The Hateful Eight (Tarantino, 2015): 3 Questions

3 questions come to mind after watching Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight:

1) To what extent is violent artwork necessary? Not in the sense that it appeals to a minor demographic that craves the grotesque, but for all of us in society at large. I've always thought it's not essential. Yet in the west, people have been required to read tales like these since Homer--as a young person I always questioned why the Euro-American tradition considers The Odyssey a classic when it's method of justice is essentially a bloodbath. After all, and to put it bluntly, Odysseus "harms" the suitor Melanthius' scrotum and also hangs his faithless housemaids who kick their feet until their last breaths; echoes of these literary scenes clearly occur to The Hateful Eight characters Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) respectively. Even the crucifixion, a representation of which the camera dwells on at length in The Hateful Eight, is violent. And in the end, violence remains. And in the west, these stories are told generation after generation...

2) Is racial harmony only possible when a common adversary is shared? At the end of the film, both Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) share a laugh in harmony while (and only when?) Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) slowly hangs.

3) Is a healthy society one in which biases are openly expressed, or is it one in which people are restricted from offending each other? Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has argued that a healthy culture is one that tells painfully blunt jokes "as part of his maybe dubious strategy of countering racism with “progressive racism” or the “solidarity” of “shared obscenity”—the use of potentially uncomfortable ethnic humor to expose uncomfortable political truths that get repressed or papered over by politeness." Without exception, the characters in  in The Hateful Eight are racist, sexist, ageist, and every other "-ist" condemned in U.S. culture today.

O.K. It's a great movie so I have more than three questions, and the film answers these questions in interesting ways, but I'm stopping here for now.

The Best Thing About the Star Wars Prequels

The best thing about the prequel trilogy is the way they have become memories over time. When watching them the first time (and the second time, and tenth time...I've watched all of the episodes so many times with my kids because Star Wars films and Mario Kart are excluded from our family's two-hour screen time rule) it's impossible not to cringe when Jar Jar Binks opens his mouth, Anakin opens his mouth, the battle droids open their mouths, Dex in Dex's Diner opens his mouth, and other things open their mouths.

Arguably, spinning isn't that great of a trick.

Despite Ewan McGregor who single handedly redeemed the franchise, and some really cool scenes that I love: the seismic charges in Episode II when Obi-Wan is evading Jango Fett:

 The soundscape in the prequels is stellar.

...and the moments of silence in Episode III when Anakin and Padme contemplate their fates by looking out over the Coruscant, what is most important to me is how we can picture a young Anakin on Tatooine during the age of the Republic, the Jedi Council, Obi-Wan's duel on Mustafar, and the separation of the young Skywalker twins--without the feeling of embarrassment when watching the films in their entirety.

It's impossible to retain every detail of any film. Like our own memories, we rely on a few images from the past as reference points that signify the whole. When it comes to Star Wars prequels, I take pleasure in remembering only the best details the longer I am distanced from them--probably similar to what has been recorded in happiness studies such as this one from the University of Chicago.

The way in which the past stories remain most effective as memories are wonderfully captured in these videos below. Thanks to Matt Brown (on Twitter @thehangedman) who introduced them to me.

Darth Vader Remembers, posted by Make It Dirty on YouTube


Obi-Wan Remembers The Truth, posted by Shahan Reviews on YouTube

 Star Wars Poetry, posted by Mca Free on YouTube

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Ritchie, 2015): Mini-Film Review

Guy Ritchie's 2015 caper isn't perfect, but the 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes seems pretty odd (as is the 42% given to Woody Allen's outing from the same summer). Sure, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. left my 14 yo behind when we watched the film on Blu-ray the other night, but he was tired after soccer practice, and nationally syndicated reviewers aren't 14, right?

I thought U.N.C.L.E. had to be shot on film to create its retro feel, but no.

Ritchie's films draw attention to technique without relegating story to the background. This one establishes location with innovative shots, integrates (yellow) subtitles and text (of all sizes) in an entertaining manner, and provides character and historical background details creatively. Its car chases could give the Furious franchise pause, and while many scenes would seamlessly fit in a 007 film, this one has a sense of humor to boot. It's funny but no spoof--I laughed so hard during one scene at the theater that I looked around in embarrassment to see if I was the only one laughing and fortunately I wasn't.

One of the film's backstories (of Uncle Rudi) seems to be awkwardly placed, but (as with many films) on repeat viewings you can tell why the filmmakers elected to place the info. where it is, although I think it would have been more effective if presented when the character was first introduced. And actor Alicia Vikander delivers a few lines as unconvincingly as Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones--a furrowed brow only expresses so much.

Most importantly, it's disappointing to see a fairly weak female role in a year with such strong female leads in some of the best western mainstream films: Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015), The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015), and Inside Out (Docter & Del Carmen, 2015).

But Guy Ritchie's montage+music sequences are nearly always on point (as they are in Snatch), and I'm a sucker for the split-screen style almost whenever its used because of its link to comics (I even loved it in Ang Lee's Hulk in 2003).

Split-screen montage? Check.

Finally, what's with all of the strapped-to-a-chair torture sequences in 2015? We have them in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Spectre (Mendes, 2015), and Star Wars. Extracting information from our hard drives seems to be on the forefront of filmmakers minds these days.

We're paranoid that people will figure out how to extract our hard drives.

San Diego Asian Film Festival, 2015

At the San Diego Asian Film Festival this year it was excellent to interview Taiwan director Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮 alongside UCSD Professor Ping-hui Liao after the screening of director Huang's popular film The Wonderful Wedding 大囍臨門 (2015). Afterwards, the generous director took questions from the audience during the Q&A.

... with director Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮

This year the Taiwan Film Showcase http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/taiwan-film-showcase/ at the San Diego Asian Film Festival boasted seven impressive films. Standouts included:

-- THE KIDS 小孩 Directed by Wei-Shan Yu
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/kids/
-- THANATOS, DRUNK 醉‧生夢死 Directed by Chang Tso-chi
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/thanatos-drunk/
-- & of course THE ASSASSIN 刺客聂隐娘 Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien
http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/films/assassin/

Additional Festival info:

San Diego Asian Film Festival 2015 http://festival.sdaff.org/2015/

Cinema & Taiwan/PRC Cross-Strait Relations

Here is the abstract for my upcoming presentation at the Association for Asian Studies 2016 Conference:

"Psychological Impasse in Cross-Strait Relations: Sympathetic Views of Japan in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Café Lumiere and Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles"

(update: 7/20/2017: the lecture can be viewed via YouTube at this here.)

Taiwan and PRC cinema continue to provide fascinating insights into the political and psychological dynamics of cross-strait relations by revealing the tensions, conflicts, fears, and fantasies maintained by residents on both sides. In this analysis, a primary source of tension revolves around recently released historical films that depict Japan prior to 1945: on the one hand, anti-Japanese sentiment in the PRC is present in films such as Back to 1942 (Feng, 2012) which remind one of the anti-Japanese war films in Taiwan released in the 1970s; on the other hand, a complex relationship with the Japanese Colonial era in Taiwan is evident in Cape No. 7 (Wei, 2008) and Kano (Umin Boya, 2014) which demonstrate positive human interactions despite the strictures of the authoritarian colonial regime, revealing “the ambivalent nature of Taiwanese postcoloniality” as Liao Ping-Hui has written. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film Café Lumiere (2003) arguably provides the example par excellence regarding Taiwan’s postcolonial relationship with Japan, as it presents a psychological impasse that must be bridged in order for stable cross-strait relations to be realized. Namely, the film suggests that the two island nations share remarkable similarities, while the mainland is out of the picture. In China, director Zhang Yimou’s Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005) depicts both Japan and the mainland as it contemplates both the past and the present. So while the resolution to a number of questions that emerge within this study remain unsolved, significant data is available to us to assess in these cinematic records as the cross-strait drama continues to unfold.

Panel Title: "Divergences and Convergences: Comparative Studies of Contemporary Literature, Film and Theater in PRC and Taiwan"
Conference Dates: March 31-April 3, 2016

Teaching World Cinema with a Transnational Perspective

"World Cinema" is a fairly standard course in universities these days. Yet how does transnational theory and pedagogy inform how "World Cinema" courses can be taught?

This was the the topic of the "Teaching Transnational Cinemas" panel chaired by Iain Smith from the University of Roehampton at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in the spring of 2015. Smith began the session by noting how World Cinema courses are often based on a national model (Japanese film, German film, Nigerian film, etc.) which tends to ignore the interconnections between national traditions. In addition, while the term "transnational" has been theorized (thinking beyond the scope of the nation, considering cross-cultural encounters and racial tensions, etc.), it is important to consider transnational pedagogy--especially since students may struggle without the framework of the national when approaching cinema and cultural flow.

My strategy has been to steer away from focusing primarily on the national model by organizing a World Cinema course by theme--in the cultural studies model which analyzes ethnicity, gender, and class relations--rather than nation. Yet certainly, the nation remains a fixture when considering cultural flow. Each week, students come to class having already prepared contextual summaries of the films that will be screened so that an understanding of time, place, and the importance of the films is in position before we move to thematic concerns.

During weeks 1 and 2 I begin the course with a brief introduction to film narrative and film techniques/aesthetics, since my course is presented as a general education option, primarily to students who are not majors in film studies. Students read Film Art: An Introduction by Bordwell and Thompson which I believe provides an excellent framework from which to discuss and write about the function of film techniques within film compositions.

The rest of the semester is organized by these themes: Identity, Authority, and Poverty.

Weeks 1-3: Film Narrative and Film Aesthetics
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Motorcycle Diaries (Salles, 2004)
In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)

Weeks 4-8: Identity
Whale Rider (Caro, 2002)
The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck, 2006) 
Persona (Bergman, 1957)
The Last Train Home (Fan, 2010)
High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

Weeks 9-12: Authority
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997)
Three Times (Hou, 2003)

Weeks 13-15: Poverty
Wasteland (Walker, Harley, Jardim, 2010)
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010)

During class sessions, we discuss the ways film narratives and techniques reveal the unique, particular conditions the characters experience, but as the course progresses we can also see the way globalization links the characters' experiences in interesting ways.

For example, the documentary The Last Train Home (Fan, 2010) shows the global effects of the 2008 stock market crash, while Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) shows the impoverished conditions that followed World War II in Italy. Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997) and Wasteland (Walker, Harley, Jardim, 2010) both represent and critique responses to global ecological dilemmas. The course culminates with a film that projects transnational connectivity and themes. This year students will be watching Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010) as the course's final film.

This method of organizing the course is under constant revision. If you teach World Cinema or a Transnational Cinema course, I'd be interested in hearing any feedback and/or comments you may have.

Fight Club's Representation of Consumer Culture

Fight Club's (Fincher, 1999) depiction of consumer culture remains all too relevant--so in a way, I'm not entirely surprised that the film has moved up on the www.imdb.com Top 250 chart from #37, when I wrote my MA thesis on the film ten years ago, to #10, where it is today in 2015. And my college students continue to watch the film and discuss it.

Anyways, here's my dated take on it: "It was on the tip of everyone's tongue, Tyler and I just gave it a name": Fight Club's Representation of Consumer Culture." If you get a chance, let me know what you think of the movie. My goodness, its opening act/exposition is perfect. And it's a great novel too.