Johnny Case in Wonderland . . . hopelessly adrift in popular culture

While I don’t think it’s a slight that Ryan Gosling’s dead-eyed and frustratingly flat turn in Drive—a silly and nihilistic hyper-violent film adored by 15 year old boys, for whom it is perfectly tailored—didn’t earn him an Academy Award nomination, I am genuinely surprised that The Tree of Life was nominated for Best Picture and also earned a Best Director nod for Terrence Malick (who also wrote the script). Not because it isn’t deserving, but because it’s so strange and otherworldly and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and certainly not the kind of fare that normally generates Best Picture nominations.  Sure, the French loved it (Malick won the Palme d’Or at Cannes), but there’s just no way this movie will play outside of urban areas in America.  I might have hated it.  Then again, maybe I loved it.  I’m still working it out.  At times I was frustrated, but at others I was deeply moved and enchanted and at several points I got teary, though I’m not quite sure how or why that happened.  I was talking to a friend last night about it and I said, “Can you believe it got nominated for Best Picture,” and he replied, “I know!  What is that thing—is it even a movie?”  It’s a great question as it’s certainly not a movie like we’re used to seeing.  It’s as though Ezra Pound got transported into our present and discovered digital technology and decided to use it make make an imagistic tone poem that allusively recalls the past while simultaneously pointing towards the future.  I saw it in a movie theatre in LA and I’m so glad I did as Emmanuel Lubezki’s immersive cinematography (also nominated) is meant to be experienced and felt as much as seen and that can only happen if you see it on the big screen.  This is a movie I’ve spent months trying to come to grips with and I still haven’t, but it’s big and sprawling and ambitious in a way few if any other pictures I’ve seen in recent years are.  Like a lot of other folks, I’m often annoyed with the Academy’s habit of frequently anointing audience friendly middling fare, but you’ve to give credit where it’s due and though I’m surprised I’m also thrilled that they went with the way of grace and nominated this boldly experimental but little-seen film.

We are super excited to announce that Sterling Hallard Bright Drake will be screening at the 34th Annual Big Muddy Film Festival, which is one of the oldest university affiliated festivals in the U.S. and has a “reputation for programming excellence … recognized world wide by film and video professionals, as well as academics and faculty at distinguished institutions.”  This is a great festival at which we’ve always wanted to play, and we are honored and delighted to have been accepted!  It’s playing as part of the Late Night Screening block on Friday, February 24th at 10:30PM at the Big Muddy Independent Media Center.

… when a loud, messy, mostly incoherent, and largely uninteresting film fails to garner an Oscar nomination.  Yup, I’m looking at you and your dog, Tintin.  Having grown up with the books, I wanted to love it, but I was surprised with how boring it turned out to be, especially given that the trailer looks great.  At any rate, not a snub, oversight, or an omission.  Just common sense.

Two years ago I spent Chinese New Years Eve (which is just one day of what is really a two week long celebration) on the roof of a 41 story apartment building in Tin Hau on Hong Kong Island watching fireworks go off over Victoria Harbor.  This was immediately followed by what was one of the best, and most decadent, parties I’ve ever been to in my life.  I was just beginning to adjust to living in Hong Kong and that night and the following day pretty much sealed the deal.  I freaking loved it there and have missed it horribly since I left, but never so much as now, when I’m trapped in an ice floe in the middle of nowhere in Washington state.  Bedford Falls is a very challenging place to live in the winter.  Conversely, there’s nothing like living in a foreign country.  I knew no one, not a soul, when I got off the plane in Hong Kong, and it was a weird feeling, but also totally magical.  It’s such a rare opportunity to start life anew; when you’re abroad you are completely anonymous and you can be whoever you want to be.  You merely create the narrative you want to be your own and so it is.  There’s no baggage as unless you’re a fugitive (which I most certainly was not) you can leave whatever parts of your past you’d like to leave behind back home.  And so I did. 

And now I’m back home and I’ve reassumed the old narrative, but that’s fine too, as it’s somehow better for my having had a chance to work on it from a different angle while living somewhere else and I feel like it all started on that night two years ago that kicked off the year of the tiger.  It’ll be a while before I can live abroad again, but I’m already secretly planning and plotting how to make it happen and vetting potential locales—hopefully once again in Asia, as I love the chaos and discombobulation that comes with living somewhere so foreign to my own experience.  At any rate, to all my friends and family, may your work and love lives in this, the year of the dragon, be prosperous and productive, full of health, happiness, and wealth.  Kung Hei Fat Choy!

So you know how the national news has been reporting nonstop on the snowpocalypse in the Pacific northwest?  Yeah, that happened, as you can tell from this shot of the backyard of the Smythsonian, my beloved Bedford Falls manse:

Here’s the thing though: it’s only an event because the NW refuses to deal with snow.  I was in Seattle during a “snowstorm” a few years back during which it snowed maybe 3 inches in a 24 hour period and people literally parked their cars on Interstate 5 and walked away.  I’m not a snow person—in fact, I’m well known as one who detests the snow and cold—but in another lifetime I once lived in Chicago for a winter (yup, it was for a girl), i.e. a place where it actually snows.  A lot.  And yet it’s no problem.  They salt, they plow, and life goes on apace.  But most towns up in this part of the world, including Bedford Falls, don’t own snowplows.  They subcontract with hillbillies who have bulldozer blades attached to the front of their 4 x 4s, and even then, only after days of snow.  The bulldozers don’t plow so much as they scrape the surface snow to the side of the road, which hermetically seals any cars parked there in a snowbank and leaves the roads encased in a solid 5 inch thick sheath of ice.  It would be better if they didn’t “plow” at all.  The thinking goes that municipalities investing in snow removal equipment would be a waste of money because it doesn’t really snow much up here, and that’s mostly true, except for the few times a year—every year—that it does snow, during which we’re f***ed for much longer than we otherwise would be because they don’t own plows, they don’t salt the roads, and they don’t even lay sand.  The public schools were cancelled yesterday as a result of 3 inches of snow.  3 inches!  Washington governor Christine Gregoire has declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard.  Seriously.  Yeah, I’m annoyed and embarrassed.  Here’s the view from the front port of the Smythsonian on this, day three of the snowpocalypse.  Keep in mind that it hasn’t snowed in well over 24 hours and also note that under normal circumstances there is a road between my yard and the houses across the street.

The following is a verbatim transcript from my trip to the store this morning:

Me: [Scanning my list.]  “Let’s see, I think we just need lemons and then we’re outta here.”

My 7-year-old daughter: “What kind of cocktails are you making, Dad?”

Old blue-hair who overheard: “Did she just ask you about cocktails?”

Me: [I smile sweetly and nod affirmatively at the blue hair as I grab 10 lemons.  It’s a highball night and we’re having company.]

…or near it at any rate.  We’re delighted to announce that Sterling Hallard Bright Drake will be screening at the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, NV on Friday, February 10th at 2:30PM in the historic Boulder Theatre.  We’ve heard great things about this festival from a lot of people, so we’re hoping we can make it! 

… have in common?  A: An unabashed love of the Grateful Dead.  This amazes me!  I discovered this strange factoid while reading Michael Azerrad’s “Our Band Could be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground (1981-1991),” which is one of the three best books about music I’ve ever read (interestingly, all three are about a specific era of punk rock).  When I was in high school and college during the 1980s, I LOVED Ginn’s Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, T.S.O.L., The Ramones, The Dead Kennedys, The Replacements, The Minutemen, and any number of other punk and post-punk bands.  I was also a hard core Deadhead (100+ shows).  And when living first in the San Francisco Bay Area and later in my beloved Chico—which had both Vomit Launch, its very own awesome punk(ish) band, and Mother Hips, a still extant Dead influenced band that I used to see at backyard keggers when they were called The Keystones—that somehow never seemed incongruent to me.  Indeed, the Bay Area may well have been the only place in the world where you could go see a punk show at the Mabuhay Gardens while wearing a tie-dye one night and a Dead show at the Berkeley Community Theatre while wearing a Black Flag shirt the next and not catch crap for it in either venue.  In a lot of other places around the country that sort of behavior at punk shows could well have resulted in a beating, but not in the Bay Area.  I always just kind assumed I was a bit weird in really loving such divergent kinds of music, but now I find out Ginn, founder of one of the hardest of all early SoCal punk bands, also loves the Dead.  For some reason this delights me beyond all reason.

I’m delighted to announce that our documentary short Sterling Hallard Bright Drake is an official selection of the 2012 Cinequest Film Festival, where it will play in March (exact time & place TBA).  The dead-time between when you finish a film and then start hearing back from festivals is an absolute killer for your confidence, so it’s nice to start things off with an acceptance to a festival that Chris Gore’s Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide lists alongside Toronto, Sundance, and Cannes as one of the world’s best.  We’ve never been, but we’re excited to find out first-hand what it’s like!