CLOUD ATLAS: visually arresting, unbearably pretentous

I had a chance to see “Cloud Atlas” last night, something that was, in essence, a three-hour tour of your own living room. This movie was ambitious, a delight to look at, and thoroughly pretentious. The actors gave uniformly fine performances and the design of the whole enterprise had a nice feel and look, but it was long, long, long, and finally made laborious by a vague pedanticism, a lecturing quality conveyed continually when spotlighted characters happen to have an "a ha" experience in which things are revealed give a little speech about the interconnections between people and their events, across borders, cultures, times, dimensions. The Wachowski siblings seem incapable of making a smart sci-fi movie that doesn't lay out its alleged philosophical underpinnings while already tone-deaf and padded dialogue.

 They should try an experiment and adapt an Elmore Leonard novel to film, "Pagan Babies", say, or "Mr. Paradise". Leonard's crime fiction, specifically those featuring the hi jinx of chatty, nitwit criminals in and around the gravel and grime of Detroit's gothic ruins, has the sort of fast thinking, cleverly arranged wording that is both memorable and compact;attuned to ironic asides rather than summary declarations of what has gone before and what the nuances should be notices on the way to a unifying theory of bad faith. His dialogue is texture and lends complexity to the characters as they go about their mission to gratify their baser instincts. Shakespeare would appreciate Leonard's skill. The Wachowski siblings, specifically, to resist the urge to engage in junior college metaphysics and bring their talent for sharp visuals in line with writing that moves the plot and entertains while it engages.  They need source material that will slap the bullshit out of them.

http://youtu.be/1ZSSQ1q3HiYGuitarist Allen Holdsworth first came to my attention as the lead player in the British hard rock band Tempest, which was led by drummer Jon Hiseman. The band itself was quite good, if bedeviled by inconsistent material, but Hiseman's drum work was particularly good, a combination of Mitch Mitchell and Elvin Jones, snappy and brisk. But it was Holdsworth who got and kept my attention; the guitar improvisations were a revelation, years ahead of the stylistic curb when Eddie VanHalen would suck up all the attention among guitar fanatics.

Holdsworth was a bold and exploratory soloist, blessed with a fluidity and speed that are distinct, and a technical agility to start a solo in any position, in any key, from any angle he chooses.  There is something cerebral and serene about this musicians alacrity as a improvisiational  thinker; his solos are vexing for those wanting typical whiz kid wheel spinning  offered by Malmsteen wannabes and those who want their jazz fusion players to be either witlessly conservative in the chicken scratching department, or technically impressive and impatient , as has been Al DiMeola's preferred style for decades, whether playing electric or acoustic guitar. Holdsworth is one of those artists who regards each solo as an original composition--there are beginnings, middles and ends.  There , in addition to the eccentrically articulated lines he assembles odd chord voicings,  unusual mid-tones , and an ever surprising series of brilliant stretches of fleet inspiration.

Even when he was playing over the Cream-esque riffs of Tempest, Holdsworth aimed toward a jazz complexity. That side of him was amply filled during his later stints in the bands Soft Machine, Gong, Jean Luc-Ponty and The New Tony Williams Life, and especially his own series of solo efforts and collaborations. He is among the few guitarists from that period who continue to interests and intrigue me, as his combination of register-jumping speed, oft-kilter cadences and phrasing, and grandly convoluted note combinations makes me think of improvisors no less grand than Coltrane or Wayne Shorter. Yes, I think Holdsworth is that good.

Man of Steel: The Best Superman Movie

I have just returned from Man of Steel and find myself pleased with the results. Henry Cavill is now the definitive Superman, and MOS is presently THE definitive Super Hero film. Unlike the dozens of grousing professional film critics who likely had no idea of how they wanted Kal-El to be portrayed, I was impressed with the way director Zack Snyder and writer David Goyer and co-writer/executive producer Christopher Nolan re-imagined the iconic character in a way that helped us understand better how he came about his unwavering diligence to do good and his unflinching resolve to overcome adversity. There was something rather clever and subtly effective in establishing that Kal/Kent/Superman was not just different from earthlings, but also different, quite different from his fellow Kryptonians. The dual fathering of Jor-El and Jonathon Kent made for a credible, believable result in the form of the adult Clark. The action sequences were especially brilliant, with a splendid, inspired use of CGI to convey the scope and magnitude of having a world beset upon by super-powered adversaries; Snyder has a comic sensibility that is a perfect match for the ambitions of this movie. His movies are not everyone's idea of a good time, but for the set that likes fantastic battles and Big Action sequences that concern the eternal issues of Good vs. Evil, with Elizabethan cadences or not, Snyder reveals his customary mastery of the special effects at his fingertips. 

It has the magnificence of the best Futurist manifesto, which claimed that the staid present must be destroyed and that we need to speed the progress of humanity with the speed, efficiency of machines. Ironic, yes, as this was the philosophy of  20th fascists who desired to bully mankind into servitude. Superman, of course, is the free thinker, the free man, the defender of the weak against well-intentioned conquistadors. Michael Shannon as General Zod was a classic villain, sufficiently complex, with a moral compass no less compelling than Superman's, although at odds, fatal odds with those of the Man of Steel. 

The final battle sequence, a long one, is among the most exciting action sequence I've ever seen in a superhero film. Metropolis is gloriously, grandly, royally laid to ruin by the unleashed fury of Kryptonian v Kryptonian, and it is, of course, a near perfect simulation of the reader's imaginative interpretation of a battle scene in the traditional comic book format. Although possessing some gloom and desaturated seriousness from Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, where the watchword has been" realism" from the start, Man of Steel is fantasy all the same; for all the emphasis on Superman's emotional confusion and the junior -college existentialism of his twofold "otherness"--his difference from both his native planet's traditions and the distinctions between him and his adopted planet--this is in a long line of science fiction and fantasy films where grand cities are destroyed, leveled and  turned into rubble in a grand way. 

From the post WW2 nuclear nightmares of the Godzilla movies to the skyscraper decimation in the Transformer franchise, Man of Steel  adds to a  tradition of architectural destruction that I admit is one of my inexplicable guilty pleasures, originating, I think, from my love of the art of Jack Kirby, a comic book artist whose work for DC Comics rival Marvel featured battle scenes among superheroes and super villains that smashed through brick and mortar regularly. The shards, bricks, glass, and wood that scattered through the frames of the panels he drew were captured as if by a high-speed camera; Kirby created the sensation of a great force plowing irresistibly through strong, dense barriers.  Director Snyder comprehends the improbable physics behind what Superman and his foes high-powered hi jinks and proceeds any way to execute them. 

This is the Superman we've been waiting for, muscular, committed, a guardian of the week against the bullies of the universe who will be as strong as he needs to be to make that all of those things we take for granted or pay lip service to truth, justice, an American Way based on fairness and consensus --survive and flourish. For the controversial end of the battle where Superman does something old schoolers insist Superman would never do, I say this: it's about time.  Although he remains the Blue Boy Scout with his big heart and unerring sense of fair play, he is not a doormat, he is not, as we said back in my drinking days, a pussy. He is a hero who is as strong as he needs to be and who will use his moral compass to guide to him action that will truly serve the greater good, the goal of an honestly Good Fight. 

Whither the paperback?

It felt as if someone had just walked over the ground where my values now lay buried:an article in Slate asks the question whether the paperback book is becoming extinct by slow degrees. They seem to think it is, and it's publishers who would like to dispense with them altogether. 

This does raise the old , dogged, fiercely defiant nostalgia for all things bound between covers, but the story does us the service of letting us on the economic dynamic involved with the decreasing importance of soft cover books.The article belabors a point that's obvious to anyone with the slimmest knowledge of how things work in the actual world, that old technologies are replaced, quickly or slowly, by more efficient technologies. 

In this case, it's the upcoming demise of the paperback book, which has had it's once dominant marketshare eroded by ebooks. The reason is simple: ebooks cannot be resold, as opposed to paperbacks, which can be sold as used books indefinitely. Publishers want to be in the position of being able to charge readers each time they purchase an ebook. From a vendor's standpoint, eliminating the second hand market and being the only ones selling the desired merchandise at full retail is a good thing, although it sucks for the rest of us.

Costello or Waits?

Elvis Costello had a brilliant run in the Seventies through the Eighties but started to take himself way too seriously. He strayed from his strong suits--subtle, hook-driven melodies, virtuoso wordplay, and real passion--and became as an artist a humorless prig. What was interesting, compelling melodies became an amorphous eclecticism that often times ersatz Broadway blockbuster than music that was genuinely felt. The lyrics, in turn, became convoluted, drunk on their cleverness and thesis-worthy punnage, laden with the serial heartache that traversed from song to song, obscurantism disguising his lack of a good idea to bring to the audience. In contrast, Tom Waits  has just gotten deeper, richer, stranger, more brilliant over the years--his music is a seamless mesh of styles--Brecht-Weil, delta blues , whore house jazz, world music, country, and the like--that consecutive listenings for me yield new surprises, things I didn't notice before, bits of interplay between elements that differ in origin but which come to compliment and commend each other. His lyrics, as well, is the work of a man who has grown in his aging, someone for whom experience has turned into that frail thing called "wisdom", and yet also realizes he hasn't the power to prevent others from making their own mistakes and becoming embroiled in their own tragedies and celebrations. There is a resigned irony in Waits' worldview. There is only a resume and curriculum vitae in what remains of Costello's. The songwriter increasingly reminded of many genuinely talented students in college who lost sight of his own ideas by trying to please every one of his professors and classmates: LOOK AT ME, I AM A MASTER OF ALL FORMS! At best this is mere professionalism; at worst it borders on nervous hackery. Waits had the benefit, I suppose, of having a small audience; he was allowed to go in directions he saw fit and seemed unconcerned with what others thought he should do. His instincts have proved sounder. Costello still writes solid songs when his best instincts are engaged, and he has done at least one album of superb songs and performances, 2002's "When I Was Cruel". This came out after he had released a series of indifferent albums, ie "The Juliet Letters", "Kojack Variety", " Mighty Like a Rose". But that was 11 years ago. Waits had the gift of being a genuine witness to the experience of others; it was his deft skill at not making the people in his stories heroic, iconic or otherwise an embodiment of a hackneyed liberal conceit that made his lyrics so arresting. This is what's meant by negative capability, I guess, the ability, through imagination, to transcend your own context and experience the sensations of others. His accomplishment was a rare one for a songwriter who chose to write about poor people and eccentrics; he could empathize while maintaining an aesthetic distance. It's that "distance", so to speak, that brings into the milieu.

Slate shuts down Poems section

Fitting that the last poet we consider on Slate's poetry page is William Carlos Williams, the maverick who convincingly turned the impatient cadences of American speech, a verbal style that seemed to accelerate in pace as new technologies encroached on our attention span, into a means to express experience in ways both plain and abstract. Slate Poetry Editor and former U.S.Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's selections of poets over the years has been eclectic, daring, unexpected, nearly always provocative; not all his selections have been to my personal liking and I have, in fact, said unnecessarily harsh things questioning his taste. 

All that storming prose amounts to pounding the end of the bar, frustrated, irate, and smugly content to be that way. In addition to inspiring some of my better writing over the last ten years, those bits of prose that actually convey a series of ideas both fever pitched and lucid, the Slate Poems page and the attendant Fray page allowed me to pretend to be the Big Mean Critic, a self-made windbag opining among his books and empty coffee cups for a readership of persons a few dozen associates and friends on the forum. Overall, though, I respected Pinsky's dedication to not taking the easy way out in terms of his selections--rather than log roll and fill the page, week to week, with a string of poets who all write about similar topics in similar ways with similar failing, trembling voices--there are dozens of them in this country! 

Where do these people come from??--Pinsky challenged our conceptions with poets who often times took the form apart and rebuilt it in ways not always to our liking. These are writers who hadn't abandoned the idea, by of Pound, to "make it new" and Robert Pinsky, to his credit and our great benefit didn't abandon the search for the voice that stood out, the voice that was unique,the voice that was legitimate. There was much I didn't personally like among the poets he chose, but the discussions that ensued on Poems Fray, now defunct, were a perfect way to think through the issues I had with particular poets. Robert Pinsky, as well, demonstrated that he is a genuine and classy guy, willing to participate in the discussion, refusing to take a hard line in favor of adding an additional insight to a counter idea to something you've written. I am deeply sorry that Slate is discontinuing the Poems page. It has been a wonderful experience throughout the years.

HOW TO READ LITERATURE by Terry  Eagleton

I've been a long time reader of Eagleton for the plain reason that he has a wonderful prose style and that , as a Marxist in the mode of Raymond Williams, he remains skeptical of using art as a springboard for philosophical speculation and insists that we have to appreciate how authors use their imaginations and techniques to elicit the subtle effects on their readership. He does not dodge the political in art, but he does insist that readers remember that literature is about the human experience and that the role of the artist is to present us with provocative narratives that place the reader in a flow of experience outside their own references.

 Eagelton, though, does go slack in making an argument about why attentive reading and an eye and ear for how a narrative succeeds or fails on the terms it establishes for itself; he is, perhaps, too much of a crank more interested in bellowing at today's kids rather than re-establishing his own reasons for bothering with a career in literary discussion. He makes an attempt to tell us why it's important to have the skills to read with a subtler mind through extensive explorations of emotional conflicts and situational tension, but he is not entirely convincing. 

There was a point in the end pages of his book "Literary Theory" where Eagleton seemed to go into a both a lament an rant about how theorizing about literature, the general examination of books as "texts" and the demonstration of how they cannot mean anything adequate to lived experience, over the finer art of criticism, genuine appreciation, when he postulated that after years of slugging it out with competing academics one--meaning himself, I believe--had to struggle what it was that made one desire to teach and dicuss literature as a career. Perhaps the author has reached that point even as he tries to reignite the passion for the studies of stories as entities in themselves, not extensions of political assumptions. I  like Harold Bloom's assertion that literature's principle benefit to the is that it helps us think about ourselves. That works for me.  Succinct and more profound than a dozen extended regrets.