The Frame

Month: September 2008 Page 1 of 2

FBTop100 #92: Amelie

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On September 24, 2008

In Film

This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films.

AMELIE-20

Amélie
France 2001; dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
starring: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
screened 4/6/08; DVD

Previous Viewing Experience: I’ve seen this at least four times, but most of them were pretty soon after it came out on DVD, so it’s probably been four or five years.  Wow, that makes me feel old.

Previous Reactions: I pretty much fell in love with this movie when I first saw it (hence the seeing it again so often so soon).  The colors, the music, the quirk, the charm.  Mostly the colors, if I’m honest.

Brief Synopsis: Amelie Poulain lives and works in Montmartre, but doesn’t connect very deeply with other people.  When she finds a long-lost box of toys and successfully finds the overjoyed owner, she decides to do random acts of kindness (and meanness, in one case) – one of which may lead to romance if she doesn’t chicken out first.

Response:  Interesting reaction this time. I’m still charmed by the film, and for all the same reasons as before. But I found myself also a little disappointed at its obviousness. Which I think is a function of having seen several Krzysztof Kieslowski films over the past year. Jeunet’s use of vibrant color seems directly borrowed from Kieslowski’s later films (the French ones), and since the cinematography is one of my favorite things about both Amelie and Kieslowski’s work, I couldn’t help comparing them in my head. And Kieslowski is better. Amelie’s problem is that she’s afraid of connecting meaningfully with other people. That’s why she spends more time pulling pranks and tricking everyone else in the story (whether for their good or ill) rather than concentrate on her own life.  Ultimately, that’s why she constructs elaborate schemes and false identities that keep her in contact with yet also distanced from Bobo. And that’s great, it’s a fine storyline. But then Jeunet introduces a brittle painter who can’t quite capture one girl’s expression in the Renoir he’s copying. Why? Because she’s in a group of people and yet not connected to them. Over and over the fact that this girl and Amelie are the same is reiterated. Over and over the painter explicitly pushes Amelie to take the risk, to open herself up to others. Again, not a bad thing in and of itself, but Kieslowski takes a similar storyline of people who have cut themselves off from the world emotionally in Red and carries it out with much greater subtlety and ambiguity. Perhaps that’s why Amelie is #92 on this list and Red is down at #39.

I still love Amelie, don’t get me wrong. It’s delightful, and it remains one of the two or three best introductions to foreign films for the subtitle-phobic. But it’s a gateway drug to world cinema, and if you like it, move on to the harder stuff.

Overall Rating: Well Above Average

FBTop100 #93: The Blue Angel

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On September 24, 2008

In Film

This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers’ 100 Favorite Non-English Films.

blueangel

Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel)
Germany 1931; dir: Josef von Sternberg
starring: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich
screened 7/5/08; New Beverly Cinema

Previous Viewing Experience: Never seen it, nor anything else directed by von Sternberg or starring Jannings, though I’ve seen several later Dietrich films.

Knowledge Before Viewing: In a meta sense, I’m aware that von Sternberg and Dietrich are a well-known actress-director team, and that Dietrich made waves for her masculin costuming in this and/or her other films with him. More specifically, I know the basic story has something to do with a straight-laced professor who gets angry at his students for lusting after a sexy showgirl, but then he feels a bit differently once he actually sees said showgirl. I’m not looking forward to this one too terribly much. It sounds like an offputting combination of dirty old man lechery and moralizing. Add in early sound era awkwardness, and yeah. Sorta ambivalent. Hopefully seeing it in a theatre (fortuitous timing on the New Beverly’s part!) will help.

Brief Synopsis: My pre-viewing synopsis is fairly close, actually. The Professor (Jannings) finds his students sneaking off to the local cabaret, but when he goes there to catch them at it, he ends up falling for Lola Lola (Dietrich) himself. She encourages him and eventually they marry. But when the show goes back on the road, he’s reduced to performing clown parts to earn his keep and stay with her.

Response: I wound up liking this a lot more than I initially expected to. One of my favorite films it probably won’t ever be, but it was definitely worthwhile at least seeing once to experience such a young Marlene Dietrich. She’s absolutely delightful from start to finish (outside of, perhaps, a few scenes near the end where she gets to be quite the little bitch). The story is far more focused on the Professor, though, and his fall from esteemed academic and community leader to pathetic joke after he marries Lola. And this being to some degree a Gemran Expressionist film, his decline gets a little on the overwrought side at times. I did particularly like the recurring bird imagery – both the Professor and Lola keep birds, linking them before they’re, um, linked, and an early shot of a dead bird provides a foreshadowing glimpse of how this is all going to work out. In terms of moralizing, the message is apparently “don’t marry flighty showgirls much younger than you because it’ll ruin your life.” Which, actually, is probably good advice.

Overall Rating: Above Average

Music Monday Thursday: The Fratellis in Concert

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On September 18, 2008

In Music

Busy week of concerts for me! I went to see Glasgow band The Fratellis on Tuesday night. I’ve been meaning to feature the Fratellis on a Music Monday for a long time, but haven’t, largely due to Music Monday going on hiatus while I settled in out here. Then I got tickets to their concert and decided to wait.


Jon, Barry, and Mince Fratelli

Of course, I couldn’t help comparing the concert to Jenny Lewis’ from last week, even though there’s not a lot of comparison between Lewis and the Fratellis. The Fratellis are about as hard rock as I actually like (which is not saying a lot), and they were definitely amazing in concert. But I’ve definitely decided that the Wiltern is the largest venue I can take, and it’s not that large, comparatively, and I’m only willing to do that large a show again for my favoritest bands. Especially those from, like, Scotland who aren’t likely to turn up again soon. The Wiltern is set up pretty well – lower floor is all standing, with a special pit area which I didn’t go into. I think you had to have a special something or other to go down there. But I did get a sweet spot right behind the pit, with a nice railing to lean on. I did get a lot less tired this show than at Jenny’s; a combination of the leaning and the fact that the headliner was finished by eleven, rather than starting at midnight.

My major complaint was the overproduction of the show. The lighting designer went crazy, and yeah, there were moments when that was cool (like when the spotlights highlighted Mince Fratelli, the drummer, as he wailed on a fantastic drum solo), but overall it was incredibly distracting. The music is good, guys, you don’t need all that stuff. Also, it all felt so very planned. They only spoke between songs once – although I can understand why; their accents are so thick even I couldn’t tell what they were talking about! The rest of the time it was boom, boom, boom, like rote.

But that’s not quite fair, because it sounds like they were on autopilot, and they weren’t. When they were in the middle of a song, every second was fantastic. Jon (lead singer/guitarist) is incredible; I listened to the CD on the way home, and he was definitely doing some new and much more intricate guitar solos live. They have two CDs out now, and they did a really nice job with the setlist, bringing in the best of both albums (although they didn’t do my favorite song, “Creeping Up the Backstairs”).

I haven’t been to enough concerts to know yet whether the production issues I had are the result of the kind of band the Fratellis are (more straight rock, less indie/folk than Jenny or most of the other bands I’ve seen) or the size of the show. Maybe I’ll figure it out as I expand my concert experience.

In any case, my disenchantment with the production doesn’t diminish my love of the music, so here are some tracks. First, the aforementioned “Creeping Up the Backstairs” from their debut album, Costello Music. Just because they didn’t perform it doesn’t mean I can’t show it some love. :) I had various Fratellis tracks on my iPod for a long time from one of my friends, but it was this one that made me sit up and start really listening. Over and over. And over.

The Fratellis – Creeping Up the Backstairs

And from their recently released sophomore album Here We Stand, a song titled “Mistress Mabel,” which I largely chose because the piano fills make me very happy. Generally I still like Costello Music more than Here We Stand, partially because I’m more familiar with it, but I also feel like it’s got more personality, more quirk. But Here We Stand is more solid in a way, I think. More confident. But less youthfully enthusiastic. They’re both good, is what I’m saying, and if you like these two songs, you’ll like both albums.

Mistress Mabel

2006 – Costello Music 2008 – Here We Stand

Amazon doesn’t have the albums available as MP3 downloads (boo!), so my intention to embed the Amazon Clips widget was sidetracked. Perhaps all for the best, since instead I’ll embed an imeem playlist with all the other songs from the albums. (Why don’t I just use imeem for all the tracks? Good question – first answer is that I only just figured out that imeem plays the full track and not just a 30-second preview. Second answer is that I know I tend to fall in love with bands more when I have a couple of their songs on my iPod and can live with them for a while, so I still think it’s useful to have a sample track or two that you can download as well as stream. As I said, I had Fratellis songs hanging around for months before I lived with them enough to become a fan. What do you think? Should I nix the individual downloadable tracks, like those above? If it makes any difference, mine sound better – don’t know what bitrate imeem uses, but they’re definitely muddier.)

In Which Jenny Lewis is the Awesomest

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On September 12, 2008

In Music

I’m much too tired out to write a whole post about the Jenny Lewis concert I just got home from. So highlights will have to do.

  • Got to the venue way early, since I didn’t have tickets and didn’t want to risk not getting in. Thus, I was tenth in line. Yay! And stood in line for an hour and a half. Meh.
  • Two opening acts ended up meaning that Jenny didn’t actually start until almost midnight.
  • All that MADE NO DIFFERENCE. She’s totally incredible and has this ability to make the whole audience fall in love with her at sight. By the end, she probably could’ve told us to go jump in Silver Lake, and we would’ve been like, okay!
  • But she’s cool, so she didn’t do that.
  • She did mostly stuff from her new album (since, you know, that’s what she’s promoting), which comes out on the 23rd, but threw in a few of the best tracks off Rabbit Fur Coat. Good mix.
  • Usually when bands do songs I don’t know, I get a little lost and my attention wanders. That even happened with Rilo Kiley the first time in Austin. Not here. She had me every second.
  • Possibly that’s because I was at the edge of the stage, five feet from her, and she’s very good at making eye contact with the audience. I swear she winked at me once.
  • The new songs sound great – several a lot harder than Rabbit Fur Coat (“Messiah,” “Jack Killed Mom”), but others are spare and vulnerable. I love Rabbit Fur Coat, but the new one has a lot more varied sound. In a good way.
  • The album’s not out until the 23rd, but the whole thing is streaming at Jenny’s MySpace page. Give it a listen.
  • Some people were born to do certain things. Jenny’s definitely found her thing. Not only is she a fantastic singer/musician and a brilliant songwriter, but she clearly loves it. She was enjoying the music, the other musicians, the audience, performing, everything about it.
  • Probably enjoying an extra lot because it was the first night of the tour with brand new songs in a hometown venue. The Rilo Kiley show I saw in LA was outstanding, but you could tell the band was getting a little tired – last stop on a tour promoting a two-year-old album. She was sparkling tonight.
  • So yeah, if you get the chance to see her on her upcoming tour (which is detailed on her MySpace), I recommend it highly.

It’s That Season Again…

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On September 3, 2008

In Television

The new season of Bones premieres tonight, marking the beginning of this year’s TV season for me. Yay! My DVR is bigger than the one I had last year, which is a good thing. Here’s a little preview of everything I’m going to try to watch. Until I inevitably can’t keep up and have to drop some. Let me know what all you’re excited about!

There may be spoilers for previous seasons throughout this post.

Must-Watches

The Office

The Office

How long has it been since a half-hour comedy topped my must-watch list? It’s probably never happened. But The Office manages to be funny, real, fake, and heartwarming all at the same time. Going for three months in the summer without Jim and Pam and Michael and the rest of the crew is…not fun. I’m not sure what I want to happen this year – they kept the Jim-Pam storyline from getting too stale last season by having lots of other stuff going on, but I’m not sure how much longer they can do that. On the other hand, we’ve got the Dwight-Amanda-Andy triangle getting more convoluted all the time, not to mention Jan’s pregnancy. So we’re chock full of drama. Which will be handled most comedically, I’m sure.

30 Rock

30 Rock

How long has it been since TWO half-hour comedies topped my must-watch list? But I honestly look forward to 30 Rock every week at least as much as any other show. Sometimes even more than The Office, I’ll admit. The continuing adventures of Liz Lemon, producer of an SNL-like sketch comedy show, her boss Jack Donaghy, Jack’s assistant Kenneth, and others manages to stay fresh, funny, and wonderfully self-referential. (My favorite moment last year? After taking a conversation about a cellphone to an obvious extreme of product placement, Tina Fey turns to the camera and asks if they can have their money now.) My #1 request for this year: Give Jane Krakowski more to do.

Pushing Daisies 

Pushing Daisies

The most enchanting new show last year made it through the network’s quirk-factor gatekeepers and somehow got renewed. And we all breathed a sigh of relief that it’s on ABC, not FOX, because I doubt FOX would’ve been so generous. Ned is a humble piemaker with a special gift – he can bring dead things back to life with a touch. But a second touch returns them to death forever; and if he lets them live for longer than one minute, someone else dies. Pretty much a catch-22, especially when he brings back Chuck, the girl who lived next door and who he now loves. As cutesy as the concept is, it’s also the only show on TV that continually greets me with a sense of wonder. Plus, the art direction and cinematography is delectable. My fear for Season Two is that it won’t be able to figure out how to keep the “they love each other but they can’t touch” premise from getting old.

The Amazing Race 

Yeah, I’m putting a reality show fourth on my list of twenty shows I want to watch. You wanna make something of it? I love, love, love The Amazing Race. Why it took me until, like, Season 7 to figure this out, I couldn’t tell you. Seriously, racing around the world, to awesome places, doing awesome things (and some not-so-awesome things)…I’d do that even without a potential million dollars at the end of it. And watching it is the next best thing.

Chuck 

Another sophomore show, Chuck blends the things I like best in TV shows all together: geeks, spies, kick-ass women, action, comedy, awkward romances, etc. And it does it well. I almost literally can’t wait for it to come back. Will Chuck and Sarah move from fake dating to real romance? (I honestly can’t remember if they sort of did last year, or not…anyone remember?) And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Julie Cooper in previews. Er, that is, Melinda Clarke – she played Julie Cooper on The O.C. (and became pretty much my sole reason for watching the show near the end, before I quit watching completely). So that’s very exciting.

How I Met Your Mother 

How I Met Your Mother

What’s this? ANOTHER half-hour comedy? That’s right. And if Arrested Development were still on, we could have a nice set of comedy tennis doubles. But it’s not. Boo. Anyway, How I Met Your Mother isn’t quite as innovative as The Office and 30 Rock, but it makes up for it by having characters I love to pieces. If Ted were real, I’d marry him in a heartbeat. And if Robin were real, well, I’d be her. In my dreams. And Alyson Hannigan. And Jason Segal (who I like much better on TV than in Judd Apatow films). And of course, Neil Patrick Harris, who is GOLD. What about this year, though? I miss Ted-Robin as a couple, but I’m starting to be curious as to who the mother is – the last few episodes of last season seemed to be moving closer and closer to revealing her, or at least dropping strong hints about her. On the other hand, the premise of the show sort of dictates that once Ted meets her, show’s over, right? And I’m fairly sure it isn’t Stella, as much as I like having Sarah Chalke on the show. And I’m not at all sure about Barney-Robin. But that could just be because I’m still, two years later, so attached to Ted-Robin. We’ll see.

Ugly Betty

Ugly Betty

Oh, Betty. I don’t care for the world of fashion (oh, right, except for Project Runway), and you keep dragging me back in. When a show has so many characters you love to hate, or hate to love, or love to love, how can you resist? Mark and Amanda are easily among my favorite supporting characters ever, even when I spend entire shows wanting to smack some sense into them. And there’s plenty of drama to go around…Wilhemina’s blackmail baby, Christina’s involvement in that, Gio vs. Henry…suddenly hoping all that didn’t get resolved last season and I forgot. What with the writers strike and trying to graduate, I got a little lost even on some of my favorite shows.

House 

House

House and Wilson are on the outs because of a little thing like House killing Wilson’s girlfriend, Heinous Bitch. Gotta admit, though, Heinous Bitch did bring a lot of interest to the show last year, so I think it’s going to miss her. But House seems to be able to come up with something (like the American Idol approach to hospital hiring) to keep me involved, so I’m trusting them. I wish Thirteen were a little less Cameron2. Even though I like Cameron. Oh, and Felicia Day, of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, The Guild and BtVS S7, and general all-around acting/internet/tech cool person, is going to be in episode 2, so watch for that.

Bones 

Bones

Zach!!! I’m still angry about that. I didn’t believe it, I didn’t like it, and I don’t like that Zach won’t be on the show as much this year. Yet I’ll still be watching, because I need my Boreanaz-Deschanel-fake forensics fix.

Dirty Sexy Money 

My favorite guilty pleasure show of last year. I honestly don’t remember much about the plot part, and I could really care less about the overarching thing with Peter Krause’s father. I’m all about the twins and whatever shenanigans they’re getting up to.

NCIS and Numb3rs 

NCISNumb3rs

 

These both fall into my “episodic procedurals that I love to watch but don’t obsess over.” They usually stick around on my DVR until I’ve watched everything else, or when I need something comforting to watch. Yeah, I find procedurals about murders comforting. I’m weird like that.

Will Watch

These shows I’m still interested in (or am checking out for the first time and expecting to be good), but I’m not wholly invested in anymore. Some of these may be surprising to those of you who’ve known me over multiple TV seasons.

Fringe 

Fringe

I’m actually pretty excited about this one; it’s only down here because it’s new and hence an unknown quantity. Even being from JJ Abrams – I fear he’s spreading himself a little thin, what with this new show, and Lost (which I guess isn’t coming back until spring?), and the Star Trek movie, and I think there’s another movie he’s working on, too. But the concept sounds cool, and I’m hoping it’ll be awesome.

Grey’s Anatomy 

Grey\'s Anatomy

Two years ago I was a huge Grey’s addict. Then the debacle of S3 happened, and S4 didn’t pick up the pieces quite enough. So I’m there out of loyalty (although I don’t think I ever actually watched the post-strike episodes last year, so I’m a little out of the loop), but I don’t have the same blind hope that I did last year. Unless they turn it around quickly, I may have to regretfully let it go.

Desperate Housewives 

Desperate Housewives

I think I missed the last episode of this, too, because I thought they stopped at the tornado one, but then I later heard they aired the next episode (where you find out that Tom and the kids aren’t dead, I guess). Anyway, this year they’re apparently jumping several years ahead, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I guess they wanted something of a fresh start for the show, which admittedly stagnated a bit last year. We’ll see how it works out.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles 

Sarah Connor Chronicles

I want to move this into the top section, but it never grabbed me last year as much as it did some people. Honestly, I think being busy with school and thrown by having a show start right when all the others were ending (off-season shows really throw me for a loop, unless they’re reality shows) might’ve contributed. But again, I’m always up for kick-ass women shows, and if Summer Glau is involved, even better, so my hopes are high that this will soon become a must-watch.

Heroes 

Heroes

What…even happened last year? I really don’t remember. I remember thinking what a blessing it was that the season was cut short by the strike. Not a great sign, honestly. And from what I’ve seen, I’m not alone in my ambivalence toward S2, so hopefully the writers will find some new direction that will be awesome. If not…

Family Guy 

Family Guy

I actually love Family Guy and have no beef with it. I just tend not to care whether I catch every episode or not, so it’ll get saved up on the DVR or I’ll watch it on hulu.com when I feel in the mood.

Private Practice 

Private Practice

Addison was one of my favorite Grey’s characters, but I never got beyond casual like for her spin-off. I’ll keep it on the DVR for now, but it’s probably one of the first to go if I start getting behind. Unless it suddenly becomes awesome. But my hopes aren’t particularly high.

Tentatively Trying

Knight Rider 

Knight Rider

This could be pretty cool, or it could CRASH AND BURN. Chances about 30-70. Plus, it’s against two other shows I’m not missing (Pushing Daisies and Bones), so it’ll have to be really darn good for me to expend the effort to find and watch it.

Crusoe

(I can’t even find a promo pic for this; that doesn’t bode well)

An 18th-century period piece on primetime network TV? When has that ever happened and been successful? Don’t get me wrong, it’d be cool if it does work and does well, but I’m not scheduling my life around it just yet.

Kath & Kim 

Kath & Kim

I wanna give this a shot because a) it’s Australian, b) Molly Shannon, and c) Selma Blair. But if the tone in the ads is actually indicative of the tone of the show, I might not be able to take it for long.

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