Upcoming Parlor Attractions

As you may have divined by the increasing length of time between posts here, I’ve just about explored what I set out to explore and noted down as best as I could some of what I have to say for now on this topic of our emergent Narrative Otherways. This Salon&Parlor project has allowed me, in its insistence on put up or shut up, to discover meanings I previously only chatted about. That, as you know, while pleasant and entertaining, tends to vapor. This weblog’s semi public way of playing a hunch has prodded me to name (but never capture!) some of what I sense happening in & around us and round which I’ve been nosing and digging for some time. By this process of my commitment to writing for these screenpages I’ve found form for my thinking. And for that I am thankful. And am thankful to you, too, for giving me a not entirely imaginary reader which is an at least equal part of the alchemy of givng form. That other who receives and sometimes talks back.

So we are coming to the end stages, I think. Then this bit of mulling can continue its existence in the twilight of some digital afterlife, however that concept ends up unfolding. But before I leave I’d like to explore for a last posting a little more about motherhood, (most likely through the HBO mini series production of Mildred Pierce) how it’s to do with daughterhood, how one makes the other, both ways. And maybe one other bit about faith (pretty likely to be through Vera Farmiga’s Higher Ground.) So watch for that business as topics for the last postings.

Previously listed as Upcoming:

Blue Valentine, 2010. Directed by Derek Cianfrance. Written by Cianfrance with Cami Delavigne and Joey Curtis. The director’s lengthy and personal creative methods in the development of this story is in itself worth analysis as an interesting evolution of filmic process & production. However, since we here in the Salon are pretty much focused in on meaning I’ll say simply that there’s so much here to stir the heart and mind this film deserves its own Discourse Parlor. So we intend to just do that. And am thinking perhaps of matching it with another fine, sad film, Revolutionary Road, which I’ve been trying to get to for some time now, (as evidenced by its listing a ways below) and which also charts the path of reproductive choices made in fertile bodies but not such fertile soil.
Accomplished! Check it out in our Promise Parlor on Blue Valentine and our Parlor on Revolutionary Road.

Most recent thinking on Upcoming Parlors.

By popular demand some writing and thinking on Winter’s Bone. Directed by Debra Granik, written by Debra Granik & Anne Roselini, 2010. I’ve invited guest discussant Caryn Cline to tell us why this movie holds meaning for her and for a number of other Salon netizens who’ve brought it to my attention.
Accomplished! Check it out in our Parlor Dialogue- Questing for a Heroic Practice of Love.
A discourse on White Material, directed by Claire Denis, written by Claire Denis and Marie N’Diaye, 2009. The most recent tread cross honesty by the director so practiced at it. An incredible, deep reveal of the carnivorous end stages of colonialism and its embodiment in the death throes of a farming family, most wrenchingly in the person of that family’s matriarch. This would fulfill an as of yet unfulfilled discoursive promise made down this page some on the films of Denis.
Perhaps another larger Parlor on the recent spate of films that seem to me to be expressing a common theme, at least on the surface, of women who leave, or stray from marriages, significant others, children, the known, expectations. Right now this discourse is circling round – The Other Man, 2008, I am Love, 2009, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009. And I hear tell that Leaving, 2009, does work on this theme, but that movie left town before I got a chance to see it! So it sits “saved” in my Netflix queue.
Accomplished! Check it out at our Parlor Discourse Womanhood’s Escape from the Reproductive Model
And by way of reminder from another earlier listing on this branch, I am still anxious to share Yes, 2004, by Sally Potter with all of you in our main Parlor. Such a compelling exploration of desire, of men and women, of narrative form/meaning that reaches, dares to dangle right off the edge of our known storydom, tip toeing along the borders of tale telling to blaze a bit of path amidst some new forms entirely.
A sidebar bit of back and forth between myself and editorial collaborator Kathleen Gyurkey, and anyone else who’d like to join in, on the film Closer, by Mike Nichols, 2004. Right now my take on it is as a reclamation project turning over the toxified ground of male sexual desire for women, in this case under the guise of desire for a couple particular women, yes, but in the end as a way to get at another man.
Accomplished! Check it out at our Parlor Dialogue - Is there any love in the film Closer?

Yet newer thoughts for possible Parlors.

On the work of writer/director Rodrigo García. There’s something fantastical here, just on the edge of fairy tale in his loving, honest characterizations of women adrift, searching for love, waiting for phone calls. In particular his Nine Lives from 2005. Delicate, interlocking stories into which bits of love fall like water into the cracked rock of these women’s lives. Taking care of children, demented elders, blind sisters, abortions, more children, connection and isolation. Compelled to longing. Loneliness. And yet….
And then there’s Mother and Child. 2009. Where Annette Bening thaws. Magnificently.

New thoughts for future Parlors.

One in particular is for a Discourse category we might call “A Body of Work.” Most immediately in the works is a dialogue on the films of Claire Denis. And now as I think about it, clearly Jane Campion’s films as listed below could fall into this Body approach as well.
Also in response to this returning conception of a “Female Hero Journey”, which I must confess I have resistance to, I recently stumbled into a showing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the original Swedish title translates to “Men Who Hate Women”) and think we might have in this film a starting point for a Discourse on this heroine business.
Accomplished! Check it out at our Movie Salon: Are We Questing for a Female Hero’s Journey?
Certainly for those of us who grew up with Ted Bundy haunting campuses or that murderer whose acts of desecration ruined a river, forever, getting a foothold on the sharp and rocky path of victimization is at least movement. Certainly the protagonist Lisbeth Salander is able to protect herself, and this tale never ops out into a rescued or dead woman (at least not our main gal) in that way of most action narratives. Or perhaps this story shows the beginnings of something else entirely.
Accomplished! Check it out at our Discourse Parlor on the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo .

First writing below:

And to give an idea of the road trips that might lie ahead here is my wish list for the next few Discourse Parlors. At least for now.

Yes, 2005. Writ/dir. Sally Potter. An absolute reason to keep the faith, an exploration of new form plus rigorous emotional honesty… Possible coupling with the new release by Potter, Rage. But haven’t seen it yet.
Breaking and Entering, 2007. Writ/dir. Anthony Minghella. Another absolute reason to keep the faith.
Bright Star, 2009. Writ/dir. Jane Campion. Coupled with re-viewing of Campion’s The Piano, 1993, and with her Holy Smoke (2000), writ. Jane w/sister Anna Campion. All investigations that till up new soil in the territory of male/female love.
Accomplished! Check it out at our Discourse Parlor On the Nature of Love in Bright Star
Revolutionary Road, 2009. Dir. Sam Mendes, writ. Justine Haythe. Doesn’t it seem lately that Kate Winslet is just the most brave, fierce actress out there? Coupled with more Kate in Little Children, 2006, dir. Todd Field, writers Todd Field w/ Tom Perrotta, and In the Bedroom, 2002, dir. Todd Field, writ. Andre Dubus w/Robert Festinger. Filling in the complex, multi-shaded shadows of female character.
Transamerica, 2005. writ/dir. Duncan Tucker. More absolute, and tender, honesty.
Elegy, 2008. Dir. Isabel Coixet, writ. Nicholas Meyer from a Philip Roth novel. ”The Dying Animal” is the second title and that about sums up this unapologetic exploration of the heart of an aging man. Coupled with other movies by Coixet: The Secret Life of Words, 2005. And My Life without Me, 2003.