From Stones in Exile, a documentary about the making of the Rolling Stones' classic album Exile on Main Street.  Recorded in the dank, musty basement of Nellcôte, a mansion Keith had rented in the South of France.

Keith, Mick, and Charlie discuss their love for black American music. The clips ends with Keith and Mick sitting around Nellcôte strumming guitar and singing the blues. So effortless and so, so good.

Interviewer: It's been said the Rolling Stones gave black music back to Americans.  What are the first black musicians that turned you on to black music?

Keith: Chuck Berry, Little Richard.  I guess Little Richard was the first one I heard that really knocked me out.  Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo... the list gets endless.  I guess the more you got into black music the more you followed it back to where it come from.  So eventually you're listening to Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, etc.  Everybody goes through it.

Charlie:  To me even now American players and singers always the best.  It is one of those things you have going.  It is for me... but then you know I'm a black American freak.  'Cause that's the music I like, primarily.  That's really the music I love.

Mick: It was a super eclectic band.  I was brought up in the '50s, you know.  I liked pop music.  I didn't just like blues.  I love blues but, you know, I love Elvis.  But I loved crap pop music.  I like acoustic blues music, country music, we like everything.  Plus you've got all these other people.  And you're kind of throwing this whole mishmash in.

[Keith and Mick strumming guitar at Nellcôte]

I don't want you when you have
Every man around this town.

You going to lose your reputation, baby.
Going with every man around this town. 

True / False is a documentary film festival held in Columbia, MO, usually in late February or early March.  I've gone the last three years.  Or has it been four?  Seen many good films and a few bad ones.  I'm more likely to feel engaged but unsympathetic towards a good film than to find myself truly disinterested in a bad film.

My favorite films this year.  (Spoilers) 

Page One : A Year Inside the N.Y. Times : This documentary follows David Carr, who was hired by the Times to report on media, especially the influence the Internet has on broadcast and print journalism.  Without Carr’s personality I don’t think the film would be very interesting.  But I think he makes it work. Maybe that’s because I’m drawn to iconoclastic, confrontational personalities (who, by their actions tend to illuminate rather than obscure issues).  Carr has a checkered past (drug use, time spent in jail) which gives him a sense of the fragility of success and a been-through-hell, not-easily-impressed attitude.  He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  Some of the best moments of the film are the confrontations Carr has with “new media” hipsters (the bloggers, the content aggregators) who are quick to criticize old institutions like the N.Y. Times as out of touch, too slow, etc.  These people copy the reporting of others, add some celebrity news, and call themselves journalists.  A few disturbing images related to WikiLeaks war footage.

(Had a good audience for this film.  The Columbia School of Journalism was right down the road from the theater.  So there was a lot of interest in the film.) 

Armadillo : A documentary about Danish soldiers serving in Afghanistan.  A very good film that shows war from the vantage point of the GI.  You see tearful goodbyes, boredom, attempts to befriend the locals, moments of intense action.  There was a big controversy in the Danish press (when? not exactly sure) about the behavior of a few soldiers while serving in Afghanistan.  Caused a lot of consternation in Denmark- Should our soldiers be there?  Are they acting professionally?  Should those involved in the incident be court marshaled?  I get a sense this film is the first time the story is told from the soldiers’ point of view.  Danish with subtitles.  Some disturbing war footage.

Bobby Fischer Against the World : I’m not sure if this is of any interest to a general audience.  It’s a biography of Fischer in three parts:  1) His childhood and early success with chess.  2) His world championship match against Boris Spassky (Rocky IV borrows its theme- the loner American battling the entire Soviet machine).  And 3) His decent into paranoid, schizophrenic madness.  An interesting portrait of genius- if such a word can be applied to someone who devotes his life to a game.

Project Nim

Me to sister J:  I wish you could have seen this film I saw.  It was about a professor who arranged for a family to raise a chimpanzee as their own child (it was the ‘70s) and teach it sign language.  I have such violent reactions to movies- in terms of the strong opinions they provoke from me.  In the past you’ve encouraged me to tap the brakes when I get overly anti-social with my cold, condemning opinions of other peoples’ behavior.  Other times we are completely on the same page when calling “bullshit” on others.  I’d be interested to know where you stand on this film.

Sister J: In general I don't like anything that tries to make animals like humans i.e. dressing them in clothes, so I'm not sure how I would feel about raising a chimp as one. I'm sure it's fascinating on some level to see if you can teach an animal to communicate with you through sign language, but something about it doesn't sit well with me. Why isn't the chimp with its mother? Not saying I'm not for learning more about an animal's capabilities, but I don't know. So did the chimp learn sign language? Did they make it wear t-shirts? Bleh. ;)

I was literally just reading through that book Stuff White People Like and the 3rd one on the list is film festivals hahahahahaha.

Me: I think we might be on the same page on this film.  Near the end of the film the chimp is transferred to a medical research facility and the director of the film makes the research scientist out to be a villain.  That didn’t sit well with me because the medical researcher was a very thoughtful person.  And- this is what really bugged me- the researchers who took the chimp at a young age have the luxury of not having to figure out how the chimp’s life ends.  At one point the language professor says “No one keeps a chimp past four years old- they don’t know their own strength.”  No shit- and what happens then?  In the end the medical scientist helps relocate the chimp to a ranch where it lives out the rest of its life in peace.  So he’s “redeemed”- but that’s so cheap.  He was doing meaningful research- yes, unpleasant- but not hippie fun and games like the language researchers.

The audience at the fest is a bohemian crowd-which I like most of the time.  But their jeering at the “villain” in the film annoyed me.  Think things through people, or don’t get involved in the first place.  Like you said, “Why isn’t the chimp with its mother?”

[An e-mail to a friend.]
 
I finally watched Primer last night.  Liked it.  Though I admit I don’t understand all of it. 
 
Overall I thought it was very well done for a low budget film.  I really liked how the first half of the film focused on the engineering, entrepreneurship, finances- the ho-hum aspects of creating the machine.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind took the same approach, where the sci-fi aspect of the story is made to look routine.  The facility where a patient may have his memory erased looks like a dirty health clinic in a downtrodden neighborhood.  The technicians are twenty-somethings who bicker and flirt with each other rather than pay attention to the procedure they’re performing.  Primer also took this approach- two guys working on an engineering project in their garage ala Hewlett Packard.  Much more convincing than top secret government programs, mad scientists, wall-to-wall computers, and all the other clichés.  Also, the language they used was convincing.  Technical enough to convey they’re conducting a scientific experiment; vague enough not to give away exactly what they’re up to.

Once the film got to the central conflict I began to lose interest.  It was still engaging, it’s just with films like these I look for the essential message and don’t care to sift through all the details.  Call it a lack of attention or a personal hang-up, but I dislike films that require more than one viewing to understand.  Sometimes the need for multiple viewings or consultation with Internet discussion boards is trumpeted as a badge of honor (as with Donnie Darko) but I see it as self-indulgent on the part of the writer and director.  It may be their baby, but to me it’s just one film among many.  Again, maybe my fault.
 
Primer warned me if I screw with causality, causality will screw with me.  I understand that.  I’m a little hazy on the timelines, interactions with time-doubles, the machine within a machine, the fail-safe machine, etc.
 
I would definitely recommend it.  My complaint is more a personal hang-up than a real criticism of the film.

"I don't rattle, kid.  Just for that I'm going to beat you flat!"

Paul Newman, as Fast Eddie Felson, is down on his luck and disgusted with having to hustle pool in dive bars.  He wants to play the big game for big money against Minnesota Fats.  He settles here for a $100 bet ($750 in today's dollars) against a "two bit punk." 

I think There Will Be Blood is a well made film. The cinematography is beautiful. The score is a bold choice. I thought it was brilliant to use spooky music. The score suggests a horror film- which, along with the title, serves to ratchet up the suspense and build a sense of foreboding. Something bad- very bad- is going to happen.

And that's where the film disappointed me. I have no problem with slow, plodding development. Though I did say out loud "Get on with it!" during the silent opening sequence, I did think it was well done. It established how terribly hard life was back then. In fact, I remember being chilled at one point- it might have been a little later in the film, when Daniel finally arrives at the Sunday ranch and asks if he can camp on their land. Anyhow, I remember being chilled and getting up to crank up the heat in my townhouse. The endless shots of desolate gray skies and a chill wind must have had a psychological effect on me. I said "well done" as a nod to the director as I realized the stark difference between my easy comfort and the pioneers hard work and misery.

But this slow, meandering plot, with all the requisite slow, lingering shots has got to lead somewhere. I alternated between frustration and anticipation as I watched. The peak of my attention in the film was the scene where Daniel is sitting on his porch with his brother- or the man who has presented himself as his brother- and confesses he is terribly competitive and wants every other man to fail. Then he adds, "I look at people and I see nothing worth liking." He asks his brother if he feels the same way and his brother says no, with all his trying and failing he doesn't see it like that- he just doesn't care any more. Daniel remarks, "Well, if it's in me then it's in you." Whoa! That line stood out. That's foreshadowing if I've ever seen it. That really piqued my interest and I thought OK, we may find out this brother is not the quiet, broken man we think he is. We are going to find out that neither man can escape their father's blood and an intense rivalry will develop.

Only it doesn't. A few scenes later Daniel's brother is unmasked as an impostor and impassively excised from the script. And for what? To make a point that traditional conflict-climax-resolution story arcs are passé? Daniel's son is handled in an even more careless manner. The director inserts a shot of the son, now an adult, marrying the Sunday girl only so he can set up the very next scene. With no exposition of a juvenile son's deteriorating relationship with his father, no backstory that carries beyond an eight year old kid, the director expects the audience suddenly to become emotionally invested in the confrontation between adult son and miserable, contemptuous father. When Daniel reveals to his son that he's an orphan ("lower than a bastard") adopted for the sole purpose of having a cute face present when swindling homesteaders out of their oil-rich land, I cried foul. Yes, the director inserted a few cues along the way- the most telling of which was Daniel refusing to answer his brother's question about the whereabouts of the boy's mother. Still, I thought it was cheap and hypocritical. How is the audience supposed to feel indignant when it's revealed that Daniel Plainview does not love his son, he merely feigned love in order to enrich himself financially? The director didn't tend to the boy's character either. He merely inserted him into the story in order to set up a nasty verbal denouement, hastily arranged and devoid of any lasting impact.

I had lost interest by the time we get to Eli Sunday's triumphant return as a well-dressed, successful holy man, visiting "such an old friend" Daniel, at Daniel's beautiful California mansion. A tradition story arc suggests Daniel will take vengeance for Eli having forced him to confess his sins in public. But the film has shown an interest in bucking trends. So will a drunk, declining Daniel summon up the will and strength to confront the ascendant Eli? Will blood be spilled as the film's title suggests? Oh wait, Eli is not successful. He's lost a fortune in the market. Will Daniel suddenly show some compassion? Do I care about these sudden revelations? Oh wait, it is traditional after all. A beat-down and the credits role.

A good attempt but ultimately disappointing in my opinion. If a film insists on departing from the traditional path, it must do so for a reason. I can't see what was accomplished by this film's journey.

My sister responds:

Thanks, as always, for sharing your thoughts on the film. I cannot be as sharp in my analysis, as it has been a while since I’ve seen it, but I will make one comment. I think the slow, plodding, anticipatory pace of the film is apt, at least in one sense. The flatness and pace of the movie echo the long wait/search for oil. (“There Will Be Blood” is the filmmaker’s title; Upton Sinclair’s book from which the film is adapted is called, simply, “Oil!”) For Daniel Plainview, it is the process of finding and extracting the oil that defines his character, more so than the payoff that oil-ownership brings. The opening scene encapsulates the meticulousness of the process, chipping away rock slowly slowly, alone, quietly, in the dry western dust.

Anyway, I enjoyed the film. And I do agree with some of your readings of the plot development. I’ve never read the book, but it would probably make an interesting comparison. I remember hearing that the screenwriter made significant changes.

I conclude:

Good point about the pacing. And you’re right, it is interesting to compare novels and screenplays. The only one I can think of at the moment that I have some expertise in is Lord of the Rings.

I know I can be argumentative about films, but that’s actually a good sign. It means the film provoked me in some way- which is what I want out of a film. It’s strange. Sometimes I let things slide. Like with Gran Torino. I guess I liked it because of Clint Eastwood’s brooding presence. At Thanksgiving when we discussed the film briefly, Mom and Uncle B. made some good points against the film, and I thought, they’re right, those really are weaknesses.

Maybe I’m more critical of the very good films because my expectations are higher? Or maybe I get aggravated when I feel like I’m watching filmmaking technique and not storytelling.