Sinister: B&S Content!!! (and some other stuff about films, books, and the suburbs)

[McQuain, Chris]

A brief post from lovely Portland, Oregon. If Seattle is a brand new Ben
Sherman shirt, Portland is the one you got at the Goodwill- maybe a little
more scruffy, but with much more personality.

Ian asked if Bob Dylan was ever in a movie.  He was in a documentary, a very
famous one by D.A. Pennebaker, called "Don't Look Back". So, if you don't
look back, you're like Dylan in the movie. I couldn't possibly be the only
person who is aware of this.

Rebelstrange posted about Hal Hartley directing Beth Orton's video. A very
cool video, BUT: I myself was privileged, as a film writer/reviewer (put
those tomatoes down, please, you don't even KNOW what I'm going to SAY yet!)
to see a preview of the 'Book of Life' before it ran at this year's NW Film
Festival, and it was really, really bad. I quite liked 'Henry Fool' and feel
PJ Harvey can do no wrong, but Hal Hartley has a problem, and that problem
is that you can practically hear him from behind the camera, telling the
actors to please try to read the dialogue he wrote as if they're as
impressed with it as he is. It taints most of his films and really ruins the
Book of Life, which also has the disadvantage of being MTV slo-motioned
quick-edited to death, and with very dull and obvious 'humour'. Polly Jean
looks drop-dead cool in it, though, and it's only an hour long, so if you do
the Peej you may be interested in seeing it just for that.

The pick of the hip, New York-dwelling American indie film litter is, by
far, Mr. Todd Haynes. People are posting about Mark C.'s dream of suburban
America- well, lads and lassies, to get the real deal on Suburbia, USA,
first watch Blue Velvet and then watch Mr. Haynes' [SAFE] (and THEN move on
to Todd Solondz, whose films are good but not quite up to those levels.
Please don't see them out of order =). [SAFE] is easily one of the best
films of the 1990s (and in my opinion, EVER!) and gives you humane,
empathetic (though very objective, detached, and Kubrickian on the surface)
treatment of the Suburban Condition as channeled by Mr. Haynes and the
lusciously red-haired Julianne Moore. Please, anyone who's seen it, chime in
with your acclaim of it! The whole Sinister list must see [SAFE]!!! 

I know people slagged Velvet Goldmine (Haynes' long-awaited follow up to
[SAFE], a cruelly underrated glam-rock epic) because they didn't understand
what it was supposed to be (a lovely, gaudy-colorful, glittering, bisexually
erotic glam-rock fairly tale with the 1970s as the Emerald City and the
1980s as a dark place ruled by those twin Wicked Witches, Reagan and
Thatcher), only what they simplistically wanted it to be (a Bowie bio-pic,
which it was NEVER intended to be). I'm still deciding whether or not to
start a Todd Haynes fan club (do people DO things like that?!!?) but if
anybody else is interested or even knows what I'm talking about please to be
letting me know. 

For further REAL revelations on American Suburbia, refer to "The Ice Storm"
(book OR film, both marvelous). Also, a new book by A.M. Homes called "Music
for Torching", imagine "The Ice Storm" as a madcap satire/comedy. I guess
A.M. Homes is semi-celeb in the UK for writing "The End of Alice" and
getting it banned everywhere and starting a national discussion about
pedophilia and sex. People are talking about John Updike on the list and
he's also essential reading for the excavationists of that place we call the
suburbs. 

For a very UN-real and UN-serious view of Americana Suburbiana, see John
Hughes films 1984-1986. They're not very good but they're very sweet and
charming and fun to watch. Not so much "Sixteen Candles", but "Breakfast
Club" and "Pretty in Pink". Nobody should ever, ever think anybody's life
anywhere is like life depicted in a Hughes film. Ian asked how the boy gets
his picture from his computer screen to Molly's in PIP. The answer is, it's
just pure cheesiness, somebody thought it would be 'cool' and they put it in
the film even though it has no basis in reality. It's a part I've mocked
each and every one of the THOUSANDS of times I've seen Pretty in Pink. 'Cos
it's one of my favorite films. 

I hope at least some of this will fit in your trouser pockets.

-Chris  
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