Magnificent Anderson...

After internal turmoil over Darjeeling Limited, I went back and rewatched Life Aquatic and Bottle Rocket, the two Wes Anderson films I have negative feelings about. I'd only watched each of them once before. I still don't care for Bottle Rocket, but it has a nice, "this guy is gonna do great things" quality about it which is fun to see. The plot is weak, but the characters are developed in a really appealing, quirky, touching but not quite realistic way. It's also nice to see something so stripped down, considering how ornate and flamboyant Anderson's films have become. I liked The Life Aquatic a lot more than I remember, and unlike Darjeeling Limited, which I thought was strong in the beginning and got weaker toward the end, I felt Life Aquatic did the opposite -- it starts off real fluffy, all style and no substance, and grows into a very touching, emotional comedy-drama. This progression actually makes sense, given the subject matter. It's a really, really good film. Not as good as Tenenbaums and Rushmore, but still very good. All this rewatching has made me very curious to watch Darjeeling again. I can understand the critics more -- I see distinct plot elements swiped from all the early films in order to make the new one, and I wonder if I like it for what it is, or for what I want to believe it could have been. It is the first time I've come out of a Wes Anderson film with a clear idea of specific things that could have been done better.

The revisitation did reaffirm what a strong and nuanced actor Owen Wilson is -- I had forgotten the incredibly downplayed performance he pulled in Life Aquatic. It's really touching, especially contrasted against the irritating half-mad character he plays in Bottle Rocket, and (the same, only less mad and more just neurotic) in Darjeeling Limited.

There's something else I want to say about the lack of meaty female characters. Apart from Royal Tenenbaums, which had Anjelica Huston as a strong, fully fleshed-out character, none of the other films feature females as anything other than props for the male stars to react to or against. I have the same problem with Scorsese, who has never in a long, long catalog, written or directed a film with a decent female character. It doesn't make him a bad writer or director, it only makes him a bit immature and sexist. The same, of course, goes for Anderson. I don't think these directors should make movies about women, only that the female characters that do show up in their stories should be a bit more rounded, developed, believable. A bit more autonomous. But I digress.

Hey, I really like this HBO show called "The Wire." I just got the 3rd season, I'm gonna go watch it now. Also, I've got tonsillitis. So, you know, no making out for a little while.

Darjeeling Limited

I like The Darjeeling Limited. The more I think about it, the more I like it. I want to see it again. I like Wes Anderson, but I think he's a bit hit or miss. I didn't care for Bottle Rocket all that much, and I thought Life Aquatic was really good fun, but sort of forgettable and emotionally vacant. I think The Royal Tennenbaums is close to perfection, and I feel the same way about Rushmore.

The Darjeeling Limited is not perfect. There are some awkward moments, a few times when I whispered to myself, "er, that was a misstep," and the story seems to lose its way for a little while in the third act. But it is a warm, beautiful movie, with characters both flawed and familiar, a first act so brilliantly hilarious that I belly laughed throughout it, and a story arc that works, I think, incredibly well. Mark Kermode, who's opinion I agree with more often than not, said that the movie is flawed because it ends up falling in love with what it starts out lampooning -- Americans as "philosophical tourists" searching for a packaged spiritual experience. But I think Kermode is missing the point here, entirely. Westerners going to the east are always, in my opinion and limited experience, very hard-pressed to not look like completely ridiculous sore-thumb privileged outsiders. The fact is that the cultures are strikingly different, and fitting a western perspective into an eastern environment is always awkward, especially at first. Anderson beautifully captures this awkwardness, as well as showing how eventually, if the travelers can open themselves up, the awkwardness can give way to something like spiritual growth, no matter how ridiculous it looks from the outside.

Some little things bothered me -- the boys coming out of the tent before the funeral in slow motion to the Kink's tune . . . it seemed like a total misstep to me, bad timing, wrong music, too quirky. Also, the third act false ending and subsequent visit to the mother -- the whole thing seemed a bit jerky and contrived, even though in the end I think Anderson brought it all back together in a touching, sentimental way that just skirted being too sentimental, and I really liked that. When it comes down to it, I love Wes Anderson's films, because I love the way he sees the world, and I love (LOVE) the fact that through cinema, I can see the world through his eyes. His mis-en-scene is like a fantastic journey to a world that is just utterly gorgeous, and no matter my little quibbles, I love watching his films for the meticulous style alone. Even better, this film actually came with quite a bit of substance as well.

John Waters ain't got nothin' on us

Aunt Toby with the racing schedule, and aunt Teddy behind her looking so-fist-i-cated.


Completely unrelated, I've been watching "The Power of Myth," the PBS series with Joseph Campbell from 1988 or thereabouts. It's about the history of mythology, and spirituality, and the line between the knowable and the unknowable. Campbell says that artists are the mythmakers, and of course as a lifelong student of mythology, he asserts that mythologies are our roadmaps, without which we are utterly lost. This is a nice counterpart to the moment I had on Friday, looking around my shared studio at college at what I was up to and what everybody else was up to, thinking 'what the hell are we doing here, thinking this work is so important?' Just making objects and pictures and feeling so serious and important about all of it, working so hard to make utterly useless things . . . I like Campbell's take, with all its historical ramifications -- this romantic notion that we have some sort of gift, we are called to the highest post, and that artists are, maybe, making the only things that actually are useful.





Which brings me to the last point, vaguely connected. I went to a concert on Saturday night that a friend invited me to. It was this singer/songwriter called Joseph Arthur, and it absolutely made my lips curl. I've been trying to understand what it is about this particular music, and music like it, that makes me feel so uncomfortable and displeased that I want to crawl out of my skin. I hate to be one of those people who harps endlessly about 'selling out' and 'keeping it real,' but when I boil it right down, that's where I end up. This guy -- he's got the hipster mullet, he's got this super attractive backing band of incredibly competent session musicians, he's got a voice that alternates between gravelly fullness and coked-out falsetto, he never misses a note, the band never misses a beat, the songs all progress in a predictable, familiar way. Have I, have I heard this before? It's so familiar, so comfortable . . . This bothers me because it doesn't feel like art, it feels like profit. It's like when a movie has been test-screened, and you can FEEL that it's been test-screened, that 1,000 imbecile's opinions have been taken into account in creating the final piece -- it is entertainment appealing to the lowest common denominator, with no heart or soul or purity of vision or intention, no honesty and no sincerity. But the thing is -- if I were going to a, say, Britney Spears concert (you know, if we lived in an alternate universe or something) I would have no doubt of the intentions of the artist and promoters, and would have no doubt that the majority of the audience was also aware of these un-artistic motivations. Nobody is being fooled, in part because nobody is trying to fool -- nobody is pretending it's anything other than what it is. The thing that got under my skin about this particular show, this Joseph Arthur, was that it was being packaged as something honest and pure, something with totally artistic intentions. It felt like a sort of malicious dishonesty . . . Now, I might be being totally unfair -- it could just be a lack of vision or a problem of fame causing one to lose perspective. I know nothing about this guy's back catalog. I just know that the show I saw made me feel a little bit like Mr. Arthur was telling me he loved me just to get me into bed.

Beirut

Do you remember the 5th of November? Vulpes Homosexual, aka Guy Fawkes day, took place amongst much explosive merriment last weekend. I watched fireworks from my friend Brian's pad, while enjoying a wee dram of Laphroaig Whisky and freezing my tuchus off (try to guess how long it took me googling to figure out how to correctly spell 'tuchus'... during my search I learned that the literal definition of 'bubkes' is goat droppings. Thank god for wikipedia). In the words of Allan Jardine, the tech-extraordinaire at my college who spends his days wiling away the hours in his wardrobe-lair, you will know it is November 5th because it "sounds like Beirut out there."







(watch closely for awesome transition)
Speaking of Beirut, I really like the band, Beirut. They just put out a new album last month, and it is really, really good. They are all very good -- a nice assortment of eastern european and jazz instrumentation (+ukulele!), a delightful handful of incredibly competent musicians, a lovely lady violinist, and a spectacularly talented, adorable, charismatic lead singer/songwriter. The music is a very accessible mix of gypsy traditional and indy-pop and I find it quite addictive. They've got a nice website too.

Therefore, you can imagine my disappointment when I traveled all the way to Glasgow (alone, and with a raging head-cold) to see this promising young band in concert, and they totally, totally blew. The show was held in a venue called "The Arches" which is housed in a series of connected abandoned railway tunnels across the street from Glasgow's Central Station. Merge the obvious acoustic nightmare of trying to amplify and mix a 6 piece mainly acoustic band in a tunnel with the fact that the band is young and new to touring, they are not yet to the point where they can bring their own sound guy on tour (I HOPE they weren't using their own sound guy...), and whoever was doing sound at this event was obviously both deaf and slightly retarded (fetal alcohol syndrome, maybe?), and you have the makings for a miserable, cacophonous nightmare.



Here is my advice:
1. Hire a sound guy (or girl) who understands acoustics, mixing, amplification, has an ear for music, knows how to kill feedback...
2. Turn down the fucking horns and teach the horn players to pull their punches (for example, place the bell of the horn farther away from the mic when you want the sound to be softer...)
3. This lead singer/songwriter, Zach Condon, has a totally beautiful singing voice, but seeing the lot in concert made me realize how amateur his use of it is. He's using the same vocal style on every song, sort of giving it all he's got so that what he's got becomes a lot less impressive than if he sort of sang it straight, and then broke out with the awesomeness in a more controlled fashion. In other words, Zach's vocalizations need to mature.
4. Ok, I know the concert has turned out to be a total fucking disaster, but at least 'pretend' to be having a good time up there. You've got a sold-out crowd of adorable Glaswegian teenagers singing along to your shit. You're like, barely out of high school and you're touring Europe. That's AWESOME. Act like it. Geez.

As you can see, in addition to thinking I know something about film criticism, I also am apparently beginning to think I know something about music criticism. For shame. I'm going to go make some art now, to wash the critic-stink off of me. But yeah, if you're thinking of seeing Beirut in concert, my advice is to, I dunno, wait a year or two, unless they're playing a really small, well-run club with excellent sound techs and a good community vibe (for example, I'm sure they'd be great if they were playing The Vera Project in Seattle).

No, I take that back. Go see them if you want to. Support the band. They're super-promising, and I don't regret forking out for the concert. I just wish it hadn't sucked. I'll probably go see them again next time. And hopefully write an awesome blog about how much their live show has improved.