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XXI: J.M. Kenny, An Evening with Kevin Smith II: Evening Harder (2006)
Actually, misnamed: two evenings. One is a Q&A session in Toronto and the other is in London, after Jersey Girl but before Clerks II. The stories are perhaps better in An Evening with Kevin Smith (based on various US Q&As) - the feuds with Burton and Anderson, the making of Superman Lives, the truth about Ben Affleck - but there are nuggets of gold in Smith's description of bears and his dissection of The Lord of the Rings as a film about walking. Even the trees. Stories about his wife and their sex lives, dealing with a kid, superhero movies. But maybe a little tired. It's no doubt edited to leave out material which overlaps from the other Q&As.
My completist moment - but still, I rented rather than bought. Will buy if I see it cheap.
I've been a fan of Todd Haynes for ages, although I didn't quite get to him in the days of New Queer Cinema. Poison was a complex, three taled structure: a weird mocumentary about a boy who flew, a 1950s horror about isolating sex and a pastiche of Jean Genet's prison pornutopia. Velvet Goldmine is a post-Wilde reimagining of David Bowie via Citizen Kane - in which an instantly identifiable Croydon is labelled "New York". They don't even flip it to get the traffic on the correct side of the road. Then I went back to <safe> just before Far From Heaven remade Sirk by putting all the subtext back in.
So I really wanted to see his new film:
XXII: Todd Haynes, I'm Not There. (2007)
I like Bob Dylan, but I'm not a fan, and I know enough of the basic life: obscured childhood in the sticks, pilgrimage to Greenwich Village, goes electric (Judas!), Don Pennebaker movie of British tour, writes novel (which I've read), plays with journalists' heads, has motorcycle smash, hangs out with Ginsberg, makes movie, get born again, vanishes into self-indulgence, does Traveling Willburys stuff, vanishes again, gets rediscovered, writes autobiography (which I've not read and which didn't give everything away - it's volume one, dummies), get rediscovered. But Haynes was never going to do something that straightforward.
He casts Christian Bale - from Velvet - as Dylan, or rather Jack Rollins, the star who hides from fame, and also as Pastor John, the born again Dylan. And Heath Ledger as Dylan, or rather Robbie Clark the movie star and bad husband. And Ben Wishaw as Arthur Rimbaud the rebel Dylan. Richard Gere as older Dylan or Billy the Kid. And Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody Guthrie, the young (and black) Bob Dylan. And finally, with a stroke of genius, Cate Blanchett as the main version of Dylan.
No doubt there are other personae, but it gives a sense of kaleidoscope of his career, and Blanchett in particular is uncannily right. She is genius and endearing and annoying in alternate shots. The film reproduces set piece album covers and concerts - rather like Tim Robbin's Bob Roberts did to pre-Bush satiric effect - and moments from, say, Don't Look Back are transposed from Sheffield to London or Greenwich Village. Cameos from his songs ("Desolation Row" especially) populate the background, a tease for the connoisseur. Bale is perhaps underused, and Gere at first seems robbed, but presumably had the shortest shooting time. Wishaw seems very isolated from the rest. Franklin delivers mannered lines with a jester's relish. Ledger, well, it's impossible to watch without a sense of loss - the loss of one who perhaps also had turned against fame. It's actually one of those effortless performances which was likely hard work - you forget he's an Australian twenty-something who was too-often cast as an airhead.
As in Poison, Haynes switches between film stocks to distinguish the threads - colour, black and white, 16mm, 30mm and so forth, and here mixes real with fake documentary footage, even down to talking heads on the man. Men. At the same time, I'd say it's about twenty minutes into indulgent at 135 minutes.
After all this, do we know the secret of the Dylan enigma? Alas, and fortunately, no. He's still as full of contradiction and good sense as ever. In any of his avatars.
Totals: 22 [Cinema: 8; DVD: 13; TV: 1]
Actually, misnamed: two evenings. One is a Q&A session in Toronto and the other is in London, after Jersey Girl but before Clerks II. The stories are perhaps better in An Evening with Kevin Smith (based on various US Q&As) - the feuds with Burton and Anderson, the making of Superman Lives, the truth about Ben Affleck - but there are nuggets of gold in Smith's description of bears and his dissection of The Lord of the Rings as a film about walking. Even the trees. Stories about his wife and their sex lives, dealing with a kid, superhero movies. But maybe a little tired. It's no doubt edited to leave out material which overlaps from the other Q&As.
My completist moment - but still, I rented rather than bought. Will buy if I see it cheap.
I've been a fan of Todd Haynes for ages, although I didn't quite get to him in the days of New Queer Cinema. Poison was a complex, three taled structure: a weird mocumentary about a boy who flew, a 1950s horror about isolating sex and a pastiche of Jean Genet's prison pornutopia. Velvet Goldmine is a post-Wilde reimagining of David Bowie via Citizen Kane - in which an instantly identifiable Croydon is labelled "New York". They don't even flip it to get the traffic on the correct side of the road. Then I went back to <safe> just before Far From Heaven remade Sirk by putting all the subtext back in.
So I really wanted to see his new film:
XXII: Todd Haynes, I'm Not There. (2007)
I like Bob Dylan, but I'm not a fan, and I know enough of the basic life: obscured childhood in the sticks, pilgrimage to Greenwich Village, goes electric (Judas!), Don Pennebaker movie of British tour, writes novel (which I've read), plays with journalists' heads, has motorcycle smash, hangs out with Ginsberg, makes movie, get born again, vanishes into self-indulgence, does Traveling Willburys stuff, vanishes again, gets rediscovered, writes autobiography (which I've not read and which didn't give everything away - it's volume one, dummies), get rediscovered. But Haynes was never going to do something that straightforward.
He casts Christian Bale - from Velvet - as Dylan, or rather Jack Rollins, the star who hides from fame, and also as Pastor John, the born again Dylan. And Heath Ledger as Dylan, or rather Robbie Clark the movie star and bad husband. And Ben Wishaw as Arthur Rimbaud the rebel Dylan. Richard Gere as older Dylan or Billy the Kid. And Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody Guthrie, the young (and black) Bob Dylan. And finally, with a stroke of genius, Cate Blanchett as the main version of Dylan.
No doubt there are other personae, but it gives a sense of kaleidoscope of his career, and Blanchett in particular is uncannily right. She is genius and endearing and annoying in alternate shots. The film reproduces set piece album covers and concerts - rather like Tim Robbin's Bob Roberts did to pre-Bush satiric effect - and moments from, say, Don't Look Back are transposed from Sheffield to London or Greenwich Village. Cameos from his songs ("Desolation Row" especially) populate the background, a tease for the connoisseur. Bale is perhaps underused, and Gere at first seems robbed, but presumably had the shortest shooting time. Wishaw seems very isolated from the rest. Franklin delivers mannered lines with a jester's relish. Ledger, well, it's impossible to watch without a sense of loss - the loss of one who perhaps also had turned against fame. It's actually one of those effortless performances which was likely hard work - you forget he's an Australian twenty-something who was too-often cast as an airhead.
As in Poison, Haynes switches between film stocks to distinguish the threads - colour, black and white, 16mm, 30mm and so forth, and here mixes real with fake documentary footage, even down to talking heads on the man. Men. At the same time, I'd say it's about twenty minutes into indulgent at 135 minutes.
After all this, do we know the secret of the Dylan enigma? Alas, and fortunately, no. He's still as full of contradiction and good sense as ever. In any of his avatars.
Totals: 22 [Cinema: 8; DVD: 13; TV: 1]
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Although, like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I'm not convinced it was deserving of crossing the 120 minute line. No Country for Old Men, did.
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Note the use of pedantic punctuation, as in V. and (I believe) Adaptation., designed to catch the unwary.
I so need a break from copy editing.