Tag: Photography

Week in Review: April 30th – May 6th, 2018

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La Jetée – Chris Marker’s experimental classic. I was curious to re-watch this due to my burgeoning interest in photography. Constructed entirely of photographs and voice-over, with the exception of ~3 seconds of film, this is certainly an unorthodox way to construct a 30 minute science fiction time travel story. Marker utilizes the medium he’s chosen and various visual motifs within his photography to explore how different objects or ideas – a photograph, a memory, taxidermy, fossils, history, love, a film – function as imperfect vessels of meaning through time. If you haven’t seen this gem, it is on YouTube here: La Jetée

Zama – As mentioned in the previous Week in Review, I also read Antonio Di Benedetto’s 1956 novel, Zama. Di Benedetto stated openly that the biggest influence on his career was Dostoevsky. The first part of this book is sort of like Notes from Underground set in colonial Asunción, layered with the complicated racial hierarchy of the region; like the narrator of that novel, the titular Don Diego de Zama is a conniving, neurotic type who’s overwrought inner dialogue moves the story along. As an official in the Spanish Empire, Zama aspires to a more central position of importance, ideally in Buenos Aires with his family, or better yet, in Spain. As an americano though (one of Spanish heritage but born in the Americas) his pull is weaker than any Spaniard’s and his plans are repeatedly thwarted. In parts 2 and 3, the parameters of Zama’s stasis take on a Kafkaesque quality. Questions of who he is, where he is, and what is keeping him in Asunción become more ambiguous. I found that the initial disdain I felt for Zama slowly turned to sympathy and then to something more mysterious. Very much recommended.

Hamlet – London’s Royal Shakespeare Company came to town with their wildly successful production of Hamlet featuring a nearly all black cast replete with numerous pan-African influences. Though this production had its cultural moment long before 2018’s Black Panther film, this did not stop the Wakanda Forever salute from being incorporated for good fun (and for good reason). On a scene to scene, character to character level, this show was better acted, better produced and more visually interesting than D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater Company rendition earlier this year. Part of it is talent and budget, but part of it is that the RSC show is able to go places through its cross-cultural pollination that are simply inaccessible to a majority white American cast. For example, Hamlet’s encounter with the Ghost of his late father is preempted by, what I can only describe as, a solo African dream dance featuring live drummers on stage, encircling fog machines, and flashing strobe lights. The question of whether Hamlet is really seeing his father, some other spirit, or simply going insane always existed within the text; what this production adds is a historical and cultural ambiguity that refocuses the scope of the play. To its credit, the D.C. show wisely leaned into the latent political interpretations offered by current events: Claudius as an authoritarian leader in charge of a secret police; Hamlet as a liberal hipster driven to radical protest. Here again though, the RSC production essentially runs a circle around that take, while offering larger readings. Notably, this play still takes place in a Denmark, a country that is ethnically over 90% caucasian and one of the many western European countries with a dark legacy in the Atlantic slave trade.

To The Back of Beyond – What if you just stood up and walked away from your entire life? Home, career, partner, children, everything. It’s an extreme, partially unbelievable conceit for a novel that author Peter Stamm makes not only believable but emotionally resonant. Thomas, a husband to Astrid, and father of two children, does exactly that at the start of this book. He walks away one evening on what begins as a stroll and slowly becomes a much larger choice to continue to hike through the Swiss countryside without end. The perspective alternates from Astrid to Thomas as they both slowly accept that Thomas will not be returning. Stamm’s prose, which is quite elegant but never dazzling, keeps the story within the quotidian. Thomas’s decisions to keep going, like most things in life, just sort of happen, revolving around the practical needs one would face in such a scenario. Ultimately the story is about the distant relationship between the two protagonists, and though Stamm never drifts into abstraction, the distancing itself is pregnant with more relatable interpretations. The need for freedom, space, change in a relationship are all on the table, and in many ways it’s Astrid’s, not Thomas’s, pained yet quiet acceptance of this that will have most readers reeling.

Thor: Ragnarok – In the wake of Infinity War, I felt compelled to fill in some personal blind spots in the MCU. I am also a huge Taika Waititi fan and was excited what he could do with a massive budget. I was mostly not disappointed, with the caveat that this film looks and moves like any of the magical/space operatic entries. Waititi’s unique contribution here is the comedy, which has the dual function of making Ragnarok wildly funny and of finally (3 solo films in!) fleshing out Hemsworth’s Thor into a three-dimensional character. The contrast with the piece of cardboard with the stapled blonde wig on top that plays Thor in Age of Ultron is stark to say the least. Allegedly, there are numerous Maori influences throughout visuals but I am sadly uninformed in that area. The significance these references likely have with the film’s broad post-colonial themes makes sense, but unfortunately said themes are under-developed anyway.

Face / Off – In John Woo’s ludicrous but highly entertaining film, FBI agent Sean Archer, played by John Travolta, decides to swap faces with terrorist Caster Troy, played by Nicholas Cage, in order to go deep undercover in a high security prison and learn from Troy’s brother the key to stopping a terror attack in downtown Los Angeles. Obviously, Troy wakes up without his face, finds Archer’s face lying around and attaches that face. . . If this premise isn’t enough for you, there is also a sequence where Archer, with Cage’s face, is pointing a gun at a mirror seeing the reflection of the terrorist he’s after, while on the other side of this mirror is another mirror(!) where Troy, with Travolta’s face, is pointing a gun at the reflection of the FBI agent he despises.

Avengers: Age of Ultron – I had heard that this was one of the worst MCU films, and its possible that that low bar made me mostly enjoy it despite its many shortcomings. This film is excellent at illustrating the power discrepancies between the team members, the importance of cooperation and knowing your role. Surprisingly, Hawkeye, the weakest Avenger by far, steals the show and may be the only three-dimensional character in the film. Besides that, I was unable to extract an intelligible political message, other than that Artificial Intelligence is dangerous if we don’t do it right. Ultron has an eye for the theatrical, at one point taking great joy in destroying an older version of himself, but too low an IQ to make this portrayal of the future worth thinking about.

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 26th – April 1st, 2018

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The Constitution of the United States – I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s surprisingly short and simple, elegant even. The Founder’s laser focus on preventing future authoritarianism remains striking, though I’m most impressed with its inherent capacity for self-correction and evolution.

A Film Like Any Other – My first step in an effort to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Dziga Vertov Group political films he made, along with Jean-Pierre Gorin, in the wake of the failed French student revolution of 1968. This conceptual film consists of nearly two hours of political discussions between a group of French communists sitting in a field, occasionally intercut with montages of the ‘68 uprising. There are two simultaneous audio tracks of independent debate one gets to read through, and the frame limits your vision to the backs of the comrades in the surrounding tall grass. . .only Godard. This is an excruciating sitting, recommended for Godard completionists only.

Kaili Blues – Bi Gan’s very beautiful Chinese drama from 2015. Set in a rural Chinese town, a doctor feuds with his step-brother over the raising of his nephew. The second half of the film, following the doctor on the road looking for his nephew, is punctuated by a roughly 40 minute continuous shot, the camera traveling several miles via two motorcycles, a car, a boat and then circumambulating an entire town on foot, all while following multiple characters repeatedly interacting. Its impressive stuff, though I was even more taken with the still photography throughout the film. Bi extracts a somber moodiness from the sort of detritus typified by a rural town undergoing uneven development. Wet concrete, cloudy skies, industrial materials, unfinished construction and slow motorcycle rides are expressionistic cues that build out the emotional thrust of the work. The Chinese title translates to “Roadside Picnic”, the same name as the Russian science fiction novel that would inspire Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Though the influence of Tarkovsky is notable on Bi, that potent comparison doesn’t keep this first film from feeling a bit under-baked. Perhaps a re-watch would help but I felt there was too little going on plot-wise. Still, Bi’s visual instincts appear fully formed. This is an auteur to keep an eye on.

Barry – SNL alum Bill Hader’s new HBO show. Hader stars, directs, writes, and produces here, and surprise!, he’s good. Like, really good. Hader plays a lonely assassin, former marine, who rediscovers the joys of human connection in a hack L.A. acting troupe while honing in on his next mark. Like many of the dark, anti-hero led prestige television shows from the last decade, there’s a certain perversity baked into the concept. The show requires the viewer to root both for Barry’s emotional fulfillment and his professional success (i.e. killing people). If the pilot is any indication, these two things will rarely be aligned.

Colossal – The premise is unique: a woman’s self-destructive alcoholism in upstate New York personified as a rampaging kaiju in Seoul. In execution, this movie falls apart. The ‘fight scenes’ were often unintentionally laughable and tonally awkward. Worse, the film clumsily alternates between which characters are deserving of your sympathy during any given scene. I would normally leave it here, but in the wake of Barry, I have to mention Jason Sudeikis. The contrast with the talent and ambition of Hader is stark. I don’t know if it’s the script, the direction or him, but Sudeikis is unusable in this film. Every dramatic moment involving his character feels false, a cartoonish depiction of alcoholism and personal resentment. I like him, I find him hilarious at times, but at this juncture I’m skeptical that he has the dramatic chops to do anything but broad comedies.

Translations – Brian Friel’s 1980 play about the Irish-English cultural divide set the 1830’s. During this time, the British Empire was actively employing the Royal Engineers to standardize Ireland through language and cartography. Their job was in effect to rename the entire country. The majority of the characters are Irish people speaking Gaelic but this is all performed on stage in English. Likewise, the Royal Engineers obviously speak English. Thus, very cleverly the language and cultural barriers of that time are conveyed using a common language for the audience. Fitting too, as this play was a pointed commentary on the then ongoing Troubles with its central theme around translation. The question of how to translate a random street crossing with a nearby well becomes an existential dilemma of whether one should fight to maintain a cultural heritage or assimilate into what will be the future paradigm.

Week in Review: February 26th – March 4th, 2018

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Sampha: Process – A Malick-like collage of performances set in urban London, the beaches of Sierra Leone and in a giant empty diving pool, among others. It amounts to an experimental album film, consisting of no linear plot or dialogue (or full songs for that matter), but one gets a vague sense of Sampha’s background and concerns around his mixed global identity.

Sullivan’s Banks – Another short collage, this one about eight banks designed by American architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Heinz Emigholz directs the structures one at a time by simply placing the camera at various angles for observation. Shot in the 1990’s, each analysis begins with a few elliptical master shots where you can see how each building blends in to a small town square. Only when the camera moves closer do you begin to see their quiet radicalism and idiosyncratic nature. Sullivan was a fan of ornament and the density of details and materials on these banks absorb you as the camera tessellates around them. While the film offers no opinion per se, if there is an argument being made it is that Sullivan was a modernist and a visionary that American architecture stopped following.

Maillart’s Bridges – This is another Emigholz short film that is part of his Architecture as Autobiography docu-series. It examines 14 structures, primarily bridges, designed and built by Swiss engineer Robert Maillert (1872-1940) early in the 20th century. Maillert was notable for his creative use of reinforced concrete to minimize material usage and structural footprint. Emigholz’s camera replicates the approach to Sullivan’s banks, with one caveat: as the camera pivots around the sturcutres we almost never see their functional tops. Instead, Emigholz is fascinated with looking at the bridges the way Maillert may have, admiring and exploring the visual play of curves and lines amongst the Swiss Alps’ landscape.

Blind Spot – Teju Cole is one of my favorite creative minds and his first photobook does not disappoint. As he notes within the text, the book represents the 4th segment in a tetralogy about looking. A photography project shouldn’t come as a surprise though. Cole’s penchant for flaneuring in his literary works helps elucidate the formal continuity between the four projects. The photographs, representing over a decade of international travels, are often stunning but he lets none of them speak for themselves. Each image is coupled with a piece of text on the opposite page that contains a reaction to his prolonged exposure to his picture. The pairs are organized thematically and they elliptically build out a continuous stream of thought around his philosophical, aesthetic and political ideas. With this photobook, one looks at Teju Cole looking at what he was looking at.

Chef’s Table – It’s hard not to chuckle at the self-serious formula at this point, which is unfortunate because the chefs are still anything but formulaic. I watched Season 3, Episode 6 about chef Virgilio Martínez of Central based in Lima, who’s ecosystem inspired dishes are fascinating. He and his team scavenge around Peru for hundreds of unique ingredients used nowhere else in the world, and then combine them in groupings based on elevation. Apparently some of the dishes aren’t even designed to taste good.

Solaris – Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1973 three hour Russian science fiction classic. This was a re-watch as part of my Annihilation post-mortum and I can confirm that it still holds up. The film is much broader than I recalled, though I think its possible to read the film as Tarkovsky’s personal crisis over the then obvious shortcomings of the Soviet experiment. A telling 5 minute sequence set in a futuristic Moscow is merely a drive around the multi-tiered infrastructure and booming skylines of Tokyo.

Taipei Story

The 90th Academy Awards – I watch the Oscars every year for shallow reasons that I can’t quite reckon with. It is almost always the same: a drab four hour affair punctuated by a few funny presenting bits and the ensuing consensus of whether or not the host was any good. This year I was pleased by the #MeToo tone of the evening and Jimmy Kimmel’s general presence, but there just weren’t any surprises in this stagnating event. I uncharacteristically did not make a prediction list, but I didn’t need one. All most all of the wins were predictable. The one spark was when Kimmel took a caravan of stars over to a local movie theater, interrupting an ongoing film’s audience with candy baskets and hot-dog canons. The bit ran too long, and it honestly looked like chaos, but it contained the potential for disaster and thus was exhilarating. If the Academy really wants to expand the broadcast audience, they need more uncertainty.