« The Anywhere Effect | Main | Bubble Wrap »
March 16, 2006
Kieslowski and the Metroplex
Conitinued problems with th Wordherder servers, which have been slammed with trackback and comment spam. Right now, we've decided to shut down trackbacks temporarily at least, but hopefully Technorati or Site Meter will catch most links (or just leave a comment!). The server shut down while I was writing this blog entry the other day, but luckily I was able to save it:
Just a couple of links I don't want to lose: First, via GreenCine, a Guradian article on a Krzysztof Kieslowski retrospective in London. Kieslowski's Three Colors:
Red is probably the film most responsible for my deciding to do my graduate school research on film rather than literature (even though I've only written in passing about Red or any other Kieslowski film for that matter). What's interesting about Richard Williams' article is that it's also an "end of cinema" essay, too. In commenting on Quentin Tarantino winning the Palme d'or over Kielowski at Cannes in 1994, Williams writes:
In its recognition of the potential influence and commercial significance of Tarantino's film, the jury's decision could not be faulted; nevertheless the choice appeared to close the curtain on the European cinema of ideas, a tradition of films based on character-driven narratives and an unhurried approach to pacing.Williams does provide a great overview of Kieslowski's career, especially his late-career "French" films.
Unrelated link: Edward Jay Epstein's discussion of movie piracy in China, where he notes that very few Chinese people attend the cinema while billions of pirated DVDs have been sold. Implicitly, it seems to be an argument for collapsing the window between theatrical and DVD release dates, but again, it seems to reinforce the "end of cinema" argument. I've been thinking about these changing movie-watching practices a lot lately (as you might have noticed), particularly
in the context of Charles Acland's fascinating book on 1980s-1990s moviegoing practices, Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture. Perhaps most significantly for my research, Acland's book is a reminder that the multiplex is actually a relatively recent phenomenon even within the very short history of cinema itself.
Posted by chuck at March 16, 2006 10:42 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/5325