Thanks to Megan for her heartfelt response to my [Safe] and Velvet Goldmine plaintiveness. The films really are life-changing, and hopefully it won't be another 4 years before we get a film from Todd Haynes again.
i agree that those two movies are good, but you forgot to mention why. they were beautiful. <<
Their beauty is certainly an essential component to why they were good, but I would say the main reason I admire them is for their incisiveness and refusal to go along with the idea that a film must be a visual 19th-century novel- beginning, middle, end, plot, character development. Todd Haynes is a rare writer/director who makes films of ideas and is artistically successful at it. By using and address issues of class and environment [Safe], artistic integrity (Velvet Goldmine), and above all, identity (both Safe and V.G., as well as his first feature Poison). It is, of course, essential when one is subverting the conventional notions of 'plot' and 'character' to fill the screen with beautiful images to get your ideas across, which Haynes does remarkably well. I also dearly appreciate Todd Solondz, but Haynes just has a slight edge over him, to my mind. It's like asking if you want chocolate cake, or MORE chocolate cake. They're both very good, though. Hal Hartley is, to me, a mixed bag but his films are still intelligent and sometimes even funny, just too often tainted by smugness.
. i saw it as being about david bowie and iggy pop <<
This is tempting, but the characters each embody so many characteristics of all the glam rock stars that it's difficult to pin it down to any particular real-life person. They are meant less to embody particular people than a set of glam ideals, both aesthetically and philosophically; really, the film isn't about bowie or pop or even necessarily glam rock, those were just the best ways to get a discourse going on the screen about the exhileration of self-invention and the accompanying identity crises. Haynes ALWAYS gives you all sides, and lets you decide for yourself. This is without losing any of his humaneness or empathy for the people in his films- if it comes off a little clinical, it's because we as an audience are too used to being manipulated by meaningless tear-jerking by cardboard characters and wooden dialogue and one-sidedness, instead of a genuine emotional response provoked by seeing a more objective view of a character's experience.
i don't like classifying movie makers together based on how they live. <<<
This is fair, but Hartley, Solondz, and Haynes (as well as Scorcese, the over-maligned Wooday Allen and Cindy Sherman) represent a particularly 'New York' kind of film-making/visual art. It's anti-Hollywood, independent, usually their work is made with depth and flair. I don't think it's unfair to any of them to place them together the way I do in my head, I wasn't implying that they all have the same level of talent or are even the same, they just all have an independent spirit that is very New York filmworld (as opposed to the greedy and manipulative L.A. film scene). I like the idea of an artistic community and sometimes this can be geographical (like the Scottish scene featuring our beloved Belle & Sebastian, Arab Strap, The Pastels, etc.) Megan herself is in New York and seems to me to have a New York frame of mind about film- I don't think this is a dismissive thing to say or that it says anything about her personally, just that she (judging from her excellent taste) has good ideas and is sure to be a fine film-maker, belonging in the company of other good film-makers, and New York is definitely the place in America to find that. Good luck, Megan! Do you go to any of those classes Scorsese teaches at NYU? Oh, and Ewan full frontal we've seen SO many times before (not that it's entirely unpleasant or anything!)- Christian B. is more my type and I don't even have to see him naked to confirm it, he's got such a cute face and a lovely smile. Hugs all around- -Chris (favorite Arab Strap song: "The Clearing") :) :) :) :) +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+