THE SCHOOL OF CHANTAL AKERMAN: JOE PERA TALKS WITH YOU *UPDATED...AGAIN*

Jeanne Dielmann /
Joe Pera Talks With You

 

D'est / Joe Pera Talks With You

When I have a favorite television show I go through various stages. First it’s the initial viewing. Then I go back and watch it again. The third time is to see if I missed any of the details or small moments. After that I just have it on in the background as I’m doing something else because I’ve become so comfortable with it. After that I move on to something else for a while. Then it’s the re-discovery period which brings about a whole new appreciation.

This has been my journey with Joe Pera Talks With You.

Over the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, adult swim played reruns of Joe Pera and I honestly forgot how perfect of a show it is.
What stood out the most during my re-watch were the visual similarities between it and the films of Chantal Akerman (mostly Jeanne Dielman... but quite a few of her other films as well).
Much like how everyone considers anything "weird" to be "Lynchian", I find myself calling anything slowly paced with long un-broken shots to be Chantal Akerman-esque. I know I need to stop doing that but in the case of Joe Pera it does make sense.

Some films are so influential that they’re injected in to the DNA of cinema to the point that some filmmakers don’t even need to see something to be influenced by it. This applies to everything from the films of Spielberg & Lucas to Fellini & Hitchcock. While Chantal Akerman isn’t exactly a household name like the aforementioned directors, her work (specifically Jeanne Dielman...) is often cited as one of the most influential films within the world of (slow) modern art house cinema. Akerman has been referenced quite a bit these days (Swallow, Joker, Mrs. America, etc), so it isn't that crazy to associate her with Joe Pera and it's brand of slow television.

Putting aside the obvious visual similarities presented in this post (coincidental or not), both Joe Pera Talks With You and Jeanne Dielman... are very hypnotic (although I will say that Akerman has close to 50 years of films under her belt that extend beyond the narrow world of just Jeanne Dielman...). The longer you stare at the shots the more you start to zone out (I made a point to use scenes/shots where the camera stays fixed in one position for an extended period of time).

La Chambre / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Les Rendezous D'Anna /
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann /
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann /
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann /
Joe Pera Talks With You

The Golden Eighties /
 Joe Pera Talks With You

Saute Ma Ville /
Joe Pera Talks With You

Hotel Monterey / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Les Rendezvous D'Anna / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

News From Home / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

La Chambre / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmann / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

The Day When / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

D'est / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

Saute Ma Ville / Joe Pera Talks With You

I'm Hungry, I'm Cold / Joe Pera Talks With You

News From Home / Joe Pera Talks With You

Portrait d'une Paresseuse / Joe Pera Talks With You

D'est / 
Joe Pera Talks With You

BONUS

News From Home / 

Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera 

Jeanne Dielman/ Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielman/ Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielman/ Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielmane / Joe Pera Talks With You

Jeanne Dielman/ Joe Pera Helps You Find The Perfect Christmas Tree

News From Home / 

Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera 

WRONG REEL EPISODE: 588 - MICHAEL MANN NEWS...

 

I'm back on Wrong Reel talking about the various recent Michael Mann-related projects coming out over the next few years. Click here or the image above to the go to the episode.

Enjoy...

THE SCHOOL OF CHANTAL AKERMAN: MICHAEL HANEKE - PART 3

 

The Seventh Continent / Michael

Former Haneke collaborator Markus Schleinzer owes a bit to Haneke when it comes to style (see above). But that style also comes by way of Chantal Akerman…

For Michael I chose a way of storytelling that is often used by Haneke as well but he hasn´t invented it. You can find it as well with Chantal Akerman - Markus Schleinzer, Indiewire.com

Jeanne Dielmann / 71 Fragments... / Michael

We even looked at the coincidental influence and visual similarities between the work of Akerman & Haneke so it only makes sense that his unofficial “protégé” should have his share of Akerman-isms as well.

Below are some visual similarities between the feature films of Haneke & Schleinzer by way of Chantal Akerman.

Enjoy…

The Seventh Continent / Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

The Seventh Continent / Michael

The Seventh Continent / Michael

The Seventh Continent / Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

The Seventh Continent /
Michael

 

A RANDOM AMHERST MEMORY...

I grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and I have an immense sense of hometown pride. I sometimes consider myself an amateur historian of the town with a focus on the 80s & 90s. A lot of that pride is rooted in my time playing high school sports (Track & Field to be specific) but I just enjoyed growing up in the small liberal “alternative” overly PC bubble that was/is Amherst. It should also be mentioned that I had parents from outside of Amherst to prepare me for the real world. My Queens-bred Father and Spartanburg-raised Mother always made a point to remind me that while Amherst is a nice place to grow up - it is not a representation of what the real world is (they were right).
Anyway, there are very few celebrities from my small town. But the few we have (Emily Dickinson, Uma Thurman, Eric Mabius, Ebon Moss, etc) are held in high regard. I think it’s safe to say that Dinosaur Jr frontman J. Mascis is our “biggest” celebrity. He’s an Internationally recognized guitar virtuoso/gen-X icon with connections to everyone from Sonic Youth to Nirvana.
He even left his little mark on pop culture as his song “Feel The Pain” has become one of the top 10 stock songs used in any movie and/or TV show to let the viewers/audience know the story is set in the early/mid-90s (this was most recently done on episode 1 of the popular show Yellowjackets).

The other day I was watching Allison Anders’ Gas Food Lodging (which was not only mostly scored by Mascis but features a cameo from the man himself)…

…and I started to think about Mascis’ small yet impactful presence in film over the years and it brought me back to a specific moment from the documentary; 1991 - THE YEAR PUNK BROKE where Kim Gordon playfully interviews Mascis about Amherst…

This moment always stood out to me because even though Mascis is being kind of sarcastic in his responses - what he said is true. A guy really did light himself on fire in the center of town in 1991 in protest of the gulf war (click here to read more)
I always wonder if people outside of Amherst/Western Mass knew he wasn’t joking.
I also wonder if folks from Amherst/Western Mass knew this was mentioned in a documentary.

And what he said is untrue about “no one caring”. It was a really big deal at the time from what I remember (I was in the 4th grade).
Mascis has a small history of painting Amherst in a somewhat negative light (even though he’s lived there his entire life from what I understand).
Years ago when he appeared on WTF with Marc Maron , he said:

Amherst is a very bitter place. No one Wants you to succeed...

This always struck me as odd. In my experience growing up in Amherst between the late 80’s through all of the 90’s, Mascis was the hometown hero who could do no wrong. He wasn’t just the local celebrity. He was the local universally loved celebrity. He is older than me and from a different era so perhaps his experience growing up in Amherst was different (and more negative) than mine.

Anyway, J. Mascis has been popping up a bit in my world recently which triggered some serious Amherst memories that I felt like sharing…

THE SCHOOL OF MAYA DEREN: JULIE DASH

A Study In Choreography For Camera / Realatives

Julie Dash’s pre & post Daughters Of The Dust work is/was highly experimental in that the narrative was often abstract and there wasn’t much dialogue. There seemed to be more of an emphasis on dance & movement reminiscent of Maya Deren.
Julie Dash is very much her own filmmaker and Maya Deren is hardly the first filmmaker to document experimental dance. However Deren is a staple within film studies & film academia so it wouldn’t surprise me if Dash was influenced by Deren in an indirect or abstract kind of way.

At Land / Realatives

To be clear - imagery of waves and people walking on the beach is a common arthouse staple, but Deren did popularize and heighten that imagery early on (she didn’t invent or do it first, but she did make it popular with films like At Land and finale of Meshes Of The Afternoon).

Even some of the imagery in Daughters Of The Dust can be traced to the same history in Deren’s films like Divine Horseman: The Living Gods Of Haiti.

Divine Horsemen /
Daughters Of The Dust

Divine Horsemen /
Daughters Of The Dust

The voodoo documented in Divine Horseman and the Gullah culture seen in Daughters Of The Dust both have a connection to slavery. That connection is what sparked this specific blog entry…

Outside of Daughters Of The Dust, the dance & movement explored in Dash’s seldom mentioned short film work is rooted in African dance. I don’t want to credit someone like Maya Deren with popularizing something like African dance, but, to me, at the end of the day there is a visual similarity between the work of Deren & Dash (I’m also aware that experimental & interpretive dance is very vast & vague and I could be reaching).

Meshes Of Thefternoon /
Four Women

Divine Horsemen /
Praise House

Meditation On Violence /
Praise House

Ritual In Transfigured Time / Four Women

A Study In Choreography For Camera / Realatives

A Study In Choreography For Camera / Realatives

Ritual In Transfigured Time/
Praise House

TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN

 

My never-ending fascination with John Paizs’ Crime Wave led me to his follow-up feature; Top Of The Food Chain - a sci-fi/horror-comedy about aliens disguised as hyper-sexual human beings who try to take over the small Canadian town of “Exceptional Vista”.
Paizs explores everything from the negative stereotypes sometimes associated with small town North America, to the sometimes creepy & kinky things that lie just beneath the surface of seemingly conservative communities modeled after Norman Rockwell paintings. I know it’s lazy to call things like this “Lynchian”, but given Paizs’ coincidental connection to David Lynch - I’d say Top Of The Food Chain deserves the “Lynchian” stamp. 

Not only does the basic description of Top Of The Food Chain sound like a late-night movie of the week (or even a twilight zone episode), but Paizs keeps the same spirit & ambiance as the many genre films that came before it.
Between folks like Quentin Tarantino & James Gunn, there’s been a more mainstream resurgence of interest in “grindhouse cinema” (Grindhouse, Inglorious Basterds, etc) and old school Troma films (James Gunn’s background is rooted in Troma). My issue with all of this is that their films have multi-million dollar budgets which, in my opinion, is almost anti-Troma or anti-grindhouse. That doesn’t mean a movie with a nice budget can’t reference smaller/lower budget films, but when you’re Quentin Tarantino saying you’re just making a grindhouse movie with smooth/sleek computer-generated graphics and clear big budget resources - I don’t fully buy it. But that’s just me.

Top Of The Chain is in no way “low budget” but you can tell where John Paizs relied on practical visual effects & old school camera tricks that you would literally find in actual old-school science fiction films of the past.

There are tons of references here. Intentional & Coincidental…

Scenes like these from Lifeforce (above) & Top Of The Food Chain (below) are hardly the first to pull of moments like these but they’re both from a long line of classic science fiction tropes.

For unexplained reasons, the residents of Exceptional Vista always seem to be horny. The aliens use this to their advantage when luring their victims…

Lifeforce /
Top Of The Food Chain

And while John Paizs is his own filmmaker with his own unique style, I’d be remiss to not make some type of surface correlation between two exploding head scenes from fellow Canadian filmmakers…

Scanners /
Top Of The Food Chain

Another example of more recent practical effects used by modern filmmakers with the magic of make-up/prosthetics & editing…

Lost Highway /
Top Of The Food Chain

And while the connection between Paizs & Lynch is coincidental (in the words of Paizs himself), there is an awkward dinner scene early on in Top Of The Food Chain that reminds me of the dinner scene in Eraserhead

Eraserhead/
Top Of The Food Chain

Top Of The Food Chain co-star Tom Evert Scott pretty much confirmed that this moment (between two movies about aliens) was 100% intentional…

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind/ Top Of The Food Chain

Paizs also incorporates his unique modern satirical style. Like Crime Wave, elements of Top Of The Food Chain are presented through the eyes of generation-x looking back on the 1940’s (they weren’t alive then but their parents were). The only thing is the gen-x lens behind this movie has a huge smirk on the whole time. It’s respectful but still smirky. There’s lots of overly cheesy tongue-in-cheek dialogue mixed with the ambiance of Leave It To Beaver on edibles.
The entire cast, from stars Campbell Scott & Tom Evert Scott, right down to the smaller supporting actors do a great job of imitating the old-school b-movie style of acting all while showing those films respect. That’s another slight issue I have with modern directors paying homage to “b-movies” and grindhouse movies. 8 times out of 10 it’s like they’re poking fun more than making a genuine statement or paying a respectful homage to smaller/low budget films.


The finale is like an homage to The Night Of The Living Dead…

The Night Of The Living Dead / Top Of The Food Chain

Or the very loose adaptation of Dr. Caligari from 1989…

Dr. Caligari / Top Of The Food Chain

and I would love to see these two films screened as a double feature...

Meet The Applegates / 
Top Of The Food Chain

It should also be noted that a lot of the skeletal elements of Top Of The Food Chain are a callback to Crime Wave (Sandy’s fascination with/crush on Dr. Karel is reminiscent of Kim’s childlike crush on Steven in Crime Wave).

I also hate to be that guy but there’s even dialogue in this film about a potential vaccine that can control the population. Given today’s climate - some might call that topical or even prophetic. Now…I’m pro-vaccine (I’ve had both shots and even had the Covid anti-body procedure for other various health reasons). I’m not saying the vaccine is bad. But the dialogue around it is very prescient and sometimes divisive at the same time. The scientist Dr Karel represents the pro-vaccine crowd while the small town locals represent the anti-vax side. Clearly this wasn’t what Paizs was trying to say intentionally as Top Of The Food Chain predates Covid by 20+ years, but it does play in to the simple-minded social media talking points where small town automatically equates misinformed or downright dumb (which obviously isn’t always the case).

If you’re a fan of Crime Wave, Kids In The Hall (another thing Paizs worked on in the past) or select Guy Maddin films, Top Of The Food Chain is a great continuation. The energy, which is more subdued this time around, is still a first cousin to the modern Canadian art films that came before it.
There’s a very strong continuous thread that starts with Paizs’ short films which went in to Crime Wave. the DNA from Crime Wave (which was birthed from the ideas in his earlier shorts) are all over Top Of The Food Chain. If you’re a fan of standalone films that also come together to form a bigger cinematic collage - I highly recommend Paizs’s work.

FRANCE

What sets France apart from the rest of Bruno Dumont’s work is that it’s his most traditionally “French-looking” film. What I mean by that is instead of his typical countryside/borderline backwood setting with intentionally odd-looking non-professional locals, the story of France is based out of Paris with mostly professional actors. There’s more of a polished feel to France and the actors when compared to stuff like The Life Of Jesus or Flanders. Dumont does sprinkle elements of his unique style throughout the film (some of the story does take us to small European countrysides inhabited by intentionally “weird-looking” people), but instead of nonstop close-ups of “actors” with scars and uncontrollable physical ticks, Dumont gives us endless close-ups and long takes of French darling Lea Seydoux.

In the film Seydoux plays famous television news host; “France De Meurs” who, after an auto accident with a delivery driver, starts to spiral downward both personally & professionally. 

The character of France is both a famous journalist and a celebrity in the vein of folks like Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Laura Ingram, etc. They report the news but can also be found in the tabloids themselves (one subplot of this movie deals with our journalist protagonist having to deal with being on the other side of the tabloids). Seydoux isn’t a journalist but she is very famous. Especially in Europe. In an interview with Screen Slate, Dumont admitted that part of the reason he cast Lea Seydoux in the lead role is because she’s such a major international star. Seydoux is a Bond girl, a former Mission: Impossible villain, a Wes Anderson regular and one of the current faces of Louis Vuitton. Who better to play a fictitious French star than a real French star?
Dumont occasionally works with professional actors but the majority of his movies are led by awkward non-professionals. The role of France had to be played someone with real acting chops and Seydoux does an excellent job.


France is a great companion/unofficial sequel to Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. Seydoux's France is essentially a combination of both Jake Gyllenhaal’s “Lou” and Renee Russo’s “Nina” rolled  up in to one person. Its as if the story of France picks up years after Nightcrawler where the driven sociopathic journalist suddenly has an unexpected change of heart and feels a sudden wave of emptiness about life (in reality, Gyllenhaal''s “Lou” from Nigthcrawler would never feel this way but just go with my comparison here).

Nightcrawler / France

Nightcrawler / France

Even though this movie starts to drag towards the final act (it could’ve ended three different time within the last 30 minutes), I did enjoy it. The problem is that unless you're familiar with Bruno Dumont’s odd sense of humor that he often mixes with elements of drama - there’s a good chance you’re going to be a bit lost.
I’m not exactly sure what audience this was made for outside of people like myself (the very small cult of diehard Bruno Dumont fans left out there in the world). There doesn’t seem to be many hardcore Bruno Dumont fans left these days, and the critics that once loved him in the 90s seem to have had enough of his work these last 15 years or so (films like Flanders, Hadewijch & Outside Satan have pushed viewers and critics away).

I guess France is a bit different. It did well at Cannes and is getting a pretty decent international release unlike Dumont’s last handful of films (I'm sure Lea Seydoux's presence had something to do with that). My worry is that this might be an introduction to the world of Bruno Dumont and his incredibly unique style for many people. When I saw France on the big screen I found myself cracking up alone at times in a mostly packed theater full of confused people who didn’t know if they should be laughing or not. France is very much a socio-political satire/commentary on current world events but not in that easy to digest Adam McKay approach that a lot of people are used to. Especially in America.

Blance Gardin as "Lou" in France

Dumont also tries something new this time around by casting an actual experienced comedian (Blanche Gardin) in the role of the comic relief (she plays France’s personal assistant “Lou”). Much like Richard Ayoade in The Souvenir 2, Gardin’s performance as Lou will probably go unnoticed by most but it’s still one of best supporting roles I’ve seen in years.


No matter how much of polished appearance France has, it’s still a pretty odd movie that you don’t just dive in to head first.
Now that we have outlets like the criterion channel I urge folks to seek out Dumont’s earlier work if you haven’t already to get a little familiar with his style.

SCORSESE MADE ME DO IT

 

The regulars over at The Pink Smoke got together to share some of their favorite Scorsese-recommended films. 

Click here or the image above to go to the article.

Enjoy.

THE SOUVENIR PART II

The absolute best thing about The Souvenir II is how Joanna Hogg managed to do the multi-layered meta storytelling thing without falling in to the trap of being overly “quirky”. This isn’t a 2-hour long music video with inside references. I don’t mean to take down other filmmakers in order to prop up stuff that I like but so often there’s this urge to add a heavy layer of fantastical dreamy quirkiness to deeply personal semi-autobiographical stories. This is just a personal thing. Some people like it. I don’t. A recent example of this would be Charles Kaufman’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things. Actually, a lot of stuff related to Charles Kaufman fits in to what I’m talking about. From Adaptation to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (I enjoyed these Kaufman-scripted movies when I was in my early 20’s but now that I’ve reached my 40’s, I’ve sort’ve grown out of them).
Without being too pretentious or eye rollingly personal, Hogg pulls off the task of making a film about a younger version of herself in a mostly realistic way. There are some isolated abstract moments, but at the end of the day this movie is grounded in reality.

The Souvenir II’s entire existence almost goes against a very poignant exchange that takes place towards the end of the film:


Patrick: Did you avoid the temptation to be obvious?

Julie: I think so.

Patrick: That’s all you can hope for, isn’t it?

I bring this exchange up because the movie is so obviously about Joanna Hogg (right down the protagonist having a similar name and the exact same initials as Joanna Hogg) yet there is this theme of not being too obvious as a filmmaker which makes for an interesting contrast. But perhaps that’s part of it all. Another layer of personal contradictory inside references stuffed in to the “cinematic universe” of the Souvenir (by the way - I’ve been using the term “cinematic universe” long before the marvel stuff took off). 

I actually wouldn’t mind seeing a third Souvenir story. These movies are so incredibly niche but they absolutely deliver for their niche audience…

While you should see the first entry in order to get the backstory of the latest, you could blindly watch the sequel and it still stands on it’s own. We pick up right where the first part left off and we follow Honor Swinton’s “Julie Hart” as she combines her grief from the events in the film first with her final student film.
A lot of the shots in The Souvenir II take place on a movie set which puts an emphasis on what I was talking about earlier. We see “Julia” (…Joanna) directing a film about herself which means we’re really watching Joanna Hogg direct a fictional version of herself directing a fictional version of her movie-self. It’s a breath of fresh air to see someone be incredibly open & personal without hiding behind that mixture of comically dramatic quirkiness I spoke of earlier (I’m sorry for using that word quirky so much but as soon as other filmmakers stop relying on it so much I’ll stop using it).

Another highlight of The Souvenir II is Richard Ayoade’s supporting performance as “Patrick”. It’s almost like Joanna Hogg went out of her way to please us folks who wanted more from his character after the first movie. It’ll probably go slightly unnoticed & under the radar but Richard Ayoade’s performance is one of the best supporting roles I’ve seen in years. For the folks that wanted more than just his one (brilliant) scene in the first film, your prayers have been answered.

Hogg also does the Olivier Assayas “thing” of making wealthy/privileged people seem interesting & fascinating. Dare I say she does it even better than Assayas?

At times, Hogg's latest feature feels like a love letter to UK cinema (which makes sense considering this is a movie about making movies). Some of the dialogue in the film directly addresses a lot of the basic stereotypes that come along with films set in the UK (rainy dreary kitchen sink settings) and Julie’s student film within the film comes off like an homage to both Derek Jarman & Terence Davies (Jarman-regular Tilda Swinton’s presence in The Souvenir II adds an additional layer to this).


This was the first movie-going experience I’ve had since February 2020 so it’s nice that my return to the movie theater ended up being the best thing I’ve seen I all year.