New Peaks In The Uncanny Valley

Careless Lisper

Slavoj Žižek had me raising my hand in objection by the first minute over a throwaway comment of reality as abstraction but he quickly settles down to unfurl a devastating rapid response to a series of embarrassingly superficial market capitalists who are increasingly beginning to exude the air of polyester flare-wearing, Boomer swingers. Wealthy but morally bankrupt. Rich but fucking clueless. Wedged up but drenched in Hai-Karate aftershave. The epitome of dangerous anachronisms. Naturally they're the last to realise it in much the same way that Louis XIV was puzzled when the peasants arrived at Versailles and proved themselves to be natural vivisectionists in response to the brutality that small groups of greedy people invariably inculcate through financial and most importantly historical myopia.

I loved watching this and I now have a bit of a man-crush on the Slovenian dissident who I recently struggled with his Lacanian analysis in A perverts guide to cinema. Žižek also tackles some more concrete issues in this so hang in there for some honest critique of why the left are very hypocritical on Afghanistan and so forth. There's a certain amount of professional jealousy from here, as unlike me he got to bone Miss Brazil as the Elvis of cultural theory. 

It's not right, but it's OK. 

Man on Wire

I guess I'm not the only one who gets a little tingle from seeing the twin towers in pre 2001 New York film scenes. I particularly like seeing footage of the construction of the towers in the early 70's. It's a time that's of interest for me because it seems to resonate so strongly from the screen. I chose this Italian trailer with the Eric Satie piano piece because it's infinitely more delicate than the over the top editing for the the U.S market trailer complete with basso profondo voiceover.

I've had this story on my radar for quite some time. I'm not really sure if there was a transition from knowing about the story to being aware of the documentary but for some reason I couldn't imagine it being any more interesting than a long news clip or a very short film. I couldn't have been more wrong. There's a bunch of stuff going on in this extraordinary documentary film. There's no way of anticipating the kind of details that always emerge during the act of doing something dangerous over a period of time. The close scrapes. The near misses. The ominous omens. On their own they are reason to believe it's worth an hour and a half of your time.

But there are other dimensions that caught me by surprise. The incongruous sentiments of detailed planning worthy of a bank heist, flying back and forth between New York and Paris over and over again, combined with a sort of physical poetry of performance, and an essential ability to inspire or seduce all around him into collaborating. It's an ability that falls apart too quickly to be left unmoved by the tears of his best friend on one or two occasions.

The last time I saw something this creative was back in Beijing with the Parisian Ballet company protesting in mid act to the intelligentsia and elite of Peking (and a white boy in baseball cap) over the knee jerk sentiments of blind Chinese nationalism to Olympic torch protests in France. 

This is a moving piece of film with unexpected dynamics and curious details that I can't imagine ever being done any better. Most striking for me is the interstitial editing of film sequences of a younger Philip Pettit practising in France. There was no way of knowing it would be used for a film many years later but it's done so elegantly that the juxtaposition is fused with a sense of poetic connection. Much like the wire across those twin towers.