Coming from a New Yorker, this is particularly meaningful, but that is not why I highlighted it. It's a powerful way of getting inside a moment, when one is in-city if not citified, and inured to the background noise-that-isn't-really-noise-but-ambient-sound in a way that allows for space but gently cushions with comforting familiarity.
Sorry for my oafish characterization, but thanks for that phrase, because I felt it immediately and deeply.
DC is helicopterville (as you know). Eventually they are background (unless you happen to be right under one that's doing touch-n-goes at the Observatory)...
The Tuesday siren (not to mention the foghorn on the bridge) is a backgrounded part of the citiscape in San Francisco. Probly every city has things like that – localized, familiar, comforting in a way.
Not really the same thing, but if you're doing a survey of background noises: In my neighborhood, I can sometimes hear the lion roar at Vilas Zoo, and on game days I can always hear the crowd roaring at Camp Randall Stadium.
We hear the occasional bellow of the elephants out our back window. I always think of it as a triumphant-yet-despairing roar as the mighty beast heaves another miscreant zoo-goer outta the yard...
The occasional ship's horn, especially after dark. Being out running errands, and hearing, then seeing, KC-130s coming in for a landing at the nearby Army airbase.
Out on the coast south of SF, our little town had a formidable foghorn – really a boomer. One time a newly-esconced house-purchaser from outta town was outraged at the noise, and in a brutally stupid move, posted his ignorance and his chickenshitism for all to see on the local listserve, whence he was duly and artfull flayed by one and all.
I'm certain that now, had he survived the community's mocking putdowns, the sound would be sufficiently backgrounded. Either that or he'd be crawling walls in some doorless, windowless hell...
My dad was born on the South Side of Chicago, and his family's home was across the street from a foundry (real prime real estate, that, shows the wealth and privilege I came from.) He said if the steam hammer stopped in the middle of the night you'd wake up to see what's wrong.
I'm going with Trains. My school is across the street from the main train tracks and the trains have to whistle as they approach a street intersection. My department typically has a mjor class in which many talks are given and a train comes by almost every time we have that class
One of the startling discoveries of my adult life has been that city noise vanishes. Horns, shouts, sirens -- it's usually steady, like the ocean, and when you hear it, it reminds you that life keeps moving -- whereas suburban noise is always intrusive, hellish, reminding you that someone is spending money to keep a lawn perfectly square. Every day somewhere on the block there marches a small army of guys with roaring leaf blowers. Every week or two someone feeds a tree into a chipper FOR A WHILE. Every so often the nine-year-olds playing in a nearby yard erupt into a shrieking fight about the rules of a game -- not nearly as fun as overhearing drunk 24-year-olds trying to sing Mambo #5 as they wait for their uber. I really detest the suburbs. All I see there is waste, isolation, and cop shows set in the city.
Thanks. I probably overstated. If I offended anyone who lives there… “subjective” is a good word — and try to imagine how much more abrasive I was in my youth!
Thanks Roy, it sounds fascinating, but definitely like the kind of movie you need to be in the right headspace to appreciate. A friend of mine saw it when she was already feeling nostalgic about a couple of things in her own life, and she spent the rest of the evening after the movie crying on and off. So I've been waiting to be in a positive but patient mood before I check it out.
You mentioned "Tokyo Story" last month. It got me thinking - I found a copy of "Early Summer" on YouTube and watched it one quiet night. I like films where
nothing much happens in an important fundamental way. This sounds similar.
I don't know if I would go out to see this but I will sure watch it streaming.
Glad you do. This is a more ambiguous kind of story and I think Ozu usually knows just where he's going at all times, but maybe they have more in common than I thought.
Good writing about a good film is something I always enjoy, and this one I will watch, because there isn't a scene where a baby is cut from the womb of a dead woman.
I did finally get around to watching Videodrome last weekend, and, yeah, it's a LOT more fucked up than Crimes Of The Future. Trying to decide if Debbie Harry or Kristen Stewart is better.
Roy's comment about the present film makes me think of my love for the Hernandez Bros comics, esp. Love & Rockets. I like the SF/fantasy aspects of the stories, but I'm equally entertained by the Locas stories where it's just set in an essentially normal suburb, or Heartbreak Soup, set in a tiny Mexican (?) town. I've no great affection for tales of average lower-middle-class randos yet I'm fascinated by these comics.
"so much of it takes place not only between the lines, but between the actions, as the import of what is said and done, or not said and not done, dawns on you."
I should see this. I'm jonesing for exactly this since Monday, when I finally watched The Last Detail. For the first half it felt minor, a movie about Nicholson bending rules to show a younger guy a good time before he goes to prison. The second half sneaked up on me with all its unseen stuff. Tuesday I woke up crammed with reflection, floored by the realization that a line Nicholson says -- "Kid like that's better off in prison. Too many things can happen to him out here" -- is really a line about why he himself got out of real life, joined the navy.
Speaking of unseen -- I have decided that Nicholson and Hal Ashby put one of my all-time favorite movie moments in here, three seconds long: Nicholson is talking and something catches his eye out of frame, he flashes with anger, then goes back to what he's saying. You are trusted completely to understand he's seen a pretty girl. Jesus.
I suspect if someone made this movie today, they'd cut to a bodacious ass boom-booming side to side. Jack would look sad and left out, not furious at a world he can't have. In the next scene we'd learn he's estranged from a daughter, and so's the prisoner he's escorting. They'd end up AWOL on a cross-country journey of discovery and reconciliation.
Aye yi yi, no, make me see the real world better, not a bullshit world. You guys, I am open to movie suggestions -- and adding Past Lives to my list.
Sorry I don't have any good recommendations for you (unless you're into pre-Code Hollywood) but now I want to re-watch Last Detail and look for that moment you mentioned.
Some of my favorite movies are pre-Code -- Trouble in Paradise, Grand Hotel. Or just after Code, like Our Man Godfrey. You're right, these sometimes feel like they are built on real life, despite the big sets and star power. I should watch more of them.
The moment in Last Detail (stop reading now if you want to find it on your own)... is at the ceiay inkray).
Those are great pre-Code choices, the ones I'd add are pure trash, but trash of the highest order: Cecil B. DeMille's Madame Satan, worth it just for the dirigible scenes, and an early Barbara Stanwyck film, Baby Face, where a woman applies the principles of Nietzsche to her relationships with men (and yes, Nietzsche is actually mentioned in the film.)
"more hum than clatter"
Coming from a New Yorker, this is particularly meaningful, but that is not why I highlighted it. It's a powerful way of getting inside a moment, when one is in-city if not citified, and inured to the background noise-that-isn't-really-noise-but-ambient-sound in a way that allows for space but gently cushions with comforting familiarity.
Sorry for my oafish characterization, but thanks for that phrase, because I felt it immediately and deeply.
2 marks for the phrase and the whole review.
No oafish at all, every city dweller knows exactly what you are describing.
That's an interesting description of the phenomenon.
DC is helicopterville (as you know). Eventually they are background (unless you happen to be right under one that's doing touch-n-goes at the Observatory)...
The Tuesday siren (not to mention the foghorn on the bridge) is a backgrounded part of the citiscape in San Francisco. Probly every city has things like that – localized, familiar, comforting in a way.
Not really the same thing, but if you're doing a survey of background noises: In my neighborhood, I can sometimes hear the lion roar at Vilas Zoo, and on game days I can always hear the crowd roaring at Camp Randall Stadium.
We hear the occasional bellow of the elephants out our back window. I always think of it as a triumphant-yet-despairing roar as the mighty beast heaves another miscreant zoo-goer outta the yard...
Damn I hate zoos.
The occasional ship's horn, especially after dark. Being out running errands, and hearing, then seeing, KC-130s coming in for a landing at the nearby Army airbase.
Oh, that does sound romantic (the ship's horn, not the KC-130's)
Out on the coast south of SF, our little town had a formidable foghorn – really a boomer. One time a newly-esconced house-purchaser from outta town was outraged at the noise, and in a brutally stupid move, posted his ignorance and his chickenshitism for all to see on the local listserve, whence he was duly and artfull flayed by one and all.
I'm certain that now, had he survived the community's mocking putdowns, the sound would be sufficiently backgrounded. Either that or he'd be crawling walls in some doorless, windowless hell...
My dad was born on the South Side of Chicago, and his family's home was across the street from a foundry (real prime real estate, that, shows the wealth and privilege I came from.) He said if the steam hammer stopped in the middle of the night you'd wake up to see what's wrong.
I'm going with Trains. My school is across the street from the main train tracks and the trains have to whistle as they approach a street intersection. My department typically has a mjor class in which many talks are given and a train comes by almost every time we have that class
One of the startling discoveries of my adult life has been that city noise vanishes. Horns, shouts, sirens -- it's usually steady, like the ocean, and when you hear it, it reminds you that life keeps moving -- whereas suburban noise is always intrusive, hellish, reminding you that someone is spending money to keep a lawn perfectly square. Every day somewhere on the block there marches a small army of guys with roaring leaf blowers. Every week or two someone feeds a tree into a chipper FOR A WHILE. Every so often the nine-year-olds playing in a nearby yard erupt into a shrieking fight about the rules of a game -- not nearly as fun as overhearing drunk 24-year-olds trying to sing Mambo #5 as they wait for their uber. I really detest the suburbs. All I see there is waste, isolation, and cop shows set in the city.
Huh. Hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks, I think.
This is a highly subjective view, but one that I share, and it's well-described.
Thanks. I probably overstated. If I offended anyone who lives there… “subjective” is a good word — and try to imagine how much more abrasive I was in my youth!
It’s so easy to overstate or understate. None can say how often they’ve stated.
Good night, by my clock.
Gritty!
Thanks Roy, it sounds fascinating, but definitely like the kind of movie you need to be in the right headspace to appreciate. A friend of mine saw it when she was already feeling nostalgic about a couple of things in her own life, and she spent the rest of the evening after the movie crying on and off. So I've been waiting to be in a positive but patient mood before I check it out.
This sounds like one I want to see! Thanks, Roy.
You mentioned "Tokyo Story" last month. It got me thinking - I found a copy of "Early Summer" on YouTube and watched it one quiet night. I like films where
nothing much happens in an important fundamental way. This sounds similar.
I don't know if I would go out to see this but I will sure watch it streaming.
I enjoy the movie reviews - Thanks!
Glad you do. This is a more ambiguous kind of story and I think Ozu usually knows just where he's going at all times, but maybe they have more in common than I thought.
I’ve put it on the list. Thank God it won’t get remade with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
No, it will get remade with AI Tom and AI Meg.
Ai, ai, Tom 'n Meg!
Hearted not hearted.
Good writing about a good film is something I always enjoy, and this one I will watch, because there isn't a scene where a baby is cut from the womb of a dead woman.
Wow! Talk about a spoiler!
IKR? Doesn't EVERY film involve a baby cut from the womb of a dead woman these days?
[struggling mightily to refrain from cracking wise about a womb with a view]
Movie time!
I did finally get around to watching Videodrome last weekend, and, yeah, it's a LOT more fucked up than Crimes Of The Future. Trying to decide if Debbie Harry or Kristen Stewart is better.
Roy's comment about the present film makes me think of my love for the Hernandez Bros comics, esp. Love & Rockets. I like the SF/fantasy aspects of the stories, but I'm equally entertained by the Locas stories where it's just set in an essentially normal suburb, or Heartbreak Soup, set in a tiny Mexican (?) town. I've no great affection for tales of average lower-middle-class randos yet I'm fascinated by these comics.
Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!
"so much of it takes place not only between the lines, but between the actions, as the import of what is said and done, or not said and not done, dawns on you."
I should see this. I'm jonesing for exactly this since Monday, when I finally watched The Last Detail. For the first half it felt minor, a movie about Nicholson bending rules to show a younger guy a good time before he goes to prison. The second half sneaked up on me with all its unseen stuff. Tuesday I woke up crammed with reflection, floored by the realization that a line Nicholson says -- "Kid like that's better off in prison. Too many things can happen to him out here" -- is really a line about why he himself got out of real life, joined the navy.
Speaking of unseen -- I have decided that Nicholson and Hal Ashby put one of my all-time favorite movie moments in here, three seconds long: Nicholson is talking and something catches his eye out of frame, he flashes with anger, then goes back to what he's saying. You are trusted completely to understand he's seen a pretty girl. Jesus.
I suspect if someone made this movie today, they'd cut to a bodacious ass boom-booming side to side. Jack would look sad and left out, not furious at a world he can't have. In the next scene we'd learn he's estranged from a daughter, and so's the prisoner he's escorting. They'd end up AWOL on a cross-country journey of discovery and reconciliation.
Aye yi yi, no, make me see the real world better, not a bullshit world. You guys, I am open to movie suggestions -- and adding Past Lives to my list.
Sorry I don't have any good recommendations for you (unless you're into pre-Code Hollywood) but now I want to re-watch Last Detail and look for that moment you mentioned.
Some of my favorite movies are pre-Code -- Trouble in Paradise, Grand Hotel. Or just after Code, like Our Man Godfrey. You're right, these sometimes feel like they are built on real life, despite the big sets and star power. I should watch more of them.
The moment in Last Detail (stop reading now if you want to find it on your own)... is at the ceiay inkray).
Those are great pre-Code choices, the ones I'd add are pure trash, but trash of the highest order: Cecil B. DeMille's Madame Satan, worth it just for the dirigible scenes, and an early Barbara Stanwyck film, Baby Face, where a woman applies the principles of Nietzsche to her relationships with men (and yes, Nietzsche is actually mentioned in the film.)
These both sound amazing. Thanks!
Me too.
Hard to beat Last Detail.