SCREENING LOG - 6/16-6/22, 2003

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I watched CRIME WAVE, SHADOWS, OLD SCHOOL and FACES. In order of preference:

Shadows (1959, John Cassavetes)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0053270

You'll get no argument from me that on the surface this looks like one of the most influential American films of the 20th century Ð I can't think of any film that came out prior to this one that seems as evocative of pretty much every low-budget independent film of the last 40 years, from MEAN STREETS to RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, with Altman, Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Larry Clark and P.T. Anderson in between Ð but of course there are also a lot of bad indie films that have been made in that span of time which bear no less of a resemblance to this raw, off-the-cuff exploration of interracial relationships in a jazzed-up version of New York City. On the other end of historicity, compare this to other urban realism films of the 50s and the electric rawness of this movie, featuring pioneering use of handheld camerawork giving an unprecedented look and feel improvisation, makes it seem much fresher and more contemporary than the television spit-and-polish efforts of a MARTY or a SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. This is not to say that this is a masterpiece Ð there's a lot of bad acting on display by amateur actors from Cassavetes' workshop Ð but it's the loveliest bad acting I've seen Ð the actors are so transparent in their efforts to make their characters work that they disarm you with their earnestness, and the gap between them and the roles theyÕre trying to play becomes fascinating terrain in and of itself. While the utter newness of this film was overshadowed by the concurrent trans-Atlantic one-two punch of 400 BLOWS and BREATHLESS, Cassavetes' debut definitely deserves comparison to Truffaut and Godard, and not at all unfavorable.

Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0062952

Cassavetes upped the ante with his second feature, taking on the entirety of middle-class America in the form of one bored affluent couple on the rocks and their illicit liaisons over the course of one raucous evening of laughter, tears and desperate sex. The actors (with the glorious exception of Lynn Carlin, a much needed calm in the eye of this storm of histrionics) dance around like beheaded chickens, talk MUCH LOUDER THAN NORMAL and break out in song at a moment's notice Ð it often feels that Cassavetes is straining for effect, to do something, anything, to shake the viewer out of complacency. It's a troublesome strategy, leaving the viewer in an overall state of exhaustion, but every so often an image, a close-up of a face, or a fleeting moment of one person's outsized expressivity, makes it all worthwhile. (The camerawork, while no less ragged on the surface than in SHADOWS, seems markedly more assured in its raggedness, if that makes any sense.) ItÕs a kind of filmmaking that can never be perfect, in fact it spits in perfection's face and seeks instead to shake and stir and keep stirring and never stop.

Crime Wave (1985, John Paizs)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0088963

A young girl develops an attachment to the troubled young screenwriter who lives in her shed, who can only write the beginnings and endings to his stories. Director John Paisz is as nutty as fellow Manitoban Guy Maddin in his deadpan parody of an extinct genre (in this case, the 50s B-noir filtered through TV sitcoms and informercials), but his true kindred spirit may be the Tim Burton of the '80s, whose tales of oddly cuddly, regressive man-child outcasts this resembles. And what does it mean that I long for those movies these days, when I once lamented the 80s as a aesthetic wasteland of a decade? For example, I found myself waxing nostalgic for the good old quality exploitation of REVENGE OF THE NERDS after sitting through the train wreck ofÉ

Old School (2003, Todd Phillips)

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0302886

The idea of three grown men starting an on-campus fraternity for the sake of unadulterated debauchery has tremendous comic potential, but it's pretty much pissed away like a keg of Old Milwaukee in this ineptly executed effort from the creative team that brought you ROAD TRIP. The only reason to watch this would be Will Ferrell's uninhibited hamming, which itself becomes monotonous by the midway point. I.Q.s over 17 not admitted unless accompanied by drugs or drink (neither of which were available to me, sadly).

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