De La Soul is Dead

My piece on De La Soul is Dead is now up at Popmatters.com.

"Kiss Them for Me"

My blurb on Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Kiss Them for Me" is now up at Popmatters.com

Seven Ways to Go to Hell: The First Seven Shots of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness

John Carpenter's best movies exemplify the virtues of American horror movies made during the 1970s and 80s, a time when any genre director worth thinking about knew the genre and its traditions, and took those traditions seriously (don't worry, this isn't going to turn into an extended exercise in high fuddy-duddyism). Carpenter and contemporaries like Joe Dante and Stuart Gordon knew the entire arc of horror movie history because they came of age at a time when cultural institutions like Shock Theater, Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and Aurora monster model kits turned horror movie fandom into just another American pastime, like baseball or duck & cover drills. As a result, you had a generation of very self-conscious horror filmmakers who thought deeply about their antecedents yet never succumbed to the temptations of parody or mannerism. Their films very much worked within genre traditions, and extended those traditions in deeply satisfying and exciting ways.

Carpenter's films in particular couple an admirable reverence for horror film conventions with an extraordinary knack for narrative economy. Below, I've taken the first 7 shots of his 1987 film maudit, Prince of Darkness, and tried to get at some sense of what makes each of them work. I had a particular destination in mind when I started, and I was able to navigate myself there without too much trouble, but I was largely flying blind along the way. But I like to be surprised, so I liked this little exercise. Carpenter packs a lot of information into a small space, so I left out some observations that were interesting to me and might have been interesting to you, but I think I was able to give some sense of how individual choices fabricated a more or less coherent whole.

Shot 1, Still 1

Full moons have been part of horror movie syntax going at least as far back as Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man. Carpenter happily admits to falling back on cliché, but with enough skill, clichés can work as efficient shorthand, signifying ideas and history in one image. That's my way of saying that the full moon shot works. It starts the movie off on a perfect note. Well, except it's not really where the movie starts.

The real beginning occurs seconds earlier, as his minimalist, synth driven score plays under the Universal Pictures intro. I can't be sure, but I suspect he originally planned this shot as a neat graphic match with the Universal logo, cutting straight from the image of the revolving Earth to the static shot of the moon. Instead, the production company and producer credits separate the logo and the first shot. At any rate, the music and image immediately set the mood and signal the genre and, if you're hip to Carpenter's earlier films, the director. If you accidentally wandered in looking for Three Men & a Baby, you now know you're in the wrong theater.

Shot 2, Still 1

Notice how the shot carries directly over from the first image, with the light from the moon streaming through the window, forming a half circle against the door. It would be easy to cut to a close-up, but by cutting to this long shot, Carpenter keeps the first two images linked. The low-key lighting is very effective, and establishes an appropriately eerie mood, as the music score continues to pulse through the sequence. With night scenes, especially those in horror movies, a lot of contemporary filmmakers like bathing everything in blue hues (it's like a return to the silent movie convention of using blue tints to signify nighttime), but Carpenter and his cinematographer, Gary Kibbe, keep everything neutral. Also, notice the economy of the production design, and how effectively it conveys information. Thanks to the elaborate cross on the wall, hanging directly over the old man's body, the image tells us that at the very least he's a man of intense religious convictions, and the work of semiotics being what it is, we're probably already making the correct assumption that he's be a priest or minister of some kind.

Shot 3, Still 1

The film cuts to a close-up of the old man. The pattern of light changes between shots, so that where in the long shot, bright moonlight illuminates the entire right side of his face, here the light shining on him is decidedly lower-key. The change in lighting allows Kibbe to use the light to sculpt the man's face, emphasizing the tension in his jaw line, and the intensity of his upward stare. We sense this is a man with trouble on his mind.

Shot 3, Still 2

Then, in the same shot, he dies. Old religious man with trouble on his mind laying in bed wide awake in the middle of night, we hardly knew ye. Or maybe we knew a hell of a lot about you considering how little time you were on screen.

Shot 4, Still 1

Cut to shot 4, a close-up of the man's hands holding onto something. The cut conveys the idea that whatever's in his hands probably has something to do with whatever thoughts once occupied his no-longer-worried mind. Slowly but surely, his hands a fall away and reveal...

Shot 4, Still 2

... a box? Yes, a box. Or, as Roland Barthes would call it, a piece of the hermeneutic code. The contract provided by commercial narratives typically stipulate that hermeneutic riddles will resolve themselves in due time. This shot promises to tell us what's in the box if we stick around long enough. Think of this shot as a kind of promissory note offered to the spectator. It guarantees to reward our curiosity, and in return we promise not to abandon the film even if the characters grate, the style proves to be tacky, or we remember that we came to see Three Men & a Baby, not a John Carpenter movie with a down on his luck Alice Cooper. Of course, Three Men & a Baby isn't even going to explain the deal with the creepy ghost kid who suddenly pops up in the background during one scene, let alone the mystery of what's in the box in a completely different film. We're less than a minute into the movie, and the narrative ball is rolling onward.

Title Card

The title card. The only thing interesting about it (and I'm not counting this as a shot, or else I'd feel obliged to include the production company and producer credits) is that there's nothing interesting about it. Compare to the title card of Halloween or The Thing or They Live. Simple white on black design, arguably signifying starkness, possibly signifying a rush to just get the damn thing done on time and on budget.

Shot 5, Still 1

Shot 5, Still 2

Shot 5, Still 3

I really like the next sequence of image. It starts with a fairly common type of cheat that can be annoying or can be neat. This one's neat. It begins with a long shot which appears to be following the man in a white shirt. He's walking along in the middle of the frame, and gets consistently closer to the camera, which appears to be carefully tracking with his movements. So the scene is clearly about him, right? Well, not so fast.

Shot 5, Still 4

Shot 5, Still 5

Shot 5, Still 6

Shot 5, Still 6

The shot really has two subjects, neither of which is really our man in the white shirt. The first subject is the girl on the bicycle and the second is our man in red. Unless you happen to be a big Simon & Simon fan, you probably don't realize it yet, but you're now laying eyes on the film's star, Jameson Parker. The reason this kind of cheat shot can be annoying is because it can easily be fancy misdirection that lets the director yell, "Look ma, I can move a movie camera." (Or more accurately, "Look ma, I can order my DP to order the camera operator to move a movie camera.") In other words, this kind of 'track that, now track this' trick is often just an empty flourish. Here, it conveys some interesting information, and even the man in the white shirt serves a purpose.

The girl on the bicycle becomes apparent in the third still I excerpted from the shot. She glides across the frame as the camera tracks rightward. We see the man in the white shirt briefly glance at the girl, and then turn away. He shows no particular interest in her. Now, compare to Mr. Parker's character, who sees the girl coming his way, and, as shown in the fifth still, makes the effort to turn his head and catch a glimpse of her going in the opposite direction. He's clearly interested. The man in the white shirt's brief glance helps intensify Parker's more ostentatious gesture. Before we even know this is the guy we're supposed to be watching, Carpenter and Parker are already communicating information about the character, and establishing a key personality trait. To put it simplistically, he's horny, and that's all we might guess about him from this shot, but as the film unfolds, we find this guy is a kind of obsessive, somebody with almost stalkerish tendencies who watches and obsesses over girls (or one girl in particular). This trait will directly affect how the film's plot unfolds. And Carpenter starts building up this characteristic from the very first moment the character appears on screen.

Shot 5, Still 7

Shot 5, Still 8

Parker moves down frame from the long shot and into a medium shot. We can make guesses about his character, about his location, but nothing definite yet, although the satchel over the shoulder of a man in a polo shirt routine strongly connotes "either an instructor or aging graduate student or both" to me. The shot ends with him looking to his right, our left, and anybody who's ever seen a movie edited using continuity principles knows we're about to get a point of view shot.

Shot 6, Still 1

And the point of view shot reveals a pretty, red headed female, played by Lisa Blount. Keep in mind, this is just seconds after he ogled the pretty blond on the bicycle. He seems to be a man on the prowl. Or perhaps just very deeply lonely. So Carpenter feeds us more information about what makes this guy tick, and by cutting to a shot that so prominently features the redhead, we basically know we've been introduced to the film's female protagonist, who we, knowing Hollywood narrative conventions, assume will be the hero's love interest. The notebooks under her arm (universal sign in movie image-speak for "Hi, I'm taking classes!") and her appearance suggest she's another aging graduate student, a detail that largely resolves questions about the location. Okay, one last shot, and we're done for now.

Shot 7, Still 1

Cut back to a close-up of Parker. The shot-reverse shot pattern establishes a subject-object relationship between the two characters, and underscores the intensity of his interest. In other words, Carpenter lets us know this isn't like the fleeting lust for the girl on the bicycle thing you saw less that ten seconds ago; he really digs this red headed girl. This relationship is going places. Scary, nightmarish, apocalyptic places, but places just the same.

So, a lot of information, delivered in less than two minutes of running time, during which Carpenter establishes two major characters, one incidental character, the tone and genre, and sets two different narrative wheels in motion. The writing lays out the structure, but the skill and economy of Carpenter''s direction permits him to get all the necessary information across very quickly and without much fuss. Now for the requisite auteurist interpretive leap. The concluding close-up above allows us to get a good look at Parker. Now, take another look at him. Then take a look at the fellow pictured in the right side of the image below.

That's the director, John Carpenter, as I'm sure anybody reading this post knows. Now, I'm not saying they're spitting images of one another by any means, but I think it's fair to say that when Carpenter and/or the film's casting director picked Parker, and had him grow a mustache, they picked a man who fit a certain type, one which we might fairly call the John Carpenter type: a sandy-haired, skinny fellow with a mustache. Carpenter's go to guy throughout most of the 80s was either Kurt Russell, or when Kurt Russell wasn't available, gregarious, sturdy guys like Tom Atkins or Roddy Piper. I think Russell and actors in that mold were for Carpenter idealized images of what a macho man's man was supposed to be. Parker, in contrast, plays a deeply imperfect hero, someone's who's passive and ineffectual.

All of which leads me to speculate if we have in Prince of Darkness that most prized of auteurist objects: 'the auteur's most personal film.' Carpenter made Prince of Darkness right after Big Trouble in Little China flopped, bringing his then ascending career to a halt. Back to the minors for Mr. Carpenter. Parker's character, and the entire film's moody, apocalyptic tone, can be read as expressions of Carpenter's own uncertainty about the direction of his career, the direction of Hollywood, and the direction of the horror genre in the late 1980s. Now if I could only find proof that Lisa Blount looked just like Sandy King circa 1987, then I think this argument could really work.

15 Albums

Responding to a tag from a friend, the task is to name 15 favorite albums. As arbitrary as ever, listed largely in the order they occurred to me. Each one, aside from being personal pleasures, are inducements to sanity and vital pieces of misinformation that make humans look better than they really are.

List

A. Pavement Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

B. Otis Redding Otis Blue

C. Yeah Yeah Yeahs Fever to Tell

D. De La Soul De La Soul is Dead

E. Duke Ellington Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band

F. Billie Holiday Lady Day: The Master Takes & Singles

G. Blondie Parallel Lines

H. Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers L.A.M.F.

I. New Order Power, Corruption & Lies

J. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook

K. Frank Sinatra The Best of the Columbia Years 1943-1952

L. The Go-Betweens Oceans Apart

M. Charlie Parker The Yardbird Suite

N. Buzzcocks Singles Going Steady

O. Phil Spector Back to Mono (1958-1969)

Notes

A. I would love Crooked Rain Crooked Rain just for the line in "Range Life" where Malkmus sings "The Stone Temple Pilots/They're elegant bachelors/They're foxy to me are they foxy to you?" but that's only one of many moments where Malkmus ambles into hilarious moments of grace.

B. I could pick any of Redding's albums from Pain in My Heart to The Immortal Otis Redding (and the last two posthumous collections, Love Man and Tell the Truth, aren't bad either), but Otis Blue has the best cover (just about the only time a record company pulled the whole 'let's put a blond white woman an album by an African-American recording artist' trick without embarrassing themselves) so I guess it wins because of that, but also because "I've Been Loving You Too Long" is the greatest vocal performance of Redding's career, and his recording of "Satisfaction" renders the Stones version absolutely useless.

C. Maybe it's too soon for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I can see how some of their mannerisms might grate, but then again maybe I can see better how their mannerisms might seem like symptoms of a rational cynicism that felt more intelligent than hope or desperation during the last decade.

D. Perhaps De La Soul is Dead should be held accountable for the proliferation of skits that have ruined many a hip hop album, but De La Soul is Dead is the first and just about the last time the skits are as funny and necessary as the songs, and the songs are very funny and very necessary.

E. The recordings collected in the Never No Lament set often sound like the summit of human civilization, every second a testament to taste, composure, and wit.

F. Billie Holiday represents the kind of human mystery that breaks my heart, because every decision she makes about phrasing and interpretation across the late 30s/early 40s recordings collected in the above set indicates a level of insight and genius neither you or I or the person in the next room can ever hope to touch, but every decision she made in her personal life was the wrong one. Maybe somebody misinformed her at a young age that they gave Nobel Prizes in self-destruction, and so she applied her considerable skill there too.

G. I love the unapologetic trashiness of Blondie, so redolent of the Bazooka Joe faux-populism of punk, and smart enough to recognize in disco merely another another expression of that sensibility, patterns of thought which all come together on Parallel Lines.

H. L.A.M.F. is the great lost punk album of 1977, a masterpiece of strung out theories about civilization and its discontented hangers-on from the New York Dolls guitarist and F.O.D.D., Johnny Thunders.

I. That New Order album makes the work of mourning in the age of mass communication sound so damn sexy.

J. Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter were, as the cliché goes, an ideal match of sensibilities. It's often said all the Songbooks are great, but I find the Gershwin collection relatively dull, and I think the sarcastic, mercenary temperament at the heart of many of Irving Berlin's lyrics is something she just didn't get and thus often didn't know how to phrase (I really dislike her reading of "Let's Face the Music and Dance"), but Porter's songs are guides to how to waltz through the suffering and heartbreak the world pushes at you without breaking a sweat, and that sensibility was always Fitzgerald's special benediction as a performer, so everything comes together beautifully here.

K. I know many who say the Columbia Years just aren't as interesting as the Dorsey recordings, where Sinatra found his voice, or the Capitol years, where he reconstructed it, but there's something to the smooth, lavender quality in Sinatra's sound throughout most of these songs that counts as a particular kind of perfection. And I'm as suspicious of the claims made on behalf of perfection as anybody, but sometimes perfection can be, you know, nice, and this is often very, very nice.

L. The Go-Betweens are sometimes my favorite rock band, and Oceans Apart would rarely be the album I'd name as my favorite, but I have been listening to it a lot in the past two months, and despite the most godawful mastering job I've ever encountered, I keep coming back to it rather obsessively. It was to be their last album, and it sounds like an accidental testament, a wonderful encapsulation of their sensibility and the range of their sonic ideas, which somehow the muddy mastering just renders all the more incisive.

M. Charlie Parker would be the best argument ever made on behalf of the pure pleasure of virtuosity for its own sake, except plenty of feeling and humor backs up every outburst, so I'm once again saved from having to make moral allowances for genius.

N. I've challenged myself to say something about each of these albums, but I have nothing to say about the Buzzcocks. Just that they're loudly wonderful and sublimely frivolous and very desperate.

O. And in light of recent events, let's just say my love of the Spector recordings might have a little less to do with Spector than the title of the box set would indicate, and more to do with Ronnie Spector's proto-punk goddess presence, or Darlene Love's determination to sing the only Christmas song anyone will ever need to hear, or Carole King & Gerry Goffin having the nerve to write "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)." I mean, there are dozens of reasons why I sometimes play songs from the set obsessively, and most of them have nothing to do man whose name and face graces the box. Though sure, he probably had something to do with it all. Why else would they put his face on the box?

Favorite Albums of 2009

I intend to finish my favorite movies of the decade countdown by the end of the week, but in the meantime I thought I'd shift my thoughts to a very belated list of my favorite albums from last year. It strikes me one of the theoretical advantages of the blogosphere is that writers don't need to be quite so slavishly concerned with deadlines, so for instance a best of the year list need not materialize in the first week of January, when solid December releases are still trying to make their claims upon time and memory. Instead, of course, the blogosphere mere encourages a race to the finish mentality, so that it's not unusual to see sites pushing out purported favorites sometime near the end of November. At any rate, these are the releases from last year that periodically obsessed me and which still claim some hold over my attention and affections.

1. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart -s/t An album which I liked a lot on first listen, and which I came to love over the course of the year. Pungent shoegaze nostalgia that wraps its fuzz blast histrionics around singing that whimpers and whispers its way around the ear as the lyrics make desperate proclamations of adequacy and yearning.

2. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix Car commercial dance punk of an unusually stirring variety. Music to drive into brick walls by.

3. Primary Colours - the Horrors Like all current Brit-pop possessing any pretensions to relevancy, this channels Ian Curtis's ghost to exuberant effect, like paranoid roosters trapped in a florescent box.

4. It's Not Me, It's You - Lily Allen Snot-nosed spitfire proclamations of gender ressentiment wrapped up in the bouncy-bouncy day-glo sounds of a girl figuring out just how much the world owes her.

5. It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs! In which Karen O. discovers her inner disco goddess and conquers dance floors in need of a good rug shampooer.

6. My World - Lee Fields A soul legend only in the lost dreams of jaundiced archivists, he rises from the earth to produce stone cold soul that demands history's bloody head on a plate.

7. Wilco (the Album) - Wilco The joke being that not even people who like them a lot (like me) have any trouble imagining their lives without them, but their poignant superfluity, like the backyard bar-b-q philosopher who takes you aside to explain the meaning of love, money, and rock n roll because you both need and deserve to know, is their primal gift after all.

8. Embryonic - The Flaming Lips Weird noises gurgling up from the basement belonging to America's favorite square hippies next door, this is drenched in the sounds of the sad reverie of those too easily astonished at the limits of their imaginations, which is why it obsessed me for two weeks straight.

9. Rated R - Rihanna - Explorations of a superstar's distorted, jagged plane of super-existence, where every trauma takes on the scale, pathos, and bathos of an epic myth.

10. Sainthood - Tegan & Sara - Still getting into this, but sounds almost as good as the last one, and with the girls possessing great yelps in the form of voices that give me goosebumps even when the songs have nowhere in particular to go.