Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #2.

I don’t think this actually fits: a short meticulous and Baroque-sounding composition, like the ones Mark Mothersbaugh writes, would be better, but Robert Pollard’s “Dr. Fuji and Henry Charleston (Zoom Variation)” is such a sweet instrumental gem that I just had to include it in the mix.

Pollard’s album Zoom, by the way, is four tracks of sheer pop perfection, almost as if these were outtakes from Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes. In my book it’s already some of the best music I’ve heard all year (you’ll read a longer review in December).

Hear it (192 kb, 2.43 mb).

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Thought I should make a direct link to the Homeland Security Racism report from the CFFSC here. In addition, there is a working paper by Dylan Rodriguez on the Bagong Diwa Prison Massacre — more information on the Collective website.

I was going to write snarky comments like these:

I also wanted to draw my readers’ attention to the comment left here and how it succinctly, if perhaps unwittingly, summarizes “imperialist” logic. The report linked above makes the argument, among others, that the American empire’s military and mercantilist practices overseas are mirrored in its domestic surveillance methods — at least, as manifested in the PATRIOT Act, control over subjects perceived as threats, particularly in the form of incarceration and deportation.

The blog comments — which I’ll reductively rephrase as “If you don’t like it here, leave” — exemplify the Bush administration’s increasingly invidious attempts to stifle dissent and criticism. Unfortunately, sir, Filipinos are already being deported in worrying numbers, so your hopes about America-haters just might come true. Lucky you.

The majority of the people who signed the letter are American citizens, and so “going home” to the Philippines isn’t literally correct — but I, not an “America-hater,” felt personally stung, since I am one of those people that is a “mere” immigrant to this country and could indeed, all practicalities aside (but there are many), return to the Philippines.

(This was the same kind of tactic the Marcos regime used to (arguably) effectively discredit its Filipino opposition — both its conservative and radical left components — overseas.)

I’ll have to mull this over for a lengthier response.

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[Quiz done; answers already posted.]

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Because of the unprecedented number of submissions for the last movie quiz (I’m being sarcastic), the next quiz will be way easier.

Here are the answers (they’re all part of the Criterion Collection, by the way):

Shot 1:

In Mark Rosman’s The House on Sorority Row — just kidding. Vera Clouzot faints when she discovers that something that should be in the pool isn’t, in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 film Diabolique. Simone Signoret (standing off to one side) is probably more celebrated as the steely mistress, but Clouzot’s performance as the nervous teacher is the better of the two. (I was only partly kidding about The House on Sorority Row: the slasher flick borrows this whole plot twist. Rosman would later go on to direct Hilary Duff in a couple of features.)

Shot 2:

The Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) wanders through a ballroom (in a riveting hour-long scene) in Luchino Visconti’s magnificent The Leopard (1963). (I was initially hesitant to use this shot, figuring that it was too small to recognize Lancaster — I was going to go with a vidcap of Lancaster and the gorgeous Claudia Cardinale dancing — but people got it.)

Shot 3:

Serial killer and pedophile Peter Lorre is stuck, in Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M. (There’s the title, written on his back!)

Shot 4:

Nicolas Cage waves off the oncoming F-18s, in Michael Bay’s The Rock (1996). It’s big, dumb, loud, and a hell of a lot of fun. Almost everyone got this; maybe I should have used this pretty one instead.

Shot 5:

Homayon Ershadi drives around the outskirts of Teheran in his Range Rover, looking for someone to rescue him or bury him, in Abbas Kiarostami’s 1988 film Taste of Cherry. Absolutely sublime (the hairs on my arm are standing up, just thinking about it).

Two people identified all five films correctly, but one person sent their answer in earlier (sorry Brandon). Congratulations to thick pigeon, who wrote, “Thank goodness for 3rd world piracy!” I suppose that means pirates have good taste, but poor Abbas…

A new quiz, with a musical twist, appears tomorrow.

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Bull Schanen (the winner of the previous movie quiz) never did respond, so I decided to go ahead and figure out a new theme for the mp3 uploads. Not sure if I can fill up a CD like before, but we’ll see.

The next few uploads will be called “Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film.” His films, while perhaps thematically similar in general (and almost all of them have a fussy and almost distracting attention to detail, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing), are also distinguished by an impeccable taste in music, which I won’t dare to replicate here. But think, for instance, of the transcendent opening credits of The Royal Tenenbaums, with the muzaky version of “Hey Jude,” or the ending of “Rushmore” with the Faces’ “Ooh La La,” or Sigur Ros’ “Staralfur” in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (which I won’t spoil); it marks Anderson as one of the young directors who meshes what are essentially mixtapes almost perfectly, and inextricably, with the rest of the film. (The other possible theme would have been “Soundtrack for an Imaginary Quentin Tarantino Film” — maybe next time.)

Anyhow, the opening credits will be running over John Cale‘s “Paris 1919,” from the fantastic 1973 album of the same name — a track suitably classy-sounding and enigmatic and inaugural (can’t think of the right word) and evocative, at the very least, of a kind of wistfulness. (If I were to pick a favorite Velvet, it would certainly be Cale, who had a greater command of melody and willingness to experiment than the more lionized Lou ever did — with the exception, I suppose, of Metal Machine Music).

It’s not clear what the song is about — there’s a ghost, and Beaujolais raining on the Champs Elysees, and “William William William Rogers.” Somehow I envision quick cuts of different people tying bowties to this song; I’m not sure why.

Hear it (5.62 mb).

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