AFI, Here's an idea

Instead of making a list of the most "inspirational" films, why doesn't AFI make a list of the 100 best film soundtracks? I mean, c'mon, you know the only reason they counted down the "inspirational" films was because they wanted to include them in the best films of all time, but felt sheepish doing so. And, I've already bitched about Harold & Maude's placement there. Anyway, I wish I had enough knowledge to make a 100 list for myself, but I have a few suggestions for AFI if they ever pick up on my idea... and I'll steer clear of the obvious ones, like that little movie The Graduate. And I'd probably add every Gregg Araki movie to the list, if only because he and I are musically parallel, but I think they'd probably focus on "Written for the Screen" music.

1. Xanadu - Olivia Netwon-John / Electric Light Orchestra [um, duh]
2. Magnolia - Aimee Mann / Various
3. Reality Bites - Various, including Dinosaur Jr. / Lisa Loeb / U2 / New Order / Crowded House / The Posies / The Knack
4. Good Will Hunting - Elliott Smith
5. Kids - Lou Barlow / Folk Implosion / Sebadoh / Slint
6. William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet - Various including Radiohead / Garbage / The Cardigans / Butthole Surfers / Des'ree
7. Once - Glen Hansard / Marketa Irglova [this would probably make the list, but for good reason]
8. Lost Highway - Angelo Badalamenti / Trent Reznor / Various including Marilyn Manson / The Smashing Pumpkins / Rammstein / David Bowie
9. Purple Rain - Prince [um, duh, again]

Unfortunately, upon racking my brain, I realized what a daunting task this might be. Most of the great film/music moments come from pre-released music or even simply from "scores." I mean how could I look past Ennio Morricone? Maybe a "Best Song Made for a Film" would be an easier task. You know Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" would be on top. You know it. And you know, if they actually did a best soundtracks and Whitney didn't make the top 10, there'd be hell to pay.

Short Cuts 22 March 2008

Here's an update of what I've been watching in the past few days.

The Witnesses [Les témoins] - dir. André Téchiné - 2007 - France

The Witnesses is uncharacteristically swiftly-paced for an André Téchiné film, particularly one that deals with what I'd like to call a love trapezoid during the course of an entire year in the early 80s. Like his previous Wild Reeds and Strayed, he treats The Witnesses like an epic war romance, crafting the AIDS crisis into une guerre, told from the point-of-view of an apathetic mother and wife (Emmanuelle Béart) whose husband (Sami Bouajila) is sleeping with a young boy (Johan Libéreau, of Cold Showers) who comes down with signs of what we now know as AIDS. Though successful in its own right, the film ultimately lacks the overall heartbreak of Wild Reeds and the simply stunning nature of Rendez-vous. Try not to pay attention to Béart's plastic surgery face and lips (or the fact that an American character who shows up near the end is clearly not from the United States).

Them [Ils] - dir. David Moreau, Xavier Palud - 2006 - France/Romania

Note to foreign directors who've made a successful horror film in their native country: don't come to America. Now, I'm not outright banning anyone from coming, but Hollywood has been recruiting foreign directors for their shitty remakes for the past few years (see The Hills Have Eyes, The Grudge 2, Hitman), and now we have the directors of Them to blame for The Eye. Them is actually pretty creepy (which is something I've heard The Eye certainly is not), but it feels more like a suspense demo reel than it does an actual film. It's tense and eerie, but empty and meaningless. Thankfully at seventy-seven minutes, it's hard not to at least applaud the directors for favoring old-fashioned terror over merciless gore.

It's My Party - dir. Randal Kleiser - 1996 - USA

It's been AIDS week at my house, first with The Witnesses and then It's My Party. It's My Party is pretty indisputably bad, but I can't bring myself to despise it. The film represents a specific era of time in which AIDS irrevocably changed the lives of everyone around it. In It's My Party, a brain tumor begins to eat away at Eric Roberts (whose casualness about dying gets grating after a while) after years of suffering from AIDS. Instead of dying in a hospital, he throws himself a "going-away" party with his close family and friends, including Lee Grant as his Greek mother, Marlee Matlin as his sister, Olivia Newton-John, Bronson Pinchot and Margaret Cho as his best friends, and George Seagal as his estranged father, among others. I can't really call It's My Party hokey because, in a way, it's authentic; its subject matter is too desperate to be easily dismissed even if it's constructed by lousy filmmaking. Just look at it as a brave aritfact.

Hannah Takes the Stairs - dir. Joe Swanberg - 2007 - USA

Grumblecore. Mumblecorpse. Those are two words that I couldn't resist using in reference to Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, the ultimate test of my patience in a long time. In yet another depiction of post-college life, Swanberg introduces Hannah (Greta Gerwig), an emotionally confused serial dater who blows through the hearts and lives of three men (Mark Duplass of The Puffy Chair, Andrew Bujalski of Mutual Appreciation and Kent Osborne) throughout the course of the film. With Hannah Takes the Stairs, Swanberg best identifies the dead-end nature of the so-called mumblecore movement, crafting a film that's barely distinguishable in maturity or even in terms of plot devices from his previous Kissing on the Mouth and LOL. I could go on, but I'm remaining tight-lipped on this one.

Céline and Julie Go Boating [Céline et Julie vont en bateau] - dir. Jacques Rivette - 1974 - France

Oh, joy. Add these ladies to my list of all-time favorites. It's easy to see how David Lynch might have gotten inspiration for, well, just about all of his films from Céline and Julie, but seldom has surrealism seemed as playful and enchanting as it has here. I would suggest you go out of your way to find this film if you haven't already seen it, and thanks to both Eric and Ed for their incessant Jacques Rivette masturbation sessions or I might have missed out. A fucking incomparable masterpiece.

3 Honorary Awards

I kind of rushed myself to get the 1st Annual Fin de cinema Film Awards published that I forgot three very important awards to bestow. My apologies to the recipients.

The John Malkovich Award: Michelle Monaghan - Gone Baby Gone

The John Malkovich Award goes to the outstandingly bad/forgettable/annoying performance in an otherwise decent film. I'm kind of stretching the word "decent" for Gone Baby Gone, but Michelle Monaghan was so exceptional in being more of a set piece than an actor that I couldn't have her go home empty-handed. She literally cowers opposite every single actor in the movie (Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Amy Ryan, Ed Harris) to the point that makes the audience question why she's even there in the first place. She's the "love interest" whose purpose only comes late in the film, and by that time, you've forgotten why you should even care what she has to say, or how her opinion would affect Casey Affleck.

Runners-Up: David Strathairn - The Bourne Ultimatum; Brad Pitt - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [for being another example of Casey Affleck's performance rendering another actor's absolutely forgettable]

The Teaching Mrs. Tingle Award: Catherine Keener - Into the Wild

The Teaching Mrs. Tingle Award goes to the actor who manages to still retain their usual "fabulousness" despite working under the conditions of a shitty movie (read: Helen Mirren). Into the Wild sucks. I've bitched and moaned about it for months now. Catherine Keener is radiant in just about everything she does (as long as it's not playing a stock character in a stock movie like The Interpreter). In Into the Wild, she manages to hit a home-run every time she's onscreen, which for the laboring runningtime certainly isn't enough. What's also remarkable about Keener's performance here is that she isn't condemned to her usual role of ice queen cunt, which admittedly she does wonderfully. Her performance is probably the only authentic moment of Into the Wild, even though more people are leaning toward Hal Holbrook.

Runners-Up: Marion Cotillard - La Vie en rose; Tea Leoni - You Kill Me [It really pains me to say that, but it's true]; Margot Martindale - Paris je t'aime

The Best (And, Therefore, Gayest) Idea for a Broadway Musical: Xanadu

All this talk in my comment forum about Xanadu reminded me, "how could I forget to shamelessly include Xanadu as an award recipiant this year?" Certain films, like Xanadu, exude time-frame, so giving it an award for 2007 is perfectly acceptable in my book. Thankfully, for those who would disagree, there's validity to its inclusion: it was the surprising hit of the Broadway season this year. A lot of people were surprised, but not me. When I found out that they were still going to use such songs as "Suddenly" and the rousing closing-number "Xanadu," I knew they had a hit-in-the-making, even if the film itself never took off when it hit theatres. I'm sure the Electric Light Orchestra music is probably sadly missing from the production, but I've got to hand it to Broadway for adapting a Hollywood film in dire need of a revival, because, well, Broadway is about as fresh out of ideas as Hollywood is.