scene but not herd

About a week ago I went to see Pedro Almodovar's new film called BAD EDUCATION and once again I came away very satisfied. I already wrote about the fact that Almodovar truly is a film maker. Too much criticism nowadays seems to focus on the acting or the screenplay and it often neglects to mention the purely visual. Almodovar's films have great scripts and acting, but they also revel in the visual. You might say BAD EDUCATION is a mystery movie. In quite a few ways it brought to mind Patricia Highsmiths' Ripley character whereby one character takes on the persona of another. It is also a film about love and revenge. Almodovar makes these rather commonplace themes interesting by the way he films them. There is a film within the film and memories are also depicted as purely filmic. The audience watches certain scenes as fact when they are actually depictions of a screenplay. What one imagines as a flashback is actually actors portraying the screenwriter's memory. It's actually rather complicated and fascinating as it reveals itself on the screen. I think you have to see the film to understand this, but it is almost like a type of Russian doll where you open up one doll only to find another smaller one inside. I've loved all of his movies and this one begins with the name of his production company "El Deseo," (desire) and ends with the word "pasion" (passion) filling the screen. These words are very important in his work and I think they reached their peak in two movies he made in the eighties, LAW OF DESIRE and MATADOR. His early films can be considered in the vein of John Waters, but with these two films he really came into his own. The outrageousness of John Waters is still there, but there is such a maturity in Almodovar's craft that he honestly leaves Waters in the dust. I want to bring up MATADOR because in the Sunday edition of the L.A. Times it was noted that this film would be re-released in the fall. I've never seen it on the big screen so that day can not come soon enough. I really hope they are putting out a really nice print of it because color is used so well in this film. If you've never seen it, well, then you have to. It is what BASIC INSTINCT wishes it could be. It is about "l'amour fou." It is about unbridled desire and passion and it reeks of sex and death. The opening of the film is amazing on its own. The intercutting of scenes showing a man masturbating to "snuff" films and a woman plunging a long needle into the back of the neck of the man she is having sex with are quite an eye opener. This may sound crude or offensive to some, but this film is nothing of the sort, or maybe it is, but it is so much more than just that. Make sure to pencil this one into your schedule when you see it listed playing at a theater near you.

I guess the eighties really are back. Certainly that post-punk sound is having a revival in much of the music I hear lately. What is really bugging me is the return of full on conspicuous consumption. There are so many tv shows right now that seem to wallow in showing people spending absurd amounts of money. I don't have a problem with people working hard and earning a lot of money, but I do have a problem with people who insist on letting everybody else know how much money they have. I see many cities gentrifying, but it is the gentrification of millionaires. The Sunset Strip in L.A. is abhorent to me nowadays. When I was in my teens and early twenties I could go see bands at the Whisky or Roxy and park on the street with no problem. Nowadays the parking lots charge 10 or 20 dollars and the meters run until three in the morning and you have to put in change every hour so you still end up paying a ridiculous amount to park. Now many areas are simply for the rich and famous and those who want to be around the rich and famous. It's a shame that nice, cool, and simple clubs become rare. What's wrong with cheap drinks, a good jukebox, and no cover charge? I guess in conservative times this seems to be the norm, but hopefully things will change, or not as the last elections showed.