Out of Focus

Adding My Voice to the Chorus of Hosanas

I'm not going to take the time right now to write a full review of No Country For Old Men, the latest film from the Coen Brothers which opens today. Suffice it to say, when I saw it at a New York Film Festival press screening last month, I was simply blown away. It is easily one of the best films of 2007, and it most certainly rivals Fargo -- in my book -- for the best of their work. In fact, I hesitate to say "rivals" instead of "surpasses."

Unlike many literary adaptations from books that interest me, I did not refrain from seeing the film until after reading Cormac McCarthy's novel, but since seeing the film, I am anxious to dig into its paper-based counterpart and source material. I'm going to refrain from writing in detail about the film until after I've had that literary comparison just because it's more fun for me that way. But regardless of how much I do or don't like McCarthy's novel, my love for this film.

No Country For Old Men has obviously stayed with me for quite a while. I'm always most fascinated by movies that take standard genre elements and then mix, merge and match in order to create something new. It's obviously something the Coens have been doing since their first three movies. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing forcefully announced a duo with a unique and fascinating sensibility and imagination. Blood Simple was their take on noir, but it now also seems to be something akin to a scientific control: that one element that arguably can be found in all their work; an exploration of the darker sides of human character, even in their good guys. My favorite Clint Eastwood directing effort has always been The Unforgiven because of the masterly way he took the two most American of film genres -- film noir and the traditional Western -- and combined them into something utterly fresh and unique. While not a "traditional" Western nor noir in the least and taking plenty of cues from Hitchcock and other suspense traditions, No Country For Old Men signifies a similar achievement to me -- the pinnacle of what the Coens have been doing for nearly a quarter of a century now.

Go see it.

Jury Duty Which I Actually Enjoyed

Tonight might be the opening of the Seventh Annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in New York, but it's a first for me. My friend Payal Sethi (who worked last year at Tribeca with me) is the festival's programmer, and a few weeks ago, she asked if I'd like to be on one of their juries. Of course I said yes. My first festival jury; kicking back to watch some Bollywood; sounds great!

Of course, the seven films I had to watch turned out to not really be traditional Bollywood in the least. In fact, not one of them was a musical. A couple had some songs, but not in the standard song-and-dance number way. But that actually made it all more interesting: to see the kind of Indian cinema that likely doesn't come to mind, at least to those who don't follow it. As I was telling people that I had to watch Indian films all weekend, everybody obviously thought I was subjecting myself (for better or worse -- depends on your perspective, I suppose) to multiple three-plus hour movies filled with flowing saris and lip-synched production numbers.

The jury deliberation experience was an interesting one even though my colleagues and I seemed to mostly agree without too much debate on our selections. I don't feel like I can really say which films I enjoyed the most because that would indicate what won the Best Film and Best Director prizes, so I'll come back to talk about the films in more detail after the winners are announced on Sunday night. The films under consideration for those prizes which I had to watch were Dosar, Frozen, Manorama Six Feet Under, Missed Call, Valley of Flowers, Via Darjeeling and The Voyeurs. (You can buy tickets to any of these films online at meraticket.com.)

I'd encourage you to take a look at the film descriptions and check-out a few of them. The festival also features a large number of short films playing as part of various programs. The most fascinating thing to me about all these films was the various approaches towards stories much like the ones in American mainstream and other Westerncinema. From Manorama's homage to Chinatown to Dosar's almost Sirkian qualities; Valley of Flowers' reminded me in a way of The Fountain while Via Darjeeling utilized its own twist on the consistently mimicked Rashomon-tale. (Yes, I know Rashomon is Japanese! Hence the "consistently mimicked" descriptive phrase.) The Voyeurs creates its own mix of a slice-of-life tale with some "peeping Tom"/Rear Window elements. Frozen, for some reason, had me thinking, "This is what Terrence Malick might shoot if he ever decided to do black & white in the Himalayas." And Missed Call certainly owes a lot to every first-person diary film or, to a degree, mockumentary about young-adult angst and relationships. And yet, all of them have their own specific perspective grounded in the place and the culture from which they come. And not a one has a big dance number, thereby blowing your perception of everything Bollywood, right?

But who am I to tell you: go see for yourself, and next week, you can argue with me over the winning films if you disagree.

Pausing for Podcasts: Radiolab Digs Through the Dirt

As I've discussed before, I'm addicted to Podcasts. In an era where polemical talk radio dominates the airwaves and in a city like New York where most of us barely listen to radio because we don't drive to work each day, for me, the "Podcast" as an entity has had quite an impact. I've always listened to NPR here and there, but I've never had the chance to listen to some programs (and discover others) as regularly as since discovering podcasts two or three years ago.

One of the best radio shows around is WNYC's Radiolab. If absence truly does make the heart grow fonder, people should be fondest of Radiolab. The hour-long program which uses science to look at a variety of interesting subjects is produced in seasons of only five episodes each. Maybe the amount of time and care taken to produce each hour is why the show is so damn fascinating and phenomenal. I have yet to listen to an episode that hasn't kept me riveted. As I only discovered the show a few months ago, everything is still new to me.

The episodes are rebroadcast on WNYC every two weeks, and then posted as podcasts . I just got around to listening to one episode that was posted at the end of September but originally aired in April 2006. The episode is called "Detective Stories". The episode is summarized on their web site as follows:

Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour, we hear surprising stories of playing detective and finding that what really happened in the past is not at all what you’d expected. We start at a trash dump in Egypt, where we find Jesus, Satan, sissies, and porn. Next, the mystery of why hundreds of old letters written to the same woman were discovered on the side of Route 101. And lastly, a blood sampling tour of Asia reveals a prolific baby-maker and potentially a world conqueror.

The final two stories are particularly fascinating. I found myself laughing out loud in the grocery store last night during parts of "Goat on a Cow," only minutes after being saddened by the central events in the story. And the implications presented in "Genghis Kahn" are no less jaw dropping.

Give Radiolab a try. It's another one of those radio shows that proves why at one time even television was considered to possibly be simply nothing more than a fad that could never completely replace radio. Just like talkies!

Out of Focus Up-to-Date

I feel like a month just flat out disappeared. Is that what happened? I mean, last thing I know, I'm back from Toronto, preparing to move apartments, trying to get to New York Film Festival press screenings, and suddenly ... it's November 1. I suppose moving, buying a bunch of stuff for the new apartment, overbooking myself with screenings and theater, the IFP Market, a promotion at work and learning that my new apartment is "officially" an electric deathtrap (while further learning that NYC "code" for circuits, outlets and the like is something that I've never seen in any NYC rental apartment that I nor anyone I know has ever lived in!) all may have some influence on the fact that October 2007 will for a long time remain one big blur.

It's amazing how unsettled and utterly discombobulated I become from an apartment move. By no means do I think I'm unique; picking-up ones life and moving it is a disruption regardless of the distance, but I think I manage to handle it all particularly poorly. I still don't know where plenty of the things I need are. Searching for them haphazardly by rummaging through boxes is -- as I should know all-to-well in my 36 years of life and well-over 15 moves -- not particularly efficient. And so, lots of things have fallen by the wayside.

And yet, through it all, I have found a wee bit of time to play several Scrabulous games, getting my ass particularly handed to me on a platter by my porn magazine editor friend! See, who said porn mags aren't about words and stories!