A Christmas Movie Clash-ic
I actually love “Love, Actually” (dir. Richard Curtis 2003). Generally, I don’t care much for films, and only manage to see three or four per year, most of those being disappointments if they were made past 1955 or were not directed by auteurs such as Tarkovsky or Malick. This film though, unexpectedly, cut me to the quick. I wept for joy in the parking lot where I first saw it, and have watched it every other year or so since, at Christmas. So I’m delighted to hear that many others have done the same, and that there’s such a fun, dynamic conversation this week about a silly romantic comedy from ten years ago, that is being called #LoveActuallyWars, engaging writers from the MSNBC, Huffington Post and many others.
The best round in the fight (and perhaps the final) is from the consistently-intelligent Christopher Orr (@OrrChris) over at The Atlantic. His piece, “Love Actually is the Least Romantic Film of All Time,” is notable not only for its wit and charmingly incredulous tone, but because, though he’s ostensibly picking nit about a decade-old film that in no way aspires to high-art status, he’s actually talking about some pretty important concepts. I want to commend those concepts, and offer a corrective to Orr’s reading.
First, I think it’s wonderful that Orr challenges the film’s message. Viewers of any art should put their fists up a bit, and for the most part, American movie-goers (still more music fans) stand about with their gloves at their sides, taking anything that comes on the proverbial chin. Orr writes that “Love, Actually” preaches
the elevation of physical attraction over any of the other factors typically associated with romantic compatibility: similar likes and dislikes, overlapping senses of humor, shared values, what have you.
And he goes on to illustrate how this is true for each of the 9 couples in the film. There are disturbing implications here, and Orr’s right, it’s tough to see them because what:
- the actors are so pretty?
- the music so winning?
- the cuts are so fast?
However it is, the film “somehow manages to present the idea,” not only that it’s acceptable, but “that it’s romantic to go behind a friend’s back to ostentatiously declare your everlasting love for his wife,” which is pretty screwed up. Meanwhile, Orr argues (correctly) that love takes work, that relationships and even attractions are built at least as much on conversation as on physicality and neuro-chemicals, which I also appreciate.
Second—though, again, this particular example doesn’t matter in any real sense— I appreciate that this whole discussion tries to put the brakes on a rapid expansion of the canon. We’re talking about the canon of Classic Holiday Movies, and Orr is fighting to keep “Love, Actually” out. It happens that I include it among my favorite holiday films, and I think that Orr overstates a point or two, but I appreciate that he thinks it matters how we bandy about the term “classic,” and that he treats the idea of a canon as a helpful limitation rather than an oppressive limitation of “voice” (ugh!) on behalf of an elite. One can only watch so many films after all, an Orr wants only the best included, which, as someone who works in historical literature, I appreciate. Again, it happens that the poets I most admire are not in said canon, but I think the idea is still helpful and the work of limiting it, noble.
About that point or two: I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that "Love, Actually" is a British film. It is a very British film, actually, featuring an all but entirely British cast (which accounts for some of their uniform excellence) and it takes great pains to be located: it opens and closes on Heathrow airport, features side characters in cameos like Mr. Bean, is shot all over London, and climaxes (one of several) on a patriotic speech about the greatness of British culture. All of these I appreciate, being an Anglophile. Reading the film as not about “Love” and how it comes about in our day, but as being about the difficulty of expression of feelings in modern Britain changes it for me.
Though it requires leaning heavily on stereotypes (which are, in my own experience, true) about British people generally, such a reading explains a few of Orr’s complaints. For example, Orr charges that, in the film, “the principal barrier to consummating a relationship is mustering the nerve to say 'I love you,'” which he calls “disturbing.” In America, he’s right. We have no problem talking about our feelings, and make the private public with flippancy. In Britain, this is less so. A “relationship” will often ignite, and smolder for ages before anything “gets said” about it. Witness Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, (whose film version also features Emma Thomson). One can’t say the characters didn’t have an intellectual romance just because they never really spoke on a direct emotional level. Or Romeo and Juliet, who look like a case of love at first sight until we notice that Juliet finishes Romeo’s poem, at their first verbal exchange, which means that though he’s known her for all of five minutes, she’s the one he’s been waiting for; an intellectual companion who
- cares about poetry like he does
- knows him well enough to pick up on the innuendo of his language game
- is playful and risky enough to smack to linguistic missile back over the net
She may also be hot, but she isn’t only hot. Other examples abound, but it isn’t true, as Orr claims, that the characters in "Love, Actually" love each other without knowing anything about one another. Finding the words to discuss one’s feelings through British reticence is rather a barrier, and makes up some of the “work” that Orr finds lacking in these relationships. Hence the title: “Love, Actually,” is a verbal stumble, a pause meant to signal a person’s gathering herself up to make the grand gesture that such an admission actually, sometimes is.
Small Cameras pt.1-Fuji x100
I haven't had a proper camera since the digital revolution made my years as film photography student seem quaint, like minoring in tannery, or taxidermy. Granted, there is still great work being done in film, and I'm not sure that even the best digital cameras match it yet--though they're close--but it still feels a little funny having been in likely the last class to learn hand-processing not as some retro-choice, but as the only option for aspiring professionals, just as it must've felt when the French perfected a county-wide canal system just in time for the automobile to render that method of goods transport adorable and less cutting-edge than they imagined and budgeted for.
Since I'm travelling around Europe a good bit this year, I thought it was time to step up.
I haven't had a proper camera since the digital revolution made my years as film photography student seem quaint, like minoring in tannery, or taxidermy. Granted, there is still great work being done in film, and I'm not sure that even the best digital cameras match it yet--though they're close--but it still feels a little funny having been in likely the last class to learn hand-processing not as some retro-choice, but as the only option for aspiring professionals, just as it must've felt when the French perfected a county-wide canal system just in time for the automobile to render that method of goods transport adorable and less cutting-edge than they imagined and budgeted for.
Since I'm travelling around Europe a good bit this year, I thought it was time to step up. Thing is, I'm sort of particular about what I carry on my person. I choose my wallet based on whether it will disturb the line of my trousers, and carry my keys in a side-bag for the same reason. I'm not a diva exactly, but cheap or badly designed things not only disturb me ethically, and obviously, aesthetically, but sensually: the touch of most plastics turns my stomach. I know enough about myself to realize that if I was actually going to carry a camera with me, rather than have one on my shelf at home, it would have to be small, and pretty cute.
So DSLR for me then. At the same time, I didn't want to settle for the quality that comes from most compacts. Anybody that pays attention to such things will know that we're in the middle of a small-camera revolution, with the advent of the (really strangely beautiful) iPhone camera, and the Micro 4/3, and other mirrorless systems making quality files available from much smaller packages than were concievable a few years ago.
I spend entirely too much of my time reading reviews of these cameras, and by this point I've owned most of them, and been really satisfied by none, and thought I ought to say why.
Fuji x100
The first one I bought was the legendary--really this camera and the hype surrounding it will define this decade of camera manufacture in any history thereof--Fuji x100. I don't want to provide a full review here, since they exist really by the thousands all over the internet; I just want to say a little more loudly some things that all those reviews say in the footnotes. That is: though this camera makes amazing images, better than anything in its class, including narrowly, the Leica x1 (more on that in a minute), and though it is beautifully-designed as an object (I notice whenever anyone walks by with one around h/ir neck), its menu-design and sluggishness take nearly all the joy out of shooting with such a pretty thing.
Amber Willett in Dresden, Germany. Shot with Fuji x100.
Again, every reviewer notes this camera's focus-problems and slow start-up speed, but they don't say with sufficient strength (or didn't anyway to stop me from buying it) that what this means is that you'll often miss shots while it "boots up," that if you see some great moment--your wife smiling, kids playing, and bird overhead--you'll likely get to save that only as a memory, while you look at the little rotating wheel on your x100's screen. If somehow, by the time you're ready, something else great happens, you'll likley get an out-of-focus picture of it, since it's another 10 seconds (more like 3, but that's an eternity to a smile) while the thing focuses.
I look back at the few good images I made with it from time to time and think: these are gorgeous, but not since the Sega Genesis have I so badly wanted to physically damage a piece of equiptment for dis-obeying me. If you have a world of patience, or a studio, or if you take pictures mainly of food or other things that hold still, this is the camera for you. Otherwise, let's all be thankful for Fuji's having moved the proverbial ball so far down the field in terms of style, but lament their accompanying ham-fisted approach to the engine that drives it. A great camera to look at then, just not much of one to look with.
Favorite Things: Rdio
There are heaps of great music-steaming services out there, now that, apparently, music is free. Really, they should be used as over-qualified previewers in determining which LPs or CDs you really need in your collection, if permanence and sound quality matter to you. Among them,
- Spotify: of which I might be a terrific fan, where it legal in Germany, where I am currently living, but alas, it is not.
- Pandora: the great pioneer and game-changer that plays a virtual radio station built on a matrix of similar-sounding artists. A great service, but it won't play an entire album, and I've never been much of a singles guy. Also illegal in Germany.
- Naxos: this is the largest classical record label in the world, and they're buying up smaller companies by the cello case to add to their online streaming service. It is a subscription service, so you pay for access to their 800,000+ tracks but can stream them at CD quality, if you have the bandwidth. They also have a pretty deep bench when it comes to jazz.
- Rdio: Another subscription service (my plan costs something like $6 a month), Rdio features the best interface of the lot, tons of obscure recordings, a social feature that is (for once) actually useful--I'm not talking about updating one's facebook automatically every time a new record comes on, but the "playlists" feature, where some pretty tasteful people put together great jazz mixes, Christmas tunes, KEXP-based melodica, and other turn-ons for this traveller.
Year's Best
Last year, one of my favorite musicians ever, Iron and Wine, released their new album on my birthday, which felt like a gift from the world. The year before, the band that has taught me more than any other (about art, about life) Bright Eyes, released two albums on my birthday. It seems fitting then, that I should offer something back, in the form of a Best-of list, since this year's birthday has just passed without fanfare from the musical community. Here then are my favorite albums from 2011, offered in a spirit of generosity rather than contention, for those of you with whom I no longer share car rides or mix tapes.
 |
| Girls- Listen Here |
 |
| Iron and Wine- Listen Here |
 |
| The Antlers- Listen Here |
 |
| Youth Lagoon- Listen Here |
 |
| Bon Iver- Listen Here |
On the Town
My wife and I were missing our hometown (Seattle) the other day, as we are exiled and adventuring abroad for the year, and counting its many glories, not least among which is the thriving theater scene. "Remember that one play?" she'd say, and I: "that was great; remember this other one?" Suddenly it seemed like we'd seen a lot of plays during the last two years. Suddenly it seemed we should try to make a list of those we remembered particularly.
Comedy of Errors
dir. George Mount for
: we saw this Shakespeare-in-the-park production twice, once at the show's open, and again at its close, as a treat for our out-of-town wedding guests.
Julius Caesar
: Another Shakespeare-in-the-Park, this time at Seward, and a season before.
Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World
dir. Anita Montgomery for
: Staring my good friend Carol Roscoe in a breakout role.
The Tempest
at Seattle Shakespeare Company: featuring, on the night we went, live music by
, composed especially for the show.
Crime and Punishment
: one of the only competent productions I've seen at this beleaguered, (since closed) regional playhouse more concerned with furthering a sociological agenda than with making good art.
Othello
Intiman: Officially the worst play I've ever seen, despite (because of?) the cast's having been shipped in from New York, to the understandable pique of Seattle's own talented acting pool; we walked out at half-time and were dismayed for weeks.
On the Town (a musical)
at 5th Ave: the actress/singer/personality Sara Rudinoff enlivens everything she touches.
39 Steps
Seattle Repertory Theater: disarmingly charming and British.
Jude the Obscure
Erikson Theater: My own entry in Book-it's Novel Workshop Series; actors reading from stools on stage hasn't been so entertaining since Dylan Thomas' reading of
Under Milkwood
in New York, which I unfortunately missed, having been born forty years too late for the premier.
The Cider-House Rules
(parts 1 and 2): an epic production full of moving performances, which addressed, I think, social problems we're not really having. It made terrific sense when they staged it 15 years earlier, to general acclaim.
Great Expectations
: Unbelievable directing, a terrific supporting cast, and Jane Jones (as both Havisham and Betsy) in a performance I think I'll always remember.
Oh Lovely Glowworm
dir. Roger Benington for
: A flawless production of a flawed but terribly-inspiring play. Magical in nearly-every way: this was one of those rare (for me) pieces of art that made me want to do everything differently.
Hunter Gathers
: This tiny theater is (was) the most important thing happening in the Northwest for the last decade. The ambition and level of artistry on evidence was just stupefying. Then, they lost most of their ensemble, artistic directors, and lighting designers either to New York or to theaters with bigger budgets, and have since become a gay teen youth center that sometimes does plays.
Twelfth Night
Seattle Shakes: A Christmas production! So fun and Dickensian!
Two Gentlemen of Verona
: A mod-production that used technology in a smart way: characters texted each other and we could read their screens via subtle projections. Sounds fishy, but it wasn't. Definitely the coolest production I've ever seen of this play.
Electra
: This was kind of a play, but mostly a vehicle for the emoting of its female lead Marya Kaminsky. She's a phenomenal actress, but it was unsettling to basically watch someone hurt for two hours straight; like watching
Passion of the Christ
, that.
Those were the big ones anyway. Added to the concerts (notably, the XX, Sunny Day Real Estate, Rufus Wainwright, and Mark Kozalek) and dance shows (importantly Nacho Duato,
--which may be the single best thing I've ever seen--Pacific Northwest Ballet's
Romeo &Juliet
and year-end
Gala
, Seattle Opera's
Don Quichotte
, and the powerful modern company Sonia Dawkins' Prism Dance Theater), well, we were busy. Still, what a city.
Poetry Reading Poster
In August, I gave a poetry reading at the Phinney Ridge Community Center whose advertisement was designed by my talented friend Mark Selander at Machines and Humans. Several people commented on the poster, so I thought I'd post it. Check out more of Mark's work here: www.machinesandhumans.com
