The Triumph of Style

I'm generally not one to favor that style-over-substance approach people like Guy Richie and Quentin Tarentino feel they can rely upon, but in some cases, it can be absolutely flooring. In some cases the style of a director can seem out of place in the majority of his or her films, but you put up with it because their films are interesting. I've always been a fan of Wong Kar Wai and felt that when he stepped away from his established style to make In The Mood For Love, it was the smartest thing he'd ever done (the film is beautiful in every way). Bits of the style he'd established in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels seeped into Mood, but it was essentially a departure. Departures from your established style can yield positive results (There Will Be Blood, Frenzy, Dersu Uzala), but, almost more exciting is what happens when you find the perfect use for the style you've created; the reason you had a voice in the first place.

My Blueberry Nights
by Wong Kar Wai

It's no secret that Wong Kar Wai loves America. He loves it as Sergei Eisenstein and Akira Kurosawa did before him. He loves it almost as much as John Ford loved it. His films have all been testaments to that love; He's made manic-crime films a la Point Blank; retellings of golden age Doris Day-Rock Hudson romances; he's structured entire films around pieces of American music; he's in the middle of remaking The Lady From Shanghai. He's the Jean-Luc Godard of Hong Kong; a cinephile's cinephile. Best of all he's managed (until now) to make his films incredibly entertaining in their own right, completely divorced from his fanboy's nature. When I say until now it's because if anyone else in the world had tried to make My Blueberry Nights it would have been unwatchable. A predictable, romantic comedy/road movie where the naive girl learns lessons from the kooky characters she meets along the way, all the while sending postcards to the boy she secretly crushes on. That is about as trite a plot as they come. But what saves it from certain failure is the fact that as I was watching it, Kar Wai's style (the very thing that had given me pause while watching his other movies) makes perfect sense. To put it simply this is the movie he was born to make.

This is Kar Wai's first english language movie (and if he were smart he might make it his last movie period) and stylistically he's never going to beat himself. The slow crank speed of his cinematography, the lingering, sweaty soundtrack, the shifting narratives, the blindsiding, ambiguous heartbreak, all of it adds up here in ways it never did in his Hong Kong films. Every cliche, every silly line, every tired plot device, every piece of narration, all of it would have killed any other film. Not this one. This is Kar Wai's loveletter to America and nothing (not even Norah Jones in the worst acting turn by a singer since John Lurie's debut in Stranger Than Paradise) could ruin it. The film has faults (even the title screams "wasted hour and a half!"), but they brought more smiles than anything. Rachel Weisz can't pick an accent? No sweat! Natalie Portman as a world-weary gambler? Isn't that cute!?! Cat Power is Jude Law's supposedly Russian Girlfriend? ...Actually, I really don't know what to make of that. Sure I guess she has the bangs to look kind of Russian, but she doesn't even fake an accent. And her music's all over the soundtrack. That one's a head-scratcher. But the point is that the folksy wisdom the lead inherits from the crazies she encounters feels fresh. He gets help from co-writer Lawrence Block in capturing that feel of modern southern lore, but here it's all in the camera. Silly, idealistic stories were meant to look like this, and to see that potential fulfilled (on both ends) was strangely satisfying. Never in a million years could I be asked to care about Norah Jones finding her way back to Jude Law, but, here I let it all wash over me like the gorgeous sunset, diner grease, cigarette smoke, and winter air that drift through the reels. Nothing has ever looked quite so perfect as the fluorescent lights of a Memphis dive through a camera in drop-frame slow-mo.

As it is I think there are two kinds of people who'll enjoy this movie: girls between 12-35 who love romantic comedies/Jude Law and me. Do I recommend this film to anyone who doesn't meet that criteria? HELL NO! But I can tell you that I was so ecstatic over the absolute success of Wong Kar Wai's storytelling that the fact that it's been told a million times never bothered me for a second. Sure it's been told before, to the point of irrelevance, but never by Wong Kar Wai. Never the right way.

The Man from New York City

"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single person to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

-Rudy Giuliani

And this suppurating fascist was almost president.
Just imagine someone being more proactive about the murder of civil rights for profit than the grazhny cowboy bastards in power.

Composition/Arrangement

I think what makes new bands stand out above all their peers is the approach they take to arranging their music once it's been written. Some bands are content to play the songs the same way again and again (now, mind you this does occasionally work), but in my experiences music becomes so much vital and exciting when the bands take the time to change the way they play them. Broken Social Scene changes the tempo of many of their songs and almost every guitar part changes at every show (not exactly the most original concept, but it saves their concerts from becoming reruns). There is one band in particular that has taken a really proactive approach to re-imagining their tunes: Grizzly Bear. It's hardly unexpected that a crew of chic artist types from Brooklyn would be so interested in turning each song into something new for every performance, but these guys do it better than nearly anyone I've seen. Seeing them live was a revelation because not only did it show me that every member of the band sings, they've all got a whole bevy of effects running simultaneously to turn the songs into a whole new fleet. They highlighted their spirit of change in the Friend EP, wherein they redid a few of their own songs, had other bands interpret their work and even did a Crystals cover (it's a faithful rendition but it's pretty amazing nevertheless). They have a style and a sound and so to hear them turn regular sounds into the heavy, crunchy Grizzly Bear sounds.

What's more every member of the band has their own personality that enters into the music. Obviously bassist/clarinet player Chris Taylor and drummer/keyboardist Christopher Bear add very unique elements to the music (Taylor's awesome backing vocals for one, Bear's light-delay heavy drums for another) but where the real difference comes in is the dynamic between lead vocalists Ed Droste and Dan Rossen. Ed has a much deeper voice and you could swim in it when it takes off. His tracks tend to be darker and sweeter. Rossen has a lighter, earthier sound and tends to accompany it with slighter instrumentation. Their voices appear equally on Yellow House, the bands first real record as a band (though technically) and the difference is at first so slight as to appear as if there might just be one voice, but, upon closer inspection the differences are made apparent. It's really cool to listen to Rossen sing his Deep Blue Sea and then hear Droste sing He Hit Me to see exactly where their styles part ways. Rossen is also a remarkable guitar player which just makes their improvisation and fascinating compositions easier to envy and impossible to turn off. What's more they seem to be completely unpretentious.