Hyperkult

Mellow yellow: Shelley Duvall in '3 Women;' Photo credit: lecinemadreams.blogspot.com

I have no clue what happens at the end of 3 Women, and neither will you. It is a fantastic film nonetheless, probably moreso because it’s so dreamlike and indecipherable. As I readied to slip on my Judi Rosen stovepipe bells this morning, a flash of Shelley Duvall clad in her ’70s wardrobe from the film struck me, hence this post. I blame the jeans.

During my Robert Altman kick of yesteryear, weeks on end were spent watching his films: Images, Short Cuts, Nashville, California Split, M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, and 3 Women, of course, are my favorites, and I have a special place for A Wedding and Secret Honor, too. I’d like to revisit McCabe and Mrs. Miller to see how it measures up today, because I didn’t particularly like it at the time. Needless to say, I think everyone needs a little Altman in their life, even me, the T.V.-less, apathetic moviegoer. Maybe 2010 is the year I get my groove—and my Netflix account—back.

Anyway, 3 Women. Its strange plot—or lack thereof—aside, it’s a marvel to look at. Arid California deserts, ’70s apartment complexes, Sissy Spacek’s lustrous hair, and, oh, the pastels! The costumes are deceptively simple and decade-specific, but because the film’s visuals are so distinct, I can’t help but think that every scalloped lace collar, every nightgown print, every chiffon flounce, was meticulously considered. The movie is rife with keywords I use when searching for vintage dresses on eBay.

And, while I know the artwork is wildly different (for obvious reasons), I can’t help but associate the mural painted on the interior of a pool in 3 Women (Exhibit A):

3 Women and phallic art; Photo credit: lecinemadreams.blogspot.com

…with one of my all-time favorite Prada campaigns, a collaboration with L.A.-based illustrator James Jean (Exhibit B):

Prada Spring/Summer 2008 campaign; Photo credit: populargoodness.files.wordpress.com

At best the only similarity is that they’re both murals. Plus the pastels.

There Will Be Lists

Lists! God, yes, I love them again. See what happens when you get a girl started? Oh, it’s all fun and games until I name The Pineapple Express one of the Best of the Decade. (I will not, though I loved it and am sure a cogent argument could be made in its favor.) Someone recently asked me, for pure shits and giggles, to fire off a list of the Top 25 Films of the last ten years. I could only come up with 20, and at least three of those I felt ambivalent about.

Also to be considered is the perilous line between “Best” and “Favorite.” Just because I adore a movie and can sit through multiple viewings—ahem, The Devil Wears Prada—does that make it worthy of a top spot? In this case, I will say “no,” because I’m judging films like a Michelin rater does a plate at Jean Georges. Well, okay, maybe I’m not that calculated about things, but I am naming movies I consider punch-you-in-the-stomach good—the ones I can’t shake for their beauty, charm, and/or overall execution.

To make things easier on myself, I’ve narrowed that original list of 20 down to 15. This is the nice thing about such a self-imposed assignment: I’m not beholden to anyone else’s standards, and can choose to include or exclude any information I please. Hell, this could be a list of three and it would be perfectly acceptable, albeit not that interesting. I would highly recommend any and all of these for rental. Once again, in no particular order, but this time sans explanations:

Top 15 Films of the Decade

1. Amores Perros
2. There Will Be Blood
3. Capturing the Friedmans
4. Talk to Her
5. Punch-Drunk Love
6. Before Sunset
7. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
8. Dogville
9. Dancer in the Dark
10. Lake of Fire
11. All About My Mother
12. The Royal Tenenbaums
13. City of God
14. Amélie
15. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Paris is for (erstwhile) lovers.

Photo credit: Omar Omar, via Flickr

After a year-long run of critic’s screenings and what a friend and I call “The Junket Circuit,” I have to admit that I’m quite the apathetic filmgoer these days. I hate to call myself a former film critic, because I don’t think the title is accurate at all. While I feverishly punched out reviews at my old job, I was often disillusioned by the process and frustrated by the quickfire pace of internet publishing. I myself don’t really read film reviews—maybe the occasional Andrew O’Hehir, Anthony Lane, or LA Weekly article, but not much else.

What the job demanded I do was keep up with every theatrical film release known to (wo)man, from Quantum of Solace to more obscure fare like Reprise, a really lovely Norwegian film that quietly came and went last year. The fact is, during my tenure as an active member of the film journalist cabal, however low on the totem pole, I was uniquely wise to how the game works. You start to see things differently when you’re privy to the special dance that critics and PR reps do, especially when you’re a part of the sometimes-sordid process.

I was also spoiled. Free movies were a given, as were afternoons at The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, eating really good pasta salad, swilling Pellegrino, then chomping on a chocolate chip cookie while waiting to interview Colin Farrell. I would often emerge from junkets with a stupid or nonsensical story to tell, like smelling of Colin’s cologne after our one-on-one (we never touched, it was just that strong); trying to escape a roomful of pervy porn journalists at the Girlfriend Experience junket, only to run into Larry Flynt at the hotel restaurant; or sitting down with Gael García Bernal at the Chateau Marmont, listening to him speak about how purposely singing badly (in Rudo y Cursi) was kind of like losing one’s virginity.* Those were the days.

Now, I feel really disconnected from film. What’s coming out this week? You got me. Someone had to explain what I Know They Serve Beer in Hell was to me, and apparently it’s some kind of vulgar cultural phenom. This is due in part to the fact that I don’t own a television (true story), but more because I don’t really care. It’s like someone’s poured a vial of “I don’t give a shit” tonic into my morning tea. I’m not sure what caused the shift, but movies just don’t excite me very much at the moment, and they haven’t for a while. My Netflix account has gone from “long dormant” to “cancelled,” and I’ll only pay to see something if a group of friends wants to go. Even then it’s more about the pre- or post-movie drink or milling around the Arclight bookstore afterward.

All this cogitating came about because I noticed that Lars von Trier, a director who I’ve long admired, released a new film in the States yesterday—a movie I have zero interest in seeing. If you’re at all familiar with von Trier, you know that watching one of his movies is often tantamount to emotional torture, but at least they’re well made and say something about life’s absurdities, heartbreaks, contradictions, and on.

Antichrist I’m judging based solely on the violent descriptions I’ve read online. Usually I’m much more diplomatic about this kind of stuff, but do I really want to see a film about a child’s death, the parents’ psychological undoing, and featuring a climax (literally?) of genital mutilation? The answer is a resounding “no.” I just don’t want to go there. I don’t wanna.

It’s not that I don’t want to be challenged—for the love of God, I wish more movies were challenging in a good way. This just sounds like self-imposed cinematic flagellation, and after experiences with Salò, Irreversible, and Funny Games (both versions), I think I’m over the whole “shock tactics for profundity” approach. Antichrist may be nothing like any of those films, but as moviegoers we’re blessed with the power of choice. Sometimes you’re in the mood for Gomorrah, and other times you need an afternoon filled with perennially-rerun TBS favorites; I’m talking Back to the Future followed by She’s All That, and maybe you’ll luck out and catch Robocop on one of the basic cable stations around dinnertime. Not that I know anything about this, because I don’t own a television. Sigh. So right now, I want less Criterion fare and more British Elle, scoops of sorbetto, re-runs of the O.G. 90210, sunshine, bunnies, et cetera. Jeanne Dielman will have to wait.

On the other hand, there’s always room for more 90210.

*I think I still have the tape of Gael saying this. I hope I do. At the time, it necessitated several rewind-and-relisten takes because I really am that pathetic and helpless when it comes to hot, Spanish-speaking men.

Photo credit: Nick Night; Yohji Yamamoto A/W 1988-89 Campaign

How did I miss the news that Yohji Yamamoto recently filed for bankruptcy protection? Too much of ‘tha Book, not enough of The Cut these days, I guess. The silver lining to this sad, if not surprising, news is that Yamamoto will continue to design virtually uninterrupted while an investment firm pumps cash into his struggling business.

What an unfortunate segue into Wim Wenders’ Notebooks on Cities and Clothes, a really great movie about Yamamoto, identity, place, and other esoteric micellenany that somehow relate back to fashion. I discovered the film Designer Imposter-style, thanks to Netflix. As in, the red envelope gods spied on my rental queue and pulled a “If you liked Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, you’ll love…” Only this movie is no shabby second-best a la Primo!; it came out in 1989, long before that digital purple fairy I mentioned was flitting its way around Jacobs’ Parisian workroom. What Notebooks achieves that MJ & LV doesn’t is a deeper level of creative brain-picking, one image maker framing another. Oh, yes, Wenders will go Spinoza on your ass…or something like that. Expect a side of philosophy with footage of Yamamoto’s runway shows, and an equal amount of visual fodder for ogling.

While watching, I was struck by how prescient Yamamoto’s designs were, especially since they were born during a decade of of sometimes-fabulous, sometimes-wretched excess. The man knows women, knows bodies, and sure as hell knows beauty—the lasting, relevant sort that even finnicky fashion types can’t dismiss years later. The only thing really dated about the film is its soundtrack, which is actually quite fabulous: think Terminator score meets that of an ’80s-era porn film.

Watch the trailer for a taste of what to expect. It ranks up there with Unzipped as one of my favorite fashion documentaries ever made.

My designer documentary kick of a couple months ago was preparation for The September Issue’s recent release. The chance to look behind the darkened lenses of “Nuclear Wintour,” as Vogue editrix Anna Wintour is known by some, and what continues to be the only fashion magazine I read religiously, was a voyeuristic (Vogue-ristic?) dream come true. While the movie is not earth-shatteringly revealing, it is transportive, even for audience members who don’t know Thakoon from Chris Benz.

I had the chance to prescreen the film and interview director R.J. Cutler, who previously produced the Bill Clinton campaign documentary The War Room. The politically-minded (and sartorially-challenged) filmmaker was enchanted by Wintour and her Condé Nast family, even if getting Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington to smile for the camera was a trying task. I’ve posted my article below, which appears in the, ahem, September issue of SOMA. Click on the article for legible text.

Photo credit: Kitsune Noir

I recently resurrected my long-dormant Netflix account, only to be greeted by a queue that stretches 78 films long—88 if you count the 10 titles languishing in the purgatory otherwise known as “Saved DVDs.” The unruly list starts with Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman is a Woman and ends with Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, but honestly, what I really want to (re-)rent next is The Pelican Brief.

While I contemplate inviting Julia Roberts’ timorous Darby Shaw into my living room, in the interim I’ve been occupying myself with a series of designer documentaries—a mailbox march of red enveloped arrivals inspired by the impending release of The September Issue. (From what a trusted film journalist friend tells me, it lives up to even steely-eyed Anna Wintour’s measure of excellence.)

My first excursion into the world of couture on screen was Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, director Loïc Prigent’s 2007 film about, arguably, fashion’s most influential designer. Once rebuked—and fired—for his notorious “grunge” collection for Perry Ellis, Jacobs is now an industry darling, evidenced by his elite editorial and celebrity following. The sartorial vanguard’s often unconventional vision has filtered into the wardrobes of mainstream America, with suburbanites waiting with bated breath for the H&M collaboration that may never come. Look to your local designer knockoff kiosk to find rainbow-colored, Eye Love-inspired PVC handbags still selling strong, years after Jessica Simpson paraded her pet “Louis” around on Newlyweds—much to the horror of genuine Murakami aficionados.

Visually striking, but devoid of true depth, I found myself making the most tangential—and maybe inappropriate—of associations while watching the movie. Paul Thomas Anderson, speaking about a 70s porn documentary about John Holmes that informed Boogie Nights, described the Julia St. Vincent-helmed picture as more “love letter” than objective slice of life filmmaking. Then again, I’m not sure how precisely cinematic a documentary about an adult star is meant to be. Nevertheless, the same might be said of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, which engages insomuch as it invites viewers into the charmeuse-strewn workroom where Vuitton collections are born, all the while portraying its creator sympathetically. But beyond this hallowed space, where Jacobs compulsively snacks on protein bars while giving the “yay” or “nay” to fabric flower adornments, there was a marked absence of meaningful insight into Jacobs himself.

I was searching for neither a scathing exposé of Jacobs’ drug-addled years, nor lascivious confessionals from ex-lovers, but a genuine inquiry into the Mythos of Jacobs. What we are given instead is, at best, a half-realized portrait of the slim couturier, and a digitally rendered purple fairy flitting about to symbolize “inspiration.” But alas, had Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton been a less benign movie, you probably wouldn’t be able to purchase it at Marc by Marc Jacobs stores internationally, as is now the case. Look for it somewhere between the mushroom key chains and coffee table photography books.

That said, it still gets points for featuring one of my favorite Vuitton collections to date. It’s pretty, fun, and often inspirational, even if it sometimes comes off like a less thoughtful creative patchwork than the LV Tribute Bag at the center of the Vuitton Spring/Summer 2007 showcase.

Official website of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton