Thinking today about the Oscars and the Coen Brothers I began reflecting on the Chigurh character in No Country for Old Men. I recall reading in one of the early reviews that Chigurh (who obviously comes from the Cormac McCarthy novel) is unique to the Coen Brothers’ filmography, a figure of malevolent evil that tilts the rest of the film, indeed their output, off balance. Or maybe I wrote that in this blog and no one else made such an observation. In any case, whenever a character or theme seems to appear out of nowhere it is enlightening to look at the filmmaker’s whole filmography and see if there are antecedents lurking in early shadows. And Chigurh turns out to be a purified, reduced, concentrated form of a character who has appeared in Coen films since their first feature,

I began by comparing Chigurh to, of all people, The Stranger (Sam Elliott) in The Big Lebowski. The cowboy isn’t evil, but he is omnipresent. He is the over-voice, the color commentator, (maybe even the shaper of fate like Bela Lugosi in Plan 9). In other words, he has the same preternatural knowledge of other people’s doings and motivations as a serial killer does in a 13 movie, and if Chigurh resembles anyone at root, it is Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal. And in fact the Coens have blended narrator and killer on occasion. PI Loren Visser (M. Emmett Walsh) in Blood Simple is both storyteller, prime mover, and malevolent force. Raising Arizona’s Leonard Smalls (”Tex” Cobb) is a simplified version of this foe, as is The Dane in Miller’s Crossing. Then there is the near-sub-human Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) in Fargo. Even the guy who beats up Steve Buscemi in Paris, je t’aime is a miniature version of Chigurh.

The Coen films that don’t seem to have this narrator/force of evil are The Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother Where Art Thou? (unless it is John Goodman’s Big Dan Teague), Intolerable Cruelty, <emThe Man Who Wasn’t There, and The Ladykillers (arguably their weakest films). Do they need this figure in one of its varieties to give themselves a solid through-line in tales that are otherwise wittily unpredictable?

The point, however, is that often the role of tale-teller and evil implacable force are combined into one person. Chigurh likes to improvise little bullying bet-oriented narratives with his victims’ lives haging in the balance. Charlie Meadows (Goodman again) is a storyteller as well, indeed a better storyteller than the high-priced, pretentious playwright whom the studios have summoned to Hollywood.

In fact, Barton Fink may remain the key Coen Brothers film, the gateway to all their concerns, such as language, social hierarchies, and the ability to weave tales. The film begins by showing the pulleys and curtains that lurk behind the surface of theatrical storytelling. It ends by showing the source of all storytelling, the head, completely detached and neutralized. Fink is contrasted with a famous writer whose secretary, it turns out, writes his novels for him. Storytelling, and then selling that story, appear to be the Coen Brothers’ big themes, and No Country for Old Men is another variation of their exploration of American loquacity and self-mythologizing. And the Coens’ use of the “avenger-narrator,” well, it really completes a film.

Okay, here is something that I see on a daily basis: people buying cheap brakes. Their reason? “They’re all the same.”

WRONG. Brakes are not all the same. When you are offered a $10.00 set of brake pads at the auto parts store, dont think, “WOW, what a great deal…” Instead think, why are these pads so cheap? Which lasts longer, a $10 pair of shoes or a $40 pair? Do the off-brand batteries from the dollar store last longer or does the Copper Top do its job? A good set of OEM pads are more expensive than the ‘hook’ set (which are advertised to get you into the store, where sales reps then upsell you…LET THEM). But there is a reason they’re more expensive: the pads are designed to meet or exceed specifications set by the manufacturer as to what is SAFE for your vehicle. Pads are not changed every year, they will last for a very long time on your car if you have the right set. You are taking your safety in your hands! Not only your safety, but the safety of everyone around you - pad quality affects your stopping distance (as do your shocks, so test them too). Think about it: if your wife and children were in front of ‘that guy’, wouldn’t you like to know his car is capable of stopping as it should? I guess I’m just on a rant here, but for my safety and yours please do a little more digging on what’s best for your car. I’m also not saying the more money, the better the pad…I’m just saying sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Just go with what is recommended for your vehicle. The pads are designed to work with your entire system. Let them do their job. :)

All I can really say about every product I have used from PIAA is WOW! The overall quality of the product is fantastic. The 520 series lights we received for the XJ were fantastic. The housings themselves have now taken a slight beating on the trail, but have held up flawlessly. The 520 series lights come with the wiring harness and relay. For our install we actually modified the harness that goes inside, and replaced the switch that come with the kit with a piece from K4, and a green LED light. We mounted them flush next to the shifter in the center console. This gave us a clean installation, with a factory look. With h-4 conversion housings we were also able to use PIAA’s Superwhite H4 bulbs. And what a difference it makes over sealed beams. To anyone who lives out in the sticks, where street lighting is non-existent, I highly recommend these bulbs. They have a terrific output on low beam, so much so that I often don’t click over to my high beams. So to help keep yourself safe, and improve your lighting, I can’t recommend PIAA’s halogen replacement bulbs enough.

The VIAIR system we were lucky enough to get and install is now completely wired and mounted. Now, time for some testing. We also have a set of automatic tire deflators. So we were able to test the time it takes to deflate the tires from 35psi to 8psi, then 8psi to 35psi. The results are as follows: the deflators can deflate all 4 tires from 35psi to 8psi in 5min 15sec. The automatic tire cap deflators sure beat kneeling at your tire with a screw driver deflating your tires! The VIAIR system was able to beat the numbers they post on their web site. The tires went from the 8psi reading to the 35psi rating in just a little over a minute (1min 3sec) per tire.

More Victimless Crimes in Vancouver?

The city of Vancouver is considering passing a helmet law. Originally the law was to be for persons under the age of 18, however, they intend to amend that to include adults. The ordinance below reads as originally set up. A city council meeting will be held February 11th at 7:00 pm and a second meeting is scheduled for February 25th at 7:00
pm.

City Hall
210 East 13th Street, 3rd Floor
Vancouver, WA 98660

AN ORDINANCE requiring helmets be used by persons under the age of 18 when operating or riding on bicycles, skateboards, roller blades, roller skates, unicycles and scooters in a public area within the City of Vancouver; providing for savings, severability and an effective date.

Summary:

The City of Vancouver is currently one of the few jurisdictions in Washington State that does not have an ordinance requiring use of helmets for at least bicycles if not other human powered vehicles. In August 2007, the Clark County Board of Commissioners asked the Clark County Youth Commission to develop a proposal for bicycle helmet
regulations. The Youth Commission presented their recommendations to the Board of Commissioners on November 28 and Vancouver City Council on December 3. The majority of those recommendations are incorporated in the City’s ordinance, including requiring the use of a helmet not just for bicycles but also scooters, skateboards, roller skates, unicycles and roller blades.

Helmets would be required for any person under the age of 18 operating or riding on bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades, roller skates, unicycles and/or scooters in a public area within the City of Vancouver. Penalties for violation of the helmet law would be a civil fine not to exceed $50, which gives the Police Department limited
discretion in determining the level of the fine. There is also a provision for the court to waive, reduce or suspend the civil penalty if the violator provides proof that they have acquired a helmet. The proposed helmet ordinance would be enforced by the Vancouver Police Department as part of their regular duties.

In 2008, $5,000 is set aside for a public education campaign about the new helmet law and for purchase of additional helmets to be made available to low-income youth. Funds are available in the 2007-2008 general governmental budget.

Action Requested:

Subject to second reading and public hearing, approve the ordinance. (Jan Bader, Program and Policy Development Manager, 735-8870)

Letter from a concerned citizen:
Dear Mayor Pollard and City Council Members,

I recently was told that Vancouver was considering passing a helmet law for cyclists of all ages with a fine up to $50.

As a homeowner, business owner and cyclist, I would like to voice my opposition to this law. I am curious as to the motivation behind this. I could possibly understand a law that would require helmets for children, but for adults? I am unaware of a rise in cyclist accidents in the city of Vancouver, is there one? I have also been informed by
other cyclists that there is no evidence that cyclist accidents/fatalities were reduced as a result of helmet laws in other cities. In fact, there is more evidence to support that bike safety increases as more cyclists are on the road (helmets or not).

I ride my bike rather than drive a car on many occasions, mostly because I live and work in close proximity. Most of my trips are short and within the neighborhoods around which I live and work and I rarely wear a helmet. I choose to wear a helmet when I am riding distances and crossing major, high traffic streets. I am a safe cyclist and have never been in any accidents, with only the exception of falling off my bike as a child. The idea that a police officer could pull me over on my bicycle and ticket me for not wearing a helmet seems ridiculous.

I have read that there will be funds alloted for low-income cyclists, however, I think it will ultimately be unfair to that population as many use bikes as their only mode of transportation. Requiring them to get helmets, keep helmets and wear helmets will be a problem and only increase their interactions with law enforcement.

I strongly believe that this is excessive government and not something worth the use of our police officers to enforce. I realize that other cities in Washington have these laws on the books, but that doesn’t mean that Vancouver must follow suit.

Again, considering that there is no evidence that Vancouver has a problem with non-helmet wearing cyclists and that there is little evidence to support a decrease in accidents or fatalities when these laws have been implemented, I strongly oppose a helmet law for adults in the city of Vancouver.

Thank you for your consideration of this information.

Sincerely,
Chris Jochum

For more information on wearing helmets and helmet laws visit:

http://cyclehelmets.org/

If you would like to contact the City Council and have your voice heard on this issue, please email them and/or show up for the council meetings on February 11th and 25th.

Mayor Royce E. Pollard, mayor@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Pat Jollota, pat.jollota@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Pat Campbell, pat.campbell@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Jeanne Harris, jeanne.harris@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Jeanne Stewart, jeanne.stewart@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Tim Leavitt, tim.leavitt@ci.vancouver.wa.us
Councilmember Larry Smith, larry.smith@ci.vancouver.wa.us

27, 000 Days (USA, 2007, Noon, Saturday, February 9) is a short film about a sick man remembering with regret his past. It’s like a blend of Tolstoy and Beckett, only essentially non-verbal, and it’s depressing as hell because filmmaker Naveen Singh doesn’t leaven his dire vision with humor, as does, say, Alain Resnais in Providence.

The Gates (USA, 2005, 3 PM, Saturday, February 9) is three movies one. The first is the remnants of a 1976 film in which director Albert Maysles chronicles the attempts of the installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to set up The Gates in Central Park. That attempt failed but now with co-director Antonio Ferrera, revisits the project as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg approves the project. The third and final section is a tone poem that salutes the finished project, shown in almost all lights, weathers, and degrees of local population. The film is a throwback to documentaries of the 60s, cinema verite, with no narration. The younger Christo looks a tad like Woody Allen, downtrodden by the contrariness of New York, his adopted home. Jeanne-Claude is prone, over the decades, to motherhood metaphors when talking to the media. But when it comes to The Gates themselves, the non-standard celebratory manner of Maysles, who has made several films about Christo, is winning.

I’m a little worried that Taxi to the Dark Side (USA, 2007, 5 PM, Saturday, February 9) is coming too late in the cycle of Iraq documentaries, when the choir has definitively been converted and when the subject appears to have dropped out of the national election conversation. Yet this documentary by Alex Gibney Enron is important, and well made, with a combination of archival and new footage. It takes as its focus the case of a young Afghan cab driver named Dilawar, seized by a team of roving Afghan soldiers, and sent to the interrogation center at Bagram Air Force Base, where he shortly died, his death ruled a homicide. Gibney expands from this story to explore the use of extreme interrogation techniques elsewhere and the Bush administration’s attempt to evade the political and legal complications of its approval. Taxi to the Dark Side is powerful, but also clear and filled with new information. If you miss it at the festival it will probably show up at the Cinema 21 or somewhere else.

Not By Chance (Brazil, 2007, 5:15 PM, Saturday, February 9) concentrates on all that presumably obsesses the Brazilians: traffic, apartment hunting, and coffee. Like Crash and Amores perros, Philippe Barcinski’s film follows a group of bourgeois citizens as their lives mildly intersect and they cope with tragedy. Enio (Leonardo Medeiros) is a traffic coordinator getting to know his daughter; Pedro (Rodrigo Santoro) is a pool table designer who ends up dating the coffee snob trader who moved into his now-dead girlfriend’s apartment. It’s Amores perros light: sure, there are a couple of “ironic” traffic tragedies, but in the end the film wants to uplift and inspire.

Something of an anti-Schindler, The Counterfeiters (Austria, 2007, 5:45 PM, Saturday, February 9) is a fascinating dramatization of the true account of a group of criminal and financier concentration camp prisoners gathered together at Sachsenhausen to British forge bank notes and American money. The main counterfeiter is Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), whom we first see just after the war and then in 20-minutes of backstory before he is arrested. Director-writer Stefan Ruzowitzky puts his characters in an ethical thumbscrew, as the prisoners both enjoy privileges others are denied while helping the tyranny that put them there. The Counterfeiters is one of the best films in this year’s festival.

If Caramel (Lebanon, 2007, 8:30 PM, Saturday, February 9) starred Julia Roberts and were called Steel Magnolias the chances are that it would not be a festival selection, but because Nadine Labaki’s film, in which she also stars, uses amateur actors and has a “new wave” shooting style, the film’s essentially soap opera elements are at first disguised. Set mostly in a Beirut beauty parlor it follows the romantic and personal trials or several westernized women (although I didn’t catch why caramel was important enough to be a title, unless it was to evoke memories of Chocolat). The tale could have used a lot less iced tea and a lot more Ice-T, although, once you’ve made the commitment to absorbing the whole film, the last shot is very powerful.

I’ve introduced the 31st Portland International Film Festival in the lead review for the February Vancouver Voice, which will be posted on this website shortly, and for the rest of the festival I’ll post short reviews of the movies I’ve managed to see, beginning with the films slated for Friday, February 8, in each case giving the film’s first showtime — but check everything against the Northwest Film Center’s website, where changes and updates are posted.

We’re in a form of Michael Haneke country in The Edge of Heaven (Germany, 2007, 1 PM, Friday, February 8), which follows the intersecting lives of six people (four Turks, two Germans, including Hanna Schygulla) and is divided into three large parts. Like Crash it follows these people as they intersect across Germany and Turkey, it is essential that the plot not be spoiled (though the chapter titles do that already). The fifth feature by Fatih Akin, it’s a complex, gripping drama that unreels at a brisk pace, and on the basis of what I have seen so far it is already one of the best films in the festival.

Tuya’s Marriage (China, 2006, 6 PM, Friday, February 8) is another “perfect” film fest movie: a slow, deliberate account of Mongolian life with lots of careful detail about how the “other half” lives. Directed by Wang Quanan (Lunar Eclipse), this emotionally complicated film follows the day to day experiences of Tuya (Yu Nan) as she uninterestedly considers various candidates for marriage after a major life change (a back injury makes literal what she has been denying, her culturally imposed dependence). The films embraces the ordinary. A horse riding Tuya can’t just encounter a guy on a tractor for a hectoring chat, we must first see her in the distance for several seconds of “reality” as she clops along. We must be shown her making the complete trek to a shack carrying tea. Eventually there is a little bit of contrived suspense over a missing son, and then an active climax, but by then it is too late.

There is no narrative per se in You, the Living (Sweden and other countries, 2007, 7 PM, Friday, February 8). Instead there is a series of tableaux in which a static, usually distant camera, in the manner of Wes Anderson, observes a series of mostly non-sequential moments of frustration from daily life (it’s the new universal style; The Band’s Visit has something of this look, too). For example, a commuter train lets off a tremendous number of people, all of whom have to cross in front of the train. Impatient to get going, the train honks its horn, straggling commuters pause to let it go by, and the train proceeds to execute a snail’s pace forward momentum. A woman complains, often in song, that no one understands her; someone is fried in the electric chair for a magic routine gone bad. Director Roy Andersson offers a world of traffic jams, long waits, interrupted music rehearsals, and so forth that purport to capture what life is like for we, the living. Andersson appears to be making the same mistake that cinema verite filmmakers make, which is that reality is more likely to be captured honestly through simplicity and unobtrusiveness, despite several hundred years of theatrical history that show how drama, when done right of course, provides the true intimacy that makes films more real than real.

Alexandra (Russia, 2007, 8:30 PM, Friday, February 8) is a wry, methodical tale of a woman’s visit to her grandson’s military base in Chechnya. As a symbol of Mother Russia, Galina Vishnevskaya, an opera singer whom director Aleksandr Sokurov profiled in a previous documentary, is a stolid observer. We are meant to see the mechanical minutia of war — rifle cleaning, the humidity of a tank, the intrusiveness of a checkpoint — through her eyes, “making strange” the otherwise day to day life of an occupying force. Sokurov ( The Second Circle , Mother and Son ) shows no battles, only the longeurs of base life, and he wears his points on his sleeve, as he ponders Vishnevskaya pondering the baby faces of the soldiers she encounters. A break in the litany of military ironies comes when Vishnevskaya visits a market and forges a temporary, uneasy bond with a Chechnyan woman, her unironical mirror image. It’s an elegant (with help from the score by Andrei Sigle) if static movie (despite the constantly moving camera) that ends up feeling slighter than the portentous close ups of rifles and faces intend.

Then She Found Me (USA, 2007, 9 PM, Friday, February 8) is this year’s Away From Her, the last festival’s film in which an actress made her directing debut in a tapped down melodrama. It’s unlikely that this film, however, will carry on to win awards and Oscar nominations. Based on a novel by Elinor Lippman, the film is directed by Helen Hunt who also stars as a woman recently married whose husband (Matthew Broderick), also a teacher, leaves her in only a few weeks. While she is slowly falling for a harried father of two (Colin Firth), she is also tracked down by her biological mother (Bette Midler) who gave her up at birth. If the film didn’t have the imprimatur of being in the festival, it might comfortably fit into the string of Hallmark movie tear jerkers, for it is life affirming in all ways.

Introduction
As a fan and disciple of The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929 - 1968, Andrew Sarris’s standard anatomization of Hollywood directors, I return to it again and again for insight and succor. Unfortunately, the book has a cut off date of 1968, consequently containing no rankings and summaries for Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, and scores of other directors who emerged since Sarris’s book came out.

Modestly, I hope to rectify that situation. Over the next several months, I propose to issue forth brand new director summaries and evaluations, geared for adaptability into Sarris’s template. With a slight refiguring of Sarris’s categories, these new director filmographies and summaries should slip easily into Sarris’s book, physically, though perhaps not aesthetically. In Sarris’s book, the titles were in plain text, with key films of a director’s oeuvre in italics; here all titles are in italics, with key films also in bold; I’m sure that Sarris would do it that way, too, if he were writing the book today. My slightly refined categories will be, in ranking order, Future Pantheon, The Near Side of Paradise, Lightly Likable, Working Stiffs, Cable Ready, Send in the Clowns, Foreign Trade, Producers as Auteurs, Actors Turned Directors, Strained Seriousness, More Less Than Meets the Eye, The Writers, Flashes in the Pan, and finally, Subjects for Further Research. Rankings are tentative, for the most part, because these are living directors whose full careers may eventually modify their final rankings. Fellow fans of American Cinema are encouraged to print out this dispatches and paste them into a scrapbook that can sit on the shelf next to Sarris’s book.

—————————————————————————

Gregory Hoblit (1944 -)
Ranking: Cable Ready

Bay City Blues (1983 TV series one episode); Hill Street Blues (1981 - 1984 TV series eight episodes); Hooperman (1987 TV series); Law and Order (1986 - 1987 TV series three episodes); Roe vs. Wade (1989 TV movie); Equal Justice (1990, TV series one episode); Cop Rock (1990 TV series various episodes); Class of ‘61 (1993 TV movie); NYPD Blue (TV series nine episodes 1993 - 1994); Primal Fear (1996); Fallen (1998); Frequency (2000); Hart’s War (2002); NYPD 2096 (2004 TV movie); Fracture (2007); Untraceable (2008)

Gregory Hoblitt comes from the world of television, which is no longer the opprobrious status it used to be back in the 1960s, when one prestigious directors from the classical period went to die and young upstarts learned poor technique. Television slowly began to improve visually and dramatically back in the late 1970s and the two shows most closely with him, Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue were innovative both in look and how they unfurled traditional cop melodramas. But Mr. Hoblit has not brought that spirit of innovation to the big screen, where his movies tend to resemble all the other mid-range Hollywood movies around them, techniques elucidated by David Bordwell in recent essays and blog entries, that include meaningless camera movements meant to enliven otherwise conventional or static scenes (compare the opening shots of Hart’s War to, oh, say, anything by Alain Resnais) .

Which isn’t to say that Mr. Hoblit isn’t attracted to the same theme from film to film. From his first true feature film, Primal Fear to the recent Fracture Hoblit’s tales, regardless of the writers, focus on the power struggle between a seemingly ordinary man and a malevolent if not superhuman force. The two legal mysteries pit Richard Gere against a young Edward Norton, and a youngish Ryan Gossling against a crafty Anthony Hopkins. In Fallen cop Denzel Washington confronts an executed serial killer with supernatural staying power (in a story that somewhat resembles Wes Craven’s Shock).

The lugubriously paced Hart’s War, based on a novel but something of a Night of the Generals knockoff, is a legal drama set in a WWII prisoner of war camp, which, after 17 minutes of back story, finally settles into a war of nerves between a bully (Cole Hauser) and an African-American pilot (Terrence Howard) that results in an apparent murder, and then between Bruce Willis as the unofficial camp leader and his attempts to dominate Colin Farrell as an ad hoc defense attorney, while Willis is at the same time jostling for power with the camp commandant, Marcel Lures (the film ends crazily with a series of extreme sacrifices all within five minutes). In this way the film is the apotheosis of Hoblit’s fascination with power struggles.

His most recent film, Untraceable highlights another dominating figure who effortlessly controls those around him, in this case a serial killer with mixed beliefs about the Internet and the media. Diane Lane plays Hoblit’s first female protagonist, an FBI agent in the cyber-crimes division. A derivative script and a reliance on standard issue visual techniques of the day unduly flattens out the suspense and helps render the film ideologically confusing. Nevertheless, Hoblit is that unusual entity, a metteur-en-scene with an identifiable thematic consistency.

Reviewing my blogs I realized I really haven’t said anything about the suspension. To help control the ride; and give us the lift we wanted, I looked to the products available from Skyjacker. Skyjacker suspension offers a wide variety of lifts for many different vehicles. What we were looking for were front lift coils and control arms. The Skyjacker components are built very well and the coils offered us the lift we wanted (3″) without sacrificing the ride quality. For the LCA’s (lower control arms), we used their single flex units–a single piece painted black, with urethane bushings. And the install kit came with all the hardware we needed to get the job done right.

For the shocks we again chose to go with Skyjacker parts. We used their Hydro 7000 series. I have used these shocks before with flawless operation on my Bronco, and decided again to go this route. And so far they are working very well! For the rear we used the Skyjacker Add-a-Leaf. The advantage of the Skyjacker unit compared to other manufacturers is that it is a full length Add-a-Leaf. This gives us the lift we want and great support to the spring pack. The install kit also came with new U-bolts and centering pins for the rear suspension.

More to come as the build progresses…we’re nearing the finish!