Men With "Dirty Macs"
Now Playing: New Pornographers--"Execution Day"
Sunday's Cinema Guild showing was Mario Bava's 1971 "classic" Twitch of the Death Nerve, shown under the title of Bay of Blood. The plot is incredibly simple--people show up to a deserted house, where they are all messily butchered by a variety of knaves and rascals. Twitch was the primary inspiration for the slasher genre "as we knew it" in the late 70s and 80s, which means that it was responsible for a whole truckload of awful movies. After Five Dolls the week before, this was a real letdown. If you're young and pretty and have sex, you basically deserve to die, was the message here. It reminded me of last year's midnight showing of Psycho at the Michigan Theater, part of that excruciatingly pretentious New Yorker "tour." I'd been prepared to enjoy it, but a whole lot of slasher-flick aficionados showed up towards the front of the seats, and the creepy, unwholesome simian hooting during Marion Crane's "big scene" really turned me off the genre for a while. We had a few newcomers show up who were apparently huge Bava fans and say in so many words "well, if you don't like it, you just don't get it." Fair enough, although lack of understanding won't stop me from criticizing. For me, that whole way of thinking's kind of a weak ploy to weasel out of narrative accountability. I think after shows like "Doctor Who" and movies like The Wicker Man, I've been spoiled for interesting writing and intriguing plots, and now expect those in all my movies and TV shows. I recently saw Shaun of the Dead (2004), a British comedy about a 29-year old retail worker forced to cope with an onslaught of zombies. Brilliant writing, terrific acting, wonderful characters, and not a wasted moment in the entire movie. I'd seen that the day before Twitch, so maybe that spoiled it for me. What an elitist prick I am.

Speaking of "Doctor Who," I finally get to see the new show tomorrow night on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which we get from Windsor, Ontario. There's already been a great deal of discussion on the British Horror Films forum as to the new series' relative merit--some of it acrimonious, probably forcing away a much beloved poster, sad to say. I haven't gotten that excited about it yet, although I'm sure I'll be squawking a different tune tomorrow evening.

The weather's getting a lot nicer, and I think I'm starting to feel a little better about life. A long walk sounds like an excellent idea.

Global Warming Wanted! All Is Forgiven!
Now Playing: Super Furry Animals--"The Placid Casual"
The week has been remarkably blah in Ann Arbor. This is hardly surprising, but whoever's "in charge" has seen fit to dangle a couple of days of spring in front of our faces and then pee on us by bringing back the 40s. In an environment where I've become convinced I suffer from seasonal affect disorder, this is no laughing matter (for me, anyhow).

I've started walking again, and that definitely makes me feel better. Some of my best days here have been spent walking, and I found yesterday while tracing over the crime map in the Ann Arbor Observer that I've covered a remarkable area in and around downtown over the last two and a half years.

As is my wont, I passed the week by watching a couple of good movies: Memento (2001) and The Official Story (1985), both rented from the Ann Arbor District Library as usual.

Memento I got as a lark, but ended up enjoying it, a "Time's Arrow"-type journey, directed by Christopher Nolan, through one man's truly fucked-up life. Stricken with an intense short-term memory disorder, he can only remember things that happened a few minutes ago, apart from his life before his wife's death. Guy Pearce's excellent performance and truly weird charisma help to redeem some stilted dialogue. There's also a heartbreaking portrayal of a married couple by Harriet Sansom Harris (Bebe on Frasier) and Stephen Tobolowsky.

Another marriage with problems dominates The Official Story, an Argentinian film made shortly after the collapse of the military dictatorship that fought the Malvinas/Falklands War of 1982 and murdered all the thousands of "desparecidos" (people suspected of subversive activity) beginning in 1977. A well-to-do teacher realizes that her daughter is actually the child of such a couple, taken by her husband, a man with influence in the government. Her growing awareness of how the political situation is tearing her family apart is pretty moving, and I wish I wasn't so lazy at present so I could check imdb for a few names (for shame).

I also saw His Girl Friday (1939), which was great. I now have a huge crush on Rosalind Russell. Much better than the original The Front Page (1931), with Pat O'Brien and Adolphe Menjou, pretty awesome to begin with. Those who like that sort of thing should check out a rare Cinema Guild evening showing on Tax Day, April 15, at 8 pm in Auditorium 2 of the Modern Languages Building at the University of Michigan. Cinema Guild jefe Lou Goldberg will be showing a pair of movies from His Girl Friday helmsman Howard Hawks--the original 1932 Scarface, starring Paul Muni (I've seen it, and it's awesome), and 1939's Only Angels Have Wings, with Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth. So many movies, so little time...

I'm not actually listening to the SFA right now, but it's the last thing I heard. I'm not sure how that thing works, anyhow.

I'm just not into the April Fool's thing anymore.

"Dead People Don't Come Back To Life"
"If the priest knows that a person who is living a notoriously evil life intends to come to Communion, the priest shall speak to that person privately, and tell him that he may not come to the Holy Table until he has given clear proof of repentance and amendment of life."

--The Book of Common Prayer (Episcopal) (1979)

I love that "notoriously."

I went to church voluntarily for the first time in seventeen years yesterday. It was out of curiosity, not belief--I've never believed going to church has any effect on behavior or morality for me (outside of acquainting me with the Bible, which I could have done on my own--and largely did), and if that's the case, then why go? I was interested to see how it would feel after all these years and Easter Sunday seemed as good a time to go as any. There were decided differences of course, between Trinity Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor.

St. Andrew's was much more architecturally impressive (like that really means anything from a theological or moral standpoint). The building dates from 1867, and the interior decorations were gorgeous. It was odd, then, that the service was largely "contemporary," whereas the liturgy in the sixties wood-panelled glory that was Trinity Episcopal was mostly "traditional." I decided not to take the Eucharist, as I don't believe in its literal or even symbolic truth. I realized during the ceremony that it can be interpreted as a metaphor for one's membership in the human community, but I suspect that many of the people who take it view it in a far more literal sense, so I thought it would be disrespectful to go up there myself (I was confirmed and everything, but it looks a lot different from my own perspective). For me, it would be like joining a minyan or reciting the shahada (and I'm sure the other participants wouldn't appreciate it one bit). Interestingly enough, I can still pretty much deliver the entire Nicene Creed from memory. The title quote for this post comes from the Easter sermon, incidentally.

It was an enormously interesting experience--maybe I'll go again in 2015.

What better way, then, to further celebrate Easter than to drop by Cinema Guild and watch an Italian slasher film made by a devout Catholic with an almost sociopathic disdain for human nature?* Mario Bava's Five Dolls For an August Moon (1970) is one of the most bizarre and entertaining movies I've ever seen. The plot is pretty simple--several people end up stranded on an island and kill each other off, most of the reasons having to do with money and a secret scientific formula. There is absolutely no reason to care about the characters, and their sheer venality makes it fun to see them get killed off to some incredibly groovy music by Piero Umiliani. This is, of course, the staple situation of every slasher movie, but Bava somehow manages to make it classy, unlike Michael Lehmann in Heathers (1989), where some truly dark and funny satire is undercut by the script's apparent need to have Winona Ryder appear in a quasi-heroic role (and by Christian Slater's mere appearance onscreen). I was going to continue my spiritual Easter journey by going to see the Javanese gamelan performance of The Mahabharata at Hill Auditorium, but the movie had somehow drained my energies. If you get a chance, definitely check it out.

Five Dolls, not Heathers.

Here's a truly inspiring summary and appreciation of a great career. Make sure you read to the very end.

It's the first genuinely nice day of the year--I think I'll go frolic or something.

*I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

The Kingdom of Make-Believe Lives!!
Like Jesus and Bob Hoskins, I had a fairly eventful Good Friday. Sure, I didn't threaten the political and social fabric of entire civilizations. My London gangland empire was never conquered in the space of a day by the Irish Republican Army. It was pretty eventful, though. So there.

For one thing, I got my hair cut. People don't really like you or trust you unless you're well-groomed. It's a shitty lesson that leaches away one's will to live, but it's there. Honestly--I don't like anything making a liar out of the late, great Fred Rogers.

Tucked away in the Depot Town district of Ypsilanti, Michigan, the "D.T." or "Unabomber Central" (as I'm so close to calling it) seems the size of my kitchen and living room put together. It's apparently run by the multi-talented Naia Venturi, a local artist and puppeteer. I'd been there once before, for "Chemical Traces," a marionette musical about rival unabombers in love with the same disgruntled and heavily armed postal worker.

Good Friday at the Dreamland saw the "March Manifestival," a cavalcade of fun, games, music, and a marionette extravaganza (I like puppets, so I went), following a script partially composed through audience participation. It was a little alarming at first, as the Picaroons came on and played a whole lot of folk music (including a song derived from Shakespeare that I'm pretty sure was covered by Vashti Bunyan once upon a time). I recovered much later that night by listening to Rocket From the Tombs, the Mars Volta, and the Roots.

I don't know why, but the Dreamland seems to have an obsession with the Unabomber (himself an undeniable product of the "Harvard of the Midwest"). We played a trivia game where the contestants were read a line and had to guess if it came from a U.S. president, a Nobel laureate, or the Unabomber. I ended up tying this Martin guy and then it was on to the puppets. I seemed to pull a lot of adjectives during the script-writing, including "stainless," "ruddy," "tumescent," and "cavernous," which give you some idea of the finished product. A wonderful evening, even if (because?) I had to miss the folk-dancing to catch the last #5 bus back to Ann Arbor (um, yay, I guess).

After I returned, I went to the Blind Pig to see Jamie Register, one of the people behind hiphop collective Cloud Nine Music. Local band Otto Vector played first, and I'll just employ the notes I jotted during the performance...

"Who are these people? The place is deserted--I expect tumbleweeds. The music seems kind of a hard-edged dance-pop with a very eighties vibe. It's all right, but definitely not what I associate with the Blind Pig. Kylie Minogue with guitars--that's who they remind me of! Now I can die in peace (unless someone tries to pull a Schiavo on me, in which case I won't be pleased). There are some unbelievably half-hearted moshers right in front of the stage. I'm not sure I've got the heart to stick around for the Cloud Nine guys... Sweet Jesus, this place is dead (no offense, given the date). It's just as well, of course, as I found my usual place on the stool by the wall next to the 1972 Blues Fest album (with John Sinclair pompously smirking all the way through). Still... I've never seen it like this. Yeah, this is really getting me down. Screw the headliner--I could be at home watching old 'Cracker' episodes."

And so I went.

Protecting the Sanctity of Life the Only Way I Know How
For anyone around Ann Arbor looking to do some good Thursday night (of the four other people who've left comments on this blog so far, one's in Wales, one's in Florida, one's in Delaware, and one's in Louisiana, so I know it's unlikely), Planned Parenthood is having a volunteer night at their Ann Arbor clinic at 3100 Professional Dr. from 6:00-8:30 p.m. Don't worry if you miss The O.C., as it's begun to suck anyhow. There'll be envelope stuffing for the Spring Luncheon fundraiser, fun conversation (The Simpsons and aforementioned tanking FOX show will almost certainly enter into discussion if Jess and I have anything to do with it), and food, not to mention the great feeling you'll have upon completion. See you there, and if not, think of us fondly...

Values. Family. Jobs. Growth. Carbs. Choice. Ownership.
I went to hear a lecture this evening by U-M history professor Victor Lieberman on "Southeast Asian History in a Eurasian Context." Dr. Lieberman's specialization is in Burmese history and I'm pretty sure I used one of his articles in my thesis. Unfortunately, I was there for maybe a minute when I realized that it would almost certainly be a digression on the lecture notes I put together for the class on Southeast Asian history I taught at Akron a few years ago (trade routes, Mongol invasions, Srivijaya, etc.). Outside lay one of the first nice evenings of the year and I was inside in a stuffy lecture room. Off I went, I'm afraid. It was a curious thrill to confront my "past life" for a brief instant, but perhaps there'll be better opportunities down the road.

I'm maybe a third of the way through Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, which is much like pulling teeth. Check this out:

"At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it seemed, without being observed by him."

Most of the book is like that and I'm getting so close to tossing it out the window. On the other hand, I bet if I finish it that I'll be that much readier for Finnegan's Wake.

I finally saw Point Blank (1967) and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Point Blank was all deadly Lee Marvin cool, racing across semi-psychedelic L.A. trying to get his money back from his double-crossing ex-partner (John Vernon, in a terrific screen debut; he was great in The Outlaw Josey Wales as well). McCabe and Mrs. Miller might have been one of my favorite movies had it not been about a half an hour too long. I've always thought Robert Altman was hugely overrated (especially in M*A*S*H), but this was actually pretty good. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are well-matched as a gambler and a hooker who try to spruce up a grim Washington State mining town, and Michael Murphy characteristically livens things up as a clean-cut weasel. I love Michael Murphy. He makes every movie he's in sleazier.

The "greenway" resolution went down before the City Council last night; apparently its supporters behaved like absolute ninnies at the meeting--now I rather wish I'd been there.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!
Saturday morning I went to volunteer for Planned Parenthood at a Community and Health Expo at Second Baptist Church on Red Oak, near my former residence on the Old West Side of Ann Arbor. It was a rather bizarre experience, as prayers opened the event and we were treated to a stunning religious vocal performance by an area music major. It made me think about how foreign I now find organized religion. While I'm sure everyone at the event had different ideas on religion and spirituality, everyone also made strides towards coming together for a better community, something of which I'd certainly like to see more. Weirder still was that I'd brought a Bible with me; I'd recently seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1966) and was checking the events against the movie. The Sermon on the Mount gets me every time--thrilling stuff. Yet another reason I'm sometimes proud to be human.

The WRAP library will be up and running by April 9, the tenth anniversary of the organization's existence in Ann Arbor. Anyone interested should come check it out afterward in Braun Court, next to Kerrytown and right across from the /aut/ bar.

Arbor Update has an excellent summary of today's Treetown Scab Rag article (particularly excellent as it saves one the trouble of actually buying the Treetown Scab Rag or even fighting for it over at the library) on the greenway brouhaha to be voted on tomorrow night. I received a very pleasant email back from my councilwoman, Joan Lowenstein, who will be voting against the proposal, and who also thinks public transportation's great (yay!).

The Cinema Guild showing today was Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! (1966). It might be my favorite Bava so far, as the exteriors were beautifully shot in a sort of grainy texture enhancing the horrific nature of the film's events. The plot was more interesting than usual, with a ghost causing people to kill themselves, a pair of rival sorceresses, and a characteristically stiff male lead who looks a little like John Carradine. It could have used some more stringent editing towards the beginning, but still a fun time. Not as many people showed up this time as they did for Planet of the Vampires, but I surmised it was because the movie didn't have "planet" or "vampires" in the title. "Kill, Baby, Kill!"'s pretty cool, though, right? Maybe antes need to be upped. So next week it'll be Dimension of Amnesiac, Barely Legal Psycho Vixen Groupies in Go-Go Boots, one of Ken Loach's lesser-known offerings.

Here Comes the Sweeney
I've never seen The Sweeney, the landmark seventies British TV series which basically consisted of car chases and John Thaw screaming at people ("shut it!!"), but the name of the show came from Cockney rhyming-slang for the police "flying squad" ("Sweeney Todd," and so on). I thought of that last night during the screening of Detroit: Ruin of a City, by Michael Chanan and George Steinmetz. The workers striking at the River Rouge and other places apparently organized flying squads for protection against police and strikebreaking goons. So now you know.

Detroit played at the Rackham Ampitheater on the U-M Campus at 8:30, and I thought it'd be just me and a few curious onlookers. I arrived in the brisk evening air to find everybody in the fucking world milling about in the lobby. The original showing had "sold out" and they'd scheduled another one for 10:30. I decided to try that one, went home, had a beer, watched part of The McKenzie Break, and returned to barely squeeze into the second showing.

Mmmph. I actually don't know all that much about Detroit history, what I do know mainly coming from Heather Ann Thompson's Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. A lot of the footage was really interesting, especially the stuff shot by a local workers' film organization trying to even out the media balance in the 1930s, and I actually didn't know that the whole "Devil's Night" thing (referenced in The Crow and, if I'm not mistaken, that Judgement Night movie) comes from Detroit. Other than that, it was a bit of a wash. It was shot mostly on a camcorder as one of these Louis Theroux-type, post-ironic observers of American culture offers a variety of bon mots while being driven around the city by a couple of old Motown salts (apart from George Steinmetz, I actually don't remember the names). The editing was probably choppier than it needed to be--if intentional, it was incredibly pretentious; if not, they should have done a better job. And how'd a movie like this manage to snag Michael Nyman to handle the soundtrack? All in all, it was nowhere near worth coming back for the second showing. I'll think better next time before I go to anything associated with something entitled "Ruins of Modernity."

Oh, and Francine Prose read from her latest, A Changed Man, at the Liberty Street Borders just before the movie (not that the two were related). I enjoyed her novel The Blue Angel, and looked forward to the reading, but found I could only stay a few minutes as those readings inevitably give off such a whiff of sadness and gloom that I become even more depressed than usual by listening to them. So it was off to the Film section to "browse" through the latest TimeOut film guide. They didn't seem to like Picnic at Hanging Rock as much as I did, but they do admit the sheer awesomeness of Death Line (available at Liberty Street Video on DVD under the title Raw Meat).

Sodom and Begorrah
I have less and less use for St. Patrick's Day every year. To "celebrate," after work I went to watch a Chinese-American themed thriller from 1937, Daughter of Shanghai, introduced by a professor from the U of M Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Starring thirties sensations Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) and Philip Ahn (Master "Snatch the pebble, Grasshopper" Kan from Kung Fu), it's a brisk little B-picture about nasty illegal alien smugglers. Wong's father gets killed by the evil gang (headed by a hilarious villain) and she and Ahn, a hotshot G-man, cooperate (and don't) to bring her father's killers to justice. J. Carrol Naish, Charles Bickford, and a young Anthony Quinn show up as a few of the baddies. Great fun, and a perfect antidote to the St. Paddy's Day blues.

However, situations like these are precisely why Ann Arbor is overrated. If you live in Ann Arbor and read this, please follow the link to Brandon's first post, where he provides an email link to contact the mayor and/or councilmembers. I don't drive and I certainly don't plan on living in Ann Arbor longer than I have to, but it would be nice to see this city become a model for sustainable living rather than just another boutique suburb.

It's Everyone Else Who's Crazy, Judge Crater!
A recent event has forced me to wonder whether I'm really as nice as I think I am. I walk around Ann Arbor, with people not smiling back at me and chattering grimly into cellphones, and I occasionally feel much better that I'm being nice and they're not. But I'm starting to wonder if it's all a crock. I often blame life in this town for turning me into a misanthropic ass, but maybe I've been that way all along and the last two years have simply shown me the truth unadorned. Something to think about as I prepare for the Oirish hell that arrives tomorrow (mercifully, like Valentine's Day, it's only once a year).

In the meantime, I foolishly rely on movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to keep me sane. Peter Weir's masterpiece of repressed Victoriana helped pave the way for other films like Breaker Morant, Mad Max, and My Brilliant Career (all 1979) to put Australian cinema on the world map. Based on Joyce Lindsay's novel, which I intend to read, Picnic examines the turn-of-the-century disappearance of three schoolgirls and a governess at the natural landmark of Hanging Rock. It's quite the visual feast, with lots of pretty shots of nature (and schoolgirls lacing each others' corsets, drearily blatant phallic symbols, etc.) but doesn't really get going until the first half-hour is up. Once is does, though, it provides a smashing dissection of how the community around the girls' school falls apart in the wake of the incident, and a more general indictment of repression that would seem a little trite if not for Picnic's sheer visual beauty.

I also just finished Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country (1913). Taking, as she often did, the moneyed classes of New York for her subject, Wharton puts a merciless parvenu newcomer, Undine Spragg, into the mix of old and moneyed aristocracy and lets her rip through three husbands and the social fabric of two countries. Like Picnic, it's slow going for a bit but picks up towards the second half as it's clear Undine plans to leave no stone unturned in her quest for fortune and respectability. The ending's fantastic, but I won't give it away. As usual, Wharton's fiction hasn't dated very much.