While Watching "A Child is Waiting"...

...it became apparently obvious where Matthew Weiner found all the inspiration for Betty Draper Francis: in Gena Rowlands' character.

Have you seen this film yet? Where do you think Betty sprung from?

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love “2001”

I’ve always had a very complicated relationship with 2001: A Space Odyssey. For starters I am not a fan of Stanley Kubrick: I see why people deeply worship him and I understand why he’s so revered, but I have never connected to his clinical take on cinema in the way I have with Michael Haneke and David Fincher for example. I love his perfectionism and admire his dedication to his craft, but his movies never click with me. Whenever I find myself in conversations about his work, people are baffled when I tell them my two favorite movies of his are Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut.

Besides my lack of excitement for its maker, my relationship with 2001: A Space Odyssey has very Oedipal undertones. Growing up I always tried to learn how to love my dad’s two favorite movies: Patton and 2001. I still remember that first time when he announced we’d be watching his favorite movie and recall being enraptured by the scenes with the monkeys and thought this would be an adventure movie in the vein of The Jungle Book which I loved. Things got strange due to a grammatical confusion; the Spanish word for “monkey” is “mono” so when the word monolith came up I assumed he’d be a king of the chimps, a King Kong figure. Next thing I know “The Blue Danube” is playing and there’s a lady with a weird hat walking upside down. No more monkeys fighting? The whole thing became so boring that I don’t think I made it all the way through the end.

As a teenager in love with cinema I approached it once more and finally finished the whole thing. It was my first time watching the murderous HAL, developing a crush on Keir Dullea and realizing that visual effects had once existed without the aid of computers. However, this time around I found myself being as bored as I’d been as a six year old. I just didn’t get it! Why did I love Citizen Kane, 8 1/2 and freaking Tarkovsky and still saw nothing of value in what most people regard as Kubrick’s masterpiece?

Two day ago I saw the BAM Cinematek in Brooklyn would be playing 2001: A Space Odyssey as part of its “Big Epic Screen” Series and said to myself it’s now or never. Those who know me know that going to the movies is my absolute fave thing in the world and I thought that maybe if I saw 2001 on the big screen it’d finally click with me. I feared that it wouldn’t and that I’d still be out of the Kubrick loop and I also feared that I’d be ecstatic about it, making my younger self feel like a shallow dumbass (but hey, isn’t that what all the classics are supposed to do when we approach them as grown ups?).

Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen was unlike any other movie experience I’ve ever had. For once, I was immediately absorbed into its world. The way in which Kubrick plays with sound before we’ve seen a single image reminded me of the way in which we sing a hymn before mass begins. The movie is preceded by a pitch black limbo in which we listen to György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres”, this was especially interesting to feel as part of an audience. Watching it at home it’s impossible to control external sounds (dogs barking, younger siblings nagging, bells ringing...) but in a movie theater people seem to know they need to be quiet. Sitting in a dark room surrounded by strangers sharing this same experience was almost mystical. For those who think the movie is about the history of humanity, this small moment of darkness was like conveying non-existence. We are born until we listen to Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and see light for the first time.

This feeling is repeated during each of the film’s four chapters, in which we are convinced we are being reborn as more complex creatures. The scenes with the monkeys and the first appearance of the monolith once again filled me with childlike wonder and joy, but this time around by the time I got to space with the characters, I felt a strange sense of accomplishment - as if I’d helped them get there. The last part of the Moon mission chapter also conveyed something I’d never detected in the film before: that final high pitched sound we hear as the astronauts approach the monolith seems to be a desperate cry towards the universe, as if asking why the hell are we here?

By the time we got to the HAL chapter I was completely enthralled, watching the images on the big screen added one more quality I’d never found in previous viewings, as Stanley Kubrick directs a literal ballet of machines. The way every piece of equipment moves and the way every note of the score accompanies these moves, is akin to watching Fantasia; the images and the sounds in perfect unison reminding us why we go to the movies. Needless to say so, the grandeur and majesty of the special effects - which despite their age are more impressive than CGI - had a surreal quality as I half expected the spaceships and pods to burst out of the screen.

In the HAL sequences I also noticed the way in which Kubrick humorously suggests we are being brainwashed by the system. There are several moments where his camera is fixated on the red light that represents HAL and it’s as if it could see into the souls of the audience. We know it can’t, but at the same time it instills a very primal kind of fear in us. These sequences also added a new dimension brought on by silence. Kubrick accurately depicts outer space as a place of complete soundlessness, so the image of an astronaut cut loose from his ship and floating/sinking away into darkness was more terrifying because we couldn’t listen to his screams of despair.

There was also another moment that struck me as inventively wicked: the scene where HAL stops life support on the dormant astronauts and we see their life stats go from natural peaks and valleys to the fatal straight lines. Because we can't look away from it, we're confronted right and there with the idea that there might come a time when we'll need to be saved from our very creations. This doesn't necessarily mean that we should be scared of machines, but that we need to be conscious of even the art around us. In his whole movie as machine dichotomy, Kubrick is reminding us that we are being shown truth by a device that might turn its back against us. This is repeated once again during the last chapter where we see Keir Dullea's character age in a matter of seconds. The fact that Kubrick represented this time advance within a room is an obvious nod to how we as an audience are also aging within the four walls of the theater we're sitting in...

By the time the movie ended, I was completely blown away. The famous light-tunnel sequence almost gave me a seizure, the flight over the canyons of Jupiter was more exciting than anything in Avatar and the eventual birth of the star-child, once again accompanied by Strauss’s ode to Zarathustra, was truly rapturous. Within seconds it felt like a movie and a symphony. The lights went on and I was sent out into the world with a myriad of questions: are all movies meant to be seen on the big screen? If so, does that mean that I haven’t seen many movies because I’ve only seen them at home? Kubrick proved to me that cinema is the ultimate hybrid of spiritual/human connection, but now I also fear that I’ve been spoiled, because I've been once again reassured that truly great movies aren't about story but about sensorial experience.

3. Examine all windows.

“I just wanted it to look like a dream.”
- Buster Keaton on Sherlock Jr.

Slavoj Zizek made a great point of how the human mind is the most complex cinema projector. We "see" things on the "back" of our head, which are then projected towards our consciousness. This idea was rarely seen with such efficiency as it was in this movie.

Upon realizing the movie in front of him has changed, the "ghost" of the sleeping projector realizes he's in for something different. Which brings us to my fave shot:

He points at the screen trying to call out his "owner's" attention but fails to do so, in the process reminding us of how the deepest secrets of the mind (the ones we often turn into traumas) are usually there and are usually pointing at us to see them and fix them. This can also remind us of more spiritual ideas and you have got to love how Keaton goes even more meta and sets a frame within a frame, within the larger frame of our mind which determines how we are decoding what we see.

- This post is part of Nat's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot".

There's No Business Like Men Business.

There was a time when "chick flicks" got studios so excited, they even allowed them to become the first movies to feature new technology. How to Marry a Millionaire was the first movie shot in the widescreen CinemaScope despite not featuring a single "epic" moment. 

This would've been the 1990s equivalent of allowing a Julia Roberts movie to be the first to be shot and projected digitally or the early 2000s equivalent of having the first 3D movie be a Nicholas Sparks adaptation (yes, I know...) so let's take a minute to celebrate a time when women sorta kinda-ish ruled the system.

Now, for my favorite shot...

How to Marry a Millioanire is extremely chick flick-y and you can certainly trace something like Sex and the City all the way back to it. Which is why, my favorite shot features the three protagonists literally becoming maneaters as they gulp down huge sausages. 

The sly shamelessness with which  Jean Negulesco shows us how these women defy all social norms and have come to own their sexuality is the more subversive because he sets this scene against a city backdrop and what are skyscrapers if not tributes to the male erection? Yet instead of turning the ominous structures into signs of peril, the film playfully suggests that all these men are only awaiting for these women to capture them. To top this joyful celebration of the women gulp down their hot dogs with champagne.

Truly, what's not to love?

This post is part of Nathaniel's Hit Me with Your Best Shot series.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for The Most Dangerous Game.

Queering in the Rain.

If someone "inceptioned" the wet dreams of Rainer Werner Fassbender and Jean Cocteau, and asked a young Todd Haynes to make a movie out of them, the result would be Pink Narcissus. This avant garde gay landmark is often more conservative and forced than it wants to be, its lyrical qualities only subverted under the fact that despite its subject matter, it's r(b)arely erotic.

For all its use of phallic imagery, blowjobs and ejaculations, the film results rather tame and more often than not seems to wander too much into its own self indulgent qualities. Being about the fantasies of a hustler (Bobby Kendall) and having them play out like a Pasolini-meets-Fellini version of Skinemax soft porn seems to subtract queer out of the equation more often than not. The one thing that pervades in the film and makes it an interesting experience however, is how director James Bidgood shows off his cinematic influences throughout.

Director Bidgood famously removed his name from the film after he felt that the editors had butchered his work, when the truth is that it's the editing that gives the film a dreamlike quality. See for example how the editor juxtaposes "random" body parts, in this case the belly button and an eye, so that we're transported to Un Chien Andalou and Psycho in a second. The film may not really tap into the real sexual desires of a gay man, but it explores how films themselves can evoke the sensual world.

This feeling continues when on the Times Square fantasy, the director relies to neon (as well as inventive sight gags) to remind us of the overwhelming experience that can be NYC, something audiences had seen years before in the playful Singing in the Rain.

"Gotta dance!"

The references to the classic musical continue in further scenes, as Pink Narcissus seems to explore the same color palettes and borrows from the movie's musical structure.

"Singing and dancing in the rain..."

Notice the similarity between the painted skies, which not only relish in their obvious staginess but also never fail to inspire the romantic in us.

"You were meant for me..."

All of these cinematic winks bring us to my favorite shot:

Remember that scene in An American in Paris where Gene performs the famous ballet? I have never truly loved that movie, but I'm endlessly fascinated by how Gene recreated the most famous moments in French art.

And what is the shot above, if not an homage to the simple beauty of impressionistic painting? You're almost half expecting Bobby to put on a tutu and pose for Degas. Gotta love how the shot makes a superb use of the gorgeous male figure without taking away from the rest of the scene's beauty. The clothes rack could very well be out of a Matisse painting and it's only during this scene where Pink Narcissus manages to combine painting, cinema and classic humanism to remind us that beyond the confines of our testes, art can usually help us achieve the most glorious kind of orgasm.

- This post is part of Nat's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

Put the Blame on Gilda.

Head over to The Film Experience and read my piece on sexy Rita's striptease.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for Eclipse Series 33: Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for World on a Wire.

Head over to PopMatters where I discuss Jason Robards in Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for Summer Interlude.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review of Summer with Monika.

Head over to Top Ten Films and read my list of the greatest performances in Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Did Y'all Know James Caan Had Been THIS Hot?

Proceed with your day.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for the outstanding David Lean Directs Noel Coward.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for A Night to Remember.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for A Trip to the Moon.

The Savior Formerly Known as Prince.

Poor Snow White, always dreaming of a better life and never finding a salvation that goes beyond chauvinistic societal limitations. Why am I looking so much into a simple fairy tale you ask? The answer is simple: little boys and girls, grow up on these tales that establish that women will only find solace, happiness and fulfillment once they find a man. Sure, this is all very trite, I agree but beyond the "obvious" story codes, movies have always embedded subtle, shall we call 'em Freudian graphic slips in movies.

For example, why on Earth is Snow White looking for answers in a well? Not only are wells essentially patriarchal symbols of urban development, they also happen to be extremely phallic figures. If you think I'm still being too paranoid, I take you to my favorite shot in the movie:

See, how what once were innocent cute little singing birds seem to take on the shape of jaws about to swallow our heroine. Since the camera is looking up at her it makes us feel that she can only be safe if she enters the well and surrenders whatever little independence she really had (why is the Queen evil if she's only trying to live up to strict rules about how women should look and act?) It doesn't really help that birds have forever represented the male reproductive organ, it's as if the movie is telling girls that other men will harass them, but they have to keep pure until "the one" arrives.

Not so curiously enough, the minute the prince appears the birds fly away, making the scene harmonious once more. Takes someone with balls to save this woman from the perils of the world. That this whole scene is set to one of the catchiest, most iconic songs in the Disney canon speaks for itself. Who cares if the animation is so subversive? Children and most grown ups will never know, after Taylor Swift sings "Romeo save me, I've been feeling so alone. I keep waiting for you but you never come, is this in my head, I don't know what to think". As Carrie Bradshaw would say, "another one bites the dust".

This post is part of Nat's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot".

Key Moment of the 90s.

Head over to PopMatters and read my review for what I think is the greatest movie of the 1990s. Disagree? Let me know why!

There's No Need to Fear...

My review for Underdog: The Complete Series is here!