The All Golden: The Polyamorous Soap Opera

A Dream Soap

Filmmaker Nathaniel Wilson wrote a press blurb for his 2024 film The All Golden: The Polyamorous Soap Operat, which reads:

"Our feature film The All Golden is having an exciting, totally independent distribution, only through the enthusiasm of curious programmers, and the unique spaces and institutions where films are discovered (virtual spaces into real ones). Our current run presents each night as a different new way to experience the movie - w/ Special Guest Moderators, Interactive Gallery Components, and pairings with other exciting new work."

Does this sound at all interesting? I'm allergic to a share of art-happening stuff (Mike Bilandic chronicles the current scene better than anyone out there now), but The All Golden I can dig, what with its prompt to force a construction of narrative in my own brain, or not. (See the onscreen title a little less than half-an-hour in, which announces "Part Two [?], Ein Traumspiel," or "A Dream Play," the German title for Strindberg's play — Kubrick adapted Schnitzler's Traumnovelle or "Dream Story" into Eyes Wide Shut.) The All Golden exists lost in the fragmentation and aggressive capabilities of modern editing. A script readthrough mentions the discovery of lost Nazi gold (a thread buried within Godard's Film Socialisme).

A viewing of Wilson's film has much to do with a zone-out via the supplement of one's choice. Somewhere in the back of the mind, or during REM sleep, different connections draw themselves. After a good night's sleep one will come back to The All Golden, film literally re-playing or not. •

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Nationtime — Gary

1972. 2024.

In 1972, state delegations for the recently-formed Congressional Black Caucus decamped to Gary, Indiana, for a convention (hosted by a Gary high school) that sought to unify the disparate factions of the Black Power movement in the wake of the barrage of late-60s assassinations and the push against a Nixon presidency. 

Nationtime — Gary [1972] serves as a potent example of Greaves' aptitude for empathy and conciliation, inseparable, as witnessed in his direction of the actors in the earlier 1968 Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Presiding over the event as main MC is a figure less integrationist than Greaves (who's just there to observe) — the poet-activist Amiri Baraka, né LeRoi Jones, author of Dutchman.

The original cut of Nationtime — Gary ran 58 minutes in black and white, prints of which were struck for viewing at the institutional level. This restored version assembled by Greaves's widow Louise and the heroic IndieCollect runs 80 minutes uncut and from 2020 restores the film to its intended color version. (A 4K restoration has been carried out on the black and white iteration too.) William Greaves' instinctive artistry aside, Nationtime — Gary exemplifies one of the great American historical documents and for this pivotal moment we are there •

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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of William Greaves:

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One [1968]

Nationtime — Gary {Restored Uncut Color Version} [1972]

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2-1/2 [2005]

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Quiet City

Quiet Is Loud, Loud Is Quiet,  a Movie That Found Me Too Tired to Untie It

I've been away dealing with some recurring health issues that have persisted for about a year. Just before I was hospitalized a few weeks back, I watched Aaron Katz's 2007 Quiet City, the follow-up to the filmmaker's Dance Party, USA. (Both are available on Blu-ray in a nice two-film set from Circle Collective.) I rewatched Quiet City the other night and the film finds me perplexed. These are notes I found on my phone a few nights ago.

pens up the space to the subway platform by Seventh Ave

Aaron Copland

Sucks the atmosphere away

Adults playing toy musical instruments made for kids or like the Chris Gethard show

the blank walls in convo w actors

Rooftop convo

The image in urban isolation /

The honeymoon of many coming close then pulling

He uses his butterfly antics ? -

Swanberg shows up

Like Hanukkah or Yom Kippur

The common principles have evolved to Queen/Palookaville as a refreshed Independent American Cinema

a satire of a satire

Sifting through the piles of Trade Center

Desperate to break from their own frames

Come alive at the house-hang. Torture.

11 years from now the wedding album and FB posts of photos.. made a film once, in the past - bucket list •

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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Aaron Katz:

Dance Party, USA [2006]

Quiet City [2007]

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I'm Back for Now

– What about the time I chipped my tooth on the bathroom urinal?! What the FUCK is so comical about that?!

– It was a back tooth, Hank.

(The Larry Sanders Show)

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Million Dollar Mystery

Fleischer's Last Stand (I Stan for Fleischer)

The final film by Richard Fleischer, Million Dollar Mystery [1987], places the emphasis on "mystery." To elaborate: a passage from the film's Wiki page: "Million Dollar Mystery (also known as Money Mania) is a 1987 American film released with a promotional tie-in for Glad-Lock brand [garbage/rubbish] bags. This was the final feature-length film directed by Richard Fleischer and shot by Jack Cardiff. [...] During the closing credits, Bob informs the audience that there is one million dollars somewhere in the US and if they follow the clues in specially marked Glad-Lock bags, they have the chance to win $1 million. [...] Million Dollar Mystery was a box office flop grossing $989,033 against a $10 million budget.

"The film received negative critical reviews. The film holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 6 reviews."

It's not that bad, as far as crass 1980s wind-down stoner ensemble comedies go. I probably caught it on late-night HBO or Cinemax back in the decade — where Rich Hall led, I tended to follow. My dad told how when he was a child, the only (not ten-, not fifteen-) thirteen-cent matinée he walked out of midway through was Richard Fleischer's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, — the octopus tentacles scared the shit out of him and he booked to the exit. It's too bad he hasn't seen Million Dollar Mystery, as he'd really be shaken by the scenes with Kevin Pollak, wherein the movie screeches to a halt as Pollak riffs throughout a menagerie of impersonations, the most ridiculous of which involves Columbo and Pollak-Falk's eyeballs rolling every which way loosely. Maybe he got shook up in a car chase: these moments are the highlight of the film, pure unleaded action-poetry. •

Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Richard Fleischer:

Million Dollar Mystery [1987]

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Blue Skies

On the Fritz

Stuart Heisler's rather tame 1946 Technicolor-musical Irving Berlin revue is well worth seeing — this does come, after all, from the director of the mighty Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman of the following year. No shattered tumblers in Blue Skies though. What Heisler delivers are discrete moments of beauty (see the "Blue Skies" scene alone — a sublime moment) that make for one of the oddest paces in any film I can think of. (See the terrific one-man drag sketch at the dinner club.) Fred Astaire (Jed, here a Renaissance man broadcaster, dancer, singer, director for stage) vies with Bing Crosby (Johnny) for the heart of nightclub showgirl Joan Caulfield (Mary). 'Only one man will succeed' — there's no equivocating by film-end as to whether or not Johnny or Jed can proclaim victory. Joan's a bit of a dud; Crosby kept her on the picture following the death of scheduled director Mark Sandrich at the start of production, which is when Heisler took over the enterprise. Bing, you see, was banging Joan... That aside, among the female cast members Nita (Olga San Juan) truly stands out — she with the superhuman midriff, with the facial expressions of a seasoned pro — something fallen from the blue skies: but no, with the duo of Jed (surgically modified teeth) and Johnny (aux perles naturelles) all Mary, Mary, Mary. Maybe only Heisler had the sense good enough  to put Olga to worthy use, then to secret his daily rushes from Bing. In one notable number, Olga/Nita sports a white feathery headdress that brings to mind a celebratory blast of ectoplasm erupting from her skull. 

The weakness of Blue Skies lies largely in the flatness of its scenes, and, up to a point (say, the famous mirrored-Astaire performance of "Puttin' on the Ritz"), the uninventiveness of the production design. (Every mansion soirée in American movies of the 1940s and 50s requires a room off the main hall used as a library chamber or drawing-room, where lovers are able sneak off to trade confidentialities over Scotch and soda and chamomile. There's no 'charge' to the sets — a cardinal mistake in any concerted attempt to work the mise-en-scène. One must have a mind of winter beneath deceptive blue skies... •

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A quick note: Friday afternoon saw me at the dump AMC near my house, where I watched Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis: A Fable. Still processing the experience, a roundabout beeline to the soul, if one will. All told, maybe the finest epic of America's endgame 21st century since the Malick/Criterion cut of The Tree of Life. Watch this space for more on FFC's fabulous artistic gambit. •

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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Stuart Heisler:

Blue Skies [1946]

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