Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I have waited a long time for the new Charles Burns book. Final Cut is beautifully drawn, but the characters feel like ciphers. On the surface, the horror movie tropes and exploration of the human psyche feel like vintage Burns, and my younger self would have loved it. His connections between cinematic narratives and human connection show how fantasy sometimes separates us. However, Final Cut feels much emptier than Inside Out and less horrific than his best work. The science fiction horrors are only on the screen and in the mind and not realities for the characters as in other Burns stories. Thus, he shows that our disconnections can be more horrific than any fiction. That said, maybe I'm just that far removed from my teenage self and cannot find a connection to any of these characters or their familiar obsessions. As they slip apart, I found myself also withdrawing. Perhaps, that's the point.

Yasujuru Ozu's A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and its remake Floating Weeds (1959) are masterworks in drama. Each tells the story of a traveling kabuki theatre troupe visiting cities on the Seto Inland Sea. The films' primary conflict revolves around the owner's excursions to visit his former mistress and their grownup son, who believes that the actor is his uncle. The lead actress becomes jealous when she finds out. She pays a younger actress to seduce the son, an act that complicates everything. Meanwhile the troupe's fortunes take a downturn as audiences are more interested in newer styles.  Both films include an amazing scene where the kabuki master and his mistress shout across a rainy street while walking back and forth, which reinforces their alienation and disconnection. Like many of Ozu's pillow and low-angle shots, he deftly builds characterization and setting through placement. Perhaps, the character studies and relationships in each are at their must s...