Excuses pt. 2, and GOOD MORNING (84)

Alright, a list of excuses as to why I've been completely absent from this blog over the course of the last week or so:

1. Bay 2 Breakers. Don't know what that is? It's basically a drunken parade of costumed wasted people who march from one side of the seven-square mile peninsula that is San Francisco to the other. There are people dressed like life-sized vaginas, tiki-bars on wheels, the most graphic dry humping I've ever seen, house parties like you haven't seen since your days in a fraternity, obnoxious half-naked women, endearingly naked old drunken people, puke/piss/shit all over the place, trash piles, police piles, me dressed like a 1970s Hanoi tourist half-cocked peeing on a tree in front of more than one family, and seriously, everything else you can imagine. I'll be quite honest, I felt a little bit out of place at the event as I was drunk, but could still move/remember/think but there's a lot of good to be had in this sort of burst of intoxicated revelry. I think I'll take a different, more enjoyable tact next year, but I'll say this: any city that allows this occur on a yearly basis is pretty fucking amazing. I recovered from this event all Monday, waking up at 11 and only leaving the house to see Star Trek (my review later this week) and to eat 12 bites of 12 different cookies.

2. Friends. Good, good friends were in town, and even if I didn't see them as much as I wanted, it was nice to have them here. For whatever reason if anyone is ever visiting, my mind automatically shuts down in terms of any sort of responsibility I might have. All of sudden I'm tossing caution to the wind and just not doing jack shit. Some people might call this laziness, I call it loyalty.

3. Work. Who would've thought that going to bed two nights in a row after drinking myself in to a slumber at 1 in the morning and then waking up four hours later to serve coffee to hundreds of slack-jawed yoke-heads would make me pass in to a deep slumber every afternoon? Smart people, that's who.

So there, excuses. I know you were dying for reasons.

What I've learned about Japan from the film Good Morning (84):

1. Japanese children fart in tiny whistles, seemingly only when pressed lightly upon the forehead.

2. Japanese male adults seeming fart in a way that only their spouses can hear, and when they do so, their wives mystically appear, worried about their health and well-being.

3. Japanese travelling salesmen are a cunning lot of tricksters and schemers who hang in tightly knit groups and meet in bars to discuss the newest way to scam their unwilling customers.

4. The only way to combat these cunning bastards is to arm your elderly, slightly belligerent mother with a long sharp knife and place them in front of the door. This causes the salesmen to retreat quickly, sharpened pencils tucked in to their strange boxes.

To say the least, I didn't really get this film. It was a slight film, a silly sort of look in to post-war Japan, but, and I'm sad to say, I just didn't get it. It felt like a film made in the aftermath of a terrible war, which it was, and it seemed to ape some of the strangely sit-com family shows of America's 1950s. There was a Father Knows Best sort of feeling to the whole proceeding that threw me off. Was I supposed to be laughing at this film? Sad at this film? Or just sort of jollily plopped in front of it, eyes watery, mouth agape?

It makes me wonder: maybe I can't do happy films? You know? Maybe I need something serious to sink my teeth in to or I'm just not as good at dissecting a film. Maybe this little triffle of a Technicolor Japan film wasn't enough for me to grab on to and it just slipped through the gaping cracks in my brain. Maybe I can only process in any sort of thoughtful way films that discuss serious things like romantic affairs and death and anything German.

Or maybe, maybe this highly acclaimed classic just didn't fit my mood.

Who knows.

Wednesday: What's Next!

Weird people and THE FRENCH CONNECTION

This city is full of odd folk. And yes, every city is full of odd folk, but I swear to God, San Francisco, California has more nuts per square mile than other spot in America that doesn't have padded walls and wooden baton wielding nurses. Over the course of the last month or so I've encountered a few and I thought, hell, why not introduce you folk at least to small bit of my city. The excessively weird bit:

1. Yesterday, I'm walking home from Duc Loi, the super-cheap Asian grocery store nestled directly behind my house, and as I'm walking I step past a churning pile of pigeons gorging themselves on feed. This isn't a rare sight, especially in The Mission, so I keep walking. I take the corner though and feel a breeze whip over my head, look up and the entire pile 'o' pigeons is dive bombing over my head, intent on another pile of unknown edibles. I'm a little baffled, so I look around to see why this flock of pigeons are migrating down the street and what do I see? A sketchy woman peering across a car, her hand full of bird food, tempting the pigeons down the street. Now I don't know if she was looking for a tasty dinner of stringy pigeon meat or just wanted to bring home some friends, but yeesh, if this didn't push me in to the house a little quicker than usual.

2. Weeks ago, I stumble, boozy and exhausted on to the 14 to the Ferry Building where I work. I'm surrounded by geriatric Asian women and angered that for whatever reason this bus stops every single street. No joke, once a block, like clockwork. Somewhere between 10th and 5th, a twenty-something woman gets on the bus, disheveled and wearing what might be the fakest wig I've ever seen. But she isn't wearing it as a joke, or as a costume, she's wearing this nappy weave as if it's her real hair. She just sort of stares at me hungover and staring at her hair and gets off at the next stop. Pretty much made my morning.

3. Three days ago. It's ten 'o' clock or so and I'm walking to the video store to drop off a finished Criterion film and pick up whatever's next (sadly I think it's Hamlet (82)). I'm talking to my brother on the phone and not paying attention when I look up to see a man wearing only a white leather tiger striped vest, white leather pants, a pair of white sunglasses, and white leather boots, holding a white guitar case and singing at the top of his lungs. As I walk past he pulls out a pair of drum sticks waves them in the air and yells something completely unintelligible. I walk faster. On my return trip, he's gone. Lord knows where.

That's just three I pulled off the top of my head. God I love living in a city.

Everyone in the whole world who loves a good movie should see The French Connection. I know, I'm supposed to be writing about Criterion movies, but Alex and I abandoned Ozu last night in favor of William Friedkin's beloved modern classic and I couldn't have been happier. You've seen clips from this film. You've seen Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) standing the street, staring up at the train line, a look of such rabid determination flashing across his face you're almost fearful of what he'll do next. You've seen the shooting on the stares. You've seen all this because this is a famous, famous film from the 1970s.

And I can't believe it took me this long to watch it.

I'm almost happy it took me this long, because watching it as a pseudo-adult I think I saw the greater issues at hand in the film. On the surface, this is a crime film, a story of two police officers and their obsessive quest to find out why a Frenchie, a low-rent Italian hood, and a whole host of hoods are collaborating in the seediest era of New York City. At it's heart though this is the story of Popeye Doyle, a man obsessed with solving a crime, solving a crime by any means necessary. There's illegal shakedowns, shoot-outs in broad daylight, stunning car chases (and I mean this, this is one of the great car scenes you'll ever see in a movie, riveting and frightening all at the same time), and of course Gene Hackman just chewing the scenery like a seasoned pro. What's great about this movie is it doesn't pander to a stupid action-flick audience. We know almost nothing about Popeye Doyle and his partner Cloudy Russo (Rod Schneider), just that they love to drink, seemingly have no families, and for some unknown reason NEED to solve this case. And that's all we get, two obsessed detectives burying the hurt of their lives beneath a need to solve crime.

It's a beautiful, tragic film, and it deserved all the awards it won. I sat their last night, mouth agape at how good this film was 'till the very last frame. The ending, bleak and disturbing, brings this film home exactly the way I wanted. Afterwards, inspired, Alex and I looked up what the real French Connection was and have already put the John Frankenheimer sequel on the Netflix queue.

You haven't seen this film yet? Get the hell off the computer! Get out there, rent this film!

Wednesday: Good Morning (84)