Against The Hype

I haven’t yet parsed (nor could I possibly) all of the mysteries and wonders of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive after my first enraptured viewing, but how hypnotic is that scene in Club Silencio where Rebekah Del Rio sings “Llorando”, her a capella Spanish cover of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”? Her clear and tremulous voice, that creased forehead and weathered face, captured close-up over a dark background, echo more powerfully as a naked embodiment of desire than almost any musical number across the cinematic decade that followed. (And what are musical numbers meant to be but embodiments of desire?) The scene is wondrous in its simplicity, cutting between close-ups of Del Rio, weeping for a lost love, and of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, weeping for beauty.

Mulholland Drive sustains its mystery by baring its heart in scenes like this one or Watts’ fabled audition, even when it complicates them with the futile threat of being illusory. What illusion? When Del Rio collapses as her voice plays on, or onlookers clap to Watts’ tear-choked breaths, we aren’t disappointed that “it’s all a sham”—because we remember. And so the magic persists: beyond death, beyond reality.

Mulholland Drive | 2001 | USA | Director: David Lynch | Screenplay: David Lynch | Cast: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Rebekah Del Rio, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller

Here are my Twitter posts on some of the movies I caught in the past year:

District 9: Bracing as a quasi-documentary on alien immigrants, and as a horror film on unwanted transformations; opaque as an action flick.

Double Indemnity: I just don’t get classic actresses playing hysterics. c.f. Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey into Night

Fighting: A formula film without the formula’s best parts: the sweat-soaked anticipation, the thrill of the win, or, y’know, the actual fighting.

Funny Girl: Nearly a revue meant to showcase Streisand’s talents at belting and rapid-fire line delivery; Streisand redefines stardom.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Potter fatigue has caught up to me; all of J.K. Rowling’s missed dramatic opportunities keep thwacking me in the face.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Sturdy pulp movie, with stars (Ford, Connery, Phoenix) that knew they were stars, and how to act as stars.

Katong Fugue: How is it that celluloid pianos so readily channel their player’s inner desires? (c.f. The Piano)

Moon: “Thoughtful scifi” for beginners: promising premise, predictable plotting.

Paper Heart: Shades of When Harry Met Sally, with clever, disciplined use of the handheld trope.

Paranormal Activity: Oscillates like Julie & Julia between its annoying and gratifying plots, but with demons (actual v boyfriend) not cooks

Public Enemies: Retreads Bonnie and Clyde, laced with the irony that even America’s Most Wanted doesn’t beat its citizens’ self-absorption.

Ratatouille: Anyone (who can reconstruct whole recipes from scratch with just a whiff) can cook.

Silkwood proves that horror movies are scarier when they feel like a part of life, especially one you haven’t the means to escape.

Taken: dooming teenagers worldwide to clampdowns on travel by their paranoid parents, who believe that kidnappers lie at every foreign turn.

There Will Be Blood score is such a keeper: each track is flavorful and distinctive! If it didn’t fit the images, that’s the movie’s fault.

Up: Apart from the vignettes of lifelong marriage… eurgh. Eurgh. Pixar at its most infantile.

The Wedding Banquet: Queer domesticity warms my soft heart.

West Side Story: (Romeo + Juliet’s plot) – (Shakespeare’s poetry) = Awful book scenes. Rita Moreno sets her scene ablaze; other songs nowhere as fiery.

You Can Count on Me: Exactly what the title says.

I’ve moved! My old site name, TinyEpiphanies.com, was a holdover from my younger days when I needed a general label to hold forth on anything I wanted. I’ve since learnt that my favourite writing for this site involves railing against the excessive hype plastered on nearly every awards contender nowadays, and leveling a more nuanced critique of its glories and missteps.

Hence: Against The Hype.

Please update your links and bookmarks to AgainstTheHype.com! For feed readers, please update your feed to http://www.againstthehype.com/feed/. Here’s to a great new year!

I have joined the writing team at SINdie, short for Singapore Independent Films Only, which I think amply covers the scope of the blog. “Independent”, though, is pretty redundant at this point, since we’re long past the short-lived post-war era where Singapore had a thriving studio film industry. For my debut reviews, I attended a night screening of 26 short films from aspiring local filmmakers at the Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media, though I had to bow out after sixteen films to catch a public bus home (not to mention that a consecutive run of about five films before I left made a good case for leaving).

Here’s a snippet from my favourite piece of the lot, a joint review of four of the shorts:

While SINdie’s regular policy is to give each film its own post, I’ve packaged together these four films, which span three languages (English, Mandarin, Tamil), because they suggest a regrettable tendency for local filmmakers to receive their storytelling and scoring influences from charity show montages or social awareness ads.

Sure, After Skool, Shifting Feet, Father and Ananthi differ in the precision of their cinematography, editing and makeup, which are especially strong and steady in those last two films. But they’re all prone to breaking out the “touching” melodies at key moments, and in all their stories, one character commits an unfeeling transgression against another, only to have a later turnaround scene that casts this character in a less stonyhearted light:

After Skool: A bunch of bullies beats a girl bloody (seriously, she’s like marinara) for having an old auntie’s photo in her pendant, only to have one of them soften after she picks up the fallen pendant, realising its significance as she sits by the unconscious girl’s bedside… (Full review)

It’s great at SINdie: not only am I already getting a much better feel of local film in just my first two assigned screenings, we’re also the only Singaporean blog to focus explicitly on homegrown films, which means that the filmmakers themselves often look to our reviews for encouragement and critique (though, given my hard-assed expectations of formal incisiveness, they might often find more of the latter from me).

I’m here to serve!

I haven’t posted in a month, and a lot of things have happened to me since then: among others, I’ve joined a film writing team, started learning Japanese, and programmed cherished movies for my friends. I’ll get to some of these as the days roll by, but none, none of them can top…

… not understanding why Sally said the story of her life hadn’t started yet…

… because mine feels like it’s already begun.

Thirty-three years later, here I come!

“God save Illinois.”