poor Hans Epp's old war buddy and sister. But this is what kind of makes his casting these people over and over again so great- not only do we get to see just how much talent they have, but we can actually pick and choose our favorite version of them.

But perhaps because of these other, and in my mind better, options, The Merchant of Four Seasons is not my favorite of Fassbinder's stuff. I like it more than Katzelmacher (which also featured Schygulla and Irm Hermann) but then I like most movies more than Katzelmacher. Except maybe Star Trek: Nemesis. Fuck that movie.

So yeah, even though I think this explores economics and post-war German relationships in a really interesting way, most of Fassbinder's stuff seems to do that, and I liked it better in The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant or Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. They all explore many of the same ideas, of survival and the need for love/validation; how these two needs clash and collude, what happens when one wins out over the other, and what it means to even be considering the two in a Germany that may never be what it once was.

That said, this still has some great stuff.

Also, poor Hans Epp. He just can't win, can he?

I swear Fassbinder has used this exact shot in other movies. Irm Hermann is kind of a weird looking actress- she's got sort of a doughy, uninteresting face sometimes (like here, and in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) but then other time she can look really beautiful, like she does in Bitter Tears of PVK. She's in amazing shape (I should know, since it wouldn't be a Fassbinder film if there weren't a gratuitous shot of a woman naked once every 20 minutes!) and yet sometimes she just looks so utterly frumpy and potatoesque. I guess that's a tribute to how much she brings and takes away to/from her character with just her face and body language. So, kudos Irm Hermann! For being kind of unusual looking and making the most of it. Actually, she looks kind of Kirsten Dunsty in this shot, doesn't she? I think that might be a fair description of her. Irm Hermann: the proto-Kirsten Dunst, except more potatoey, talented, and German.

La Music Notturna Delle Strade De Madrid No. 6, Op. 30, from the Master and Commander soundtrack. It's composed by Luigi Boccherini. Not sure who is performing it though. I think this is a pretty well known piece, but then again what do I know? Not a lot, when it comes to classical music. I listen to a lot of soundtracks at work though, and this one has really been growing on me. I think it really picks up and gets interesting, aurally speaking, around the 4:00 minute mark. And then again around the 6:00 minute mark. The rest is really beautiful too, obviously. Plus the whole thing is almost ten minutes long, which really helps pass the time while working.

Umlauf Statue Garden

There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Austin City Limits

This was a fun, albeit long, weekend. I barely have any pictures worth posting from the festival because all I had on me was my phone the whole time, which takes subpar pictures on a good day. But I'll post the few worth posting...

After getting out of work on Friday, I walked North from my office building to Zilker Park. I was incredibly relieved to find that the ticket I had bought off of some random guy on Craigslist was legit. Thanks Austin, for staying semi-honest! (Semi-honest because I have not forgotten nor forgiven the litany of fake apartment and job listings I've had to wade through recently. I suspect this is more about Craigslist than Austin, but I'm holding the city responsible too.)

I did miss the Black Keys. Yes, this is sad. Hopefully I'll see them at some point. I also missed Miike Snow and The Mountain Goats, who played Friday morning. I would've liked to see them live. At the NJFF last year we showed a documentary that was basically just concert footage of John Darnielle doing his thing. It sounded okay (I didn't watch it). Mostly that screening is memorable to me because a woman and her son showed up without checking to see what we were showing; they bought their tickets and entered the theater only to emerge angry and perplexed about 20 minutes later. What the hell kind of trick were we trying to play on them? Why weren't we showing a real movie? We gave them their money back and they went away quietly but I'll never forget the distrust in that woman's eyes... It was like she had found out her whole life was founded upon a lie... We usually showed such good things, she thought she could trust us...

Anyway! Phish played Friday night, they were great. I caught most of Spoon and some of The Sonic Youth/Vampire Weekend while I was wandering around. It was like putting the ipod on shuffle, kind of. Good times. I saw a buttload of acts on Saturday, my favorite of which were Gogol Bordello and Matt & Kim. Really energetic bands- the former because they are crazy gypsy tramps and the latter just seemed really excited to be here. Kim danced on the audience's hands. It was cool. I was disappointed by Pete Yorn though, who played Saturday afternoon and whose album Musicforthemorningafter I have loved since high school. His sound was not good.

But then! Sunday. Oh Sunday. What a wealth of greatness was Sunday. I started off the day with Blind Pilot, who played most of 3 Rounds and a Sound, which I have probably listened to somewhere in the thousands of times at this point. They played a few new songs too, which were lovely. It was perfect, and if you ask me about it to my face I will deny it but... I may or may not have gotten a little verklempt when they played "Oviedo". You didn't hear it from me. Well, you did. But I'll never admit it.

Also very good on Sunday: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, whose set was eeextremely jam-filled. They sort of played snippets of their songs in between instrumental stuff. Or at least, that's what it seemed like at the time. I don't know. It was late afternoon, the last day of the festival. I was dazed and dehydrated. For all I know they didn't show up and I dreamed the whole thing. So in hindsight the overall performance was sort of cool. Probably. I think.

The first of the last two acts I caught were The Flaming Lips, who were basically awesome. I wish they had played earlier as I was tired by that point, but I was still glad to see them. They're not my favorite band in the whole wide world, but they put on a good show.

The last act I saw was The National, who were disappointing, although I was way back on the hill, reposin', taking in the sights and the beautiful Sunday evening. I like them mostly because in the dead of winter, when you're stuck in New Brunswick (or, God help you, on Livingston Campus) and you've gotta go to class, and the temperature is dropping into the single digits and the wind coming off the Raritan feels like it's driving tiny metal slivers into the marrow of your bones and seperating the flesh of your face from your skull, and the sun's disappearing but it's 4:30 FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS KIND AND GOOD, WHY?!....there's something about bands like The National or Joy Division or The Arcade Fire that make you feel a little bit better about life. You're not the only one who is miserable or confused or tired. You are not alone. There are others thinking about dark, sad things too. And they're doing okay.

Maybe not the best band to see live? Not exactly positive mental associations happening there.

So yeah. That was my festival experience. I skipped out on some of the bigger acts like Norah Jones, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, and the Eagles, mostly because I'm not really a huge fan of those acts and felt kind of ambivalent towards seeing them live. But the weekend was still definitely worth it, if just to see a crowd of people bouncing around in time with "Start Wearing Purple", hear Phish bust out Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll", or watch Blind Pilot make fans out of n00bs. Not kidding about that one, after their set was over the guy standing next to me (he was a total bro, but I will forgive him that) turned to me and said, "Who was that? I have to remember them when I get home..."

Blind Pilot, I said. That was Blind Pilot, friend.

I actually saw Blind Pilot twice, because I went to their aftershow on Friday night, at Stubb's. As you may have guessed from the picture. They sounded great but I was drunk and exhausted so I only stayed for the first few songs.

There was a veritable wealth of people-watching to be had but this was far and away my favorite. This is the mom who just wanted to hang out, read a John Grisham novel in her fancy beach chair, and enjoy a beer. But no, the fucking festival had to take over her park. Did she roll over like a beached whale? No sir. She fought back. She read her paperback, 30 feet away from the stage, and pretended like it was just another day at Zilker. That's right, mysterious Mom character. Don't let them push you around.

I have to say in general, Austin had their shit together for this. There were literally hundreds of port-o-potties everywhere, free water stations, local vendors selling things for $5-$8, an interesting local art market, an entire army working the merchandise tent, and they were giving away ACL t-shirts to anyone who collected a big trash bag worth of recycled beer cans/water bottles/whathaveyou. It kept things really clean and the free water (that was apparently triple filtered or something? I don't know but it was AWESOME) kept me from being very sad. Huzzah for Austin!

BONUS:

Warrioooooors... Come out and play-aaaaay!!! I loved this movie so much and at some when I have gathered my thoughts together on why exactly it is that I loved it I will document it here. I have a bunch of pictures. It'll be a great post. Just you wait.

Watched: Sons of Anarchy

Love it. Love the Hamlet overtones, love the characters, love the amazing caliber of character actors and longtime tv alumnae amassed here, love the ridiculous and over the top plot twists, love the violence, love Charlie Hunnam's very nice face. I don't really think it makes any sense to call one show or another the "best thing on television", because so many shows are reaching for completely different things. But I will say that of all the shows I either caught up with or watched in their entirety this summer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daria, The Unusuals, Lost [way back in March], The Guild, Wives and Daughters, Heroes, Skins, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, True Blood, Glee, Sherlock) NO show was as addictive or entertaining as this one.

Needless to say, I am thoroughly hooked. Morally ambiguous outlaw types policing a small town in California? It's like Peter Pan, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Mad Max rolled up into a ball of APPEALING.

Against Unworthy Praise

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.

What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.

-Yeats

(one of my favorites)

Watched: Legends of the Falls

1. The youngest brother enlists in the army to fight in WWI and the other brothers must go. No discussion. No, hey, I know we've been protecting this little terd our whole lives but he is like, at least in his late teens now and maybe he needs some sort of grip on reality. Also, his fiancee is the one who convinces her to go. Does anyone say, hey fiancee, tell him not to go? Of course not.

2. Brad Pitt then blames himself for obvious and inevitable death of younger brother resulting in him going home to sleep with brother's fiancée then run away for a while to travel the world? Or something? Whatever. I hated the "can't be tamed" plot device because Brad Pitt is not really that a strong of an actor in this and he comes off more as solipsistic and spoiled than wild. Stupid.

3. What's her face then married Aiden Quinn. Right choice, if you ask me, which you didn't but I'm going to tell you anyway. Quinn is definitely the hottest brother. But oh! Is she really happy with the prosperous, honorable brother who asked to marry her and is in love with her instead of the jackass that slept with her then ran away, never bothered to write except to say "Marry another", and then returns to expect her still waiting?

4. Of course not. So she kills herself because she can't have a baby and she hates her life and Brad Pitt has 2 babies with the Native American woman that he knew as a little girl (...little grossed out by that...) who he has now married. Funny how she turned into a beautiful woman from a prepubescent child while he was away and he is still.... 30? 35? Serious makeup fail. I get that he's still supposed to be hot but honestly that just made the whole grossness of him marrying her worse.

5. Native American woman dies because Brad Pitt is a jackass who thinks all of a sudden that he's the smart one (he's not) and tried to get into the bootlegging business. So some dude accidentally shoots her while trying to send Pitt a message.

6. I don't even remember what happens after this point. Anthony Hopkins dies at some point. Oh and Aiden Quinn and Hopkins have a falling out because Quinn wants to be a politician and Hopkins doesn't like his sponsors or something? Oh, honestly. I've spent way too much time typing up all these stupid plot points as is.

7. This movie has a decent score from James Horner and some great scenic shots but the drama is SO overwrought, predictable, and the characters so one-note that I was fairly bored. I don't remember anyone's name because who cares. I know it ends with Pitt dying as an old man in a fight with a bear (maybe the one he stabbed as a kid?) which was fine, I guess. I don't know. I'm too overwhelmed with my apathy for this movie to consider it further.

Watched: Hunger

So I've watched a lot of movies concerning harrowing subject matter, but I was still barely able to watch the last 15 minutes of this. Hunger is about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, specifically about Bobby Sands's involvement. But I think what makes this film so interesting is that Sands, played by Michael Fassbender, doesn't even show up until around the halfway mark.

We start with a guard soaking his bruised and bloodied fists and follow him through his morning ritual. We move on to the first day of a new IRA prisoner, watch him and his roommate as they fight back against their imprisonment in whatever ways they can. Then finally we get to Sands and his long talk with a priest before he embarks on the hunger strike that kills him. I think in some ways the the method is a bad idea if director Steve McQueen wanted the audience to empathize with and cheer for Sands he failed. But then, that doesn't seem to be his intention.

Considering the amount of detail and time he gives to the guard's life and his abrupt death later as well as the moment of grace given to an otherwise nameless, faceless riot officer, I'd say McQueen is more interested in showing the humanity and brutality of the whole situation rather than making Sands any kind of hero. This becomes obvious during his conversation with the priest, who basically tells him that doing a hunger strike is going to kill more people unnecessarily and in a smuggled note that tells him: negotiate. But as Sands tells the priest in his analogy to the injured foal he killed as child, he has always been the one capable of doing the awful things that needed to be done.

Then he starts the hunger strike and shit gets real. Like I said, this movie really focuses on the humanity of this situation, which includes: smearing the prison walls with feces, smuggling things in and out of the jail in various orifices, channeling urine out of the rooms and into the corridors, copious amounts of blood, dirt, and brutality. The detailed depiction of the way these prisoners are either cooped up in filthy cells or being banged around the otherwise metal/concrete prison brings home their pain and decay. But when Sands begins fasting the camera spares no one the gritty details of starving to death: the weeping, ugly sores, the vomiting, the gnarled sinews; it's all there and Sands leaves the guard's story and the other prisoners to hone in entirely on the breaking down on this man's body.

In short, this movie is incredibly hard to watch. But I think it's worth it if only to understand, if you any doubts, how harrowing and complicated the Irish political situation really was and what it means to sit and fester in a jail cell, or even die very slowly (Sands starved for something like 66 days) for something you believe in.

Also, Fassbender is amazing. The fact that he starved himself down to Christian Bale a la The Machinist weight is one thing, the fact that he makes Bobby Sands extremely sympathetic and infuriating is another. The fact that he is also an extremely handsome guy is probably irrelevant, but I just thought I'd put that out there.