Satoshi Kon's Eternal Dream Parade

Satoshi Kon
1963 — 2010
When artists pass from this world, it speaks to the power of their work and demonstrates that they have infiltrated hearts and minds, if the audience hearing that sorrowful news reflexively filters it through the mental lens of that art. Which is to say:

This scene from Kon's OVA Perfect Blue (1998) was the first thought to flash through my head upon hearing of the August 24th death of the animator, director, and cartoonist. This is partly because of the literal content of the scene, in which tarnished pop star turned terrorized actress Mima has just discovered the demise of her entire aquarium of fish. But it is also because this has always struck me as a well-animated crying scene, and crying is notoriously difficult to animate. And all this because among Kon's four features as director, his first, Perfect Blue, remains my favorite. At first pass the unconventional psychothriller meditation on female identity and celebrity culture seemed joltingly Argento-esque, pro-critics tended to invoke Hitchcock and... don't forget we're talking about cartoons here. As soon as Millennium Actress (2001) appeared it was clear that what Perfect Blue is simply a Satoshi Kon film.

If there is one painful, unpronounceable word above, it is "four." Four features, one TV series, assorted animation tasks. Kon's death at 46 (nearly the same age as Whisper of the Heart director Yoshifumi Kondō) leaves us with a frustratingly small body of work. Frustrating not because it is inadequate, but because it is remarkable enough that one cannot help but want more. Every one of Kon's films is an increasingly ambitious technical and storytelling challenge. Satoshi Kon made films expansive of imagination and personal of preoccupation, pushed the boundaries of his medium and tried to break, dodge, and stand out from certain clichés, prejudices and lazy habits of the Japanese animation industry. It is that ambition to blow an audience's mind with sights they have not seen and will not forget that separates Kon's work, and, one hopes, will be the inspirational legacy of his films.

As I always feel lacking during such moments, I direct interested persons to this appreciation and 2003 interview by Brian Camp. The discussion mainly concerns Tokyo Godfathers, but manages to cover several key and under-examined aspects of Kon's films, such as the realer-than-truth documentary qualities possible in animation, and his dedication to visual depiction of Japanese characters that look Japanese.

Further reading at Midnight Eye, a pair of interviews regarding Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress and Paprika.

And so, still feeling lacking, I must allow the artist final say in these matters:

Caritas Lost, Caritas Found

Andy Hallett

1975 - 2009
From the moment Angel enters the demon karaoke bar Caritas, in Season 2's opening episode "Judgment, the series is transformed. A watershed episode for several reasons, spreading new hues across the palette of the series' story imagination, from this moment forth, it erupts into philosophical full color.

The proprietor -- The Host, later named Lorne, Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan by birth -- reads auras via the subject's singing. And he is lime green, gay-coded, possessed of a lovely tenor and unquenchable thirst for sea breeze cocktails. Andy Hallett played Lorne with patience, kindness and a love of humanity that fairly bled compassion through his red contact lenses. Too often relegated to comic relief, Hallett would not let Lorne become catty or abrasive, and imbued his character's gabby, pop-music fixated patter with something that hoisted it beyond sass -- he communicated a sense that Lorne babbled in showtune references because he revered the beauty he had found in even the glossiest manifestations of human culture. Though new to our dimension, though younger than his vampire friend, though not even human, when it came to matters of the heart, Lorne was the wisest and most humane of Team Angel. And he was the only guy who could call Angel "Milk Dud".

On Angel, Hallett had a difficult task, an enormous amount of conflicting character to assimilate and convey, and very little space in which to maneuver. But he sang, carried simultaneous notes of humor and sadness, built this demon with a song in his heart (and his heart, er, in his butt) as a creature too generous toward everyone but himself.

Andy Hallett died of heart failure on March 29, 2009. He was 33 years old. So to Mr. Hallett -- to Krevelornswath of the Deathwok Clan, to the Host of Hosts -- raise a sea breeze. And please: fresh grapefruit juice. Which requires a real live grapefruit. One you must cut and squeeze, not pour from a can.

Echo Chamber - Antonioni Moving, Reflecting, Passing

Our place in the world is unnecessary. Roving sparks of dying energy, bouncing like aimless, dimming embers against the cold, hard planes and the streaming seas of numbers that comprise the planet's surface. Retracting into ennui, or reaching out in desperation, humanity makes its own mysteries.

Michelangelo Antonioni's films document those deepest mysteries of human existence; what space lies beyond a draped picture window, behind each pillar, around each corner; the inability to leave imprint where we have walked, loved, quarrelled, wept, moved. The mystery of L'avventura is not an unresolved disappearance but the unresolved continued existence of everything, of form and of void. The puzzle of Blow-Up is not a beguiling amateur sleuth story, but a genre implosion, demolishing the entrance and exit points of detection drama.

Not anti-mystery: ur-Mystery.


If we say Antonioni died on July 30, 2007, or was born September 29, 1912, it is to trace a narrative with selectivity. It speaks to a compulsion to give shape to a matterless tour through one plane of sight, sound, experience. But the sands of a red desert are at once unintegrated granules, restless and shifting, and members of a vast, open, sun-blasted expanse; the unified field image of a photograph at once the objective frieze of a moment in time and space, and a death-mask reproduction, built of microscopic chemical blobs, depthless, unmoving. The harder we insist on giving them shape, imbuing them with meaning, the greater the margin of slippage, until, indeed, in the fluoroscopic light off the eclipsed sun, it may be said that Antonioni was never here at all.


The master image of Antonioni's filmmaking is the glacial mask-face of Monica Vitti, staring into some middle distance, beyond herself, and back into herself. Feeling too much (Red Desert) or too little (L'avventura), the space she occupies simultaneously a non-space hole where a woman was-not / is soon to not-be, and the inside-out nexus of her body, molecules in continuum with the architecture, the landscape, the universe, the net of maths stretched into the infinite. What moves behind those black eyes, what world can be shut out by the drawn draperies, what fracture can there be between lovers, when they are all isolated, but intrinsically connected? Like the subatomic push-pull that unites/tugs at all things, mirrored large scale by the bind of gravity, the looping orbit of astronomical objects bound on track but never meeting , the affirmation of 1, negation of 0, Antonioni pierces the illusory continuity of a life-as-narrative, of the character as collected traits moving to resolution, of the cinema as the device to capture a world in motion, and finds beyond the veil, a deeper continuity; mystery surviving resolution, unresolvable.


Mastroianni and Moreau on the flat, ordered stage of a golf course in La Notte, wander the corridors of their marriage, and land in the soft, disordred hazard zone of a sandtrap. She reads a love letter, plucked out of a lost pocket in a version of their story that could-have-been. He asks who wrote it, and she tells him: "You did," and they are lost and found, all possibilities and dead threads of their story before and continuing beyond the film at once preserved, and gone in the loose doom of the sandtrap.

The all but wordless romantic breakup that opens L'eclisse is the death of a relationship, but to join the stream as it closes existence indicates it once existed. Alain Delon and Vitti in languor, posed in pain, moving only long enough to freeze once more, but the undulating trees outside the window, the oscillating electric fan, signal invisible movement the audience cannot see or feel: air, moving in time, around the eroding bodies and objects on the motion picture screen.


Monica Vitti sat on this sofa. This street lamp stood upon this corner. This loaf of bread filled this movie screen in Zabriskie Point. Michelangelo Antonioni was born 1912, died 2007. These grains of sand surrounded this pool of oily water in this desert. And BOOM, they were gone. Some were chosen for documentation as they passed through, but none were Truer than the others. Which caused the others? Which stories are over? Where are they now? To isolate the image, movement, object, life, drains it of context; to imply its place in even an unfathomably large whole is to superimpose a beginning, end, solve it, reduce it, conscribe it to history. To say Michelangelo Antonioni is gone is to say : Michelangelo Antonioni was here, and thus always here. Time shuffled the molecules of Michelangelo Antonioni into form, and pressed outward on that form until they dissipated once more.

"When all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters decend upon us"

Bob Clark
1941 - 2007

Teen sex comedies. Cheap kiddie fantasy films. Sherlock Holmes pastiches. YA fiction adaptations. Transvestite melodrama. Jack the Ripper fiction. Vulgar star vehicle musicals. Misguided '80s concept comedies. Slapstick comedy about dogs. Babysploitation. These are a few of my favorite things, these subgenres that are not as splashy and sleazy as those that jump immediately to mind in discussions exploitation cinema, but at heart they are exploitation movies nonetheless. Bob Clark gave the world memorable entries in all of these maligned genres. In more popular, flashier junk cinema, Clark was a titan, directing key titles in those evergreen genres that define exploitation: slashers, rape-and-revenge, zombies, Bo Svenson vs. Mafia.

On a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, in Pacific Palisades, filmmaker Bob Clark, 67, and his son Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, died in a collision with a drunk driver, April 4, 2007.

I strongly suspect you will be reading a lot of memorials today that read like this one: "Bob Clark had his one great, shining moment. He directed A Christmas Story." It seems Clark's holiday film touches a lot of viewers deeply, and for them I am happy; for me, it is like watching Russ Meyer's The Seven Minutes: it is passably entertaining, it bears the stylistic stamp of its director, but it is the work of a great exploitation filmmaker trying to go legit, and avoiding what he does best. What's the funniest movie Bob Clark ever made about growing up? Oh please: see the poster at the top of this post.

A Christmas Story, coasting on someone else's empty nostalgia, smearily photographed to signify a cliched period feel, wildly uneven in its internal reality, condescendingly narrated by the smarmy Jean Shepherd... The only Bob Clark movie ever to gain respectability, the only one many audiences love, is the only one I have no time for. And I've made a lot of time for Bob Clark.

Two related, never separated, always complicated modes of art appreciation are the principle attitudes with which we watch films of limited budget, resource and class: the ironist stance and the true believer stance. The ironist may be located anywhere along the appreciation/derision spectrum, from camp appreciation to "So Bad It's Good" to "Laughing At, Not With". And the true believer, for whatever you make of it, finds satisfaction in "So Crazy, I Can't Believe It".

"So Crazy" is the more interesting, for it encompasses the artistic idiosyncrasy, the unique bad taste, antisocial attitude, and transgression, the brutal honesty about what entertains us, and absence of pretension, that are rare animals in mainstream film. The B movie, the drive-in, the grindhouse, the Wizard Video catalogue, whatever you want to say about them, they do not pretend. With more frequency than the mall multiplex, do they deliver: So Good It's Good. The exploitation true believer knows something about acquired taste, as well as the art house devotee, as well as the student of the avant garde.

And this weekend, when you're watching Grindhouse, and if you're reading reviews of Grindhouse, don't listen to any critic with a history of shitting on junk-genre movies, who suddenly pretends to be an expert on their appeal: It's bullshit. Go ahead. Read Owen Gleiberman's review. It's right here, loves the movie and is full of shit. And back to Mr. Clark, unfortunately, the vast majority of obits this weekend? Are going to be bullshit. He was by every report, an uncommonly nice man, and made one movie everyone and grandparents love, but the rest of his filmography, they hate.

So Black Christmas (1974), bloody and foul is also a taught, tense thriller, a bona fide, acknowledged classic of a slasher picture, because it does those things that slasher pictures do best, without shame or disguise. And so likewise the creepazoid Deathdream (1974) does for zombie ickiness and 'Namsploitation. And Porky's obviously struck a nerve with audiences and signals a minor paradigm shift in teen sex comedies. Why not admit it: Baby Geniuses is great at what it does, and most audiences are too cool to enjoy a totally committed, bizarre comedy about CGI-enhanced babies. At some point, you must meet the genre halfway. Baby Geniuses is, as they say, what it is, and if we can get into what it is, not what you hate it for being, it is impossible to deny the film's fevered grotesque hilarity. It's almost like no movie about super-babies was going to please you people! Likewise, The Karate Dog. It is as genuine, nutty and gooney movie about a karate dog as you could want. If you didn't want it, that's your problem. Not "kitsch", not "camp", not "making fun of" can make you enjoy it, if you aren't ready to watch a talking dog do karate.

Horror aficionados will have an easier time 'fessing up to an enthusiasm for zombie comedies. But what about "zombie comedy" is inherently more respectable or even "cooler" than "dog comedy"? A: Nothing. And Bob Clark made a a zombie comedy almost as low-budge inventive as Dead/Alive, which walks the scary-funny line in a more interesting way than Shaun of the Dead. The movie is Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972), which is not as funny as King of the Zombies (1941), but is surely an all time top-five zombie comedy.

Bob Clark was not among the most stylish technical filmmakers, nor the wild and woolliest storyteller. Clark brought instead a full, unironic investment in the genre to every movie he made, and that is what makes them so solid and fun. Murder by Decree (1979), his Holmes vs. Ripper tale, is as classy and British as he can muster, and more successful on those terms than Hollywood's stabs at the characters. His 1995 Judy Blume TV adaptation, Fudge-A-Mania, bolstered by Darren McGavin's reliable charm, is better, funnier for an adult audience than the book. As totally tacky, starstruck musicals go, Rhinestone (1984) has more charismatic performers and better songs than Dreamgirls. Given that filming Bo Svenson kick ass is an honorable cinematic goal unto itself, 1976's Breaking Point can't really go wrong (though few films can live up to its tagline: "Innocence and Fury Don't Mix... THEY EXPLODE!").

My favorite Clark film, besides Black Christmas? 1967's She-Man (DVD available from Something Weird). Why would an upstanding Army man start dressing up as a woman? Because he's being blackmailed by a cross-dressing dominatrix named Dominita, and must be her slave or she will rat him out for deserting the Korean conflict, that's why. And you know, when it comes to young exploitation directors who start their careers with black and white cross-dressing melodrama? Bob Clark's isn't the craziest, most pathological, the greatest, or the most notorious, but it's one of the most solidly entertaining and good-natured.

And in the end, all Karate Dogs go to Heaven.

Al Lewis, 1923 - 2006

Al Lewis
1923 - 2006
There are four performers whose portrayals of Dracula are so iconic that they will spring immediately to mind for the average American: Bela Lugosi, Max Schreck, Christopher Lee, and Al Lewis. In the 1960s, the pop culture relationship with monsters changed, and Lewis' Grandpa on "The Munsters" (the character's family name is indeed Dracula - he's Lily's dad, not Herman's) filled in the final facets of the character: regular guy, sarcastic Yiddish joker, and comforting family presence. If any "Munsters" cast member could hold his own next to Fred Gwynne, it's Lewis, eyes a-twinkle, cigar a-chomped.

Al Lewis passed away on February 3, 2006, in New York and is survived by his wife, Karen. Some men, when they pass, as with Ossie Davis last year, give one pause. This is very sad, I think, and he will be missed. But we should all be envious of such a life; there are not many ways to live more fully than Lewis did. Character actor, humanist political activist, restauranteur, sports scout, voracious scholar, circus performer, we've just lost another great show biz raconteur. Lewis' '98 Green Party bid for Governor of New York was one of the few show-biz personality political attempts that was more than a novelty or publicity move. The man demonstrated for the Black Panthers, he fought against imprisonment for non-violent drug crimes, and he was there at the Rosenberg execution - the roster of Lewis' activities goes on and on, and it is inspiring.

A fine remembrance of Lewis as an activist for social justice can be found at the Dissident Voice newsletter site.

Besides his indelible turn on "The Munsters" (the greatest gimmick sitcom of all time), and hilariously abrasive work as Leo Schnauser on "Car 54, Where Are You?", Lewis was a real gem among comedic character actors for more than 40 years. Lewis was a delight every time he popped up on screen, my favorites being appearances in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), The World of Henry Orient (1964), and most of all, the Kinetoscope-cherished They Might Be Giants (1971).

For more biography of Mr. Lewis, check out the "Munsters" season 2 DVD, containing a sweet biographical tribute featurette. (And don't believe iMDB's 1910 birthdate: he lied to get the "Munsters" job!)

As Grandpa tells Eddie Munster in the Cold War-razzing classic episode "Herman the Spy," (Al Lewis the radical must've loved this one - the Russians are lovable scamps, the American government are jerks, and military intelligence on both sides are idiots), in perfect '60s sick-joke style:

"Bury me deep this time! I don't want any crazy dogs digging me up again!"