He Found Some Dice And Think The Devil Got Ahold Of Him: Cabin In The Sky (1943)

The black experience in America is one that is troubled by many factors and opening a history book more than denotes these various issues.  Yet, even with the heavy awareness of a history of slavery, Jim Crow oppression and a hard earned Civil Rights movement that resulted in the deaths of many a prolific figure.  A consensus that the black experience somehow did not extend to issues within popular entertainment is outright foolish and generally ill-conceived.  Indeed, jazz and poetry were part in parcel to the popular culture of the time, but became a thing to be appropriated within white culture, much in the same way that primitivism would inject new life into the modernist art movement without really providing any justification to its origins and certainly not the equal point of access to the very artists with which the work was drawn.  Now, when it came to Hollywood productions the black representation was far more troubling, certainly denoted this month with the various musicals I have watched, a variety of which use blackface in a very unapologetic manner, but this was far from the only genre to appropriate such imagery.  I say all this to note the exceptional nature of something like Cabin in the Sky in its complete use of an entirely black cast, which included musical powerhouses of the time, particularly a dynamic and inspired turn by Ethel Waters who is moving as a troubled wife that simply wants the best for her husband.  As the Warner Brother DVD notes at its beginning, the imagery present within Cabin in the Sky is not always the most ideal or positive when it comes to a representation of black culture during the time, however, there is something very aware in the filmmaking of Vincente Minnelli, who shoots the film in a very loving manner, allowing the performances to take on an heir of the natural, as opposed to some of the more hyper-performative things that happened in early all-black films, most notably Green Pastures.  Sure it is far from a perfect film in terms of racial depictions, but it is void of blackface and aside from a few unfortunate instances this really is a testament to the magnificent performance art coming out of the African-American community in the thirties and forties.

Cabin in the Sky focuses on the life of Little Joe Jackson (Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson) a dice gambler who is down on his luck and owes considerable money to various gamblers in his community.  However, Joe realizing the error of his ways has taken to a life of improvement, inspired by his loyal and devout wife Petunia (Ethel Waters).  Unfortunately, since his gambling is a considerable addiction, the rediscovery of a set of calamity cubes in his drawer followed by the prodding of local loan sharks, leads to Joe foolishly returning to the local gambling saloon, only to become caught up in a fight, in which he is stabbed in the process.  This near fatal would leads to the religiously confused Joe to be a point of confrontation between hell and heaven, each believing that they have the right to his soul.  Hell is represented by Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram) who posits that Joe must necessarily spend his eternity in hell because while on Earth he was suspectible to gambling, boozing and the provocations of the local temptress Georgia Brown (Lena Horne).  Yet, The General (Kenneth Spencer) represents the side of Heaven and asserts that considering the heavy amount of praying being undertaken on the part of Petunia that he should be given a chance for heaven.  In a religious bargaining, both sides agree to give the morally ambiguous soul of Joe six months to correct his ways, although his earthly spirit will have no recollection of the events prior, instead; having only his world and conscious to make his decisions.  At this point the battle for Joe's sole does take on spiritual proportions as both Lucifer Jr. and The General exact their sway on the individuals in the world, as well as the natural world around them in order to save Joe.  Lucifer Jr. attempts to play into Joe's weakness for gambling, using trickery to make him win a large amount of money in a lottery, one that causes individuals like Georgia Brown and his former loan sharks to come hunting for his money.  In contrast, The General uses the spirituality of Petunia to push Joe towards salvation.  All of these events lead to a climactic, jazz-infused confrontation with both sides that layers into a larger narrative in regards to where salvation truly occurs.

Cabin in the Sky is perhaps one of the great considerations of religious navigation and how one attains salvation and seeks forgiveness.  While I will not be able to review it anytime soon, I was able to catch up with Philomena and it is an equally ambiguous, but, nonetheless astute observation on how one navigates the world of salvation.  I would place Cabin in the Sky second only to Secret Sunshine in its look at how factors beyond simple faith or penance play into a person's ability to find religious understanding.  Joe is a troubled character who clearly wants to correct the wrongs in his life, looking initially to do so through financial means, as it is a world he understands as a result of his crippling gambling addiction.  This is clear in his choice to buy Petunia a electric washer for their house, despite having no electricity with which to run the appliance.  He assumes that what Petunia wants is a means to make her physical labors lessened, although she constantly asserts that she wants Joe only to be appreciative and around for her to love, as Joe's own salvation becomes more clear and define, to do his actions towards Petunia, bringing her gifts that he had to labor to accrue, most notably the simple, yet sweet, gesture of picking wild flowers.  It is this understanding that his own actions have come from the natural world that inspires Petunia to note the brilliance of God in the natural world.  Indeed, much of Joe's frustration and trouble comes from the mechanized and industrialized world, his connection to the damnation in the saloon or Georgia Brown's arriving via train.  This film, while somewhat troublesome in its context, seems to suggest that happiness is tied to understanding that not all joy and affection can be produced, indeed, when money is placed into the narrative, even Petunia becomes jealous, asserting that her frustration comes from Joe offering money to Georgia Brown, when it is somewhat clear that it is more a result of catching the two together, without understanding that Joe was doing his best to deter her advances.  The narrative does posit the absolute power of the natural to shift the order of things as a certain tornado comes to solidify Joe's final push towards salvation through a cataclysmic cleansing.

Key Scene:  The "consequences" song between Anderson and Horne is a moment of natural, simplistic aural contrast in an otherwise wholly visual film and it sticks out in an emotionally stirring way.

This is available via the Warner Archive and the DVD looks like near HD quality.  It is worth your time if you are fascinated by race in American cinema or musicals at their most realized.

Here's To Our Kids, May Their Parents Be Fucking Rich: Magic Mike (2012)

I am a huge fan of Steven Soderbergh, offering favorable reviews in the past year to both his blockbuster epidemic film Contagion, as well as his low-fi study of anger and isolation in a small town community via Bubble.  The director has received a high degree of very deserved praise for his seamless ability to transfer from big-budget films to small independent works repeatedly, often more than once in the same year, however, these worlds rarely ever crossed and viewers were either given star-studded spectacular bits of film, or a movie whose actors were all incredibly amateur in their delivery.  Then came one of the most unusual films in the directors oeuvre to date, Magic Mike, which gained a footing and reputation all its own, simply for choosing to focus on the life of male strippers.  So much was made of the film being "female-oriented" that it certainly failed to gain the reputation and respect it so blatantly deserved.  Firstly, Soderbergh manages to capture a world quite unfamiliar to many individuals, not to mention without any clear biases, one way or another.  Also, and much to my elation, Magic Mike manages to blend these two previously divided worlds of Soderbergh's films, in that we have bit time actors such as Matthew McConaughey and Channing Tatum, as well as lesser known performers whose only notable roles came through brief television appearances, as such the film exudes a display that manages to capture the monotony and tragedy of day-to-day struggles irregardless of lifestyle choices, as well as the showy and over-the-top nature of the sexually fueled world of male dance reviews.  Furthermore, as seems to be the case so many times in the works of Soderbergh, particularly in the case of something like Traffic, viewers are given more than one narrative to congests and while they are all invariably tied together, it is clear that individual desires and internal struggles emerge, often in explosive and intense ways.  It is nearly tragic the level of dismissive rhetoric thrown at Magic Mike simply because of its subject matter, hell if people can muster up the courage to watch more than one masculine oriented Expendables film, there is absolutely no excuse not to check out the much superior film by a well-established auteur.

Magic Mike, as the title suggests focuses mainly on the life of Mike (Channing Tatum) a construction worker and furniture designer, who also happens to moonlight as a male dancer to pay for some debt occurred prior to the film's beginning, his stage name is the title's sake, although he is not the owner of the bar in which he performs, instead he relies on the guidance and somewhat sly business ways of aging performer Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) who clearly has a devious past that fails ever to be mentioned.  During one day of construction, Mike meets Adam (Alex Pettyfer) a down-and-out young guy who for one reason or another has resorted to taking up residence on his sister Brooke's (Cody Horn) couch.  Realizing rather quickly that he might prove decent at the job of being a dancer, Mike pull strings to get Adam into the revue, under the name of The Virgin Kid.  After a rather bold, but fortuitous first showing, Dallas agrees to allow Adam to train with the crew, eventually leading to his becoming a regular fixture in the revue.  All of this occurs, much to the disdain of Brooke who concerns herself with the dangerous lifestyle associated with late nights and heavy sexual activity, all the while dealing with the growing advances of Mike who becomes quickly infatuated with Brooke.  The life proves a bit problematic for Adam who cannot handle the constant drinking and drug use, eventually blowing a large amount of money on a sketchy drug trafficking deal, one that blows up in his face when he leaves his entire stash at a sorority party that turns sour after Adam gives a girl an ecstasy pill.  The large loss of money and a failure to gain money for Dallas leads to a falling out between the veteran performer and Mike who is tired of working in the unappreciative shadow of Dallas.  Refusing to subject himself to the lifestyle, Mike leaves bitterly on their last night in Tampa, but not before taking care of Adam's debts.  He then stops off at the house of Brooke to beg a few moments of conversation, however, Brooke is well aware of the aid he provided her brother and invites him in for much more than light discussion.  We are led to assume that their romance will succeed and that Mike will discover a way to pursue his dreams without subjecting himself to a less than desirable lifestyle.

As noted earlier and constantly joked about on various blogs, Facebook posts and Twitter updates, Magic Mike was jokingly (or perhaps not) condemned for making heavy use of the semi-nude, if not entirely nude male body.  When one considers film theory, particularly feminist film theory this provides for an unusual moment, because as many know Laura Mulvey coined the term of "The Male Gaze" to explain the pleasure men earned from gazing upon the female body in cinema.  She of course used Marilyn Monroe as her example and led to an entire academic discourse on notions of the female objectified in cinema.  This ideal proved to dominate the manner in which individuals discussed and created cinema well into the 2000's, perhaps not really changing until Daniel Craig's James Bond stepped out of water in a noticeably revealing Speedo, completely reverting notions of who is to be "gazed upon" in a film.  Of course, this occurrence is rarely discussed and has proved to disappear in newer works in the franchise.  Yet, we cannot ignore the means by which Magic Mike does similar acts, we are certainly shown the male form in a sexualized manner, often close-ups on the various actors butts, abs and genitalia, Soderbergh goes so far as to show one performer's penis as it is being made artificially erect by a air pump.  Viewers are asked then to consider their own relationships to gaze in cinema, because for the reactionary males who found the concept of Magic Mike to be inherently gay seem to remind society that the critiques Mulvey posited nearly forty years ago still ring true, it had just become an assumed thing that the female body was acceptable for a depiction of nudity and sexuality and that the male body was not to be subjected to such things.  In fact, the Motion Pictures Association of America still seems squeamish to allow for full-frontal male nudity to be shown in films, often slapping films with an NC-17 rating for such acts.  The fact that Soderbergh chose such a subject shows his willingness not only to tackle the more unknown lifestyles in America, but too that he wants viewers to consider their own objective relationship with cinema, it truly is a slyly brilliant work by the ever interesting director.

Key Scene:  The "It's Raining Men" scene is some rather stellar choreography in so much that it allows viewers to understand the dynamic of the groups characters, both in the overly committed manner of Mike, compared to some of his more drug-fueled colleagues that struggle to keep up pace with the young dancer.  It works both on a action level, as well as a metaphorical one, much praise should be given to Alison Faulk for her subtle and brilliant choreography.

The bluray was a pseudo-blind buy for me, in that I intended to rent this, but damn if it was not quite good and well worth owning, although perhaps renting is appropriate for those who may still be hesitant to watch a film about male strippers.

I Can't Put Anything Inside Me: 301, 302 (1995)

This film features a suspense laden-melodramatic narrative, an industrial noise-heavy soundtrack, and two women increasingly dealing with dueling paranoias crammed into incredibly tight spaces.  From that description alone one could assume that I was describing a Dario Argento movie and their assumptions would easily be justified.  However, the movie I am describing is actually a Korean movie from right in the middle of their illustrious and still evolving New Wave.  The film 301, 302 is brilliant, experimental and highly-invocative film that is about women's place and identity within Korea as it moves into modernity.  Heavy with a social critique, at no point does 301, 302 overdo its imagery and become on the nose.  A study in the issue of psychologically based eating disorders in their emergence, existence and eventual ending and it also questions the relationship of food and consumption relate to the body image, particularly, when that images is predicated on male dominance and judgement.  The acting within 301, 302 is stunning, the cinematography is intensely realized and the overall grittiness of this film causes viewers to become aghast at what would normally be simple images of food.  Cheol-su-Park's work intends to undermine the comfort in food and eating, as well as causing aversion to the traditional gaze in cinema, all of which he manages to do and still provide a entirely watchable, if not intense movie.

301, 302 begins, in sorts, at the end of the narrative, we are shown 301 (Eun-jin Pang), referred to by her apartment, engaging with a detective who is inquiring about the disappearance of her neighbor 302 (Sin-Hye Hwang).  301 explains that she was a pseudo-friend of 302, in that she, a cook, often attempted to deliver food to the writer who lived a very secluded and reserved life behind her closed apartment door.  The detective assumes that 301 offers little to his investigation and leaves, at this point the narrative unfolds, through what we assume to be flashbacks.  We are shown 301in earlier years, overweight attempting to cook a meal for her husband who is dismissive based on her expanding weight and constantly heckling about liking her food.  Eventually, 301's husband leaves her and she takes up attempting to win 302 over with her cooking.  She is enraged when she discovers that 302, who has a huge aversion to food, is always throwing her food away.  After confronting 302 about her refusal to eat by forcing her to eat the rotten leftovers, 302 confesses to being sexually abused at a young age while working in a her stepdad's butchers shop, ever since she has found herself disgusted by both food and the act of intercourse.  Feeling terrible about her actions, 301 begins to attempt making food for 302 that will be suitable to her diet, focusing on organic ingredients and often vegetarian dishes.  As each persons past opens up it is revealed that they both engaged in some terrible actions, 301 cooking her cheating husband's dog alive and 302 leaving a girl in a freezer to die.  Eventually their pasts become nearly irreconcilable and the two must come to grips with their consumption disorders in a disturbingly poetic finally, one that has to be seen to be believed.

The film can be critiqued from many venues, particularly in regards to feminist theory.  In terms of a revenge narrative, the possibilities are evident, although it does not necessarily reflect this tradition in that it fails to exact bodily revenge as is the case with works like Deathproof or I Spit On Your Grave.  Similarly one could analyze the notion of voice and empowerment within women's movements, it is no surprise that 302 is a writer, as she sees it as a means to deal with her traumatic past and give voice to others who may have experience similar situations, however, this is also not completely plausible as we are led to believe that she never finishes an entire piece, let alone one one that companies agree to publish.  Ultimately, the film is to be read as a commentary on the power of food in female identity.  For 301 her ability to cook and enjoyment in eating are seen as a means of power, although her consumption becomes problematic when it is used as a means to replace her lack of sexual activity, it, nonetheless, suggests the possibilities of food serving as a means of identity.  Similarly, 302's refusal to eat has its own identity attached to it, although again it is unhealthy in its sexual attachments.  However, this unacknowledged hunger strike certainly has political implications that can be drawn from many a moment in history.  The food in this film, however, is to constantly be questioned, even in the closing moments of this dark film, we are not quite sure as to whether the food serves as a thing of disturbing unison or blatant and literal division.

Key Scene: Pretty much any of the cooking scenes are magnificent.

I am enthralled with this movie and am glad to have purchased a copy, however, I am also aware that it may not be for everyone, so I highly suggest renting the film before making a purchasing decision.