I love Gaspar Noé, warts and all. I look forward to his new films like I look forward to some exciting event where I have no idea what’s going to happen.
His latest, Climax, is really great. I reviewed the film for Rogerebert.com.
Oh, and in the review, I referenced the opening credits sequence for his 2009 film Enter the Void. Here they are:
Me backstage during a production of Macbeth, in which I played one of the witches, reading William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, before it was time to put on my costume.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
Some things are great because they achieve such clarity of talent and perception that they pierce you to the heart. Some things are great because they make you forget that your heart can be pierced and they transport you to a place of lighthearted enjoyment. Some things are great because they speak directly about our society in such a way that something seems to come further into focus.
The Shaggs are not great for any of those reasons. In fact, to use the word great in conjunction with The Shaggs is an iffy proposition.
The Wiggins sisters lived in Fremont, New Hampshire, a small logging town way up north. Their grandmother had had a premonition that her son would have several daughters and that they would become famous musicians. Austin Wiggins believed his mother, so, after having married and produced several daughters, he set about the task of bringing his mother’s prophecy to light.
It was the late ’60’s.
He bought a drum set, several pawn shop guitars, and some rudimentary amplifiers. The girls set about learning how to play and writing songs. They were a bit nervous when their dad suggested that they play the Fremont Town Hall Saturday night dance. They didn’t think they were ready, even though they’d been taking lessons and practicing together for just over a year. But Austin insisted. They became a fixture there, playing weekly until Austin’s death in 1975. The group disbanded after that.
Austin took them out of high school and home-schooled them so they could focus on their music. He also arranged for them to go down to Boston and record an album. Again they weren’t sure they were ready for that step but what Austin said went.
The album they recorded is some of the most astounding music you will ever hear. You can’t sing along to it, you can’t tap your foot, you can’t get lost in the melody, you merely try to keep your jaw from hitting the floor too hard.
At the time that they recorded the album their youngest sister Rachel was not yet accompanying them on bass for all the songs. She only plays on “That Little Sports Car”. The lineup for the rest of the songs is as follows:
Betty Wiggin – rhythm guitar, vocals
Helen Wiggin – drums
Dorothy “Dot” Wiggin – lead vocal, guitar, arrangements
It is almost impossible to avoid cruelty while describing this music. The girls seem to be playing different songs simultaneously. Legend has it that during the recording the girls would stop and say one of them had made a mistake. The engineer couldn’t fathom how any of them could tell.
How can something so disjointed and crude be one of the “greatest” albums of all time? Well, for one thing, you can’t stop listening to it once you start. It leaves you flabbergasted.
I shall take a moment to try and invoke the sound.
Picture 3 very sad teenage marionettes with instruments. They would rather be back in their boxes; they don’t like you looking at them or listening to them. But they have no choice so they start to play. Their only job is to keep playing so that the puppet master is happy. They don’t realize that they have free will. This mixture of survival instinct and total oppression gives the music a haunted quality, like prisoners forced to play instruments they have no affinity for.
Apparently the locals would come out and taunt the girls while they tried to entertain at The Fremont Town Hall. But they kept playing until their father passed away. Then they didn’t have to pretend anymore.
But, still, Austin’s mother was right. His daughters are famous. Some have greatness thrust upon them.
— Brendan O’Malley
My review of Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life, about a couple’s infertility struggles, starring Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn, was one of my favorite films of 2018. I reviewed for Film Comment‘s September/October 2018 issue and it appeared just in the print edition. But it’s now online.
If you haven’t seen the film, I highly recommend it. It’s not just dark. It’s funny too. A real ACTOR’s movie. Here’s my review.
I feel so fortunate to have met him when he came and spoke at my school. In a particularly magic moment, he took the hand of a student in the front row, pulled her to her feet, and danced with her, taking her in hand, floating sideways across the stage with her, a moment of perfect grace.
During his time with us, he was asked, “How do you direct Audrey Hepburn and not fall in love with her?”
He replied, “You don’t.”
Stanley Donen was responsible for creating such iconic images and movements and feelings they’ve seeped so totally into the culture we can’t even trace them back to their origins. Or, we can, but these images, moments, gestures, feelings, have traveled so far they have taken on a life of their own. It is as though they have always been there. But they haven’t. He created them.
He’d be in the history books for this alone.
But then there’s:
and …
Funny Face, another adored classic. Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn? Come on!
Pajama Game, co-directed with George Abbott (who also wrote the script, and co-directed the Broadway production with Jerome Robbins), is also a fave. In the famous “Steam Heat”, it’s really Bob Fosse’s choreography that is the star. The camera placement and camera movement – from stage level – to above the stage – to sometimes (rarely) up on the stage – paves the way for that realization. It’s about Fosse. Filming a dance sequence in this intuitive and generous way is almost a lost art.
We need long shots to see the three steam-chimneys move as one. The camera has to move at the same speed as them – but with then the big flung-out show-bizzy Fosse gestures – you need cuts to accentuate. Film-making is a collaboration: editing/camera/direction. In “Steam Heat,” nothing distracts from that which is most important: the choreography as executed by these geniuses.
Speaking of Fosse, there’s also this great number from Damn Yankees, with Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
Fosse again, a fantastic number in Stanley Donen’s film adaptation of The Little Prince:
Donen’s work in the 60s is excellent, zipping with verve, fun, silliness, heart. Two for the Road, starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn may … dare I say it … be my favorite film of his? Oh hell, I don’t need to choose. But it’s so wonderful.
How much do I love Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? When Hepburn musingly asks, “How do you shave in there?”, touching Cary Grant’s dimple, she asks what so many of us thought.
The film is filled with meta-fun, plus their beauty, they’re both so insanely beautiful, beauty and charm to revel in. The film revels in it frankly and with no apology. Why deprive ourselves of enjoying their beauty, or pretend that that’s not what we’re doing? Donen knew what we wanted.
And then there’s the meta-perfection of this moment.
Here, Donen loops in the awareness of the entirety of Grant’s career, his rapport with audiences for 30 years at that point, the love everyone had for him. Let’s adore him without caveat or exception.
In 1997, Stanley Donen won an Honorary Oscar. His acceptance speech is one of the high watermarks in the history of the Academy Awards broadcast.
We’ve lost a huge link to our collective past. But his work will live on.
Rest in peace.
For a couple of years now, my hilarious cousin Emma – whom I have written about before – has been making videos she calls “Melatonin Movie Reviews”, where she pops 4 Melatonins and then discusses current releases.
Honestly, my family … I can’t keep up!
Well, Comedy Central took notice of what Emma was doing and brought her into the fold. Congratulations, Emma!
Proud to present to you, on Comedy Central, my cousin Emma, a.k.a. “Melatony” and her hilarious roommate, a.k.a. “Silent Siskel”, weighing in on the Oscars, after downing 4 Melatonins.
My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. He did series on books he loved, and albums he loved. I thought it would be fun to put up some of the stuff here. So we’ll start with his list of 50 Best Albums. I’ll put up one every Monday.
Brendan’s list of 50 Best Albums is part music-critique and part memoir and part cultural snapshot.
I have always loved these essays, because I love to hear my brother talk. I am happy to share them with you!
The first stutter of the marching band snares that skitter along underneath “Lose My Breath” acts like some magic elixir on me, dressing me up in a tuxedo and dropping me right into an old screwball comedy. I am Cary Grant and I don’t mean I’m a gorgeous movie star, I mean I’m a naive professor who can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that there is a woman in a silky evening gown standing ever so close.
Then “Cater 2 U” kicks in and whatever machinations she has undertaken to get me away from my important work on particle phsyics have worked. Through some sequence of mishaps and little white lies we are alone in a fabulously appointed hotel room. I’ve bumped my head and must lie down. She sits next to me, rustling the fabric of that shimmering dress, and presses a poultice to the only lump the code will allow her to acknowledge.
But, being the clumsy minx that she is, she spills a champagne bottle all over me and my throbbing tuxedo. Just then Destiny’s Child start cooing “T-Shirt” and we’ve got to get out of these wet things!
The screwball reasserts itself as we’re flushed out of the hotel room by an overeager bellhop. In the lobby in nothing more than my skivvies I implore the young lady to simply leave me alone, why is that so hard for her to do? Just then my fiancee (fiancee, I’d completely forgotten!) sweeps through the lobby on her father’s arm declaring that the grant I’d expected to complete my work has now been taken off the table. Destiny’s Child ask, ‘Is She The Reason?’ on behalf of the wet minx who now views me as something of a cad.
She has a quick conversation with a maid. “Girl” underscores the scene as the two commiserate in thwarted love.
Our wet heroine then flees the lobby and sits at the hotel bar sipping then gulping cocktails at an alarming rate. Through Destiny’s Child she tells herself to break this “Bad Habit”. I’m still shell-shocked in the lobby in my underpants, too shaken up by the loss of my potential academic future to realize that the woman of my dreams is a mere yards away and under the happy spell of martinis.
A quick kick in the rear by the aforementioned bellhop brings me to my senses and I rush in to tell her I could care less about that silly grant and even less about that horrible woman I was engaged to only moments before. Can’t she see I’ve changed? She is deep into intoxicated grief however and rebuffs me, telling me why through the mournful lilt of Destiny’s Child “If”.
In a fit of desperate invention, I rush into the convention being hosted by my ex-fiancee and her war profiteer father! Wrapped in a bathrobe monogrammed with the initials of the swanky hotel I bum rush the stage and begin a rambling explanation of my research. My findings are shocking indeed but when combined with my declaration of undying love for the young lady hiding in the back of the hall they elicit a rousing cheer, as Destiny’s Child declares me “Free”.
My poor sexy ex-fiancee spikes her heels into the plush rug, whips the fur stole further around her neck, and along with Beyoncé, declares herself “Through With Love” until she collides with the bellhop in front of the marble staircase. He breaks her fall with a kiss.
My tuxedo restored, I dance cheek to cheek with my new fiancee, the right one, who not only loves me dearly and is sexy as all get out, but is also an heiress bent on funding research that she can feel passionate about. Destiny’s Child sings “Love” as we are revealed to be in the lobby of the hotel where we have just gotten married and decided to live.
Is this an album review? I’m not sure. But when Beyoncé asks, “Can you keep up, baby boy?” and then puts her foot down and says, “Put it on me deep in the right direction” that is what happens to me. I’m scandalized in all the best ways.
— Brendan O’Malley
When I was a kid, my best friend’s parents had one of those huge Time-Life photo books. I became obsessed with it. It was very disturbing stuff and I was drawn to it with a queasy fascination. I was 9, 10, 11 years old and some of those pictures – the most famous pictures of the 20th century – were NOT fit for child viewing.
There was the Buddhist monk on fire. Holocaust photos. A line of people kneeling by a huge open grave, with a firing squad behind them. Horror. The famous photo from Vietnam of the guy pointing a gun at a man, and it’s the moment just before firing. I’m an adult and I’m traumatized by that photo. The “napalm girl.” The unforgettable picture of the woman who jumped off the Empire State Building, landing in a car below, perfectly placed on her back, tidy and trim in her gloves and suit and lipstick, like she was asleep. I was so haunted by this photo, I cannot even tell you. I could not get this woman out of my mind. Every time I was at my friend’s house, I couldn’t resist. I had to go look at it. The car was crushed. The woman was perfect, beautiful, eyes closed. She was like Sleeping Beauty. (Sheila. Put the book down. Go play dodgeball and get your Keds and Toughskin jeans all dirty.) But I would close my eyes and see the expression on that Vietnamese man’s face right before he was killed.
Clearly the book made a huge impression on me.
One picture really grabbed me. I was drawn to it like I was drawn to the suicide photo. I would look at it as deeply as I could, trying to understand it. And I’m not sure, still, what it was I sensed. I was just a child. A girl stands in the ocean, long blonde hair, arms outstretched, wearing a white shirt with the word JESUS and a heart on the back.
There was some caption about the Jesus movement and all the counterculture kids running away to join communes, cutting all ties with their middle-class imperialist corporate-pig parents.
I didn’t get it, but I vaguely understood the concept and it scared me. Who were these kids? Where did they go? Weren’t their parents worried?
Again: Sheila. Go outside. Hang upside down on the jungle gym. Fall off and knock your tooth out. Do anything else.
For whatever reason, I was so struck by this woman in the ocean. I wondered about her life. Had she run away? Was she okay? Where did she live?
Ironically: the picture shows her in a state of bliss. But I felt anxious looking at it. This is not retrospect talking. It’s one of my most vivid childhood memories. This book and those two photos, in particular.
Cut to 2014.
I haven’t thought about Jesus Freak Lady since I was 4 feet tall, wearing scuffed Keds, a Star Wars T-shirt, with a battered baseball glove in my backpack. I’m years away from that book in 2014. I go to a screening of Inherent Vice. I am absolutely in love with the movie from the first second. I am in heaven.
Then comes this moment:
And it all came rushing back, and I knew EXACTLY who she was. I knew EXACTLY Paul Thomas Anderson’s inspiration. Nobody can tell me different. And even if he admitted to it later in an interview that I haven’t heard, I clocked it all on my own. I love it when that happens.
It’s part of what happens with memory and how connections are made in the unconscious and the connections are yours, because they come from your experience, and you bring all those memories to bear when you’re immersed in a work of art. The calling up of those memories is PART of the experience.
Even though that book seriously disturbed me, and I could not get the image of piles of bodies in concentration camps out of my mind, and I was haunted by that peaceful Sleeping Beauty suicide (“why????” I agonized as a kid, staring at her peaceful face), I’m not sorry I found it. It helped me enter the world.
This brings us back to Inherent Vice. When I was a child, I kept hoping that Jesus girl was okay. I didn’t know why the photo made me anxious and I didn’t question it. All I knew was I looked at her, and I felt like she was floating untethered from something, that she was lost.
When I saw Inherent Vice decades later, I thought of that photograph. When the final moment of the film came … I knew. Back then, I was picking up on something. The darkness flickering on the periphery of the Age of Aquarius.
9-year-old me sensed something back then. I was right to be worried.
I wonder if Paul Thomas Anderson felt the same way.
In case you don’t know the photo, here is Evelyn Francis McHale, dead from jumping off the Empire State Building in 1947.
Here is a fascinating 2009 article – which I read avidly at the time. Incredible investigative journalism there. Her suicide note is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read.
I love this film! It’s an animated art-survey course, as filtered through an international art-heist caper. So much fun. Gorgeous! My review of Ruben Brandt, Collector is now up at Rogerebert.com.
When I was around 8 or 9, my parents let me watch Sounder with them. I sat on the floor in front of the television. My parents were behind me on the couch. During the scene when Nathan returns home – that incredible scene – I felt an explosion of feeling inside of me, and I was so young I had never felt anything like that before in a movie made for kids. I glanced behind me at my parents and I saw that my mother was sitting there with tears streaming down her face. It shocked me. It made such an impression. I had never seen her cry like that before.
I look at that moment as a watershed “A-ha” moment. I was a child. My mother’s reaction confirmed to me that what was going on for me was also going on in the Grownup Land (which wasn’t always the case). I remember thinking, vaguely, in an 8 year old way – “Wow. Okay. So this must REALLY be good if grownups are crying.”
And – in looking back – it was the first time I realized what art could do, what the movies could do. I had responded to movies before. I had loved movies before. But there was something about seeing this one with my parents – and catching my mother’s pure response to it – that made me realize that art was serious, it could touch people in this way.
I have never written about Sounder before, and finally I got a chance to. My essay on Sounder is now up at Film Comment.
