Film Notes 2006

Well, now that I've posted my copious rankings up here, maybe I can glean some insight. I've already noted that 2006 felt for me like a year of the elliptical, slow, potentially "boring" movie. At least, I personally grew to appreciate that style of filmmaking a lot more. I'm still not a huge Hou Hsiao-hsien fan, but that would seem inevitable in the near future.

Korea (and Asia more generally) was also a big discovery for me this year. That is to say, I'd been hearing about that vigorous national cinema for a while, but I actually got my hands on amazing stuff from Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk this year. I'd seen a fair number of Wong Kar-wai films before, but hadn't been attracted to anything like I was to 2046.

David Bordwell is a great champion of the contemporary Asian cinema, and has probably my favorite blog of any type going right now. His writing on film style, both in the blog and in the book have gotten me watching and thinking about movies differently, especially about editing style, but also choice of aspect ratio, lens, staging, and a lot of other stuff.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is the other major film writer I've discovered this year. Movies as Politics was probably better, but I enjoyed Moving Places a lot as well. He's the first person I've come across who really advocates for filmmakers to engage their audience morally and politically without coming across as a scold; his cinephilia is great enough to accommodate acerbic criticism without sounding simply closed-minded.

Richard Linklater, obviously, is now an obsession for me. I moved beyond the Sunset/Sunrise movies, previously the only things I really enjoyed, and am fascinated by how his auteurist traits manifest themselves in the seemingly disparate projects he works on.

Thankfully, David Cronenberg was fully explicated by Sean Axmaker and the handful of superfans in attendance when I watched Videodrome, my first Cronenberg film, at Experience Music Project. None of the four movies of his I watched this year felt to me absolutely great, but the way they connect via a surreal gruesomeness was special. His experimentalism feels somehow necessary, or at least very in tune with the material in the script he's working with, so departures from reality don't seem forced or overly eccentric. Steven Soderbergh's totally weird Schizopolis, while obviously not a Cronenberg project, slots in nicely here.

I recovered from the weird intimidation of Through a Glass Darkly enough to discover two more unbelievably vital Bergman films

Béla Tarr's work is like an elemental force. I wouldn't argue that every second of Werckmeister Harmonies (145 min.) or Satantango (450 min.) is thrilling, but to create the unique moments in those films and convey certain emotions as he does, duration is key.

Memorable moments:

• Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye
• The awesome visual spectacle of the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut (no, not that type of spectacle)
• Dennis Weaver looking for the demonic truck driver at the roadhouse in Duel
• The chase across the roofs and the bizarre climax in the mannequin room from Killer's Kiss
• The Coen brothers patenting their weird sort of lighthearted dread in Blood Simple
• The meeting in Shop Around the Corner (of course)
• Bob Saget in The Aristocrats
• The old men in Slacker
• Ryan and Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon
• That bass hum throughout Innocence
• The sheer black-and-white beauty of Touch of Evil at the Egyptian
• The Northwest Film Forum, generally
• The food/bedtime scene with the aging gangsters in Touchez pas au grisbi
• The look and sound of 2046, not to mention Tony Leung Chiu-wai's moustachioed ladykiller
• The gallows humor of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
• The enthusiasm of the packed house for This Film Is Not Yet Rated, seen from one of the most awkward seats in the balcony of the Egyptian
• The instant messaging in Me and You and Everyone We Know
• Billy Bob Thornton, but maybe even moreso the scumbag kids, in Bad News Bears
• Thom Yorke's "Black Swan" at the end of A Scanner Darkly
• The shock of Oldboy, and rushing out to see Lady Vengeance at the Varsity the next night
• So many things in/about A Prairie Home Companion
• Junebug's rural charm, director Phil Morrison's ludicrous moustache
• The little girl in The White Balloon
• Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street
• Sacha Baron-Cohen in Talladega Nights
• William Hurt in A History of Violence, maybe also the "love" scene on the stairs
• Charles Coburn in To Be or Not to Be; also, the scene in which the cattle baron (Eugene Pallette) and his wife have a screaming match, unsuccessfully mediated by the butler, over the comics at Sunday breakfast (specifically, the wife spoiling a major plot point of the Katzenjammer Kids for her husband) is one of the most uproariously funny exchanges ever recorded on film, and the grudging reconciliation with their prodigal daughter immediately afterwards turns it into one of my few absolute favorite scenes ever
• The dance scenes in Werckmeister Harmonies and Satantango; the drunken tango monologue from the latter is also an extremely memorable bit of dramatic comedy
• A lot of things about My Man Godfrey, but esp. Carole Lombard
• Jim Jarmusch's foreigners: Eszter Balint in Stranger Than Paradise, the Japanese couple and Nicoletta Braschi in Mystery Train
• A litany of mostly unprintable and/or indescribable moments in Shortbus
• Hipster soundtracks: Shortbus (esp. the use of Animal Collective), Fast Food Nation, Half Nelson, Stranger Than Fiction, This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Television's "See No Evil" over the closing credits), and of course the as-yet-unseen Marie Antoinette
• The straight romantic comedy bits of Stranger Than Fiction

Films to see next year:

• Inland Empire [Lynch]
• Curse of the Golden Flower [Zhang]
• The Good German [Soderbergh]
• Pan's Labyrinth [Del Toro] NY
• Stuff by Johnnie To
• Stuff by Bong Joon-ho
• Design for Living [Lubitsch]
• Tape [Linklater]
• The Newton Boys [Linklater]
• SubUrbia [Linklater]
• Idiocracy [Judge]
• Clerks II [Smith]
• La Promesse [Dardenne]
• Rosetta [Dardenne]
• The Boss of It All [von Trier]
• Letter from Iwo Jima [Eastwood]
• Still Life [Jia]
• The Queen [Stephen Frears]
• Stage Door [La Cava]
• Persona [Bergman]
• Old Joy [Reichardt]
• Climates [Ceylan]
• What's Up, Doc? [Bogdanovich]
• Ghost Dog [Jarmusch]
• Night on Earth [Jarmusch]
• Permanent Vacation [Jarmusch]
• sex, lies and videotape [Soderbergh]
• Battle in Heaven [Reygadas]
• The Proposition [Hillcoat]
• The Science of Sleep [Gondry]
• Marie Antoinette [Coppola]
• Gabrielle [Chéreau]
• Find Me Guilty [Lumet]
• Keane [Kerrigan]
• Clean, Shaven [Kerrigan]

Films to re-watch next year:

• Waking Life [Linklater]
• Chungking Express [Wong]
• Ashes of Time [Wong]
• Kings and Queen [Desplechin]
• Tokyo Story [Ozu]