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February 29, 2004
Oscar Blogging
George is blogging the Oscars. I'm trying to throw in some snarky comments, too. Come join the fun.
Update: 83 comments later, the Oscars are over, and Lord of the Rings won in a landslide. They've been giving Oscars for 75 years, and no American woman has ever won best director. What a shame. As George observed (scroll way down), not a single person of color won an Oscar this year. The good news: Errol Morris won for The Fog of War and gave one of the best speeches of the night.
Posted by chuck at 9:33 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
ICFA Presentation Schedule
Okay, so I've been using blogging as a procrastination tool today. This is my last chance to blog on February 29 for four years. Might as well take advantage. Here's my panel for the upcoming International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Looks like a promising, closely knit panel with all three papers focusing on The Ring. Should be fun.
70. (FM) Looking at The Ring
Intrepid
Chair: Kenneth Jurkiewicz
Central Michigan University
Video From the Void: Haunted Technologies in The Ring
Charles Tryon
The Georgia Institute of Technology
The Ring: Global Horror, Adaptation, Analysis
Petra Kuppers
Bryant College
Re-imaging The Ring: Nakata, Verbinski, and the Politics of Adaptation
Jay McRoy
University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Posted by chuck at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Triplets of Belleville
After reading Tanya's review, I finally went to see Sylvain Chomet's animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville (IMDB), last night, and like Tanya, I completely enjoyed the film's visual and musical artistry. The opening sequence, featured in theatrical previews, riffs on the early-'30s Fleischer Brothers Talkertoons, with parodies of Josephine Baker, Fred Astaire, and Django Reinhardt. The stars of the show are, of course, the eponymous triplets, who perform a scat-style song (one I'd like to see win the Oscar). The "scratches" on the film add to the nostalgic feel, leaving me feeling completely immersed in this world, but as the camera pans back, we see the scan lines of a television set and are quickly transplanted into a 1960s-era France, in the lonely, dilapidated house of Madame Souza and her orphaned grandson, Champion.
The film's ability to convey the characters' personalities and emotions with minimal dialogue is impressive, but to try to convey much information about the plot would, I believe, ruin the experiences for others. J. Hoberman's Village Voice review generally captures the spirit of the film without giving away too much. In short, I completely enjoyed the film's nostalgic tone (which I read as nostalgia not for the past itself as much as for a certain style of animation), its use of rich earth tones to convey this world, and the visual shorthand used to comment on characters and situations, including the waiter with no backbone (he literally bends over backwards), the square-shouldered mob guys who always walk in pairs, and Champion's skinny-legged, chubby dog, Bruno. The film is an absolute treat. See it on the big screen if you can.
Note: Also check out Elbert Ventura's Pop Matters review.
Posted by chuck at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Badda Bing
Cool New York Times interview with David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, one of my favorite TV shows. Chase's comments about how he films the therapy sessions were especially interesting:
There's one rule on the show: the camera in the therapy office does not move — forward, backward or sideways. I've been in a lot of therapy, and I never saw a camera move in to my face. I didn't think we should say, "O.K., this is the important part. It's all about his father, and the time he didn't come home on Christmas Eve." I wanted everything to be just flat. I wanted the audience to have to figure out what was important, to actually do the same work that Dr. Melfi was doing. I wanted to present therapy scenes as they are. Because a lot of therapy — let's face it — is [expletive].The show's formal experimentation, its willingness not to reassure or comfort its audience, has always impressed me. I'd noticed that the therapy scenes are often filmed "flat," or that they rarely evinced any real progress, but I don't think I'd ever noticed the complete lack of camera movement in these scenes.
Posted by chuck at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 28, 2004
Shoot Out at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Via Metafilter: The Flash game Bush Shoot Out, starring President Bush and Condoleeza Rice shooting out terrorists in the Oval Office. Strange but funny stuff.
Posted by chuck at 6:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
"History's Like the Weather"
In an intriguing Salon interview, documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris, comments on his recent film, The Fog of War, in which he interviews former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (subscription or free day pass required). The film has received a wide audience, in part because of the temptation to draw historical parallels between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. Morris, to his credit, is somewhat careful to avoid drawing false analogies between the two events, while recognizing some relevant comparisons:
I don't believe that history exactly repeats itself. That's not the argument. History's like the weather -- it never exactly repeats itself. And there's a danger in making inappropriate and false analogies, but it's really hard to look at this story without seeing parallels, common themes. I think about why I was attracted to doing this movie with McNamara in the first place. One of the reasons most certainly is that his stories, whether he knows it clearly or not, his stories are about error, confusion, mistakes, self-deception, wishful thinking, false ideology. It's a cornucopia of bad stuff, of human failings. And what's so interesting is that in some form or another, we see them in play today.I've been an Errol Morris fan ever since I saw The Thin Blue Line for the first time. Here's hoping that he earns a well-desrved Oscar (it would be his first) tomorrow night.
Posted by chuck at 5:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bollywood in the Times
Continuing my recent fascination with Bollywood, India's prolific film industry, here's a quick link to a New York Times op-ed piece on Bollywood's awards season, which roughly coincides with (and apparently exceeds) Hollywood's.
The editorial emphasizes Bollywood's massive audeince, noting that many Bollywood films are well received in countries such as Indonesia and Egypt that tend to resist American culture. Also intriguing was the fact that Indian aid workers have been greeted in Iraq and Afghanistan with "snatches of half-remembered Hindi songs and names of Bollywood stars from the 1970's."
The editorial also mentions Kal Ho Naa Ho, a film I reviewed a few weeks ago, noting the Bollywood industry's attempts to capture a wider audience, including "members of the educated urban elite who had looked down on Bollywood films," as well as Indians living abroad in the US and UK.
Posted by chuck at 1:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2004
Gay Ban Defeated in Georgia House
The Georgia House of Representatives narrowly voted down an amendment to the state constitution that would ban gay marriage, but because twelve voters did not participate in the vote, this story is not over yet:
The Senate had previously approved the measure, so Thursday's vote could have meant final legislative approval and sent the ban on to voters to decide in the November election.If you're interested in how your Georgia representative voted, go here. This should continue to be one of the more fascinating legislative sessions in Georgia in a long time.
Seven of the 180 members of the House were present but did not vote, and five others had excused absences. Those 12 lawmakers can be expected to be targets of intense lobbying over the next few days.
Immediately after the vote was counted, Republican members moved for Senate Resolution 595 to be reconsidered on Monday, when the Christian Coalition of Georgia and the gay rights group Georgia Equality had already planned to bring hundreds of their supporters to the Capitol.
Edited for multiple typos, forgotten title. Remind me to never write a blog entry unless I'm sufficiently caffienated.
Posted by chuck at 9:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 26, 2004
FLM Interviews
Before I forget: Matt of Rashomon links to some articles written by prominent directors in the winter 2004 issue of FLM, a magazine by Landmark Theaters, the outstanding art-house theater chain. Some highlights:
- Denys Arcand, The Barbarian Invasions
- Errol Morris, The Fog of War
- Bernardo Bertolucci, The Dreamers
- Patty Jenkins, Monster
Posted by chuck at 8:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Stone Reader
After reading George's entry on Mark Moskowitz's fascinating literary quest documentary, The Stone Reader, I've been waiting for some time to actually see the film for myself. The doucmentary focuses on Moskowitz's appreciation for Dow Mossman's 1972 novel, The Stones of Summer, and his desire to track down Mossman who never published another novel.
The film opens, interestingly, with a scene in which Moskowitz self-consciously calls attention to the contrived nature of documentary truth. We see him "selling himself" to the director or photography, while Moskowitz's own son holds the boom mic. Later, we see Moskowitz, who also directs and produces campaign commercials, working at his editing machine, putting the film together. Throughout the film, he carefully crafts an image of himself as an avid consumer of books, with bookshelves prominently displayed in nearly every interior shot and Amazon.com boxes arriving frequently at his house.
The quest narrative provides an interesting framework for telling the story of literary admiration, even if it seemed a little artificial to me (the Salon critic had the same impression I did, calling it a "shaggy dog" story). In a sense, it allows Moskowitz to indulge his appreciation for the novel. It also allows him to implicitly criticize the ways in which the publishing industry can devour the labor of even the most talented and promising writers (such as Mossman, whose original publisher, Bobbs Merrill, stopped publishing fiction).
More than anything, the film seems to convey how deeply authors such as Mossman and his mentor at Iowa, William Cotter Murray, needed to have their labor affirmed by a reader. In this regard, Mossman's reaction to Moskowitz's quest is fascinating: "You're more than the ideal reader. You're in another dimension." The build-up to meeting Mossman was nicely developed, and I found these sequences to be utterly fascinating, in part because I do find that image of short-lived fame to be such an intriguing concept.
At the same time, the film subtly emphasizes what it describes as a declining literary culture. We hear a Norman Mailer interview on Moskowitz's radio, in which Mailer suggests thatthe novel will soon disappear. We see greybeards such as literary critic Leslie Fieldler, former Iowa creative writing professor Murray, and John Seelye, the NY Times critic whose review prompted Moskowitz to buy the book, all lamenting what the Salon writer, Laura Miller, decribes as their "tenuous hold on a culture that is ebbing away."
I did notice, like George, that the film had a somewhat masculinist tone, with few, if any, women having prominent roles (the only woman he interviews is his mom), a fact the film seems to gloss. In fact, I wondered if Moskowitz's decision to emphasize his wife's request not to appear in the film might have been an attempt to acknowledge that criticism to some extent. I also found the decision not to clearly identify the subject matter of the book (or Moskowitz's reasons for enjoying it so much) to be a compelling omission. You get veiled references to the beauty of the language, to the Vietnam War, but very little in the way of specifics, and so I found the film to be less about the novel itself, and more about Moskowitz's nostalgia for a literate culture that he fears is fading away (Harry Potter notwithstanding).
Posted by chuck at 2:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Life's But a Walking Shadow...
After reading about scribblingwoman's frustrations at the "Which Book Are You?" quiz, I decided to take it one last time. I'd been scoring out as Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita, a great book, but a little unsettling as a self-representation. On further review, I found out the book that best "represents" me is...
You're The Sound and the Fury!
by William Faulkner
Strong-willed but deeply confused, you are trying to come to grips
with a major crisis in your life. You can see many different perspectives on the issue,
but you're mostly overwhelmed with despair at what you've lost. People often have a hard
time understanding you, but they have some vague sense that you must be brilliant
anyway. Ultimately, you signify nothing.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
I actually did my senior thesis on The Sound and the Fury and my MA thesis on As I Lay Dying, so I found this choice to be perfect. Then I read the decription. "Deeply confused?" Hmm... "Overwhelmed with despair?" Say what?
The good news is that scribblingwoman's comments led me to Maud Newton's blog where she discusses her appreciation of Faulkner's novel, specifically Quentin's meditations on time, which is what attracted me to the novel in the first place.
Posted by chuck at 1:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 25, 2004
In Other News...
Here are a few passing thoughts that never quite achieved blog entry status:
I'm turning into a political junkie. I really can't get enough now. The combination of the presidential primaries, early polls, and the immediacy and volume of news and commentary in the blogosphere is turning into a serious addiction. But, anyway, the turnout for the Democratic primary in Utah probably isn't good news for Bush, as Utah voter Blake Sarlow pointed out (Yahoo link may not work):
Officials printed 5,000 extra ballots in Salt Lake City to accommodate the demand. "Three blocks from Temple Square and there's a giant line of Democrats," said Blake Sarlow, waiting to vote. "It's the craziest thing."
I watched Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen (IMDB) last night. I was rather impressed by the film's clear-eyed treatment of teen partying and sexuality, but found the formal technique of gradually washing out the film's colors until it was virtually monochromatic to be not only distracting but also heavy-handed. Quite honestly, at first I thought something was wrong with my television. Still, the screenplay, co-written by the film's supporting actress, Nikki Reed, was rather sharp, and performances by Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter were very good. Looks like Steve Shaviro and I disagree about the formal elements, although I'd agree with him that the quick camera movements added to the film. I'd also agree that the film seems too moralistic for my tastes. One other question about the film: Doesn't it seem strange that the film sets us up to condemn teen sex and that the girls generally have sex with black men? Is the taboo against representing interracial sex in Hollywood being used here as a way to communicate the dangers of having sex as a teenager?
I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed for a potential paper on teaching globalization via representations of work, and it's an intriguing book. Her descriptions of working for Wal-Mart certainly remind me of my experiences working for Home Depot when I was a graduate student at Georgia State. I know the book has been criticized because Ehrenreich is essentially a "tourist," and to a certain extent, I was, too. I knew that eventually I'd leave the Depot for a PhD program, which allowed me to protect myself emotionally from that life, but the book absolutely opens up some questions about the difficulties of getting by on near-minimum-wage pay. In a sense, I think the work that Ehrenreich discusses is actually beyond description, that low-wage service work cannot really be represented adequately. This goes beyond the simple distinction between an object and its referent to me; it's something more visceral, physical, emotional, mental, psychological. Even with my distancing techniques, when I stepped into a Home Depot, I became a different person. When I heard an interview conducted at a Home Depot while watching TV at home, I immediately felt myself falling into a bad mood, just from hearing the atmospheric sounds on my TV.
Posted by chuck at 1:36 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
February 24, 2004
Reactions to the Federal Marriage Amendment
I don't read Andrew Sullivan's blog very often, but ever since President Bush announced publicly that he will support and pursue an Amendment to the Constitution protecting the "sanctity of marriage," Sullivan has been posting his own deeply moving reactions to Bush's speech as well as a number of emails he has received from a wide variety of people criticizing the announcement. The overall effect is pretty powerful--people from a variety of political positions sharing their reactions, their feelings of betrayal or loss or shock that our leader could write discrimination into the Constitution through the Federal Marriage Amendment. It's a truly effective use of blogging, using the medium's personal immediacy to express opposition to Bush's actions and to find comfort in the reactions of others.
Once you've read the reactions of Sullivan and his readers, go here and voice your opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. Also, a small request: consider mentioning this petition in your blog. I'm not sure how seriously people take these petitions, but I do think it's important that people voice their opposition to this amendment clearly.
Posted by chuck at 11:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Disney+Dalí
Fellow 'Herder Tanya referred me to this Wired article on "Destino," an animated collaboration between the rather unliekly pair, Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, from 1946. The short film "Destino" has been playing in theaters before the animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville. Read Tanya's entry in palms for the full scoop, but now I really want to see both films.
Posted by chuck at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nader Noise
Pretty much everybody knows by now that Ralph Nader has announced his decision to run as an Independent in the 2004 presidential election, and bloggers everywhere have been weighing in with their opinions. I'd planned to write an entry yesterday, but was not feeling very well, but now I'm glad to have had some more time to think about things.
I'll start by saying that I happily voted for Nader in the 2000 election, that I was energized by his speeches, which I had the good luck of hearing frequently on a community radio station in Champaign, Illinois. However, even in a clearly designated "blue state," I weighed that vote very carefully, knowing that Bush's policies were not as close to Gore's as they appeared (I've spent five minutes trying to work in an "objects are closer than they appear" rear-view mirror joke, but it's not working), although I couldn't have imagined John Ashcroft having such a major political role.
Like Harry at Crooked Timber, I think it's also important to acknowledge that it would have been impossible to predict September 11, or the political fallout from that event. It's also important to note that Gore ran a mediocre campaign, highlighted by his uninspiring decision to choose Joe Lieberman as his runningmate (Michael Bérubé has some useful comments on the 2000 election here). The possibility of securing federal funding for the Green Party was far too enticing, and I felt that the 2000 election offered a nice opportunity to build broader support for a third party (even though the Greens aren't quite representative of my politics). In a sense, my vote was an act of resistance against the Clinton-style centrism that had come to dominate federal elections.
I do respect Nader's work as a consumer advocate and as someone who has fought to protect workers from abuses by American corporations, but Nader's campaign in 2004 risks tarnishing that legacy for me. As George points out, Nader won't win in November, and the primary benefit of his 2000 campaign was, in my opinion, federal funding. Voting for a single candidate, as an independent, will not change the political landscape in any considerable way.
As an aside, I'm not sure I buy the argument that Nader will steal votes only from the Democratic candidate (especially if that candidate is Edwards). Many Republicans might see voting for Nader as a safe "protest vote" against Bush without having to vote for the Democratic candidate. I'll also agree with the assertion that Nader may be in a better position to attack Republican policies than a Democratic candidate might, but given how he ran his 2000 campaign, I'm not sure that I'm completely comfortable that he'll do that.
I'm unwilling to demand that Nader not run. As Chun suggests, that's not very democratic. But in an important and tightly contested election, I will strongly discourage people from voting for Nader. As Howard Dean suggests, this election is about coalition building, and the only way to see that coalition win is to gain more votes in the electoral college than the Republican Party.
Posted by chuck at 1:20 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
February 22, 2004
Now, If He Were From Arkansas...
It's probably no secret to most of my readers that I will be very happy if the voters send George Bush back to his Crawford, Texas, ranch this November. I don't remember ever feeling such strong opposition to a presidential candidate (I was too young to really understand Ronald Reagan, but still find him less undesirable), and it appears that a number of people share my feelings of distaste for the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but perhaps I'm on the outside when it comes to why people dislike president Bush. According to an AP article, it's pretty simple:
John McAdams, a political scientist at Marquette University, said resentment of Bush is particularly strong among liberals who already hold three things against him: "First, he's a conservative. Second, he's a Christian. And third, he's a Texan. When you add all of those things up, that invokes pretty much every symbol of the cultural wars.''Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd say that most people who oppose Bush's re-election don't care that he's a Christian (except where he has allowed it to interfere with the blurring of church and state), and most of us really don't care that the man is from Texas (after all, I really like Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, and Ann Richards). And quite honestly, his verbal gaffes really don't bother me that much, even though I always appreciated Clinton's eloquence. Maybe I'm outside of the mainstream on this one, but I always thought it was his policies that mattered, not his home state, his personality, or his religious practices. Really quickly, I object to this reductive analysis because it deeply misrepresents the opposition to Bush's presidency, implying that it's only a bunch of New York or Massachusetts liberals who oppose Bush (which is obviously far from true)."It's particularly galling when somebody who mangles his syntax and doesn't pronounce words extremely well and is from Texas beats you,'' McAdams added.
More later on Ralph Nader's decision to "run for president" as an independent.
Posted by chuck at 7:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Capturing the Friedmans
During interviews promoting his compelling documentary, Capturing the Friedmans (IMDB), Andrew Jarecki invariably reports that he initially planned to make a film about clowns who performed at birthday parties for wealthy children living in Manhattan. However, as he talked to David Friedman, the city's most popular clown, small details about his haunted private life began to emerge. Gradually, David revealed that his family had been torn apart by a notorious child molestation scandal in the late 1980s in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island; his father, Arnold, and his brother, Jesse, had been convicted of dozens of child molestation charges, with David insisting on their innocence. Other footage, filmed privately during the 1988 trial, shows David angrily denouncing the charges against Arold and Jesse on a video camera in something close to a videotape confessional to "his future self." Soon we see videotape and super-8 film footage from family collections, the father and his three sons hamming in front of the camera, playfully performing music and skits before an imagined audience.
This mixture of contemporary interviews (with several of the family members, law enforcement officials, and alleged victims) and the Friedman's video library creates a compelling documentary that takes its subject and its audience seriously. While Jarecki has been careful to avoid explicitly commenting on the guilt or innocnece of Arnold and Jesse, he skillfully questions the methods that police detectives used to gather information and subtly reminds veiwers that no forensic evidence was offered to support the molestation charges. In other interviews with both family members and alledged victims, Jarecki demonstrates the ureliable nature of memory itself, specifically in the case of one witness whose description of the after-school computer classes when Jesse and Arnold allegedly committed their crimes is often laced with contradictions. As Michael Atkinson suggests, Jarecki simply allows investigators to talk until they've "buried themselves in righteous dung." Jarecki also draws from the observations of Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter, who reminds viewers that the Friedman case emerged in the late 1980s, just as hysteria about child abuse at day-care facilities had reached its peak. The use of family film footage adds a quality of cinema-verite to the film, especially the use of handheld camera during one sequence where parents of the alleged victims chase the Friedman family across the courthouse parking lot (which reminded me of a similar shot sequence in Barbara Kopple's amazing documentary, Harlan County, USA).
At the same time, Jarecki's film calls into question the reliability of David and other members of the Friedman family, as Roger Ebert points out. David's protests about his father and brother are a little too strong, and we gradually learn more about Arnold's pedophilia (it's clear that he owned a large collection of child pornography, and he later confessed privately to molesting the son of a family friend), leaving us with some ambiguity about exactly what Arnold might have done. In this sense, the film follows the logic of trial films as described by Carol Clover, positioning the audience as a "jury" re-trying the case, but without offering a clear verdict for either Arnold or Jesse (although Jesse's innocence is strongly implied).
But to say that the film is merely about the "elusiveness of the facts" seems entirely too reductive. Instead, the film should be understood, in part, as a commentary on the Freidman family's desire to record and remember their experiences, even the bitter conflicts that sometimes erupted between family members. It also addresses the complicated dynamics of the Friedman family itself. I found myself inhabiting a range of reactions to all of the members of the Friedman family from sympathy to suspicion. The film haunted me long after I finished watching it, and the DVD offers ample supplemental material to address many of the questions that were left unanswered in the film itself.
I'd really appreciate knowing what other readers thought about this film. I'm still not entirely resolved about my feelings towards some of the characters or about the stance the film takes towards them.
Posted by chuck at 3:53 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
February 21, 2004
Orkut at Georgia Tech
Via the Georgia Tech community on Orkut: an article in Georgia Tech's student newspaper, The Technique, on Friendster, Orkut, and other online networking communities.
Posted by chuck at 2:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 20, 2004
More Fading Film News
I have to leave for school in a minute, but I just wanted to link to this article on the decline of traditional film. More later.
Posted by chuck at 9:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
My Southern Roots Are Showing
Weird. I never realized how much of a southern dialect I have. I just took this online "Yankee or Dixie" quiz based on the Harvard Dialect Survey results and scored strongly "Dixie." I should not be tremendously surprised, I suppose, because my parents have lived most of their lives in the south. I'd also imagine that my answers to some of the questions (caramel as 2 or 3 syllables? sneakers or tennis shoes?) might have been different if I was still living either in Illinois or Indiana. But, pretty much no matter where I go, sugary carbonated beverages will always be Cokes, and the plural form of you will always be y'all.
Note: Because this entry has been attracting so much blog spam, I've decided to close the comments on it. If you feel strongly compelled to leave a comment about this quiz, feel free to leave them on another entry.
Posted by chuck at 9:37 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
February 18, 2004
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing
One of the most underrated films of the 1980s is now available on DVD with a director's commentary track. If you haven't seen Patricia Rozema's 1987 film, you should definitely check it out.
This is actually great news because the film has not been available in the US in some time. I used to teach the film at the University of Illinois and always found interesting things to discuss with my students.
Posted by chuck at 10:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Spellbound
Or, "Orthography Dreams." Spellbound (IMDB) is a thrilling documentary that follows eight middle-school age students as they prepare for the national spelling bee held yearly in Washington, DC (please note: while writing this entry, I'm feeling entirely too self-conscious about my spelling skills).
The film opens by interviewing eight candidates from diverse backgrounds, and like Jenny, I found myself identifying with several of the kids' neuroses and habits. As the film's suspense mounted, I also found myself choosing a "favorite" kid, while rooting against others. The film clearly positions you to root for an African-American girl from Washington, DC, but reactions to other kids seem to be based more on individual tastes. Like Jenny's brothers (scroll down to her comments), I found the "spastic kid from Jersey" really annoying, but beyond that, I thought the kids were generally charming and quirky in the best possible ways.
I think that what I found most interesting was how the film actually created a "villain," a kid who had finished second the year before and was competing again. Even though several of the kids whose stories we followed were repeat competitors, the fact that this kid came in near the end of the film led me to perceive him as the "bad guy," threatening to spoil my happy ending. I also found the reaction shots of the parents (who were generally portrayed as supportive) to be interesting, especially given the ways in which the film plays on the viewer's emotions.
I don't want to spoil the suspense for people who haven't yet seen the film. That's certainly part of the fun. I did, however, appreciate that one competitor managed to advance to a later round after successfully spelling the word, "Palimpsest."
Mild spoiler below:
I did find it strange when the director chose to cut away from the spelling champion just before she spelled the winning word. Instead of watching her win first-hand, we see her commenting in retrospect about winning before the film cuts back to her successfully spelling the winning word. I almost threw the remote. Did other people have this reaction?
Posted by chuck at 1:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2004
Remaking Global Cinema
Back in film theory mode (some Ring spoilers ahead): I've been thinking about the concept of the remake lately for reasons that are somewhat complicated (although they are more than loosely connected to some writing I've been doing on The Ring). As many readers likely know, Dreamworks' 2002 version of The Ring is a remake of the Japanese horror film hit, Ringu, and as many critics have complained, Dreamworks bought the US distribution rights to the Japanese original in order to suppress its release in the States until after they had completed their version of the film.
A similar relationship exists between the Spanish film, Abre los Ojos, and Cameron Crowe's stylish remake, Vanilla Sky, although Ojos was released before Crowe completed his version of the story. In both cases, the fact of remaking the film has been seen as a lack of originality, implying that Hollywood simply steals the ideas of international cinema for its own gain. I'm intrigued by this notion of originality and the "aura" (to use Benjamin's overused, but valuable, term) of the precursor film, especially in light of The Ring's explicit treatment of a secret videotape that presents itself as a window into a child's unconscious mind.
While doing some lazy Google-style research, I did come across two academic essays that might frame some of the issues I want to raise: Steven Jay Schneider's "World Horror Cinema" (PDF) and Leonardo Quaresima's "Loving Texts Two at a Time," (the link has suddenly disappeared).
Note: Another example would be Christopher Nolan's recent remake of the Norwegian film, Insomnia.
Posted by chuck at 2:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Can the Georgia Senate...
...be declared legally insane?
The proposed amendment to the state constitution forbidding gay marriage passed the state senate yesterday. The amendment, designed to fortify heterosexual marriage, passed only after several spoof amendments forbidding adultery and limiting Georgians to one marriage over the course of their lives were voted down. Supporters of the constitutional amendment were celebrating at a local strip club and could not be reached for comment.
George is also talking about this topic today, comparing the opposition to gay marriage to the opposition to the Civil Rights movement. Meanwhile, in California, things make a lot more sense.
Posted by chuck at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2004
Experimental Game Lab at Tech
Note to self: Be sure to visit Georgia Tech's new Experimental Game Lab on Friday, February 27, at some point between 1 and 6 PM (Via Grand Text Auto).
I've known about the new lab for some time (it's housed in what used to be a computer lab for freshman composition classes), but haven't had a chance to really investigate what is happeneing there. If you happen to be in the Atlanta area, be sure to swing by.
Posted by chuck at 9:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Writers on the War
An interesting project in Saturday's Guardian features short comments by writers ranging from Julian Barnes and Nadine Gordimer to Studs Terkel and Margaret Drabble about the war in Iraq. The collection is based on a similar 1937 project by W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender to compile comments by novelists and writers on the Spanish Civil War. Via Tena, filling in for Atrios.
Posted by chuck at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 14, 2004
Zell Miller Uncovers Far Left Conspiracy
In a speech entitled "A Deficit of Decency,"* (speech also available on Miller's website) Georgia Senator Zell Miller exposed a far-reaching left-wing conspiracy to deprive American citizens of decent moral beliefs and traditional family values. Miller accurately diagnosed the process by which the left wing has managed to eliminate Christian teachings from the United States, endangering the many thousands of churches that dot cities and towns across the country, noting that the United States faced a "famine" of Christian teachings after courts forced the removal of the Ten Commandments from state courthouses and destroyed countless heterosexual marraiges by allowing for people of the same gender to marry.
More damaging to the far-left cause: Senator Miller identified the left-wing attempts to take over the minds of innocent citizens during this year's Super Bowl halftime show. Miller observed in his speech that
The culture of far left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl's now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon.Yes, the same Viacom that has owned Blockbuster Video for over a decade. According to reports, Blockbuster is merely a conservative front designed to mask left-wing corruption. The same Viacom that owns CBS, who refused to air an advertisement by the liberal grassroots organization, MoveOn.org. CBS's decision is now believed to be another move designed to obfuscate the left-wing conspiracy against traditional values.
After broadly describing the secret "crotch-grabbing culture," Miller also exposed one of the chief leftist agents of the culture wars, Comrade Kid Rock, whose raunchy songs celebrating strip clubs actually demonstrate a strong message of feminist empowerment. However, Miller's diligence exposed Rock's danger to the United States:
But as bad as all this was, the thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing that ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having "a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch." Think about that.Such images require quick and decisive action, and Miller and some of his colleagues in Congress have acted, promoting a broad range of bills designed to protect marriage and to protect the right of the goverment to impose Christian doctrine by placing replicas of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms. It is hoped that by preventing gay marriage, female rock musicians will no longer be tempted to reveal their "mammary glands" on national television. FCC chairman Michael Powell took a break from deregulating the US media to support Miller's contentions, commenting "I personally was offended by the entire production." Powell quickly added that further deregulation of the media, allowing Viacom to own an even larger chunk of the media pie, seemed like punishment enough for airing such offensive material.
Miller concluded by addressing the much discussed deficit, but noted that this deficit, usually understood as a budget deficit that future taxpayers would be required to pay, has been misunderstood. It is in fact "a deficit of decency," one that will require relentless censorship to balance. In fact, our children and grandchildren will have to watch thousands of hours of wholesome television shows in order to balance all of the indecent images to which we have been exposed.
Leaders of the vast left-wing conspiracy could not be reached for comment other than to say that Comrade Rock has been punished for so brazenly revealing the inner workings of the Party's plans for promoting the Right to Party. Other members of the left began searching for further means of encouraging indecency and general mayhem, including a proposal to hire fans to shout profanity while attending major sporting events, thus subverting crowd microphones and giving the FCC a massive headache in pursuing the war on indecency.
* All Miller quotations taken from an actual speech delivered on the floor of Congress.
Posted by chuck at 10:28 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
My Aunt's Twentieth Century
I just returned from near Athens, Georgia, where I attended my aunt's 97th birthday party. I've been trying to wrap my head around the concept that she has lived for 97 years for most of the day, but it's such a difficult thing for me to imagine.
She's incredibly healthy, and her memory is still fairly sound, particularly her ability to remember her friends and family. It's also great to see that she has so many friends (there were around 50 people at the party) to celebrate with her.
I keep going back to thinking about the things she must have seen, the stories she had, many of which are now lost, even though her memory is relatively sharp, and I really wish now that I had listened to my father when he told me to write that stuff down.
Posted by chuck at 9:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 13, 2004
Luckily I'm a Night Person
Weird. I was working on a blog enry a few minutes ago when suddenly my dishwasher started gushing out water at the base. So, with quick cat-like reflexes, I was able to eventually figure out how to cut off the water in my apartment...
...only a few minutes after I called my father and woke him up at 2 AM to ask him what I should do. I do feel bad for my downstairs neighbors, though. They're going to wake up tomorrow with a kitchen full of water.
Seems like poetic justice since I'm writing a paper on haunted technologies right now.
Posted by chuck at 2:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Uncovered Review
Several months ago, I commented briefly on the MoveOn.org sponsored house parties for screening Robert Greenwald's documentary, Uncovered. At the time, I was simply intrigued by how the film had been distributed. Now that I've had an opportunity to watch the film, I'll throw in my two cents about it.
I'll first point out that I find Greenwald's film to be an impressive and important documentary, one that offers a powerful argument against the war in Iraq. Uncovered used editing very effectively in several key sequences, cutting between Bush's famous State of the Union speech and CIA intelligence experts who take apart his major justifications for the war. The number of experts Greenwald assembles, including John Dean, Scott Ritter, and Joseph Wilson, is quite impressive, and I found their arguments to be very convincing. If more undecided voters were to see this documentary, I think that would be a very good thing.
That being said, I know well that my impression of the film is certainly inflected by any number of biases. As I watched the film, I tried to imagine how undecided voters might respond to it. Would they notice that the film failed to offer any interviews or comments by people who supported the war? Would those viewers object to a documentary that took such a clear argumentative approach? I'm not sure I have an answer to those questions. One minor quibble: the film used borrowed footage from C-Span broadcasts to build some of its arguments without displaying the date of the speech we were watching, which could occasionally be confusing, but that's probably me being picky.
I'd also imagine that because many of the documentary's claims (yellowcake, mobile weapons factories, terrorist connections) have been so thoroughly confirmed (annoying WaPost registration now required) by now that Uncovered might have a much different imapct on viewers than it did when it was first released. I'd be curious to hear from others who have seen this film. What were your reactions to it?
Posted by chuck at 12:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 10, 2004
Bibliographical Notes for The Ring
Once again via Cinema Minima (and also Metaphilm): An essay on The Ring. I'll be delivering a conference paper on The Ring in a few weeks, and this source looks like it will come in handy. No further comment yet. I've got grading to do, and then I'm off to the Kucinich event.
Posted by chuck at 6:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Video is Dead. Long Live Video.
Via Cinema Minima: It looks like the end of the road for the VCR, with Philips, one of the pioneer manufacturers since the 1970s, planning to stop selling VCRs in Australia to focus on DVD players.
According to the article VCR sales are declining rapidly, at a pace of 30-40% per year. I think the article may overstate this decline in that sales of combination VCR/DVD plaers are still very popular as many consumers still have large videotape libraries. Interesting story, though.
Posted by chuck at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Academic Articles on Blogging
I'm too lazy and sleepy to write anything witty, but Jill has linked to Lisbeth's collection of links to academic articles on blogging. How cool is that?
Posted by chuck at 2:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 9, 2004
I'm in the Mood for...
Trainspotting, at least according to the What to Rent algorithm, which bases movie rental suggestions on personality and mood. The film suggestion generator even prescribes that I watch my suggested film in the letterboxed edition for maximum pleasure (dude, I know that already).
On subsequent logins, the generator prompts you to find out how satisfied you were with the recommendation. I think the mood questions are a bit broad (Do you want to see something similar to your usual tastes? Do you want a popcorn or a "red wine" flick?) to really be useful, but then I've seen way too many films.
Posted by chuck at 10:14 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
February 8, 2004
Dennis Kucinich Unplugged
Democratic Congressman and Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich will be appearing live at Eddie's Attic, a local music venue on the square in downtown Decatur. Kucinich's appearance features music and spoken word performances from a whole bunch of cool people, tentatively including cunninglynguists (some reviews here and here), a current favorite of mine.
Eddie's Attic is a pretty intimate venue, which will likely allow people the opportunity to connect personally with the candidate. Tickets are on a sliding scale between $10 and $20 (Via the Atlanta discussion group on Orkut).
Posted by chuck at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
CBS won't show this advertisement because it's an "advocacy ad," even though it accurately reflects the long-term effect of Bush's economic plan. But a certain oil company with strong ties to the vice president, one that overcharged the American taxpayer, one that received a reconstruction contract without any competition, is allowed to air face-saving ads letting us know that "it's all okay."
I'm with George. Let's start a cronyism meme.
Posted by chuck at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 7, 2004
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Throughout Errol Morris's fascinating documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (IMDB), former Secretary of Defense McNamara, one of the most volatile figures of the Vietnam era, proves to be an incredibly compelling figure, someone who can be remarkably self-critical and reflective about the decisions he made to deepen our involvement in the Vietnam War. Or someone who can speak frankly about calculating how to make US fire bombing missions in Japan during World War II more efficient, even acknowledging that had the US lost the war, he would likely have been tried as a war criminal. But then, just as quickly, McNamara closes down, refusing to address Morris's prompt to further reflect on US culpability in Vietnam. As I watched the film, I became increasingly fascinated by these gaps, by those moments when McNamara refused to comment further about a subject.
The film itself is an incredible achievement, the kind of film that Errol Morris was put on this planet to make. It primarily features talking-head footage of interviews Morris recently conducted with the 85-year-old McNamara using a technology called the "Interrotron" (see Ebert's explanation), a video device that allows Morris and his subject to look into each other eyes while the subject also looks directly into the camera, creating a sense of intimacy between the spectator and the interviewee. Morris mixes in actuality footage of World War II and the Vietnam War with shots of tape recorders playing audiotapes of McNamara's meetings with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He also includes charts and graphs, time-lapse photography, and shots of newspaper articles, often cutting so quickly that it becomes impossible to absorb everything we've seen. The film is driven by Philip Glass' melancholic, mysterious score. The result is a challenging film that bears multiple viewings.
Framed around McNamara's eleven "lessons," the documentary traces his life and career, starting with what McNamara describes as his earliest memory, the celebrations of the end of the First World War when he was two years old, with McNamara acknowledging the unlikelihood of such a vivid, early memory. This sequence sets the tone for the film's consistent practice of undermining our ability to know or understand the world with complete certainty. This sense of uncertainty about the ways in which history is written seems to guide Morris's approach in The Fog of War, as he recently acknowledged in his notes on the film:
"At first I thought McNamara's failure to apologize was a weakness of the book [1995's "In Retrospect," which inspired "Fog of War"]; now I think that it is one of his strengths," writes Morris in his director's statement. "It is much more difficult to analyze the causes of error than apologize for it."Rather than an apology, which is essentially designed to erase the past, McNamara provides us with at least a small window into the Vietnam era, albeit one obscured by the very "fog of war' that he describes.
The film challenges McNamara's credibility in several places, sometimes through the audio recordings of past conversations, sometimes by the questions we hear Morris ask off-screen, but as Slate writer Fred Kaplan points out, McNamara's (usually self-serving) narratives of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and Vietnam War clearly misrepresent what actually happened, but like Kaplan, I don't see these misrepresentations as flaws in Morris's film, which is less a history of US foreign policy than it is a reflection on the production of historical truth. As McNamara himself acknowledges, he would have been viewed much differently historically had the US lost World War II, leading one observer to recall Benjamin's observation that history is written by the victors.
Fog of War also offers a profound critique of what McNamara refers to as "rationality," which might be understood in terms of the relentless and calculated efficiency that was a part of his celebrated image as a World War II planner and as an executive at Ford (he helped in the development of seat belts), an observation that challenges some of McNamara's earlier assertions. Again, this willingness to engage in self-reflection, if not self-criticism, was compelling, even with McNamara's refusal to pursue some of these points, and perhaps because of the refusal, the things he couldn't--or wouldn't--say.
The film offers several moments that may tempt viewers to draw comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. Several of McNamara's lessons acknowledge this perception, including his first lesson, "Empathize with your enemy." McNamara comments only about his role in the Vietnam War, never mentioning Iraq or the current war, but it's relatively clear from the coded language that he feels that some of his lessons still apply. In his case, the failure to understand that Vietnam perceived the war as a war of decolonization was partially to blame for the failure of the US military. To be sure, McNamara is quick to dismiss these connections while Morris more openly encourages making these comparisons.
Overall, this is a compelling film, one that demands multiple viewings.
Posted by chuck at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
For Serious Collectors Only
As many of my regular readers may know, I find parodies of action figures to be very funny (see here, here, and here). This new "Dishonest Dubya" Lying Action Figure (actually a really cool animation by Angry Candy Productions) is no exception. "Dishonest Dubya" comes complete with four outfits and fourteen actual quotations from Bush speeches. A "remote control" allows you to change Dubya's outfit or to cause him to speak or choke on a pretzel at the click of a button. Fun stuff.
Posted by chuck at 5:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 6, 2004
Fear and Loathing in Globalization
It's officially "Short Attention Span Day" at the home office of the chutry experiment. So while I'm taking a break from grading, I'll add one more link to my external memory file. Fredric Jameson has a review of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (which I still haven't read) in a recent issue of The New Left Review (via Dr. B's blog).
Posted by chuck at 1:07 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
February 5, 2004
Separate Cinema
Just a quick link and comment to Separate Cinema, which appears to be a great resource for teaching black film history:
Founded in 1976, the Separate Cinema Archive® has, for over two decades, been the only source dedicated to the art and fascinating history of the African-Americans in film. The archive of over 25,000 posters, lobby cards, stills and assorted ephemera spans the past century of important and historic black cinema.Can't blog. Must grade.
Posted by chuck at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Maybe You Can Fight City Hall
After all the negative publicity, Georgia school superintendent Kathy Cox has decided to drop the proposal that evolution be eliminated from the state's high school curriculum. Now let's see if we can save the history curriculum, too (via The Salt-Box).
Thanks to all the people who sent in letters and emails or signed petitions.
Posted by chuck at 3:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jimmy Carter Blog
Former President Jimmy Carter is blogging his trip to West Africa through the Carter Center website. Carter's trip appears to be primarily focused on addressing some of the health issues that many African nations are facing.
It's more of a travel journal than a blog (no hyperlinks, no blogroll), but news from Africa is too frequently dismissed or ignored, making Carter's travelogue something worth following.
Cross-posted on my course blog.
Posted by chuck at 10:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 4, 2004
Now That He's Out of the Race...
Hopefully some of Senator Lieberman's "Joementum" will rub off on me. Or maybe not. At any rate, massive full-speed grading sprint ahead. Light blogging (with occasional euphoric bursts of procrastination entries) likely for the next few days.
Posted by chuck at 2:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 1, 2004
Media Studies: The Next Generation
Also via Dennis Jerz: A BBC article on media literacy. The article reports that enrollment in media studies courses is up 15.8%, with educators hoping to teach basic "media literacy" to students as young as three years old. The goals established by the British Film Institute would include helping children to distinguish between different types of media in order to understand "that the sources and motivation of a text can make a difference to the truth or accuracy of what it says."
Posted by chuck at 11:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Adam Vinatieri Has Sold His Soul
Two game-winning field goals in the Super Bowl in three years? That's just too good to be true. I don't think I even dreamed that high when I played football in my backyard. Okay, so unlike George and Krista, I'm kind of a football fan.
TeeVee Archive blogged the entire game including the commercials (Via Dennis Jerz).
Posted by chuck at 10:41 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Georgia Education Resources
I'll highlight other topics soon, but the Georgia education controversies have been drawing quite a few readers to my blog. For those readers who are interested in the topic, here are a couple of useful links:
- KathyCoxEvolve
- A Georgia Science Education Petition
- Jimmy Carter's comments on the proposed curriculum
In the changes to both the history and the science curriculum, two motivations seem to be at play. First, the new curriculum seems designed to prepare Georgia students for statewide tests used to measure school performance. As Joseph Jarrell points out:
States are facing new federal mandates to improve test scores. Interestingly, states can devise many of the tests used to measure this improvement. While mandating that we teach less, Georgia will prepare assessments that test less. Interesting formula: teach less, test less, brag more.Second, the curriculum also seems designed to avoid any form of controversy, whether the "controversial" theory of evolution, which Cox describes as a "negative buzzword" or the more controversial aspects of American history.
In both cases, the implication is that we need to protect our students from any ideas or concepts that might be threatening. This approach understimates the ability of students to think critically about their values and about culture more generally. Avoiding controversial material also assumes that students are merely passive recipients of the material they are taught rather than independent thinkers capable of sorting through the ideas, concepts, and theories raised in the classroom.
Posted by chuck at 4:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Value-Added Cinema
Via Boing Boing: Steve Seid and Peter Conheim present Value-Added Cinema, a 47-minute montage of "egregious product placement shots, drawing on 70 films—removing the gratuitous and unnecessary plots and leaving behind just the exhilarating core of consumerism." Now playing at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.
Posted by chuck at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack