jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Poor Goro. Could there be anything more thankless than taking over a project tailor-made for your genius father, a master of animation renowned for his grace and deep humanity, and attempt to match his best work? When it was announced that Goro Miyazaki, son of anime legend Hayao, was directing the adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea novels, you didn’t have to be Yubaba the Witch to know that it would end in tears.

Read the rest of my review of Tales from Earthsea at About.com.

Gedo senki. Goro Miyazaki, 2006. **

Copenhagen is a tough place for drug lords, heroin addicts, and fathers–and Milo (Zlatko Buric) happens to be all three. Set over the course of one particular rough day in Milo’s life, the final installment of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy walks a thin line between character study and hard-hitting underworld expose. When we first meet Milos, he’s in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. In the next scene, he tries to accommodate his bratty daughter’s ballooning plans for her 25th birthday party–and then it’s off to figure out what to do with the 10,000 pills of ecstasy smuggled fresh from Holland. You see, Milos doesn’t know much about pills; he’s more of a dope man himself. There’s more than a little Tony Soprano in the harried patriarch and the way he has to juggle family life with the demands of the Danish underworld. It should come as no surprise that by the end of the night, Milos is back on the dope, women have been bought and sold, business associates beaten and gagged, and spoiled food isn’t the only thing that’s been spilled. I haven’t seen the other parts of the trilogy; apparently they’re only loosely related.

Pusher 3. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2005. ***

“America’s Greatest Living Writer” Neal Pollack is on the road promoting his hipster parenting memoir Alternadad. I caught Neal last week at Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction; here’s the entire reading–poo, vaporizers, bhotman and all–cut into four bite-size chunks for your enjoyment.

Part 1: Prologue and Amsterdam

Part 2: Blog Posts

Part 3: Q&A

Part 4: The Silver Surfer

[tags]neal pollack, alternadad, books, readings, nyc, mo pitkins, video, youtube, poo, parenting, fathers, drugs, amsterdam, diapers, marijuana, muckfilm[/tags]

The outrageous imagery of David Lynch works in mysterious ways, seeping into your dreams and gestating in your subconscious. Eraserhead presents me with a particular riddle: I was convinced I’d never seen the movie, yet felt instantly familiar with it. Did Lynch’s subsequent work fill in the blanks as if through osmosis, or–more likely–had I seen Eraserhead at such an unripe, impressionable age that my disturbed mind suppressed the memory? Either way, there it was, and I knew it: the way Henry steps into the puddle, the awkward dinner with Family X, the Radiator Lady and her song, and of course the baby, the naked helpless freakin’ baby with its shiny skin, festering sores, and butcher window eyes.

Here’s what Lynch says about Eraserhead in Catching the Big Fish:

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So, I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.

I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.

Eraserhead. David Lynch, 1977. ****

[tags]david lynch, eraserhead, 4 stars, film, bible, baby, fathers, surreal[/tags]

L’Enfant won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but it’s going on our worst-of-year list. The set up is interesting enough: a homeless teenager leaves the hospital with a newborn, and her small-time crook boyfriend decides that it would be a good idea to sell the baby for a handful of cash. The technical term for this kind of a man is “raging asshole,” and instead of giving us the mother’s story, the film’s focuses on him as he tries to steal enough money to buy back the child, avoid the cops, and dig himself into an ever-deeper hole. It would have been a challenge to make this character even borderline likable, but the Dardennes don’t even try. The amount of callousness, stupidity, and ignorance on display is overwhelming, and in the unearned final scene, we’re suddenly asked to embrace the babymonger’s unlikely redemption. This is the kind of preposterous fake-gritty hokum that gives art house film a bad name–call it the Crash of Cannes.

L’Enfant. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005. *

• L’Enfant at Rotten Tomatoes

[tags]film, dardenne brothers, belgium, cannes, palme d’or, baby, fathers, 1 star, crooks, suffering, asshole, gritty[/tags]

A very sweet family drama about fathers, sons, and lawyers that snuck up on me in all sorts of unexpected ways. Marcy is taking over reviewing duties for this one–she also liked Burman’s Lost Embrace. Family Law is Argentina’s entry for the Academy Awards and opens December 8.

Derecho de familia. Daniel Burman, 2006. ***

[tags]film, 3 stars, argentina, daniel burman, fathers, sons, lawyers[/tags]