jürgen fauth’s muckworld

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

Marcy and I will be editing the Spring issue of the Mississippi Review Web. Here’s the call for submissions. Please feel free to forward this to any and all interested parties, and to post wherever appropriate.

24 Words Per Second: The Movies Issue
We are writers who watch a lot of movies. Maybe it’s no surprise that the films we see have a way of seeping back into our fiction: plots that echo silent film, narrative gimmicks borrowed from the French New Wave, characters who spend too much time at the multiplex or model their lives after movie stars. For the MRW Spring issue, we are looking for short stories with a cinematic bend. What that means, exactly, is up to you. Perhaps your story references Aki Kaurismäki, moves like a screwball comedy, or features cinemaniacs trying to kick the habit. Maybe it’s narrated from the perspective of Natalie Wood’s ghost. As long as it’s inspired by the movies, we’re interested.

The deadline is March 15. Send submissions (3000 words max) to mississippireview.movieissue@gmail.com.

My list of top ten films of 2007 is up on About.com. I’ve taken some liberties this year, and instead of summarizing every movie’s appeal in a superlative-filled blurb, you get quick takes on my favorite scenes from each film. Hope you like the new approach. Marcy’s well-considered list is still being, well, considered, but we do have a list of most talented newcomers of the year — and soon, we’ll be listing our disappointments, too. But for now, “the six-pack stays where it is.”

I use contemporary art like a day spa. In case I’m feeling out of sorts, a visit to Long Island City’s own art haven P.S.1 never fails to rejuvenate — it’s just slightly stranger than you expect, and I always leave in high spirits. This time around, there were endless video loops of cats tearing into rat carcasses, Liz Taylor, Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz story boards, a magical room without a roof we had never noticed before, and a polar bear made of feathers. A few more photos - and podcasts!

It’s hard to believe I’ve had this gig since last century, but it says right there under my picture: Guide since 1999. After months of planning and frenzied behind-the-scenes work, About.com rolled out the new design for our site this morning.

I dig it — it’s much less cluttered and more web-2.0-y, with support for tags on all articles and a new row of tabs that’s supposed to let you access accumulated content more easily. A number of widgets in the sidebar highlight reviews, photo galleries, and our all-but-dead forums. In exchange for a new promo spot up top, they’ve pushed down the blog a little, but you can still subscribe to the feed or get nothing but the blog on a dedicated page. Vain as we are, we’re most concerned with our mugshots, which weren’t the ones we submitted and will hopefully change any moment now.

What do you think?

Between the noontime press conference at the Waldorf and the Ziegfeld premiere, Monday completely belonged to There Will Be Blood. If celebrity sightings are your thing, I’ve got a few stories for you — but I’d hate to namedrop Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liam Neeson, John Leguziamo, and the kid who played H.W. just for the sake of baldfaced bragging. Still, Marcy successfully handed copies of Twins to Peter Saarsgard (who high-fived her) and Amy Poehler (who stole her seat) — no doubt, both have already fallen madly in love with the book and are setting the machinery of Hollywood in gear to make us rich and famous, too.

Oh, and the movie? Minute for minute, There Will Be Blood still thrills more than anything else I’ve seen this year, and that’s even more true for the second viewing. I won’t apologize for taking a few more days to fine-tune my review — but I am glad we had already handed the film a slew of awards before Paramount fed us steak and martinis. Previously.

There Will Be Blood. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007. *****

These are bittersweet days for the nostalgic Phish fan. The tenth anniversary of the legendary Fall tour of 1997 is bringing a few things into sharp relief: how lost we are with Trey in rehab and Mike in hiding, how we still haven’t gotten over Coventry, and how embarrassed we still are by just how much we love this band. Mike was right: they had another 21 years in them, easily. That’s the bitter part.

And the sweet part? As always, the music. I’ve been embroiled in a fiendish listening orgy, making my way through the tour set by set, often dropping everything I was doing to stand in awe of the continuously developing sound and earth-shaking improvisation. Since they first graduated to arenas in 1994, Phish had perfected its tension-and-release jamming for big venues, but it wasn’t until the low-pressure European tour of 1997 that they discovered new spaces and rhythms in the music — a style that came to be known variously as cow funk, intergalactic space funk, and porno funk. Whatever you call it, it was groovy and psychedelic and very, very tasty. Bow-chicka-wow-wow!

At the time, that magnificent noise, sometimes driving, rising, sometimes standing still in imperceptibly morphing waves, sounded like the future to me: this was the mothership. Now it comes heavy with nostalgia for a season when I was setting off on a road trip from the Deep South to New York City with a new haircut and a brand-new girlfriend, a promising writer with a funny name and an even funnier sensibility. I met my future Schwiegereltern, saw movies that never made it to Mississippi, and crashed the Mayflower Hotel with Andy Gadiel’s crew for an epic holiday run at the Garden — only the first of four memorable New Year’s Eves I spent with Phish. Ten years later, the band is gone but the girl’s still with me.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be listening to a lot more Fall 97, and I doubt I’ll be able to resist posting about it again. For now, here are a few tunes from the beginning of the tour, sorted by ascending dankness: Black-Eyed Katy is friendly enough, but anyone except the hettiest brahs might get hurt listening to Tweezer and Run Like an Antelope. (These are all audience recordings, which accounts for the somewhat muffled quality. Just turn it up. If you dig any of this, I highly recommend Live Phish 11, the official release of 11/17/97 Denver.)

From 11/13/97 Las Vegas, Black-Eyed Katy, a new song that defined the tour and later, with added lyrics, became The Moma Dance.

[audio:Phish-BlackEyedKaty-971113.mp3]

Gumbo from 11/14/97 Salt Lake City

[audio:Phish-Gumbo-971114.mp3]

Timber Ho! from 11/16/97 Denver

[audio:Phish-TimberHo.mp3]

The half-hour Tweezer that opened 11/17/97 Denver, and a cover of Jimi Hendrix’ Fire. Again, you can get this in soundboard quality on Live Phish 11.

[audio:Phish-Fire-971117.mp3]

[audio:Phish-Tweezer-971117.mp3]

Also Sprach Zarathustra and Run Like An Antelope from 11/19/97 Champaign

[audio:Phish-AlsoSprachZarathustra-971119.mp3]

[audio:Phish-Antelope-971119.mp3]

• More from This Month in Phish History
• Download every show from Fall 1997
• Setlists from the tour so far after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Awards season has begun in earnest, preparations for the About.com redesign are in high gear, and the Phil Lesh Halloween extravaganza and marathon is upon us, so I’m resurrecting a category from the early days of muckworld, when everything was still hidden behind a password and we had a grand total of four (4) readers: that’s right, “Konsum” is back, a.k.a the sloppy roundup of everything I’ve been watching/eating/reading. We’ll get back to meatier individual posts as soon as the dust settles.

The photos above are from from last Saturday’s panel “Haverford and the Power of the Pen,” a title that makes me giggle and think of Indiana Jones. From left to right in the top picture: Luke, the friendly student moderator, Marcy Dermansky, author of Twins, David Behrman, publisher, Richard Lingeman, author/editor The Nation, Ron Christie, author of Black in the White House, and Alison Grambs, Friar’s Club writer and author of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Getting Even. In the photo on the right, Christie, Marcy, and Behrman. With a roster this diverse, the resulting discussion was plenty interesting, but I couldn’t stop thinking: we’re now one degree of separation from both Victor Navasky and Dick Cheney. Eek! More photos from Haverford and Bryn Mawr at flickr. On to the movies:

Diva
Film Forum is rereleasing this celebrated 1981 French film, and the press notes they’re handing out might as well have a fat disclaimer on top: anything you may have to say about his movie is redundant. There are pages of raves here by Pauline Kael and the like, along with a fascinating interview with Beineix that moots whatever you might want to add. Yes, Diva sparkles with ideas, every shot is a delight, every element aims to please — it’s a joyous celebration of the possibilities of cinema. Regardless, I better get a review ready for the Friday opening. Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981. *****

Open Hearts
Where does domestic melodrama end and soap opera begin? Susanne Bier’s dogme drama doesn’t care. Mads Mikkelsen is excellent as a doctor who falls in love with the fiancee of the guy his wife put into a coma. There’s a whiff of General Hospital about all of this, but it should go without saying that the acting and writing are far superior. Still: lots of people talking about theiremotioms in hallways. From the director of After the Wedding and Things We Lost in the Fire. Elsker dig for evigt. Susanne Bier, 2002. ***

Things We Lost in the Fire
Look, it’s a foreign film with Hale Berry, Bencio del Toro, and David Duchovny. Another Bier melodrama, this one slightly more appealing than Open Hearts because of del Toro and those adorable children. I’m hoping Marcy will review this for About. Susanne Bier, 2007. ***

Knocked Up
Another faux-transgressive family values commercial by Judd Apatow, filled with improbable characters and unbelievable plot developments. The jokes are funny exactly to the degree that you consider them “racy.” I laughed twice and shook my head the rest of the time. Who the hell are these people? Judd Apatow, 2007. *

Wheel of Time
Herzog gets fantastic footage documenting a Buddhist ritual in Bodh Gaya, India, but the film loses steam when when the action moves to Graz, Austria. The sand mandala is amazing, and who doesn’t want to see Werner cracking jokes with the Dalai Lama? Werner Herzog, 2003. ***

Zodiac
Reception of this Fincher epic was mixed, but I found the twists and turns of the hunt for the late-sixties California serial killer extremely compelling. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. are a great trio of leading men, and there’s an old-fashioned, All the President’s Men feel to the film. Because it’s based on a true, unsolved case, there’s no telling where the narrative will go next. Freed from the confines of formula, Zodiac also becomes a study of the nature of obsession. David Fincher, 2007. ***

Michael Clayton
Solid legal thriller about the moral quandry of a man who finds himself on the wrong side of an Erin Brockovich class action suit. George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Sidney Pollack are spot-on and the narrative is laid out without condescension. Tony Gilroy, 2007. ***

La Jetee
It’s always good to revisit the classics. YouTube has the entire film but Criterion is nicer. Chris Marker, 1962. *****

Citizen Kane
Like I said. There’s always new things to admire in Welles’s masterpiece–this time I was concentrating on details of the elaborate narrative structure. Orson Welles, 1941. *****

It Is Fine. EVERYTHING IS FINE!
Crispin Glover’s second film as a director, a mad sex murder mystery featuring a hero/villain with cerebral palsy, will require a few more days to digest. I’ll confess right here that I might have walked out if Mr. Glover himself hadn’t been guarding the doors; in the end I’m glad I stayed. He also performs a slide show with the film that has to be seen to be believed. David Brothers and Crispin Hellion Glover, 2007. ***

Bonus: I always thought that the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf” was inspired by the Zodiac killer, but I can’t seem to find a reference for this — not even at David Dodd’s Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics. Here’s a video of an acoustic ‘81 version anyway: