Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen is my idol; I love his work and I know more about him than any other filmmaker, though there are plenty of directors I think are better. His 43rd film as a director is Vicky Cristina Barcelona; we saw it yesterday at Bay Street, where they had some difficulty projecting it correctly but eventually figured it out. It should not have been such a challenge to frame it up, but anyway.

I am pleased to report that it's his best work in ten years, surpassing Match Point, and certainly blowing away everything (and Anything) else he's done since at least Sweet and Lowdown. Apart from that film's brilliant performances and lush design, I find its structure lacking; VCB is probably better overall, in its breezy, romantic good humor and consistency. Not that this kind of ranking is particularly meaningful except for Woodyphiles like myself but, knowing his work as I do, I automatically try to fit each new film into the oeuvre.

Even his low points, and there have been many in the last couple decades (in my opinion, his last great film was Husbands and Wives in 1992), have some interest for me as I see him shuffling and reshuffling his deck of conceits, jokes, characters, tics, locations, traits, situations, themes and conversations with each film. In VCB he pulls a pretty good hand, with fine, sexy performances, consistent humor throughout, light, deft direction and the inspiration of a luminous new setting.

And I enjoyed this piece, from the New York Times, very much. Classic stuff.

Outside Lands

This weekend is the giant Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park. Kim and I went to the first night last night, primarily to see Radiohead. I have not gone to too many festival shows and I doubt I will go to too many in the future. It's a total clusterfuck and just not worth it.

I didn't mind how difficult it was to actually get there - we took the BART, tried to get a cab from downtown, gave up, went to the Muni, gave up, took the Muni back to Powell and looked for a cab again. We eventually found one.

Inside the park, it was cool until we tried to go see Beck. Kim and I got in separate lines for beer and food and an hour later had beer and food. It was just stupid. I'm actually going back on Sunday to see Wilco; I'm going to try to smuggle in some beer because fuck the organizers and their fucking bullshit. I basically paid $160 bucks so Kim and I could stand in line for food and beer and then hear Radiohead from half a mile away. Plus my sciatica was about as bad as it's been in six months.

There was bike parking:
Some delicious oysters:
Looking this way from the beer line, I thought I heard some music that might have been being played by Beck:Looking the other way, you just get the sense that humans are really stupid creatures. Why would any intelligent creature want to be doing this?
Emanating from that reddish and greenish area, below, were the sounds of the Greatest Band on Earth. Well, it wasn't all bad.

DIY Days

Last Sunday I attended DIY Days at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. My friend Maria, a classmate from CalArts, suggested that we go, so I have her to thank for getting me off my ass. It was an inspiring day of panels and case studies about very independent filmmaking, alternative distribution and self-promotion for your film projects. We heard from Tiffany Shlain, Arin Crumley, Caveh Zahedi and Lance Weiler among many others.

Here Maria is arguing with her friend, Ben, about whether it makes sense to buy people you're trying to network with, or pitch to, or from whom you want something, a cup of coffee:

My favorite talk of the day happened in the later afternoon, when the schedule was starting to bunch up, so it was not given quite as much time as I would have liked. It was called "Cinema and the Singularity," which title intrigued me enough to encourage me to stay when I had been contemplating leaving earlier.

The question the speakers were asking was rather mind-blowing to me. They asked, "What would singularity cinema look like?" A different way of putting that might be, "What happens when the stories start writing themselves?"

This was meaningful to me because, in a sense, it was a subject of my thesis film, Nervous, but I was only scratching the surface of those issues. The idea, though, of avatars in virtual worlds becoming self-aware and spinning narratives of their own is pretty interesting, if difficult to imagine and technologically unlikely (for now). It's a much more interesting topic philosophically than as some kind of prediction. I have thought about working out a feature-length version of the film, in which case I would certainly come back to these ideas.

As it turns out, though, the panels were not the best parts of my day. The second best part was learning about a crazy, amazing super-pen. I'm an avid note-taker, so this pen was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. The kid who showed it to me was a little nervous at first - apparently he had just been trained by the company and had chosen me as one of his first marks to try his pitch on, so I could have easily rejected his advances. But it was a home run for him because I thought the pen was super-awesome.

The best part of the day was totally unexpected. Faye Dunaway was at DIY Days and I got to meet her for a quick moment, just as she was preparing to leave. Apparently, she is really into DIY cinema and fascinated with new technology, which is pretty cool for a woman in her late sixties. She was very nice and pretty low-key and was cool about me introducing myself as a fan and talking with her for a moment. It was thrilling, because I absolutely love her and several of her films are among my favorites, including Chinatown and Network. I gave her directions to Market Street.

Here she is, on her way out:

Days of Heaven

Things I learn from Terrence Malick:

1. Voiceover is not always bad.
2. If it's not crushingly beautiful, why look at it?
3. Listen to the way people actually talk.
4. If you have to grow a field of wheat so you can harvest it with steam-powered tractors and a hundred extras, then grow another field of wheat so you can infest it with locusts and set it on fire, by all means--do that shit.
5. Life is short.

So much more than a hardware store

Pagano's is one of the delights of life on Alameda. It's a hardware store that crams everything and the kitchen sink (yes, literally) into a labyrinthine old fire-trap in the Bay Station district of the island (not sure if these districts mean anything or if it's just marketing), a pleasant Sunday afternoon bike ride away. Like that bedeviled Moscow apartment in The Master and Margarita, it's much bigger on the inside.

We bought some twine so Kim can tie up her peas properly.

A Dark and Stormy Knight

When I went to the movies Thursday afternoon, it was to see The Dark Knight again, this time in IMAX. I had wanted to see an art film, something that wouldn't come to Alameda, but San Francisco let me down on that one, as usual, for the time frame that I had. I really wanted to go to the Castro Theater to see The Exiles, but there was no matinee. I too often go to the movies and see crap, because that's all that's ever playing, but I need better films to come to my theater, because I am lazy.

Unlike seemingly everyone else in the entire world, I do not think The Dark Knight is the greatest movie ever made; anyone who does is just being willfully ignorant. I'm pretty sure I don't even think it's the best superhero movie ever made. I don't even know if I could say that I like it better than Tim Burton's Batman from 1989.

But on my second viewing, I did like it better than the first time and IMAX is a pretty great way to see it. Since only some of it was shot in IMAX format, the film only took up the entire screen during those scenes. The gigantic size did not make up for the tedium of the last forty minutes of the film or the pretentiousness of the dialogue throughout or how seriously everyone involved seemed to take the whole overblown enterprise. But the best action scenes were enhanced, that's for fucking sure.

Still, I will never understand why we're not allowed to actually see the action in action films these days. Very often there are so many close shots that are cut together so quickly, that all sense of dynamics, physics and causality are lost. Look at, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which is relatively recent) or The Empire Strikes Back or even T2, or Bullitt, or just about anything made before the last ten years and compare the shooting and cutting of the action scenes to any of today's blockbusters. A lot of shit takes place in wide shots where you can actually see that your heroes are in danger, rather than closeups that telegraph this information with a grimace and a flash-pan, as is the trend today.

Michael Bay's Transformers may have set a high water mark for this kind of incomprehensible shooting strategy; Dark Knight is not nearly such a problem and much of the action is shot quite well. It may be that, when Nolan runs out of ideas, it's more obvious because other moments are so kinetic or graceful. There were too many scenes in which he swirls the camera furiously around two characters talking with gruff intensity at each other, which seems like a cheap attempt to cancel out cheesy, self-important dialogue with false urgency. How about just cutting the fucking scene? No one would miss it, dude.

In my opinion, if you want to see a recent film that gets it fucking-A right, that exemplifies the balance of mise-en-scene and montage necessary for a pure cinema of kinesis, as I refer to it, (usually but not always in reference to the "action" genre), it's Quentin Tarantino's half of Grindhouse, his mock-sexploitation feminist revenge-fantasy car-racing movie, Death Proof. Setting out to make a B movie, QT fails spectacularly at it because he's a cinematic virtuoso who can't help but do it right, even when he claims he's trying to do it wrong. The rest of these guys need to go back to school.

Disclaimer

Friday morning I was pretty hungover from my Thursday night exploits, Thursday being the last day of my work week. Typically, I go to the Lucky 13 and drink and smoke; on this Thursday, though, a coworker had a birthday party in the city, so I stayed after work, went to the movies and then made my way to a Chinatown bar where I played Texas Hold'em on my iPhone for an hour before anyone showed up. Then, after having a couple of drinks with my coworker and his friends, I came back to the island and went to the Lucky 13.

My point is, Friday morning ... yeah. So, since Friday's like my Saturday, I medicated myself and decided to watch a movie I had from Netflix called Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. As much as the first movie had surprised me, I was surprised again at how hilarious this sequel was. I had a good time - and the film, no bullshit, has some complicated and slyly perceptive things to say about race and hysteria in post-9/11 America, a lot more than most films that purport to be about such things, but I'll let that go.

What I thought was kinda bizarre was that, toward the end of the credits of a movie that is basically a wall-to-wall pot joke, with all kinds of other drugs, sex and violence thrown in, not to mention the usual excretory humor, this was the disclaimer someone felt was needed:

Well, that's a relief. I guess there may have been cigarette smoking in the film, though that's not what's most memorable about it (Kumar's graphic, dream-sequence threesome with his ex-girlfriend and a giant, anthropomorphic bag of weed sticks in my head, though). I wonder if, through some strangulated logic, a bong counts as a "tobacco product" in this instance? I do remember one or two of those...

After the game

There was a day game yesterday at AT&T Park so, when I took my lunch break around 3:15, King Street was mobbed to a surreal degree. To that mob, everything must have seemed just right: leaving the game, big crowd. I wonder if it occurred to any of them that there are some people on King Street with non-Giants-related business?

On the block with my building is an alcove, a concave scoop removed from its building, a smoking area. Sometimes, in spite of the shallowness of the scoop and the lack of cover, it attracts the homeless. Yesterday, as I passed by on my way to get tacos, shouldering through the baseball crowd, a woman sat there in the alcove, legs crossed, and cut off all her hair with a steak knife, the tufts strewn before her, fluttering softly away on the breeze.

When she was finished, she bowed her mangy bald head toward a new task, the circular arrangement of a small pile of what looked like animal droppings on the concrete in front of her. It wasn't the shit of a large mammal, if it was shit at all; it was smaller, white-flecked pieces, like bird shit. Maybe it was from geese.

I looked at this scene for only a few seconds because, you know, it's not polite to stare. Then, for the next hour or so, it remained burned into my retinas, an omen of the apocalypse.

And another thing...!

In case it wasn't clear from the last post, I'm going to be one of those bothersome old cranks one day. I prefer the term curmudgeon, but crank will do.

That parking space has got my name on it

Here's a thing people like to do: get the cops to slap these stickers on the cars of people who park in "their" parking spots. This is not my car, but this has happened to me before. Someone was parked in front of my house, so I parked across the street. Now, I don't drive too often because I take the bus to work. So I left my car parked across the street for several days.

The way I look at it is, I fucking live here and I have the right to park on my own goddamn street. For that matter, it's a public street, so any member of the public has the right to park here, basically forever. But evidently the City of Alameda, and my neighbors, see it differently. When it was my turn to get one of these tickets, my neighbors made no effort to contact me as far as I know. They did not leave a note on my car themselves. They just went for the gusto, called the cops and got them to slap one of these notices on my car, which says:

Section 8-7.8 of the Alameda Municipal code provides that: it shall be unlawful for any person to park or leave unattended any vehicle on a street in the City of Alameda continuously for a period exceeding seventy-two (72) hours.

To comply with this ordinance, your vehicle must be driven at least 1/10 of a mile every three (3) days. (Incidental moving from place to place in the same area does not comply.)

So they covered their bases there, I guess. It is comical, admittedly, the part about 1/10 of a mile. Naturally, this law mysteriously does not apply when parking in front of your own house. I wonder if the cops call it the "Asshole Neighbor" law or something; obviously it was invented to get whiny neighbors to shut up. Merits further investigation. By which I mean, of course, that I should drop it and learn to live by the "community standards." The problem is, that phrase is usually cover for people behaving like idiots.

When I confronted my neighbor about the sticker on MY car, however, I was as sweet and low key and full of remorse for the inconvenience I had caused her as I have ever been in my life. I sometimes regret that life is not a movie in which the Good, by which I mean me, always triumphs over the Bad, by which I mean everyone who pisses me off. I think I may not be alone in that.

I am aware, of course, that many people (like my pal, Val, for instance) DO think that they own the street space in front of their homes, even though they do not, in any way, and HATE it when people park there.

People love to put up signs

This one is at one of the marinas; I guess stones might...hit the boats? Fill in the channel? Become a hazard for...birds?

It's sometimes hard to decipher the rationale for putting up certain signs, if not the meaning of the sign itself. I mean, how big a problem was stone-throwing prior to the signs (of which there are several along the path)? Is it simply a matter of decorum?

Get Spanked

At some point, I will write a bit more about why Alameda has so many hair and nail salons. I have never seen such a concentration of them as can be seen near Park Street especially. There's easily a dozen of them within a couple miles of each other. How they can possibly all stay in business, I'll never know. Or maybe I will know, if I investigate a bit. Last week we saw a new one, up near the marinas in the northeast section of the island.

Most graffitied building in Alameda

Last Sunday, Kim and I biked around the northern edge of the island (the Oakland side) to see how far the public shoreline extended. On the west end of the island, there are a lot of run-down warehouses and derelict buildings near the old Navy base. This one wins the prize for Most Tagged.

But what can you do?

Something else I've seen walking from work to the bus station.

How is it that we're supposed to live? How much are we meant to ignore? Caring too much is just uncool, always has been. Plus, it's exhausting. Is this why so many people are so relentlessly shallow? I'm sure I am one of them.

Is it that the press is "weak?" Or just that everything is subject to the omnipotent Market? Money is strength, power, love, sex, good, right, might. And...truth?

Edge of the world

Went with Val and Kim to a party in the Sunset. Met some interesting FX geeks from ILM.

I remember coming out here to Ocean Beach back in the day, during the boom, feeling like we were standing on the front edge of the world.

Kim enjoys the backyard...

...while I try blogging from my iPhone.

A is for Alameda

Ice Cream

Not far up Park Street, some homemade ice cream can be had. Next time you're in Alameda, visit Tucker's. My favorite flavor is chocolate and peanut butter. Actually, that's the only one I've tried because I am a creature of habit, but all of the other flavors appear to be equally delicious.

Privatization

I work in San Francisco and often walk from my office, near AT&T Park, to the Transbay Terminal at 1st and Mission, where I catch the bus home. I've noticed that some of the buildings downtown have notices like this one embedded in the sidewalk.

You know, we citizens have given up an awful lot of what was once called the "commons," to the point where assertions of ownership such as this are the norm. We think nothing of the fact that corporations own, or claim ownership of, pretty much everything.

Meanwhile, I frequently pass this frighteningly monolithic, windowless cube owned by the aforementioned, stadium-branding telecom. It was from a secret room within this Borg box that the National Security Agency jacked into AT&T's Internet backbone. Thanks to our brave lawmakers, this corporation now has legal immunity for having helped our government spy on us. Oh, well.

In Memory of My Dumb Friends

In October, I will celebrate ten years in California. I've managed to pack a lot of living into the past decade, though it's still hard to believe so much time has passed. I lived first in west Berkeley, then various spots in Oakland, then spent three years in Los Angeles. A graduate degree and a wedding later, my wife and I returned to the Bay Area to live in idyllic Alameda, an almost absurdly Rockwellian fantasy of a hometown of the kind most Americans would not believe still exists. We love it here.

A few blocks from our home is Jackson Park, located on Park Avenue. Park Avenue happens to be one block southeast of, and run parallel to, Park Street, which is the main street on this side of the island. Kind of an odd arrangement, though oddly charming, that would certainly fuck up visitors to the island, especially those navigating by Google, if anyone who didn't live here actually came here.

Anyway, Jackson Park is long and narrow, just one block wide. At the west end, is a strange, curved, cement, bench-like structure that has become a hangout for whichever one of the island's hundreds of roving teen tribes gets there first. Carved into the base are the words, "In Memory of My Dumb Friends."



I believe this is a reference to animals; the cement thing may have once been a watering trough for horses. I'll have to check with the Alameda Historical Society on that one. But I also thought the phrase would make an excellent title for this blog. I have many fond memories of my dumb friends; my smart ones, too.