Excited, to say the least...

...

and that is because of the gig I'll be attending this Friday. SAINT ETIENNE. London. Bloomsbury Ballroom. 8.30 PM.

Fox Alpha Base in all of its glory, again.

It will be divine. And it will be described here.

Another gig to look forward to: A Doll's House. With the one and only GILLIAN ANDERSON. Oh, there's Eccleston, and Stephens, and three more talented and experienced cast members. And there's the fact that Ibsen's play was reimagined by Zinnie Harris. 1908 (that's what her manager wrote in response to my e-mail), London, British politicians, and Nora, played by an actress who has always challenged herself and whose artistic integrity has always been so inspiring.

It will be utterly glorious. And it will be described here as well.

The X-Files 2008 or believing in anti-blockbusters

The release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a perfect opportunity to revive one of the several blogs I never have the time to update, although at least I don't have to worry about the future of my "franchise." ;)  Having read tons of absurdly venomous reviews of Carter and Spotnitz's latest endeavour, having witnessed the collective foot stomping (Carter didn't give us aliens, Anderson and Duchovny look older, what a cheap film) I have to say it's not only the quality of the "civilian" viewing public that is going to the dogs these days. Critics/reviewers/bloggers are not exactly paying attention, either. Does that come as a surprise? Hardly. Hasty judgments, blurb-like hostilities, proud ignorance: that is the everyday reality on the websites devoted to film.

A couple remarks I posted elsewhere, after the first viewing of the film: 
http://community.idealistshaven2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29148&page=2

I'm not at all surprised it produces such extreme responses. I sort of admire Spotnitz and Carter’s courage. Mind you, it doesn’t seem to be paying off now, with the avalanche of bad, oftentimes needlessly aggressive reviews and comments, but give our movie some time. In the world obsessed with youth, glam and all things spectacular, TXF: IWTB dares to offer you something very down to earth, ostentaiously modest, acknowledging the passage of time, yet ultimately strikingly true to the heart of the show.

Ten years ago, in The X-Files: Fight the Future I saw two absurdly glamorized characters who were truly afraid to believe. In TXF: IWTB Scully and Mulder are back, finally allowed to be four-dimensional human beings, to deal with their obsessions, insecurities, remorse and love, to really talk. And I feel like spending more time with them. 9 months ago I wouldn’t have believed it to be possible. I thought the new movie would be like the trailers I saw today in the cinema: all for pseudo-scary horrors or s-f productions - the massive yawn-inducing nonsense that passes for entertainment nowadays.

Quoting oneself is always embarrassing, so here's are some new material, or rather a couple of observations after the second viewing:

- The film gels much better: the editing and cinematography seem very well-thought and consistent, though not particularly earth-shattering.

- At times I had a feeling I'm watching a sort of auteur take on the series as such. I do not necessarily mean all the winks for the sake of the faithful X-philes, or the fourth wall breaking scene after the credit. It's more about the way the central motif of the series, the issue of scepticism and believing, has been presented here. Carter's cameo in the film (the director is sitting in a thoughtful pose, embracing a white urn in one of the hospital scenes with Scully) pretty much illustrates how he approached his most well known product: as  something close to heart and personal. And I greatly appreciated it. 

- It struck me even more than the first time how well the main characters are written and played by Anderson and Duchovny. Anderson, in particular, gives a gut-wrenching, layered performance which is on par with some of her best work in films such as The House of Mirth and Straightheads. She gives the film an emotional gravity and effortlessly, it seems, makes even the more questionable lines work. That the actress does not grace the big screen more often speaks volumes about the cluelessness of the US film industry. That she will appear in Ibsen's A Doll's House in Donmar Warehouse next year proves to me not everyone is clueless about her acting talent.

Celeb (w)hoar(e)d)

This entry will, perhaps, smack of shallowness or total cluelessness. The inspiration came partly from Virginia Heffernan’s NY Times article “The Beautiful People, the Uglier the Better,” in which she compares modern-day celebrities to specimens or lab slides, examined in great detail by thousands of gossip site readers. In the interest of honesty, I should add, however, that my own habit of regularly checking celeb gossip websites provided an equally strong impulse to try and explain why exactly we are doing it.

Heffernan offers answers which are interesting insofar as they elevate the status of those who read celeb gossip, disseminate it and provide their own comments.

1. Readers as consumers:

We “are not primarily looking to be entertained or transported,” she writes. “We’re just looking for data, more and more data, the more raw the better.”

2. Readers as detectives and/or narative makers, ergo writers:

“there is an undeniable pleasure in inferring stories from pieces of data, whether the story is trivial — “Lonelygirl15” — or substantial, like the military service of the president. Isn’t the discovery of that pleasure, in some sense, what drives science and all manner of detective work? We’re all on the Web, weighing various kinds of data we get — eBay listings, blog posts, Craigslist solicitations — and trying to read between some pixels, and connect others."

3. Readers as tech savvies:

“maybe we’re not entirely wasting our time; we’re practicing interpreting images from the new close-range, high-def magazines and Web sites.”

I’m not sure I trust these explanations completely (blame all those years of watching The X-Files). What happened to the less sophisticated truths about those of us who enjoy gossip? Would it hurt to simply concede that we have too much time on our hands? That, rather than protecting common sense, our snarky comments only prove how rude, mean and disturbed we can be? Most importantly, doesn’t taking part in the celeb culture prove we’re a bunch of mindless, moralizing a-holes who are too lazy to actually do something useful?

The Deeply DiViDeD Series - Red Road

Beautifully shot, gripping, disturbing.

Drama, thriller.

Sex, release from prison, surveillance, revenge.

Moving, devastating, brutally honest performances.

How meaningful are these taglines? Do the well-worn, blurb-like, choppy bits in any way help in verbalizing one's very private response to this gem of a movie and to movies in general? And to what extent can the "generic surplus" make the viewers forget or ignore the initial guttural response to what they saw on the screen?

Andrea Arnold's Red Road, a subversive take on panopticism in its more private version, invites questions concerning the viewing of films and WRITING about films - it feeds the voyeuristic impulse, gives it a rationale, and then cruelly deprives the viewers of their smug expectations. Perhaps that is why it never stood the chance of wide release, even though it offers both width and release.