jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Yesterday, I escaped the puerile, disgusting, and (worst of all) staggeringly unfunny Poultrygeist to enjoy a banana in Central Park.

Today, unrelenting construction noise on our block makes me wish I could seek refuge at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, where the cherries are in full bloom. They’ve delighted us in the past — but alas, the Tribeca Film Festival begins today, and Cannes announced the linup.

A vaguely appropriate Ginsberg poem has been added to my muxtape.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. Lloyd Kaufman, 2006. N/R

Photo sharing site Flickr added video uploads last week, and some users are up in arms. I think the video player integrates well, quality is great, and the restrictions — clips can’t be longer than 90 seconds — appeal to me. After all, every single muckfilm I ever uploaded to YouTube could have been improved by more rigorous trimming. Here are a few soothing/dull trial vids we shot this weekend. More to come!

We’re proud to present the April issue of the Mississippi Review Web, dedicated to fiction inspired by the movies. Check it out at MississippiReview.com or go straight to the pdf download. Featuring:

• Brandon Scott Gorrell: Godzilla
• Colin Bassett: Dance Party, U.S.A.
• Emma Garman: Talking with Françoise Sagan
• John Minichillo: Nearly Here
• Katherine A. Gleason: Fred Astaire Refuses
• Lori Romero: Rockfall
• Meghan Austin: Requiem for an Almost Lady
• Myfanwy Collins: Verbatim

Fewer movies than usual because I’m working on several top secret plans for world domination, we’re still catching up with The Wire, and my obsession with Daniel Plainview shows no signs of abating. (Check out the new entries in the contest.) The notable exception was Etgar Keret’s Jellyfish, a sweet film that plays like minor-key Israeli version of Magnolia. I also tried to talk Marcy into watching Southland Tales, hoping that Richard Kelly’s sophomore disaster might improve upon second viewing. The answer was a resounding no — we didn’t make it past the 15-minute mark.

It’s been a good week for concerts, though. I never blogged about the March 19 benefit for Scotty Hard, a cause that brought all the champions of the downtown groove scene to the Highline Ballroom. My personal highlight was an outrageous and all-too-brief set by elusive dub god Bill Laswell, accompanied by Bernie Worrell. This weekend, Ratdog was back at the Beacon — unlike the Rolling Stones, they’re a band that actually belongs there. I missed Thursday’s sit-ins by Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, and Steve Molitz, but witnessed Friday’s ups (Tomorrow Never Knows! Hard Rain!) and downs (ridiculous sound problems during The Weight), as well as Saturday’s just-about perfect four hours of rock’n roll heaven. And now you’ll have to excuse me while I retire to my favorite secure undisclosed location.

The Wire. Season 3. ****
There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****
Jellyfish/Meduzot. Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, 2007. ***
Southland Tales. Richard Kelly, 2007. *

Ratdog
4/4/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Playin’ in the Band > Tomorrow Never Knows > Tennessee Jed, Sitting in Limbo > West L.A. Fadeaway, Even So > October Queen > The Deep End > Big Railroad Blues
II: K.C. Moan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, The Weight, Eyes of the World, The River Song > Stuff > Dear Prudence > China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
E: Casey Jones

4/5/08 Beacon Theatre, New York NY
I: Jam > Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Maggie’s Farm, Row Jimmy, Dark Star > Weather Report Suite > Let It Grow
II: You Win Again, City Girls, Victim or the Crime, Lazy River Road > Jack Straw > Dark Star > Stuff, Days Between > Two Djinn > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower
E: One More Saturday Night

If you drive a couple of blocks down Konrad-Adenauer-Ring from where I was born, you come to what used to be the biggest American military hospital in Europe. It was here that in 1981, the diplomats that had been held hostage in Teheran made their first stop after they were released. Jimmy Carter, the first U.S. President I was ever aware of, came to Wiesbaden to meet them. My parents went down to witness the excitement and later reported that they had, in fact, seen the back of Jimmy Carter’s head.

It ain’t much, but it’s the best Jimmy Carter story I’ve got. Jonathan Demme’s documentary Man from Plains only mentions the Iranian hostage crisis in passing as we follow Carter on a 2006 tour promoting his controversial book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. More snapshot than full-blown portrait, the film is as much about the elder statesman’s ongoing struggle to bring peace to the Middle East as it is about the ways in which the American media deflects complex and controversial issues. For more, check David Hudson’s roundup of reviews.

Jimmy Carter Man from Plains. Jonathan Demme, 2007. ***

I’ll have photos from holiday sojourn on Cape Cod later, but in the meantime I wanted to point to Commander König’s eerie and beautiful Easter-inspired photo series.

I just happened to mention Phish’s 1998 Prague shows the other day — turns out, the second night is being officially released on LivePhish today. You can listen to the Ghost for free. Some other time, I’ll tell you about how we stayed at an expat commune stalked by a mysterious “sickness” and the mirthless lectures on materialism I received from a future Park Slope real estate agent. I still have the poster we managed to rip off a downtown wall without being arrested by the Czech secret police.

Screening-wise, it’s been a slow week. I walked out of Olivier Assays’ Boarding Gate after it became clear that the tats on Asia Argento were the only interesting thing about it. Instead, I’ve been obsessing over my There Will Be Blood DVD — much more on this later.

Boarding Gate. Olivier Assayas, 2007. N/R

I made it back to New York and just posted my final Berlinale piece on About.com. Below is a list of all Journal entries as well as an overview of the thirty-odd movies I saw.

Also: the official Berlinale site has video from the There Will Be Blood press conference — around 40 minutes in, you can watch me ask Paul Thomas Anderson about “I drink your milkshake!” I sure wish there was a wide shot of the podium so we could see Daniel Day-Lewis giving me the thumbs up, but it’s a nice record anyway. The site has been featured all over the web as well as in USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, but this was my favorite milkshake moment by far.

Berlinale Journal

• Berlinale Journal, Day 1
• Berlinale Journal, Day 2
• Berlinale Journal, Day 3
• Berlinale Journal, Days 4 &5
• Berlinale Journal, Day 6
• Berlinale Journal, Day 7
• Berlinale Journal, Days 8 & 9
• Berlinale Journal: The Awards
• Berlinale Journal, Wrap-Up

Films Covered, Sorted by Rating

1. United Red Army. Wakamatsu Koji, 2007. ****
2. Night and Day. Hong Sang-soo, 2008. ****
3. Megane. Naoko Ogigami, 2007, ****
4. Jesus Christ Savior. Peter Geyer, 2008. ****
5. Sparrow. Johnny To, 2008. ****
6. Wonderful Town. Aditya Assarat, 2007. ****
7. Quiet Chaos. Antonio Luigi Grimaldi, 2008. ****
8. Black Ice. Petri Kotwica, 2007. *** 1/2
9. Julia. Erick Zonca, 2007. *** 1/2
10. Another Love Story. Lúcia Murat, 2007. *** 1/2
11. Auge in Auge. Michael Althen and Hans Helmut Prinzler, 2008. *** 1/2
12. Transsiberian. Brad Anderson, 2008. *** 1/2
13. Gegenschuss. Dominik Wessely, 2008. ***
14. Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti, 2007. ***
15. I’ve Loved You So Long. Philippe Claudel, 2008. ***
16. Katyn. Andrzeij Wajda, 2007. ***
17. Filth and Wisdom. Madonna, 2008. ***
18. Be Kind Rewind. Michel Gondry, 2008. ***
19. Chiko. Özgür Yildirim, 2008. ***
20. Happy-Go-Lucky. Mike Leigh, 2008. ***
21. Lake Tahoe. Fernando Eimbcke, 2008. ***
22. Standard Operating Procedure. Errol Morris, 2008. ***
23. Gardens of the Night Damian Harris, 2007. ***
24. Elegy. Isabel Coixet, 2008. ***
25. Kirschblüten - Hanami. Dorris Dörrie, 2008. **
26. The Other Boleyn Girl. Justin Chadwick, 2008. **
27. Shine a Light. Martin Scorsese, 2008. **
28. Lady Jane. Robert Guédiguian, 2008. **
29. Shiver. Isidro Ortiz, 2008. **
30. In Love We Trust. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2007. **
31. Ballast. Lance Hammer, 2008. *
32. Beautiful. Jaihong Juhn, 2008. *
33. Elite Squad. José Padilha, 2007 *
34. Coupable. Laetitia Masson, 2008. N/R
35. Asyl -Park and Love Hotel. Kumasaka Izuru, 2007. N/R
36. Restless. Amos Kollek, 2008. N/R
37. Leo. Josef Fares, 2007. N/R
38. Divizionz. Yes! That’s Us, 2007. N/R
39. Yasukuni. Li Ying, 2007. N/R

I’m is happy to report that Madonna’s directorial debut Filth and Wisdom, premiering at the Berlin Film Festival, isn’t bad at all. Eugene Hutz of the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello stars as a struggling London musician. Also, Antonio Luigi Grimaldi’s moving comedy of grief Quiet Chaos, Robert Guediguian’s misfire Lady Jane, and Naoko Ogigami’s lovely Megune (Glasses).

Read Day 7 of my Berlinale Journal.