Steven Rubio's Online Life

call me by your name (luca guadagnino, 2017)

This is the twenty-second film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 22 is called "Time Out for Romance Week":

It can be easy to balk at watching a romance movie since they all-too-often offer nothing beyond the trite paint-by-number genre trappings common to the Hallmark Channel. Sometimes they can also veer into sickeningly saccharine territory or can unrealistically portray love as a simple, lasting feeling between two impossibly witty and beautiful people that sets real-life people up for unrealistic expectations. However, since love is actually an enormously complex and powerful force that is different for every single person, it is a theme that drives many fantastic movies. The key is not to oversimplify it, but explore it for how much it can stir the soul in so many different directions.

This Valentine’s season watch one of these fantastic movies all about that complicated emotion from Time Out’s The 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time.

Call me a romantic: I've seen 79 of the 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time. It's clear why Call Me by Your Name is on the list. (It's 15th on the list, and the 4th-most recent.) It's subtle approach to love between two men may be a bit too safe, but the emotions displayed by actors Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer as the two are touching and real. Some have complained about the age difference between the two characters (one is 24, the other 17), but Chalamet is both believably 17 (he was 20 when the film was shot) and believably mature enough to make his own decisions. It's a coming-of-age story, but I didn't find it creepy.

But there's another reason that Call Me by Your Name feels differently now than it must have in 2017. In 2021, charges emerged accusing Hammer of cases of sexual abuse. Other accusations arose. Hammer was never charged, although the cases were opened for a fair amount of time. Hammer's acting career hit a wall ... he hasn't acted in a film since the accusations appeared. It's not my place here to figure out what did and didn't happen in those cases. But it definitely affects how I watched a movie about a 24-year-old man beginning an affair with a 17-year-old. That's not fair, but I can't just pretend it doesn't exist. So there's a creepiness to the film that I don't think I would have felt had I seen it in 2017.

Call Me by Your Name is #157 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

creature features: werewolf of london (stuart walker, 1935)

Universal's first stab at the werewolf genre, six years before Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolfman. While movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man were based on literary sources, Werewolf of London was basically invented out of thin air (it was the first feature-length werewolf movie). Much of the lore we think of when werewolves come to mind was invented here.

Werewolf of London is one of the few early Universal monster movies I had never seen. Like the others, it's quick, wasting little time getting to the good stuff. The makeup wherein the doctor turns into a wolf is similar to what Chaney Jr. underwent for The Wolfman. It's OK "for its time", even if it seems old-fashioned now. Overall, it's an OK film but no classic, eventually replaced in our minds with the version Chaney Jr. gave us. Henry Hull, who plays the lead, had a long career, with his last movie coming in 1966 (one of my favorites, The Chase). Valerie Hobson, who was Frankenstein's wife in The Bride of Frankenstein, once again plays the scientist's wife (she was 18 years old, working opposite much older men). Warner Oland, a Swede who played Charlie Chan in many movies, is also in The Werewolf of London ... he died a few years later. And Spring Byington turns up (in the 1950s, she starred in the radio/TV series December Bride).

african-american directors series: neptune frost (saul williams and anisia uzeyman, 2021)

This is the twenty-first film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 21 is called "Afrofuturism Week":

Afrofuturism is an exciting subgenre of science-fiction movies that has been gaining traction in the past few years with mainstream offerings such as the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films, as well as the TV show Lovecraft Country. Afrofuturism is all about centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings. These stories can inspire people to build toward a better future and question the past and present social structures that create and maintain cultural and economic inequality between races. Common tropes include the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect.

This week, let’s escape the real world and venture forth into a world of new realities made possible by Afrofuturism with this list here.

From the examples I have seen, I think I had a mistaken sense of what made Afrofuturism. I'd seen the mainstream offerings, the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films and the TV show Lovecraft Country. If I'd looked at the suggested list more closely, I might have had a better feel for what Neptune Frost might be like. Touki Bouki ("unencumbered by the 'rules' of cinema"), Sankofa ("uses time travel to place a woman from modern times back into the horrors of the old South"), Fast Color ("a superhero movie, although a very low-key one that can be approached as just a mysterious fantasy"). The introduction above of Afrofuturism is a useful description of what happens in Neptune Frost: "centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings" including "the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect."

That describes Neptune Frost, but in truth it's a film that defies ordinary description. Saul Williams and Anisia Useyman create a unique world, rooted in Burundi but taking place in a future connected intrinsically to technology. A community of young adults, dedicated to a different kind of world, use unexplained hacking skills to subvert the larger society while staying hidden (China and Russia are initially blamed for the hacks). The connection to "The Internet" eventually destroys them, or rather, the discovery of the community by the outside world allows the powers that be to destroy them. One person remains ... I don't know if this was meant as a positive ending, perhaps it's meant to be ambiguous.

Oh, and it's a musical.

Gender fluidity, colonialism, and yes, science-fiction ... it's a unique blend. Willliams and Useyman deserve praise for creating something new. Sometimes inscrutable, but always fascinating to look at ... I, at least, had never seen anything like it.

music friday: 1978

John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, "You're the One That I Want". From a movie I don't like, featuring singers I don't care much about (as singers). But this is a great song, and a great pairing of singers.

Village People, "Y.M.C.A." An example of how a concoction can make good records. Victor Willis is the lead singer.

Boney M, "Rivers of Babylon". A Rastafari song, recorded by The Melodians in 1970 ... it turned up on the soundtrack for The Harder They Come, making it famous. In 1978, it became an international hit by Boney M., a group formed by German producer Frank Farian.

And the original:

geezer cinema/african-american directors series: american fiction (cord jefferson, 2023)

American Fiction is based on Erasure, a novel by Percival Everett, and it's a model of how to adapt a novel to a film while retaining what makes the book interesting in the first place. It tells the story of Thelonious Ellison, nicknamed Monk (played by Jeffrey Wright), an African-American novelist and professor whose novels, which are heavily academic, don't get much of an audience from the readers who buy books. His agent says Monk needs to write books that are "more black", which Monk rejects out of hand. But when a new novel titled We's Lives in Da Ghetto, steeped in stereotypes (and thus "more black"), becomes an enormous best-seller, Monk decides to write a parody, which he calls My Pafology. A publisher gives him an enormous advance for the rights to the novel, after which a film producer offers even more money for the film rights before the book has even been published.

A crucial scene in the film occurs when Monk begins writing My Pafology (which becomes Fuck). Writer/director Cord Jefferson illuminates the scene from the book by having two of the characters (played brilliantly by Keith David and Okieriete Onaodowan) act out what Monk is writing, pausing occasionally to ask Monk just what he wants them to say. It's crucial, because it adds an honest, serious level to what is a mocking representation of stereotypes. One of the problems I had with the book is that Percival Everett includes the entirety of My Pafology, and he's far too good at it ... the book is as bad as it is supposed to be, and thus it's a burden to get through. Jefferson steps beyond the badness. (It helps that the book is only a few minutes in the movie, rather than ten chapters of a book.)

The characters, in general, are a bit nicer in the film. Issa Rae as the author of We's Lives in Da Ghetto gives the character substance ... she's not just a pulp writer out for a buck. And Myra Lucretia Taylor's family housekeeper Lorraine has a good relationship with Monk, whereas in the book, she doesn't much like him. Also, the relationship between Monk and his sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), which has a barbed feel in the novel, is more congenial as played by Wright and Ross, without losing an edge.

The film has received five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. I think it would be a worthy winner for Best Picture ... of the nominated films, I'd choose Anatomy of a Fall, and I'm on record as thinking the un-nominated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the best picture of the year, but American Fiction is very good. (Since I last listed my Top Ten of 2023, American Fiction has made the list, replacing Maestro, Barbie has moved up, and I changed the order of a few others.) Of the other categories, I've seen 4 of 5 Best Actors and think Jeffrey Wright is the best of those, I've seen all 5 Supporting Actors and would place Sterling K. Brown at or near the top, and I've seen all 5 Adapted Screenplays, and would vote for Barbie, although it's nonsense that it got placed in the "adapted" category.

It's worth noting that while fans of Erasure will want to see American Fiction, knowledge of the novel isn't necessary to appreciate the movie.

the tale of the princess kaguya (isao takahata, 2013)

It's true, when I read "Studio Ghibli", I tend to think "Hayao Miyazaki". But Studio Ghibli was founded by Miyazaki, producer Toshio Suzuki, and Isao Takahata. Over the years, Takahata was involved in some of the studio's greatest films: Grave of the Fireflies, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Kiki's Delivery Service, Only Yesterday, and others. One thing that separates Takahata from people like Miyazaki is that he performs many different roles in the movies ... he was even the musical director for Kiki. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya was his final film before his death. The problem for me is that I don't know enough about the process of creating animated movies, so it's not clear to me what role Takahata plays in Kaguya. He is the director and co-writer, but to the best of my knowledge, he doesn't do the animation. I'd be happy to be better informed about this, but Takahata appears to be a titan of animated films without being himself an animator.

Which doesn't really matter ... The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a beautiful film, no matter who we credit. Takahata seems to be the guiding vision behind the film. It has the look of animated watercolors ... it doesn't really look like any other film that comes to mind. The story is based on an old Japanese story about a bamboo cutter. It is filled with fantastical elements, yet the story is straightforward. It is currently #350 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century (which had its most recent update on February 1). Nominated for an Oscar as Best Animated Feature (the winner was Big Hero 6).

I watched the English dub, with Chloë Grace Moretz as the Princess. She is fine. I don't want to be a broken record, but this movie really is beautiful, and wonderful to watch.

sleater-kinney 2024

Wrote a long email to a friend who had forwarded me a video of Corin and Carrie, and thought maybe it was time to put my thoughts here on the blog.

I've been thinking a lot about S-K lately. The new album is the reason, plus it seems like everyone I know wants to tell me that the band has a new album ... I guess my Sleater-Kinney obsession is well-known.

When No Cities to Love came out after the ten-year hiatus, I was happy. It wasn't their greatest album, but it was good, better than I had expected, and I looked forward to the future. And they were still great live ... saw them 3 times, climaxing with a New Years Eve show at the end of 2016. But then came The Center Won't Hold, which I liked but didn't love, and then Janet left the band. I saw them twice after that, my 16th and 17th time, and honestly, I liked the three times I saw Wild Flag more than I liked those shows. When Path of Wellness came out, it barely registered with me, and now Little Rope sounds OK but I'm not obsessed anymore.

And I think it's all about Janet. I thought of Sleater-Kinney as a trio ... maybe because the first time I saw them was in 1998, after Janet joined the band, or maybe because I was so in love with her drumming. I thought of her as the final piece in creating a great band. Now, I don't suppose we'll ever know exactly what happened, and I imagine the three of them are on good terms, but I haven't been able to shake what Janet said when she left. “I said, ‘Am I just the drummer now?’ They said yes. And I said, ‘Can you tell me if I am still a creative equal in the band?’ And they said no. So, I left.”

That crushed me, way more than the hiatus ever did. It was like when the Beatles broke up. Because I got the feeling, and nothing the last five years have shown me otherwise, that Carrie and Corin always thought it was their band, while I always thought it was a trio.

So I might like them better now if I hadn't loved them before. But I can't get Janet out of my mind. I wish I liked Quasi, but I don't.

music friday: 1977

The Bee Gees, "How Deep Is Your Love". One of several contributions by the Bee Gees to the iconic soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, which was for several years the best-selling album in history. The Bee Gees had been recording since 1963, and were prolific enough that their international debut album, Bee Gees' 1st, was actually their third album. I remember hearing songs like "Holiday" and "New York Mining Disaster 1941" in the early days of FM Underground radio. 

The Emotions, "Best of My Love". The mid-70s were the peak period for the R&B group The Emotions, and "Best of My Love" was their only #1 hit. It was written by Maurice White and Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire.

Debby Boone, "You Light Up My Life". A monster hit from the 70s, this was originally the title song to a movie written, directed, and produced by Joseph Brooks, who also wrote this song. In the film, actress Didi Conn lip-synced to a recording by Kasey Cisyk. There were shenanigans with Brooks (google it), and he went into the studio and recorded a new version with Debby Boone, the daughter of Pat Boone (Cisyk's version was on the original soundtrack album). Boone's version was the biggest single of the 1970s ... it was also voted #4 by Rolling Stone readers on a Worst Songs of the 70s poll. Boone's version won a Grammy as Song of the Year ... the song also won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

You Light Up My Life" has been covered many times, by artists as diverse as Johnny Mathis, LeAnn Rimes, and Whitney Houston. But perhaps the most remarkable cover was this one: