A Grand Illusion

It’s found in the (out of print, alas) Chris Heath-authored Pet Shop Boys, Literally. Neil Tennant recalls an unrecorded song from their early days called “Oh Dear.”

CHRIS: It was dead funny. What were the lyrics?

NEIL: The tune sounded like the Specials and it went:

I was walking down the high street in the middle of the night
Someone caught my eye and I nearly died of fright
Crossed the road to whisper something secret in my ear
And now I know I’ll never be the same again
Oh dear

(They both collapse into hysterics)

I’m miffed at Jane Dark for noticing details in Clean that I’d jotted down but failed to remark on in my post. Olivier Assayas’s dispassionate camera, for example, simply observes Maggie Cheung devouring a cheeseburger and onion rings. We note quietly that it’s probably the first junk food she’s eaten after six months in the clink. We note also that Assayas doesn’t linger on the scene, almost out of tact; she takes two or three bites at a time, stuffs the o-rings in her mouth, and we cut quickly to Nick Nolte, whose own gaze appraises but won’t commit to a judgment — yet.

Staring into space and calculating, figuring things out, waiting for the recoil he uncertainly expects from Cheung after each of his polite, hopeful rhetorical brutalities. They never come.

If I may permit myself a splendid generalization, Nolte’s performance is the truest representation of goodness I’ve seen in recent cinema. His is a generosity of spirit leavened by the awareness that he courts humiliation at each juncture.

After months of ignominious banishment to the nether regions of my hard drive’s music folder, I unearthed the Wire remix of Erasure’s “Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day,” renamed “Fingers & Crumbs” – appropriate, since this isn’t so much a revision as a reinvention. Colin Newman casts Andy Bell’s wounded tenor adrift on a sea of arctic-blue electric guitar strums, worthy of Wire’s It’s Beginning to & Back Again; it’s 9:30 of lovelorn trance, and much the most powerful music Bell’s put his name on. “Gone and blown it all” he repeats, growing more desolate with each gradation, until – in a neat reversal of Newman’s own vocal at the beginning of Wire’s “Heartbeat” – he disappears into the ether.

If anyone wants a copy, let me know.

Forget Antonioni: Jacques Tati had the right attitude towards the trendiest trope in early sixties cinema: the soullessness of Modern Life. In Playtime, newly restored in a Criterion edition which can only be described as incandescent, Tati is more bemused than sad by modernity; he catches people who love the chic new toys but stumble when they try to make them work, but instead of laughing at them his 70 mm compositions reminds us that they’re part of something larger even if they’re oblivious to it, or — in the case of Monsieur Hulot — can’t understand it. Plate-glass windows never looked tastier; you can almost chew on their gleaming surfaces. The soundtrack captures a city hip to its own trendiness. The buzz of a drugstore’s electric sign has a soothing effect, as does the emerald glare the sign casts on Hulot and the patrons. For the American tourists stepping out of tour buses, Paris is the place to be because it’s just like America; and wasn’t this the idyll that post-modern advertising promised to realize? Every city is just like your city. Playtime argues that the sterility of Cold War architecture is a palliative against the corrosive effects of the job for which you’re working in that building in the first place; that architecture and noise pollution can be part of the “experience” of modern life*, which is what I infer from studying Walt Disney World’s Contemporary Resort Hotel and Tomorrowland in their seventies incarnations.

The familiar Hulot is peripheral to his own film, a wraith in a trenchcoat. This fact and the recurring sight gag of the restaurant valet imitating a door by holding a massive knob is perhaps the closest Playtime approaches didacticism: if we love our things we become things. But in this tinkerbox world, is that so bad?

The worthiest compliment I can pay to the restaurant sequence which dominates the second half is that it summons the gleeful grownups-playing-naughty air of Viridiana’s Last Supper scene, or, better, L’Age D’Or. Where the creator of L’Avventura and La Notte would have tut-tutted watching his revelers carouse as a restaurant (literally) collapses on and around them, Tati can’t begrudge them their fun. The fat American who gets mistakenly bumped from table to table, rather than losing his temper, is cheerful when the waiter switches a footlight on with an abrupt kick. Again, the compositions’ expansiveness implicate the viewer too. Try to resist this, Tati seems to say.

This film is the best evidence that Franco-American aesthetic policy is fruitful in a way that foreign policy never will.

* Isn’t this what Pere Ubu’s The Modern Dance and Dub Housing suggest too? The difference is in the privileging of senses. Playtime emphasizes aural and audio stimuli while the Ubu stuff emphasizes aural and olfactory, in an imaginative sense; you can practically smell the exhaust fumes from the Rustbelt factory backdrops.

I wanted to hate Marisha Pessl’s “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.” You can tell right away she has pedigree and her idea of hard work is lifting her Norton Anthology from the Louis Quatorze desk. But I ended up liking it all, even when she was scrubbing my face on how smart she was. It’s a good gimmicky book. Read it.
I’m also recommending Scott Smith’s “The Ruins” Yes, I know Stephen King did it, and, no, the novel doesn’t deliver anything more than very taut thrills, but… well, how often are you thrilled?

What makes Maggie Cheung’s performance in Clean so marvelous is her understanding of how her ex-junkie’s impatience and hauteur are proxies for heroin. They’re defenses against seemingly hostile forces: relatives who get you a menial job so that they can, in part, remind you of their generosity; former friends who won’t tell you if they ever really liked you or merely tolerated you; and even the genuine compassion of a father-in-law (Nick Nolte, finding new cracks in that gravelly voice). The Parisian babel in which writer-director Olivier Assayas, who divorced Cheung shortly before filming, places Cheung looks wonderful in the grey light. Cheung, lighting endless cigarettes, looks great despite hair that looks like it was mauled by hedge clippers. His talent for marrying music with images remains intact, though: here it’s Brian Eno’s swirling, murky Apollo soundtrack, the title track to Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and “Spider & I.”

Most of the reviews didn’t do justice to this film’s quiet power. The dialogue is unremarkable and honest (as when an acquaintance, visiting Cheung in prison, responds to her question about whether methadone truly makes you feel better: “Depends on the person. Not for me”). If no images sear themselves in the brain as indelibly as Cheung’s imitation of a cat burglar, scored to Sonic Youth’s “Tunic (Song for Karen Carpenter)” in Irma Vep, maybe there’s more at stake for Assayas’ characters. There’s only one (early) scene showing Cheung shooting up. Clean deals with the aftermath. Just “getting by” is painful: crossing a street corner, driving a scooter, concentrating on a game of pool while a friend listens to demos which represent the last attempt at forging a career.

It’s out on DVD.

I’m very fond of Sting’s The Soul Cages, the only solo album on which his poetic pretensions find appropriate, pretty settings. Since this is Sting he’s incapable of considering that ponderous subjects may be more interesting if treated with levity. The endless closer “When The Angels Fall” falls and falls, searching for a melody, anything to justify itself and its employment of worn tropes (and yet a feisty deejay played this at my junior prom, to my delight if not my date’s). Elsewhere his crack band injects a tricky time signature on “Jeremiah Blues (Part 1)” as predictable as their paymaster’s wit and even stoops to power chords on the epic (there’s three songs which qualify as such; remember this is Sting), broken-kneed shuffle of the title track.

Yet there’s a sense in which Sting’s commitment to the myth of his upbringing (destitute Newcastle shipbuilder dies to give birth to the once and future King of Pain) frees him from sullying his genius on the creation of hits and such. At least half of TSC’s tracks allude to his childhood, and each improves on its predecessor, as if he was a writer discarding incomplete drafts. He works damn hard here, and while the strain shows the results are often impressive. The album’s lone hit, “All This Time” is one of the oddest Top Fivers ever: a striking mandolin hook (”Losing My Religion,” the year’s other mandolin hit, was three months away) and Sting’s mastery of conversational cadences; he unfurls those polysyllabic sentences (”Fussin’ and flappin’ in priestly black like a murder of crows”) as if Paul Simon had never existed. “Why Should I Cry For You?” should get more publicity as his most ambiguous ballad since “Every Breath You Take.” Sounding a little like Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” and studded with unexpected filigrees, it shows a rueful, gentler Sting, whose dusky croon weighs each word like he can’t understand why he should feel conflicted. The sailor-far-from-home metaphor mitigates the assholism he’s surprisingly eager to accept (”"I loved you in my fashion”). It’s a touching performance, justifying the song’s inclusion in a couple of C-90’s I’ve compiled over the years.

From its doctor’s-office cover art to Ottmar Liebert homage/pastiche, The Soul Cages is estimable middlebrow art. It’s the sort of album your cousin Ralph will zealously defend at a Christmas party, provoking from you a condescending smirk but no rebuttal.

Yo La Tengo’s latest is good-not-great.

Sure, I grant Joseph Von Sternberg his due — as a creator of grand, exquisitely lit recreations of fantasy worlds in which Marlene Dietrich scabrously glowered. As much as I adore The Blue Angel, Morocco, and The Scarlet Empress, I can’t quite endorse Graham Fuller’s claim that Sternberg reveals “cold, cruel truths about love,” especially when the cold cruel truth is that, with the exceptions of Gary Cooper and Emil Jannings, her leading men were sticky wickets like Clive Brook (and, sadly, the young Cary Grant) for whom love was as irritating as a warm gin and tonic. Of course, as if to compensate, the cocoons in which Sternberg encased Dietrich became increasingly elaborate. I’m reminded of Orson Welles’ demurral in that book of interviews he composed with Peter Bogdanovich: “He had a perfect, really an immense visual command, over what is finally kitsch” (Bogdanovich’s ascot wrinkled defensively, no doubt). I’m uncomfortable with granting kitsch a value beyond itself, even when it’s as plush and intoxicating as Sternberg’s.

Terence Davies’ adaptation of The House of Mirth is simply one of the most underrated films of the new millenium. Rent it.

A backup singer known for sterling anonymity courts obliquity when she becomes a lead vocalist. Every other featured player on Jennifer Warnes’ version of Leonard Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan” sears: Stevie Ray Vaughan, the vulgar gleam of the synthesizers, Cohen’s vampiric lyrics. Meanwhile, I didn’t buy a note of Warnes’ vocal; she sounds like Pat Nixon imitating Dennis Hopper. Why is she more convincing on her big hit, released the same year as her modest selling Famous Blue Raincoat — “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”, her schlockarama duet with Bill Medley for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack? Guess the L.A.-approved euphoria of the song’s melody and words jived with Warnes’ own aesthetic.

Crestfallen, I replayed my second-favorite Cohen album Various Positions. Well, I was floored all over again by the heartbreaking manner in which she cushions Cohen’s croak on “If It Be Your Will.” I’m wary of angel metaphors, but Warnes does sound like a some kind of celestial guardian offering the peace Cohen demands (her trills at the 3:19 mark are goosepimply perfection).

This chilling story slated to run in tomorrow’s Washington Post chronicles the unfathomable layers of cronyism that went into the rebuilding of Iraq. This is how political appointee Jim O’Beirne (whose wife Kate is an editor of National Review and a frequent guest on “Meet the Press”) selected the best and brightest were selected:

O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

But don’t worry. Those hired worked tirelessly:

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

What do my fellow critics hear in the Junior Boys and Hot Chip? With their polite beats and the vocal-as-embarrassed-afterthought mouthing sentimental vagaries, this is dance music for people who don’t like to dance very often (I don’t go so far as to claim — as one buddy said — that it’s music for people who don’t like dance music). I’m rather fond of Hot Chip’s The Warning, a tuneful minor success that mines two veins of disco: the absurdist (”Over & Over”) and the obsessive “([Just Like We] Breakdown”); but, jeez, I didn’t shudder as its world-historic importance sat on my head. Meanwhile So This is Goodbye really skimps on the melodies in favor of “textures” or something — or, in the words of a contemporary, creators of moments that “refuse to be architected.” (I didn’t know that was a verb either). It says a lot that the album’s most memorable tune is a Frank Sinatra song — and a lugubrious one too. I couldn’t listen to Frankie Knuckles for more than 10 minutes at a time myself.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_re_mi_ea/pope_muslims_14
There’s a lot of hilarious things about the new controversy and this article. If I may resort to broad strokes, let me point out the obvious funny highlights:
-The Pope commenting on the war-like ways of Islam by quoting a text from the Middle Ages. And we all know how peaceful the Catholic Church was during the Middle Ages.
-”How dare the Pope say we’re violent?!?” say Muslims caught in a “a torrent of rage that many fear could burst into violent protests.”
- The Pope quoted a text on how Islam allows for jihads. “He’s ignorant about Islam!” Hmmm, no, he’s right. Islam DOES allow for jihads. And that’s a problem. See, when a “Christian” president starts a war, he’s EXPRESSLY going against Christian doctrine. But Muslim doctrine does encourage war as a way of spreading the faith. And yes, I’ve read the Q’ran, as I’m sure the Pope has.
-Muslim officials all agree that Pope’s comments are “derogatory”. What no Muslim official has been able to say is that the Pope’s comments are FALSE. Food for thought.
-This paragraph is awesome:
“The pope and Vatican proved to be Zionists and that they are far from Christianity, which does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood,” Shiite cleric Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi said during a sermon in Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra.
Translation: “Christianity and Islam maaay be able to get along. The ones we need to kill are the Jews.”

My verdict- my humble, unlearned opinion:
The Pope’s dumb for saying this. But he’s not quite LYING, is he?
Fanaticism sucks.
And Jihads are deadly.

I need not touch on my own religious views, except to remind you that Islam forbids the use of alcohol. FORBIDS. I’m gonna stick with party animal Jesus.

Check out the photography of George Steinmetz. His photos have appeared in National Geographic and various science and travel magazines. The camel photo on the front page is incredible.

I’m also partial to the Armani billboard. Look under “Identities”, then at the photo on the bottom right; it’s one of the light-haired man wearing sunglasses.