Briefly noted

How is it that I still have time to watch movies in the midst of all my moving chaos? It's called procrastination and it is my friend.

In praise of sound editing?
All summer long, I've been waiting from Brick to come to the Green Hills movie theatre-- as promised in their season preview guide. They told us it would be early June, then early August-- and then, lo and behold, mid-August rolls around and the damn thing's out on DVD already. So, anyway, at least I got to see it. It was dubiously billed as a neo-noir set in a high school-- yeah, I was skeptical too. And, truth is, the movie is primarly interesting for its surfaces and stylistic choices. Jonathan tells me they made for about half a million, and for that little, it's really awfully meticulous. It's a terribly intricate plot with a lotta fast-talkers so you really have to pay attention but the adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pretty great as a nerd/loner-turned-badass (dubious again? yes, but I bought it, I really did). But really, the remarkable thing is that I can't remember the last time I saw a movie in which the sound was so important. The fight scenes are viscous with all their slushy pumpkins-breaking-open noises. I mean, the Foley artists must've been gleefully bashing stuff for days. And there's an ingenius chase scene in which you hear repeated Doppler-effect footfalls as the chasee and chaser turn corners (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is wearing some snazzy Brat Pack-looking loafers that make a notable slappy sound) and you're so very aware of the running sounds and then, JG-L trips and makes the most of it by taking off the shoes-- so then, he's silent and you hear his pursuer about to turn the corner-- and JG-L runs back and drops, sliding, to the floor and trips the other guy who then sails outside of the shot. And then you hear a big crazy BONG sound. The camera pans out and you see the other guy was knocked out by slamming into a big metal post. Why don't more directors pay attention to stuff like that? Anyway, it's a fun ride. I don't remember the stakes ever being so high when I was in high school, but you know, I'll suspend my skepticism for such careful stylization any time.

Cute and horrible
I'm noticing a trend lately in films that purport to be bio-pic-ish and yet invest most of their energy in looking sideways, through squinty eyes at the real pain and drama of their subject. I'm thinking, first, of The Notorious Betty Page which I liked, I guess... I mean, on one hand, I admire the director's restraint in that she didn't dwell on the fact that Betty was molested by her father, that her husband beat her up, that she was gang raped, that a million boyfriends left her when they learned she was an S&M porn goddess, that she turned into a Jesus freak in her later life. But the movie is so damned cheerful! It's like, isn't it cute when girls dress up in fetish boots and spank each other? Part of what makes the movie appealing is its guilelessness but I couldn't help feeling a little shafted-- like I was denied my cathartic moment. And then, I feel like I'm being a stingy audience and not coming to the movie on its terms-- but, in fact, asking it to pander to my emotive expectations. Shame on me! But all that's really just preamble to talking about Breakfast on Pluto which I watched last night. I do certainly think it has something in common w/ the Betty Page movie but it's more in the presentation of the main character, Patrick "Kitten" Braden, than it is in the movie itself. I mean, we see unmitigated illegal gun trade, we see someone get his head blown off, we see plenty of real raw stuff. But, in a movie about a character who is remarkable mostly for his unapologetic gender bending, we see pretty much no sex. Frankly, it's a wise choice in many ways. When I worked in a bookstore, customers used to get mad when we put the gay-themed magazines on lower shelves because "children might see them!" Heavens! And on the cover of these illicit materials would be, like, a muscley guy standing there w/ his arms crossed over his chest. Or Nate Burkus. Fully clothed, of course. OOOH! Scandalous! I really find it problematic that there's a perception that queer people's lives are defined solely by who they're fucking, how they're fucking them, and the notion that fucking is the only real, interesting component to their lives. It's pretty goofy, really. So, by not showing endless scenes of gay fucking, this movie maintains a curious glossy innocence. However, the movie goes a little further in its pursuit of "cute." There are two birds who pop up now and again to chitchat about the goings on of the people. Yeah, random talking birds. Oh, and Kitten does a stint as a costumed mole or something for a children's theme park. Yep, full roly-poly-bodied mole suit. Ridiculous! So, all this reminds me of way back when (ugh, like 3 years ago) when Jason Zuzga was on a panel discussion for the Poetry Center in Tucson and he talked about the subversive quality of cuteness-- how it somehow mitigates both violence and socially progressive concepts so that it might reach a typically less-than-receptive audience. He referenced anime but also thought that an "aesthetic of cute" is really coming straight out of a queer subculture. But there's also something totally unnerving, totally uncanny about presenting some not-exactly-mainstream ideas about sexuality in particular as seen through a lens of kid-like innocence. And so, movies like The Notorious Betty Page and Breakfast on Pluto become really exciting and dangerous as they bore into our consciousness around the edges of their scrim of cuteness. And so, I come around to thinking that, though I generally want to gaze long and deep, then poke and prod into issues of sex-- because human sexuality compells me pretty much more than any other realm of thought (can anyone really doubt why I identify w/ the sexual 5 on the enneagram?)--that sometimes squinting at it as it dances coquettishly through gossamer curtains has its own payoff.

So, this wasn't so brief after all.