biographies

"Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" could easily be a modern "Beauty and the Beast" directed by Tim Burton. I have to say that the beast is not that bad; he actually looks like a cute dog, maybe a Cocker Spaniel. But the fact is that, in this case, David Lynch could fit better with the Arbus's work. Don't get me wrong, the movie is directed by Steven Shainberg, the same director of "Secretary". Not having seen Secretary yet, my interest was totally in Diane Arbus.


Even knowing it was "an imaginary portrait", I expected something more biographical and maybe more faithful to the image I have of Arbus. Her photos can lead us to such a portrait, but knowing a bit about her we know she was not "one of us"*, but was more to a nice intruder. (Susan Sontag talks about it in "On Photograph"). Also, Nicole Kidman's Diane, and this is not her fault, could be both a model of Allan's ads or Arbus's strange photos, not mentioning that she seems a contemporay version of her previous Viginia Woolf. The film is not bad but it ends up resuming Diane Arbus into a fetishist herself and tries to explain her work by her supposed inner freak. But don't take me that seriously. "Fur" can be a good watch, specially if you like fantasy genre.


*Freaks, directed by Tod Browning.

The opening scene. A drop of menstrual blood hits the pavement. It´s not necessary much more to understand that it´s a movie about girls. With a sort of disappointment, I already knew what to and what to not expect, an apprehension confirmed right in the next scenes, dialogues between the sisters. It´s not only a film from a girl´s point of view, but it is also like any other music biography we´ve already seen. Something like: turn up the sound and (try to) enjoy it.

The film tells the story of the beginning of the band, its success and fall, but it´s not exactly a film about The Runaways. It focus on Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, letting Lita Ford, Jackie Fox and Sandy West "in the backstage", being West the only one who has more scenes with them. With the exception of Cherie Bomb and I Love Rock N´Roll, we don´t see a daily band routine, the artistic process of writing and arranging songs, what would be more interesting than the pattern "sex, drugs and rock n´roll". Yes, it´s the year of 1975, they are the first all-girl rock band, but all this we already know.

It´s difficult to conceive that so young girls had so much freedom to do whatever they had in mind when we look to Dakota Fanning, still too "little" girl to convince us that she is the fox we've been waiting for. However, the times are others. If the real Runaways looked like what today would be twenty something, Fanning and Stewart fits perfectly into those seventeen years old.
Cherie Currie was much wilder for sure (what can be perceived in her voice) but Fanning makes a great job. Like I´ve read somewhere , she is making the transition from child actor to a grown up actress in a strong way.

Speaking about looks, if you, like me, didn´t really know The Runaways, but in the other hand knew The L Word, Kristen Stewart will look so much like Shane that will be hard to properly enjoy or take in consideration her portrait of Joan Jett. Too bad! After watching some old videos of The Runaways on youtube, I can say she is very good as Jett. Watching their live in Japan, in 1977, it´s incredible how Scout Taylor-Compto is very alike to Lita Ford.

You want a part of me
Well, I'm not selling cheap
No, I'm not selling cheap*


Between December 1992 and March 1993, the music journalist Michael Azerrad interviewed Kurt Cobain for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, published by Doubleday. Almost all the 25 hours of audio taped interviews took place between midnight and dawn at Kurt´s house in Seattle, Washington. One year after the last of these interviews, Kurt committed suicide. Years later, Azerrad meets the director AJ Schnack and the idea of the movie comes in.

Shot in the three cities where Kurt lived, Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle, and not featuring any Nirvana song or image of him until the very end, Kurt Cobain About a Son is something between a documentary and an (auto)biography where we see an honest (self)portrait of Kurt. At least, as honest as it can be. The use of random images and other music artists works when trying to give importance to what Kurt is saying, when trying to show the person instead of the icon. Gus Van Sant´s Last Days, that focus on the icon (Kurt´s sun glasses, wearing a dress, etc) and use the silence to try to get into Kurt´s mind/world, works, but as a portrait of the character as we know it.

Childhood, father´s absence, adolescence, art, musical identity, depression, fame, life. It is an interesting view on the construction of a real character and on trying to discover the real person. Kurt wanted to be famous, but didn´t expect to become a "fucking cartoon character".


People do not deserve to know about my life private now. (...) The thing that I've always, that I've never understood, is the classic reaction to someone who complains that's in the limelight is like "well, you know, you made your bed, now you have to sleep in it. That's what everyone expects. You're public domain now, and everyone has the right to know everything about you." (...) I don´t agree with people saying: "everyone has a right to know." I have the right to change that perception. I have the right to change people´s way of thinking of celebrities. It should be changed. It should be different. They should be treated as human beings and respected (in their private issues).


*Celebrity Skin, by Hole. In the movie Kurt talks a lot about fame and its consequences, about the pressure over him and Courtney Love.


updated: I left the movie playing while working on other things. I prefer to listen to it than watching it. It was like Kurt was in my room, talking directly with me.

How to analyze a documentary? What to take into consideration? When most documentaries follow the same structure and format, and considering that the main objective was reached, the subject ends up being the determinant. At least, for me.

Frank Gehry is a Canadian architect who acquired both critical acclaim and popular recognition with unlike buildings that cross the lines between architecture and art, functionality and free creation. If you are not familiar with his work, I would say it reminds me of Franz Kakfa, the German Expressonism and Futurism (google Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà and compare their work to the Gehry´s).

His expressionist postmodern architecture, I must say, doesn´t really appeal to me, although I realized that more than the shape, what makes big impact on me is the material. Having what I would call a conservative taste, I feel attracted to brick and stonework when steel, glass and metal keep me away. I like the MARTa Herford Museum, in Germany, that was clad in brick and stainless steel, as also the Dancing House, in Prague, but the Novartis Building (Switzerland), the Experience Music Project (Seattle) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA) can call the attention of the eyes, but not of my heart: I don´t feel the impulse to explore such places.
Bringing it to the cinema, it´s like Monsieur Hulot´s house versus Arpel family´s house. The futuristic house from Jacques Tati´s film Mon Oncle is very formal and static (geometric) to could have been built by Gehry, but we can say it has some similar characteristcs: the fish-shaped fountain, for example, even though Gehry would make it much bigger. In the other hand, even being an ancient building, Monsieur Hulot´s "house" has a sort of chaos and movement that would attract Gehry and which charm and personality definitely attracts me.

What I most like about Gehry´s work is the whole process of creation, the "giving form" more than the form itself. Instead of the final product, I choose his sketches and mock-ups. The whole process is exciting and Sydney Pollack portraits it quite well what makes me wonder how to rate this documentary. Gehry´s work is interesting, but can this film please those who are not interested in architecture? I am not sure.

Freaks, Francesca Woodman + Roy Andersson.

Pina gives me such a peace, but her choreographies disturb me in such a way that I wonder if it may be the fear of the mirror (identification) or fear of primitivism (has freedom necessarily to be the "loss of self-control"? - only by the loss of the self - that lives in social conditioning - we can find ourselves?).
"Your fragility is your strength".

"I have never been gay a day in my life and I'm sure as hell not a part of any movement"

Burroughs was a deconstructor of labels (of any type) and that's what especially calls my attention to him.

"He opened up to me not gay culture, but gay rebels who couldn't fit in with gay culture, who were very different. (...) Burroughs has an uneasy relationship with queer culture in America, or queer writing or whatever. Burroughs was never seen as part of that, he was still too transgressive. Even when it become sort of okay to be queer, he was beyond queer".