October 2003 Archives
My co-worker Boris points out an ebay auction both funny and sad:
Last night, I saw The Revolution Will Not Be Televised at the Castro Theater. This documentary quite accidentally captured an insider's view of the failed military coup in Venezuela last year. It paints powerful portrait of Hugo Chavez as charismatic man-of-the-people who loses and regains his job in the space of three days. We are also shown in detail how privately-owned Venezuelan television networks were able to spin the coup as a peaceful and voluntary transition, even days after its failure.
It is striking to recall how muted the response to all of this was from the US government and in the US media. The film touches on this topic several times, but only in passing - it never stops to study the issue seriously.. It half-heartedly tries to connect the dots between Chavez' indifference to US oil interests and Bush's indifference to Chavez. It replays press conferences in which Ari Fleisher and Colin Powell soft-pedal the issue even as people are dying in the streets of Caracas. It also uncritically portrays several claims that the coup had been manufactured by the CIA.
These are all certainly provactive assertions, but it does frustratingly little to explore them. They seem to be here only to spice the film up a little, to ensure that all the angry little Chomskyites in the audience feel like they got their money's worth. These claims ring hollow because the film lacks a real critical assessment of how the Venezuelan media war played out in the international realm. I found myself wishing the film would do more here, but it never even bothers to ask obvious questions such as whether anyone in the US could have seen through the impenetrable smokescreen put up by the Venezuelan media.
Instead of asking the hard questions, it settles for cheap conspiracy theory. This would have been better left out - the central narrative is plenty compelling on it's own.
So I'm sitting here tonight letting the CD shuffler do it's thing and Takako Minekawa's Roomic Cube comes up. I have listened to this CD at least six or seven times before...but just now, BAM! Out of the blue, I'm blown away by track #7, 'Destron.' This song is pure minmalist electro-pop balad genius. I actually can't stand listening to it anymore - it's too good. I've heard anything quite like this. Well, except for the seven times I've listened to it already.
How did I miss this? Maybe it's because she's singing in English on this one (though I don't quite understand what she is saying). Maybe it's because I have a half-bottle of Charles Shaw in me at the moment. Maybe it's because I was always suckered by the more upbeat numbers like '1.666666' and 'Fantastic Cat.'
How can a song that you've heard several times before just blindside you like this? Has this ever happend to you?
Of Sun Tzu's <i>The Art of War</i>, one critic <a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195014766/ref=pd_rhf_p_2/102-0284776-9221776?v=glance&s=books&no=*' target='_blank'>writes</a>:
<table border='0' cellpadding='8'><tr><td bgcolor='#EEEEEE'><img src="http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/customer-reviews/stars-1-0.gif" width=64 height=12 border=0 alt="1 out of 5 stars"><u>Ok but not relevant!</u>, June 5, 2003<br><table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0><tr><td><font face=verdana,arial,helvetica size=-1> </font></td><td><font face=verdana,arial,helvetica size=-1> Reviewer: A reader</font></td></tr></table>
I guess all in all it was alright but I can't see any use for the information. It took me several days to read because I just couldn't get into it. I liked Shogun much better.
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Quentin Tarrantino once spoke about the infamous scene from <i>Reservoir Dogs</i> in which Michael Madsen takes his knife to a cop's ear. In the final edit of that scene, the camera pans away, leaving us to listen to agonized screams. Mr. Tarrantino notes that test audiences were far less horrified by an early cut of the scene in which all of the gory details were shown.
Of course, a good film maker wouldn't have needed a test audience to tell him this. At least as far back as Hitchcock, they have understood that creating suspense is at least as much a matter of what you don't show as it of what you do. In <i>Kill Bill</i>, Mr. Tarrantino has manifestly failed to recall this lesson. Here we see not only the ear, but nearly every other human body part removed in full, blood-spraying glory.
While I wasn't particularly disturbed or offended by any of this, I did come away wondering what the point of it was. The violence here is so supersized that at times it threatens to consume the entire film. This is particularly felt in the film's patient, stylish and well-filmed climax, who's cutting edge is left dull by the numbing splatterfest that precedes it.
Apparently, one popular explanation/justification for all this violence is that it is so intense that it eventually becomes comical. Well, maybe, but I think it really depends on your idea of what is funny. The Road Runner was violent, ha-ha funny. Monty Python's Black Knight was violent, ha-ha funny. <i>Kill Bill</i> is violent, I-can't-believe-someone-actually-put-that-on-film funny.
Then of course, there is the legion of QT fanboys who toss around words like <i>homage</i> and <i>pastiche</i> like so many throwing stars. "Don't you get it? Three decapitations-per-minute is, like, a reference to old kungfu movies, see?" Well, these people clearly have never actually watched any of the old Shaw Brothers films to which <i>Kill Bill</i> declares itself a paean. While certainly violent, those films were rarely more than slightly gory, if only because they lacked a $10 million budget for latex and fake blood.
Nonetheless, QT's mastery of exploiting the exploitation film is clearly evidenced in <i>Kill Bill's</i> plot, dialog, editing, and soundtrack. But for my money, films like <a href='http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/' target='_blank'><i>Hero</i></a> and <a href='http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0190332' target='_blank'><i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</i></a> are still much better genre reinventions because their directors don't feel compelled to hide behind winking pop-postmodernism. I dunno, maybe I'm getting old, but Mr. Tarrantino's brand of irony just isn't doing it for me anymore.
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<i>Oh, and did you know? This was The <u>Fourth</u> Film by Quentin Tarrantino.</i>
