Cosmopolis [2012]
1. “Put a stick of gum in your mouth and try not to chew it.”
2. “Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time.” They continue their conversation without interruption even as the car rocks back and forth.
3. This alone.
3 other things. A completely underrated movie. I think among Cronenberg’s other works it most resembles eXistenZ. What a double bill that would make.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [1963]
1. He tiptoes along the side of the road, peeks around the bend.
2. “What if something happens?!”
“What could happen to an Old Fashioned?”
3. Myer gets caught in a Murphy bed.
My first taste of this straightforward and delightful cocktail from Charles Baker’s classic book Jigger, Beaker and Glass came courtesy of Paul McGee at Three Dots and a Dash. He shared his formulation with me, and I adapted it for mixing at home. If you love Old Fashioneds and the like, this one is very much worth a try. It’s a wonderful drink to sip slowly; as the ice melts, all the flavors really open up.
CAP HAITIEN RUM AND HONEY
2 oz. 3-star Rhum Barbancourt
.75oz. El Dorado 12-year rum
2 teaspoons honey syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters
Place a giant ice cube in a small tumbler. Add all ingredients to an iced cocktail shaker, stir until chilled, and strain into the tumbler.
The Tempest [1979]
1. He emerges from the sea, naked, carrying a sword.
2. A crystal ball surrounded by glowing candles.
3. The sailors throw bunches of flower petals into the air.
It’s a weird coincidence that Pete Seeger has passed away at the very moment I’m resuming work on Pause of the Clock. One of his songs served as an early creative spark for the movie. I dug out the letter I sent him. That he was kind enough to reply to me almost immediately meant a lot to me.
I did actually call Harold Leventhal at his office in New York. Polite but gruff, he was certainly one of the last of the old school managers and promoters. When I mentioned the idea of us making a new recording of the song, he didn’t rule it out exactly but said, “Well, his voice is shot. If you did that he’d have to sing very softly, maybe even just whisper the words.” (Which is why when Seeger recorded an album several years later and it won a Grammy, I had to laugh.) I think I spoke on the phone with Leventhal once more, but my idea of using the song never really went anywhere. I was much too preoccupied with actually shooting the movie. The thought of flying to upstate New York with a Nagra to record Pete Seeger when I wasn’t even sure about how synchronization licenses worked was too far-fetched even for me.
It sure would be nice to follow through on my original idea and somehow use “The Bells of Rhymney” in the movie. Is that feasible? Who knows?
What an amazing guy. I have my own story about him, which I will save until I have more time to write it out properly. Till then, just drop what you’re doing and listen to The Bells of Rhymney.
Check out the rest of the book review at Reel Librarians.
The African Queen [1951]
1. “‘What an absurd idea.’ ‘What an absurd idea.’ Lady, you got ten absurd ideas for my one.”
2. Leeches. Salt.
3. A flock of empty gin bottles bobbing in the river.
Velvet Goldmine [1998]
1. Gatefold sleeve. Wrapped from the waist down in crushed red velvet.
2. “It’s funny how beautiful people are when they’re walking out the door.”
3. Coils of microphone cable on the stage’s scuffed wood floor. He writhes around.
Where Moulin Rouge! fails, Velvet Goldmine succeeds: it uses an intricately dense musical soundtrack to viscerally expand both the narrative and the characters themselves. The constant music isn’t just some kind of pretty wallpaper.
Paramount has just become the first studio to announce that it will no longer distribute film prints. This means that each forthcoming movie from Paramount, regardless of whether it was produced on film or video, will only be shown digitally in theaters. Paramount is the trailblazer, but my prediction is that by 2015 every other major studio will follow suit.
Ironically perhaps, this morning I finished logging all the footage of Pause of the Clock. When I got to the end of roll 33, the final shot of which is a stray glimpse of the church sanctuary where we staged the movie’s final scene, I must admit feeling a bit wistful. We had the good fortune to shoot on 16mm. And though, at this point, the possibility of ever being able to “finish” on film by producing a final film print looks very unlikely, Pause of the Clock will always have that special look that comes only from shooting on film. James Gray puts it really well:
But I think the power of what is new is really in some ways what is damaging, because let’s say everyone was shooting digital — the whole world, Steven Spielberg, Chris Nolan, all those guys, they were all shooting digital — and then all of a sudden I came out with this product and said “Well there’s this thing, it doesn’t see in pixels, it sees in grain, which is more like your eye sees, and it has a better contrast ratio than digital and it has a better color representation,” everybody would be like “This new thing — film — I gotta change to film.” I can’t understand why everyone wants to migrate to a medium that is — in my mind — objectively worse.
Now, the movie’s the thing. A good movie is a good movie (and a terrible movie is a terrible movie) regardless of (or sometimes despite) its format. But it’s just very sad to suddenly have fewer choices rather than more choices.
