Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939): review: 3/10

 *

Mr Smith is become a senator in a rural place in the USA. Naïve, he wants to use his mandate to set up camps for boys, failing to understand the depth of corruption and cynicism in Washington.

Very long, sentimental and only occasionally amusing, the film dawdles, utterly dated. 

It is only interesting because it is used as an occasional reference to aspects of American culture and society, usually political corruption, folksiness, popular heroism and the enduring Washington / provinces standoff.

Getting ready for New York

*

Pochade carriers ready to be packed,

TED talks are often repellent and in this, below, as usual, the tone is relentlessly self-congratulatory. The American positivity is nauseating. But I found it interesting nonetheless to understand more about zoning and the development of urban leisure spaces in New York.

https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_burden_how_public_spaces_make_cities_work?language=en#t-311820

The pity is that these modern spaces are over-designed. They are too clean and much too unambiguous to invite rich speculations. Being in them is like being in a computer simulation, a sort of Truman Show.

This is a feeling which predominates through much modern design. Idiosyncrasies and historical accidents are removed and what are left are the smooth  surfaces of hotel atriums. Times Square in the fifies has a sort of messy vigour, and looks like New York ought to look: the modern version resembles a pedestrianized street in a provincial Germans city; and has the strange absent character of the faces of those elderly people whose faces have been surgically "improved". There is something missing with the wrinkles and lines- experience.

 I want yellow cabs and bums and squalor and broken stuff as much as I want new. Broken things are interesting and it shows that people are relating to their environment in some way. Modern design is sterile. And I really don't care if Macy's gets more customers.

*

And here is my calendar. six days to go:

Well here we  are. Scoring off the days.

*

The Great Debators (2007): review: 5/10

In the 30s, in racist Texas, a black teacher trains a black college dabating team: despite interpersonal difficulties, largely inspired by a pretty girl with a dimple, they prove formidible in debates with other colleges.

This is an essay in moral obviousness: we might be better served by a film which illustrated with less suffocating self righteousness the genesis of the civil right movement, and whose lead characters had the tiniest complexity: but as this film comes from Ms Oprah Winfrey's stable so we should expect nothing else.

I'd be curious to see a film describing the corrosive effects of self-righteousness on the American people -a quality which Americans seem delighted to export. This would be a film which parodies moral worthiness and all the bossiness and mental lethargy that comes with it, and which describes the nausea it induces in gentle souls who prefer to mind their own business.

Everybody's Fine (2009): review: 3/10; table manners in American films

A retired widower attempts to visit his grown children, travelling across the USA, to discover that he has been given a false immpression of their lives.

The films contains elements of the road movie, and is a sort of right of passage film, showing shifts in attitude and expectation  taken by different generations.  The film is also, I suspect, about American decline and disappointment, as Americans learn to live with diminished world status and reduced  individual chances of achieving the American Dream.

The film offers glimpses of these themes, but does little to grapple with them, instead washing us over with sentimentality, providing lazy solutions to the various relationship crises described. All this is underscored by syrupy music.

 *

As so often in American films, the characters have terrible table manners, speaking with their mouths full and biting food off the prongs of their forks with their moths open, leaning over their plates or slouching with their elbows on the table (Julia Robets is particularly guilty of these offences). In "Everybody's Fine" the dismal manners of a brattish child become a focus for one of the conflicts in the film.

These atrocious table manners can be seen in films showing Americans of all social classes, but seem most striking among their middle classes. It's a form of arrogance: they think that because they are wealthy they are above regarding the feelings of others and has a sartorial equivelent in the way they inisistantly dress casually even in formal situations. However, they haven't yet started, I think, to swear as is now common among the British upper middle classes (see the Guardian Newspaper)- or maybe they have, but it is censored from films.

Grand Canyon (1991): review- 3.5/10

Ensemble piece set in LA, featuring blacks of the working classes, various whites -usually wealthy- and the charmless progeny of both races.*

This eliptical fim attempts to make some sort of moral-existential point, but fails: the sort of parables as comprise films such as these demand a dramatic energy that is missing here.

This could be because the script lacks a clear central ethical dilemma, or because the characters are suffocated by a worthiness (suffocated by the sentimental presence of de-liturgicised religion- "spirituality", constantly exhorted by the director to Do Good) that reduces the scope of choices available to the the characters, sapping their spirits.

Indeed, probably, the only characters in the film who get any real fun out of life are the robbers at the start.

And you always know to be wary when humour is completely absent in a narrative art work; because where humour is absent, mawkishness or moralism enter.

*Quite why do Americans have such atrocious table manners? Could it be the cowboy legacy, when meals were eaten in the dark round a campfire after a hard days droving, and none of your fellows could see how you chewed with your mouth open and waved your fork around like a fly swat?

The Ladykillers (2004): review- 0/10

The Coen's remake "The Ladykillers", moving it from London to the deep South, whose culture they attempt to satirise.

This could be interesting. It isn't: indeed, this film is a disgrace: the humour is inane, it's very poorly paced and it completely fails to create any dramatic tension. It should be struck from the Coen brother's catalogue.

Oh, and the acting is universally poor too- with a horrible, forced "zaniness" all round.

Alice in Wonderland (2009): review- 1/10

The Disneyfication of a British literary classic sees it ruined, with a tiresome feminist message and the total absence of the wry wit that makes the book so beguiling.

Everything becomes exaggerated, nothing has grace, and the characters become caricatures. The clever animation which is impressive at the start of the film later turns tiresome, as if it is an end in itself.

Director Tim Burton should be taken and shot for this.

Urubici: female taste; architecture; 10a Festa Nacional das Hortaliças; Gauchos

Urubici is essentially a single long, straight road with a grand church (see yesterday) at one end and not much at the other and forested mountains all around. It is a cold place for Brazil, and usually gets a tiny bit of snow every year. The population is a mixture of Portuguese, German and Latvian descent, mainly.

We stayed at the Urubici Park Hotel: as before this was enjoyable though they seem to have difficultiues answering emails regarding reservations.

The hotel features a good deal of handicraft work. Indeed, horror vacui seems to have overcome the owner, and every space in the hotel was filled with a hand made affirmation of nature's goodness- though sometimes God gets an affirmation too. I do not know quite why all this horrifies me so.

The Lord is my shepherd: mural on the second floor opposite the stairs.

The manager is a woman: female taste has this peculiarity: this insistant cheefulness, this need for surface decoration. The coming of Easter has obviously excited the manager's creativity, and lent her the opportunity to transform the hotel so it resembles a giant kindergarten.



Throughout Brazil, women - usually those whose children are grown - meet to make such items, which invariably involve representations of flowers and small animals and pieces of cloth. The items are sold in specialist handicraft shops, or exchanged as gifts. I believe such behaviour is not uncommon among the female sex in other countries too.

*

The town of Urubici features, most interestingly, a small number of attractive Art Deco villas. As I associate this style with seaside towns and cinemas, it seems slightly odd to me in this rustic setting. They are painted in the same ice-cream colours of their cousins in Miami and Southend on Sea. And then there is the main church itself, which I featured here yesterday, which while not strictly Art Deco in my book, is has some of the colourful geometricity associated with the style.

Classic Deco "Sun Motif" as stained glass window.

Such art deco styled buildings can be found also in Florianopolis. I wonder if they are all the product of the same architecture studio?

Some of these buldings are covered in tiles, Portuguese style:

*

This being Brazil, there is no shortage of religious venues. There has been a veritable wave of new evangelical churches flooding Brazil (Mormons, in pairs like policemen, can be seen patrolling Florianopolis dressed in their trademark black suits despite the heat. I befriended a pair and tried to corrupt them with alchohol: they befriended me and tried to corrupt me with religion: neither side won). This represents disillusion with Catholicism, and a desire for North American cultural values- these new churches are not shy to link material and spiritual success and the style of their pastors is "charismatic".

Saturday night is a slow night, even in Brazillian evangelical churches. Note the tie: evangelical pastors dress like businessmen.

*

Other local features are some rock carvings (representing quite what is anyone's guess), a trout farm, and various waterfalls.

*

The Festa Nacional das Hortaliças is a celebration of vegetables:

A particularly impressive display.

There was also, perhaps more excitingly, a rodeo, rock bands and various tents selling country things and a funfair. The rodeo brought a host of Gauchos: rodeo isn't really a Catarinese thing: it's really part of the culture of Rio Grande do Sul. They have a traditional costume of scarves, baggy trousers, hats and knives worn at the belt.








Gaucho culture is much more macho than the culture of Coastal Santa Catarina, which is notable for its gentleness. The police issued some warnings about the knives, and I felt something rough and confrontational in the air.

Two Gaucho ladies.

Inglourious Basterds (2009): review- 7/10

Peculiar film that alternates between sadistic revenge fantasy and spoof. Much of the drama derives from extreme proximity of enemies.

Very leisurely: Pitt's acting is, as usual, utterly flat and unenjoyable: the Nazis are much more fun.

Sleepy Hollow (1999): review- 6/10

For some reason the film-makers traduced themselves.

The film starts off elegantly and wittily and both Depp and Ricci are enchanting, and there are some potentially interesting themes introduced about the limits of reason.

But the film then declines into a fomulaic action piece (albeit with gothic trappings) following obvious Hollywood conventions and becomes tedious.

The art direction is stunning. Alas, there is a cartoonishness about the film that seems very American to me.

*

This is the first of the film reviews I shall be publishing here. Previous reviews have been available on http://rateyourmusic.com/~tadeusz598

These reviews are written to be as concise as possible, and rarely contain plot summaries.

I shall, over time, transfer these reviews (and possibly re-write these in the process) from Rateyourmusic to here.

Some photos from Balneário Camboriú; white shoe; billboards

These white shoes shine with undue brightness, causing a sort of visual imbalance, drawing far too much attention to the feet and away from the face.

Having a perfectly white shoe and sock is important to Brazillians. Cleanliness is also considered highly important (at least, in private spaces: in public places you can really do whatever you please). White is the most popular colour for trainers for women. Men wear a wider range of colours, and often their shoes are decorated with exciting stripes. The socks are always made of a certain spongy cotton.

Is the trainer (when worn as a normal shoe as opposed to being worn for the playing of sports) the most hateful American cultural export ? It surely ranks high on any list, but is it nastier than chewing gum, Chicken McNuggets, mass obesity, Tele-evangelism, car culture or political correctness? Perhaps readers have their own suggestions?

*

These huge billboards, which dominate the town of Balneário Camboriú, are plainly aimed at negociating female vanity. Female vanity is big business in Brasil, and I'd suggest that at least 90% of retail space is given over to it (but I am estimating here). The clothes they advertise are not cheap, plainly out of reach of the overwhelming majority of women: it is an industry geared to satisfy the vanity of their elite.

The quantity of these billboards is amazing: they are both impressive and oppressive, suggesting a sort of cult; a cult in which beautiful females are accorded unusually high status.