https://open.spotify.com/episode/5b8nYWCsk98DWKiexEf5Tp?si=a32d519c8c334ae3
Cinematic Music with Pauly Deathwish
Season 1 Episode 2
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5b8nYWCsk98DWKiexEf5Tp?si=a32d519c8c334ae3
Cinematic Music with Pauly Deathwish
Season 1 Episode 2
https://share.stationhead.com/EfsvX7iV94J
“Tema d’amore”–Ennio Morricone
“13 Angels Standing Guard ‘Round the Side of Your Bed”–Silver Mt. Zion
“Let’s Get Lost”–Chet Baker
“Pablo and Andrea”–Yo La Tengo
“I’m a Fool to Want You”–Billie Holiday
“Purple Rain”–Prince
“Moonlight Mile”–The Rolling Stones
“Expecting to Fly”–Buffalo Springfield
“Holes”–Mercury Rev
“The Light Before We Land”–The Delgados
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4TkK9YTwAjFgEg0sBv5qd3?si=f7ac3a85d5044581
It starts just like Charlotte Gainsbourg.
5:55.
Air.
Nigel Godrich.
But there is something different.
A shruti box?
A little distorto guitar.
Ah, yes.
Chuchotements.
Françoise Hardy.
A little Yo La Tengo.
Built to Spill.
Guitar carries it for a second.
Good lyrics.
All mood.
And then into an Amon Düül II warble.
Like Marc Bolan.
Jim Carrey.
Most annoying sound in the world.
Into Pink Floyd.
David Gilmour.
Circa The Wall.
Strange sadness.
Almost a premonition of impending doom.
Calm before the storm.
J. Spaceman telephony.
Floating with no highs and no lows.
All mids.
Strong opening track.
Very slow-moving.
Luxurious.
Immediate Delgados shift.
Paul Savage.
Pauly Deathwish.
Glasgow effect.
Great counterpoint for a pop musician.
But if you check this bloke’s CV…
You’ll know he went through Fux.
Gonna have to say Elliott Smith.
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.
Megan Childs violin.
Around the warm fire.
Welsh.
Expansive.
Strings open up.
Hate.
More Fridmann.
Pointillism.
Schoenberg.
Timbre.
Richard James.
GZM.
Beethoven.
Another Welshman.
John Cale.
Orchestral bass that Lou loved.
This guy’s a bastard.
Jaded.
Hurt.
Is this a breakup album?
I thought the last one was a breakup album?
Ahhh…
Into Gorwel Owen.
1968.
Floyd.
Atom.
Mad cow.
The last GZM album.
Rockfield.
Bohemian.
String band.
Money never runs out.
Cheap air organ.
Tubes?
Fan.
A very apropos album title.
Woody.
Tobacco.
Spring water Scotch.
And then the Great Reset arrives.
Like a fucking spaceship.
Dark shit.
What is this glitch business?
Thom Yorke blasts upon the scene.
Drums James Brown.
Good groove.
Savvy.
Whoa!
Marching band.
Drumline.
Snares.
Caught by Lee “Scratch”.
Guitar all mangled.
Melodies solid.
Mogwai?
Bert Jansch out of fucking nowhere.
Definitely Lips.
Pet Sounds.
Track rejected by Bond franchise.
Convincing.
Acoustic to electric.
Now it’s Serge.
Requiem.
Stereolab.
Break beat.
Absolutely boffo.
BOF.
More Brian Wilson.
Van Dyke Parks.
Phil Spector.
High Llamas.
Still a sadness.
That the old world is passing away.
FUCK!!!
Right into some Leonard Cohen shit!
Scott Walker.
How the FUCK was this recorded?
Sounds like 2″ tape.
Question:
how has this Pauly Deathwish released three albums in two months?
I can’t even keep up with this guy.
Mercury Rev.
Deserter’s Songs.
Levon Helm.
Chamberlin.
Mellotron?
Like a Christmas album.
See You on the Other Side.
David Fricke.
A review in the liner notes.
“Everlasting Arm”.
Definite vibe.
Record pillaging wizard.
Baritone.
Lots of fucking glockenspiel on this record.
But it’s nice.
Like Ennio Morricone.
Cinema Paradiso.
Mandolins.
Jackie Gleason.
Dean Martin.
Herb Alpert.
Tchaikovsky.
Again with sugar plum.
Slick!
Very light.
Chiaroscuro.
Fresher than the sweetness in water.
Hearing Dungen.
IV Thieves.
Makes sense.
“Frenchie” Smith.
Dig CV.
Light, British, airy.
Good hook.
Hooky.
Is this the single?
A little neo-psych Hendrix moment.
It’s definitely GZM.
Repetition until transcend.
Stereolab first album.
Not looped.
Manuel.
Carpenters.
Messiaen.
Definitely some breakup here.
Sonic Youth.
Sister.
Experimental.
Thurston.
Lots of drum machine.
Drum and bass.
Panning.
Definitely holds up with Radiohead.
How the fuck was this made?
PD tells us that it was all made on an iPhone with only a Telecaster.
That is some serious trickery.
Ear fooling.
This is COMPLEX music.
Mixes sound polished.
Clarity.
Some Chinese stuff.
Noise floor fucked for the first time ever.
Bacon?
Rollerskate Skinny.
It’s THAT good.
Shoulder Voices.
How was this made?
This heralds a new talent.
But this bloke is 44.
Tour sponsored by Ensure.
Not hearing a sophomore slump here.
Two albums in two months.
Review third forthcoming.
This dude is emo as fuck.
I dig it.
This guy is a mystery.
What is his deal?
This sounds more like a cohesive album that Introversion.
Introversion sounds like a debut album…in all the best ways.
Songs saved up.
A greatest hits.
Go big or go home.
This album deals much more in subtlety.
Not every song here is a home run.
This album breathes.
Ambiance.
Negative space.
More Beach Boys vibes.
70s.
Sad.
Bathrobe.
But mentally sharp.
A spark of genius.
A little bluegrass.
Bill Monroe.
Dock Boggs.
The old world is passing away.
Jonny Greenwood.
Georges Bizet.
Live forever.
Nonesuch.
Elektra.
Hoyt Ming.
Incredible String Band.
Wales, Scotland.
Back and forth.
And across to Ireland.
Oh, no.
There’s the single.
“Makes Me Wanna Stay in Bed”.
Emma Pollock.
Hate is all you need.
Coming in from the cold.
New Radicals.
Delayed bass from The Wall.
Pavement.
Spoon.
Good fucking song!
Eisteddfod.
All Is Dream.
Hard following up.
Unenviable.
Emma Pollock solo.
With Alun Woodward singing.
The Great Eastern.
New Spiritualized.
Banjo.
Let It Come Down.
Abbey Road.
Coldplay.
A Rush of Blood to the Head.
This bloke is serious as fuck.
Sad eyes.
I’m sensing a Jandek promotional strategy.
Final track Richter.
Ravel.
Emperor.
Philip Glass.
Conlon Nancarrow.
City/country dichotomy.
Urban/rural.
Urban encroaching.
Something felt.
Big symphony night.
Excitement of New York Phil.
The fucking french horns!
Automation.
A story in dynamics.
Lesson.
A folk album.
bucolic.
Pauly Deathwish.
iTunes.
Spotify.
-PD
Teenage Fanclub.
That glow in The World’s End.
But a sadness.
THE sadness.
Emily Dickinson.
Unrequited.
Unattainable.
My Bloody Valentine.
Sloshy grunge hats.
Edge echo.
Chris Bell.
I Am the Cosmos.
Yerself Is Steam.
Slowdive.
Rutti.
Brian Eno.
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Tom Petty.
You don’t know how it feels.
J. Spaceman.
Abbey Road.
Air.
George Martin.
Beck.
Badfinger suicides.
Loser.
Spiritualized.
Royal Albert.
I can only give you everything.
Rick Danko.
Loping.
The Delgados.
Dave Fridmann.
Black magic warded off by honesty.
Good timing.
Divine.
Sigur Rós.
Nigel Godrich.
Pocket symphonies.
Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Serge on the way.
Lenny Bruce, even.
Hit to Death in the Future Head.
Wait at least until track three to break it down.
Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.
Gorecki.
Arvo Pärt.
Deserter’s Songs.
Absolutely.
The confusion of ridiculous counterpoint.
Aaron Copland.
Tonal, yet dissonant.
Thick Billy Corgan.
Siamese Dream.
Definitely a sadness here.
Dawn Upshaw.
Tabula rasa.
Death.
Immense Mellotron.
Tchaikovsky.
Abrupt modulation.
Sugar plum.
Lou Reed.
Ennio Morricone.
Cinema Paradiso.
All you need is hate.
Upstate.
Chaliapin.
Basso profundo.
Jussi Björling.
Dvořák.
Memorial day.
The Inflated Tear.
Columbus, Ohio with duct tape.
Debussy.
Posing with a bass clarinet.
Primal Scream.
Get Duffy.
Rock ferry.
Smokey Robinson.
Sad clown.
Dead clown.
Kinks.
Grasshopper.
Suzanne.
Woodwind quintet.
Did I ever write one?
Yes, I did.
César Franck.
Saint-Saëns.
Organ symphony.
Or is it contrabassoon?
Nadia Boulanger can tell you.
My teacher’s teacher (twice over).
The Left Banke.
LSD.
Herb Alpert?
Hummel.
Handel.
Strawberry fields.
Stereolab.
Unequivocally.
Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements.
A little lo-fi.
Vocal doubled.
Vox continental.
Great hook.
Changes that pull at your heartstrings.
More melancholy.
A fucking marimba solo?!?
Are you kidding me???
Makes sense.
Pauly Deathwish collaboration with Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes.
Lost Bayou Ramblers.
Gordon knew him as Death.
I have become death.
96 Tears.
Farfisa.
Partials.
Tim Gane tone.
Faust IV.
Doogie Howser?
Scary.
Impending.
Suspense.
Rock bass.
Ozzy.
Black Sabbath.
Amazing Grace.
Pete Townshend.
Front.
Back to J. Spaceman.
Dirty ass rock and roll with pristine horns.
Expensive drugs.
Sophisticated changes.
Éminence grise?
Is this the artist we’ve been waiting for?
Rodriguez?
R. Stevie Moore?
Wesley Willis?
Sounds like Jack Nitzsche.
Major Velvet vibes.
Suck-ceed twice.
Dylan with P-bass.
Mick Taylor.
Too much attitude.
Keith Richards.
Let it Come Down.
Shakespeare.
Fucker kicked the bucket.
First to be vaxxed.
Maricopa.
First Suicide album.
Bossa nova.
The Soft Bulletin.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.
Gimme some lovin’?
Steve Winwood?
How old?
La Monte Young.
Slow changes.
First rehearsal tapes.
Alan Vega.
Martin Rev.
New York City heroin.
Warhol Factory torn down.
Across from YMCA.
Trump dances.
Great throwaway lyrics.
George Harrison.
Sound of universe.
Spacemen 3.
Savage tone.
Revolution.
Direct into mixing console.
Fried signal.
White album.
Sonic Youth.
Derek Bailey.
Lou ecstacy.
Late Lou.
European son.
Blood pressure rising.
Brutal.
Frankie Teardrop.
I think I’m in love.
Dub bass.
Will the circle remain unbroken?
When I had dinner with Roky.
13th Floor.
First Velvets album.
Heroin.
Drug rush.
Invincible.
But you gotta buy it.
Dirty Baltimore.
Cop shoot cop.
Cheree.
On the jukebox.
Eat at the gas station.
On tour.
First time in Texas.
American Supreme.
Iceland.
13 Angels.
It’s definitely Bowie.
New career.
Same town.
New old.
Old is new again.
Mercury Rev.
Savvy programming.
Dynamics.
Break beat.
A fuck ton of flutes.
Flute loops literally.
Bowie sax.
Little fluffy clouds.
Every drop.
Gay glam chorus.
Tony Visconti.
Don’t underestimate.
Pere Ubu.
First album.
Méliès.
Boys peel out.
Boces.
Inspector Clouseau.
Phone.
French ambulance.
Pants.
Gives me pants.
Videogames.
Cutting hole.
Pink Panther.
Herbert Lom.
A Shot in the Dark.
Grandaddy.
Under the Western Freeway.
Weeping willow.
Under that.
With Sean Mackowiak.
Square waves.
WarGames.
Tympani.
Rollerskate Skinny.
Dublin.
Kevin Shields.
Comes back loud.
One song mastered soft.
Definitely Low.
The main influence of Pauly Deathwish’s debut album.
Honegger.
Pacific 231.
Chariots of fire.
Vangelis.
Such a groove.
Nancarrow.
Polyrhythm.
Immense sadness.
By the side of a freeway.
Under an underpass.
Not like RHCP.
Much darker.
Like Godspeed.
Philip Glass.
Eno.
Blackstar.
How did a Trump supporter make this album?!?
I thought all Trump supporters were redneck morons???
This is way fucking better than Ariel Pink’s dabblings.
This sounds like a debut album.
Songs saved up.
Like The Strokes.
Cinematic as fuck.
Glitch Radiohead.
Trail of Dead.
Makes sense.
Because Pauly wrote the string arrangement on IX.
Dark.
Killers.
Disco compression.
Distressed.
These lyrics!
Johnny Rotten.
Trump 2021.
Snot on the crowd.
Arcade Fire.
Makes sense.
Lost Bayou Ramblers lost sessions.
Montreal studio.
This was all made on an iPhone?!?
Guy Debord.
Aladdin Sane.
Time.
Rick Wakeman?
Olivier Messiaen.
Major 7ths in uppermost range of piano.
Almost indistinguishable from octaves.
Eerie.
Slight.
Only for the sensuous ear.
The Wall.
Waters delayed bass.
No nonsense drums.
Humble Pie reference?!?
Ha!
Great lyrics!!
Predating new Bob Dylan album.
Check SoundCloud timestamp.
This is definitely the QAnon anthem.
This hook should be on a million conspiracy videos.
“10 Days of Darkness”.
Tell ’em Large Marge sent ya!
My end is my beginning is my end.
Grinderman.
No pussy.
Early-’90s.
Nirvana’s wake.
Finnegans Wake.
Great debut album (if I do say so myself).
Usual suspects.
Spotify.
iTunes.
Pauly Deathwish.
-PD
This film is squeaky clean.
Antiseptic.
And that is not a compliment.
It is waste of great actors (and a decent story).
Jeff Bridges is good.
Great talent.
Excellent contribution here.
He plays what must certainly be a backhanded homage to Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair.
A magazine I used to read.
Dreaming of entering that glitzy world where my idol Nick Tosches wrote.
All is, in fact, vacuous in such a world (as this movie plainly shows).
Which brings us to me.
And this.
Dossier du cinema.
Pauly Deathwish.
I am almost done.
Being an addict.
Being a basket case.
Almost done.
Almost.
Maybe tomorrow?
Kirsten Dunst has great breasts.
Linchpin.
Melancholia.
Poor men love breasts (as it turns out).
Danny Huston falls like the last laugh of Murnau.
Wiping the shitter.
Riches to rags.
Saudi Arabia.
Gillian Anderson plays the villain here (of sorts).
Megan Fox is boring.
Skinny woman are, in general, unattractive.
Real.
Be real.
Keep it real.
Restecp.
White Russian as bridging mechanism.
Ms. Lebowski.
R. D. Laing.
Lord Byron.
The only cinematography is when Dracula is depressed.
I’ve been blessed (?) with a complete lack of suckcess in my lifetime.
Good bit with La Dolce Vita.
Reminiscent of the open-air movie in Cinema Paradiso.
This film could have been a lot better.
Simon Pegg is an all-world talent.
This kind of tripe is beneath his abilities.
-PD
Wow 🙂
What a beautiful and perfect movie!
The International.
Yes, we are back to Turkey.
But this film is very much about the passions of youthful revolution.
Is Trump a revolutionary?
Of course.
Was George Washington a revolutionary?
Of course.
But the strain of revolutionary verve in this film is that of communism.
I don’t hate communism.
I don’t hate anything.
But I think some things are not so good.
With communism, I mainly criticize it on an economic level.
Have I read Marx?
Not very much.
But I’ve read enough Debord to get the late-60s version of Marxism.
I would argue that Debord, one of my three favorite writers, was at his best when he was NOT talking about Marxism.
When he goes off on Marxist tangents, he loses me.
I find it boring.
And, as I’ve said, I object to it on economic grounds.
I have a college degree in music.
[which will be very important in reviewing this film]
But I have an advanced degree (above and beyond that) in business.
Am I a genius of economics? No.
But I questioned. I was skeptical. I studied Marx.
And I found the capitalist system to be the best system.
It is, by no means, perfect.
And so why, then, do I like Guy Debord?
Perhaps no one in history hated capitalism more than Guy Debord 🙂
I respect Debord because he was a brilliant social critic.
I do not agree with his economic assumptions.
I do not agree with his Marxist assumptions.
But when it comes to a critique of capitalism (which is the underpinning of globalism), no one has found the flaws like Debord.
No one has completely dismantled the matrix in which we live (the “spectacle”) quite like Debord.
And so his book The Society of the Spectacle is essential reading in my opinion.
At least the first few chapters.
As I said, Debord gets a bit bogged down in Marxism and loses his poetic divining power concomitantly.
But let’s discuss this film.
This is, by far, the best Turkish film I’ve ever seen.
Granted, I think this is only the fourth I’ve ever watched 🙂
But this is really a special movie!
Wikipedia says that it is set in a small town near Adana.
For that, I will say hi to the American soldiers at Incirlik Air Base 🙂
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for representing the United States. Thank you for your service. We love you and we pray for your safety and happiness!
It is true.
I love our American troops.
Most of my life I did not appreciate these wonderful people.
I took it for granted…
“Somebody will do that job…”
But in my older age, I respect these soldiers very much.
But let us shift back to this film.
First, let us thank the two directors: Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Muharrem Gülmez.
They have made an almost perfect movie.
Really, this film is so, so good!
But you must be warned, my dear friends: it is simple.
It you are looking for a complex, confusing film, then you will be disappointed.
Such that, you must be like a child–like a youth to appreciate the naïveté of this masterwork.
So I would say this: it’s a bit like a Turkish version of Cinema Paradiso.
Do you see what I am getting at?
It is poetic.
The mise-en-scène is a bit like what we might expect from Claude Monet (were he still alive).
It is loving.
Large swaths of color.
And, perhaps most quintessential, it is unassuming.
Down to earth.
There’s no condescension in this film.
Come as you are.
First movie you’ve ever seen?
No problem 🙂
It is that sort of loving masterpiece!
It is set in Turkey in 1982.
Cassettes 🙂
80s-style clothing. The Turkish version 🙂
A junta is in place. A military government. Martial law.
And one band of musicians gets rooked into being a “marching band” (of sorts).
But these are folk musicians 🙂
They don’t play brass instruments. They don’t play the sousaphone.
So it is a very steep learning curve (which sounds a lot like Charles Ives in its beginning stages) 🙂
But let’s get to the most important point.
“I fell in love with the actress/She was playing a part that I could understand”
[Neil Young]
Yes.
Özgü Namal.
Just two years younger than me.
She is the star of this film.
Amazing facility as an actress.
But really just a glow–a vibrance in her every gesture.
Here is someone who is glad to be alive 🙂
And it made me glad to be alive!!!
But let me tell you the other star: Cezmi Baskın!
This man!
He has no Wikipedia page in English, but he is a wiseman.
A humanist.
A saint of an actor.
A craftsman.
He plays the bandleader.
And his daughter in the film is Özgü Namal.
Umut Kurt does a very good job as the young communist.
And, hence, the title of the film: The International.
“L’Internationale” 🙂
The most famous of communist anthems.
Yes, dear friends, it is that melody written in 1888 by Pierre De Geyter which is the MacGuffin of this film.
The whole plot hinges on it.
Derrida would call it the brisure (if film were a text).
To deconstruct.
The hinge.
I will say this: the struggles in this film are very real to this day for the people of Turkey.
I would say our communist character would probably today be a member of the CHP party in Turkey: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi.
The Republican People’s Party 🙂
Which is funny because in the U.S., the Republicans (whom I support…more or less) are conservative or “right wing”.
So, yes: the CHP is “left wing”.
But as I say, this is a very fine film.
It shows very much the love which a father can have for his daughter.
It shows the sacrifices which parents make for their children.
Parents will even die to save their children.
This is a funny movie, but it has this tone of seriousness as well.
Actually, the whole film is like a brilliant joke 🙂
It starts very serious…
But the it becomes festive and ridiculous!
Most of all, there are so many poetic camera shots of Turkish life.
Little things which we don’t see in America.
So an American can learn some of another culture.
But also, we see that people all around the world have similar worries and dreams as us.
Well, I don’t want to tell you too much.
I will just say that this is well-worth watching.
It is a bit long, but I watched it in two installments.
And the subtitles are good 🙂
Anyway, it is on Netflix streaming in the U.S. currently as Beynelmilel.
I am so glad I found this film 🙂
Güle güle
-PD
If would be a shame if there were any lies wrapped up in Holocaust historiography.
Because, if there were, they would have the potential to seriously degrade what should be a pure remembrance.
If, for instance, the majority of concentration camp prisoners/workers died as a direct result of the Allies cutting Nazi supply lines.
And when these camps were “liberated” or otherwise found, public relations needed a story (and fast!) to account for this horrible loss of life which technically fell on the shoulders of the Allies.
If (and it’s a big if) that was the case, then such a “noble” lie might have been “borrowed” by the emerging Zionist state of Israel.
Anything to make way for the Jewish homeland.
To recap, if a majority of Jewish casualties in WWII were actually the result of the Allies attempting to starve the Nazi state into submission through siege tactics, then the Allies would have had motive and opportunity to foist upon the world a caricatured distortion of the facts.
Caricatures do not do true honor to the victims.
And if the emerging Jewish state of Israel used such distorted facts to further lobby for a “homeland” (a place where people were already living…non-Jews…for a long time), we could say that “Israel” also had motive and opportunity to participate in this “noble lie” (for different reasons).
But what is most sad is that what I have just written would get me arrested in several countries of the world (mostly in Europe).
We will mention one: France.
I have spoken about the Loi Gayssot in critical terms before.
And I do not think it is a smart piece of legislation.
It is, ironically, a very authoritarian law.
If I understand it correctly, this law (aimed at “Holocaust deniers”) punishes even those who object on critical grounds to any factual aspect of Holocaust “history”.
As we know, history has been wrong before.
And it can be wrong again.
Furthermore, we never close the door on a particular epoch.
For every other event (except the Holocaust), we welcome new research which brings the situation into clearer focus.
The Holocaust is the one period of history which is off limits (verboten) to any sort of skepticism.
And it is this sort of authoritarian attitude of anti-history which will be the unraveling of whatever the liars of history are trying to hide.
Lies are a big part of every world event.
Operators at the lower level just want to cover their butts.
White lies.
But these white lies can pile up.
And pretty soon the official historiography bears little resemblance to the actual event in question.
Mid-level operators merely want to move up in life.
They want to keep the bigwigs off their backs.
So they condone low-level lies.
And they even concoct some fairly witty stratagems of their own.
And these regional efforts coalesce into inexplicable gumbos of narrative (like the story we have all been given concerning 9/11).
But the real fuckery happens at the high-level.
Here is where everything is a game.
Here is where hubris reigns supreme.
Here is where the Ivy League and the Oxford/Cambridge set conspire in an unholy matrimony of minds to make “a new world”.
These are the minds which, largely, have been so besotted with “logic” that they can no longer entertain the idea of a God or any sort of higher power.
And it is at this level that public relations and social engineering churn out lies which are meant to shape world history.
Lies which are meant to redraw the map.
If the gas chambers did not exist (except in the propagandistic imagination of Allied copy) in any Nazi camp, then it would have likely been a high-level wonk who conceived of such a grand macabre to once and for all paint the Nazis as “pure evil” and the Allies as “beneficent warriors” fighting a “just war”.
So let’s see how censored the Internet is, ok?
As of today, you can still harbor some doubts.
A mathematician doubts.
Bertrand Russell doubted Gottlob Frege.
And Russell was right to doubt.
Logic and mathematics teach us that most “complete, unified” systems eventually fall by the wayside.
That is because they are flawed.
Our knowledge improves.
Some discoveries are truly special, but it is always a process of learning.
The Gayssot Act in France (and other similar legislation in neighboring countries) wants you to take (on faith) the complete accuracy of Holocaust historiography SO FAR.
Such legislation is eager to CLOSE THE BOOK on all nuance and scholarship.
But there is at least one website which seems to harbor healthy doubts about aspects of the Holocaust.
Remember: questioning ANY PART OF THE HOLOCAUST in France is a violation of the Gayssot Act.
Excuse my French, but that is fucked up!
Don’t we want the truth?
If Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking ring, do we want to know that?
Yes.
If Donald Trump was colluding with the Russian government to get elected, don’t we want to know that?
Yes.
If the gas chambers were a fanciful way to paint the Nazis as the ultimate enemies, don’t we want to know that there were (in fact) no gas chambers in any concentration camp?
Yes.
We want to know.
And we also want to know how bad the Nazis were.
We want to know about babies on bayonets.
We want to know every Jew-hating idea they ever penned or yelled.
Because we do not approve of this Jew hating.
But we will not punish speech.
In our quest to quash the Nazi strain of hatred, we will not become (ourselves) “Nazis”.
Because the Loi Gayssot only encourages people to seek out “taboo” knowledge.
I can’t believe I agree with the scumbag Cass Sunstein on an actual point, but I think I do.
In other words: don’t make the knowledge taboo.
Let the cream rise to the top.
Let the crap sink.
Do not criminalize idiocy.
AND DO NOT EVEN think ABOUT A CHINESE METHOD LIKE REEDUCATION!
So here is the site, dear friends:
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Don’t let some shit-stained-pants-wearing talking head deter you from visiting this site.
Remember when CNN told the world that only “they” could report on WikiLeaks?
These tactics are wearing thin.
If the truth is out there (thank you X-Files), then people will find it.
And the frauds will be exposed.
And the genuine articles will be raised up on cheerful arms.
The global media wants you to think that only dumb Arabs and Persians would ever “deny” the Holocaust.
Do some fucking research!
And I fall into the same target.
I tell myself, “Do some fucking research!”
I do.
All the time.
Just as it was impractical to get an unbiased assessment of 9/11 when the commissioners were appointed by the Bush administration, so too is it impractical to think that a Jewish (or, God forbid, Israeli) author can give an impartial account of any aspect of the Holocaust.
And yet, this is a conundrum.
For Jews, no period of history is so important.
And I sympathize with the call to “never forget”.
But we must be extremely careful to get right exactly what it is we are to “never forget”.
“Never forget” rings especially hollow in the United States regarding 9/11…because most people have absolutely no deep understanding of that event.
I have done my research on that fateful day.
And everything which led up to it.
And much of what followed.
So in the case of 9/11, “never forget” is meaningless…because the vast majority NEVER KNEW IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Which is the trouble with such campaigns.
The message, then, is “Never forget…what we’ve told you…happened.”
Well, that’s not very bloody comforting!
And the propaganda is pretty transparent.
Which brings us to the “Holocaust industry” and this masterpiece of a film (really): Life is Beautiful.
There is very little propaganda in this film.
There is very little mindless regurgitation of dubious assertions.
But yet it is still there.
And hence my opening diatribe.
First, let me get in one more jab.
Here is something I have actually read.
By Robert Faurisson.
It is called, “The ‘Problem of the Gas Chambers'”.
http://codoh.com/library/document/868/?lang=en
It is from 1980.
There are 141 pieces by Dr. Faurisson (among many other authors) on the CODOH site.
I have read few of them.
But enough to pique my curiosity.
As I said, it makes me highly suspicious when an obviously brilliant scholar such as Dr. Faurisson is “refuted” solely by ad hominem attacks.
When such is the case, said victim only grows stronger.
And Dr. Faurisson is not attacking the Jews.
He’s attacking history.
With logic.
Read it for yourself.
To be recursive, he seems to have found a “fatal flaw” in the historiography which predominates in such shite as Schindler’s List.
We don’t need a John Williams swooning violin melody to tell us the truth.
We just need the fucking truth.
Whatever it is.
We don’t need music in our museums to drive home a particular point.
We just need the artifacts.
They must be laid out in a way which allows for logical conclusion.
They must not LEAD the museum-goer to a particular conclusion.
If they do, then we have entered the realm of propaganda.
And we should be made aware of our participation as guinea pigs in such attempted thought control.
You can read about Dr. Faurisson’s struggles against the French government here (in his biography on the CODOH site):
http://codoh.com/library/categories/1104/
Ok…
La vita è bella.
🙂
It’s a beautiful movie.
Which I saw many times in the theater.
When it came out.
One of the most important and formative films for me as a cinephile.
Roberto Benigni is my favorite actor ever.
And Nicoletta Braschi is wonderful in this film.
Furthermore, Benigni’s film direction is underrated.
The scene, for instance, where he and Sergio Bustric lay in bed is such a lushly-filmed tableau.
I wanted to live in that scene.
Amongst those antiques.
And their hilarious repartee involving Schopenhauer 🙂
But Life is Beautiful is notable mostly as a work of naïveté.
Like Cinema Paradiso.
Instead of Ennio Morricone’s gossamer score, we get Nicola Piovani’s criminally-unavailable musical backing.
[get on that, Spotify!]
There is true magic in this film.
The kiss between Benigni and Braschi under the banquet table.
Sure…
There is so much Chaplin in this film.
Mistaken identity.
The whole thing starts with a virtual rip of The Great Dictator.
But Benigni tells a new story.
And the details don’t matter.
One death was too many…during World War II.
And one family torn apart…was too many…during the Holocaust.
-PD
I bet you thought I stopped writing about film, right?
🙂
Me too.
Sometimes.
I think…
“Am I still a film critic?”
With all this Trump this and Trump that.
With these tableaux.
This lazy poetry.
But I am back with an actual film.
And it is a masterpiece.
But I don’t know what to call it!!!
It’s a Chinese film.
Sort of.
But not really.
Because it’s by a Brazilian film director.
But not just any Brazilian film director.
Someday I will get around to reviewing one of the best exemplars of naïveté ever made.
Yes, one of the best FILMS ever made.
Central do Brasil.
Central Station.
A formative episode in my filmic life.
But back to this Chinese film directed by a Brazilian.
I didn’t even get to his name yet 🙂
Walter Salles!
Yes…two masterpieces are enough to make an auteur!!
But we can’t use the Chinese title here.
For the film.
Under consideration.
Because that would be disingenuous (and we will get to Trump).
[Or we will try.]
{so much…stuff…in the world}
Let’s paint the picture…
Three Gorges…no.
We must wait.
Central Station was a fiction film.
A beautiful masterpiece which stretches even up into the sertão.
But Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a documentary…about a guy from Fenyang…named Jia Zhangke.
Messrs. Baggini and Fosl (Julian and Peter) would call that a “spectacularly uninformative sentence”.
And Kant, the less-colorful–less-candid “analytic proposition”.
But we hit an impasse.
The film I am reviewing is so little-known (apparently) that it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.
Worse, it has a strange, butchered title on iMDB.
There it is called Jia Zhang-ke by Walter Salles.
Hmmm…
I must admit: it appears some people in marketing over at Kino Lorber are dicking around.
But we press on…
Just who the fuck is Jia Zhangke? And why should you care about him?
Well, first: he’s a film director.
And second: he’s as good as Jean-Luc Godard.
Did I just say that???
Yes.
I just put someone on an equal level with my favorite director of all time.
What’s more, a Chinese guy you’ve probably never heard of.
Of whom.
And what about this Fenyang business?
Well, let’s get out our maps.
First, we must find Shaanxi Province.
Northern China.
The capital is Xi’an.
But we must get to the more obscure.
Fenyang.
Home of our subject auteur: Jia Zhangke.
So we don’t exactly know the title…here to there…from this platform to the next.
But we will say this.
If you are in the U.S., this film is currently streaming on Netflix under the title Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang.
Or something like that.
This is the confusion of a lack of standardization.
Where’s ISO when you need them…or Zamenhof!
Ok…so why should you watch a 105 minute documentary about a filmmaker of whom you have likely never heard?
Because Walter Salles compels you.
He says, “Watch my story… Pay attention to this little self-deprecating Chinese man. He’s a cinematic genius.”
Wouldn’t it be great if all artisans and artists helped each other out in such a way?
A filmmaker, age 57, decides to make a film about another filmmaker, age 46.
Actually, that is quite an honor.
That an older filmmaker would help in the career of the younger one.
So we heartily praise Salles for his mise-en-scène as well as his morals.
But then we hit another impasse.
Because words cannot express the brilliance of Jia Zhangke’s grasp on cinematic language.
And so, why should you watch this film? I ask again.
Because it gives you an introduction (not dumbed down in any way) to the works of a contemporary film artist who is leading the cinematic medium into this new century.
Likewise, it gives you an introduction to Chinese film at the same time.
These aren’t kung fu flicks (for the most part).
These are art films.
Similar to Breathless…
Born of the French New Wave.
But also born of Raj Kapoor.
Indeed, as a young boy…Jia Zhangke remembered an early film which extolled thieves. And it was this Indian film shown in China. And the Chinese kids remembered the melismatic melodies for decades…to rip off a shred and a few threads of a melody which bound them as enfants terribles.
Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a bit like Cinema Paradiso.
The big director returns home.
And there’s a sadness.
Maybe you can see your childhood home.
And hit the wall one more time.
You can imagine the family bed and the father’s desk was there.
And the books on shelves along here.
So many books.
That there is a sadness of being from Fenyang.
I feel it being from San Antonio.
And Jia Zhangke, all throughout this film, ideates thoughts which have now and then wisped in and out of my dreams.
Jia is very calm. Thoughtful. Serene.
A true artist.
And as he talks about the process of creation, I find him to be an exceptionally dedicated artist.
We hear about Xiao Wu (1997).
Pickpocket. Starring Wang Hongwei.
I mean, this bloke…Wang… His clothes hang on him in almost a magical way.
He’s a good-for-nothing bum in the Chaplin mold, but still puffing away like Belmondo in Breathless.
But Jia was right.
It’s the gait.
The way Wang Hongwei walks.
Body language.
Brilliant!
And the shots we see of Platform are really moving.
It’s like being from a place like Kiruna, Sweden.
Gotta get there by train.
Up past the Arctic Circle.
And the kids…they don’t have a lot of entertainment.
Maybe even the sight of a train.
But in China…………….far more vast.
These remote places.
Like the Three Gorges area where Jia made Dong and also Still Life.
But the joke’s on me.
Because the whole world knows Jia Zhangke.
The whole world of cinema.
And me, with my insular approach, not so much.
Because Jia won the Palme d’Or in both…wait.
We have the wrong envelope.
Ok…so maybe he’s not that well know.
His films have been screened in competition at Cannes, but no hardware yet.
With the exception of his Golden Lion from Venice.
But none of that matters.
What matters is that he’s making great films.
What matters is that he has the potential to best us all.
This was a very moving film for me.
Because it speaks to the obstacles of life.
Of the unhappiness.
Of the solitude which must be for creations to ferment properly.
To mix metaphors, we need the darkness in which to screen our masterpieces of light.
We cannot screen them in a glass house…at 2:30 p.m.
Finally, this film will give you invaluable insights into the recent history and current state of China.
All the people on Weibo (like Twitter).
The market system which has been kicking ass since the 1990s.
And crucial periods such as 1976-1989.
The restructuring period right after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
WE NOW JOIN PAULY DEATHWISH NEWS NETWORK…IN PROGRESS: “…
Xi Jinping. His father purged in 1963. His father jailed in 1968. Xi was sent without his father to work in Shaanxi Province in 1969. [The remote province from which film director Jia Zhangke hails.]
This was a time of immense violence in China. Being purged. Being jailed. Being sent to the countryside to work and be re-educated. All of this was suffused with violence.
So when President Xi got the message from President Trump himself that the U.S. had just launched 60 Tomahawk missiles into Syria minutes earlier, President Xi was met with the shock of surrealism…a perfect steak…beautiful ladies…the glitz and glamour of Mar-a-Lago…and the throat punch of an actual tiger. No paper.
“Get North Korea in line, and fast!” Would have been the message.
So that, in these times, to truly appreciate that which is unfolding around us, we need directors like Jia Zhangke.
These are our new philosophers. Our new poets.
Thinking about social media.
Fooling around with it.
Inventing new artistic forms.
And finding new types of loneliness.
And desperation.
Jia came from a very poor area.
He loved his family very much.
The Chinese don’t like violence.
We Americans don’t like violence.
See this film.
Then get back to me on Dereliction of Duty 🙂
-PD
It’s hard to imagine that perfection would be possible in 2011.
In this very uncinematic era ruined by technology.
But it takes a genius to produce art from tech.
And it takes an artist to produce art.
Martin Scorsese was well up to the challenge.
As the weirdo I am, The King of Comedy has always been my favorite of his films.
Rupert Pupkin spoke to me in a way that perhaps only the totality of Dr. Strangelove ever similarly did.
But Mr. Scorsese had the brass to undertake a project which should have been doomed if only by its trappings.
Films have tried and generally failed at relative tasks.
City of Ember, for example.
But Scorsese was not deterred.
Not least because he had the magical trump card: Méliès.
Which is to say, he had the story to end all stories (as far as cinema is concerned).
The big daddy. The big papa.
Papa Georges.
But first things first…
We must give credit to Asa Butterfield (who looks like a cross between Barron Trump and Win Butler in this film).
Butterfield is no Mechanical Turk.
Nay, far from it.
But automata (or at least one particular automaton) play a large role in Hugo.
And why “Hugo”?
Kid living “underground”? Victor? Les Misérables?
Yes, I think so.
And it’s a nice touch by the auteur (in the strictest sense) Brian Selznick.
[Yes, grandson of David O.]
We’re at the Gare Montparnasse.
Torn down in 1969.
Site of this famous 1895 derailment.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m up to 1,261.
But we press on…
Because Méliès was about dreams.
And Hugo is about dreams.
les rêves
And Scorsese has been “tapped in” to this magic at least since he portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Kurosawa-san’s best film).
I must admit…I was a bit confused for awhile.
Something told me Scorsese had transformed himself into Méliès.
It was only later that it all made sense.
Ben Kingsley.
I mean, Scorsese is a great actor (Van Gogh, etc.), but he’s not THAT great!
But I’m jumping ahead…
Sacha Baron Cohen is very good in a somewhat-serious, villain role here.
I fully expected the immensely-talented Cohen to “ham it up” at some point, but he instead gives a very fine, restrained performance which fits like clockwork (sorry) into the viscera of this exquisite film.
But let’s revisit Sir Kingsley.
What a performance!
The loss of a career (Méliès).
The loss of a previous life.
The fragility of celluloid.
All to end up running a pathetic souvenir shop.
Toys.
Very clever, but still…
Such a fall from grace.
Into such obscurity.
I can only compare it to the trajectory of Emmett Miller (which was so artfully documented by my favorite author of all time [Nick Tosches] in my favorite BOOK of all time [Where Dead Voices Gather]).
The speed at which technology moves has the potential to reduce the most eminent personage to mere footnote at breakneck speed.
It was so even a hundred years ago.
And the process has now exponentially accelerated.
But we are coming to understand the trivialization of the recent past.
We are holding tighter to our precious films and recordings.
Because we know that some are lost forever.
Will this vigilance continue uninterrupted?
I doubt it.
But for now we know.
Some of us.
That today’s masterpieces might slip through the cracks into complete nonexistence.
Consider Kurt Schwitters.
The Merzbau.
Bombed by the Allies in 1943.
Es ist nicht mehr.
Into thin air.
But such also is the nature of magic.
Poof!
Skeletons later evoked by Jean Renoir in La Règle du jeu.
Scorsese is a film historian making movies.
And it is a wonderful thing to see.
And hear.
Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre more than once.
As on a player piano.
With ghost hands.
And the gears of the automaton.
Like the mystery of Conlon Nancarrow’s impossible fugues.
I’m betting Morten Tyldum lifted more than the spirit of gears meshing in Hugo to evoke the majesty of Alan Turing’s bombe in The Imitation Game.
But every film needs a secret weapon (much like Hitchcock relied on the MacGuffin).
And Scorsese’s ace in the hole for Hugo is the Satie-rik, placid visage of Chloë Grace Moretz.
Statuesque as water.
A grin.
A dollar word.
The beret.
And the ubiquitous waltzes as seen through keyholes and the Figure 5 in Gold.
Hugo is the outsider.
Scruffy ruffian.
Meek. Stealing only enough to survive. And invent.
But always on the outside looking in.
Below the window (like in Cinema Paradiso).
Ms. Moretz’ world is lit with gas lamps.
And you can almost smell the warm croissants.
[Funny that a film set in Paris should require subtitles FOR PARISIANS]
Assuming you don’t speak English.
Tables are turned.
But Paris draws the cineastes like bees to a hive.
THE hive.
Historically.
And that is just what this is.
History come alive.
But another word about Ms. Moretz.
As I am so wont to say in such situations, she’s not just a pretty face.
Though they are faint glimmers, I see an acting potential (mostly realized) which I haven’t seen in a very long time.
The key is in small gestures.
But really, the key is having Scorsese behind the camera.
It’s symbiotic.
Martin needed Chloë for this picture.
And vice versa.
We get a movie within a movie.
And (believe it or not) even a dream within a dream.
Poe is ringing his bell!
Or bells.
“Lost dream” says Wikipedia.
Yes.
It is as bitter a music as ever rained into Harry Partch’s boot heels.
To have one’s life work melted down for shoes.
Rendered.
To click the stone of Gare Montparnasse.
In an ever-more-sad procession.
Méliès becomes the vieux saltimbanque of which Baudelaire wrote.
Such is life.
We never expected to end up HERE.
Astounding!
-PD
Fucking masterpiece.
A fucking masterpiece.
God damn…
It’s not often that a movie strikes me this way.
I had every reason not to even WATCH this film.
The premise was too perfect.
Too good to be true.
In English (and on Netflix in the U.S.), it is listed as The Film Critic.
But we pay our respects to international films even if the template of our website goes haywire in so doing.
El Crítico is an Argentine-Chilean coproduction.
Sounds like a wine, right?
Well, this beats any Malbec I’ve ever tasted.
I cannot say enough good things about this picture!
First things first-Hernán Guerschuny is a goddamned genius.
From the very start of this film we get the Godard whisper…that voiceover which started (si je me souviens bien) circa 1967 with 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle.
The majority (80%?) of El Crítico is in Spanish, but the remaining 20% (in French) makes all the difference.
We have an Argentine film critic, played masterfully by Rafael Spregelburd, who thinks in French.
We are thus privy to his internal monologue throughout the film.
For anyone who writes about motion pictures, El Crítico is indispensable.
Priceless.
Just right.
[not even a pinch of salt too much]
Dolores Fonzi is really good, but Señor Spregelburd is outstanding.
Spregelburd plays a Godard-obsessed film critic (are you seeing why I like this?) whose fumbling attempts at romance stem from his total immersion in cinema.
Guerschuny deftly interpolates scenes which are “meta-” in the same sense that Cinema Paradiso was essentially a film ABOUT film.
And I am a fan of this approach.
It worked perfectly for the greatest artistic creation in the history of mankind (Histoire(s) du cinéma) and it works exceptionally well for Guerschuny’s film [of which James Monaco and la Nouvelle vague I think would be proud].
Guerschuny, like his main character Tellez [Spregelburd], wants to explode the genre of romcom.
Yes, you heard me right: romcom.
And it thus places El Crítico in the same tradition as Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste and Godard’s Une Femme est une femme.
But something happens to our protagonist Tellez.
And something, I suspect, is in the heart (!) of director Guerschuny.
This is, in fact, a film about appreciating naïveté.
It is a postmodern idea.
And an idea dear to my heart.
It’s quite simple, really…
I can appreciate Arnold Schoenberg as much as AC/DC.
Abel Gance as much as Napoleon Dynamite.
The idea is that pretentious films (and film reviews) can become just as tiresome as trite, Entertainment Weekly boilerplate.
Does that magazine even still exist?
I don’t know.
It’s an honest question.
In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had the title correct.
It’s supermarket-checkout-lane film criticism.
But it’s not worthless.
Sometimes the most esteemed, erudite film critics become blind to the beauty around them.
They don’t give simple movies a chance.
On the other hand, there are a ton of crappy movies out there today.
But El Crítico is not one of them.
But let me tell you about the secret weapon of the film under consideration:
Telma Crisanti.
Without her, this movie fails.
Not miserably, but the façade falls apart. And then the superstructure…
Ms. Crisanti plays Ágatha, the 16-year-old niece of our film critic Tellez.
It is she who plants the seed within Tellez’ mind that romantic comedies can be sublime.
But the salient point is this: the masses are not dumb.
I will stand by Thomas Jefferson on this point till the bitter end.
And so The Film Critic speaks to young and old. And middle-aged.
It is about miracles.
But it is real.
Simply put, this is the Sistine Chapel of romcoms.
Or, what Michelangelo would have done with the genre.
Simply stunning!
-PD