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January 31, 2005
Hays Code Bookmark
I'm teaching Blonde Venus this week and wanted to frame the dicussion in part in terms of the Hays Code, which I found here.
Posted by chuck at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 30, 2005
Another Documentary Bookmark
For future reference: Jem Cohen's Lost Book Found looks like a really fascinating film, and while I was digging, I found this interview with Cohen in Senses of Cinema.
Posted by chuck at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Documentary Links
I'm doing a somewhat last-minute conference proposal on documentary and the war in Iraq and using this entry to collect a few links to some possibly relevant articles and webpages. I'll try to make sense later of what might appear to be a fairly random list of links.
- "Documentary showcases Iraqi perspective," Stanford Daily.
- About Baghdad, official website
- Documentary Film Review, ElectronicIraq.net
- Democracy Now interview with Sinan Antoon, Iraqi writer and poet, and filmmaker Adam Shapiro
- Scott Ritter's documentary debuts at UN
Posted by chuck at 9:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Lazy Sunday Film Reads
It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here at the home office of the chutry experiment, and I've found myself returning to a film blog that looks pretty cool from Filmmaker Magazine. Worth noting: Matthew Ross' link to Viceland.com's list of top ten "outsider" video clips.
Also worth noting: Atlanta's getting at least two interesting-looking films over the next two weeks at Landmark's Midtown Art theater: Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé and Robert Stone's documentary, Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst.
Posted by chuck at 4:23 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Frank Rich on Gunner Palace
I'm still waiting for Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's documentary, Gunner Palace, to reach Atlanta (I think it's coming in the next month or so, but Frank Rich has an article about it in The New York Times that I didn't want to lose. It's a good read if you're interested in the topic of how war is represented in film and on TV.
Posted by chuck at 11:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Ice Storm
I returned from my previously mentioned travels late Friday evening, just before Atlanta's weather turned icy. Like David, I don't mind (and sometimes even enjoy) the cold weather, but ice storms are not fun. I didn't have any good reason to brave the icy roads (or more precisely Atlanta's notoriously bad drivers trying to navigate icy roads), so I've been more or less trapped in my apartment with the few meager DVDs I could scavenge from a nearby blue-and-yellow family-friendly videostore. Because my electricty was out for two or three hours last night, I didn't even get to watch these films until fairly late, instead reading Hunter S. Thompson's latest, which I'd picked up for some "light" airplane reading, by candlelight.
After a stressful but exciting week, which I may describe later, I was not in the mood for anything heavy, leading to an unintentional double dose of Christina Applegate films, the mildly entertaining Will Ferrell vehicle, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and rumored Sundance fave, Employee of the Month. I'll skip the Anchorman review for now, given that most people have probably already formed an opinion of the Will Ferrell-Vince Vaughan-unsuspecting blond actress genre.
And I'm only going to comment quickly on Employee of the Month to say that it suffered from many of the excesses associated with the pseudo-indie formula, specifically an annoying over-use of fast-motion camera effects (I'm guessing the director has seen Requiem for a Dream one too many times) and a privileging of quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness, without making that quality very interesting or relevant to the film itself. The gunplay that comes later in this film suggests that the director has also been watching too many Guy Ritchie films, but as this reviewer notes, Matt Dillon's role in teh film suggests that the best way to describe Employee of the Month is as a poor man's Wild Things. Not recommended unless you're really bored. Or a big Matt Dillon or Steve Zahn fan.
Posted by chuck at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 26, 2005
Feeding Oscar
No time for a longer post, but just wanted to point you, my readers, to the "Expert Oscar Analaysis" article in Inside Higher Ed. Enjoy.
Posted by chuck at 8:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 25, 2005
Paul Giamatti Was Robbed
I don't really take the Oscar nominations very seriously, but after Paul Giamatti won pretty much every acting award given out in 2003, you'd think that he would have at least been nominated for an Oscar for acting in Sideways. After all, his performance was one of the things I liked best about what I found to be an overrated film (by the way, with Giamatti not getting a nod, I'd imagine that Sideways probably will not win in the best pic race--just a hunch). Hasn't Giamatti been overlooked a few times before (Man on the Moon, American Splendor)?
In other news, how did Taylor Hackford get nominated for an Academy Award for Ray? And it looks like the road is being cleaered for Marty Scorsese to finally get his statue for best director. I'll make some predictions later, maybe (I'd propose an Oscar pool, but I'm not sure I'll have time to organize it). By the way, can anyone tell me how Before Sunset is an "adapted screenply?" Is it adapted simply because it's based on characters from a prior film? Very happy it got at least one nomination, but the category is a bit odd.
Leaving town (and blog) for a few days, so expect continued limited posting.
Posted by chuck at 11:43 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 24, 2005
Speaking of David Fincher...
I've just learned that the Fight Club director's next project will be to direct Zodiac, a thriller based on Robert Graysmith's books. According to Chuck Palahniuk's official site (where I found this news), the film will focus "on the men who hunted Zodiac, the infamous serial killer who terrorized San Francisco for 25 years."
Please note that my posting entries on two consecutive days does not constitute a full-time return to the blogosphere. My schedule is still very much in flux right now, so blogging will be sporadic at best for the next few days.
Posted by chuck at 4:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 23, 2005
Tyler Durden Goes to Church
Or, perhaps, The Promise Keepers meet Braveheart. John Eldredge's Wild at Heart is encouraging Christian men to get in touch with their inner warriors. While the book was originally published in 2001, its popularity continues to grow four years later. According to Nigel Hunt's Yahoo article,
Eldredge believes many Christian men have become bored, "really nice guys" and invites them to rediscover passion by viewing their life's mission as having a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue.While I don't want to predict whether the book's impact on people who follow its advice would be positive or negative (how would one measure such a thing, anyway?), I am fascinated by the fact that Eldredge argues that modern technologies, such as the television and Internet, have rendered men passive and docile, bored with their middle-class lives. In many ways, the book echoes the male angst portrayed in Fight Club, both film and novel (a topic that I've written about recently).
I am certainly disturbed by the adventure and battle metaphors that include rescuing princesses (who, quite frankly, probably don't need rescuing), but I also want to address a recurrent assumption that I find curious. Why do so many people assume that "modern technologies," especially television, render everyone so passive? What is it about our experience of TV that allows us to accept such a claim about the power that it has over our lives? I don't think there is anything inherent about TV that necessarily defines our relationship to it as passive, but the "passivity thesis" seems to be gaining a degree of credibility that ought to be challenged.
Posted by chuck at 10:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 20, 2005
My Week in Movies
I've been pretty distracted with job stuff this week, so not much time to blog or to watch too many movies that aren't related to work, but just wanted to remind myself to show some clips from an Oscar Micheaux film in class next week to conclude my discussion of early cinema. So far, I've been pleased with the dicussion of early cinema, especially the student responses to Georges Melies's A Trip to the Moon.
In completely unrelated film news, rumor has it that DeNiro and Scorsese, attempting to recapture their 1970s mojo, are contemplating a sequel to Taxi Driver. No word yet whether the film's title will be Meet the Bickles.
Posted by chuck at 9:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
Keepin' It Real
Rodney Bethea and Skinny Suge's DVD, "Stop Snitching," has been one of the hot topics in the media this week. The DVD is being distributed underground, most prominently in Boston and Baltimore, and as its name suggests, the DVD is designed to warn people against testifying against street gang members. The documentary has aroused further controversy because Denver Nuggets hoops star, Carmelo Anthony, appears in the film, though he is not shown making any threats. I haven't had a chance to see the DVD, but the debates about "Stop Snitching" or "Stop Fucking Snitching," according to Rachael, raise all kinds of questions about documentary practice in general.
As Rachael notes, it's important to ask whether or not these images are "real," at least in terms of threats against potential snitches, and in her reading, much of the video consists of "boasting and talk." I'd also wonder how much of the video (and the promotional materials for it) are staged in other ways. It's worth noting that the DVD itself becomes a taped confession if the people in the film act on their threats. This description is more or less echoed by one of the DVD's creators, Rodney Bethea, who claims that the video was made for "entertainment purposes" only and adds that "It's no different than a documentary about a serial killer" (Bethea, according to Gregory Kane's Baltimore Sun editorial has been reticent to talk since news of the video has spread).
From my reading of Kane's editorial, I'd imagine that the underground distribution is also part of the posturing. As Scott Macaulay notes, the underground distribution "has the punch of an urban-themed Ring." When Kane asks several Baltimore high school students whether they've seen the video, two of them respond that "Stop Snitching isn't the only video of its kind, that they're quite common and that they are the only type of movies they watch." I'd imagine that these students may be playing up the significance of this video (and the presence of others like it) for the reporter.
I don't want to sound like I'm being dismissive of the real problem of witness intimidation, which according to The New York Times, affects hundreds of witnesses every year, but I do want to asert that this video is a more complicated artifact than it might initially appear, something that Rachael and the Baltimore Sun columnist convey pretty effectively. As Fox Butterfield notes in the NYT article, this lack of witness protection disproportionately affects poor and working-class people like Ricky Prince, who was murdered, and his mother, Jackie Davis, who was forced to move out of state at her own expense, and I do think that some form of witness protection is a reasonable expectation for the people who put themselves at risk in order to help prosecute violent crime.
Quick Update: A comment in Renov's book reminded me of something I wanted to add. I think I'm suspicious of characterizations of this documentary as an objective representation and want to emphasize the film's "expressive" qualities, what it seems to be saying about crime and about street gangs. It's also important to remember that the wider distribution of the DVD has most certainly carried it far away from its original audience (and that it's likely worth reading, or trying to read, "Stop Snitching" from the POV of that audience).
Posted by chuck at 5:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 16, 2005
War and Cinema
Just a quick note to remind myself to keep an eye out for Harun Farocki's 2003 documentary, War at a Distance (via Green Cine). I've been reading Michael Renov's The Subject of Documentary this weekend, and Renov's discussion of the Gulf Crisis TV Project, a grassroots group that contested CNN's "military promotion" of the first Gulf War, has me thinking about what, if anything, has changed since then, less in commercial media than in the independent or alternative media that Renov celebrates, especially with the proliferation of documentaries about the second war with Iraq (or about the Bush administration more generally). I'd imagine that this proliferation can be attributed in part to digital technologies that allow cheaper production and (more importantly) cheaper distribution, but that answer isn't compltely satisfying, simply because it doesn't explain the relatively widespread interest in these films (that is, just because a film is available doesn't mean that audiences are clamoring to watch it). I'm hoping to have more to say about Renov's book later this week, but my schedule is about to go into warp-speed, so not sure I'll have that opportunity.
Posted by chuck at 8:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 15, 2005
Television, A Novel
Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Television, a Novel features a thiry-something Parisian academic who, while spending a year in Berlin on sabbatical to conduct research on Titian, concludes that he watches too much TV and that it's preventing him from completing his work. The novel begins with the anonymous narrator confiding, "I quit watching television. I gave it up cold turkey, once and for all, never to watch another show, not even sports." He acknowledges, of course, that he waited until after the Tour de France to make this decision, and like many of us, speaks coyly about the depths of his addiction: "On average, I watched maybe two hours a day (maybe less, but I'd rather err on the side of generosity, and not try to puff myself up with a virtuously low estimate)."
The narrator's decision provokes an entertaining, humorous, satirical meditation on TV's role in our daily lives (Warren Motte aptly describes Toussaint's work as "an epic of the trivial"). Mark Holcomb, in his Village Voice review, notes that Toussaint is "in DeLillo territory," and that description seems especially apt when the narrator speaks about the endless streams of programs that play non-stop, whether the TV is running or not: "everywhere it was the same undifferentiated images, without margins or titles, without explanation, raw, incomprehensible, noisy and bright, ugly, sad, aggressive and jovial, syncopated, all equivalent." Thus, for the narrator, TV prevents the quiet contemplation needed to engage in his scholarly work, as Joy Press points out in her New York Times review. Of course the narrator consistently finds ways around his self-imposed TV boycott, concluding that it doesn't apply when he is visiting other people's homes, ultimately justifying more frequent visits to a neighboring apartment where he is supposed to be caring for their plants (though he does a humourously poor job of fulfilling this rather simple task).
The novel is also an amusing satire of the solitary academic writer and the ways in which the narrator finds ways to avoid writing. Soon, a daily trip to the swimming pool becomes justified as work precisely because it is not writing, explaining to himself that he must let his ideas "gestate" before trying to put them on the page while they are still incomplete. There's also a humorously uncomfortable scene in the novel when the narrator runs into the professor who awarded him the grant while sunning himself naked in a public park.
Throughout the novel, the narrator becomes acutely aware of television's ubiquity, its overwhelming presence in daily life. In this regard, the novel seemed almost a fictional companion to Anna McCarthy's Ambient Television, with Toussaint's playful descriptions of surveillance monitors in a museum, apartment buildings lit entirely with the dull blue light of TV screens (all of which are tuned to Baywatch of course), an electronics stor that resembles a Nam June Paik sculpture, and the narrator's own continued reading of TV listings. Despite the narrator's renunciation of TV, however, Toussaint treats our TV "addiction" sympathetically, acknowledging its seductive pleasures while also noting its ubiquity in our daily lives.
But the strength of the novel, which can best be described as a picaresque of the everyday, is its episodic structure, with the narrative consisting of a series of disconnected fragments, just like...yes, you've guessed it, just like TV.
Posted by chuck at 4:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
A Scanner Darkly Images
While blog surfing, I came across Wiley Wiggins' link to some of the first publicly released images from Richard Linklater's forthcoming adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.
Posted by chuck at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The More Things Change...
Last year I linked to this montage of a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., in honor of his birthday. One year later, King's words and the juxtaposed images from past and present still seem relevant.
Posted by chuck at 9:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Movies, Conversation, and More
Just a quick update to thank everyone for their suggestions for my film syllabus. I decided to drop Kane for now and to teach Maltese Falcon instead, mostly because I haven't had a good excuse to watch it in about five years, and it should set up the class discussion on Godard's Breathless nicely. I've also decided to go with Harlan County, USA as a counterpoint documentary to The Thin Blue Line. But I'm also glad to have themany reminders and suggestions regarding experimental and avant-garde film. I'm planning to show Meshes of an Afternoon, and if time permits, Man With a Movie Camera. I'll work in clips of other experimental films where possible.
At any rate, there are several film topics worth mentioning here. First, I'll happily plug The Conversation, a new group-authored film blog where several of my favorite film bloggers have been talking passionately about film and film criticism. It's modelled loosely on Slate's Movie Club, but looks a whole lot cooler to me.
In other news, Dr. Strangelove is coming to Atlanta this week. I've never seen it on the big screen, so I'm really looking forward to the experience.
Posted by chuck at 9:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
Reel Changes
I've just been offered the opportunity to teach an Introduction to Film course this semester, so I'm doing some very last-minute planning/organizing. The class will probably look a lot like the Intro to Film course I taught this past summer. Here's a tentative schedule, but because I'm still working out the details, I'm open to suggestions, though I'd like to have the syllabus etched in stone by no later than Friday.
Week One: Early Cinema, Edison shorts via American Memory Project (ca. 1900).The plans get pretty tentative at around week five or six, simply because I'd like to spend at least one more week covering documentary. I'd also like to work in several films not listed, especially Breathless, which I haven't taught in a few years (I'd also like to pair Breathless with a Bogart film, maybe Maltese Falcon). Finally, I'm resisting the film studies imperative that you have to teach Citizen Kane in an introduction to film class. Would I be causing my students tremendous harm if I skipped Kane just for one semester? Any film titles that you, my readers, can suggest would be much appreciated.
Week Two: Narrative, North by Northwest (1958)
Week Three: Mise-en-scene, Blonde Venus (1932)
Week Four: Cinematography, The Third Man or Touch of Evil.
Week Five: Editing, The Harder They Come
Week Six: Sound, The Conversation or Meet Me in St. Louis (1974 or 1944)
Week Seven: Narrative, Citizen Kane (1941), but I may try something else here.
Week Eight: Documentary, The Thin Blue Line (1988), or other Errol Morris doc.
Week Nine: Genre I, His Girl Friday, tentative.
Week Ten: Genre II, Lady from Shanghai
Week Eleven: Indie Cinema, Do the Right Thing (1989)
Week Twelve: Run Lola Run (1998), also tentative.
Week Thirteen: Blade Runner (1982), or Dark City
Week Fourteen: Chungking Express or, more likely (because I've taught it before), Tampopo.
Posted by chuck at 12:14 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
January 9, 2005
Hotel Rwanda
In many ways, Hotel Rwanda (IMDB) is a difficult film to review. Terry George's powerful film asks its viewers to confront the Rwanda genocide in 1994 when the Hutu militia slaughtered more than 800,000 Tutsis over the course of just 100 days. More importantly, the film reminds its viewers that the West essentially turned a blind eye towards these atrocities. During one crucial scene, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) listens to a radio broadcast as a US State Department official insists on defining what's happenening as "acts of genocide" rather than "genocide," as if such a distinction justifies inaction. This critique of inaction by Western powers is also embodied in two relatively minor characters, a photojournalist played by Joaquin Phoenix and a Canadian UN Colonel (Nick Nolte), both of whom know that the media images of the brutality will not shake European and American audiences from their complacency or shame them into action. This abandonment is best illustrated in ascene in which Paul calls the Belgian hotel owner (Jean Reno), who sits comfortably in his brightly lit, calm office, while Paul, on the other end of the line, begs him for help. In that regard, the film seems to offer what amounts to a mild self-critique, acknowledging that audiences may be deeply moved by a film like Hotel Rwanda, but will likely do little to change the causes that might have contributed to genocide.
Hotel Rwanda focuses on the story of Paul, a Hutu hotel manager at the Mille Collines, a Belgian-owned luxury hotel. We also learn early in the film that his wife and her family is Tutsi. In the film's early scenes, Paul is shown as a stylish, competent hotel manager, someone who knows that the gift of a good cigar or the best whiskey will curry more favor than a monetary bribe. He's always impeccably dressed and manages to work between all of Rwanda's conflicted communities. When the genocide begins suddenly, in response to a code phrase repeated on the radio by a jingoistic radio broadcaster, Paul's diplomatic skills--and his storehouse of bribes--allow him to work a minor miracle, housing over 1,000 Tutsi people in the hotel for the duration of the genocide. Paul's actions prompted many reviewers to read Paul as an African Oskar Schindler, a description that seems, as Cynthia Fuchs notes, "partly right," but Hotel Rwanda, in my reading, is far less sentimental than Spielberg's film, using Paul's story to criticize Western inaction rather than to celebrate the triumph of the individual over great odds.
The film's approach to the Rwanda genocide is not without controversy: George chooses to show the brutality only at a distance, and instead we often see only the effects of the brutality, as in one crucial scene in which Paul leaves his hotel compound for supplies. But I'm not sure it would be possible to convey the sheer brutality of what happened in a feature film. Any attempt to show the violence would fall short. Others have criticized the film for its "happy ending," the film's reliance on the codes of a Hollywood thriller. Cynthia Fuchs notes that the technique of focusing on a single character's story "makes the story comprehensible and tragic, but also barely references the broad structures that create such atrocity." But in many scenes, these techniques amplify the horror, particularly in a sequence early in the film when Paul instructs his wife to throw herself and their children from the roof of the hotel rather than face death by machete.
There's no question that Hotel Rwanda is an important film, one of the first to call attention to the humanitarian crises in Africa (many discussions of the film have made reference to the genocide in Sudan). While the decision to focus on a single character, a survivor like Paul Rusesabagina, may make the story more palatable to western viewers, the film clearly illustrates how the Tutsis were abandoned by the West.
Posted by chuck at 11:50 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 8, 2005
Time Travel and Philosophy
Just a quick link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on time machines (via Jonathan Goodwin).
By the way, I saw Hotel Rwanda last night and highly recommend it. I'll write a longer review later tonight, perhpas, when I've actually managed to get some work done.
Posted by chuck at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Warhol Was Right
My on-going fascination with reality TV continues. This morning's New York Times features an article on the upcoming season of The Surreal Life, a show that I used to enjoy watching occasionally on the WB (unfortunately the show will now appear on VH1, which means I won't get to see it regulalry). The third season will focus on the "unlikely romance" between Public Enemy performer Flavor Flav and "Nordic giantess" Brigitte Nielsen. Worth noting: the article emphasizes fans' responses to this "unlikely" romance, specifically athe discussion site, FansofRealityTV.com, suggesting that it defies credibility, with one viewer complaining, "VH1 must think I'm a fool to believe that....At what point can we stop calling it reality TV?" Former Full House star David Coulier, however, is convinced that the romance is real. In other news, GHW notes that Nielsen will also be appearing on Britain's Celebrity Big Brother with Germaine Greer.
Posted by chuck at 2:03 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Cinematic Educations
I found Krista's discussion of her "cinematic eductaion" compelling, in part because her experiences echo my own. Like Krista, I missed a lot of movies as a kid because of conservative religious values. Although most of my classmates saw Star Wars in the theater, often dozens of times, I never saw the film until years later on TV. My parents were also concerned to shield me from movies and TV shows that featured what she calls "occult" overtones. Thus, I was "protected from" films and TV shows ranging from He-Man and The Smurfs to The Wizard of Oz, which I never even saw until I taught the film at Purdue in the mid-90s. The undergraduate college I attended had in the past discouraged movie-going, and students who attended that college were ostensibly prohibited from seeing R-rated movies. How they'd enforce such a rule, I can't imagine, but I could imagine a version of Footloose, substituting cinephilia for dancing, with Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, and the gang crossing the state line to see Last Temptation of Christ.
But attending graduate school with a group of film buffs and reading Deleuze's books on cinema really directed my cinematic eductaion. A great video store in West Lafayette helped. One week I'd watch Godard. The next, Truffaut or Ozu. This education was particularly focused because from 1998-2002, I had no television reception. My TV served only to play videotapes (or later, DVDs). So I have little memory of most mid-late 90s TV shows, other than the ones I watched on DVD, such as The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both of which I now find it difficult to watch on TV, preferring to see them on DVD.
I can and do still enjoy pop stuff, too (of course), although in the recent past I'd usually get my pop fix when I would wash my clothes at a local laundromat where they played movies on screens above the washers and dryers. That's where I'd usually catch bits and pieces of the Disney or children's films I wouldn't rent on my own, and the movies did offer a welcome distraction from the tedium of folding clothes. But what strikes me about my cinematic education is how "accidental" it seems, how certain movies or filmmakers come across my radar completely by accident of timing. Or how parental and religious bans still work on me in complicated ways. I have no reason to think that occult films are bad, morally or aesthetically, but I'm still less likely to watch occult films than I otherwise might be.
I mention these details because I've been reflecting a bit lately about why I chose to study film and about how and when I watch film (and TV to a lesser extent) might inform that, in large part because I've been reading Anna McCarthy's book, Ambient Television, in which she explores the role of TV outside the home, including an extended section on the relationship between TV and waiting (TV in doctor's waiting rooms, laundromats, etc). I'd planned to write a longer entry on McCarthy's book, but a few too many distractions are getting in the way. The book has certainly helped me to rethink some of the questions I've been thinking about regarding spectatorship and public/private divisions, which I'll hopefully be able to develop more in a couple of articles I've been writing.
Posted by chuck at 12:56 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
January 7, 2005
Documenting War
Morning coffee reads: Reading Cinema Minima this morning, I was reminded that Eugene Jarecki's documentary, Why We Fight (IMDB), will be playing at Sundance. According to Cyndi Greening, Jarecki's film "makes a powerful case for the economic NEED for war to sustain our hegemony and standard of living." The title clearly refers to the World War II film series, commissioned by George Marshall's War Department, that used the talents of filmmakers such as Frank Capra to justify the war, so I'll be interested to see how Jarecki riffs off of this earlier material.
Eugene Jarecki, the younger brother of Capturing the Friedmans director Andrew Jarecki, also made the 2002 documentary, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, which I found to be a little too transparently partisan at the time, although the political work of interrogating Kissinger's actions is certainly vital.
Greening, a film professor at Mesa Community College, has a personal blog in addition to her contributions to Cinema Minima.
Posted by chuck at 10:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 6, 2005
Runaway Jury
I've just spent the last two days serving on a jury for a civil case, hence the recent blog silence. I actually mildly enjoyed serving, although some of the medical testimony got a bit tedious. Like GHW, I'm in temporary limbo, waiting for the new semester to start, and serving on a jury only threw my already disoriented time schedule even further off course.
I'm still coming to grips with what I found so interesting about it, but certainly it's difficult to participate on a jury without viewing that experience outside the lens of courtroom drama. Even though jury deliberations lasted about fifteen minutes total, I couldn't avoid thinking about Twelve Angry Men. The lawyer for the defense seemed like a character out of a John Grisham movie, and even the judge reminded us on a couple of occasions that "this isn't Court TV."
It's also strange to have such intense interaction with twelve strangers over the course of two days and then just walk away. Hearing the foreman of the jury read the verdict also seemed anti-climactic. I think I expected orchestral music to be piped in as the verdict was read and to see stronger emotional reactions to it. Also intersting to see how the various jurors reacted to various pieces of evidence; what seemed important or credible to some of the other jurors seemed less convincing to me (and vice versa).
But the good news is that jury duty (not to mention the winter holiday) has given me an excuse to be a little more self-indulgent than usual in my TV and movie watching. I finally rented the first season of The Office last night, and I'm really enjoying it. Also got my weekly High School Reunion fix (still very much addicted). But I also caught, and recommend Bruno Dumont's dark and challenging film, Twentynine Palms. A little too low energy to write a longer review right now, but while it's a difficult film to watch, philosophically I think it's pretty intersting.
Posted by chuck at 4:56 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 3, 2005
My Top Ten for 2004
Inspired by several other "best of 2004" lists (Rashomon and Green Cine among others), I've decided to list some of my favorite films of the year. Unlike George of A Girl and a Gun (who has a great list of films), I'm a closet fan of ten-best lists. Even though I know that such lists are usually arbitrary, I read them voraciously, usually with the hope that I'll discover a film that I've missed or that I'll find a popular or critcially panned film worth giving a second chance. Like George, I'm not a professional critic (and in my case I don't live in a film center), so I don't get to see everything. But I have been thinking about this list over the last few days, so here's my list, in semi-chronological order, of some of the films I liked in 2004:
- Everyday People: I caught Jim McKay's film at the Atlanta Film Festival and really liked McKay's deft treatment of an ensemble cast. The film weaves between more than a dozen characters, all of whom are conflicted about the closing of a family restaurant in Brooklyn. Limiting the story to the restaurant's final 24 hours gives the film a narrative force it might otherwise lose.
- Reconstruction: Another favorite from the Atlanta Film Festival, Christoffer Boe's meditation on time and memory was one of the most intellectually compelling films I saw all year.
- Control Room: One of the best in a great year of documentaries. Lieutenant John Rushing and Al-Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim and producer Samir Khader provide one of the more compelling takes on news reporting I saw all year.
- Before Sunset: I'm joining the bandwagon on this one, I know, but Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have managed to create some of the most unforgettable characters of the year.
- The Corporation: I never had a chance to revisit my initial review of Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar's powerful and sometimes wickedly humorous take on American capitalism.
- Bright Leaves: Ross McElwee's latest autobiographical documentary, a reflection on cinema, photography, memory, and (to a lesser extent) tobacco, captivated me. This might be a personal fascination: I connect pretty deeply with McElwee's ambivalence about the south and his fascination with cinema and memory. The scenes featuring his film buff distant cousin also captivated the cinephile in me.
- Primer: Another great film about time. I'm a sucker for time travel films, and Shane Carruth's $7000 debut provided one of the best mindfucks of the year.
- Undertow: I haven't seen David Gordon Green's film on many other lists, so I'm guessing this is a personal obsession. Loved the moody cinematgraphy and the narrative pacing. Deel (Josh Lucas) is one of the creepiest villains I saw in 2004.
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I never did review the latest Gondry-Kauffman collaboration, but the film's treatment of memory and lost love was funny and smart. I also really dug Kate Winslet's hair.
- The Saddest Music in the World: Again, no full review, and I only caught it on DVD, but one of most visually inventive films I've seen in the last five years.
Films I wish I'd seen: Tarnation, Hotel Rwanda, Moolaadé, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Bad Education, Good Bye Lenin and The Five Obstructions. Many of these films never made it to Atlanta (or left town before I could see them). Many others I simply have no excuse for not seeing. I might come up with some other "awards" later this week if the mood strikes.
Update: I completely forgot Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, another great film I never properly reviewed, which should probably be in or close to my top ten.
Posted by chuck at 11:39 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 2, 2005
Random Film Notes
Found a couple of cool film notes while doing some procrastination this afternoon. First, instead of releasing a Tarnation soundtrack on CD, Tin Drum Recording has released Max Avery Lichtenstein's original music online as MP3s (via eugonline).
Also interesting: the 60 Minutes profile of Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai (link via indieWire insider). The interview coincides with the release of Rai's Hollywood debut, Bride and Prejudice, which will be hitting art house theaters soon. The 60 Minutes report, summarized here, was a pretty decent introduction to Bollywood, noting in particular that India's film studios produce more films every year than Hollywood, but the report also "sold" Bollywood primarily in terms of Rai's beauty and Bollywood's "squeaky-clean" storylines (kissing cannot be shown in Bollywood films). The interview with Rai featured a useful dicussion of the politics of Rai crossing over into American cinema, but that's short-changed in the summary.
Update: Apparently, there's a Time Asia profile of Rai, too.
Update 2: Found another morning coffee read that looks very cool. The Movie Blog identifies several blogs by independent film producers seeking exposure for their work: Everything is in Between and Selling "No Place" an Indie Feature Film.
Posted by chuck at 10:05 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
"The Schlemiel Sublime"
In a recent entry, Amardeep (note: I stole my title from him) describes his conflicted response to two of the more critically acclaimed films of the Oscar season, Sideways and Closer and speculates about where his "faint sense of disdain for these films is coming from." I'm somewhat inclined to share his impatience with "the American art house obsession with chronicling squandered intelligence," but the critical acclaim for these films, especially Sideways, has led me to question my initial ambivalent reaction to the film. I know that I identified with the Paul Giamatti character, Miles, but I'm not sure I'd recognized the full extent of that identification until I read A.O. Scott's New York Times article calling Sideways "the most overrated film of the year."
In Scott's reading, Sideways appeals because Miles himself is a critic, constantly making judgements about the wines he consumes, with the film celebrating Miles's ability to appreciate good wine. Scott adds that the film "both satirizes and affirms a cherished male fantasy: that however antisocial, self-absorbed and downright unattractive a man may be, he can always be rescued by the love of a good woman." In my original reading of the film, I was also critical of this fantasy element and disappointed that both female chracters essentially disappear in the third act. I'm not quite sure where this observation takes me. Sideways is certainly a solid film, but the praise for the film seems a little out of proportion to me. And like Amardeep, I prefer Before Sunset.
Then again, for a much wittier take on A. O. Scott's article, just go read the cinetrix.
Posted by chuck at 7:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 1, 2005
Documentary Films and the Oscars
I'm about to leave for a party, but I just wanted to point to an LA Weekly article I found on Green Cine Daily. The article, by Scott Foundas, criticizes the process by which the Academy nominates films for best documentary, explaining that Control Room and The Corporation will not receive well-deserved Oscar nominations for best documentary because they aired on TV within nine months of their initial release. This rule, designed to protect filmmakers, often prevents filmmakers from giving their films the widest possible audience (or from collecting the golden statue). I'm hoping to have more to say about this issue later, but it's clear that the Academy needs to reconsider its rules for choosing nominees in this category. Scroll down to the end of the article for the short list of potential nominees.
Posted by chuck at 4:27 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Happy New Year 2005
I'm still recovering from a quiet but enjoyable New Year's celebration with some friends, but wanted to wish everyone a happy and peaceful 2005.
I've been so focused on the job market this year that I haven't really thought about the transition into a new year. For this reason, I'm going to avoid mentioning my resolutions or plans, but looking back at what I was working on and thinking about last January has been productive (or at least it's allowed me to justify not working today). I was just starting to think about how I'd teach Fight Club, a question that ended up generating an essay. My interest in documentary film was starting to deepen, and while I've only just started writing on documentary, I'm confident that I'll be engaging with those issues for a long time.
Posted by chuck at 3:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack