Tag: Music

Week in Review: April 9th – April 15th, 2018

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The New Yorker

Gemini – Aaron Katz’s glitzy new mumble-noir. As the title would suggest, this film is about twins, and I would contend that it is about two interrelated sets of twin relationships. The first pair is that of movie star Heather (Zoey Kravitz) and her personal assistant Jill (Lola Kirke). After setting up this pair’s intimate friendship, Heather is ~spoilers~ murdered, shot dead by the same gun that Jill had leant her the night before. As the prime suspect, Jill must evade the LAPD and the stylish, loquacious detective on the case (John Cho), as she scours the city for clues to solve her friend’s murder. The second Gemini relationship is that of Los Angeles and the film noir genre. On this front, Gemini does not fair well in a direct comparison with any auteur-directed, LA-set neo-noir made this century; Mulholland Dr., Brick, Drive, and Inherent Vice pretty much run the gambit and each of those are certainly more, well, let’s say narratively consequential. Which is not to say that this film doesn’t carve out its own space. The film’s strength lies in the writing, all by Katz, which resembles a fusion of delectable noir-isms and twentysomething speak – hashtags, slang, apps, etc.

Jealousy – Philippe Garrel’s 2013 effort La jalousie is his first entry in a recent trilogy on love. Starring his son Louis, the film elliptically picks at a series of frayed relationship’s detailing the role that jealousy plays in motivating relationship, parenting and career decisions. The choice to shoot on film in sumptuous black & white is effective in delineating these character motives and in targeting a particular male obliviousness. I’m unfamiliar with Garrel’s other work so I’m at a loss for context, but this picture felt a lot like watching a Éric Rohmer film from the 1960’s only without the humor or playfulness. I prefer the Rohmer.

Isle of Dogs

The Caucasian Chalk Circle – Bertolt Brecht’s modernist epic play within a play was entirely new to me. Beginning in a post-WWII Soviet Union town, a group of townspeople debate how to rebuild their economy with a local administrator. Reaching an impasse, the group suggests they put on a play that they’ve been working on to clarify their current concerns. This new play, set in medieval times, tells the tale of a royal baby, abandoned by its mother during a bloody regime change. The baby is found by a young woman named Grusha, who listens to her conscience and risks her life to rescue the child. The majority of the plot follows Grusha on the run, struggling to find conditions suitable to raise the child, culminating in a trial to determine the child’s proper home. Despite the fairy tale ending, I think the play is about how in times of great upheaval society’s only way to deal with the moral and ethical dilemmas of the present is to seek refuge in a past that tends to be inadequate, rendered obsolete by the very forces causing the upheaval. That things work out here for the people who do the right thing is tongue-in-cheek, a fantasy that Brecht forces the audience to retreat out of into a reality that inevitably proves harsher. This production all-around was scrappy and inventive, spearheaded by three terrific performances. The electric guitar led, synth-backed folk song sequences (did I mention this play is part musical and features a singing narrator?) made the evening particularly strange.

You Were Never Really Here – This is one of the best movies of the year. Its raw, wounded, dark, terrifying yet beautiful, depressive and deeply mournful. It’s an uncomfortable movie because it takes you to emotional places that most people have never been before. Its traumatized. Its an American tragedy. . . And yet hope. It was a beautiful day today.

The New Yorker

Max Mayo3 Comments

In the Fall of 2012, my late Grandma Lydia and my father came to visit me in college at SMU. My Grandma brought with her several copies of a magazine called The New Yorker. I was vaguely familiar with this magazine, but had never actually held a copy before that point. On one of those afternoons, resting in their hotel room before heading out for the next activity, I eyed one she had left on the couch. Enticed by its colorful cover design, I picked it up, slumped in a chair and began to flip through it; within minutes I knew this was something I needed.

It was the September 10, 2012 Fashion issue. I really only turned the pages, reading little bits here and there, but I knew. In that issue, as in all of them, there were endless descriptions of New York City’s surplus of cultural events, trendy political commentary, personal essays by famous writers, long form journalism, long form culture articles, short fiction, poetry, cartoons and reviews of what at that time seemed like everything. My grandmother, noticing the glint in my eye, urged me to keep that issue. In the days that followed, I read that magazine from cover to cover, a rarity for anyone familiar with it. My thirst unquenched,  I then signed up for the trial subscription. And when that was finished, I became a yearly paying subscriber which has been the case for the last 5 years. In that time, I’ve received the magazine weekly, devouring and struggling to keep up with that relentless pile, often bringing my own stacks of back issues on vacations and holidays.

As of April 9th, 2018, I am no longer a subscriber. Without going into detail as to why, I instead want to use this space to reflect. The magazine was, without a doubt, one of the integral catalysts for my broader intellectual curiosity late in college. I can honestly say I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. Despite any criticisms that have led me to this decision, it is more true to say that my leaving the The New Yorker is a signifier of just how influential it has been. Perhaps I will be a subscriber again one day, and I will still be loosely following it online (within the 10 free articles a month constraint). But for now, a heartfelt goodbye and thank you to The New Yorker.

Week in Review: March 19th – 25th, 2018

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Conversations with Tyler: Martina Navratilova – This is my favorite podcast and I am lucky to live near where it is recorded. The guest was tennis superstar and LGBT activist Martina Navratilova. David Foster Wallace noted in his review of Tracy Austin’s autobiography that the greatest athletes usually lack the ability to express their genius through language, that their expertise lies in physical exertion and instinct. Navratilova certainly bucks that trend, yet there remained a lacking psychological depth in this conversation.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold – The 1981 novella by Gabriel García Márquez. This is either García Márquez at his most drawn-out or his most concise depending on where you fall on his style. I opt for the latter. García Márquez was a journalist before a novelist, and here he experiments with a journalist’s prose in a recognizably Garcimarquesian narrative structure. A few hours over a single night and early morning chronicling the murder of Santiago Nasar are meticulously detailed over a mere 120 pages. Our narrator constructs the event 20 years after the fact, jumping from perspective to perspective, and back and forth along the short timeline of events, only revealing at the very end what was foretold from the beginning. García Márquez is analyzing a society complicit en masse; No one body with enough personal responsibility yet dozens with moments where intervention was possible. This novella is a remarkable tracing of the contours of fate, and leads to some unpleasant questions about the trajectory of civilization. The political history of Colombia circa 1981, and the current events in the region more generally, cannot be ignored here.

The Death of Stalin – In the wake of Stalin’s death, the remaining members of Stalin’s committee – a pack of spineless, incompetent, morally bankrupt buffoons – squabble for control of the Soviet experiment. Armando Iannunci (Veep, In the Loop) directs this black satire, maybe the first comedy to encapsulate the Trump presidency. The slap-stick here is particularly good.

Yi Yi (A One and a Two…) – My favorite Edward Yang film and sadly his last. As mentioned in my partial reviews of Taipei Story and A Brighter Summer Day, this three-hour family melodrama is unique in Yang’s filmography for its embrace of a broad humanism. The fatalism and ennui that typifies his characters still remains, but no longer does Yang emote these feelings with them. The film follows the layered personal crisis’ of the Jian family after their matriarch goes into a coma. As with the earlier films, Yi Yi is an extraordinary document of a specific time in Taipei’s history that will only grow more nourishing as our world evolves. Yang’s use of glass here is a masterclass.

Doctor Strange – Mediocre movies are often the most frustrating movie experiences, as was the case for Marvel’s Doctor Strange, a lazy rip-off of The Matrix and a colossal waste of Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

National Symphony Orchestra: Noseda conducts Verdi’s Requiem – My first time hearing and seeing Guiseppe Verdi’s Requiem, and doubtfully the last. At 90 minutes, with no intermission, this part opera, part choir, part symphony about mourning for salvation at the horizon of the apocalypse is both over the top and totally engrossing. Predictably, the Dies irae segments are most memorable, the few moments where nearly every player is turned up to 11. Verdi wrote the piece as a memorial to Italian writer Allensandro Manzoni and I’m also told that Verdi was likely a non-believer. That Christianity has so often been a conduit for great art begs the question: How often is that religion actually the subject matter for a work, and how often is it merely a veil for more personal expression?

Bluets – Maggie Nelson’s short book of over 200 short essays? poems? tweet-sized thoughts? All of the above? Whatever you label Nelson’s collection, Bluets functions as a meditation on the color Blue. For Nelson, the color symbolizes both her innate depressive nature and the intensity of a recent love. Her success here hinges on a montage effect, oscillating between a potent personal thread and an intellectual discourse on the color blue throughout art history.

Foxtrot

 

Foxtrot

Max Mayo1 Comment

Warning! This movie is really, really good and this partial review spoils major plot points. I would advise not watching any trailers nor reading any reviews before going in.

The foxtrot is a dance where, “No matter where you go, you always end up in the same spot.” Michael Feldman explains this to his wife Dafna, late in the film Foxtrot, as he performs the steps in their modern Tel Aviv apartment. Right step, then back step, left step, front. Then right step again, then back step, left step, then front. Ad infinitum. . .

In the film’s first step, Michael and Dafna receive a knock at their door. Dafna opens it, looking straight into the lens, only to faint into a backdrop of spiraling squares. It’s the Israeli military, their very presence needs no explanation. With disquieting efficiency, Dafna is administered a sedative shot and carried to the bedroom. This leaves Michael alone with the officers, the pressure of shock and grief collapsing in him, as they explain that his son Jonathan was killed in action.

We learn that Michael is an architect by trade. Fittingly, he’s framed in disorienting spaces (some of which he likely designed) as he fails to compartmentalize this trauma, and we later learn, traumas awoken from the past. We witness Michael meet with his mother suffering from dementia, his brother, his sister-in-law and his own daughter, each encounter revealing a rapid retreat inwards that is visualized externally.

Michael seems on the verge of imploding irreparably when he gets another knock at his door. There’s been a mistake. A clerical error. It turns out that Jonathan is safe, it was a different boy who was KIA. This prompts Michael to instead explode, demanding his son be returned home at once. And then the film takes its next step.

Director Samuel Maoz utilizes nearly every tool in cinema’s arsenal to execute a severe formalism that pivots radically from tone to tone, act to act, character to character. It’s difficult to overstate just how jarring these shifts are during the experience. This film is a total assault of mise-en-scene, cinematography, music and editing, even space and time, which I found exhilarating.

On one level Foxtrot functions as a family tragedy, a reckoning between mankind and fate. On another, it’s an anti-war film, about the latent violence inflicted on every party in a conflict. But on its grandest scale, Foxtrot is depicting a multi-generational disillusionment of the Israeli project, a national identity crisis in progress. Maoz’s remarkable film acts like a mirror, or maybe a prism, refracting the entire dance across time.

Week in Review: March 12th – 18th, 2018

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D’Annunzio’s Cave – Another Heinz Emigholz architecture film, this time about the home of Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. I was unfamiliar with the man, or his celebrated novels, but it seems his political ideas may have influenced the eventual spread of Italian fascism. For this fact, or for the ghastly interior decorating, Emigholz directs this space as a horror film. As the camera does its usual Emigholz tessellations, an experimental discordant score by David Byrne and Brian Eno puts one in a perpetual state of unease. The rooms of the house are uniquely dark, jarring, over-stuffed, lacking any recognizable or appealing style. It feels like the home of a serial killer.

Koyannisqatsi ft. The Philip Glass Ensemble – Philip Glass was back again, again with friends! This night was a screening of Godfrey Reggio’s city-symphony classic, Koyannisqatsi, with Glass’s original score played live by him and his Ensemble. The Washington Chorus was also there to help. The performance was shaky during the slower nature sequences, but the stage found its groove mid film in time for the rapturous climax. The film remains as relevent today as it was in 1983, and we are still catching up with Ron Fricke’s cinematography.

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez’s surprising and delightful, if bittersweet novel about the power and importance of impassioned love at any age. Stylistically, Márquez abandons the literal magic here, and instead refines his near mystical talent to twist his characters in new directions throughout their lifetimes. The majority of the pages are devoted to several of the steamy 622 love affairs of our hero, Florentino Ariza, as he bides his time, waiting over 50 years for another chance at his first love, Fermina Daza. By the end, you have felt the draining strain of time on Florentino and Fermina as they approach Death’s door-step, but even stronger, you feel these character’s natural will to revivify a type of passion most only get to feel once in a lifetime. That this may be self-delusion is irrelevant to Márquez. The magnetic strength of this urge inspires him, and the reader, above all.

A Brighter Summer Day – Edward Yang’s 1991 epic four-hour coming of age story is a lush time capsule into early 1960’s Taipei. Yang’s primal filmic theme is the erosion of filial piety and A Brighter Summer Day may be his deepest exploration of this process. His narrative strategy this time involves rhyming disparate threads utilizing similar motifs – illumination vs darkness, architectural framing, pop cultural fixations – to layer his multiple story threads. For me, this is the pivot point for Yang’s output, an integral piece of the puzzle in how he moves from the outright fatalism of Taipei Story to the broad humanism of Yi Yi.

Saturday Night Live – This week’s episode with host Bill Hader hit a lower mark than the Sterling K. Brown episode, but there continued to be sketches that were pushing the show’s normal absurdity boundaries. One featured Cecily Strong sitting on her geriatric husband (Hader) in an electric wheelchair during a game night with her girlfriends. His Cialis has just kicked in and they have a limited timeframe to take advantage. In response to the consternation of her friends sitting across the table, Strong pleas, “Its no different than breastfeeding!” A second brilliant skit was a fake ad for an office lamp toilet that you can keep on your desk. Beck Bennett, the office worker who becomes addicted to the lamps, is second only to Kate McKinnon as the most consistently funny and versatile players in this cast.

Plants – I’m told that Chilean film is on the up and up, and was excited to see this 2015 effort by Roberto Doveris. It’s an atmospheric sexual awakening tale about a young girl named Flor who’s family unit is in the midst of decay. Her brother is in a coma (one of the titular plants) and her mother is in the hospital with a terminal illness. The father is out of the picture. Flor spends her free time going to comic conventions, preparing dance choreography with her friends, and naively messaging guys on chatroulette. Real life chat windows, plant life and comic book drawings feature sporadically in the frame as Flor sexual urges lead her into some dangerous encounters. Ultimately, this movie feels like a stew of visual ideas that never congealed. Pablo Larraín remains the face of this emerging cinema, but Doveris could be a director to watch, especially with a more cogent script.