Update

It's been one of the hottest weekends ever in Seattle. The average high was like 95 degrees; for comparison, the all-time high temperature ever recorded in the city is only 100 degrees. A climate like Seattle's means that not only does nobody have air conditioning, they don't even have ceiling fans. For example, I was at Neumo's on Saturday for The Long Winters (the only fan was onstage), and people were constantly exiting at the side and returning around the building through the main entrance to get some fresh air. By the end Kevin and I were listening on the sidewalk outside by the open door, exhausted by the heat. I also realized that I was a little tired of John Roderick's somewhat unsubtle singing voice. It's not really an emo style, but he maintained an intensity throughout that eventually wore on me. I've only seen them as an opening act previously, and they've been consistently great, but the set here, probably over an hour and a half with no breaks or encores, felt a little long.

I feel like I need to tell you about Junebug if only so you get to see director Phil Morrison's exceptional mustache. I enjoyed the focus on a region/locality, very close geographically to Ross McElwee's home base, although I found the characters less distinctively Southern in many ways than simply rural. At least from my experience, a lot of the characters rang true in a number of ways, although they were neither dull nor outrageously stereotypical as so often happens in films trying to evoke a particular regional culture. That may have a lot to do with the fact that both writer and director are from North Carolina, where the "action" takes place. As Morrison notes in his director's statement, it's more of a series of moments than anything else. It's also one of the few movies I've seen that tempts me to actually try my hand at filmmaking: gentle without being precious, sweet but not sentimental or saccharine, full of subtle gestures and touches that cause the thing to shine. (Actually, you could say the same things about this new Junior Boys album [with a lot of added bittersweetness] that after several listens sounds like it may wind up being one of the best I've ever heard.]

However, it's more likely that the only action Junebug will spur me to is watching more movies. [By the way, note Morrison's fearsome list of influences: Demy, Demme, Davies, Minnelli, Cukor, Burnett, Imamura, Kiarostami, Bresson, Sturges, N. Ray, Ozu, Renoir, Leigh, Spielberg, Zhang, Makhmalbaf.] I've been reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movies As Politics this weekend, and it's really great. I was a little worried that it would just be dense, super-close analytical readings of various movies, but in fact it's focused on things like distribution practices, the language and general criteria employed by critics, specifically disciples of Pauline Kael, studio logic/marketing, the potential of form as both filmic device and social criticism. As an incisive and insightful commentator on what David Thomson called "the whole equation," I'm actually enjoying him much more than Thomson in that role. And even though I already knew, it's reminding me of the danger of the much-lamented shrinking wordcount that seems to be in vogue in magazines and newspapers, and how much more (and more valuable) the critical review can be than simply a synopsis and thumb up or down.