Posted in author Joel Bocko on February 24, 2013 | 35 Comments »
By refusing to broadcast the Honorary Awards for the fourth year running, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has given the cold shoulder to luminaries of film history. Perhaps we should return the favor.
This is not a clever list of “Top 10″ reasons to ignore, criticize, or make fun of the Academy Awards. Right now I’m only interested in one deeply unfair and indicative reason. That said, a brief bit of background may be in order…
Posted in author Joel Bocko on December 24, 2012 | 19 Comments »
by Joel Bocko
If there’s a more American film than It’s a Wonderful Life, and a more American hero than George Bailey, I don’t know it. No other film more comprehensively or powerfully captures the common American experience between the wars – that is to say, between Armistice Day and V-J Day – and no other film creates a richer dialogue between the dreams and ambitions that motivate us (then and now), the comforts and camaraderie that soothe us (perhaps then more than now), and the responsibilities and burdens we feel toward our families and communities (now more essentially than ever). It is timeless but it is also very, very much focused on its own time (or rather, a time just passed), a quality that gives It’s a Wonderful Life tremendous strength rather than dating it. By featuring popular songs and political references, by tying the daily life of Bedford Falls into the greater drama of the nation, it provides us with a moving portrait of our parents’ or grandparents’ experience; by not being afraid to situate itself in a particular moment in history, the movie shows us the universal in the particular. Besides, It’s a Wonderful Life has never been timelier, maybe not even when it was released, amidst a postwar era waving goodbye (and good riddance – no wonder the film struggled at the box office) to the years depicted onscreen.
Indeed, while it represents a generally darker, grittier strain than was apparent in most thirties films, It’s a Wonderful Life functions more as a culmination of one Hollywood epoch than the introduction to a new one. Its ensemble cast, its determinedly studio-created world, its dreamy, diffused black-and-white glow, all hearken back to the golden age of Hollywood which was starting to come to an end. Within a few years, techniques like location shooting, stylistic developments associated with noir and naturalism, looser acting styles imported from New York, and outside circumstances like the HUAC hearings and the breakup of the studio monopoly would all contribute to a noticeable shift in American movie style and content. These trends would escalate with the increasing use of color and the introduction of widescreen, facilitating an increase in lavish epics to compete with television (ironically, the medium that would eventually make It’s a Wonderful Life the classic it remains today). Before long, the kind of film It’s a Wonderful Life represented – focused in scope, indulgent of character, romantic in its emotional content yet realistic in its sensitive observations of social dynamics – would be more or less extinct.
Posted in author Joel Bocko, Genre Countdown: Comedy on December 12, 2012 | 25 Comments »
Posted in author Joel Bocko, Avant-Garde Month, Fixing a Hole on December 25, 2011 | 7 Comments »
We began avant-garde month by defying language – with silent films whose currency was visual, whose ideograms were images. Today we openly confront, pull apart, and reassemble language, on a kind of a cracked-looking-glass Sesame Street, numbers and words thrown in the air, land where they may, brought to you by the letter X – as in crossed-out, mysterious value, or X marks the spot. Today each avant-garde selection touches on a different base: documentary, animation, and narrative, all while remaining resolutely experimental. Two short entries are followed by a longer one (covering A Walk Through H, a fantastic film that seems to aptly round out all our themes). Bring your map, but don’t expect it to help any.
Posted in author Joel Bocko, Avant-Garde Month, Fixing a Hole on December 18, 2011 | 6 Comments »
by Joel
Fixing a Hole is a series whose purpose is to cover films not yet discussed on Wonders in the Dark. This month’s theme is the avant garde. Check out this list for the hundreds of films included in “Film as a Subversive Art.”
Many years ago, while living in New York, I found myself reading Rousseau on a park bench, studying for a course on Political Theory. In this case homework would have more long-lasting benefits (however short the actual meeting) than an A on a test. An elderly man, about eighty, was sitting nearby with a female companion and, noticing my book, began talking to me. He had been educated by his parents according to the precepts of Rousseau’s Emile, and this early education had given him a lifelong openness to all sorts of experiences, a fondness for the offbeat and unconventional, and a unique way of seeing the world. We talked for a while, and I discovered his life story was fascinating. He had fled Hitler’s Austria, and in New York, just after the war, he had founded one of the first major film societies in the U.S., Cinema 16 – which would grow to become the most successful membership-based film society in American history.
Cinema 16 screened everything from political documentaries to foreign films to scientific movies to the occasional Hollywood picture (Hitchcock appeared at the theater to introduce The Man Who Knew Too Much). But its bread-and-butter was avant-garde cinema, a form (in all its different forms) that its administrator adored with the passion many reserve for their favorite genre or movie star. Frustrated by the inability of many friends and proteges to get onboard with experimental cinema, and eventually drawn into a rivalry with Jonas Mekas, whose Anthology Film Archives was founded in the early sixties in part as an alternative to Cinema 16′s operation, this man eventually decided to write a book, exploring and celebrating not just the avant-garde, but all forms of subversive cinema from the political to the aesthetic to the topical to the completely personal. When Cinema 16 folded in the early seventies (never having received funds from government or corporation, it was reliant on the support of its members, which eventually dwindled), this book would remain as his enduring legacy.
The man was Amos Vogel, and the book was Film as a Subversive Art. At the end of our pleasant conversation, Vogel gave me his business card and I still have it – a playful sketch of an absent-minded bearded man trotting off with a reel of film unspooling from under his arm. He did not mention his book at the time and only years later would I purchase it, but it’s become one of my cinematic treasures. While focusing on the offbeat and provocative, it is in fact a manifesto for a wide-ranging cinematic love with a keen eye for how subversion is ingrained in the very substance of the material itself – its ability to freeze, preserve, repeat and upend the physical world around us. Today I cover three films introduced to me by this book, and my entries include Vogel’s capsule on the film in question and an embedded video of each movie.
But that’s not all – such a brief sample could hardly convey the vast riches contained in this great book. I’ve tracked several of the selected shorts on You Tube and so a dozen videos follow the post. Some of these selections are narrative, some purely abstract, some are animated, some live-action, some documentary while others are fiction, and still others defy any description. They demonstrate Vogel’s broad taste, and his talent for spotting cinematic treasures in every corner. The avant-garde is, in many ways, not the far wing or the margin of cinema, but its very heart and soul, the – if you will – main stream of the medium. I would suggest watching all of these films when you get the chance, perhaps one each day after finishing the main entry. You won’t be sorry; if some of these are new to you, as they were to me, then you’ll be as thankful as I am for that warm spring day in New York.
Posted in author Joel Bocko, Avant-Garde Month, Fixing a Hole on December 18, 2011 | 6 Comments »
by Joel
Two weeks ago, I turned the “Fixing a Hole” series over to Maurizio Roca. However, he indicated that he did not want to pick it up until January, so as December was left unclaimed, and I like to finish what I started, I will be posting the last three entries in avant-garde month. Since I missed last Sunday, two will go up today – the second at 4pm EST, and the final entry will go up on Christmas. Happy holidays and hope you enjoy the pieces.
In the middle of the twentieth century, particularly in the United States, there was a very clear divide between the mainstream and the avant-garde in cinema. While the modernist obsession with abstraction and experimentation swept the other arts, making celebrities out of artists who defied or reinvented conventions, when it came to movies, you either told a story – with a budget and release schedule provided by the Hollywood system – or you disappeared into the margins. Yet talent thrived on those margins and the postwar era saw the growth of a vital underground cinema, fostered and facilitated by institutions like Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16, an inexpensive film society in New York (Vogel and his views of cinema will be the subject of the next installment in this series, going up Sunday evening).
Three figures – Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage – probably had a bigger impact and wider reach than any others, and so here I will focus on three of their early works: Deren’s At Land (1944), Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964), and Brakhage’s Cat’s Cradle (1959).
Posted in author Joel Bocko on December 5, 2011 | 12 Comments »
Conducted by Joel Bocko
What does a serial killer do when he’s not killing? In M.O., first-time feature director Mitch Rouse hopes to answer that question, taking a neorealist/documentary approach to the daily life of a killer. His influences include the work of the Dardennes brothers, traditional neorealism, and the new crop of young filmmakers shooting in the neorealist tradition. His subject, however, will be quite different from theirs.
The following conversation (as you’ll see, not all of my questions were short!) focuses on the themes Mitch hopes to explore and the stylistic approaches he plans to employ; it also addresses some of the practical aspects of this venture. M.O. will be financed via a Kickstarter campaign, which is going on right now (Kickstarter is a website set up to promote funding through multiple donors). Mitch will be dropping by the site later today, so if you have any questions for him, leave them below as comments.
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Hi Mitch, hope all is well. I know you were out this afternoon – were you working on anything related to M.O.? How much time does this project take up for you these days?
I was actually working at my full-time job today. I edit for a living, so all of the work I do for M.O. is done in my free time. I usually spend a least two or three hours a night working on the film, whether I’m revising the script, coordinating schedules with actors, or otherwise getting things ready for production. We’re scheduled to start principal photography in six weeks, so we’re right in the middle of pre-production and we have a lot to do before that can happen.
In a few words, how would you introduce people to this film, your intent behind, and the process for creating it?
It’s tough to be concise! But I’ll give it a try:
M.O. is a realistic look at the life of a serial killer. The main character in the film is a seemingly average, ordinary guy. He’s married, he has a daughter, and he has a job and a house like any middle-class family. But in secret, he’s a pathological killer.
The intent behind this film is to treat this subject matter without sensation and to leave viewers asking more questions than they came into the film with. On my end, I wanted to make a film that addresses questions I’ve never seen answered in a film before. Questions such as: What does a serial killer do before and after a murder? How does he plan a murder and then live as if everything is normal, and that he hasn’t committed a terrible crime? How does the family of a serial killer not know what he’s up to?
The process for creating this film so far has been for me to put myself into this character’s shoes. So I’ve had to imagine what I would do if I had just committed a murder, and then driven home and had dinner with my family as if it were just a regular day. Rather than simply studying the psychology of serial killers, I asked myself what they do when they aren’t killing and what their everyday habits are. Do they watch TV like everyone else? Do they spend time with their families? In the main character of M.O.‘s case, what is his relationship with his wife like? How does he treat his daughter? So I wanted to know how this character attempts to live like a regular person, and not simply what he does when he’s in the process of committing a murder.
Posted in Animated Animals, author Joel Bocko, Fixing a Hole on November 27, 2011 | 21 Comments »
by Joel Bocko
“Fixing a Hole” is a series whose purpose is to review films that have not yet been covered on Wonders in the Dark. The theme for November is “Animated Animals.”
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The Story: One spring, a little fawn is born into a world of sunshine and flowers – but as the seasons pass, and the young deer comes of age, neither he nor the world around him will remain so innocent.
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“You’d be forgiven for picturing cute, wide-eyed little critters wandering through daisy fields and singing happy songs,” I wrote when introducing this month’s theme, adding pointedly, “Not so.” And I meant it – yet here we are! Well, let this prove that clichés obscure more than they illuminate. The cute, wide-eyed little critters of Bambi inhabit a violence- and sex-filled world of tragedy, stoicism, and carnage. Despite frequent light and happy moments, this is ultimately a very dark forest indeed. Why? To unearth Bambi‘s roots, I dug up the book that gave it birth.
Felix Salten’s Bambi was published in 1923, and it shares the qualities of much classic children’s literature: quiet, thoughtful, with a delicate playfulness, yet fundamentally somber, elementally instructional and subtly allegorical – simple yet deep. Walt Disney more scrupulously balances the dark and light, yet much of the book’s mood and atmosphere is effectively conveyed. Those majestic moments when Bambi and his mother cautiously approach a meadow, or tiptoe through the snow to hunt for food, admirably capture Salten’s spirit. Even those prototypical Disney elements – anthropomorphized chattering forest critters, resembling gossipy housewives or restless schoolkids – have their source in Salten, who devotes many pages to the silly conversations of little birds.
Posted in Animated Animals, author Joel Bocko, Fixing a Hole on November 20, 2011 | 12 Comments »
November 20, 2011
Toontown City Council, c/o Cloverfield Development Co.
Acme Avenue & Avery Alley
Toontown, CA 90@#!
Dear Toons,
Well, gang, I just watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit again, this time for an online series called “Fixing a Hole.” (You know, holes, those convenient black discs you carry around in your pockets, portable escape hatches when you’re in a pickle – incidentally, how much those go for nowadays?) Anyway, the movie was a delight as always; though the climax is a bit drawn-out, the appearance of a one-dimensional Judge Doom, crushed and cackling like some maniacal cross between Johnny Paper and Johnny Rotten, is well worth the wait.
I dug that, and I laughed along with Roger, cringed for Baby Herman (somebody tell that middle-aged infant about Viagra, or better yet, don’t), and marveled at Bob Hoskins’ ability to play it straight even as he was acting against thin ai- er, I mean, against real, live Toons who must have been rather intimidating “in the flesh.” And Jessica Rabbit. Oh Jessica Rabbit. With her in their extended family, it’s no wonder the fluffy-tailed little mammals are so eager to breed.
Posted in Animated Animals, author Joel Bocko, Fixing a Hole on November 5, 2011 | 6 Comments »
by Joel Bocko
“Fixing a Hole” is a new series on Wonders in the Dark whose sole purpose is to review films that have not yet been covered on that site. The theme for Novembered is “Animated Animals.” Some spoilers are discussed below.
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The Story of the Fox (1937/France/directed by Wladyslaw and Irene Starewicz)
stars the voices of Claude Dauphin, Romain Bouquet, Sylvain Itkine, Marcel Raine
written by Jean Nohain, Antoinette Nordmann, Roger Richebe, Irene Starewicz, Wladyslaw Starewicz from Johann Wolfgang Goethe • photographed by Wladyslaw Starewicz • designed by Wladyslaw Starewicz • music by Vincent Scotto • animated by Wladyslaw and Irene Starewicz
The Story: The royal lion seeks to punish Monsieur Renard (Mr. Fox) for eating his fellow creatures, yet the crafty animal tricks, manipulates, and fights his way out of every scrape.
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“Animated Animals”: you’d be forgiven for picturing cute, wide-eyed little critters wandering through daisy fields and singing happy songs. Not so: this month there’s one cuddly creature (albeit too mute to sing), an amiable buffoon, a murderous yet still sympathetic monster, and then there’s Monsieur Renard (French for “fox”), the eponymous antihero of the brilliant stop-motion feature The Story of the Fox. Crafty, nasty, and carnivorous, Renard may have the least redeeming qualities of all the November beasts; unsurprisingly, he may also be the most human.
Watching as he assaults and semi-cannibalizes his fellow creatures, regarding us every now and then with an ambiguously conspiratorial twinkle in his eye, we titter nervously. We recognize we aren’t really compatriots in crime but rather spectators in a show enacted only for the fox’s own benefit. Renard has the gifted performer’s contempt for the audience – and we’d probably be his next victim were we onscreen ourselves. Not only the fox but his master are winking at us with raw, mischievous relish.
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Wonders in the Dark is a blog dedicated to the arts, especially film, theatre and music. An open forum is highly encouraged, as the site proctors are usually ready and able to engage with ongoing conversation.
