As I hinted at a bit yesterday when I posted about some of the best undistributed films of the year, I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of movie ranking. The idea that any of us––critic, blogger, professional, amateur…to the extent that any of those words mean anything anymore––could be indisputably “correct” in our individual execution of such an activity is insane; and of course, any attempt to draw each of our subjective takes on The Year in Movies into a consensus waters down everything that makes an individual list idiosyncratic and thus interesting. But in the end, I do believe that what’s valuable about these activities is valuable enough to outweigh what’s annoying: if you read this blog regularly and have come to draw a bead on my tastes in relation to your own, maybe seeing a list of my favorite New York theatrical releases of 2008 will help jog your memory about films you meant to see (or avoid), and now that many of these are available on DVD, maybe you’ll make it happen (or not).
My full ballot is posted at indieWIRE now. I chose not to rank the titles from 1-10, but they did reel out of my brain in a particular order, and that has to mean something. Below the jump, my theatrical favorites, with links back to previous coverage, and notes on where/how each film can currently be seen.
…Read more
Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, about a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) who falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) and follows her to a commune full of celebrity impersonators based out of a Scottish castle, would make an incredible double-feature paired with Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness. Both films deal with people who have fled to the Highlands in denial of real-world mundaneity and in exploration of an escapist fiction. Korine’s long-awaited comeback feature may be a bit more on the nose about the desperate things we do in the name of absolving our lonely fates, but like Build a Ship, it rides the line between pure shtick and genuine emotion to a degree of success that, when it works, can be truly thrilling. Both are patchworky and imperfect, but both are among my favorite films I’ve seen this year.
Korine has always been a filmmaker who plugs story in the gaps around visual one-liners, and while Mister Lonely is a more traditional shot-reverse shot narrative than anything he has done before, from the opening shot the director confirms that, in some sense, he’s up to his old tricks. Luna’s Michael Jackson, decked out in familiar sunglasses, black armband, and standard issue surgical face mask, rides through the streets of Paris on a kiddie motorcycle with a toy monkey tied to the rear. Shot in slow motion, set to Bobby Vinton’s rendition of the title song, this opening scene is both punchline and four-dimensional painting. Lonely is wall-to-wall full of comparable sequences which, though maybe only a step or two away or above the kinds of cultural regurgitations that litter YouTube––Marilyn Monroe, her hair in curlers, comes to Michael Jackson’s room and seduces him by feeding him a strawberry; Abe Lincoln, lit only by strobe light, recites the Gettysburg Address whilst spinning a basketball on his finger––together add up to surprisingly poignant portrait of the willful abandonment of reality in favor of pop cultural oblivion.
…Read more
George Romero’s Diary of the Dead opens tonight. In an interview with him at Sundance, our eyes were opened to what an eloquent artist he is. We watch Night of the Living Dead to examine the origins of the zombie genre and compare it to Diary. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Karina Longworth gets personal with the loneliest movie going experience ever: Watching Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness.
(Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday)
FilmCouch 57
Night of the Living Dead, Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness
Last week, I posted about Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness, Laurin Federlein’s highly-improvised, Hi8-sourced, sorta-doc/sorta-musical, which wraps up its one week run at the Anthology Film Archive here in New York tonight. That afternoon, I got a Facebook message from someone associated with the film, urging me *not* to go see it. I don’t know whether or not he was being facetious, but in any event, I didn’t listen. I went last night, saw it in an empty theater, and I think it was the most satisfying movie experience I’ve had in 2008 thus far.
This is the kind of balls-out, so independent it’s essentially handmade work of art that’s notable missing from festivals like Sundance. It’s an amazingly beautiful (the totally unstable, borderline psychedelic look of the blown-up video isn’t going to work for everyone, but it works for me like crazy) story about the extremes we go to in the name of combating loneliness. And, just as a hidden-camera comedy, it’s way funnier than Borat.
I don’t know if I can be rational about Build a Ship right now––it was that mind-blowing of an experience, and I may go see it again tonight and then write something more in-depth––but I wanted to post something this morning to encourage anyone who has the means to try to catch the film’s final screening at Anthology tonight. I can’t bear the thought that something like this is playing to a virtually empty house.
For screening information, go here.
A low budget musical, highly improvised, shot on consumer video and blown up to film? I’m there. I’ve been wanting to see Laurin Federlein’s Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness since reading write-ups of its premiere at Rotterdam a year ago, followed by a number of conflicted but non necessarily dismissive reviews from LAFF. I’m so excited that it’s finally coming to New York tomorrow. Here’s an excerpt of the synopsis from Anthology Film Archives’ calendar:
An absurdist musical travelogue, BUILD A SHIP follows young solitary Vincent as he rides on his moped through a deserted Scottish mountain region. His mission: to “heal the loneliness” of the few scattered inhabitants by introducing a mobile disco to the area. Driven by messianic determination and an addiction to petrol fumes, he struggles to keep his disintegrating vision afloat amidst the hostile landscape and stubborn indifference of the locals.
Conceived around the idiosyncratically witty and eloquent persona of lead-actor and collaborator Magnus Aronson, whose heartbreakingly poignant pop songs punctuate the low-key proceedings, BUILD A SHIP is based on many hours of conversations between Aronson’s Vincent and the real-life residents of the area and was filmed using two consumer Hi8 video camcorders, resulting in an intentionally low-fi, grungy look that corresponds to Vincent’s defiant struggle: to erect a vision of perfection, glamour, and aesthetic refinement within the imperfections and dullness of everyday reality.
