THE CYNEPHILE

Happy Together is a story of a fleeting love affair, but it is also a love letter to Buenos Aires. I recently visited the city for the first time and was struck by the slow ebb of energy that pulsates in its streets and cafés, a melancholy aura that betrays nostalgia for a faded past, and dreams for the not-so-certain future.

In Happy Together, the main character Lai Yiu-fai (played by Tony Leung) lives in the neighborhood known as La Boca, literally the mouth of the Riachuelo river. This barrio, with its colorful houses and storied history, is often invoked as as emblematic of Buenos Aires as a whole. The birthplace of Argentinean tango, it is a dangerous neighborhood to walk around in outside the limited tourist district. It is also quite a bit of distance from the city’s center.

The rooftops of La Boca in Buenos Aires

Lai Yiu-fai is shown repeatedly catching the bus to and from La Boca from his job at a doorman at a nightclub. I also took the #29 bus, which looks almost exactly the same today.

Lai Yiu-fai running after the #29 bus

The La Boca bus depot

And here is the La Boca bridge that the two lovers jog across one cold morning:

Ho Po-Wing [Leslie Cheung] and Lai Yiu-fai [Tony Leung]

The La Boca waterfront with the bridge in the background.

And lastly here is El Obelisco, located in the center of the city at Avenida 9 de Julio. Wong Kar Wai uses sped-up footage of this monument, which is located in the middle of the widest street in the world, as as a trope to showcase the swift passage of time.

El Obelisco at night

A film company in Lagos controls 200 subsidiaries that make popular films which never make it to the movie theaters but are instead distributed across Africa on DVD. 600 new productions every week. Is this a new flowering of cinema? The subject matter is certainly tough enough.
–What sort of things do they tackle?
–One film, for example, is about three women who go to Europe as sex workers. Before setting off, they go to their tribal medicine man to acquire some “good luck.” But they don’t have any good luck in Europe. The medicine man who sold them the charms has moved to New York. It turns out that a new baby needs to be sacrificed for the promised miraculous luck to become a reality.
–The women travel to New York
–Yes, that’s exactly what happens in the movie. They force the magician to marry one of them and to sacrifice the child who is born soon afterward. And from then on they expect their second expedition into the heart of Europe to bring them the required good luck.
–Is there any censorship?
–The DVDs are beyond the reach of censorship.
–Do critics help disseminate the products?
–There are no critics.
–Is there any feedback to suggest how the products are received by the customers?
–The feedback of cash.
–Which suggests that this type of product is satisfying a real demand.
–Exactly.

(From Cinema Stories by Alexander Kluge, trans. by Martin Brady and Helen Hughes, 2007)

A few months ago a friend sent me this fascinating article about Eva Tanguay, an outrageous but nearly-forgotten vaudeville actress who may have been the inspiration for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Whether or not this is the case, and whether or not she deserves the title of “first” rock star does nothing to diminish her star quality: Ms. Tanguay understood the essential ingredients of celebrity. What she wasn’t cognizant of was the need to record herself for posterity, and this is perhaps why she fell victim to history. Only one 78 rpm recording exists of her voice, that of her signature song “I Don’t Care.”

Tanguay also only made one feature which I would give my eyeteeth to see: the 1916 silent film The Wild Girl.

Performance excerpts, along with clips from the The Wild Girl (And yes, that’s Judy Garland singing ‘I Don’t Care.”)

The author points out in the article that press and popular literature mention Tanguay all the time. I came across this delicious anecdote in a book that I just ordered and I can’t get enough of: Show Biz, from Vaude to Video, by Abel Green and Joe Laurie, Jr. Luc Sante describes it in his source notes as “a history of prewar American popular culture derived from the files of Variety and narrated in that paper’s side-of-the-mouth style.”

The book is treasure trove of colorful details, and this Tanguay entry is one of many. Behold:

Heywoud Broun, as drama critic for the New York Tribune, reviewed her act under headline:
SOMETHING ABOUT WHICH EVA TANGUAY SHOULD BE MADE TO CARE

Wrote the acidulous Broun:

“Ours is a democracy, so probably nothing much can be done about the singing of Eva Tanguay. But even in a free country, there should be some moral force, or physical if need be, to keep her away from the ‘Marseillaise.’ She should not be allowed to sing it even on her knees, and it is monstrous that the great hymn of human liberty should be shrilled as a climax to a vulgar act by a bouncing singer in a grotesque costume begirt with little flags.

Miss Tanguay sings in French, and I have no idea whether she is trying to be funny. I never know what she is trying to be except noisy. I think she is the parsnip of performers. The only cheerful song in her repertory yesterday was one in which she hinted that some day she would retire. Miss Tanguay is billed as ‘bombshell.’ Would be to Heaven she were, for a bomb is something which is carried to a great height and then dropped.”

The outraged Eva promptly took an ad in Variety. With more courage than prudence, she reprinted the withering Broun review under the scornful headline: EVA TANGUAY–THE PARSNIP OF PERFORMERS. And then Eva let loose her blast of indignation, in some very free and fiery verse:

“Have you ever noticed when a woman succeeds how they attack her until her character bleeds? They snap at her heels like mongrels unfed, just because she has escaped being dropped into FAILURE’S big web. They don’t give her credit for talent or art. They don’t discount a very hard start. They don’t give her credit for heartaches or pains; how she grimly held tight to the reins when the road ahead was rocky and drear; how smiling she met every discouraging sneer. AND…

Now to you who have slandered, YOU are dirt ‘neath my feet, for I have beaten your game and it’s a hard game to beat!”

Apologies for the light posting as of late; I’ve been doing some under-the-hood work on the site which will hopefully will allow me to communicate with more of you more effectively. See where Anna is pointing? She is directing your attention to — ta-da! — my new mailing list!

If you’re generally not a blog reader but you make an exception for mine (um, hi mom) sign up to get a special version of THE CYNEPHILE delivered directly to your inbox. Problems, tips, suggestions? Email cynthia@cynephile.com.

Kathryn Bigelow: Will she achieve mythic status as the first woman to win Best Director?

So I can’t resist chiming in with my favorites, even though the nominees are exceptionally uninspired this year. As the Academy repeatedly demonstrates, committees, commercialism and eclectic choices don’t mix. Keep in mind that my ”should wins” are culled from the nominations, and not my art film fantasies of who deserves to have been shortlisted (two words: Claire Denis).

Oh and for all of you Smartphone users: there’s a very fun Oscar App that you should download if you like to call the horse race in advance, and weigh your picks against the hoi polloi. It is also necessary to imbibe something to get through the ceremony, especially the insipid “best song” category. (Please don’t drink the Pandora punch; it looks revolting.)

Best Picture

Should win: The Hurt Locker

Will win: Avatar

Best Director

Should win: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Will win: Kathryn Bigelow

Best Actor

Should win: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Will win: George Clooney, Up in the Air

Best Supporting Actor

Should win: Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones (His performance is the only thing that makes this movie bearable.)

Will win: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actress

Should win: Carey Mulligan, An Education

Will win: Carey Mulligan

Carey Mulligan from An Education and Mo’Nique from Precious.

Best Supporting Actress

Should win: Mo’Nique, Precious: I Refuse to Write the Entire Title Because it is Pretentious and Unecessary

Will win: Mo’Nique

Best Animated Film

Should win: I’m impossibly torn between Coraline & Fantastic Mr. Fox

Will win: Up

Best Foreign Language Film

Should win: The White Ribbon (Désolée, M. Audiard)

Will win: The White Ribbon

art + video
It’s Armory Week, and the number of openings, events and parties in the next few days makes my head spin. Aside from the usual mainstays, the new kid on the block this year is the Independent. Born out the ashes of X-initiative, it offers an alternative to the inescapable shopping mall ambiance of the art fair — there’s even a panel on gluttony! And a film program too. Check it out here.

Scope also has a video program, with work by Martha Colburn, George Kuchar and fashion-y films. Sashay!

design
Check out the next generation of Polish film poster design.

fashion
Look who’s copying a page from the Vezzoli playbook: Agyness Deyn deigns to appear in a McDermott and McGough film.

film reviews
Andrew Grant (nom de blog: filmbrain) reviews The Ghost Writer, and thinks it’s pretty good.
You should see it, especially since all proceeds from the film go to the Roman Polanski legal defense fund. (Kidding!)

mystery flavor
My favorite posthuman Andrei Codrescu is anti-Avatar, and pro-zombie. Deliciously brainy as always.

My friend Ziyan and I as zombie-vampire hybrids. Kristen Stewart, eat your heart out.

new york
Movie program ephemera from the 8th street Playhouse, which I remember going to as a little girl. Thanks to reader Jack for the tip.

photography
Andy Warhol: Unexposed Exposures just opened at Steven Kashar.
If the Factory had had a facebook page, these would be the pictures that they would post to their wall. Lots o’ pics online too.

watch online
The first and only truly Beat film Pull My Daisy (Frank and Leslie, 1959) is on Google Video.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.” –Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye

Here’s a little gem from this week’s New Yorker, from a tribute by Lillian Ross:

Salinger loved the movies, and he was more fun than anyone to discuss them with. He enjoyed watching actors work, and he enjoyed knowing them. (He loved Anne Bancroft, hated Audrey Hepburn, and said that he had seen “Grand Illusion” ten times.) Brigitte Bardot once wanted to buy the rights to “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and he said that it was uplifting news. “I mean it,” he told me. “She’s a cute, talented lost enfante, and I’m tempted to accomodate her, pour le sport.”

Oh, J.D. Many men were tempted to accommodate her, and then some.

“She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.” — A Perfect Day for Bananafish

In September of last year, Barnes & Noble was having a sale: 50% off of Criterion DVDS. This would never happen again, I rationalized, so I carried home a nice haul of Antonioni, Godard, Oshima, Roeg and Pialat—films that I could watch over and over again. I paid about $18 to $30 per disc, and I thought I was getting a bargain.

A week later I went to Shanghai, where I *theoretically* purchased a complete Godard box set (52 DVDs in all!) for the equivalent of $30 USD.

I had heard stories that the DVD stores in China were full of such unknown pleasures, but I didn’t truly believe them until I was there. Most people assume that they primarily sell new releases, similar to the vendors who hawk their illegal wares from garbage bags in Chinatown and on the subway. Most people are also afraid that the the quality will be poor, and that the films won’t be subtitled. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Imagine going into Kim’s Video before the it closed, and then imagine that all the titles are for sale, for the equivalent of $2 USD. (When I was there, the going rate was 14 RMB, which works out to exactly $2.05). Then imagine being able to purchase regionless arthouse films that were never available in your country. And then imagine seeing films that haven’t even been released yet on the shelves.

There are some drawbacks: sometimes the subtitles are poorly translated, and sometimes you do end up with a screener. But for the most part, the packaging and the quality of the DVD is indistinguishable from its full-price counterpart. Along with the Godard box set, I picked up box sets of Almodóvar, Renoir, Wong Kar-Wai, Mizoguchi, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Francois Ozon.

(So I *might* have purchased so many DVDS that they gave me a VIP card.)

I was also able to find some truly rare films. But the holy grail was undoubtedly a disc that contained both Pasolini’s Appunti per un film sull’india (Notes for a Film Towards India, 1968) and Appunti per un’Orestiade africana (Notes for an African Orestes, 1970). I shrieked out loud when I saw this, because I had seen each of the “Appunti” films only once (If you’re curious, India was screened at a Yale conference on the cinema of ’68, and African Orestes was screened at Anthology). I would have given anything for a chance to see them again, in order to compare them side-by-side. However these titles are rarely shown (especially India) and the print I saw at Anthology was projected with powerpoint soft titles. Now I was holding a DVD of some of the most sublime cine-poetry ever created. (Sadly, the disc did not contain the final “Notes” film, which I have not seen: Appunti per un romanzo dell’immondezza [1970]. I would kiss the dirtiest New York sidewalk to see this, so if you know someone who knows someone, please do share.)

It’s interesting that in China, you can get some of the most insurrectionary and revolutionary cinema from the pirated DVD store, but the films in the movie theaters are censored by the government. Going to the movies costs more than buying a illegal DVD, and for students and laborers, it’s still considered a “fancy” thing to do. One of the reasons that Baidu (a Chinese search engine) has a larger market share than Google is that pirated material is available readily; Google puts restrictions on allowing blatantly copyrighted material to surface in search results (or at least they try to). The culture of piracy is so rampant and the government truly doesn’t give a damn that it’s actually hard to get a legal DVD in China. You probably couldn’t tell the difference anyway: some of the illegal DVDS are actually manufactured in the same factory as the legal ones; they are known as “third shift” goods and in that case, there is absolutely no difference between the original and the copy. I like to think of a budding director watching the best cinema the world has to offer, each purchased for less than a subway ride in NYC. Film School? Forget it. Just go to China.

An excellent analysis of the practice by Tom Doctoroff from The Huffington Post

Planning a trip to Shanghai? Dagu Lu is the place to go

piracy, simulacrum and forgery in china: a beautifully written and illustrated essay by Andrew Doro from sheepish dot org. (Bonus: It includes a reference to the piracy scene in Unknown Pleasures)