The House Next Door

Archive: May, 2009

Links for the Day (May 22nd, 2009)

by on May 21st, 2009 at 9:00 pm in Links for the Day

1. American Pie. This GQ feature, which picks the 25 best pizzerias in America, is completely wrong, since its two LA-based pizzerias do NOT include Pizzeria Mozza (insert boilerplate rant from LA folks about how its overrated in comments ... now).

["Italians are wrong. Not about cars or suits. About pizza, and they're not entirely mistaken about that, only about crusts and buffalo-milk mozzarella. They've got the tomato part right. Pizza was created by the Italians—or maybe by the Greeks, who brought it to Naples, but let's not pile on the bad news. Right now it justly belongs to us. We care more about it. We eat more of it, and unlike the Italians, we appreciate it at dinner, at lunch, and at breakfast, when we have it cold, standing up, to make hangovers go away. Italians don't really understand pizza. They think of it as knife-and-fork food, best after the sun goes down."] Continue Reading »




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Star Trek 90210? Or Star Trash? Or whatever you want, K.

by on May 21st, 2009 at 9:10 am in Film

By Ali Arikan

Oh blessed be, nerds; oh happy day! Time to gambol. Star Trek is finally cool! HUZZAH! And here's the bonus: J.J. Abrams, the director, and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers, have found ingeniously oafish ways of crowbarring every single aspect of common Trek lore into the film. The single most moving line in the history of the entire Star Trek canon is destroyed to underline a scene that would have otherwise been quite powerful. It's obvious the filmmakers studied Gene Roddenberry's space saga closely, got to know it inside out, and it shows in their slavish and graceless dedication to the franchise. But, you know what they say: Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in your fruit salad. Continue Reading »




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Steve McQueen: Too Cool

by on May 21st, 2009 at 7:04 am in Film

By Matt Zoller Seitz

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is currently showing a series of films starring Steve McQueen. This essay for The L compares McQueen's screen persona to that of other movie tough guys, past and present. You can watch the video below, or at the magazine's web site. For a text version, click here.




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American Excess

by on May 21st, 2009 at 3:19 am in Music, Television

American Excess

Last night's American Idol finale was an exercise in excess, with award-show posturing complete with faux awards presented by host Ryan Seacrest and superstar guest performances, including Fergie—who awkwardly warbled through her hit "Big Girls Don't Cry" before being joined by her fellow Black Eyed Peas for a performance of their latest single, "Boom Boom Pow," a song that does the exact opposite of epitomizing a singing competition—and a seemingly dazed and confused Rod Stewart. The only thing missing was a dry-ice-and-fire-filled group performance of Queen's "We Are the Champions." Oh, wait, there it is.

I stopped paying attention to the conveyor belt of alternately mediocre-but-smartly-packaged and quirky-but-completely-unmarketable talent that is Idol around the time that viewers gifted themselves with Taylor Hicks, but it's clear the show is close to buckling under the weight of its over-bloated surfeit. In many ways, the finale was perfectly married to the season's purported frontrunner, 27-year-old neo-glam rocker Adam Lambert—he of the man-polish, eyeliner, jet-black emo hairdo, and heavy-metal shriek. Lambert was joined on stage at one point by Kiss for an over-the-top spectacle of a duet that involved, yes, more dry ice and fire. Continue Reading »




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The Cinephile Hunt on YouTube and Beyond

by on May 20th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Film

By Dan Callahan

Like most people, I assume, I've generally watched YouTube in dribs and drabs. I would type in a name and see what turned up under, say, Anita O'Day, or Katharine Hepburn, or Bruce Springsteen. It was only when I was commissioned by the Sydney Film Festival to write a piece about Deborah Kerr that I began to discover just how useful YouTube could be as a resource for hard-to-see films. I typed in "Deborah Kerr," and was surprised to see entire Kerr movies on the site: Hatter's Castle (1941), an early British film she made with James Mason, and The Proud and Profane (1956), a key Kerr picture that goes much further with the sexuality she only hinted at in From Here to Eternity. Most importantly, a Kerr fan had uploaded several of her television movies from the eighties, like Reunion at Fairborough (1985), which re-united her with her best co-star, Robert Mitchum, and even her last feature film, a modest vehicle called The Assam Garden (1985), which I'm not sure ever got a proper release in America.

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To read the rest of the article at the L Magazine, click here.




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Links for the Day (May 21st, 2009)

by on May 20th, 2009 at 9:00 pm in Links for the Day

1. A Good Day for Unconventional Television: Dollhouse Renewed. Maureen Ryan has the goods. I like to think that deep within the Fox office suites, the president of Fox was all, "So, Dollhouse gets terrible ratings. Let's cancel it. Any objections?" and everyone just shook their heads until some guy shouted from the back, "Wait! Todd VanDerWerff says we should renew it!" Not that I think all that highly of myself. Also, since it's upfront week, here are looks at the new Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS schedules and speculation about The CW, which announces early today. Also, here's Variety on how the shrinking ratings for broadcast TV mean that marginal shows are more likely to be renewed. And, just as I saved Dollhouse, Alan Sepinwall apparently saved Chuck (only he actually did?).

["The campaign to renew Dollhouse probably wouldn't have caught fire had Whedon never been allowed to make the weird, unsettling, unexpectedly moving and complex show that he ultimately came up with in the second half of Dollhouse's season. When shows are given time to develop, when they're allowed to be different, when they're allowed to be ambitious and strange and challenging—all that can lead to the kind of fan passion that we're talking about here."] Continue Reading »




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Links for the Day (May 20th, 2009)

by on May 20th, 2009 at 8:00 am in Links for the Day

1. Remember that one guy, Clint Eastwood? Kind of a big deal in movies for a few decades now? Well, Akiva Gottlieb has a few things to say about the fellow in a piece filed for The Nation.

["People have been writing Clint Eastwood's obituary for about as long as the man's been making movies. This is not without his encouragement. Every new picture is a valediction, as every ending ushers our martyred hero off into the shadows to his eternal good night. Last year's release of Gran Torino, said to be Clint's final film as a performer, only heightens the impulse to tie a bow around his career. Nostalgic reverence is not much to ask from an audience, but Eastwood seeks it again and again, with a child's petulant sense of entitlement. Though he was born in San Francisco, he missed the summer of love, LSD, the sexual revolution and all the spoils of American bohemia because he was too busy combating evil and moral relativism in the name of justice. Sacrifice demands recognition. In contemporary American cinema, Clint Eastwood is our perennial Last Man Standing. But what is he standing on, or for, and why is he so eager to hide it?"] Continue Reading »




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The Alligators Have Good Graphics, Vol. 2: Princesses in Other Castles

by on May 20th, 2009 at 3:05 am in Video Games

Alligators Have Good Graphics

If the past year has seen the critical gaming community boom, there seem to be two games that best represent that explosion: Braid and BioShock. A great deal has been written about the two titles and their themes have been explored. Likewise, both were very well-reviewed and have sold extremely well. They're both interesting from a critical perspective and extremely enjoyable. Their richness makes them appealing for gamers interested in critical discourse, but their popularity and thematic accessibility make those discourses accessible to nearly everyone. Neither title was the first to offer thematic depths, but they seem to have come along at the right moment.

It's interesting, then, that a great deal of the critical community has reacted somewhat negatively to Braid's themes. There have been several negative readings of the title. While it's not surprising to find some dissenters when presented with a title as highly praised as Braid, I think the so-called dissenters deserve better than an outright dismissal. I adore Braid, and I consider it a masterpiece, but I find myself in nearly complete agreement with many of its harshest criticisms. Continue Reading »




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Links for the Day (May 19th, 2009)

by on May 19th, 2009 at 8:30 am in Links for the Day


1. Though I'm sure those who care have already read up on (and maybe read through some of) the new issue of Undercurrent, with its particular focus on John Ford, I thought I would go ahead and point again. Especially since that's what Girish just did in his latest post (quote below), wherein he offers some thoughts on She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, a film not talked about in the aforementioned collection of essays (and one I like quite a bit, too; I like G's take as well). For what it's worth, I was particularly taken with the ideas I got from Adrian Martin's essay on "social mise en scène" and Dan Sallitt's essay on Fort Apache (picture above).

["She Wore a Yellow Ribbon--the first thing we notice about it is the searing Technicolor!--is the middle work of the Cavalry trilogy, sandwiched between Fort Apache (1948) and Rio Grande (1950), both of which are in black-and-white. It is a comedy, a romance, an adventure film, but most of all it strikes me as a Cavalry procedural. An elaborate web of rituals--and their underlying rules--envelops this film. These rituals aren't grand but small-scale, ordinary, everyday."] Continue Reading »




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Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell Bastards!

by on May 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in DVD, Film

By Jeremiah Kipp

[Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! streets today on DVD. Click here for more information.]

When Jim Jarmusch met hard-boiled, irreverent Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, they spent an entire evening hanging out. At first, Suzuki was very polite in his statements about Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, but after a few drinks he opened up about the things he didn't like so much. "I like the atmosphere very much, [but] it takes him too long to go and kill everyone! I would get him there, kill 'em all. I don't have time for all this." Best known for his ultraviolent 1967 film Branded to Kill, it's a Yakuza film that seems filtered through Alice in Wonderland, with logical plotting thrown out the window in favor of absurd mayhem. He got through being blacklisted and most of his later work feels like impressionistic dreamscapes filtered through hard-nosed, B-movie genre trappings, even when the movies are about painters and poets. Something about Suzuki's early work as a contract player, churning out one Yakuza gangster film after another, instilled in him a basic, primal desire to keep the movie entertaining, even if that entertainment were in utter defiance of film grammar or common sense. Continue Reading »




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Links for the Day (May 18, 2009)

by on May 18th, 2009 at 8:30 am in Links for the Day


1. So Cannes 2009 has been chugging along for a week now. Have you been keeping up? We don't have the good fortune of dispatches this year but we sure can link away to some things we like the looks/sounds of from way across the Atlantic. For instance, you can see all kinds of coverage round ups thanks to David Hudson over at IFC's The Daily. But if that feels like too much to wade through, how about some particular voices: the steadfast Mike D'Angelo has been filing reports for The A.V. Club; Danny Kasman and David Phelps have been writing tons of great quick takes for The Auteurs' Notebook; Wesley Morris drops bombs over at the Boston Globe movie blog; and Manohla has already filed a couple missives here and here. One of the features I'm most anticipating, it should be no surprise, is the new Pedro Costa picture, Ne Change Rien. Read some words by D-Kaz below that, if anything, make me super excited. You?

["Considering all his talk about work, the value of it as well as its humility, and especially how making movies is work too—good work, by ardent workers–it is hard to believe that Pedro Costa hasn't made a movie about work until Ne change rien. Où gît votre sourire enfoui?, his documentary on the making of Straub-Huillet's Sicilia!, is about process, romance, and constestation—all elements of work, but this film is quite different."] Continue Reading »




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Have Pelosi's Chickens Come Home to Roost?

by on May 18th, 2009 at 3:38 am in Politics

Nancy Pelosi

Rush Limbaugh is calling for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's resignation. On his radio show last week, the right-wing lightning rod babbled something about glass ceilings and equality—the kind of pseudo-progressive logic conservatives like to employ when attempting to disguise their utter contempt for a minority or opposition group (in this case, it's both). In other words, if Pelosi truly wants to prove she's worthy of a man's job, then she ought to act like a man—you know, like Richard Nixon—and resign. It's enough to make me rush to the speaker's defense. But I refuse to take the bait, and I suspect few others will either.

The right has been waiting to take Pelosi down since the Democrats took control of the House in 2006. The Republican Party was quick to pounce on the Speaker's allegation Friday that she was misled by the CIA on the issue of torture, with House Minority Leader John Boehner admonishing his counterpart for questioning the CIA, telling CNN's John King that we ought to instead pat intelligence agents on the back for a "job well done," once again twisting a Democrat's criticism of Bush administration officials into a slandering of the "troops." Not to be outdone, on Meet the Press RNC Chairman Michael Steele attempted to conflate Pelosi's situation with that of the president: "The question for me is does the president support Nancy Pelosi's version of what happened or the CIA director's version of what happened?" Continue Reading »




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Breaking Bad Mondays: Season 2, Ep. 11, "Mandala"

by on May 17th, 2009 at 11:07 pm in Television

By Todd VanDerWerff

A young boy, on an errand we can't quite figure out yet, rides his bicycle through a desolate corner of the city of Albuquerque, rot surrounding him. Standing in the middle of that desolation, a large man dressed all in white with multiple piercings surveys his domain. Shot from below, he looms, until we see that he's sipping from a large soda cup, the sort you might buy at a 7-11. He's waiting for someone or something, and when a couple of other guys in a low-riding car pull up to give him some guff, he shoos them off quickly enough. The kid keeps riding, finally reaching the man in white, and he circles him once, twice, many times. Then he inquires as to the origin of the man's earrings, and the man finally has to shoo the kid off. He's worried about the guys in the car, who have pulled up to the corner and parked down a side street to keep an eye on them. But when the gunshots come, they come from behind, from where the kid has gotten off his bike, is holding a gun. As the guy stares at the new wound in his gut in horror, then at the kid, the kid stares in shock, as if he, himself, didn't think he could do this, and then after a few moments, he fires again and again and again as the man in white tries to flee. The guy collapses in the middle of the street, blood pouring from his mouth. The kid and the car pull away from the scene of the crime in almost perfect synchronization, a high shot showing us the two parties leaving in opposite directions, the guy bleeding out in the middle of the street. Continue Reading »




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Assayas goes literary: Summer Hours

by on May 14th, 2009 at 9:30 pm in Film

Summer Hours opens with children playing in the French countryside, observed by a calm camera in elegant tracking and crane shots; there's a warm guitar/string quartet score playing. The weather is gorgeous, the adults are drinking wine, and the Landmark crowd is settling calmly into their seats; the title itself seems bathed in the unearned seasonal glow of Agnes Jaoui. Is this really an Olivier Assayas film? After a few minutes, the camera goes shaky and handheld, confirming you're in the right theater, but still. As it turns out, Summer Hours is as Assayas-esque a film as there ever was; it's just that Assayas has toned down the tics that were driving him into self-parody. Continue Reading »




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TV on the Internet, Episodes 1 through 8

by and on May 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm in Film, Television

Hey, House readers.

Recently, noticing a dearth of general, TV-centric podcasts, Libby Hill and I began our own show. We're still ironing out some of the technical kinks, but we'd love if you would check out the eight episodes we have so far and join in the discussion. We'll post links to future episodes here as they come up. Continue Reading »




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