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

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

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

Eleven days, five hundred movies, Madonna, Marty, and the Rolling Stones. Never mind Cloverfield: freshly arrived in Berlin for the 58th International Film Festival, Jürgen figures out that the real monster is the cuddly red bear that serves as its logo.

Read my Berlinale Journal on About.com.

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.”

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?