#I really love the thing in the Ullman shorts where if a character isn’t in the short they throw their picture in the background somewhere

[allieinarden]

I find this funnier than it objectively is.

[arecomicsevengood]

Watching Movies In Self-Isolation, Part Two

L’Assassin Habite Au Rue 21 (1942), dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot is better known for directing The Wages Of Fear (the movie William Friedkin remade as Sorcerer) and Diabolique, but this is the first movie he directed. It’s a pretty effective comedy, as well as an Agatha Christie style murder-mystery thriller. It’s really cool to watch these things that feel like they are just “movies,” before a bunch of genre conventions got built up and put in place. This one’s also eighty minutes long, super-short. The premise of the movie is there’s a serial killer on the loose, leaving a business card on every dead body. A dude passes along to the police that he found a stash of the business cards in the attic of a boarding house, so the killer must live there. A police officer goes undercover as a priest moving into the boarding house to investigate the residents. His wife, an aspiring singer, has made a bet with him she can solve the crime first, and in doing so become a celebrity that will be hired to perform places, so she also moves into the boarding house, partly to annoy him. The stuff at the boarding house is basically the film’s second act, while the first and third act are more typical murder-mystery stuff, although the tone of comedy is maintained throughout, despite all the cold-blooded murders.

All These Women (1964), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Kind of dumb sex comedy directed by Ingmar Bergman, but with gorgeous Sven Nykvist cinematography, bright jewel-toned pastels, and sort of theatrical staging in spots seeming to foreshadow Parajanov’s The Color Of Pomegranates or eighties Greenaway stuff. About a critic who visits the palatial estate of a famous cellist to write a biography of him only to find a harem of women; the whole thing unfolding from the cellist’s funeral a few days later. The winking humor is both music-hall bawdy but in a way that feels self-aware or “meta” in the context of a sixties film.

The Touch (1971), dir. Ingmar Bergman. Bergman’s one of my favorites, many of his canonized classics resonate deeply with me, but he was also astonishingly prolific, with a bunch of movies of his blurring together in my mind, and even more that I didn’t know existed, like this English-language one, starring Elliott Gould. Gould’s another favorite of mine, being in a bunch of great movies in the sixties and seventies, but damn, he’s unlikable here. Unlikable characters “hit different” in older material because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to sympathize with them according to the sexist cultural attitudes of the day. Here he’s “the other man” Liv Ullman is cheating on Max Von Sydow (RIP) with, but he’s pretty emotionally abusive, just a shit to her, extremely demanding of her in a relationship he did nothing to earn, though it does feel like the movie is kind of treating him as a romantic lead.

The Anderson Tapes (1971), dir. Sidney Lumet. This is heist movie, starring Sean Connery as a dude fresh out of prison, planning to rob his girlfriend’s apartment building, costarring Christopher Walken in his first film role. It contains all the plot beats of a typical heist thing, all the satisfying “getting the gang together, planning things out in advance, chaotic elements interfere” stuff but also a totally superfluous bit of framing about like constant surveillance, video monitoring and audio tape. All this dystopian police-state stuff seems, implicitly, like it would make a crime impossible to execute, the criminals are monitored every step of the way, by assorted agencies. But then the punchline, after everyone’s arrested for reasons having nothing to do with that, is that all this recording is illegal and all the tapes should be erased as the high-profile nature of the case makes it likely the monitoring agencies will get caught. Sidney Lumet directs a good thriller, even though I don’t find Connery (or Dyan Cannon, who plays the girlfriend) particularly compelling.

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this years ago, after reading Matt Fraction praise it, particularly how skillful the transitions between scenes were, and I really enjoyed it, but didn’t remember much about it and was excited to rewatch it. It’s got a lot going for it: An exceedingly elaborate criminal plot whose only goal is to wreak chaos, low-level criminals caught up in something they’re morally unprepared to reckon with, a charismatic police detective interviewing a bunch of weirdos, Fritz Lang following up M by continuing to be a master of film and sound editing very early stitching it all together. The Mabuse character was previously the star of a silent film I haven’t watched, and here he’s mute, which is a clever choice I didn’t register until writing it out just now. He’s gone completely insane, but is nonetheless writing a journal filled with elaborate crime plots, and his psychologist is completely insane and following these directions, in a commentary on the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time.

House By The River (1950), dir. Fritz Lang. I watched this in the pre-Quarantine days, but it totally rules. Again, it feels sordid in part because of how old it is and my assumption you’re meant to identify on some level with the completely loathsome protagonist’s sexual desire and anger at getting turned down. It’s so creepy, he’s listening to the sound of his maid showering at one point. All the characters seem very fun to play, they’re all pretty cartoonish. This guy murder his maid, and then gets the idea that he should write a book about the murder when someone explains the idea of “writing what you know” to him, and he is then surprised when his wife reads the book and puts together that it’s a murder confession, saying something like “Really? I thought I disguised it pretty well.” The film functions as a dark comedy because every character is completely mortifying. Lang’s work becoming less ambitious and more reduced in budget during his time working in America is pretty sad but this movie feels legit deranged.

Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster. Heard good things about Hereditary, but haven’t watched it yet, having been put off by the plot summary of Aster’s preceding short film, about a kid who rapes his dad. This is like a longer version of The Wicker Man, basically, starring Florence Pugh, who I had heard was like the new actress everyone’s enamored with, but didn’t think was that compelling in this. A bunch of Americans go to a Swedish village, one of them (played by Chidi from The Good Place) has studied their anthropology extensively, but all are unprepared for the fact that their whole culture seems to revolve around human sacrifice and having sex with outsiders so they don’t become totally inbred. There’s a monstrously deformed, cognitively impaired child who’s been bred specifically so his abstract splashings of paint can be interpreted as culture-defining profound lore, which I took away as being comparable to the role Joe Biden plays within the death cult of the DNC.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2019), dir. Bi Gan. This got a lot of acclaim, but I am almost certain the main reason I watched it is because the director made a list of his favorite movies and included Masaaki Yuasa’s anime series Kemonozume on it. Does a sort of bisected narrative thing, where half of the movie is this sort of fragmented crime thing, a little hard to follow, and then you get the title card, and then the second half is this pretty dreamlike atmospheric piece done in a single shot, with a moving camera. I’m not the sort to jerk off over long shots, although I appreciate the large amount of technical pre-planning that goes into pulling them off. The second part is pretty compelling though, enveloping, I guess it was in 3-D at certain theatrical screenings? I’m a little unclear on how my fucked-up eyes can deal with 3-D these days and I was never that into it. The first half is easy to turn off and walk away from, the second half isn’t but I’m unsure on how much it amounts to beyond its atmosphere.

Black Sun (1964), dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. This one’s about a Japanese Jazz fan and dirtbag squatter who meets a black American soldier who’s gone crazy and AWOL. He loves him because he loves Jazz and all Black people, but the soldier is pretty crazy and can’t understand him anyway. Jazz is, or was, huge in Japan and this is a cooler depiction of that fandom than you get in Murakami novels but it’s a fairly uncomfortable watch, I guess because the black dude seems so crazy it feels a little racist to an American audience? Maybe he wasn’t being directed that well because there would be a language barrier but it’s weird.

Honestly the thing to watch from sixties Japan on The Criterion Channel is Black Lizard (1962), dir. Umetsugu Inoue, which I watched shortly after Trump’s election in 2016, when all the Criterion stuff was still on Hulu, and it cheered me up considerably in those dark days. It feels a little like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but with a couple musical numbers, and is about a master detective who thinks crime is super-cool and wishes there was a criminal who would challenge his intellect. Then the Black Lizard kidnaps someone. It’s a lot of fun, with a tone that feels close to camp but is so knowing and smart it feels more genuinely strange and precise. One of those things you get fairly often where the Japanese outsider’s take on American genre stuff gets what it’s about more deeply and so feels like it’s operating on a higher level. I really love this movie.

I had this larger point I wanted to make about just feeling repulsed by genre stuff that self-consciously attempts to mimic its canonical influences and that might not be all the way present in this post. Still, something that really should be implicit when talking about movies from the past is that they are not superhero movies, and how repulsed I am by that particular genre’s domination of cinema right now, and how much of cinema has a history of something far looser and more freewheeling in its ideas of how to make work that appealed to a broad audience, and how much weird formal playfulness can be understood intuitively by an audience without being offputting, and the sort of spirit of formal interrogation connects the films I like to the comics I like (as well as the books I like, and the visual art I like), this sense of doing something that can only be done within that medium even as certain other aspects translate.

[scrawnydutchman]

Why do the Simpsons Suck Now?

What can I say about what is likely the most beloved family in all of entertainment history, as well as the wacky, hilarious and unforgettable cast of Springfield? Beginning as a short series of animations on the Tracy Ullman show in 1987, The Simpsons may not be as old a franchise as other influential pop culture figures like Mickey Mouse or Superman, but the extended reach of how much this show has effected our public consciousness is staggering to say the least. Matt Groening’s life work has rewrote the book on how to do a family sitcom, redefined how we look at satire, has shaped an entire generations sense of humor, have even gone as far as shaped our language with the additions of such onomatopoeia as “D’oh!” and “Yoink!”. It’s pushed our boundaries, it’s broken new ground and has left us with unforgettable characters like Principle Skinner, Moe Syzlack, Krusty the Clown, my personal favorite Hans Moleman, and of course the ever hilarious selfish stupid every man Homer Simpson.

So what the hell happened?

This series has been going on for almost 30 SEASONS as of this blog and while it isn’t without it’s dedicated fans, many agree it’s lost its touch and just needs to die with whatever dignity it has left. It’s gone through the coming and going of writers, the death of cast members and several cultural shifts due to the innovations of work coming after it, and yet it’s still kicking, much to many’s dismay. It’s at a point where the only reason to tune into it at all is to watch the extra long couch gags done by guest animators like Don Hertzfeldt, and my personal favorite: The one where Rick and Morty kill them.

(side note: if the Simpsons literally ended with Rick and Morty killing them off, all would be forgiven)

But is there any particular reason or, SET of reasons why the show just can’t live up to it’s former glory? I don’t necessarily mean due to changes chronologically, I mean just changes in objective quality regardless of whoever is writing the show. There are two big problems plaguing the modern Simpsons that I think are the major reason it’s just so mediocre now: Relevancy and Laziness.

Let’s start with relevancy. The Simpsons was so groundbreaking for it’s time because it tackled everyday realities of the typical american family. Things like religious dilemma, bullying in school, censorship in cartoons, false sexual assault allegations and much much more. You could replay these episodes at any point in time and they would be just as relevant to our modern times as they ever were before; because these issues are largely a consequence of the human condition itself. It also tackled these realities with a genuinely clever and hilariously delivered analysis of people we encounter everyday. We laugh at Ned Flanders because we’ve ALL had that overly sheltered, religious neighbor who was such a perfect individual it frustrated us to no end. Now compare that to more recent episodes with dilemma’s like . . . will Homer and Bart be able to get these horses to mate so they won’t get killed off by this mafia guy. Yeah . . . seriously. And they articulate this through a hamfisted out of nowhere Les Miserable tribute. Yeah . . . seriously. 

Now, I’m no aficionado on what goes on in the typical american household nowadays but I’m willing to bet it ain’t shit like this. Now I’m fully aware of some of the more bizarre plots of classic simpsons episodes like Homer becoming a missionary and even something as outrageous as him going to space, but here’s the thing: they were premises that actually MADE LEEWAY FOR COMEDIC MATERIAL. Homer going to space is a premise that pretty much writes itself. This Les Miserables tribute is less about what potential is there for jokes to be told and more about how the writers can arbitrarily shoehorn something culturally relevant at the time of it’s release. That’s really it’s biggest gripe, the Simpsons nowadays will do ANYTHING to say in the public consciousness. They’ll create a whole drama about some MYSTERY character being killed off, turns out it’s just Krusty’s Rabbi father that showed up in like, what, 3 episodes? They’ll make headlines about Homer supposedly dying in an episode, turns out it’s a weird premise where Homer is brought back to life over and over and over as the plot progresses into an uncanny “future episode”. More often then that though, they just haphazardly pull pop culture references out of their ass in hopes of getting some cheap laughs. They’ll talk about Pokemon Go

Here’s the Simpsons talking about Donald Trump’s presidential run

And here’s a couch gag of the Springfield populous doing the Harlem shake.. Yes. Seriously.

The length they’ll go to to be “cool” is just . . .pathetic. They used to have timelessly funny lines, poignant insight about the human condition and just all around brilliantly clever and well executed comedy. Now they desperately cling to gimmicks and things that have only been relevant for like a month. My point conjoined into a single sentence is: They try so hard to be relevant now, when in their prime they didn’t NEED to try, they just were. This show used to SET the bar, why is it suddenly reaching for it?

It’s also worth pointing out that this shows age has REALLY shown. Not only in the clearly aged voices of the cast, but also in their current technology. Really think about this: Bart has operated both a VHS AND an Ipad. He’s still in elementary school. Maybe if they kept the setting in the nineties for the whole runtime it’d be less distracting but, here we are.

The second point has already been somewhat touched upon, but it’s also just shear laziness that brings this show down. There’s no passion for legitimate satire anymore. The witty unforgettable lines aren’t there, and truthfully the show would rather pander to what’s currently relevant as already mentioned then just continue to be great. it will even go as far as rehash old Simpson’s lines like the whole “Join the Navy” bit. 

It also SIGNIFICANTLY shows in the animation. When the Simpsons didn’t have witty dialogue it could also just as easily win a laugh out of you through GREAT slapstick. This is because of wildly expressive faces, effectively fast motion, great use of stretch and squash and excellent delivery from the voice actors. Nowadays the animation is just super rigid and cheap: more Family Guy then Simpsons. So much of the lip movement and facial contortion is just recycled frames and what not, and there are SEVERAL instances where assets in certain frames of the shot will just straight up not be colored in properly. But by far the worst offender is THIS

Here’s a little perspective for you: in traditional animation the framerate is 24 FPS, meaning for a single second of animation there can be as many as 24 unique drawings in it. That’s a lot of work. Animators don’t necessarily do that all the time (as you can see above) but when they do it REALLY shows. This point in the Simpsons intro where Marge does her headflip to see Maggie in her grocery bag has ALL 24 FRAMES FILLED WITH A UNIQUE DRAWING. Look at the way it breaks down, look at the way the hair follows the motion of the head turn. Look at the expressiveness. This was always very satisfying to watch. The NEW intro has only 5 frames in it, and it’s the most robotic, emotionless, non-organic thing you can imagine. It bothers the shit out of me quite frankly, because the Simpsons is at a point where they have SUCH a huge budget and can do SO MUCH MORE with their intro then they ever could previously. There is no excuse for this. Laziness is laziness.

So yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it. The heart of the Simpsons just isn’t there anymore, and that’s probably because, as much as I love the series to death (the best seasons anyway), it’s a tired premise that they’ve realistically run out of things to do with. By all intents and purposes the Simpsons are done. All they have to do now is pander and exploit because they can’t accept there is nothing else to offer. I just wish Matt Groening and his crew would move on to fresher things. I’d LOVE for him to cancel this show in favor of something else, something that will seem brand new. But, as it stands the Simpsons are still here, and unfortunately they are more then likely to stay until one of the main cast members dies (as morbid as that thought is). But there IS a bit of good news: no matter how bad the new Simpsons gets, it can never overshadow the true golden quality of it’s prime time.

I now leave you with my favorite song from the series ever.

[humanoid-lovers]

2.0 out of 5 stars Understand what you are buying! It's just a Scrapbook of The Simpsons as a Family, not a history of the TV series at all.

3.0 out of 5 stars More of a "scrapbook" of images than a history of this classic TV series. More of a "scrapbook" of images than a history of this classic TV series.When I knew this book was being released by Abrams - one of the great ART BOOK publishers - I had really high expectations. The cover is really colorful and - after a one page "intro by creator Matt Groening - the pages are colorful and full of great graphics - including lots of "screen shots" from the TV series. But as I progressed through the next 300 pages - all UNNUMBERED - I saw very little text - only captions., and short ones at that. Okay, so the subtitle of the book is "A Celebration of Television's Favorite Family", but I figured there'd be a story here somewhere. (There isn't). It's honestly more like a scrapbook and memory jogger (Look at this page. Remember when (insert character name here) did that?". The pre-title page lists "Writing: Nathan Kane" and "Book design and layout: Serban Christascu" so I'm guessing they are ones whose names belong on the front of the jacket.Last year Abrams published a similar "pop culture" book on Rube Goldberg and there was plenty of informative text throughout.Yes, Simpson's fans will enjoy the images (and they are in great color) and it's probably a good holiday gift for a Simpsons fan. But don't expect to read anything by Groening - except the intro - or learn the "backstory of the long running series on the family from Springfield. By the way it's so big that it weighs almost four pounds!I hope you found this review both informative and helpful.Steve Ramm"Anything Phonographic" Go to Amazon

2.0 out of 5 stars Not really a history When the description states "unravels 25 years of Simpsons facts and fun", I expected a 25 year history. This just collects the handful of 'flashback' episodes, which were some of the dullest of the bunch. The first few like 'Lisa's First Word' were fun, but by the time Homer is in a 90s grunge band it's tired. Lots of filler.A lot of the screen captures are pretty poor for an art/coffee table book -- look like smartphone pics of a TV screen -- blurred. At least they could have gotten original artwork for the price.I am a huge Simpsons fan, but wish I would have paged through this at a bookstore..They've put out 'scrapbook' type Simpsons material in the past that was a lot more fun than this thing. Go to Amazon

2.0 out of 5 stars Poorly Done Cash Grab This was incredibly disappointing, even if you were aware that this book is NOT a history of the show. It's interesting to see all the flashbacks laid out in chronological order, but other than that novelty, this book is a shameless cash grab. It basically repurposes episodes almost frame by frame to take up page space. This is nothing but filler. A 2 line, 10 second scene will take up 20 pages in the book. The layout is pretty uninspired, and the images are screenshots from the episodes instead of any new designs. This is just pathetic. If you're looking for a better, more original experience, check out the Simpsons Family Album instead. Go to Amazon

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money. Will be sending this back ASAP. Absolutely not what I expected when I pre-ordered months ago. It's literally screencaps from episodes with quotes surrounding them on each page, that's the book. A total disservice to longtime fans of the show. Go to Amazon

1.0 out of 5 stars Cheap ripoff that the Simpsons themselves would mock Wanted to get this as a gift but was deeply disgusted when I flipped through the pages. This book looks like someone emailed a series of low resolution screen captures from old episodes to a bored and disinterested 7th grade year book club for assembly.You will find more interesting and substantive content by purchasing a Simpson Comic book. If you must have it, wait for the $2 clearance rack. Worst. Simpsons. Dreck. Ever. Go to Amazon

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I was expecting... First off, for Simpsons fans, it is a really nice coffee table book and a really good book in general. My review doesn't reflect upon the quality of the book, had it been I would've easily given it the 4 or 5 stars it deserves.The reason for my 2 star review is that the book wasn't what I was expecting or hoping for when I ordered months ago. Being that this year is the year the Simpsons TV show has been on the air for 25 years now, I was hoping for an in-depth look at the show from it's earliest days up until now, similar to the recent (and incredibly awesome) "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Visual History" which helped ring in it's 30th anniversary in top notch form. This book is simply the history of the Simpson family as depicted throughout the show in a chronological order starting with Homer & Marge's youth up until their present day with all images taken from the 25 seasons of the show.When I originally saw the family portrait picture in the center on the cover, I assumed that it would cover all the way back to the "Tracey Ullman Show" skits from where that image came from. That's where I feel disappointed with this book, as crude as those skits were back then, those skits still hold a special place for me because that's where I (and countless more viewers) were first introduced to the Simpsons. Having aired in late 80s, to me, they broke such new ground and being the young age I was, it was amazing seeing a dysfunctional animated family that got away with stuff that was unheard on television back then, even for almost all live action TV family shows as well. I would've loved to have seen some behind the scenes pictures and stories from those early days, especially with it's anniversary it seemed more fitting.Read more › Go to Amazon