jürgen fauth’s muckworld

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

The New York Film Festival is a marathon, not a sprint, and I hit the wall somewhere around week 3 (sorry, Alexander Sokurov and In the City of Sylvia) but recovered for the final stretch. It’s been a heady month: from the dizzying heights of Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Secret Sunshine, the joyful surprise that is The Darjeeling Limited to the horrors of Redacted, dog-on-girl action of Go Go Tales and Bela Tarr’s elegant snoozefest The Man From London. I also got to shake David Cronenberg’s hand, engage in epic debates over I’m Not There, take candids of Nicole Kidman and Sam Elliott, and meet fellow critics and bloggers who were just names and URLs to me before. Some of my suitcases from Berlin are still not unpacked.

Here are a few gut reactions to the last stray movies; we’ll have thorough reviews for all of them on About.com before long.

No Country for Old Men
The Coen’s Cormac McCarthy adaption is certainly accomplished, and the word “masterpiece” has been bandied about. Maybe so. But especially after seeing Joel and Ethan hem, haw, and shrug their way through the post-screening press conference I can’t help but wonder what this tough-minded, sun-beaten blood letting is all about. Nobody I know ever found a suitcase — or satchel — full of money, and no matter how many significant dreams Tommy Lee Jones narrates in high-falutin’ prose, all of this stuff is nothing but macho artifice. It’s like they made a movie about the “Stranger” character played by Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski but forgot not to take it too seriously. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2007. ***

Actresses
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Munich, 5×2) directs and stars in a long hard look at the fears and insecurities of the artist’s life, specifically that of an aging actress, harangued by her mother, warned by her gynocologist, terrorized by her director, but always lonely and unfulfilled. Moving but overlong, Actresses reminded me of the Ellen Fanshaw character played by Martha Burns in the outstanding Canadian TV show Slings & Arrows, which handled the same topic with sharper wit. Actresses also stars Louis Garrel and Mathieu Amalric. Actrices. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, 2007. **

Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Forget about the Redacted brouhaha: this was the real scandal of NYFF45. Only the hardiest of us turned out for this four-hour-twenty-minute rock’n roll documentary directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which lays out Petty’s career in meticulous album-by-album fashion, spiced up by the occasional drug binge and band member flame-out. Mostly narrated by a warm and winning Petty himself, the film is studded with hit songs and quality collaborators including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Stevie Nicks, Dave Steward, Eddie Vedder, and George Harrison. Even at its exhaustive length, the film doesn’t drag.

Still, something seemed off to me. Neither live nor on MTV, Tom Petty has ever transported me quite like my favorite rock bands do, but as a veteran of the deafening Walter Reade screening of The Kids Are Alright, I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong. When Bogdanovich took the stage for the Q&A, he immediatley cleared this up: we were shown the movie in mono.

No wonder I felt underwhelmed; now I was livid. Apparently, there’s a “spectacular” 5.1 mix that would have “lifted [us] right of our seats,” but somebody somewhere fucked up good. I’m sorry, Film Society at Lincoln Center, I dearly love what you do, but if you’d told me I was going to waste an entire day on an epic rock’n roll documentary and only see it in mono, I would have caught up on some desperately needed sleep. Peter Bodanovich, 2007. ***

Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical comic books are marvels of deceptively simple storytelling and clear black lines that carry surprising emotional weight. The movie adaptation does a fantastic job of setting the images I loved to linger over into motion. One of the best of the year. Much more very soon. Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007. ****

Here’s a list of all the films I saw at the festival, ranked by how much I liked them. Movies I most regret missing include Silent Light, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and the repeat screening of The Darjeeling Limited.

• Blade Runner: The Final Cut. *****
• Secret Sunshine. *****
• Persepolis. ****
• The Darjeeling Limited. ****
• Redacted. ****
• A Girl Cut in Two. ***
• Runnin’ Down a Dream. ***
• I’m Not There. ***
• Flight of the Red Balloon. ***
• Fados. ***
• The Orphanage. ***
• Go Go Tales. ***
• The Man From London. ***
• No Country for Old Men. ***
• Actresses. **
• The Axe in the Attic. **
• Margot at the Wedding. **
• Paranoid Park. **
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. **
• Married Life. *

See all posts about the New York Film Festival.

And finally, here’s the video for “Into the Great Wide Open,” starring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway — because somehow Bogdanovich couldn’t spare the 6 1/2 minutes of his 253 to show us the entire thing. You’ll find that the YouTube clip actually sounds better than what we saw at the Walter Reade.

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess.

Around festival lobbies and parties, all over the blogosphere and on the cover of the New York Times magazine, the merits of Haynes’s Dylan picture are being debated hotly — including the question whether it can be said to be about Bob Dylan in the first place. Here’s my video from last week’s NYFF press conference, where Todd Haynes spoke to J. Hoberman. My review of I’m Not There is up on About.com. More NYFF video: Go Go Tales, The Darjeeling Limited. Coming soon: the Coen Brothers on No Country For Old Men and Brian De Palma on Redacted.

I took a break from the festival today to catch up with reviews. Here’s a quick rundown:

I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’s Dylan picture only truly takes off when a Dylan song is playing, and that should tell you something. Cate Blanchett is great fun, but I liked her even better in tonight’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. More on that soon — and I’ve got video of the press conference with Haynes, too.

Paranoid Park
I saw this strictly out of professional curiosity, and Gus van Sant did not disappoint: yet another artful bore.

The Man From London
Everybody seems to be digging out their favorite “on drugs” lines for this year’s NYFF, so here goes: The Third Man on Ambien.

Secret Sunshine
Once again, my festival favorite (at least so far) comes from South Korea. No distributor yet, but you can get Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis and Peppermint Candy on DVD.

I’m Not There. Todd Haynes, 2007. ***
Paranoid Park. Gus van Sant, 2007. *
The Man From London. Béla Tarr, 2007. ***
Milyang. Lee Chang-dong, 2007. *****

At the end of every trip, this is the song that gets stuck in my head.

They say the show ain’t over till the fat man melts, but that particular show has been over for quite some time now. Yup, Jerry Garcia would have turned 65 today, and I don’t really know what else to say about that. Maybe I’ll just quote Dylan’s eulogy again and link some tunes?

There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don’t think any eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a superb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He’s the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There’s a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep. — Bob Dylan

There’s tons of Jerry on YouTube: with Rick Danko and Janis on the Festival Express, backstage at Woodstock, warming up with Crazy Fingers, playing Bird Song in 1980 and Eyes of the World in ‘91, and taking it way out with Branford — but instead here’s the late ballad So Many Roads, which you just have to love in spite of Jerry’s shorts, Bob’s undershirt, and more than a few flubs.

The Fader had a nice tribute issue a few months back; you can download the entire thing as pdf. Dig deep into the Dead vault at Live Music Archive and David Lemieux’ Taper’s Section. New York heads are celebrating Garcia’s birthday with the Zen Tricksters at B.B. King’s tonight.

Okay, one last tune: I Shall Be Released with the Jerry Garcia Band, 10/31/87:

[audio:I Shall Be Released-Jerry Garcia Band.mp3]

Too many lousy movies, not enough rock’n roll: what this blog needs is more Freebird, more Bohemian Rhapsody, more Big Pimpin’ — as played by the popular rock band Phish.

Bohemian Rhapsody (with the Boston Community Choir)

Freebird (with Wynonna Judd)

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

99 Problems and Big Pimpin’ (with Jay-Z)

Some of Phish’s most ubiquitous covers are curiously absent from the ‘tube, but here’s the best of the rest: Mean Mr. Mustard - Wipeout - The Might Quinn - The Star-Spangled Banner - Also Sprach Zarathustra - Frankenstein - Sexual Healing - Born Under Punches - Champagne Supernova - Theme from the Peanuts - After Midnight - Peaches en Regalia - Good Times Bad Times - Auld Lang Syne - Jungle Boogie - Sabotage

Find any others? Add them in the comments!

Movies about The Money are always about Trust, too, and the unofficial theme song of the heist thriller is Bob Dylan’s Absolutely Sweet Marie:

Well, six white horses that you did promise
Were fin’lly delivered down to the penitentiary
But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree
But where are you tonight, sweet Marie?

The double-cross isn’t just a staple of the gangster film, it’s built into its DNA in a way that few screenwriters seem to be able to resist. Therefore, it’s a pleasure to see criminals who don’t screw each other over for the loot. For a movie that got attacked for its perceived cynicism, The Ice Harvest put a particularly nice spin on the problem, and Bound surprised us in this regard, too.

You see, trust becomes the central problem in the developing love affair between Gina Gershon and gangster moll Jennifer Tilly when mobster Joe Pantoliano steals a bunch of money, they steal it from him, somebody gets shot, and so forth. A tight, sexy, and violent chamber play, the first feature by the Wachowski brothers has enough clever moments and directorial flourishes to stay entertaining while it lasts. In the long run though, I don’t expect to remember much aside from what the poster rightfully promised: fetishistic images of women in black leather, all tied up.

Bound. Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1996. ***

• YouTube has several home-brewed music video remixes
• Movie Screen Shots has more movie screen shots