Spoon: Girls Can Tell
This is a great, understated album that merits repeated plays. Spoon have made a literate, rocking, breakthrough record that occupies a funny place--the songs are not unconventional, per se, yet they're somehow really special. Girls Can Tell displays the emotional resonance and big rock power of, say, Thin Lizzy and Mott the Hoople; the sonically referential, indie-rock smarts of a band like Versus; and amazing hooks that recall Colin Blunstone of the Zombies. Like Jennyanykind, Moviola, and the Lilys, this Austin, Texas, trio has chosen to work on perfecting their craft without paying much heed to mainstream or trends. In spite of (but mostly because of) wrenching breakup-centered lyrical material delivered in a very real, matter-of-fact way, Girls Can Tell is one of those life-affirming pop albums you know you'll return to in years to come. --Mike McGonigal (*****)
Michael Hardt: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Empire (2000)—the surprise hit that made its term for U.S global hegemony stick and presciently set the agenda for post–9/11 political theory on the left—was written by this same somewhat unlikely duo: Hardt, an American political scientist at Duke University, and Negri, a former Italian parliament member and political exile, trained political scientist and sometime inmate of Rome's Rebibbia prison. This book follows up on Empire's promise of imagining a full-blown global democracy. Though the authors admit that they can't provide the final means for bringing that entity about (or the forms for maintaining it), the book is rich in ideas and agitational ends. The "multitude" is Hardt and Negri's term for the earth's six billion increasingly networked citizens, an enormous potential force for "the destruction of sovereignty in favor of democracy." The middle section on the nature of that multitude is bookended by two others. The first describes the situation in which the multitude finds itself: "permanent war." The last grounds demands for and historical precursors of global democracy. Written for activists to provide a solid goal (with digressions into history and theory) toward which protest actions might move, this timely book brings together myriad loose strands of far left thinking with clarity, measured reasoning and humor, major accomplishments in and of themselves. (****)
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Ital look great at this party last night....So fucking cool. They appear as if they actually have internal lives and individual opinions and talents--'cause they do.
Quite a few of the other humans at the link below were recently kidnapped and returned to us demonic, red carpet-walking robots, however.
Link: The Costume Institute's Party of the Year: Party Coverage on Style.com.
An absolute Wit favorite.
"The film was a commercial failure at the time of its initial release, but a favorable critical response and numerous television showings over the years have helped it to develop a cult following. Fans of the film enjoy the wild political satire, fast paced narrative and colorful set designs, as well as the fine ensemble cast led by James Coburn in what is generally considered one of his finest comedic roles. Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden, William Daniels, Joan Darling, and Arte Johnson, among other cast members, also give standout performances. The film scores many amusing and surprisingly prescient points about privacy concerns, specifically regarding the U.S. Government’s intrusions into the private lives of its citizens."
Link: The President's Analyst - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
We of Wit are happy to champion an overdog like they're an underdog, and here on the Staircase we find male ego completely bracing. We also like the confidence it takes to wade into any psychological swamp, a trait we rather share (and we have the scars to prove it.)
So we have to weigh in already and say that Quentin Tarantino's idea for a new genre, the "Southern" (as discussed in this week's London Telegraph below) is completely brilliant. This seems to indicate a Civil War movie is in the works.
World War II's moral clarity doesn't seem to fit into Tarantino's ethical universe as limned by his previous films, though it says here that's what he's also working on. This idea seems to dull to me, and the quotation from other movies is starting to seem like a psychic defense. We at Wit say fuck all the genres and all the other directors. If he's really gonna make a great war picture he needs to go this mission alone.
This director's characters are often extremely rhetorically gifted. We know what he did with the bible in Pulp Fiction and it would be great to see what he'd do with the Gettysburg Address.
"'I want to explore something that really hasn't been done,' he says. 'I want to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that
America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to.'
'But I can deal with it all right, and I'm the guy to do it. So maybe that's the next mountain waiting for me.'
It's a safe bet that his "southern" will also include homages to several other movie genres."
Link: Quentin Tarantino: I'm proud of my flop | Stars And Stories | Film | Arts | Telegraph.
The Library Of Congress' copy of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand, above.
Below, filmmaker Mike White writes a rather mealy mouthed New York Times editorial on filmic violence with an utter misapprehension of the mental technology of fantasy as its basis of argument. It's irresonsible for an artist NOT to depict the harshness of society realistically should he or she choose to do so, especially with the terrible complexity of contemporary life. The last thing we need in this climate of censorship and surveillance and control is an artist(!) promoting measures that would grant studios or ratings boards yet more control over writers and directors.
"Most of us who chose careers in this field were seduced by cinema’s spell at an early age. We know better than anyone the power films have to capture our imaginations, shape our thinking and inform our choices, for better and for worse. At the risk of being labeled a scold — the ultimate in uncool — I have to ask: before cashing those big checks, shouldn’t we at least pause to consider what we are saying with our movies about the value of life and the pleasures of mayhem?"
Except for this comment: Who could then have supposed the bloated girl bully this powerful man was to become? Unless, of course, he was at it even then.
Wit was harassed and smeared and threatened after writing a mildly critical review of the director above's daughter's film Lost In Translation for Artforum.
It was suggested to me by many people far more in the know than I, and despite my months of amused incredulity, that the senior Coppola was likely responsible. It was also suggested that this response was typical.
The illustration above seems to jokingly hint at the juvenile self destructive streak that might cause a grown man to actually do something this petty and dumb.
I live in the rectory of St. Mark's In The Bowery Church, by the way. I'll be waiting for Gino and Vincenzo to come and off me for referring offhandedly in this review to the Oedipus complex, a Freudian mental technology discovered nearly 100 years ago and considered by most literary educated people to be universal.
We don't cut and run here at the Staircase. Wit is just another soldier for art after all--one who knows it's far better to point one's guns outward.
Link to article in question: Twin Bills: Theresa Duncan on women and the man in two recent films..
If there were no cherry blossoms in the world,
My mind would be peaceful. --Fujiwara Norihira
Under pink petals and raging with allergies,
I read the screenplay outside anyway. --The Wit Of The Staircase
'Control' is picked for festival's Directors' Fortnight
26.Apr.07 12:32pm
"The forthcoming Joy Division movie based on the life of late frontman Ian Curtis is to feature at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The biopic, directed by Anton Corbijn, has been chosen to open the Directors' Fortnight section of the prestigious event next month.
Based on the book 'A Touching Distance', by Curtis' widow, 'Control' trails the final years of the Joy Division singer, who committed suicide in 1980.
Corbijn's film debut feature focuses on the singer's rise to fame, as well as his relationships and his struggle with epilepsy.
Leeds newcomer Sam Riley and German actress Alexandra Maria Lara will play the part of his lover Annik Honore. Curtis' widow is played by Oscar-nominated actress Samantha Morton."
Link: Joy Division film to be screened at Cannes | News | NME.COM.
Anybody who doesn't recognize the trend described in the NY Times article below toward stipping powerful women of their jobs and their social rank as a deliberate cultural strategy on the part of the Neocons is, like, high.
Working women equals Democrats equals liberal Hollywood equals massively Democratic California's electoral college votes.
Wit loved Hal Hartley's No Such Thing, the film where the great women Sarah Polley and Julie Christie met as actresses. No Such Thing is so romantic and imaginative, and also very coherent for Hartley, who I secretly rather enjoy despite the whiff of NYU film professor assholishness.
"So it is not surprising that she took some persuading to play the lead in Away From Her, the first feature film directed by the young Canadian actress Sarah Polley.
Ms. Polley, 28, who had Ms. Christie in mind when she adapted Alice Munro’s short story 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' for the screen, was nonetheless determined to have her in her movie. 'I knew I’d get a few noes before I got a yes,' Ms. Polley said.
Julie Christie met Ms. Polley in 2000 when they were both filming Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing — Ms. Polley in the lead, Ms. Christie in a small role.
'I fell totally in love with her,' Ms. Christie recalled.
'Of course, when she sent me this screenplay, I said no. But she kept on and on. She said she felt like a stalker. In the end, I thought, if I don’t do it, I’ll miss the opportunity of being with her on her first feature film'.”
Link: Julie Christie - Away From Her - New York Times.
Above, 66 year old Christie last year, more beautiful than ever...
