Cockles and mussles

This year’s Oscars seem a world away now. But one comment stuck in the brain for further thought. That of First Lady Michelle Obama when Jack Nicholson handed her the flame via video link to light up this year’s Best Film winner. She suggested that these films and filmmakers may allow and encourage people to “dream a bigger dream”. Which begged the question of American society and whether dreaming that dream was always such a good idea. The sky may be the limit as the adage goes but worryingly they are few and far between who warn one not to fly too close to that sun. Not that the First Lady in any way encouraged false hope. Far from it. The trouble with Britain as an economic player has always been so often that it just wouldn’t dream that dream thereby forfeiting and allowing foreign companies to profit from a lack of vision. So often, you were better off remaining an ‘under dog’ than parading one’s talents in that country. In fact one of Argo’s producers Graham King (a Brit made good in Hollywood) is on record as saying that Britain needs to make films that people everywhere want to go and see while not sacrificing quality for quantity or being lumbered with national identity traits. He certainly succeeded (though not for Britain) with Argo.  And though many Brit critics like to ‘pooh pooh’ the trad quality of Downton Abbey, it’s one of Britain’s greatest cultural export success s in living memory.

Without placing words into the First Lady’s mouth, surely what she meant was that Americans always need to be made aware that there is another reality to the one willfully and worryingly casually thrust upon them by themselves. Not that success or an alternative life is necessarily bad just that one needs find that success on one’s own terms and not on the prevailing winds of one’s neighborhood, friends, family, or ‘heaven for fend’ American TV.

Every year in New York, MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center team up for New Directors/New Films – this year’s Oscar for Best Live Action Short (Curfew) and Best Documentary (How to Survive a Plague) both screened at last year’s festival. And the journey of some of this year’s shorts is too worth watching,

Stampede

To Put Together a Helicopter (Para armar un helicopter)

Probably the most unforgettable film of this year’s 25 films and 3 shorts slot fest (described as more a “documentary of the imagination”) is Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (executive produced by Errol Morris and Werner Herzog). Participants of the Communist purge after Indonesia’s 1965 military coup are asked to re-enact their crimes. The idea was sparked by how readily and casually people posed smiling for photos in front of their horrific acts. And the film is certainly equal to any of the video art out there these days. The idea of these men dressing up (sometimes as their female victims in make up with Bollywood style dance routines) stems directly from the milieu they originated from- that of the black marketeers of movie tickets. Even to the extent of extolling the virtues of the gangster in the word’s original meaning of ‘free man’. “It’s not about fear it’s about image,” says one, “I know a good torture scene [location]” with some of the noirish scenes easily straight out of a Jean-Pierre Melville film. “War crimes are determined by the winners [so what makes us different from any other victorious nation]”. The film is prefaced by Voltaire’s dictum: "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
UK released by Dogwoof June 28.

This is surely the most inventive, provocative, mesmerizing and unbelievable film about war crimes you are ever likely to see - included in that judgement is the documentary The Gatekeepers (UK released by Metrodome April 12).

And you kinda need a paragraph devoted just to fresh air as a break before discussing anything else in the festival. 

Other films from ND/NF that stayed in the mind of this website were:

Les Coquillettes- directed by (and also acting) Sophie Letourneur

A Hijacking 
(UK released May 10 by Arrow Films)

The Shine of Day - with one of Germany’s most respected theatre actors Philipp Hochmair

Anton’s Right Here - familiar territory but no less poignant through its subject Anton realizing that the documentary camera can be a liberating friend and not an invader.

the beautifully photographed Küf

Viola-

combining theatrical conceit with filmic inventiveness and invasiveness – directed by Matías Piñeiro

and noteworthy if perhaps a touch self-conscious -

Towheads- directed (and starring) Shannon Plumb with indy film director stalwart Derek Cianfrance as her husband whose face we barely ever see and with his 2 real life kids on screen who we unregrettably see loads of.

Tower - directed by Kazik Radwanski

Upstream Color  - directed by Shane Carruth

The Fest’s closing night film:

Our Nixon collates the Super 8 film of Nixon’s aides- much of which has simply sat in an FBI vault for decades. Is it revelatory? Well, yes and no. Nixon has always been an easy scapegoat and guy to hate. But just as Oliver Stone’s Nixon film tried to show he was a far more complex and interesting guy if reprehensible.  And so much of the footage and audio here is just priceless as historical documentation. So, see for yourself.

Former film critic Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds (Som ao redor) from last year’s ND/NF is UK released on March 22 by Artificial Eye (Cinema Guild released in the States)

And from this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema Fest, arrives Ozon’s In theHouse (UK released by Momentum)

And though this year’s festival wasn’t quite as full of fascinating gems as last year several films still stay in the mind:

You Will Be my Son

The Girl from Nowhere – great performances and an interesting idea that just misses going somewhere.

Augustine

Three Worlds – when the big dream collides into  reality

and Jacques Doillon’s perhaps over-long You, Me and Us whose inherent emotional theatricality bears similarities to Viola in ND/NF- you might say Racine as compared to Pirandello.

Note that Eureka DVD has some great French releases in its Masters of Cinema series:

The ever relevant and still blackly funny Poison (1951)

Chabrol’s feature debut Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins

and the great Italian Fellini’s City of Women (1980)

Eureka’s (like Criterion’s in the States) are all about championing innovation in cinema. But is anything shocking anymore? Can it be? Eureka brought us The Human Centipede that outdoes ND/NF’s Upstream Color by miles.  You’d wished that the latter had gone more in its Manchurian Candidate direction: the prevalence of mind, body, environment manipulation in America. But it wasn’t the film the director wished to make. His call. CNN revealed the shocking (but hardly surprising) facts of soldiers’ testimonials a few months ago and how the U.S. military used them as guinea pigs (The Narcotics Farm doco covered similar ground).

New York’s The Armory Show celebrated its 100^th anniversary this year coinciding with the celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelors.

Dancing around Duchamp at London's Barbican.

We quote from our betters..

The Guardian’s: Adrian Searle: “Rauschenberg famously declared that he wanted to work in the gap between art and life. Cage announced that he wanted to eradicate the difference. Duchamp said he wanted to turn his life into art, and that he believed in the artist, but wasn't so sure about art. Johns, or rather his painting, said "No". Over his long career, Johns's art has both veiled and detailed the private – whether it was his everyday life in the studio or a map of the house he grew up in, while always maintaining a poker-faced refusal to explain. Perhaps that's what he meant by that NO.”

Peter Conrad’s Observer review of George Bellows’ Royal Academy show:

“The muscular tension and fraught distortion of the figures in Stag at Sharkey's gives them an unexpected modernity. The painting dates from 1909, four years before the Armory Show brought cubism and post-impressionism to bewildered, scandalised New York and caused Theodore Roosevelt – a president as well as an art critic, whose gospel of "the strenuous life" Bellows often seems to be illustrating – to rail at the lunacy of "European extremists". Roosevelt particularly scorned Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, and wondered if the painter belonged to the school of "Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle".” Echoes of our beloved Richard M. Nixon there.

Eric Shiner (director of The Andy Warhol Museum since July 2011) postured at one of this year’s Armory Show Open Forums (Sun 3pm): “What is shocking? Or has contemporary art come to a point where nothing is shocking?”  There was little if ANYTHING that transgressed let alone shocked. Except for the temperature differential of Pier 94 and that between front and back of Pier 92-  a sort of unintentional Miami-New York comment. In comparison to most work on show (for the first time you could see almost everything (98%) on ArtSy) John Latham’s 1991 God is Great (LissonGallery) looked as if it had been written yesterday. There was even an artificial snowman in one of the passageways. But it was hard not to believe that the London effort of this website wasn’t a tad more interesting.

Artist Alec Soth on the panel noted: “encountering reality at this point is transgressive…the ambition of transgression is almost always going to be bought” Another speaker pointed out the irony that in MFA’s students are “taught the business of art when [now] there really is no business”.  And writer/journalist John Bowe felt just being polite was transgressive enough these days and noted “the smallness of the conversation” in the art world and that “newspapers are going the same way”.  Also on the panel was Participant Inc’s founder Lia Gangitano –and all the conversation made her last show celebrating Andy Kaufman sound the equal of Duchamp!

To, perhaps, the chagrin of many and the glee of others, artist Liz Magic Laser was commissioned this year to design all the merchandising and invites for The Armory Show. Somewhat turning a mirror on the fair itself and treating the commission as an advertising campaign with very pertinent results – the creative process on show in the Focus USA section (curated by Shiner) - and Liz’s work was arguably the most radical there. Gagosian had enough wooden floor space to mount a dance event. But didn’t. We hope greater things from Shiner's Genesis P-Orridge show this summer.

One heartening fact gleaned at the show was that International Corporate Art was successfully introducing contemporary art on a fairly massive scale to its guests on Celebrity Cruises.

One pale mermaid

tankers and cruise ships are caught between motion and understanding

or the very least questioning

She seems so small

not even worthy of a capital f- polite or no

yet she straddles the safe harbour of that

and the allowance of nature's black, blue utterance in that small benign blue strip beyond

Her color no longer needs interpretation

And as if her plinth were there for sole human industrial scale

grandeur beyond the grayest means.

New Jersey sputters.

New York complains. as always

as Her canvas itself wasnt enough.

she maintains a presence of being not defiance

ready as if at will

prepared to jump over the wobbly pale line of reason into adventure.

her Wordsworth farewell of "how arrogant is she when HER parents and neighbours heart is heard no more."

the Dutch made you and defeated you

did she ever realise how arrogant was build against her forbears' beautiful line of reason

and then was the darkness

And she stood alone.

 

 Poem Copyright 2013 Andrew Lucre

abide with me.. PART 2

The Tribeca Film Festival was born out of an economic and cultural revival need for the downtown area after the 9/11 attacks.  As this year’s Sundance Film fest gears up and crazier folk than I humiliatingly queue up and beg in the freezing cold to see movies that can be seen in far more relative comfort later on, it seems a good point to reflect on last year’s Tribeca Festival-  arguably doing best these days in offering up documentaries that despite their success at Tribeca, for many, sadly aren’t taken up by other media outlets. And interestingly the ones that were (both in the US and UK) weren’t the ones that this blog found most impressive (UK distributor Dogwoof picked 2 titles that were very in line with their quality target audience). Outgoing NYFF artistic director Richard Peña noted in a conversation at this year’s NYFF that Sundance is now more an audition for Hollywood and that no more are Indy movies to be seen as an alternative to Hollywood.  Peña also a comparison with the catholic Mass that is probably wiser not to quote;)

Tribeca has the trappings of an alternative Hollywood fest most obvious in its PR bandwagons, sponsorship deals and premiers. Nonetheless, the Festival still maintains a programming that is food for thought rather than ‘art-house’. Yet there was no film (narrative or documentary) that either lulled us into fascination of our fellow humans or grabbed us by the scruff of the neck shaking us to look in the vein of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Lodge Kerrigan's Keane.

More economic recession woes in Downeast - a depressing tale of an Italian entrepreneur who came to save a destitute canned lobster meat factory and who almost single-handedly (with his workers) revitalises this little town in Maine. The who-dunnit is: were his plans scuppered by competitor greed across the border and/or general apathy?  At times the reality smacked of Hollywood. But it was real alright. So too was The World Before Her (top documentary competition prize at Tribeca). Director Nisha Pahuja bravely juxtaposing the 20 finalists in Mumbai’s Miss India pageant (whose lead subject preaches the event’s female empowerment), with a Durga Vahini camp (the women’s branch of the extremist Vishwa Hindu Parishad- the “Hindu Taliban”) where intelligent teenagers believe their adherence to violence is truly freedom fighting. More utter belief observed in Scott Thurman's The Revisionaries and The Texas State Board of Education's (gods of what’s published in American kids’ textbooks as Texas is the largest market) adherence and promulgation of the Christian Creationist view of evolution. The doco’s lead is Don McLeroy (Chairman of the Board for 2 years), a thoroughly decent, nice guy- I met him. And he argues his stance with a charm and eloquence that’s never laced with cynicism or connivance- the same manner which Thurman engages you in his film. Dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. Much as many of the less Fundamentalist pro-assault rifle gun lobby are currently arguing their case in America. (I hasten to add I present those last two agendas without cynicism or agreement).  

Sexy Baby cast three women as female empowerment/exploitation doco subjects but undeniably centre stage was young teen Winnifred who if she could would have her own TV show- surely more bearable than those of her older peers;) Laura’s  (22) labiaplasty was better discussed in a Channel Four doc some years back (mentioned somewhere on my site). But given the imagery in our ether, it seemed very hypocritical to argue and deny Winnifred her moment of semi-naked Facebook glory. Searching for Sugarman was there last year but best new documentary director went to Jeroen van Velzen for Wavumba- an advocate doc if ever there was one for getting back to life’s essentials. Masoud is an ageing sharkhunter on the coast of Kenya tries passing on his expertise and passion to his young recruit with failing results.

Amir Naderi an Iranian filming in Japan made the fascinating if slightly long and all too knowing Cut about a man so obsessed with keeping his cine-club above water that he accepts money to be hit. Could there be a better metaphor for sticking to your art-house cinema guns against all odds?  The final 100 blows is a countdown of 100 films. And even some of the most respected film critics in the world will be stumped by some of these.

Consuming Spirits was a beautiful, meditative animation (just NY released) that evoked the palimpsests of William Kentridge. But there was only one narrative film (well two-Postcards from the Zoo that played last year’s Edinburgh Fest) that really stayed in your mind rather than simply being thoughtful and/or entertaining after the Festival. Former Swedish TV director Levan Akin’s Certain People that gathered a bunch of young bourgeois friends for gallerist Katinka’s country estate birthday party. There was a soft-focus almost ‘Elvira Madigan’ quality (Linus Rosenqvist) that belied the terrible ennui of its characters. Think a Joachim Trier movie doped with a quinine martini that’s until the cocktail wears off and reality sets in. If this film had say a French art house director’s name attached it would easily have gained a theatrical release. It’s a Carnage for those who just haven't taken that mescaline rush just yet. And finally, mention must be made of The Fourth Dimension- Harmony Korine directing one of three short films together with Polish filmmakers Alexey Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiecinski. And Josh Koury and Myles Kane’s Journey to Planet X- will that make it into this year’s London Sci-Fi Fest? The Arrival of Mr Wang in the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Italian season was a refreshing new politically incorrect take on the sci-fi genre.

And actor James Franco’s Francophenia - a film almost universally loathed at the Tribeca screenings but was actually a very savvy straight faced satire of the art/film celebrification process. At least me hopes it was! Unfortunately for America’s there’s so much out there that does this kinda stuff with absolute sincerity sans satire. Now where are those lemmings going….

What saturated American indie film culture this year was the new hybrid of Mumblecore: Amoebacore or a trawling through the minutia of everyday lived experience elevating it a few steps up from the microscope.  Definitions are difficult. Perhaps there’s a transparency to the former rather than the latter. Maybe Amoebacore gets stuck between a rock and a hard place as we all do in life.  Frances Ha (NYFF) didn’t quite seem like Mumblecore to me nor did it feel gravitating to a ‘Sundance’ movie as did LolaVersus (Tribeca). Nonetheless, it felt incomplete. And maybe that is the point. Now, Forager (ND/NF) seemed altogether more interesting and just not Mumblecore. Perhaps the ‘grown-up’ version was Celeste and Jesse Forever (Dec 7, UK) about well, not ‘growing up’. And compared to much Mumblecore, the total artifice of Ruby Sparks seemed to hit the actor/writer/audience conundrum right on the head.

Most people in Britain and America will never see most of the films written about here. If they did would the world be a better place? Unlikely. But is that the point? Does the mindless mush of Hollywood (present company excluded of course) rom-com and gratuitous violence make the world a worse place? The latter genre has been debated ad infinitum. And a Brit film Peeping Tom (1960) became a lynch pin in that debate long ago. What is worrying (to use a euphemism) in the current gun culture debate is that everything in America ultimately becomes about presentation and possession in relation to the ‘other’. My home, my family, my happiness substituted with ‘your’ in advertising.  If you project fear will fear find you? Clearly there are many well-adjusted, caring, non-greedy people whom fear and violence seek out for no apparent reason. There’s no doubt that the pro-gun lobby have reason to fear. 

But there was a deeply distressing incident in London that just can’t be erased and is a salient incident (albeit isolated) to remember in this debate. And that’s the police shooting on the London underground of Jean Charles de Menezes. Cutting to the chase. Forget the whys and wherefores of whether these highly armed police should have had better information etc etc. The facts of the actual shooting are horrifying. The officers were supposedly trained in Israeli-style terrorist intervention tactics (SO19 firearms officers trained by the SAS). The bullets in the guns were specially designed high velocity 'hollow-point bullets' so as to explode in the brain and kill the target and avoid ‘collateral damage’ around the target. The target in question was seated in the underground carriage not escaping but apparently did move towards not thrust at an officer, in close proximity to the police and yet supposedly these two highly trained officers needed 7 shots to the head (11 shell casings were found) and one to the shoulder to achieve their objective.  Enough is enough.

The crux of course is not whether you think officers should and should not be armed, on or off duty, whether or not there was a ‘shoot to kill’ policy (vehemently denied by the Met police). The officers weren’t to know the Brazilian man was the wrong target and innocent. Let’s put all emotion aside. The crux is: if such highly trained and respected officers couldn’t even properly hit their ‘sitting duck’ target should we really be allowing military calibre assault rifles even into the hands of well-meaning, level-headed, much vetted intelligent individuals and even police officers on or off duty? 

To many it seems a ‘cop out’ to immerse oneself, one’s life in the culture of films and art. But the argument for these art forms helping us see the world more clearly is even stronger than both pro and anti gun lobby groups combined. Allowing the link between violence on TV/film and violence in the streets to have legs is a very dangerous road to travel.  Society is at fault and its own our backyards that we must be contemplating.  But first we must train ourselves to see more clearly what is there. Many American broadcasters have detailed some very effective anti-gun violence work being done (and there are many British police constabularies doing the same) by both State and Federal law officers that doesn’t involve an executive Presidential order overriding the democratic process. And as Jon Stewart pointed out on his satirical The Daily Show, how can it be that the law prevents me from buying an over sized sugar beverage or leaving the store without proper hot coffee insulation for my hand and yet most ordinary folk can purchase with equal ease ammunition and assault rifles and go have some fun. Wherever you gravitate in the debate - sympathy or empathy - the hypocritical stench of a society protecting its citizens is undeniable. 

Trying to end on a grim note, a story hit the virals yesterday of a N. Virginian sighting of what seemed a baby lion roaming the streets. Instead, it turned out to be a shaven/dyed labrador Charlie looking like such who was used as a mascot in the town. Now what if people had started shooting at Charlie. They had every reason to think they were doing the right thing and protecting American citizens. They were fearful but did they really look hard enough at what of they were fearful. Enough said.

The 2012 Planet Lucre film survival list:

Comment was to be added as to why these films are in my list below. But having written that long pre-amble it’s probably more elucidating just to list them (and allows me to cheat a little by writing less:). As they say, less is more. If you’ve seen some or many of the films you will understand. If not, there’s another world to explore;) In no order whatsoever-

Yet to open or be released in UK:

Lincoln

Hitchcock

UK released-

Argo

Woman in a Dressing Gown

Ordet (The Word)

Passion of Joan of Arc  

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Coriolanus

Wild Bill

This Must Be the Place

Seeking a Friend for The End Of The World

(not a great script/film but there was something raw in those performances from Steve Carell and Keira Knightley that eats away at you)

Nostalgia for the Light

Oslo, August 31st

The Raid

Once Upon a Time In Anatolia

Patience (After Sebald) 

The Dictator  

To Rome With Love

Carnage

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Berberian Sound Studio

The Deep Blue Sea

Damsels in Distress

The Cabin in the Woods

Acts of Godfrey

(when are you ever to see again a film all in rhyming verse!)

Bernie

and in the New York Film Festival 2012 past and scheduled UK release:

The Gatekeepers/Shomerei Ha’saf (Dror Moreh)

Holy Motors (Léos Carax)

Ginger and Rosa (Sally Potter)

Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Michell)

No (Pablo Larrain)

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire) (Taviani Brothers) 

The Bay

Not UK released:

Werner Schroeter retrospective (MoMA, New York)

Justine (MoMA)

Tender is the Wolf (MoMA)

Found Memories

Now, Forager

Teddy Bear

Certain People

Twilight Portrait

The Ambassador

Porfirio

The Painting

The animations of Sally Cruikshank

And no scheduled UK release for NYFF 2012:

Bwakaw (Jun Robles Lana)

Memories Look at Me (Song Fang) 

Downpour 

Odd Man Out 

Liv and Ingmar 

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Vous n’avez encore rien vu) (Alain Resnais) 

Jeff Preiss (new work)

Nathaniel Dorsky (new work) 

Native Son     

"Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?"

Essays Critical and Clinical- Deleuze

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH 2012

Martin Margulies reads the large and small print at the opening of Miami Basel 2012: that's why he's a rich business and art collector and the rest of us aren't;)
(art work behind is the Corruption Contract by Superflex) 

Richard Tuttle with his new very large book in the foreground

his lecture featured discussion about his passion for textiles

Vito Acconci speaking at Design Miami
Video HERE

You can find more photos of the Miami fairs HERE

please remember that all photos are copyright Andrew Lucre 2012
(gimme a break, I don't even charge a dime!)

The American Election 2012 with wobbly ghosts and candle wax...

If you thought the U.S. election was too close to call 4 years ago (and it was no where near the landslide to the Democrats that prevailing history would want one to believe) then have a gander at tonight (though only die-hards in Britain will stamina the early morning hours their time). This website is only politic in the sense that it is to do with people. No art, no films, NOTHING cultural can exist without a context. What makes those artforms deathly boring is agenda of any race, colour or creed. And politics, unfortunately, is mostly that. One CNN commentator quipped tonight from The Simpsons “we have to let these damn people vote”. Democracy is indeed the least political system of all evils. New York is hardly a swing state- yet Mayor Bloomberg bravely described his own polling experience and others this morning as “third world” after Hurricane Sandy totally rearranged the polling stations. Can Sandy be blamed for the electronics a bit skew-whiff or the lack of photocopied affidavit voting forms for those polling outside their zone due to storm damage? One could argue that Bloomberg's statement was politically agendered. Just as his decision to abandon the NY Marathon (Staten Island is predominantly Republican). But it would be foolish to say the least to draw that conclusion of either experience.

Manhattan may be sporting a brave face after Hurricane Sandy (again perhaps a gross generalisation). But the hard hit NY boroughs –many still without much help or indeed power- are speaking their mind. Whether the general American electoral vote of 270 to win Presidency tonight are doing the same or indeed are mindful of all the intricacies and ramifications of that vote is kinda beside the point. That is the system one has! And if the vote is tied 269/269 then the system is even more problematic. The Senate has a deciding vote but it is only one vote per State no matter how different are the political margins of each State. No wonder many people like ‘The Simpsons’ are sceptical of democracy!

One small haven of Virginia that has correctly predicted/voted the outcome since 1952 is neck and neck at 49% as of writing this post. Point taken? Whilst it is remarkable that the MTA has almost all subway lines up and running two very important lines are still flooded (one still with 3,700 foot of water)- the L to Williamsburg/Bushwick and beyond and the G to Bedford-Stuyvesant an up and coming (and one of the still affordable) suburbs. So home to many ‘middle-class’ and artists ‘on their feet’ who can least afford to be without a subway line.   

And nobody is happy with the American banks. In many cases you are better off bankrupt than with a salary or cash. Such are the hoops one has to jump through in order to get board approval for a co-op, buy a short sale or foreclosure, or even get bank approval for anything whatsoever. Remember the days of New Labour in Britain when one could ‘flannel’ an income 4 times what one earned or more? The buy to let bank fiasco?! America wasn’t that different. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And those banks who sold inflated mortgage products have the gall to stand on their high horses pretending that they are holier than thou for their decisions protecting the interests of American democracy! Many loyal citizens are reaching for something else rather than the intense to burn there!

I feel a film review coming on. Many to choose…ummm…45 or so from the 50^th New York Film Festival for a start. Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths (2012 London Film Festival) opened in NYC a few weeks ago, UK -Momentum Pictures-  Dec 5). It’s not perfect but it does deserve ‘a film by Martin McDonagh’ credit unlike many self-confessed auteurs. How do you make sense of the reality? Is there any sort of ‘reality’ that will reach a multiplex? Writer/director McDonagh goes a long way in discussing those questions with loads of really inventive scenes and acting turns along the way. But he doesn’t quite get inside the minds of his characters as he did with In Bruges. But you may disagree. And one could also argue that those minds, like many Americans, are fairly impenetrable nay schizoid given what normal people have to contend with on a daily basis. They don’t have a press briefing every day from Mayor Bloomberg assuring them that everything will be fine. They have normal TV! They’d all be better off doing the daily round and having a laugh in the evening with The Big Bang Theory. After all, as the doco filmmaker Patricio Guzmán noted in Nostalgia for the Light we are at the end of the day all but atoms.

Hurricane Sandy-Saturday

These Hurricane Sandy posts began with an analogy to NYC being a war zone. Over the past week that image has only blasted brighter. The bigger picture is most indeed that.  Do the math on how many pregnant mothers must be without normal facilities- heat, power, elevators, food etc. How many very young kids, elderly people etc etc etc. That’s a lot of folk. And that’s JUST in lower Manhattan. Did Mayor Bloomberg do the right thing cancelling Sunday’s classic NY Marathon? I think so. Should he have made that decision earlier and avoided runners struggling to reach NYC by plane from all over the world? It's easier to judge in hindsight. And I loathe writing in first person but I’m only writing these posts because it’s the I in me that feels such a mixture of anger, respect, hope, frustration. Staten Island and many non-Manhattan sites are still a war zone. So going ahead with the Marathon (starting on Staten Island) whilst a few miles away people couldn’t even grieve because NO facilities were back on line! It would be tantamount to giving those residents the finger and saying we’re Manhattan and you’re just a cheap-skate ‘bridge and tunnel’ crowd who we love milking for money to see our great isle of Manhattan.

I could so easily have been staying in the blackout zone of Manhattan. Selfish, seeming nice folk booted me out (another story) less than a week ago and reasonably priced accommodation I found above 39th Street. I kinda wished I was down there in the thick of it and yet so relieved, obviously, that I wasn’t. I happened on a pop-up photo gallery midtown East side last night and met a young businesswoman quietly sporting a visible facial bruise from bumping into a wall walking up and down 23 stories to her apartment. Do the math. And it was so surreal that a young, Irish photographer was plugging away at selling artistic (non-flooded) photos of New York one day before his pop-up expired.

I wanted to go on drinking, even find sex, at one of the plethora of bars on the East Side that night but it just made me burst into tears. Were they tears of anger, helplessness, frustration that I didn’t have the guts to go into some of those establishments and shout how can you lead a normal ffffing life while the temperature is dropping into real cold for many people in this city barely 10 blocks away in addition to them having  no normal life. Let alone Staten Island, Rockaway…

The next time you read a war correspondent such as Robert Fisk or Maggie O'Kane just marvel and wonder at how level headed and seemingly detached they are (not that anyone could level detachment at Fisk but you get the point;). I remember an award winning Guardian photographer at a Q&A of his work noting passionately how annoyed he was that he was expected to be something of a humanitarian in African trouble spots plus a photographer. Not having had that experience I completely agreed with his frustration. After being in NYC for Hurricane Sandy his point is blisteringly clear.

It’s not just remarkable but extraordinary how most of the subway system will be up and running by Monday, less than a week after Sandy hit. Tunnels not just flooded but with water up to a few feet from the top of the street stairs. Not everything functioned as the Mayor hoped. But then how could it? You’d be furious too standing hours in line early cold morning waiting for water and they’d cocked up the delivery time. And in a month’s time Sandy will be a distant memory for much of Manhattan that was unaffected. Or will it? Certainly not for me. I’ll never drink another glass of free private view wine, the art, without having Hurricane Sandy rustling somewhere in that picture. Is that too emotive? What else could one be!

the BIG SCREEN...

And now for something completely different – an animated bio-pic of Monty Python-ette Graham Chapman screened at MoMA last night. The good news was that MoMA was packed (as always) with visitors on Wednesday (having closed as of Sunday night pre-hurricane). The not so good news that A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman really didn’t hit the funny bone except for hard core Pythonites. And alas the Monday screening of Sally Cruikshank’s animations had to be cancelled. Those with enough enthusiasm and time to attend Friday’s screening weren’t disappointed. Introduced by Jim Hoberman (formerly of the Village Voice) his “fun on Mars” description riffing on one of Sally’s titles was no misnomer. Nor was his “she is some kind of genius” and his most anticipated screening of the To Save and Project: The 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Parents: Sally’s animations will shut up those kids over the next few no school days. She is a self-confessed “dinosaur”. Judging from the compilation (that included her titles for the Hollywood film Ruthless People) she is a Diplodocus with teeth for boredom;) She re-called that co-incidentally she tuned into a radio station whilst driving and Mick Jagger was asked what he thought of the Ruthless People titles. Not very complimentary. Sally said she hates your new song too Mick. Whatever it is:) Check out MoMA. Whatever the criticisms and short-comings it’s far more than just a few indecipherable famous abstract paintings and the like. There’s even a James Bond movie retrospective. And they thought MoMA was crazy collecting this stuff/sh**;) Just goes to show how…are some people.

A review of Flight (opening tomorrow in NYC next Feb 1 in London) was kinda promised on this site when it world premiered at the 50^th New York Film Festival. And Hurricane Sandy REALLY harnessed by focus, anger and praise of and at this film. Up to a point it’s a revelatory film (and performance by Denzel Washington) of an alcoholic. Whatever job he may command. In his case he pilots a regular stress-free short domestic flight (whilst hungover/intoxicated/sleepless) through stormy Florida weather and into blue carefree skies to Atlanta. A technical failure almost kills everyone and would have if not for Denzel’s experience as a pilot. But there were deaths and they demand legal satisfaction. The trouble with criticism is that one tends to re-write someone else’s script (John Gatins in this case). And I still can’t square the circle of the film’s ending (trying to avoid a spoiler alert).  But like it or not Gatins (in a kinda parallel Michael Moore way) begs a lot of very pertinent questions. Is the truth always a welcome friend and neighbour? Gatins suggests yes. But ironically his overall film suggests not. One thought of the nurses carrying babies down 9 flights of stairs (6 to a baby) in the darkness to evacuate newborns- some even a few hours old from Langone Hospital. What if one nurse had been like that pilot and slipped ever so slightly and a baby would lose a limb? What if that nurse hadn’t been there. What if several nurses hadn’t been there? What if a fireman or police officer inadvertently themselves drowned after rescuing a baby. A family. Would they be any less of a hero because they’d been drinking that night and risked their life. Flight will anger many folk especially after Hurricane Sandy. And one really can’t give the production team credit for that. But Denzel Washington breaks your ffing heart because he’s the only motherffer who really ever cares about anything. And it’s questionable whether such a survivor (in such a nuanced performance by Washington) would give the response he gave at the final enquiry. Humans do their best. We are all fallible. And some of us find ways to cope that are very extraordinary and definitely not the social or legal norm. It’s like medication- it is so often a fine line between just the right amount and just too much. What would you have done? It’s so easy in retrospect to judge. So as in my oft quoted Les Murray poem perhaps the world will always need legends “else they will die of strangeness”.

Hurricane Sandy-Thursday

Mayor Bloomberg quipped in one of his initial Hurricane Sandy press briefs that next time a New Yorker bad mouthes the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) remember they gave you free rides during the hurricane. Well today (Thurs) any subway line that could possibly be running is while buses (choking with passengers) renewed an almost full service yesterday. A quite remarkable achievement in transit logistics 3 days after a hurricane. And with the best will in the world one could muster, it’d be hard to imagine London getting back on its feet that quickly.

Instead of subway tunnels surging into rivers we had streets concreted with cars- a gridlock symphony of honking horns worthy of a Havergal Brian monster symphony. Even with a chill in the air the sun shone this morning in relative quiet. Many in lower Manhattan and other boroughs are still without power (after the storm roughly 750,000 were blacked out) and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore gave food for thought on Piers Morgan’s CNN show last night asking why should public utilities such as gas and electricity be given a monopoly in NYC (Con Edison). Either the system is competition capitalism or socialist control.

Regardless of where one stands in that debate it is essential to question a city as large and complex as New York. Piers Morgan pursued his inquiries into the hospital generators failing (yesterday another hospital Bellevue was forced to evacuate patients). And Morgan (and his programme) was one of the few commentators who were brave enough to raise those prickly questions. The restoration of services in the city has been truly impressive for the most part (and that’s thanks to City Hall and the belief of New Yorkers). It’s unlikely New York will ever see a storm like Sandy. But as both Bloomberg and Michael Moore acknowledged, global warming is now a fact of life (though the Republicans continue denying that on Capitol Hill). Yet given New York’s size and its geographic handicap of islands surrounded by water the city will always need to troubleshoot likely breaches of its defenses. In fact the sea wall protecting the E14th street power station was built to withstand 12.5foot waves (did a spokesman on TV claim more maybe I misheard) – far in excess of last year’s Hurricane Irene or any predicted eventuality. How much is enough when so much of the bottom line in New York is corporate money? The only answer is to keep that debate alive and virulent. New Yorkers have a tendency to complain a lot often about inconsequential things. Harness that energy, though, and combine it with the hard core of productive New York skepticism and the city may well keep its head above water for decades to come. New Jersey and its sealine friends will just have to play poker with Mother Nature. Who says the female isn't the most deadliest and devious of the species;)?