77. Summer of 69 &...

Lyrics

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
Was the summer of '69

Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit, Jody got married
I shoulda known we'd never get far

Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Ain't no use in complainin'
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenings down at the drive-in
And that's when I met you

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that you'd wait forever
Oh and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life
oh yeeaahh

Back in the summer of '69 Ohhhhh

Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin' can last forever - forever, no
Yeah

And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
Think about you wonder what went wrong

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that it last forever
Oh the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Ohh yeeaahh.... Back in the summer of '69
uhh huh...it was the summer of 69
Ohhh Yeeaahh....me and my baby in 69
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...ho....
it was the summer....the summer, the summer of 69
YEAH

I quite like this song, but I can understand why some rock fans hate Bryan Adams. He really is one of the most generic, middle of the road, rock artists. The mysteriously popular Everything I Do is his nadir. We'll find that song later on in the list, which also means that there will be a movie connected to that song. It should not be a surprise which one it is. And also that it is just as dull and dreary as Everything I Do. That cannot be said about the movie I connected to Summer of 69, which is a very recent movie about a bunch of youngsters in the 60's who form a rather unsuccessful band.

The Movie: Not Fade Away (David Chase, 2012)

Not Fade Away opens with archival footage of early rock, followed by a television test signal. We hear a siren on the soundtrack after which a voice tells us that this is a test of the emergency broadcast system. It's 1963 so you can guess what emergency they are talking about. This image is followed by the actual opening scene of the movie, a scene shot in black and white that's completely unrelated to the rest of the movie's plot. It shows us a meeting of two kids happening to be on the same train. Turns out these kids are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and what we are seeing is a fictionalized version of the birth of The Rolling Stones. The movie wasn't even three minutes old by then and I knew I was gonna like it a lot. Chase makes immediately clear that this is gonna be a movie about the way society and popular culture shape and influence each other, a theme I find greatly interesting. Chase follows up on his promise, although it is fair to criticize him for being too blunt about it. His framing device (the story is narrated by the hero's sister, who actually narrates from her term paper on American rock culture and society in the 60's) makes clear that he knows this and he doesn't really care. It shows that one reason he made this movie, was because he explicitly wanted to explore the relationship between society and popular culture. I did not mind this (in fact I liked it a lot), but I can see why it could bother people. What stopped this movie from being really great for me was the fact that the hero's story wasn't all that interesting. The events happening to him are the typical things you usually see in a coming of age movie.       

Coincidentally just before watching this movie, I read a blog post by the great film critic Glenn Kenny in which he discussed an idea I wasn't familiar with. Namely, that after the assassination of John F. Kennedy the 'depression' of the American people was only 'cured' when The Beatles arrived for the first time in America to give a concert there. It's probably a far-fetched idea; The Beatles are probably the most important pop band, but not that important. Still, it's not surprising how this idea came to fruition. We all like to believe that the popular culture of our time has some importance to society, beyond merely entertaining us. In any case this idea is quite directly expressed here by David Chase. Only in his version The Beatles 'save' America much faster. America here awakens from its depression only three weeks after the murder of JFK, when the Beatles first record comes out and can be heard on the radio. At around the same time The Rolling Stones also arrive at the scene and (main character) Douglas and his friends decide to form a band and be just like the Beatles and the Stones. They are not successful, because they don't really have the talent and because they don't really get these bands.

I don't know to what extent Douglas is modeled after Chase himself, but he is of the same generation of Chase. And although Chase portrays the popular culture of his time in a very positive, nostalgic light, he is very critical and cynical about his generation, or at least about Douglas and his group of friend. Douglas, played by the unknown to me John Magaro is pretty much an asshole, and also not very intelligent. He does not really get the popular culture he worships. There is a fun scene in which he watches Antonioni's Blow Up (a movie I haven't yet seen), one of the most influential movies of its time and doesn't get it. There  have obviously been many movies in which a character watches an art film and doesn't get it, but here this scene is used in a different way than in many other movies. Douglas is someone who aspires to be a great artist, and who sees himself as a potentially great artist. Blow Up is the kind of movie someone like him, living at that time should connect to. Or at least understand why/what others like him see something in that movie. In other words, he doesn't understand what the values of that movie are and why they are important to the like minded people of his generation.   

Chase absolutely believes that bands like the Beatles and the Stones, and directors like Antonioni, criticized the 'old' values because they sincerely believed these to be conservative and regressive. Douglas only sees that they fight the old generation, but at no point in the movie does he truly seem to realize what the fight exactly is 'for' or 'against.' He just believes that its cool to turn against your elders and your parents, but doesn't really know why. If his father (played by a great James Gandolfini) calls people 'niggers' or 'faggots' he protests against it. But he doesn't really understand why those words are racist or homophobic, nor does he really care that they are. They are simply wrong because his father uses them. And in a late conversation with his son, it turns out that it's actually the father who better understands what the 'new freedoms' are supposed to entail. He is not very happy about it, but hopes his son will understand his problem. When he realizes he doesn't he is more disappointed with his son than ever before.

76. Window of my Eyes &...

Lyrics

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home
It's like a distant, like a distant face
It's like the shadow on my wall
Something that, that I cannot touch
A heavenly past that calls
The shelter of my mind hides my laugh and my tear
I keep on looking for a reason which is not here

Through the window of my eyes, I can see the rainy day
Sitting in the chair of my cool room, looking for a way to be the one I am
It's useless to cry for the things I once have known, thinking it will come back and reach my home


Window of my Eyes is a song by Cuby and the Blizzards, a fun Dutch rock band from the 60's. Their sound is closer to a an American prog-rock band than to a typical Dutch pop-music band, which is a good thing. This is their highest placed song in the list, but to me their best song is Appleknockers Flophouse, upon which we'll stumble later on in the list. It was hard to link a movie to this song until I decided that it was relatively reasonable to interpret this song as being about an Alzheimer-ridden protagonist in a retirement home.

The Movie: Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2006)

This may sound a bit crass, but Alzheimer's disease is a very 'convenient' disease for screenwriters. For one reason, it is a very tragic disease, both for the protagonist who suffers from it, and for the family of the protagonist. The fact that the patient suffers from memory loss is tragic enough, but even worse is the fact that at times the patient has moments of clarity during which he/she is aware of his/her memory loss. It is perhaps the most harrowing disease, which means that a screenwriter doesn't have to work all that hard to create dramatic/emotional moments. All you really need are two good elderly actors, who can convey the feelings of loss the disease causes in them. Away from Her has two such actors in Julie Christie and (the to me unknown) Gordon Pinsent. Christie plays the Alzheimer-ridden wife who has to be put in a retirement home, while Pinsent plays her husband. Both of them are good and quite affecting and make this movie worth watching.

The second reason why Alzheimer's is quite convenient for screenwriters is the nature of the disease. There doesn't seem to be a a very logical progress to the disease. The patient can have be in a pretty bad shape at a certain moment, and suddenly in a much better one the next moment. Horrific weeks can randomly be followed by days of clarity, after which, just as randomly, the disease can have even more harrowing effects than before. This means that without being very unrealistic screenwriters can present the state of their protagonist according to the needs of the plot. When the protagonist needs to be forgetful for an emotional beat, he/she can be forgetful. When he/she needs to remember something important for another emotional beat he/she can do that. This is why a movie about Alzheimer can be quite challenging for a screenwriter. When done badly this can make the movie seem a bit too manipulative and maybe even a bit exploitative. Sarah Polley is certainly not exploitative here, but I did find her a bit too manipulative. The plot should be in the service of the Alzheimer patient, while here it to often seems to be the other way around. The condition of Julie Christie is in the service of the plot mechanics, which makes us care unfortunately a bit less about the character.

I don't have much else to say about this movie, except that I found it lesser than two other movies on similar subjects I've seen recently. One is of course Michael Haneke's Amour. The other one is Still Mine with James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold, which takes a much lighter, but no less serious and emotional approach to the difficulties of old age.

75. A Day in the Life &...

Lyrics

I read the news today oh, boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords

I saw a film today oh, boy
The english army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on.

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
Ah

I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall
I'd love to turn you on

As I've written in my previous entry on The Beatles, I like them, but not as much as most fans of pop music. This song though is great. It is also an example of how The Beatles weren't just musically revolutionary, but also lyrically. This song is basically a narrative about a reasonably smart dude, who essentially hangs around aimlessly all day. This kind of stories weren't all that usual around that time, but now we have an abundance of them. We now even have a word for the kind of person described in this song: slacker. Thus the movie I chose is (quite literally) about slackers, but it is perhaps interesting to note that I could have also chosen a different movie. Namely the movie referenced in the second verse of this song. It is Richard Lester's How I Won the War (1967), with John Lennon himself in the leading role. 

The Movie: Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991)

Ha! Just two posts ago I 'complained' about Kieslowski's Red. I loved how he was willing to lose sight of his main protagonist Valentine to offer us slight glimpses of the life of her neighbor Auguste. Auguste's life at first seemed unrelated to Valentine's, until Kieslowski started to make connections between them, which I found rather unfortunate. While I loved the movie, I thought that it would be even greater if Auguste and Valentine remained unrelated to each other. Well, Slacker takes my wish to its extreme and is in my opinion Richard Linklater's best movie. I also consider it better than Red, but that's not a really fair comparison. Although I am not a fan of all of Kieslowski's choices, he has good reasons for all of them and is interested in exploring other things than Linklater here. 

Slacker is a plotless movie. It just follows the young citizens of Austin during one day, but only follows each specific citizen for a short amount of time. The movie for example starts with a twenty-something (played by Linklater himself) arriving at the Austin airport and getting in a taxi. On the ride home Linklater talks to the hilariously disinterested driver about how easily his life could have gone into other directions. If he had hopped on a bus instead of on a taxi perhaps his life could have turned out differently. After getting out of the cab Linklater's character stumbles upon a women hit in a car accident. Another woman arrives at the scene, calling the police and telling Linklater that he is not needed anymore. We see him go away in the distance and never meet him again. The camera pulls back to find a youngster entering his nearby home. We see him doing some mysterious stuff and home and then the doorbell rings. It's the police coming to arrest him for intentionally driving over (and killing) his mother. As the police leads him away, we meet two friends on the street looking at what happens and the camera decides to follow them. And they too are followed for a while until the camera meets some other people more worthy of attention and starts following them. That's the whole movie. It works wonderfully because Linklater writes great dialogue and he uses long takes in very intelligent way, something that would become his trademark in later movies.

While Linklater doesn't directly connect all these people to each other, there is an idea behind his approach. These are not just disjointed scenes involving the citizens of Austin. All these scenes together do form a relatively coherent whole. The movie amounts to a rather sad, and despairing portrait of Linklater's hometown. Most of the people we meet here are (college-) educated twenty-somethings who mostly hang out aimlessly. They cannot seem to find a job and are thoroughly dissatisfied with the American establishment. They've basically lost all trust in the American elite. Two separate characters we meet believe that the American government is involved in dark conspiracies, one of them of course about the killing of John F. Kennedy. Another guy calculates that the popular vote that elected Bush Sr. in the previous elections actually included a very small percentage of Americans. A black man protests against the imprisonment of Mandela, only no one really cares. All of these people are reasonably intelligent, but seem stuck in Austin having conversations about Dostoevsky, the nature of television, and the meaning of political actions, anarchism, life and art. Only all these knowledge is basically useless. They are stuck being slackers in Austin and there is nothing they can do about it, because they are stuck being slackers in Austin. So they talk. On top of this they cannot really connect to people. This dissatisfaction is also visible in the actions of these people, which are very often acts of frustration and despair, leading nowhere. Three dudes throw a perfectly working typewriter in the water, because it 'symbolizes the woman that broke their hearts.' There is an old anarchist who lies about fighting in the Spanish Revolutionary War, because his anarchism has mostly existed in theory. If this all isn't enough, all these people also have trouble connecting to each other. So many of the conversations here involve one person talking enthusiastically, while another one just is reasonably bored, or thinks that what the other is saying is a load of crap.

Still, this is not a despairing movie. The dialogue is filled with too much humor for that. And the unknown actors exude too much energy for this movie to be despairing. They convey to us that their characters truly believe in what they are saying and that they are hopeful that life will get better. It's not surprising that many of these actors actually were local struggling artists, or other kinds of artistic types. Which at the same time makes the movie more tragic. They are all young and full of dreams, which will most probably never be fulfilled. Unless you are of course Richard Linklater, who quite clearly has sympathy for all of these characters and positions himself as one of these young Austin slackers. He became a major filmmaker whose films often involve the same themes discussed by the characters of Slacker. There might be hope for the rest of them too!

What I also liked about this movie is that you really get a sense of the city of Austen itself and its geography. By following all these characters in long takes across the city streets, we get the sense that we are getting an authentic tour of the city. These are not the places where tourists might go when they go to Austin, but the places where ordinary Austin citizens live and work. It is quite rare to get such a portrayal of an American small town, and it is very deglamorizing. It is something we rarely see in movies and it is one of the reasons I also liked for example Jason Reitman's Young Adult, which is not that good a movie otherwise.

Lastly it is quite interesting what a secretly influential movie this has been. It launched the career of Richard Linklater (even though he had made one movie before, which hardly anyone seems to have seen) and made Austin the capital of the American indie-movement. But even more interestingly, as far as I know the characters here were considered back then as a small subculture. Now their attitudes and behavior are attributed to and adopted by what we call hipster culture, which whether you like it or not is becoming quite in an important youth subculture. This has perhaps become even clearer since the current financial crisis began in 2008. Many so-called hipsters now have become skeptical of those who have the power in our society. The current popularity of hipster culture is of course the consequence of many different societal developments and cultural influences. But there are scenes and moments in Slacker which are so prescient that watching the movie you may get the feeling the most important seeds for the current popularity of hipster culture were laid by Slacker. Of course that's probably not the case, but this remains as written earlier Linklater's best movie. Though I must mention that I am not as great a fan of Linklater as others. I haven't seen a bad movie by him yet, but I don't think he has made a great one apart from this and Bernie. I have not seen parts 2 and 3 of his Before trilogy yet though and I have neither seen Waking Life.

     

74. Brabant &...

Lyrics

Een muts op m'n hoofd

(A cap on my head)
m'n kraag staat omhoog

(My collar is up)
't is hier ijskoud

(It's freezing cold here)
maar gelukkig wel droog

(But luckily dry)
de dagen zijn kort hier

(The days are short here)
de nacht begint vroeg

(The night begins early)
de mensen zijn stug en d'r is maar een kroeg

(The people are surly and there's only one pub)
als ik naar m'n hotel loop, na een donkere dag

(When I go to my hotel after a dark day)
dan voel ik m'n huissleutel diep in m'n zak

(I feel my housekey deep in my pocket)

en ik loop hier alleen in een te stille stad
(And I walk here alone in a too silent town)

ik heb eigenlijk nooit last van heimwee gehad

(I actually have never been homesick)
maar de mensen ze slapen, de wereld gaat dicht

(But the people, they sleep, and the world is closing)
en dan denk ik aan brabant, want daar brandt nog licht

(And I think of Brabant, because there the light is still burning)

ik mis hier de warmte van een dorpscafe

(I miss hier the warmth of a village bar)
de aanspraak van mensen met een zachte 'g'

(The talking to people with a soft 'g')
ik mis zelfs 't zeiken op alles om niets

(I even miss talking shit about everything)
was men maar op brabant zo trots als een fries

(I wis that one was as proud of Brabant as a Fries)
in 't zuiden vol zon, woon ik samen met jou

(In the south full of sun I live together with you)
't is daarom dat ik zo van brabanders hou
(That is why I love the people of Brabant so much)

en ik loop hier alleen in een te stille stad
(And I walk here alone in a too silent town)

ik heb eigenlijk nooit last van heimwee gehad

(I actually have never been homesick)
maar de mensen ze slapen, de wereld gaat dicht

(But the people, they sleep, and the world is closing)
en dan denk ik aan brabant, want daar brandt nog licht

(And I think of Brabant, because there the light is still burning)

De peel, en de kempen en de meijerij

(The Peel and the Campine and the bailiwick)
maar 't mooiste aan brabant ben jij, dat ben jij

(But the most beautiful thing about Brabant is you, that is you)

en ik loop hier alleen in een te stille stad
(And I walk here alone in a too silent town)

ik heb eigenlijk nooit last van heimwee gehad

(I actually have never been homesick)
maar de mensen ze slapen, de wereld gaat dicht

(But the people, they sleep, and the world is closing)
en dan denk ik aan brabant, want daar brandt nog licht

(And I think of Brabant, because there the light is still burning)

en dan denk ik aan brabant, want daar brandt nog licht
(And I think of Brabant, because there the light is still burning)

en dan denk ik aan brabant, want daar brandt nog licht

(And I think of Brabant, because there the light is still burning)

Guus Meeuwis is not some great artist, but I like his relaxed, calming voice. He has made better songs than this, but it's no surprise that this is his highest placed song. He comes from the province of Brabant and this is his paean to his home. I assume many 'Brabanders' like it therefore. The movie I linked it too takes place in Brabant, but it's definitely not a paean to it. It's in fact a bit of a joke to link this song to that movie, but I have already discussed here, what is probably, the best sincere movie about life in Brabant. It was Rademakers 'Dorp aan de Rivier.'

The Movie: New Kids Turbo (Steffen Haars & Flip van der Kuil, 2010)

New Kids Turbo is the feature film version of a comedic series called New Kids that ran for a while on the Dutch Comedy Central. I have not seen the series, but it was obviously pretty popular. This movie was even more popular, it had the most successful opening day for any Dutch movie, and broke some other similar records. So in 2011 a sequel arrived called New Kids Nitro. I have never seen the series and up until now had not seen New Kids Turbo either. Despite its popularity many media writers in the Netherlands claimed the New Kids phenomenon to be stupid, and some even went further claiming they glorified immoral behavior and caused people to behave stupidly and badly. After all, some expressions from the shows/movies started to become widely used in the Netherlands! I think criticizing movies because they might cause bad behavior in people is extremely stupid, but I must admit the movies and the series did not seem very appealing to me. The new kids are basically five loitering youths from the fictional village of Maaskantje, Brabant doing stupid things. From the advertisements I saw it seemed like these were five characters modeled on Adam Sandler. And he is basically the only actor I can't stand. You can perhaps see where this is going. I saw New Kids Turbo and loved it. This is a movie that is more subversive than the average Dutch media production. It is also simply terrific fun.

This is a movie that completely and utterly does not give a fuck about any Dutch media convention. It is not interested in being realistic, and it is not interested in being cozy or lovable. It is a combination of Ali G, Hot Fuzz and The Wolf of Wall Street (only here the characters are poor). The five 'heroes' of the film do not have the money to pay for anything anymore, so they choose not to pay for anything anymore. The movie manages to both have sympathy for this stance, and to completely destroy its characters' lifestyle in a slightly satiric way. The saying 'it's funny cause it's true' certainly applies here. The 'new kids' are caricatures, but there really are similar people like them. These are completely selfish idiots who do not care about, and are oblivious to, anyone but themselves and think they are entitled to everything without having to work. Much of the humor in the movie comes from simply observing their behavior. The movie is actually at its worst when it consciously tries to make a joke. It is basically a wonderful satire of a lifestyle. It is also a satire of Dutch news media that completely destroys the emo-tv genre. Unfortunately in the second half it stops being a satire and becomes a (tremendously fun and completely absurd) action parody. This doesn't ruin the fun.