Bridges' Bad Blake Buoys Up "Crazy Heart"

Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake says during “Crazy Heart”, “Ain’t rememberin’ wonderful?” Remembering might be wonderful, but one doesn’t need to remember anything at all to enjoy “Crazy Heart.” Though the film draws heavily on classic country influences, this tale of an alcohol-addicted country singer isn’t at all memorable for its plot. What makes the film unquestionably worth seeing is a raw, bedraggled, and poignant performance by Bridges as Bad Blake.

When a beaming, aged and weathered party store shopkeeper gives washed-up country singer Blake a bottle of scotch at the beginning of the film, viewers can see exactly what kind of celebrity he is. With his pants constantly undone, Jeff Bridges’ Bad Blake is a slightly gross, and at times vulgar, star of the show that has fallen from grace but is still beloved by his fans. When Blake sings at that night’s bowling alley show, “I used to be somebody, now I am somebody else,” his talent is overwhelming. From there on, the slow-paced film carries viewers along with Blake’s journey around the American Southwest.

Glowing western landscapes crowns the highways of Blake’s tour, while the strong musical score by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett rises and falls poetically in the background. Blake’s wardrobe is simple, his pants often undone, and he seems to pay about as much attention to it as the audiences does (not much). The glistening sweat on Blake’s face during most of the film, as he huffs and puffs (he’s rather out of shape) is almost tangible. His physicality captured through the cinematography throughout the film is notable, as well as his depth as a character. Indeed, none of the characters are ever allowed to get far away from the camera lens, which provides intimate portraits of them for the audience.

A slightly refreshing alternative to the dusty world of country music and Blake’s addiction, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Jean Craddock and her almost overly (but not quite too) adorable and precocious son Buddy are an important vein in Blake’s development. She oddly overlooks his drunk driving and obvious alcohol problem, not recognizing it as an issue until he loses her son buddy while drunk. There relationship is awkward and somewhat forced on screen—as a younger actress, Gyllenhaal might have a lot of films under her belt, but she can’t stand up to Jeff Bridges’ mastery of his character.

The only major failure of the film is Colin Farrell’s Tommy Sweet, who seems very artificial, portraying a country star with wiggling eyebrows and forced-casual lean. However, Farrell’s lilting voice does provide a nice complement for Blake’s low and classic country tone. When they team up onstage in “Fallin’ and Flyin,”” the track is instantly transformed into magic. Fortunately, Farrell is discussed a lot in the film, but never gets a lot of face time.

Many beautiful, “country” images inhabit the very realistic space of “Crazy Heart”. Blake leans with his guitar in his all-denim outfit against dusty rose stucco walls; he’s feeling down at the moment about his alcohol abuse but ultimately confident in his place in not only country music, but its personal story. The gorgeous sets serve as a dramatic backdrop to his somewhat more humble tale of addiction and cleansing.

Simplicity is key to “Crazy Heart.” It is where most of its appeal lies—in its sweeping, bare western landscapes, its moving and convincing lead character, and the basic storyline of a country singer on tour. I might have just imagined it, but when Bad Blake sang “Fallin’ and Flyin’” in a cramped southern bar on screen, I swear I could smell the cigarettes, sweat and an electrified bar calling out for “Bad Blake.”

The Oscars: a Spectacle of Little Substance

Sunday night’s particularly vapid red carpet banter was the perfect introduction to 2010’s 82nd annual Academy Awards Ceremony. From the moment Shari Shepard said to Jeff Bridges’ wife, “Your husband looks so mmm...yummy,” there was no going back—the night was doomed to its usual spectacle of bored, often empty-headed, attractive people being honored (or embarrassed) at a live awards show and on television.

“The Hurt Locker” was far and away the star of the night, winning six categories, including Best Picture. One could also say women triumphed as well, as Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director. Though the movie-going public might have never heard of the Iraq War film critics and audiences lauded “The Hurt Locker” not for its budget but its content. “The Hurt Locker” was certainly an appropriate David to “Avatar’s” Goliath in a world where a big budget usually trumps all.

Though all the films honored might have their merits, the show itself had nothing to offer home audiences. For those watching it as a live show it might have been better (unlikely based on their expressions), but as television entertainment the 82nd Academy Awards failed miserably. Yes, everyone might have looked nice in their Marchesa gowns and Tom Ford suits, but the jokes and presentations were often cringe-worthy. It fulfilled its ostensible goal of handing out the awards, but the show itself alternated between stiff and rehearsed, and awkwardly unscripted.

The priceless look of distaste on Jeff Bridges’ face after a tacky opening number by Neil Patrick Harris and a bunch of sequined, feathered showgirls caught by a poorly-timed camera shot showed how the musical number might have looked to anybody that isn’t on board with the bastardization of “Old Hollywood.” Jon M. Chu’s “Legion of Extraordinary Dancers “ turned up the energy, at least, with a confusing and disjointed break-dance number to music nominated for Best Original Score. The theme of the entire set, which seemed to be “dirty household lampshades,” just didn’t have the class one might expect at the Oscars.

All the home audience needed to know could be read on the faces on their screens and the behavior of the live audience. Sarah Jessica Parker chewed gum during the ceremony while George Clooney visibly cringed at Alec Baldwin’s jokes. Not that the on-stage presenters and performers were much better/ A nervous Amanda Seyfried and a slouching Miley Cyrus, who were presenting Best Song to “The Weary Kind” from “Crazy Heart”, represented Young Hollywood’s chronic awkwardness. The stars’ onstage dialogues were what might be expected—Vera Farmiga praised George Clooney’s acting prowess by calling him a “fantastically fantastic Mr. Foxy Fox.” It’s a topical comment, but really, she might not realize that she’s onstage at the (usually aiming for classy) Academy Awards. Or, considering this year’s event, maybe she does.

At this year’s Academy Awards, Jeff Bridges had his first well-deserved Oscar win as did Sandra Bullock, which was a noteworthy moment. Other than that, everybody looked pretty in their outfits and self-congratulatory airs, and nobody did anything too embarrassing. Ho-hum.

Kate Winslet said in her red carpet interview that this year she could, “relax and enjoy it and watch everybody else panic.” And panic they did—you could see it in their faces. Boredom, passion, nerves, and intense discomfort...this year Hollywood’s biggest stars did little to hide their reactions to the show, whether positive or (mostly) negative.

Folly? Not at all: Goya and Castellon at the K.I.A.

Humanity at its ugliest can inspire the most worthwhile and exquisite forms of expression. This is highly evident in “Fear and Folly: the Visionary Prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon,” exhibited at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts until May 23rd. The two artists’ horrifying and macabre conceptions of the human condition muse poignantly on the state of humanity. The compelling works are carefully selected from the K.I.A.’s own print collection. This is a wise move by the K.I.A., drawing on their own collection both saved money by not requiring the fees associated with an expensive traveling exhibition and promoted civic pride in the museum’s collection.

The austerely framed prints line the K.I.A.’s downstairs hallway, which provides a less-than-dramatic background for an exhibition meant to be striking and eerie; in addition, an inadvertent and rather jarring comparison is invited by the fact that the two artists’ works are separated by the museum’s small African and Mesoamerican collection. The constraints of a small museum are obvious in the show’s location in the building as well as signage—only some of the images have explanations for viewers.
The museum’s presentation of Goya’s lithographs was fairly strong. In “The Proverbs,” (most of the series is represented and is presented in the proper order) Goya offers up some notable images: a hellish horse carries away a woman in the aptly named “Unbridled Folly,” a shrouded giant looms over a battlefield in “Fearful Folly,” and distracted women toss about dolls that look horribly like men in “Feminine Folly.” His famous “Disasters of War” is rather more successful and impressive, but the “Follies” make their message known—the often futile ridiculousness of human life. The incorporation of Goya’s recognizable flying demons and people with faces like something he stretched out of putty makes this array of prints a mostly satisfying spread for a small Midwestern museum.

Though Goya is the better known of the two artists, his lithographs at the K.I.A. were outshone by Federico Castellon’s compelling and grim works, which were created around 150 years after Goya’s. Labeled a Surrealist by critics, Castellon produced piercing sequential illustrations of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” in the 1960s. An etching early in the series, entitled “It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade,” (1968) depicts a shadowy nude woman surrounded by pot-bellied demons and black color fields. Castellon depicts other masqueraders at the deadly party—ladies in Battenberg lace dresses with rosebushes for heads, horned men, and all manner of despotic characters doomed to death. Hieronymus Bosch would appreciate the creatures that Castellon has created—they are vibrant and abhorrent, masquerading as fish-people, trees, and rotting ballerinas with buckets for heads. His figures throb with terror and the sense of loneliness that Poe’s tale makes so inescapable. The world he constructs for these creatures is hazy and atmospheric, and when the “Red Death” himself appears as a gaunt skeleton near the end of the series, the viewer, safe in the low hallway of the K.I.A., is rightly terrified.

Inciting fear in the hearts of Kalamazoo viewers with its horrific and devastating images, “Fear and Folly: the Visionary Prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon” is certainly not folly.

Pitches for Final Project (unsure which to choose!)

Kane Kwei s is a Ghanian artist (1924-1992) who creates coffins that represent important aspects of the deceased in life. For instance, for a fisherman he might make a fish-shaped coffin. His coffins are found in collections all over the world. I would like to focus on his works in the United States while comparing how his works are used and viewed elsewhere, particularly Ghana.

To research for this there are a few places to look. I already have a book ordered on Melcat that features an essay on Kwei. Oxford Art Online has an article about him, but there isn’t a lot of academic stuff on him, so I will also need to use reviews of his exhibits online.

Kane Kwei’s art certainly speaks to life and death, and also the utility of art. I will discuss whether or not Oscar Wilde would have valued Kwei’s coffins (probably not) and why American society values them. At Kwei’s workshop in Ghana, the coffins are shown together, being worked on by many people. In the United States, they are displayed completely on their own and obviously not being used for their intended purpose. I would like to discuss how this changes the meaning and what it says about the culture of death in the United States. A potential thesis is: Kane Kwei’s coffins in the context of the United States show the incredible fascination death holds for Americans, and how our culture glamorizes and fetishizes death, as compared to Ghanian culture, which celebrates it.

OR!


“The Jersey Shore” is a reality television show that follows eight people brought together for the summer in the New Jersey shore to work in a t-shirt shop, party, socialize, and get into trouble. The eight characters represent Italian-American stereotypes in an over-the-top way that has caught the attention of the United States in a sensational manner.

Since its release, many people have written about “The Jersey Shore”. I would like to examine why the Jersey Shore characters in particular appeal so much to the American people. How the people on the show are portrayed is meant to be ridiculous and invite comment. What do these people make us discuss? What issues about our society bring up? They certainly show how much we like to examine/insult people different from us. They also attack the moral underpinning of the nation and show how easy it is to “unpin” it. Group identity is important here: these “guidos” and “guidettes” are inhabitants of American culture but are not mainstream. Were they made mainstream by the show? I would like to explore all of these questions and attempt to answer them.
A possible thesis is: “The Jersey Shore” shows Americans yet another facet of society that they might not be familiar with; it lays bare the material, judgmental, base aspect of our lives...and shows us how important those attributes are to our sense of identity as a group and how we treat the “other”.

For resources, the television show will serve as a primary source while the many online blogs and criticisms will help as well.

Pauline Kael: Questions and Answers

Pauline Kael liked to ask questions—and answer them. As a weekly columnist, she was able to disseminate her ideas to a varied readership. Kael was given an outlet where others could access her work and love it (or not) and became arguably the most famous literary critic. Her life story is tinged with tragedy, but the lasting legacy of Pauline Kael is her writing—Oscar Wilde would be proud of her contributions to art.

Strong writers elicit reactions. Kael’s excessive use of words like, “swallowing”, “pissing”, “flatulence”, or “manure,” condemned by Renata Adler in “House Critic,” are an important part of her repertoire. Kael is not, as Adler bemoans in “House Critic”, “mistaking lack of civility for vitality,” rather she is displaying her idiosyncratic way of writing. In “Afterglow” she says, “...I loved lowbrow taste, and that was hard to get across. One of the great things about movies is that they can combine the energy of a popular art with the possibilities of a high art.” By combining the language of “high” art and adding her own “lowbrow” sensibility in creating her pieces, Kael is reflecting what she is reviewing while doing something new—challenging the United States’ “movie critic” speak, with its words that indicate condescension even before one considers their actual meaning or what they say.

Following Kael’s commentary on actors is like being there when she meets them in person. She might not have the most refined things to say about them—Renata Adler quotes one of her articles on an actress, “She’s making love to herself,”—but manages to pinpoint what they are doing by close observation while connecting them to others and the rest of the world. She writes of Barbara Streisand in “Funny Girl,” “She conceals nothing; she’s fiercely, almost frighteningly direct,” and Kael could be talking about Streisand or perhaps even herself.

While loving or attacking actors might seem to be easy way to discuss a film, Kael goes further in her reviews. Often accused of “talking about anything but the film,” she points out cultural references and phenomena that movies reflect. This is arts journalism: instead of filling the basic functions of a review (information about the piece and where to see/find it, the reaction of the critic, and whether it is worth seeing), it both acknowledges other art and while creating a work of art in itself. For instance, she writes of “Hiroshima Mon Amour, “But what makes the dialogue crucial is that the audience...feels virtuous because they want to buy peace. And the question I want to ask is: who’s selling it?” By looking at larger issues that are inevitably entrenched in film culture, Kael is not ignoring movies she reviews but seeing them more deeply than many other critics.

In a world of art and people talking about it, not all voices have value. Why did Pauline Kael’s voice matter so much? She might have asked the same question (she was very fond of questions), but she would have an answer. Always sure of herself, combining lowbrow and “high” art, and reaching beyond movies to explore concepts of society, Pauline Kael’s contributions to art itself, no matter what the consequences to those she panned or raved, are considerable.

NYT Defense: Manohla Dargis' Review of "Valentine's Day"

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/movies/12valentine.html

This review by Manohla Dargis, co-chief film critic for The Times, is highly effective, especially given what it has to work with. The review holds true to the ideas of Oscar Wilde, that the critic is truly an artist whose work can transcend that of what it is reviewing.

Her opinion is strong, consistent and obvious from the first few words: “The best and really only sensible thing to say about the dire romantic comedy ‘Valentine’s Day,’ which is neither romantic nor remotely comedic, is that it makes you appreciate...the... basic competency...of ‘Love Actually,’ the ingratiating British movie it transparently and ineptly rips off.” The first sentence’s reference allows many readers to understand her more immediately. This is her “but,” located very early in the piece.

She describes each actor while pointing out the script’s weaknesses, pointing out how they are there to satisfy a certain demographic and gives no one much performance credit. She keeps the entire review brief, showing her disregard. Ending by comparing the film to “bad television” leaves the reader in little doubt of her opinion. She is harsh at the end: “...it’s grim, grim, grim. This might not be the Titanic of romantic comedies (it’s tugboat size), but it’s a disaster... But quick: there’s still time to escape!”

Defense research

Here's an example of a far less effective review than the one that I will be doing my defense on...it reflects the material that it is reviewing, in a negative way.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1963839,00.html?xid=rss-topstories