Music video for “Virtual Insanity” (1996) dir. Jonathan Glazer
Yes, but of course the guy who directed this iconic 90s music video for the British acid jazz band Jamiroquai is the same went on to make the harrowing Holocaust art film The Zone of Interest. I guess there’s some straight lines that can be drawn… give me a minute… A meditation on the flexibility of space even within a specific context? There might have also been a large black bird in both.
The real connection is Glazer’s penchant for memorable imagery within seemingly basic confines. Think on Under the Skin and the simple black void with a shimmery floor where men are led to their doom. The rabbit underground in Sexy Beast. And yes, the creepily banal house on the edge of an internment camp in Zone of Interest.
Without ready access to behind-the-scenes videos online, this video was a source of endless fascination to me in the days when MTV ruled the teen cable landscape. Every time I thought I had it figured out between its disguised cuts, the furniture would move in a way that refused to fit with my theory. Even after figuring out its tricks – learning that it’s often the walls moving over a smooth floor rather than either the floor or furniture moving finally unlocks it – the video still delights with its innovation and surprises.
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C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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State of the art special effects, little attention paid to plot - what's changed over the past 120 years?
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M*A*S*H, Season One, Episode Nineteen, “The Longjohn Flap”
This is the first of many, many, MANY episodes about the camp being fucking cold (many). The basic plot is pretty funny; it’s a fairly basic ‘deal-after-deal’ sitcom plot, except it’s about a pair of longjohns that gets passed around the camp. Thematically, there’s not much going on – the most interesting thing is the note that the army sent them summer utilities at the wrong time of year, an easy and comforting joke about bureaucracy. It’s more the performances and the style that I took notes on this time; I can summarise my love for Alan Alda’s performance in how he switches from maniacal glee at being warm (“Well next time, try to stay out of the draft! Hahahahaha!”) to an ironic focused rage (not actually angry but definitely mildly annoyed) on a dime. Both are funny on their own; the immediate switch from one to the other is comic sublime (and again, massive influence on my sense of humour).
I also thought about Larry Linville’s performance as Frank. I think part of what makes Frank a great character is that Linville finds a core of sincerity to him. Frank is genuinely a very stupid, selfish man, but Linville plays him with a childlike innocence; I’m always struck by how he performs Frank when he’s doing nothing and not being directly perceived, because he still projects an energy and inner life. Any cruelty he does is purely reactionary; this has a classic Frank joke in his loudly insisting Klinger polish his heels to military precision. If there was no chance for Frank in the script, Linville at least conveys through performance that Frank could have been something else, if his life had been different.
Linville really does give Frank a sense of humanity and even a pathos–when we eventually get him saying, “Bye, Margaret,” it’s one of my favorite line deliveries in the series–and this is a great way of describing it.
“This is the first of many, many, MANY episodes about the camp being fucking cold (many). ”
The Korean War was long – 11 years!
The Pitt, “7:00 AM” and “8:00 AM”
My wife picked this as our next show now that we’re all caught up on Hacks. For a lot of “7:00 AM,” we were both worried that had been a mistake, because the script feels clumsy, overly explanatory, and out-of-date, prestige cable with the weaknesses of network TV but not the strengths. (Me: “Okay, you can do this ‘the whole season is one long shift’ premise or you can do flashbacks, but not both, and I’d honestly prefer you not do either.”) But “8:00 AM” mostly sees it shifting into feeling enjoyably network, with good use of plots that, however absurd, move quickly, have a lot of interesting potential, and feature simple but vivid moral dilemmas and/or emotional impacts. And while a lot of the characterization feels cheesy and obvious, it’s also effective, creating the kind of memorable sketches you need to learn this large of a cast this quickly. I don’t see it dethroning Scrubs in my heart–and it’s a big reminder that I need to watch ER already–but it’s already settling into a groove of knowing what it wants to do and doing it reasonably well. Shelve it with the rest of the new procedural wave, like Matlock and High Potential.
I keep thinking about revisiting ER, I watched a bunch of it with my mum when it aired on UK TV so it occupies a similar “I watched a lot of this, I remember little of this” place in my brain as the X-Files did, and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to that.
Maaaatlooooock!
I’ve been a little curious about The Pitt with how much people seem to like it, but that’s always a double-edged sword for me – I have no idea if they like it because it’s actually good or it just hits all the Tradition of Quality (to use Truffaut’s term) signifiers of Prestige Flavored Television Product.
Thus far, I would say it’s not actually very prestige-flavored at all: it feels a lot more like a late ’90s or mid ’00s network drama in terms of style and structure. You still might not like it–thus far, even the episode I liked felt more like “solidly entertaining B” than “great”–but I don’t think that would be your problem with it.
Well, that’s good to know. I’ll wait to hear more from you as to how good it actually is, but it would be nice if this was a sign that the audiences I usually see talking about prestige TV are swinging back to desiring actual individual episodes with real structure.
Ordeal by Innocence – A scientist home from two years in the Arctic discovers that he could have been the alibi for a man hanged for murder. He sets out to find the truth, but sometimes the truth does not make anyone more free. Based on an Agatha Christie novel that has been adapted twice more, and is apparently her favorite work. And produced by Cannon Films so that invariably means a Z-list director (someone named Desmond Davis) and decent but never great production values and curious decisions about how to depict events in the past and the bizarre decision to throw out the score at the last minute and instead use pre-existing music by Dave Brubeck that never fits the story. But this also slides in nicely with the slew of Christie adaptations that followed Murder on the Orient Express, movies that at least filmed at pretty locations and kept the essence of the story and employed good actors. This one is held together almost entirely by Donald Sutherland, who brings the right mix of indignation, soulfulness, and humor to the lead role. The cast also include Faye Dunaway (wasted in flashbacks as the murder victims), Christopher Plummer, Sarah Miles, and Ian McShane in too small a role.
Frasier, “The Focus Group” – Frasier’s ego trips him up as he cannot take one person in an otherwise enthusiastic focus group who doesn’t like him. And of course violates the rules and tracks down the poor guy and ruins his life! The poor guy is played by Tony Shalhoub, who was initially approached to play his character on Wings on Frasier (returning the favor of Frasier once being on that sitcom) but instead offered to appear in a different role. Shalhoub is naturally great as someone as quiet and reserved as Frasier is blustery. But the best bits here are Martin reacting to all the crap his son gets up to. There is also a brief B plot where Niles and Daphne get into an argument and Niles of course finds it arousing.
I would never have guessed that Cannon Films had adapted Ordeal by Innocence. I’ll have to check this out. I watched the first two-odd episodes of the more recent miniseries adaptation and found it disappointing in the way the modern run of Christie miniseries adaptations usually are (with the exception of And Then There Were None, which is supposed to be dark and rather mean), so it’d be nice to see a better version. And that’s a great cast.
Thelma – June Squibb gets scammed and decides she’s not going to take it lying down. It’d be easy for the “what if the protagonist in an action film was 93 years old?” premise to result in a load of hacky jokes, but this hit pretty much all the right notes for me – it’s sweet and silly but takes the stakes seriously and finds ways to make the action exciting even if a chase takes place on mobility scooters rather than motorbikes and a “hacking” sequence is actually just the elderly star trying to deal with pop-up ads. Really good performances too, lovely send-off for Richard Roundtree and Thelma’s concerned family members all get good lines. Sweet learning that it was inspired by the filmmaker’s actual grandmother too.
Agreed, this one finds a delightful tone in what could have used the elderly as a punchline or as vehicles for sappy lessons.
Lenny – An early attempt at a cure for the common biopic, Bob Fosse weaves in “documentary” interviews with Hoffman’s impression of Lenny Bruce’s standup and wild life. This results in a fantastically watchable film – maybe it’s obvious to say that Fosse is a master of rhythm, but that his editing indicates it’s on a cellular level – even if it’s maybe not one that quite gets out of what would become the default mode of VH1’s Behind the Music.
I didn’t know Glazer made Sexy Beast. That final shot of Ben Kingsley entombed in the pool is a memorable one for me.
Edit to add: Of course it would have been so much better if Kingsley had a big silly hat on.
Definitely. I also love the images during the heist – very original plan.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And there’s still time to sign up for any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 1999!
TBD: James Williams: 10 Things I Hate About You
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez – Summerteeth/The Soft Bulletin/Utopia Parkway
TBD: Lauren James – Storm of the Century
Apr. 18th: Gillian Rose Nelson: The Hand Behind the Mouse
Apr. 21st: Bridgett Taylor: Fight Club
Apr. 24th: Cori Domschot: The Matrix
Apr. 25th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Disney on DVD
Apr. 29th: Dave Shutton: American Pie/Class of 1999