Logged and Loaded: November 2020
Pennebaker documentaries, adventurous anime, and even a little John Belushi––all in this month's episode of Logged and Loaded!
Is this the Krusty Krab? No, this is FRIED on FILM, and welcome back to “Logged and Loaded,” the show covering my favorite first-watches and rewatches of the month!
Let’s break down the most memorable of November…able. It kinda rhymes, right? Kinda.
FIRST-WATCHES
Primary - ★★★★
November 4th, 2020
The election hysteria was real this November. While most people would have taken any opportunity to distract them from electoral chaos, I decided to dive headfirst into it. After all, this film had been on my mind ever since it had been added to the Criterion Channel as part of its “Watching The Polls” collection. I had heard about its unprecedented use of vérité, which is very up my alley, and I was already a fan of D.A. Pennebaker (which we’ll get to later), but it was most intriguing to me as a time capsule. I longed for a simpler time, before the media made elections such an exhausting endeavor. Turns out, they were always exhausting! Drat!!
Even with its reputation, Primary’s feat of access is extraordinary; utilizing the latest and lightest film and sound technology of the time, cinematographers Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles get right in the thick of the campaign, from screaming crowds of fans to party affairs behind closed doors. It feels like something that could never be made today––an objective, candid, non-propagandistic look at two candidates, what they stand for, and what they’re like both on-stage and off––and shines as an astonishing historical artifact. Any honest footage of Kennedy is valuable in its own right, and seeing his overwhelming popularity, even in its infancy, is quite staggering, but obviously Hubert Humphrey has more to gain as his oft forgotten opponent. As I watched him campaign directly to voters on the street, make arresting speeches to the Midwestern working class, and be undeterred as Kennedy was clearly favored, I learned more about him than I did in an entire adolescence’s worth of history classes.
Told with the structure of a biography but paced and edited like an experimental art film, Primary exists on a rare plane of documentary cinema that captures uninterrupted history whilst distilling it into storytelling, specifically a survey of the American electoral process and just how deeply personal of a process it is.
Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro // Lupin the Third: The Mystery of Mamo - ★★★★ // ★★★★
November 11th, 2020 / November 18th, 2020
Kinda cheating, kinda not. I wanted to dip my toes into the Lupin the Third franchise, and, though I am normally a stickler about watching films chronologically, The Castle of Cagliostro is the second in the series of feature films. I ended up watching it first out of happenstance and accessibility (the film is available on US Netflix) and it wasn’t until afterwards that I discovered The Mystery of Mamo not only came out first but is only available to watch in the USA via…illegal means. One must what one must.
It ended up being the right decision though. Cagliostro is a far better introduction to anime’s favorite phantom thief, featuring the series’ beloved characters and trademark humor on full display but its absurdist style and storytelling turned down a few notches. This is thanks to Hayao Miyazaki, here in his directorial debut six years prior to the formation of Studio Ghibli, whose extremely wacky premises are always grounded with a softer visual touch. From the opening titles alone, you can almost feel the warmth of Miyazaki’s colorful, serene art style, making the world of Lupin the Third much more approachable. Along with this, the story and characters are given a bit more depth and focus beyond just irreverent slapstick and witty banter; though there is still plenty of that, there’s a mystery at the heart of this film that is engaging to see unfold and Lupin himself is given more heart and charm without losing his ultimately petty and boyish motivations. At the end of the day, it feels more balanced, making it a great primer for the franchise.
The same cannot be said for Mystery of Mamo, a film that feels more aligned with what one might expect from the series: the sense of humor is sharper and crasser, the physical comedy and character designs are more exaggerated, and the animation is far more bold and stylized. Beyond that, it is far more sexually explicit, which certainly makes it a product of its time, and the story itself becomes so convoluted and abstract that it devolves into a complete science-fiction mindbender, complete with godlike immortality, cloning, and time travel. By the end of it, you’ll forget that this series usually functions like Sherlock Holmes by way of Scooby-Doo. This all sounds like a huge mess, and it certainly is, but Mamo’s stronger commitment to its own irreverence makes it a much funnier and exciting film as a result. I had a blast with it, which isn’t exactly how I would describe Cagliostro, despite thoroughly enjoying it all the same.
I include both films in this blog because, at the end of the day, both of them hooked me into the franchise and have me excited to continue through the series.
Belushi - ★★★★
November 29th, 2020
Biographical documentaries are really hard to crack. It’s a ground so well-trod and often feels hackneyed, squeezing whatever popularity you can get out of a subject without shedding light on anything beyond what you can easily look up in a textbook or memoir. So what makes something like Belushi, an otherwise unremarkable addition to the genre on-paper, work so well? Honesty.
Belushi provides incredibly candid insight from many of his closest collaborators and a lot of it is not flattering, but the film goes even further to suggest that Belushi’s persona and popularity, through the eyes of American culture and idealism, was also not very flattering. It’s an unexpected approach, but also a sobering one. In a moment where we are losing many beloved public figures and entertainers to their own psychological battles, Belushi recognizes that society plays a role in creating the monster––that we see ourselves in them but only when it benefits us, not when it reveals the darkness. Very few docs even suggest grand ideas like this, let alone ones that actually hold substance, but Belushi dares to scratch the surface.
Belushi is also elevated by a commitment to its own aesthetics. The film employs a number of modern editing techniques, but so many of its contemporaries use them as flash in their pan, five-minute cutaways and nothing more. They are often unearned and, worse, inorganic. But director R. J. Cutler’s reliance on these modes (all of his modern interviews are audio-only and no new footage was shot) forces him to use them consistently, not just as visually engaging mediums but as storytelling tools. The original animated sequences by Robert Valley derive pathos from Belushi’s childhood, Bill Hader’s voiceover work on Belushi’s personal letters feels evocatively character-driven, and the graphics work takes simple photos and gives them some context and meaning. It’s a vast collection of ideas that are all seamlessly woven into the film’s visual identity up until the very end.
Belushi isn’t a game-changer, but it’s an example of taking a very simple idea for a documentary and executing it with flying colors, making it a definitive portrait.
REWATCH OF THE MONTH
Original Cast Album: Company - ★★★★★
November 4th, 2020
To say this movie was “made for me” is obviously not true, but also the truth? I say this knowing damn well that the film is a combination of two very disparate practices: musical theatre and cinema vérité, flash and panache versus grounded and unpolished. They’re like water and oil but, hell, I like water and I like oil, and sometimes ya need both to make a good pasta. To make things even more ironic, you have maybe the best water and the best oil on the market: Stephen Sondheim, the composer/lyricist behind several of the greatest musicals of the 20th century (this film’s focus being his 1970 concept musical and also my favorite musical of all time, Company) and D. A. Pennebaker, the aforementioned revolutionary filmmaker who injected documentary cinema with the immediacy and closeness it often has today. I adore both of these artists, and have admired their long libraries of work, yet recognize they do not inherently make a successful pairing. Well, it makes for a surprisingly good pasta after all.
Original Cast Album: Company is an all-too-singular, observational masterwork (though initially planned as the pilot for an ongoing Original Cast Album series, that idea became lost to time). It’s a hard sell for anyone who doesn’t appreciate either of the two aforementioned art forms or artists––they certainly aren’t for everyone, after all––but for anyone who does, it is an unfiltered treasure trove of access and process: Sondheim scrutinizing Pamela Myers’ two sharp notes on “Another Hundred People,” Dean Jones nailing one of his last performances of “Being Alive,” Elaine Stritch absolutely losing her shit after numerous takes of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” all captured up-close and personal. It’s extremely messy, at times endearing and at times infuriating, and captured with such unflinching precision in the edit. My favorite shots are the long takes where we just watch the cast sing into the microphones; as a fan of the musical (and the music) in particular, it’s just heavenly to have these performances so expertly put to film, even if it’s not on stage.
Filming cast recordings does exist today, usually in the form of marketing material and behind-the-scenes featurettes, but if anybody in musical theatre knew what they were doing, they would bring Original Cast Album back and in full force. Even with Pennebaker’s recent passing, it would be a shame to see this wonderful idea stay dormant for much longer.
Other Notable Watches:
GoldenEye - ★★★★ (November 5th, 2020)
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run - ★★ (November 7th, 2020)
The Death of Dick Long - ★★★½ (November 19th, 2020)
Tomorrow Never Dies - ★★ (November 24th, 2020)
REWATCH: The Nightmare Before Christmas - ★★★★ (November 1st, 2020)
REWATCH: Tarzan - ★★★★½ (November 26th, 2020)
And that does it for another Logged and Loaded! Next time…hoo baby, we’re counting down my ten favorite films of 2020!! That should be a doozy. Don’t let anyone tell you nothing good came out this year, lemme tell ya.
Y’all know what to do. Twitter. Letterboxd. Substack. Follow ‘em all. Until next time!