Needs more drunk Tina Fey

i.

This move to Stillwater is coming up quick. I still need to finalize everything.

ii.

I saw three movies in the last 48-ish hours: Inception (friday), Ponyo (Saturday afternoon), and American Splendor.

iii.

Of the three American Splendor was the best--it's visually interesting like the other two movies, messes with story structure in a po-mo sense like the other two movies, but is very clear and easy to follow. That the film functions as biography probably creates that structure to mess around in. I also identify with the film's very Ohio-ness--I've tried to write about this before: It seems Ohio, and to a similar degree Indiana and Michigan, produces the working/lower middle class intellectual stiff. Examples include Vonnegut, Bukowski (who is from LA, yes), Michael Moore, and Pekar.

An early scene in American Splendor has Pekar showing his "comics" (mere scripts with stick figure drawings) to R. Crumb. Pekar talks about the potential to make comics very different from what we expect and compares his work to French filmmakers and the Italian De Sica. I liked this a lot. He doesn't see himself as a revolutionary--there's no manifesto--he's just trying to communicate the Incommunicable At Times, and trying to do it in the least bullshit way possible. There is no high-art/low-art with guys like that. Comics can be uttered in the same breath as new-wave European cinema. Pekar, and the others, mix all culture up, use whatever they can to reach as many people they can. It's an aesthetic I embrace but have a difficult time articulating. I probably won't ever be able to do it.

iv.

Call it general cinematic malaise, but people seem to confuse "intelligent" with "muddled." Human beings themselves can be intelligent and muddled--look at Pekar, Vonnegut, Buk, John Berryman, Einstein, etc. Films shouldn't be--Kurosawa, to paraphrase, said a great movie should be one that's clear and understandable for everyone. Inception doesn't seem clear to ChristopherNolan. An "auteur" I guess, this film and Dark Knight suffer from too many ideas packed into two and a half hours. Nolan needs to simplify his ideas--why not make Extraction, where the characters steal corporate secrets from the minds of billionaire CEOs first, and then make Inception in 2012?

The first third of this film is excellent. Nolan drops us in media res at a real-time pace--we get thrust into the process of infiltrating dreams for corporate secrets in a well crafted action sequence--before Nolan slows down and walks us through the "process" of infiltration in a quick, articulate way. The concept of inception--to place a thought into one another person's mind--is interesting, but complicates the dreamscape and the film's world too much. By the second half the rules established earlier fall apart and I wasn't sure what was going on anymore.

This could be Nolan's ultimate flaw. He makes interesting "intelligent" films but makes them in an era where we crave for any authenticity from Hollywood. That Nolan gives us a sharp-looking film with a cool idea is "good enough" when it's clear that it is not good enough. Nolan may never get feedback he really needs: to simplify his ideas, to focus better.

v.

Ditto Ponyo I guess. Not a lot happens in a narrative sense, but I like Miyzaki's films for their poetic intensity--his movie's small moments make them great. Read the synopsis here. Sosuke lives on a small house on a cliff with his mom (Tina Fey). His dad captains ships and is gone long stretches of time. Early in the film, Sosuke's mom expects Sosuke's dad to come home, but he bails--takes on a second shift. Mom's reaction? She opens a big beer, gets drunk, and angry, but not in a Maury Povich-mom sort of way. It's longing and it's something organic that I don't get from Pixar movies. It's hard to describe the great stuff in Ponyo.

It's easier to describe what kind of sucks about it--nothing seems to happen, there's a little tension but not much. The story is told from the perspective of Sosuke and, like stories told by kids, it's boring construction-wise. To quote my friend Robin, who watched it with me: All the parents respect me (Sosuke) and my Kindergarten girlfriend is jealous of this super cool/perfect girl from the sea. Ponyo drowns this town and everyone seems all right with it. The moon, somehow, has come very close to the earth and could crush it, but whatever: everyone respects Soskue and he'll figure it out because he's fucking five years old.

vi.

I hope this all makes sense. I hate when people write stuff and call it a "rant." That's not interesting.