lotusland - nervous politics from a laid-back city

big smash! music on film festival

i went to see the other universe of klaus beyer at the big smash festival today.  the film was incredibly entertaining and totally worth the 2:1 bussing to film-viewing time ratio. the depressing bit was all the empty seats.

before the features, they screened a short, some (seemingly homemade) trailers for other festival flicks, and some vintage trailers (beach ball and a menudo film). 

fun is being encouraged, people.  i know this is something vancouverites grapple with, but try and come to terms with it before tuesday.  you already missed half of it.

dear vancouverites, learn to be better filmgoers

so, my reason for not updating this thing or commenting on your lovely blogs is the vancouver international film festival. nothing personal, eh?

three types of people go to the film festival
1. old people
2. neatly-dressed people speaking languages i dont know
3. emo dweebs
(and of course, ainge, who is young, sloppily-dressed, and non-emo)

overall, vancouverites need to get a fucking life.  im tired of seeing your dumb asses lining up for hours to see that boring, played-out documentary about red states vs blue states.  yes, i realise your steady diet of crappy global news supplemented with the cnn blaring at the gym has programmed your brain to destroy any remnants of art appreciation and replace the gaping holes with a burning desire to watch americans dance their political gavotte so you can sit there and smirk all haughtily and feel better about your level of political knowledge.  oooh, look at me, im interested in all these timely and relevant things, unlike dumb americans.

no, i am not going to write the film festival and tell them to deny you your crack.  but please... if you end up attending a film that happens to involve a tad more creativity and thought, and it is lost on your shitty excuse for a free will/brain, leave the theatre silently.  save your (loud) genius opinions for your friends and your blogs.  if i run into this again, i am going to start punching the guilty parties.  punching.

i just watched 4, a russian film directed by ilya khrzhanovsky.  starting with a scene where three people lie about their jobs in a bar, and ending with a funeral in a village, it's his take on contemporary russia.  you dumbass, pseudo-cultured vancouverites lined up en masse to see roberto rosselini's roma: citta' aperta (preceded by a fairly lame but heartfelt and whimsical introduction by the great italian directors daughter).  you know, all the texbooks say he's the father of neorealism (not the kenneth waltz kind), so he must be important.  seeing his film makes you soooo cool, doesnt it. 

god forbid you actually sit through another great example of neorealism not yet mentioned in your stupid coffee table books on art house movies.  no, you have to ruin it with your goddamn bitching.  you have to sit there, behind me, and loudly proclaim 4 was "a train wreck" that "totally sucked after the bar scene, which was really interesting"

it's not like this was some kind of inaccessible, avant-garde, "fuck you, democratization of film" kind of movie.  it was gritty, genuinely funny, wholly disturbing, and completely engrossing.  it was human.   its shifts from the manic to the languid made it alive.

im sorry that you dorks spend all day watching cnn and reality tv and cant deal with a bit of mud, extended scenes without hotties, and drunk slavs.  im sorry that you can only be 'entertained' by plastic, dead, and packaged soundbites with accompanying sterile, pleasing visuals.

this isn't the first film which has elicited such a depressing reaction from the crowd.  you dorks bitch every time some uppity director has the gall to make a film that doesnt 1. make americans look like assholes 2. provide  sterile, mind-numbing escapism 3. glorify some existence antithetical to the yuppie way of life without all the scary details.

get a life.  get away from my film festival at once, but leave your money.

politics and european film post 1960 - any ideas for my seminar?

a friend and i are applying to conduct a student-run seminar at ubc, which seems to be a fun way to earn credit by making up your own readings and assignments.  our chosen topic, being double majors in poli sci and modern european studies, is politics and european film post 1960. 

im asking, begging, whatevering you for suggestions. 

so far, ive got:
1. italy:  something by pasolini:  oedipus rex, hawks and sparrows, love meetings
2. france: something by godard: vladimir and rosa, germany year 90 nine zero, our music
3. uk: boyle's/welsh's trainspotting.
4. czech republic:  remunda & klusak's cesky sen/czech dream
5. ussr:  tarkovsky's my name is ivan
6. germany:  wender's the american friend
7. spain:  something by almodovar:  what have i done to deserve this?, pepi luci bom and other girls like mom
8. denmark: vinterberg's the celebration
9. yugoslavia: kusturica's do you remember dolly bell?

a brief/shitty ainge-style summary of each film can be found by clicking "continue reading" at the end of this post.

draft version of the course blurb:  european film (1960-present) and its political context. we will examine the political history and political theory behind the films we study. our aim is to use european films of this era to understand the intersection of art and politics and to investigate any problems posed by presenting politics in an aesthetic form. most theorists would agree that you cant ever divorce the two. walter benjamin believed all art was political, and that accepting certain political tendencies means that you inevitably accept certain literary tendencies. theodor adorno, who wrote largely in response to the modern art movement and the nazis merging of politics and aesthetics, was suspicious of consciousness-raising political art. he is caught between hegel's theory that art cannot truly survive in a capitalist context and marx's belief that art is going to propel the revolution. though he believes history and political domination affect most artistic output, he maintains that art should be judged on two levels: hermeneutic (appreciating it for its form/cultural function) and empirical (analysing it in its social and political context/social function). both these need to be understood in conjunction with eachother and not separately as the cultural function and the social function determine one another. the cultural aspect of the artwork has to successfully work out its own contradictions before it can go on to expose society's flaws - for example, is avant-garde art necessarily progressive by nature? most artists want to believe that their art will shake us out of our complacency, so it isnt a stretch to imply that most art is politically motivated.

pasolini at cinémathèque

i love pier paolo pasolini.  he drops gramscis name and uses him as a muse and these invocations and representations dont cheapen gramscis ideas. hes a masochist.  he doesnt blindly receive party orders and he keeps pushing the left to evolve. hes kind of a classist prick for fetishizing a group he labelled 'uneducated' but he was skeptical of the 1968 students and red brigade violence, which i do think is cool.  there is some irony in the bourgeois students beating on the proletariat cops.  armed revolution isnt my bag, either.

hes from friuli, which is northeastern italy. all the comments he made about it in the interviews/documentaries made me realize its basically western canada. its italys alberta. people there are predominantly fervently anti-marxist middle class, or theyre lega nord nuts. the church is a bit more prominent in peoples lives there (at least in the 1960s).

he seems to dig the calabrese a lot for being stubborn and passionate. i think he feels sorry for naples, but he really thinks sicilians and calabrese live life.

alberto moravia was screaming about how italians are tards for the way they treated such a great poet, putting him on trial like 33 times, murdering him, and not giving a shit about investigating the murder.  at times, it seemed italys establishment needed him to put a horrible face on the left, or at least cultivate this "hey, awesome, an evil genius" image for intrigue's sake.

seeing footage of alberto moravia was also good because hes cuter than kenneth waltz and i was really disgusted having him as the cutest old man ever.

so yeah, just go.

***

i dont want to use names, cos maybe theres a chance 'they' might be embarassed by my highly public wopitude or whatever, but a close nerd friend of mine from a place way east of vancouver has been sans internet for freakin days.  its like not seeing a fellow wino at a bar (like maybe somewhere with a faithful clientele, like tommys or the bourbon) this should not happen to nerds.

the warren says i shouldnt care about this sort of thing, but i do.

first, a bit o' fun from the war report

To be fair, we really, really hate this guy. Some of you may like him, but to us, he's just a fat, manipulative, money-hungry, temperamental asshole who manipulates information to further a point he has already decided that he wants to make. In short, he is everything that those fancy Europeans claim to hate about Americans. But the jokes on them - or us, or whatever - cuz they fuckin love this guy. So much for that European high-minded principle.

now for a bit o'speculation:

cabinet! apparently this only concerns ottawa. hmm. yes, it's cheap provincialism, but having served a 2-year sentence in sandy hill, i am proud to say i am from vancouver, not ottawa.

i care! and mr ibbitson at the globe and mail says im only a loser with no life if i run a cabinet pool. so there.

british columbians:
david emerson - please oh please give him a decent portfolio. it's arguable whether paul wells was slighting him by claiming the rookie mp would best serve the country in a not-yet-existant ministry of science, rather than shortlisting him for one of the finance portfolios. in fact, during the campaign, people working for him kept dropping the phrase 'minister of finance' in conjunction with his name. riiight, a rookie mp being promoted to finance. wait, my 'riiiiight' is exponentially more unimpressed and drawn-out when i appraise current finmin ralph goodale. you can't compare a journalist to a ceo of a natural resource-based company in terms of dealing with the canadian economy. luckily, that's actually the deputy minister's job. anyway - enough about finance. wells was on to something with the ministry of science, a work-intensive portfolio that would have an international and domestic impact without taking too much heat from the opposition. mr emerson likes work - pile it on!

hedy fry - since martin likes her so much, she will probably get something. i'd rather not think about it.

david anderson - can we get rid of him now that keith martin is a liberal?

keith martin - if brison gets something, does that mean there's no room in cabinet for two turncoats?

stephen owen - it warms my heart to see optimistic proclamations such as the justice portfolio, but i'm not holding my breath. if martin rewards the west in the form of big responsibilities for goodale and landslide annie, will there be room for quadra's little intellectual at the highest ranks? at any rate, if he doesn't get something respectable, it's an affront to nerds everywhere. it is no secret i am quite a fan of his, and i don't care.

ujjal dosanjh - why oh why is he being brought up in conjunction with big ministries? i've only heard the media drop that kind of speculation. maybe he is the only new face they know in the british columbia liberal caucus. as the first indo-canadian premier, he is kind of a trailblazer, and i suppose that sort of thing wins respect. lest we all forget his bc administration sucked. i hope he gets a respectable, yet not too major portfolio. as a dipper, he certainly won't become political minister for bc.

don bell - it would be nice if the vancouver burbs got acknowledged, but i doubt he is going to get anything despite his slaying of the insufferable ted white. maybe they can erect a statue in bell's honour on the hill, a permanent testament befitting everyone's eternal gratitude.

at any rate, i'll accept whatever martin gives us, within reason, cos stan keyes and hélène scherrer are GONE GONE GONE! i have priorities.

fahrenheit 9/11 - smiling, progressive, happy canada's take

sometimes, but very rarely, i do something trendy just to see what is captivating the hordes. first, it was hatha yoga, and now i'm watching michael moore documentaries the weekend they're released. whatever.

having done so, i'm going to join that chorus of right-thinking individuals progressive types who declare we should treat moore as an opinion piece. i'm not sure about these guys.

moore's commentary is invigorating preaching for leftists from so many walks of life. i think if i'm-a-liberal sasha is reading this, his computer screen is getting a reaction. the only other leftists we hear of on the american tv canadians get , the democratic party, have failed to galvanize and rally the progressive troops to this extent.*. every pinko i know, from profs to union guys to gay activists to gucci socialists to skaters smoking up in the park with che guevara t-shirts liked the film. people appreciated the film for its emotional appeal, its courage to dissent, its grassroots approach, its weariness re: the saudis, or least for it's property to disseminate a complex argument for the adhd generation.

people can accept all the accusations of bias levelled at moore because they realize his documentaries are his editorials. don't conservatives see it? they love his commentary, not his body. this isn't barbara streisand. moore isn't a politician, he's a journalist. journalists are allowed to be wrong and to investigate.

let's just see the box office numbers. then we can decide whether or not he has made enough of a dent in the public sphere. isn't that how we measure relevance? the appreciation of hoes, money, and clout snoop dogg has stressed in the past?

the republicans are down, yo. check this out - soft money? so every time someone buys a stupid ann coulter book or an american flag to hang from a car window the democrats should chalk one up for the republicans, mr. mccain?

* of the living, jurgen habermas and noam chomsky are still tops with name-droppers and nerds