Feb 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Encounters at the End of the World
Ross Douthat expresses the inevitable post-Oscar grouchiness about the Academy’s predictably deplorable taste. He does say, though, “I was glad to see the mad Frenchman from Man on Wire pick up a statue, at least.” Man on Wire was good, but not nearly as good as it’s fellow nominee in the Best Documentary category Encounters at the end of the Earth. Conveniently, the film’s best scene, about insanity among penguins, is available on YouTube. Inconveniently, the real genius of this passage doesn’t come through out of context:
The seal sounds is cool, too.
37 Responses to “Encounters at the End of the World”
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February 23rd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I was already aware that penguins are insane.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:51 pm
The seal sounds were indeed cool. So cool that I forced them on my 14 year old son, who has entered the years of being far beyond being impressed, and he gave a great smile and pronounced them “cool.”
For musicians/listeners amongst your readers, the Henry Kaiser in Encounters, who is involved importantly with the underwater film sequences, is the same guitar playing Henry Kaiser who often records with David Lindsay. The soundtrack is Kaiser, if I recall correctly.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
“Ross Douthat expresses the inevitable post-Oscar grouchiness about the Academy’s predictably deplorable taste.”
The post-Oscar™ grouchiness is not inevitable, just probable.
During the past twenty years, a worthy film has won Best Picture of 2007, 2006, 1997, 1992, and 1991.
So post-Oscar™ grouchiness due to the Academy’s deplorable taste should only occur 75% of the time. The other quarter of the time, their taste is acceptable.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The seal sounds are badass, it was like some really awesome dubstep record or something. And the movie is all around incredible. But I’m glad it didn’t win, because it would lead to Herzog complaining even more about how his movies are not documentaries, and how truth and fiction blur together, and the man has made enough complaints about that, no need to add fuel to the fire.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I’ll give you four out of five. Not 1997, though. L.A. Confidential should have beat Titanic.
2005 was a joke- Crash over Brokeback Mountain? Or shit, Munich?
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Munich didn’t deserve an Oscar, but its funny remake You Don’t Mess with the Zohan did. Or Pinapple Express. Why are comedies always shut out?
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Let Rourke accept his reward
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og3tN7P6oKI
Before seeing Wrestler, I watched the DVD of Pope of Greenwich Village, with Rourke and Eric Roberts. Now that was fun.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
award, not reward
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
“Not 1997, though. L.A. Confidential should have beat Titanic.”
The best grossing movie of all time that also happens to be an exceptionally good popcorn movie? Seems worthy to me.
Ben-Hur won Best Picture too. These aren’t bad choices, even if they’re not among the greatest ten movies of all-time.
—–
“2005 was a joke- Crash over Brokeback Mountain? Or shit, Munich?”
None of the three are worthy.
The taste of the academy in the past couple of decades means that in most years, none of the genuine contenders are worthy.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:27 pm
that penguin video just blew my mind.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
“Let Rourke accept his reward … Before seeing Wrestler, I watched the DVD of Pope of Greenwich Village, with Rourke and Eric Roberts. Now that was fun.”
I deeply love Mickey Rourke, and I’m oddly happy he didn’t win.
His career is already resurrected, and winning an Oscar™ would have verged on jumping the shark for him.
He thrives in the shadows.
—–
I dig the Spirit Awards because it’s the one film awards show in English that I don’t have to completely hate.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Oh God, petey the clueless wannabe film critic rears its ugly head once again.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
“Oh God, petey the clueless wannabe film critic rears its ugly head once again.”
Film is one of the limited spheres in which I possess the infallibility of the magisterium. There was a council you may not be aware of that resolves this issue pretty conclusively.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I’m not sure The Departed was all that deserving, but the other nominees that year weren’t any better. Marty certainly deserved the Oscar, if only as an apology for Goodfellas losing to Dances With Wolves.
I didn’t enjoy Titanic much, but I can recognize a well-made popcorn movie. Still, L.A. Confidential was much better. Why, oh why, couldn’t Curtis Hansen have made The Black Dahlia?
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
“Why, oh why, couldn’t Curtis Hansen have made The Black Dahlia?”
The Black Dahlia is an awful movie, and Curtis Hanson would indeed have done a better job.
But the problem is that the awful Brian DePalma movies are actually really enjoyable, despite being so goddamn awful.
Hell, I even had a good time with Mission to Mars. It wasn’t good all the way through the way Femme Fatale was, but the Van Halen space ballet alone was worth the price of admission.
As far as Hanson goes, I’ve got a soft spot for his overlooked gem The River Wild. It’s got vaginal imagery as absurdly foregrounded as 1950’s American movies had phallic imagery absurdly foregrounded.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:11 pm
The Black Dahlia was awful in every way, but it starting with the casting. Pretty boy Josh Hartnett was cast as the thug-with-a-heart of gold, basically the same character Russell Crowe played in L.A. Confidential (Ellroy changed the names, but almost every crime novel of his has this character). Russell Crowe could play that role, but there’s no way Josh Hartnett could do it, even if the rest of the movie didn’t suck.
I remember liking The River Wild but I didn’t catch the vaginal imagery. I’ll have to look for that the next time it’s on cable.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
post-Oscar grouchiness
Kudos for the Sesame Street pun, although the rest of the comment was nothing much.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
“Encounters at the end of the Earth”
Uhhh…
Partial credit for getting it right in the title.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
“I remember liking The River Wild but I didn’t catch the vaginal imagery. I’ll have to look for that the next time it’s on cable.”
Meryl keeps repeatedly white-water rafting through V-shaped canyons with a beatific and ecstatic look on her face.
It’s as funny in its own gender reversed way as the cane is in Gilda.
—–
“The Black Dahlia was awful in every way”
Agreed it’s awful, but it still had a banquet of tasty stuff.
- The discovery of the murder scene.
- The wealthy family dynamics
- The creepy faux film tests DePalma did with Mia Kirschner
- Anything at all with Rachel Miner in it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Encounters at the end of the World was awesome, and I mean that literally. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it tonight.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:36 pm
That penguin is haunting me.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Herzog seems to be in perpetual search of a subject as interesting as Klaus Kinski. Unfortunately, these penguins, and the grizzly man before them, have absolutely nothing on KK.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:07 pm
You had to think the Penn fellow would win. Of course you believed the Button picture would win as well.
(Did you even see these movies Linus?)
Not exactly. But I saw the Transsiberian one and I liked that a great deal. I also saw the Burn After Reading flick; that was okay. I meant to see that one about those people living in the woods shooting at Nazis but I didn’t get around to it.
I also saw that Mean Creek recently. Like a latter-day morality play of the kind they haven’t made for a good long while (you think of the Ox-Bow Incident).
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Yeah…that’s not cooler than a guy breaking into the WTC and walking back and forth on a tight rope for 45 minutes.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 pm
I really enjoyed Man on Wire. Anyone who hasn’t seen it really should. Its one of the few movies I’ve seen recently where as soon as I got home, I started emailing my family and friends telling them to go see it.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Penguins rule!
Penguin Liberation Front
http://plf.zarb.org/logo.php
The History of Tux the Linux Penguin
http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin
February 24th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Grizzly Man is an apology for Herzog’s Kinski-less La Soufriere.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076741/
February 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The best grossing movie of all time that also happens to be an exceptionally good popcorn movie? Seems worthy to me.
Oh, please. Titanic was a three-and-a-half-hour-long bowel movement.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:43 am
That penguin video is really sad. For some reason I have a similar reaction to it as to that astronaut in 2001, cut from his oxygen tube by Hal, drifting away into space…
February 24th, 2009 at 10:03 am
These comments seem to follow the track of the penguin. . .off to nowhere.
Makes me think it’s the humans who are insane.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Following Douthat’s post I went and rewatched Mulholland Drive. Now there… movie.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I wonder if the behavior exhibited by that penguin was selected for… maybe a small percentage of penguins get the inexplicable urge to strike out in an arbitrary direction.
If the penguin had found an awesome feeding ground, I wonder if it would have returned to the colony to show the others.
Maybe that’s how penguins “explore” their environment and find new feeding grounds and the like.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
“I wonder if the behavior exhibited by that penguin was selected for… maybe a small percentage of penguins get the inexplicable urge to strike out in an arbitrary direction.”
If it’s only a small percentage of penguins, surely that indicates it’s not selected for. Could be a recessive gene, I suppose, but seems more likely to be non-genetic/pathological.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Both “Man On Wire” and “Encounters At The End Of The World” are interesting movies, mostly in their dissimilarities.
Man On Wire is a study in existentialism. Petit is a man that had and has a purpose in his life, and nothing else really matters. The fact that there is great beauty in what he does and his singlemindedness in his pursuits draws people to him that want to be a part of making him fulfill his purpose. That becomes their purpose. It was actually interesting to see how hard his closest allies worked for his cause, and how skeptical they were to outsiders, it was almost like a religion.
Encounters is more like a documentary essay where Herzog wants to say something about man’s almost insane desire to explore the limits of what can be achieved. He does this by using a documentary format and by going to a place that is almost literally at the end of the world, but I am not entirely sure that what he has made is really a documentary. One has to remember that Herzog is not really into facts. He said in an interview that ”We need a new approach to reality. I’m not into facts. I’m going for something that illuminates us, an ecstatic truth.” The clip MY selected is quite possibly one of these ecstatic truths. The penguin’s quest mirrors our quest for what is beyond, which makes the moment truthful, even if Herzog may have invented the whole thing. This is also what makes Encounters a better and more interesting film than Man On Wire, even if Man On Wire is probably a better documentary.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Petey, what don’t you like about Schindler’s List? Can we at least agree that it’s more Oscar-worthy than The Fugitive?)
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