the chutry experiment

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March 31, 2005

Time Traveling with Aronofsky and Van Sant

I've been hearing buzz about two new potentially interesting time-travel films. First Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is currently in production, with Hugh Jackman slated to star. Meanwhile, Elephant director Gus Van Sant is reportedly working to adapt Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife for the big screen. Not sure I have anything to add right now, but I'm already curious to see what these two directors will bring to the genre.

Posted by chuck at 9:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 30, 2005

Sin City

Thanks to friends with connections, I caught a preview screening of Sin City (IMDB) tonight at the local ultra-plex, and quite enjoyed the film's brutal, high-adrenaline, sensory-overload take on forties noir. Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (whose graphic novels were the film's source) have crafted a pulpy, excessive film that is among the most gratifying comic book adaptations I can remember seeing. The film is a loosely connected set of vignettes that present three of Miller's Sin City novellas, a la Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Formally, this works pretty well, as each of the stories comment on the brutality of Basin City and the characters who inhabit it, but as an adaptation, it serves the material well, as I'm not sure that any of the stories could have carried a feature film very well by itself.

What I enjoyed most about this particular adaptation was the adptation of graphic novel to the big screen, with the panels from Frank Miller's graphic novels serving as storyboards for the films. The result is a film that looks like a comic book, completely with shots featuring black-on-white silhouettes and Miller's characteristic extreme close-ups. The heavy rainstorms in Basin City, the setting for all of the film's narratives, were well done, with rain taking on a weightiness that seems to come straight from Miller's pages. I haven't read any of the Sin City volumes in several years, but Rodriguez and Miller's visuals vividly brought back those images to me as I watched the film.

The narratives are the stuff of forties pulp fiction (and, yeah, QT directed at least one segment in the film). Some reviewers make reference to Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler, but Miller's books and the film they've inspired remind me of the more brutal noir associated with films like Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly and Joseph Lewis's The Big Combo. The voice-over narration, supplied by the vignette's three main protagonists, played by Bruce Willis, Mickey Roarke, and Clive Owen, wittily plays with the cliches of those detective novels and films.

I realize the film might be read as affirming certain gender stereotypes. Many of the storylines wouldn't be entirely out of place in the noir world I've mentioned, but the stylized images constantly remind us that we're being taken for a ride. The black-and-white shots, with occasional bursts of color--red blood, an evil baddie's yellow skin--convey the film's self-awareness about the world we're watching. I'm probably being a little generous to the film, but tonight I needed a popcorn flick badly, and Sin City served me well.

Posted by chuck at 12:20 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

March 29, 2005

Re-Enacting History

The New York Times has addressed the controversial practice of documentary filmmakers using re-enactment footage. It turns out that the Oscar-winning documentary short, Mighty Times: The Children's March (IMDB), used undisclosed re-enactment footage in its portrayal of a 1963 Civil Rights protest involving thousands of children. There is some debate about the amount of re-created footage, but Eyes on the Prize producer and cinematographer John Else estimates that approximately half the footage was fabricated.

Defining the boundary between "re-enacted" footage and "real" footage is, of course, a sticky problem, but the degree to which these filmmakers, Bobby Houston and Robert Hudson, worked to mask the re-enactment footage seems a little unethical to me, especially their attempt to "mesh seamlessly" re-enactments with footage taken at the actual event. It's a description that Houston welcomes:

"That's my quote: 'Thank you,' " Mr. Houston said. "The way we make our films is like baking a biscotti. We make a classic documentary using the archival record. We then make another layer of film. We bake the cookie twice, like a biscotti. That second layer of film fills in the gaps, and what you end up with is a seamless telling and definitive telling of unknown chapters from civil rights history."

While I have no basic objections to using re-enactment footage, I'm a little uncomfortable with this characterization of documentary storytelling. Aren't these "gaps" the real story? Isn't it more significant to acknowledge the documentary filmmaker's role in reconstructing this history from the evidence she or he collects along the way? In general, I have some real objections to any claims that you're presenting events "as they really were," to paraphrase Benjamin, and this practice of using extensive re-enactments in this way could certainly be used in ways that are highly unethical.

Later in the Times article, filmmaker John Else discusses teh question of "re-enactments" in terms of Errol Morris's use of them in The Thin Blue Line, but the crucial difference is that Morris uses this technique to question the stories of several of his witnesses, not to create a "seamless" narrative that presents history as it happened. In fact, these re-enactments are clearly marked by formal features, such as film noir lighting and the Philip Glass score.

To be fair, I haven't seen "The Children's March," so I can't comment specifically on how re-enactments are used, but I think this is a question that merits consideration. I think it's both naive and limiting to expect that documentary filmmakers not use re-enactment footage (after all history is nothing but interpretation), but it's also risky to present that footage as "real" without the practice being used in ways that might be highly unethical.

Posted by chuck at 2:30 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Tara Wray Interview

Several weeks ago I mentioned Tara Wray's documentary-in-progress, Manhattan, Kansas. Now, there's an interview with her on GreenCine Daily about the filmmaking process. Wray addresses the inevitable compaisons with Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, which also has a heavy autobiographical component. What I found partciularly interesting was Wray's discussion of the difficulty of placing narrative closure onto an autobiographical documentary.

At any rate, I'm really looking forward to seeing the completed film.

Posted by chuck at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2005

Lunch with Ralph

Yeah, I'm pretty much cribbing Ralph Luker's title, but just wanted to mention that I had lunch with a fellow blogger over Spring Break. It's always fun to meet fellow bloggers, and I was especially interested in talking with Ralph because he's working on an article about blogging for the American Historical Association's Perspectives.

As Ralph mentions, we first ran into each other in blogworld almost two years ago (at least in academic time), when I first started using blogs in a freshman composition classroom in Fall 2003, and back then, Ralph didn't think it was a good idea (scroll down for the original entry). In fact, as he so eloquently puts it, he thought it was "a form of madness." I'm not sure he's wrong about the "madness" part, but I have found that blogging supplements many of my composition classes rather nicely.

At any rate, I just wanted to respond to Ralph's question about plagiarism, mostly because we didn't really talk about that particular topic all that much at lunch. I think he's right that writing online can encourage plagiarism, but that will happen with any online form of writing, whether WebCT or any other format, and because the grades for blogging are a relatively small percentage of my grade, there's really no incentive to plagiarize. In fact, from what I hear (and I've rarely had this happen), students are far more likely to copy text from the Web into their major papers than into journal entries.

Ralph also comments on blogging's immediacy and the degree to which it might work against the process of revision. That's probably fair, and in my specific case, I do have other assignments that require multiple drafts, but in some of my classes, the "immediacy" of blogging has been the object of study, to discuss with my students what kinds of writing that encourages and discourages, as well as what "rules" develop in specific blogging communities (there are, of course, vast numbers of communities even if a few A-listers get most of the press).

At any rate, this is a long way of saying that I very much enjoyed meeting Ralph who lives basically within walking distance of my apartment, and I'm very much looking forward to reading the artcile when he completes it. And I'm very much lamenting the fact that my Spring Break is basically over, although I am very pleased with how productive I've been--getting lots of writing done even if very little of it is showing up here.

Posted by chuck at 9:17 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

High Noon in Germany

David at GreenCine points to Patrick Walsh's insightful discussion of teaching Western films in Germany. Walsh's stated intention was to use the Western to "guide [his] students toward a consideration of American manhood," but students instead identified the Western with George W. Bush's "cowboy" persona and instead used the course to think about "American self-sanctioned violence."

Also interesting that "anti-heroes" from such films as The Wild Bunch and Fistful of Dollars also failed to appeal given that the men in these films still used violence to achieve their goals, even if they did so in ways that weren't sanctioned by the dominant culture. Also interesting that Blazing Saddles, a film that tears at the seams of the Western myth, was among the students' favorites.

I mention this article because I find the students' reading "against the grain" to be rather insightful, but also because I want to remind myself to return to Flow, the very cool online journal that published the article.

Posted by chuck at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2005

Freedom is a Dangerous Thing

Florida's "The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights" has been making the rounds in the academic corner of blogworld lately. According to the Alligator Online:

Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out “leftist totalitarianism” by “dictator professors” in the classrooms of Florida’s universities.

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, passed 8-to-2 despite strenuous objections from the only two Democrats on the committee....

While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than “one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom,” as part of “a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views.”

The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative “serious academic theories” that may disagree with their personal views.

Like Ted of Crooked Timber, my initial reaction is to look back on the ancient days of yore when Republicans complained about the Evils of Political Correctness with some degree of nostalgia. You see, back in the day, Republicans would mock left-wing students who complained of being victimized. Now in the age of "Academic Freedom," all of that has been turned on its head and Republican children are being persecuted in classrooms for their views on such topics as evolution (the only example Dennis Baxley, the bill's sponsor, mentions).

I think that part of what bothers me is the langauge that characterizes the university in such stark terms, referring to university professors as "leftist totalitarians" and "dictators." Baxley's characterization of the college classroom, with students who are "being persecuted" is striking in this regard:

“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue....

“Freedom is a dangerous thing, and you might be exposed to things you don’t want to hear,” he said. “Being a businessman, I found out you can be sued for anything. Besides, if students are being persecuted and ridiculed for their beliefs, I think they should be given standing to sue.”

I thought Republicans were against frivolous lawsuits, but maybe lawsuits are only frivolous when they target poor little multinational corporations, not big, bad dictatorial professors who make $150,000 a year for only six hours of work a week. But then again, we need the rest of our time to plot out methods for persecuting our students. Of course, maybe I'm missing the point here. Maybe I could start suing people for saying things I don't want to hear....

According to what I've read, the bill has two more house committes before receiving a full house vote where it may actually pass. The Florida state senate is apparently more skeptical about the negative effects such a bill might have on recruiting faculty to state universities.

Thanks to Chris at Left Center Left, who refers to Ted's entry (who cites MyDD). Inside Higher Ed is also on top of the story.

Posted by chuck at 11:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 24, 2005

Washington Bound

I just received the good news that a paper I've proposed for the film panel at this year's MLA conference in Washington, D.C., has been accepted. I've never had a paper accepted to MLA before, so like Mel, I'm practically dancing around the room, as much as I can dance given my complete lack of rhythm. I'll be presenting material from my current book project on time-travel films, focusing primarily on my reading of The Jacket.

Posted by chuck at 5:41 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

Inside Deep Throat

For any number of reasons, documentary filmmakers have been turning their lenses on the 1970s with increasing frequency lately. It might be more accurate to say that these seventies documentaries have found wider audiences than most other docs, but in the last two years, seventies docs include Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, The Weather Underground, and Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, with Eugne Jarecki's The Trials of Henry Kissinger also touching on '70s politics, specifically Kissinger's support of Pinochet and his role in Vietnam. Add the Robb Moss doc, The Same River Twice, and it's clear that the 70s are hot--at least for documentary filmmakers.

I'm tempted to read that popularity as a retreat to a moment whose political conflicts now appear to be resolved, a reading that the predictable, if mildly prurient, documentary Inside Deep Throat (IMDB) seems to invite, but I'm trying to resist that reading to some extent in order to think about how all of these films seem to comment, on one level or another, on the contemporary political moment (Jarekci's Kissinger doc is the most important and effective by far in this regard).

In his review, Roger Ebert--constant crusader against the silliness of the ratings system--notes the oddity of the fact that a studio such as Universal would produce a documentary about an NC-17 film but would be unlikely to make such a film, and that's something that struck me as I watched was the degree to which representations of the sex scenes in Deep Throat were framed by precisely that "eductaional" rhetoric that the film was trying to subvert. Instead of men in white lab coats, you have Camille Paglia and Dr. Ruth, but the same discourse of edification returns with a vengeance. You also get an oddly distracting voice-over narration from Dennis Hopper. I get the fact that he's identified with 1970s excess, but it seemed like a use of celebrity just for the sake of having a celebrity.

In addition, the support of Universal and HBO (the new Miramax in its support of low-budget sexy flicks) turned the film's educative impulse into a flashy, high-gloss trip through seventies culture. As Manohla Dargis's review implies, it's the closest you'll get to a "blockbuster" documentary, and quite frankly, I found that the graphics and the huge music budget tamed any subversiveness this doc might have had. I'm trying to avoid any surface-depth metaphors because that's not quite what I'm concerned about here (though the film was remarkably shallow given the incredible cast of interviewees--more on that in a minute). Instead, the documentary seemed to want to make Deep Throat into a "safe" form of titilation for average Americans. Take a walk on the wild side but stay where I can see you.

The discourse of "healthy" rebellion permeates the entire film, with the dcoumentary apparently assuming that all viewersnow regard the uproar over Deep Throat to be an overreation, implying with a wink and a nudge that viewers of the film would have been among the sophisticates like Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, and Stormin' Norman Mailer, who would have attended screenings of the film, police be damned.

Inside Deep Throat also simplifies the political conflicts over the film, reducing the battles to a cynical "fisrt shot" by Tricky Dick Nixon in the family values battles that continue to dominate political discourse. While the connection certainly exists, it reduces both conflicts to relatively simple two-sided positions. Free expression or censorship. It's a lot more complicated than that. The essential conflict centers on the prosecutors' decision to go after male lead, Harry Reems, who faced a five-year jail term for his involvement in the film. Instead of focusing on the exploitative aspects of the industry that exposed Reems and co-star Linda Lovelace (who received immunity for reasons that weren't explained) to the greatest amount of risk while securing only minimal profits, the film concentrates solely on the "free expression" question.

Perhaps more troubling was the bashing of 1970s era feminism the film engages in after disclosing that Reems was eventually cleared of all charges. While I do find the extreme anti-pornography positions of some 1970s feminists somewhat unsupportable, Inside Deep Throat seems to blame people like Susan Brownmiller for exploiting impressionistic kids like Linda Lovelace for their own purposes without really thinking about their arguments in any real detail. When Susan Brownmiller becomes a villain of equal stature with district attorney Larry Parrish, that's not a very nuanced reading.

Inside Deep Throat concludes by reminding us that a modest little film made for $25,000 ended up grossing $600 million (according to some seriously unreliable estimates), but then laments the fact that pornography has become so heavily commodified (this in a film that cites Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt as references--no commodification there). Ironic shots of the Adult Video Awards in Vegas show hotties with implants suggest the dgree to which the industry has become artificial since the golden age of porn (didn't Mark Walhberg already cover this in Boogie Nights?) before we get the mandatory reminder about freedom of speech with an American flag isolated against a night sky no less.

I think I would have enjoyed this film more if it weren't so transparent, if I had been surprised at least once over the course of watching it. About the only real enjoyment I got was playing "spot the film theorist," with appearances by two pretty cool academic film theorists, Linda Williams (Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible") and Jon Lewis (Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry). Williams does make the good point that Deep Throat is one of the first films to make women's sexual fulfillment an issue onscreen (as David Edelstein's review points out), and while I did enjoy many of the interviews, I felt this doc stopped short of doing anything interesting with some really fascnating material, most importantly because it never really questioned its own assumptions about the material it was analyzing.

Posted by chuck at 12:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 23, 2005

The Difficulties of Representing War

I just came across Walter Chaw's very critical review of Gunner Palace, which I found on the cool new film blog, Cinemonster. My initial review was certainly more positive, but I do share some of their reservations about the film, specifically regarding Tucker's voice-over. I do think the film's lack of a clear political message, implied in what Chaw describes as "the lack of a unifying theme" can be read in a more positive light as an implicit criticism of the war's lack of a clear focus.

Also, based on my experience at a screening attended by the director and one of the soldiers in the unit portrayed in the film, I don't think Tucker's point is to criticize opponents of the war, as Chaw suggests. Tucker's status as a veteran certainly informs the lens through which he sees the soldiers, but to suggest that Tucker is "spitting like a bona fide jarhead in the face of all us lefty wimps who've made the mistake of trying to learn something without getting shot at" seems to deny the very purpose of the documentary Tucker and Epperlein have made. In fact, I think it would be reasonable to argue that the film is equally critical of armchair hawks who have "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers on the back of their cars without any real understanding of what the military is doing, and while the representation issue ("we can't really know what the soldiers experience") may be obvious, I do think it's worth revisiting.

I actually didn't intend to write another blog entry "defending" the film or my original review of it, but now that the film has achieved "must-see" status, I can't resist continuing the conversation and testing my initial reading of it. It does bother me that the film didn't take a slightly more explicit anti-war stance, and I'm still concerned that the film failed to represent any sense of how the Iraqi perceived the war, but there are still some powerful moments in the film that make it well worth seeing (if only so that you can complain about it later).

Posted by chuck at 8:10 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Documentary Jones

So, yeah, I've been out of the blog loop lately, but the good news is that I have been very productive this week, getting lots of writing done. I've also had a little time to satisfy my documentary jones, watching Alan Berliner's 1996 documentary, Nobody's Business, which I really liked. In fact, watching Berliner's earlier film has led me to reconsider my earlier, fairly dismissive review of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Nobody's Business focuses on Berliner's mildly combative relationship with his father who persistently deflects his son's questions during their interviews, telling him, "Nobody cares about this." Gradually the son does get his father to asnwer a few questions, using their relationship to explore his father's complicated relationship with previous generations.

I also finally watched Su Friedrich's 1990 Sink or Swim, a powerful auto-documentary in black-and-white that evokes her family's history through 26 segments titled with a letter of the alphabet running in reverse order. This is another very cool doc, one that uses autobiography to reflect on the complications of father-daughter relationships.

Now I'm off to see Inside Deep Throat, my first trip to the cinema in way too long, at least ten days or so.

Posted by chuck at 7:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 21, 2005

Springtime in the 21st Century

A few major signs that spring has finally arrived. My entry in at least one March Madness pool is in last place. My students' research papers will be due in a few short days. My allergies are starting to go haywire. And, of course, I'm getting (already deleted) comment spam from Claritin.

I'm on Spring Break this week, which means I've had some time to get some writing done, which is a nice feeling. This is also the first time I've slept past 7:09 AM on a Monday since January, also a nice feeling.

Posted by chuck at 11:21 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 19, 2005

Do the Evolution, Imax Remix

Last year, it was stickers in school books in suburban Atlanta. This year, it's IMAX movies, according to the New York Times, which reports that some Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are now refusing to show ceratin Imax films that refer to evolution, I mean "biological changes over time." The highlights:

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the first place.

So a brief speculation that life on earth may have begun inside volcanoes leads several Imax theaters to pass on 2003 release, Volcanoes because several viewers regarded the film as "blasphemous." Like the cinetrix, I'm no big fan of Imax or the cinema of attractions, but things are getting out of hand when science museums are so cautious that they are self-censoring legitimate scientific research. Oh those reality-based documentaries!

Posted by chuck at 2:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Hollywood's Big Picture

Neil Genzlinger from the New York Times reviews two new books on Hollywood's "blockbuster" economy, Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, by Tom Shone, and The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood, by Edward Jay Epstein. Based on Genzlinger's review, I'm curious to read both books even though some of the material mentioned in the review, especially on the role of blockbuster films, has been well-documented by film scholars such as Justin Wyatt.

Both Shone and Epstein, for example, emphasize the role of marketing in driving the "success" of Hollywood films, with Genzlinger highlighting the huge box office bonanza for critical lemons such as Godzilla. At the same time, the review notes Hollywood's notoriously creative accounting practices that make any real measure of box office success impossible, with Genzlinger characterizing Hollywood's accounting practices as a "high-stakes hall of mirrors," which might make the climactic scene of Lady from Shanghai the ultimate metaphor for Hollywood business dealings. Although I think it's worth noting here that contemporray manifestations of this practice are generally intensifications of existing practices and nothing entirely new. Epstein, in particular seems to note that film audiences and box office no longer "matter," and in fact, a prolonged theaterical release can even get in the way of the more lucrative industry of DVD sales and rentals, news that may not be surprising for a film scholar but might be for a more general audience (although I kind of doubt it).

What seems to bother the reviewer most is the underlying cynicism with which film audiences are being treated. At one point, he comments "It's a disillusioning notion--all that advertising, all those awards shows and low-cut gowns, sustaining a fiction. A suspicion arises when reading Epstein's somewhat dizzying book: these corporate giants don't actually need us at all, whether in the theaters or in the video stores or in line at Disney World." I'm a little puzzled here: Genzliner didn't realize that the Oscars are sustaining a fiction? Again, I'm not sure that knowledge is entirely surprising. But the review's emphasis on Hollywood's cynical regard for its audience does make me curious to read both of these books.

Posted by chuck at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 18, 2005

High Museum Carribean Film Series

Just a quick note to mention that the High Musuem will be showing two films this weekend as part of its Carribean film series. On Friday, March 18 (tonight), they will be showing Sugar Cane Alley, while tomorrow, they will be showing Jonathan Demme's documentary, The Agronomist.

I know it's a blogging cliche to mention events that you don't plan to attend, but I'm probably not going to have time to attend Friday's screening. I am hoping to see The Agronomist on Saturday, but no matter what, I think the High Museum series is worth mentioning.

In other news, my Spring Break starts in two hours. Spring Break! Yeah!

Posted by chuck at 9:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2005

DIY Cinema

Really nice Sight and Sound article by B Ruby Rich about Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (on DVD May 17) that discusses the film's fascinating mix of documentary and autobiographical cinema. Rich also connects Caouette's films to the New Queer Cinema of the early 1990s, especially Sadie Benning's very cool Pixelvision films, noting that Caouette has avoided the documentary label, calling his film "DIY cinema," while citing influences ranging from Derek Jarman and David Lynch to Spike Lee and Sidney Lumet.

One more day until Spring Break. Then I'll probably sleep until Monday.

Posted by chuck at 11:12 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

SAMLA Documentary Film Panel

I'm chairing the SAMLA (South Atlantic MLA) film panel this year, and not surprisingly, I've decided to have the panel focus on documentary film. So far I haven't received that many proposals, so I figured I'd mention the CFP here one more time. If you're interested in participating send me an email.

More information below the fold.

Panel for the 2005 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention
Atlanta, GA, November 4-6, 2005

Panel Title: “Reality Effects: Documentary in Film, TV, and Video.”

Deadline for submissions: March 21, 2005.

The film panel for the South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference will focus on the topic of documentary film. This panel will explore the role of documentary as a genre. The popularization of documentary films and videos and reality television raise important questions about the nature of truth and representation as well as the social practice of film. Papers might also address how new technologies have transformed documentary practice. We invite
papers that explore documentary filmmaking as both a concept and as a specific practice, as a participant in the shaping of contemporary cultural and political discourse.

Papers may focus on any documentary film or filmmaker, although papers on contemporary documentaries are preferred.

By March 21, 2005, please submit a 300-word proposal electronically to Chuck Tryon at charles.tryon@lcc.gatech.edu. Email attachments preferred. You may also mail a hard copy to Chuck Tryon; School of Literature, Communication, and Culture; Georgia Tech; Atlanta, GA 30332.

If you can't get the proposal in by the 21st, I have some flexibility there, so I'll hold the CFP open until March 31 before constituting the panel.

Posted by chuck at 3:20 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

A Twist of Lemon

David Edelstein calls for his audience's least favorite twist film endings and gets over 200 comments and suggestions from readers. Like him, I'd happily defend the twists in Mulholland Drive, Arlington Road (one of the most underrated films of the last ten years), and even Wild Things. Appreciated the twist in Vanilla Sky, although I don't think it's very far from the "it was all a dream" pet peeve he describes. Mystified: is the ending of Dark City really a "twist?" After all, Kiefer Sutherland's character, Dr. Schreber, tells you everything you need to know about the city before the opening credits.

But on to the list: I am disappointed by his putting Usual Suspects on the list of films with the "worst" twist endings, because formally, I think the film earns the twist at the end. I'm a little more ambivalent about the twist in Fight Club, especially the ways in which Tyler's revelation contains the film's more subversive elements, but styliitsically it fits the film rather well, especially given how the "projectionist" sequence anticipates the possibility that the film is being manipulated.

If I had to put one film at the top of the list, it would be The Village (my original take). Other films I'd add: the awful Sean Connery vehicle (and pro-death penalty screed), Just Cause to the top of the list . Frequency's time-travel resolution of its serial murder manhunt is a bit too easy, and I'll throw another Shyamalan film on the list with Unbreakable, which also seemed a bit obvious and bit too easy.

So what are some of your favorite (or better, least favorite) twist endings?

Posted by chuck at 10:36 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Recent Rentals

We're counting down the hours to Spring Break here at the North Avenue Trade School, and I just wanted to mention a few of the films I've been renting recently. I don't have time to write full reviews but recommend all three with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Over the weekend, I had a chance to watch Ming-liang Tsai's Goodbye Dragon Inn, a haunting movie about moviegoing. The film is set in a giant downtown Taipei theater, and the theater is almost entirely empty excpet for a few patrons who wander the corridors or sit silently watching the film. Goodbye Dragon Inn has almost no dialogue except what you hear on screen from the film they are watching, Dragon Inn. For more about Goodbye Dragon Inn, check out A.O. Scott's review, but it's a compelling film visually, very atmospheric and haunting.

I also watched Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the 2004 documentary about the making of the band's most recent album. I was mildly disappointed with Monster, finding it a little tedious, and after a while, I didn't think the film went any further with its attempt to deconstruct the image of the heavy metal band, and the doc certainly had the subtext of seeking to humanize the man who killed Napster. Maybe I missed something about the doc because I didn't find it nearly as compelling as some viewers, but it was mildly interesting.

I've been wanting to see Tongues Untied for a long time, and finally decided to watch it last night. The 1985 short film about black gay life, which originally aired on the PBS show P.O.V., is pretty moving, and it certainly illustrates the political power of autobiographical documentary. Riggs, who died in 1994, commented on the film and its reception in this 1991 article in Current.

Posted by chuck at 9:06 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 16, 2005

Bud Foote, RIP

I just learned that Bud Foote, a member of Georgia Tech's LCC community, passed away this week. Bud retired from Tech in 1999 but always remained a part of the department community, often contributing to campus symposia on science-fiction and fantasy literature. The obit also mentions Bud's generous donation to Tech's science-fiction library and his love for playing folk music (and his friendships with many of great folk musicians).

While I only talked to him a few times, I cherished the conversations I had with him about time-travel fiction and film. I've never really written about the death of someone I knew in the blog before, so I'm acutely aware of the inability of my words to adequately describe what he meant to me and and the rest of the Tech community, so I'll simply conclude by saying that he will be missed.

Posted by chuck at 9:53 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Slacker Story

Via Karen at the Cinecultist, I found this great story from Jeff Turboff of Filmkicks about an encounter he had with Richard Linklater in Austin back in the day.

I also really enjoyed Karen's narrative about watching one of her favorite comfort films.

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March 14, 2005

Errol Morris on David Harris

When I was preparing to teach Errol Morris's Thin Blue Line this morning, I came across this interview with Morris conducted on Wisconsin Public Radio within a few days of David Harris's execution last summer, which I wrote about last summer. Morris's discussion of their relationship is actually pretty fascinating:

I don't get him. I probably never will get him. One of the things that is so interesting, he was described by many people as "The Kid". He was kind of a fresh-faced kid at the time of the killing of the police officer. There's something actually sweet, something sympathetic about David Harris, and it doesn't quite square with the things that he's done. It's one of the puzzling things.

You know, I met him several times when he was a free man, and he scared me. He scared me but there was something endlessly fascinating about him as well.

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March 13, 2005

The Rosebud Syndrome

One final blog entry to complete my Sunday morning procrastination in blogworld. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentions (registration required) a study by economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England which reports that an active sex life makes people happier than a large bank account. In fact, a "good family life" will make you happier than being able to pay your electric bill, according to the study.

Sex therapist Lynn Talmadge does question some of the study's conclusions, noting that not all marriages are happy ones, but adds that "it is very good for driven Americans, who are taught that material things will buy them happiness, to pause and reconsider, because it's the richness of relationships that makes us happy."

I'm glad to see that economists and sex therapists are finally catching up to something that Hollywood has known all along. Just ask Orson Welles or Frank Capra. Or even Nicolas Cage.

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Death and Mourning in Hollywood After September 11

The New York Times also has an article worth reading on films made in the wake of September 11 that deal with characters mourning the untimely death of a friend or family member. None of these films have explicit political references to that tragedy, but as the article suggests, the subtext seems pretty clear. First-time director Tim Daly even notes that many of family homes in these "mourning films" prominently feature American flags.

Among the films included in this category: Fear X, Winter Solstice, Bereft, Imaginary Heroes, and The Upside of Anger. Mike Binder, writer-director of Anger, acknowledges that he conceived his film in direct response to the events of September 11, starting the script later that week.

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Forget Jeff Gannon

Forget Armstrong Williams. Forget Jayson Blair and Karen Ryan. The real scandal is the Office of Broadcasting Services (part of the State Department), which has been producing news segments that are distributed to major networks. The Office of Broadcasting Services, along with the PR arms of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture, among others, make "informative" news segments touting particular Bush administration actions ranging from Bush's controversial prescription drugs program to the war in Afghanistan. These segments are then inserted seamlessly into news broadcasts without any attribution, appearing to the home viewer as if they were produced by the news stations that broadcast them.

But, wait a second, you might say, isn't the spread of domestic propaganda prohibited by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948? The Smith-Mundt Act allowed the broadcast of pro-government news abroad but not in the United States. According to those highly ethical folks at the State Department, Smith-Mundt doesn't apply to them, just to Voice of America (not that I'm endorsing Voice of America's role of spreading propaganda overseas), so there's no need to worry there. Of course, these broadcasts are merely intended to "inform" the public, not to persuade them to assent to Bush's policies. But a segment about Bush's prescription drugs policy that makes no mention of the bill's many critics aired on at least 40 stations in some form or another. Another report, apparently by WHBQ-Memphis's Tish Clark, which modestly touts U.S. efforts in helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan, actually consisted of interviews conducted by State Department contractors, with Clark re-recording their questions.

Like Tish Clark, news people all around the country are shocked by this news. When the Times interviewed several station news directors, all of them endorsed the view that stations should identify the origins of these "video news releases," but many of these stations were discovered to have engaged in precisely that practice. When The Times rudely mentioned this detail, the same station managers stopped taking their phone calls. However, Karen Ryan, who participated as a "reporter" for many of these broadcasts notes that the line between network news and "video news releases" isn't always clear, commenting in the Times article, "It's almost the same thing." While the Times is quick to insist on the differences between the two, I'm less convinced. There is little benefit for local TV stations, already struggling financially, to spend their small resources in investigative reporting. And there's even less incentive in admitting that the station is using video news releases provided by the government. In addition, there's little incentive for the Federal Communications Commission, nominated by the President, to enforce ethics guidelines that encourage networks to disclose the origins of their news segments.

To be honest, I'm no longer sure if this kind of news report is even remotely surprising, much less shocking. It feeds into our already exisiting cynicism towards the mainstream media. This is why I think that Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed misrepresents the real point. While the Bush administration has spent more than twice as much on public relations as Clinton did during his second, Monicagate-shadowed second term, both recent presidents have spent very heavily on PR. The scandal isn't that certain media outlets are partisan. The scandal is that there's no real difference between news reports and video news releases.

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March 12, 2005

Two

I almost forgot to mention that I've been blogging for two years now (here's my original blog). Sometimes that hardly seems possible, though on other days, it feels like I've been writing here forever. Usually when blog anniversaries or birthdays roll around, I spend some time digging in the archives, but this time, the rush of activity kept that from happening. Still, I'm finding that blogs provide a nice reminder of what I've been doing and where I've been over the past year. I like that autobiographical element a lot even if I don't talk very much about my personal life around here.

Like Mel, I've enjoyed the ways in which the blogging community has provided me with a space for thinking through some of my scholarly ideas (and sometimes even having those ideas challenged in productive ways). Or sometimes to have the blog function as a virtual water cooler where I can talk about everyday stuff like my favorite comfort movies. Thanks to everyone for your comments over the last two years and for your insightful blog posts that always interest and often challenge me.

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Born Into Brothels

I should start this review by mentioning that I had some reservations about seeing Born Into Brothels (IMDB), not because I didn't want to confront the somber images of children living in Calcutta's notorious red light district but because I recognize and am deeply concerned about the ethical problems of documentary, especially those non-fiction films that seek to represent other cultures. In his New York Times review, A. O. Scott comments:

The impulse to document the lives of poor, neglected and oppressed people, which motivates countless filmmakers and photojournalists, is unquestionably noble, but it is not without certain ethical difficulties. Vital as it may be to bring news of human suffering to audiences who might otherwise remain comfortably ignorant, such exposure does not always help the suffering.

Unlike Scott, I'd have to question the motivation of some of these filmmakers (though not necessarily Briski and Kauffman) and note that besides failing to alleviate their subjects' suffering, such documentaries are inevitably partial, incomplete pictures of the lives they attempt to capture. Seema Sirohi also notes other ethical implications, observing that many of the film's subjects may not have consented to having their photographs taken and now find their images projected in theaters throughout the world. Such observations might seem obvious, but in a film such as Born into Brothels, the material that gets left on the cutting room floor (or never gets filmed in the first place) may have profound political implications.

Brothels began as an attempt to document life in Calcutta's red light district, but the prostitutes and johns were naturally suspicious of a white journaliust carrying a camera, and Briski quickly fell into the idea of teaching the children how to photograph. And her students quickly develop an enthusiasm for taking pictures as a means of gaining some semblance of control over their lives. One of the most talented photographers, Avijit, even receives an invitation to partcipate in a photography conference in Amsterdam, and his awareness of the power of the camera as a tool for documentation is rather compelling. The other children clearly bring their personalities into what they photograph. Their pictures are clearly marked by how they see the world, a perspective reinforced by the handheld shots in the city's sidewalks filmed at the height of a child.

Briski also resists the temptation to deliver this material in a classical narrative style. While Briski's immense efforts to help the children find places in boarding schools inform the film's story, they don't dominate the film. Born into Brothels isn't a film about triumphing over difficult circumstances, even if some of the kids fulfill their goals of leaving life on the street. The film also avoids introducing "experts" who might stand in for providing us with "the truth" of life in Calcutta. Instead, we are more or less immersed into this particular world, and any wisdom about it comes from the people who experience it on a daily basis, especially the children, many of whom know very well that they may soon be forced to work on the line themselves. We even see some of the girls telling us their mothers have been asking them when they'll start working as prostitutes.

Like Jeffrey Anderson, I think that Brothels would have been a stronger film if Briski had been more self-conscious about her role in shaping the narrative and in shaping the lives of the Calcutta children. While I don't think that the film should have been "about" Briski or about her "journey," a little more attention to her role as a filmmaker, teacher, and activist might have complicated the film in productive ways. The film is filled with poignant moments and powerful images captured by these young photographers, and while Briski avoids the temptation of offering a complete portrait of life in the red light district, the film still seemed to stop short of fully acknowledging these problems of representation.

Update: For some reason, I couldn't find Amardeep's review of Born into Brothels last night, but his comments clarify my interpretation of the film. I think he's right that Briski's involvement with the children has done more good than harm. In terms of the film's tone, Amardeep also notes that Briski works hard to avoid making the film appear "voyeuristic" or "about herself," and I think he's right that this is actually a strength of the film, that this uncertainty may indicate a conflicted (in the best possible way) attempt to think about representation in new ways.

Amardeep also has tons of links, including one to an NPR interview with Zana Briski the day after she won the Oscar for best documentary.

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March 11, 2005

More Atlanta Film Recommendations

Because I've been caught up in job stuff, I'd completely lost track of the fact that the first Women of Color International Film Festival will be taking place this weekend here in Atlanta. Thanks to the cinetrix for the tip.

The films look great, and the guest list, which includes Sisters in Cinema director Yvonne Welbon and Daughters of the Dust actress Barbara O, looks cool, too.

Update: When I went to the theater tonight to see Born into Brothels, I learned about yet another cool film screening. Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts' Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power (IMDB) (IFILM) will be playing at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Site Screening Room on March 17 at 7:30 PM. There will be a Q&A with Dickson and Mabel Williams after the movie.

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Act Up Fight Back

Just got an email reminding me that the next installment of the Film Love series will take place in a couple of weeks. "Act Up Fight Back: Art and Activism in the Time of AIDS" will have two very different programs. On Wednesday, March 30, there will be a screening at Eyedrum featuring Nino Rodriguez's Identities, Lawrence Brose's An Individual Desires Solution, and James Wentzy's The Ashes Action, among others.

On April 1, there will be a second set of films screened in Emory University's White Hall. This set includes Jim Hubbard's Memento Mori, which will be introduced by Hubbard himself. Also featured: ACT UP oral histories and Robert Hiferty's Stop the Church. Both nights offer exciting programs, and for more information about these screenings be sure to check out series organizer Andy Ditzler's notes about the films and other local Atlanta film events.

Film Love's last series, "NOW! Short Films on African American Experience in the 1960s," was very rewarding, and this film series looks exciting, too.

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March 10, 2005

Ways of Seeing

Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's Oscar-winning documentary, Born into Brothels (IMDB), will be playing this week in Atlanta and I'm hoping to catch it this weekend. The film focuses on Briski's efforts to empower the children of several Calcutta prostitutes by providing them with camers as a way of giving children a greater sense of control over their world. Briski has since raised money for the children by selling their photographs, and Briski's "Kids with Cameras" project has expanded into Cairo, Haiti, and Jerusalem. I'll admit that I have some reservations about Briski's project even before I see the film, specifically the potential that the film might be more about the filmmaker's journey rather than the children she is trying to help, as Seema Sirohi observes. Sirohi's article also notes many of the other controversies that the film has raised, including the fact that Briski has stated that she will not screen Born into Brothels in India. Others have claimed that the children's condition has actually worsened due to Briski's film, but that's under fairly heated debate. If anyone has seen this film, I'd be curious to know your reactions to it (links via mind the __GAP*?).

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March 9, 2005

Comfort Film

In his entry on Marco Tullio Giordana's six-hour epic film, The Best of Youth (which sounds truly amazing by the way), George of A Girl and A Gun writes,

I think of his result as a movie counterpart to comfort food. I grew up on meat loaf and mashed potatoes (my mother was from rural Illinois), and while I have for many years eaten a vastly different diet, I still regard that fare as the culinary equivalent of the prenatal position.

I've been thinking about this metaphor a lot lately, primarily because I'm still staring into that abyss Collin so eloquently described a few weeks back. In fact, I thought about titling this entry, "Exhausted in Academe," and may write that entry soon. But what I'm really interested in knowing are your "comfort films," what movies you seek out when you want to curl up on the sofa and hide from the world.

Last night for me, it was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I also rented Before Sunset, but was too sleepy to watch both, but Eternal Sunshine did the trick. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the film the first time, especially Kate Winslet's performance in the lead role. I even contemplated bringing out Dazed and Confused, but I've used it as a comfort film several times already and don't want to risk that film losing its power to calm my frazzled nerves. So what are your comfort films? As an added bonus, do these comfort films have food equivalents, the meat loaf and mashed potatoes that George describes?

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Operation Cinema

I'm guessing that it's no real sceret that Hollywood and the Pentagon (or Homeland Security in this case) have been collaborating in the war on terror. In fact, the Pentagon has had an Entertainment Office since it was established in 1947. This USA Today article briefly mentions David Robb's thesis in Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies that the Pentagon office is a "propaganda machine that cajoles Hollywood into showing the military only in a positive light." While I haven't yet Robb's book, though I certainly feel like I should, I found the Pentagon response worth noting because it relies on the assumption that the filmmakers themselves would find the Pentagon's participation disruptive. Entertainment Office rep Phil Strub comments, "If this was so coercive and onerous, why would people keep coming back?"

This realy doesn't seem to be the question that Robb is asking, and it's certainly not the most relevant question. Hollywood filmmakers have a vested interest in working with the Pentagon, and this collboration, far from "onerous," would seem to provide filmmakers with a greater sense of importance or involvement in the war effort. While some filmmakers might find the Pentagon's help "coercive," they're not likely to seek it out anyway. Instead, the concern is that only one side of the story is being told, that we're more likely to get a single point of view. Hollywood has long been happy to serve as one of the world's greatest public relations tools for the Pentagon. That being said, I'm willing to acknowledge that not all films screened for the Pentagon necessarily conform to the Bush administration's stand on the war in Iraq.

The Pentagon and CIA offices also miss the point when they point to films that appear to criticize these organizations such as the HBO movie about Alrdich Ames, the CIA-spy turned Russian mole, Alrdich Ames: Traitor Within (IMDB). The point isn't that the CIA cooperated on a film about one of its most notorious failures as an organization (though by far not the worst or most notorious). It's that the film still conveys the need for such organizations in the first place. In fact, showing these mistakes would seem to be good PR for the CIA, in part because it shows a willingness to portray the organization's failures.

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March 7, 2005

New Barbara Kopple Documentary

I have to teach in a few minutes, but I just noticed that Barbara Kopple has a new documentary on female journalists working in combat zones. The documentary will be airing on A&E on May 25. I don't have cable, so I may end up begging one of my Atlanta readers to videotape this for me. If anyone has any information on this doc, I'd love to know more.

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March 6, 2005

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Jem Cohen

Also via the very cool Documentary Film Weblog, Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews experimental documentary filmmaker Jem Cohen's Chain (IMDB), which offers "a strange mix of documentary and fiction about malls and similar commercial spaces." Cohen's "meditative" approach seems comparable to the work of Chris Marker, a debt Cohen himself recognizes in dedicating Chain to Marker and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings. Cohen has also done documentaries on/with Fugazi and Elliott Smith. Definitely worth checking out: Cohen's Benjamin Smoke, which focuses on one of the great performers to come out of Atlanta's music scene.

Update (3/9): "Chain Reaction," an interview with Jem Cohen in Cinemascope (via Mind the__GAP*?).

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Supersized Lawsuit

Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me featured a brief interview with attorney Samuel Hirsch, who was representing two adolescent girls who were suing McDonalds in 2002 for contributing to their obesity. During his interview, Hirsch is asked for his motivations in representing the two girls. His response: "You mean, motive besides monetary compensation? You want to hear a noble cause?"

Now Hirsch is at again, suing Spurlock for defamation. According to the Documentary Film Weblog, "Accusing the director of 'Negligence, Unauthorized Use of Likeness, Disparagement to Reputation, and Defamation of Character, Fraudulent Inducement, False Misrepresentation, Damage to Business Reputation,' Hirsch is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, and is also seeking 'disgorgement of profits.'" For more information, check out the New York Observer story.

No word yet on whether Hirsch would be suing himself for saying something so injudicious while on camera.

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The Professional Language of the Future

In today's New York Times, an Elizabeth Van Ness article asks whether cinema studies is "the new MBA." Reading the headline, I worried that it was yet another article that would misrepresent cinema studies to a wider audience, but the article's discussion of students who have used film studies degrees to pursue careers outside the film industry actually conveys a lot of what I find valuable about the possibilities for teaching film studies. More importantly, the article emphasizes the need for teaching cinematic (or visual) literacy, especially when cinematic images are endowed with so much power.

Specifically, Van Ness notes the ways in which a degree in film studies can prepare students for a number of other careers in fields ranging from public policy to law school and beyond. I'd imagine that anyone who teaches in film studies (or literary studies, for that matter) wouldn't be surprised by this news, but given the tendency to characterize these majors as impractical (or too theoretical), an article that identifies the skills a film studies student can develop is worth noting.

I do want to work through Van Ness's discussion of visual literacy, however, because it does reach an interesting limit in terms of discussing the power of visual images. Van Ness follows Rick Herbst's observation about the role of media images in preserving the status quo--and the need to promote marginalized voices--by noting that

At a time when street gangs warn informers with DVD productions about the fate of "snitches" and both terrorists and their adversaries routinely communicate in elaborately staged videos, it is not altogether surprising that film school - promoted as a shot at an entertainment industry job - is beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn't so much a profession as the professional language of the future.

While the "Stop Snitching" DVD and the Al Qaeda videos do have tremendous power, Van Ness more or less redirects Herbst's comments, ignoring his discussion of the power relations associated with film and media images.

She reintroduces these examples later, identifying "Stop Snitching," and the execution videos as a "complex sort of post-literacy in which cinematic visuals and filmic narrative have become commonplace." I've never been comfortable with the term "post-literacy," simply because it implies that something has been lost in the transition to an emphasis on visual literacy, rather than seeing visual literacy skills as building onto or complementing other forms of literacy. Other than that (minor) gripe, I thought it represented the best aspects of our profession rather well.

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March 5, 2005

The Jacket

I'm writing my review of The Jacket (IMDB) with some degree of caution because I don't want to sound like I'm endorsing the film, but because critics have been bashing the film, I feel compelled to emphasize some of the film's merits. Director John Maybury, apparently an associate of Derek Jarman's, has commented in an interview that the film should be read as a romance with a "subtext of being about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay." And while many critics, including the Times' A.O. Scott (see below) felt that the Gulf War subtext disappeared, I found it crucial to the film's overall significance.

The film opens with night-vision shots of a 1991 Gulf War ground battle in which Jack (Adrien Brody) is shot in the head but miraculously survives and returns to the U.S., though he suffers from a form of amnesia that causes him to black out at terribly inopportune moments, sometimes forgetting his own identity. For this reason, he carries his military dog tags with him everywhere he goes (an allusion, I'd imagine to a similar moment in Chris Marker's La jetee when the Parisian woman sees the Time Traveler's dog tags), eventually giving them to a young girl, Jackie, whom he meets while repairing her mother's car. The night vision shots, mixed with shock cuts, that open the film replicate the CNN Gulf War footage and convey the crucial relationship between technologies of war and technologies of perception, a topic disussed by Paul Virilio and many others. More crucially, the film sets up clear link between war trauma and memory loss (and Jack's eventual ability to travel into the future).

Jack's memory loss eventually places him in the inopportune situation where he is wrongfully convicted of murdering a police officer, and he is sentenced to a gothic mental institution in the Colorado mountains. Peter Deming's cinematography in capturing these snow-swept mountains was one of the film's major strengths (although the film's overuse of extreme close-ups of Brody's eyes and Kristofferson's teeth was distracting). One of the doctors in the mental institution, Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), takes an interest in the new patient and begins a series of apparently sadistic experiements on Jack, reasoning that "You can't break something that's already broken." Not exactly the kind of logic I'd want to hear from a psychiatrist, but Bekcer's experiments serve the narrative (and, I'd imagine, are intended to allude to the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, although they also vaguely reminded me of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor). There's an Expressionist quality to this footage, something that would be readily accepted in a Tim Burton film, but generally (and wrongfully) seems to come under criticism here. Like Roger Ebert, I kept thinking about Adrian Lyne's 1990 film, Jacob's Ladder, as I watched this film, and both movies are interesting in their attempts to associate the traumas of war with time travel.

Dr. Becker's most sadistic experiements include locking his patients in a metal morgue cabinet for hours at a time, which reminded me of both La jetee and Alain Resnais's Je t'aime je t'aime. While locked in this cabinet, Jack begins seeing shock-cut images from the past and future, eventually developing the ability to send himself into the year 2007 (or at least he imagines that he has traveled in time--it's never fully clear that he does), where he meets and adult Jackie (Keira Knightley), who has also endured a difficult life. And, in case you weren't aware of this fact, Jackie wears too much eyeliner and dark lipstick and presses glasses of alcohol tightly onto her lips. Initially frightened by Jack, who mentions their meeting fourteen years earlier, Jackie eventually trusts Jack's time-travel story and helps him learn more about the hosptial where he is incarcerated. I won't go through all of the details here, other than to say that the "detective" section of the film does have many logical implausibilities, especially the revelation of the "blunt head trauma" that eventually kills Jack, which could have been easily prevented. But the film is far less interested in the logic of time travel and far more interested in using time travel to convey its critique of war (it's obviously no accident that Jack is wounded during the first Gulf War by a young Iraqi boy he is trying to help).

Despite these logical implausibilities, I do think there is an interetsing film here, but I'm still sorting through where to go with it. I'll certainly write about The Jacket in my book, but I'm not ready to talk about how. Like Chris Marker's film, The Jacket certainly offers a meditation on war and trauma, and both films clearly reflect on the nature of cinematic perception. If you're looking for a taut psychological thriller, I don't think you'll find it in this particular film. And I'm not sure that the film quite succeeds as an art house genre film, although that's a better description of what the film is doing (or trying to do). It's worth noting that Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney, who were both involved in the remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris, received producer credits for this film. While I doubt they were creatively involved in the film, their support of the film seems significant in that the two projects seem remarkably similar as attempts to remake, or reintroduce, art house classics to more commercial audiences. Whether they have succeeded in this experiment is another question altogether.

Because I've written on time-travel films, I've been intrigued by the critics' treatment of genre, especially A.O. Scott's dismissal of the film. Cynthia Fuchs' review does capture the film's rather complicated political take on the effects of war. And I can only imagine that Peter Travers must have slept through most of the film, missing the more-than-transparent references to Chris Marker's La jetee. Both films involve a military-vet prisoner on whom an apparently sadistic doctor conducts psychological experiments through forms of sensory deprivation (and that's just one similarity). But part of what made this film interesting for me was its place in a recent cycle of "time-travel art films" (and I use the term "art" very loosely) that includes Donnie Darko, The Butterfly Effect, and Happy Accidents.

Posted by chuck at 10:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Atlanta Movie Notes

While I'm not unhappy that I caught The Jacket last night, I am bummmed that I missed last night's WRFG radio-sponsored screening of Sinan Antoon's About Baghdad. I've been wanting to see this film for several weeks and heard about the screening too late. If anyone happened to see the film, I'd love to know more about it. And while I'm thinking about it, I just wanted to mention the New York Times review of the new book, Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West, which sounds like an interesting read. Might be an interesting companion piece to Jehane Noujaim's Al-Jazeera doc, Control Room.

There will be another screening event here in Atlanta this week. The Midtown Art Theater will be screening Vincent Vittorio and Trey Lineberger's Little Men, which the filmmakers describe as Lord of the Flies meets Little Rascals. Co-director Vincent Vittorio will attend the screening.

Posted by chuck at 9:35 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Prediction

The Jacket (IMDB) will be this year's Donnie Darko. That's not an evaluation of either film's quality, but a statement about their relative structural positions within the cinematic universe. Like everyone's favorite creepy '80s time traveler, Adrien Brody's traumatized Gulf War vet will disappear quickly from theaters after failing to earn back the film's budget.

Then, in about a year, an enterprising marketing executive will repackage The Jacket as an underappreciated art film, complete with mandatory commentary track by a well-known film critic. The college freshmen, whose older brothers wrote critical analyses of water imagery in Donnie Darko, will discuss the metaphoric resonances of snow in The Jacket.

Then, late in 2006 or early 2007 (my crystal ball is a little hazy), with the film's cult status assured, a director's cut of The Jacket will have a brief run in art house theaters before the DVD finds its way to the bookshelves of college freshmen and other assorted hipsters all around the country. Again, I'm not saying that The Jacket is a good or bad movie, just describing the future reception this film will undoubtedly receive.

PS: I'll write a more serious review later. I do have a lot to say about this film, although I don't particularly recommend it.

Posted by chuck at 12:28 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 4, 2005

Time-Travel Sex

I read A. O. Scott's review of The Jacket with particular interest because my dissertation was on time-travel films, and I'm currently making strides towards reshaping that material into a book. The film sounds awful, as many time-travel films are. Adrien Brody as a Gulf War vet, sent to a gothic mental hospital after being convicted of a murder he did not commit, who manages to travel in time after having a bizarre form of punishment inflicted upon him by a sadistic doctor. It sounds like Jacob's Ladder minus Vietnam plus Butterfly Effect minus Ashton Kutcher plus La jetee minus Chris Marker (or something like that). Then again, Kris Kristofferson plays the doctor, so that's got to be worth something.

But what I found most enticing about A. O. Scott's review was the MPAA ratings blurb at the very end. The film gets an R-rating for, among other things, "time-travel sex." The metaphysical possibilities here abound. Is Adrien Brody in one moment in time while Kiera Knightley is in another? Are they copulating while time traveling? Because it's time travel, I'll (somewhat reluctantly) see this film and find out, but the MPAA descriptions here are probably more exciting than the images themselves.

Posted by chuck at 8:19 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

March 3, 2005

Decasia: The State of Decay

I watched Bill Morrison's amazing 2001 cinematic symphony, Decasia (IMDB), last night. I normally review only contemporary films, but I really enjoyed this film and wanted to encourage others to see it, if possible (or to find out if anyone else has seen it). Decasia is a montage of decaying silver nitrate footage set to the symphonic music of Michael Gordon (I have to be honest, I didn't really pay a lot of attention the role that music played), but the film itself is an incredible meditation on decay and loss, especially when it comes to the incredibly fragility of film itself. Although Morrison comments in an interview on the DVD that Decasia is about (human) mortality, it's impossible for me not to read the film as an allegory for the death of cinema itself or to think about the relationship between cinema or photography and death (yes, I've been reading my Roland Barthes and Andre Bazin).

The film opens with a Sufi dancer spinning wildly, setting up a spiral motif that dominates the film. As J. Hoberman notes, many of these early images recalls the actualités of pioneer filmmakers who captured scenes of everyday life, revelling in film's status as a novelty, and perhaps hinting that Decasia might offer a way of thinking about cinema's history. But before the credits roll, we get a tracking shot of a film development lab, with strips of film laying in the development fluid before being taken up on the reels (another spiral metaphor). These images of film labs reminded me of Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera, and his modernist celebration of the Kino-eye, now transformed into a decaying object. As Anita Gates notes, cinephiles will likely watch Decasia's images knowing that "a big chunk of America's film history is already lost or is in danger of rotting away."

Even with this knowledge, I found the decaying images themselves to be utterly beautiful and completely fascinating. Shots of a boxer punching against a strip of white mold suggest the impossibility of fighting against this decay. Other shots portray workers crawling out of the mouth of a cave that is about to collapse under the weight of a slightly melted film frame. Other images flip from positive to negative and back again, transforming a simple love scene into something sinister and more ominous. as a result, Morrison's presentation of decay seems more ambivalent than might initially appear. The film seems to warn against the decaying film stock and the images that risk being lost without greater efforts at preservation, but at the same time, decay has never been presented so beautifully.

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March 2, 2005

Generation Gap

I've just learned about what sounds like a fascinating new documentary. Tara Wray's Manhattan, Kansas is a first-person documentary focusing on the director's one-month reunion with her estranged mother in rural Kansas. I haven't seen the film yet, but it sounds like an interesting project and I'm pretty much a sucker for any new documentary that crosses my radar screen.

Update: I just did some more digging and learned that Tara Wray has been a guest blogger on Maud Newton's blog, which you should be reading if you're not already. It turns out that Wray has spent some time here in the ATL before migrating north to New York City. Wray is also the associate editor at Land Grant College Review and has published fiction widely (just go to Maud Newton's entry for the links).

I've noticed that Wray also recommends Craig Thompson's amazing graphic novel, Blankets, which reminded me a lot of my own memories of being a teenage fundamentalist. I'd planned to write a review of Blankets when I was reading it last year, but because it tapped into some fairly specific memories from my teenage years, I never did. Long story short: I'll go ahead and recommend Blankets again while I'm endorsing things.

Posted by chuck at 3:19 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Self-Pitying Rowdies and Mean Slackers

I want to go back to James Wolcott's discussion of Ken Tucker's Gunner Palace review because I think this debate illustrates my point about the film's political ambivalence. As Wolcott notes, Tucker initially implies that the film seems to be "bashing the troops," specifically that directors Michael Tucker (no relation to Ken) and Petra Epperlein were "were like the people who used to spit on Vietnam veterans when they returned home." Tucker later withdraws that charge, but in my reading of the film, it seems clear, whatecer your politics, that the point of identification is with the soldiers themselves.

In this sense, Tucker almost thoroughly misreads the film, suggesting that what Palace shows us "is a portrait of self-pitying rowdies." Ken Tucker points to scenes that portray the soldiers "barking orders laced with obscenities" and "brash soldiers, many not yet out of their teens, running rampant in the bombed-out remains of Uday Hussein’s Azimiya Palace." Ken Tucker's review virually ignores the real fears that many of the soldiers articulate, including their subversive jokes about the Humvee "armor" made from scavenged metal sheets. He ignores the fact that Michael Tucker worked to gain the sympathies of the soldiers in order to get them to talk freely on camera. It's hardly an unsympathetic portait.

Wolcott's comments on Tucker's review are also worth noting. Specifically, Wolcott taps into the representational challenge that seems to be so prevalent in discussions of the Iraq War, especially when it comes to portraying soldiers after the Vietnam War. Stories about the treatment of Vietnam vets by anti-war activists, however true, have gained such wide currency that representing the destructive actions of the US military has become a much more difficult task.

Wolcott adds that "No one wants to 'bash the troops,' but excusing their behavior as the hothead reaction of 'kids who happen to have guns' 'blowing off steam' and 'luckless souls' makes them sound like the juvenile delinquents in fifties dramas and sociology, not bad, just misunderstood." Wolcott's right to note that some actions by the soldiers, the actions at Abu Ghraib to note one example, ought to be criticized, and there are several scenes throughout Gunner Palace where we learn that captured Iraqis have been sent to Abu Ghraib. Because of the focus on teh sodleirs' experiences, Tuicker never follows through on what happens to these captured "enemy combatants," but the name Abu Ghraib is probably enough to unsettle us. And staying with the soldiers here may in fact convey the degree to which they are part of a larger machine, much of which is beyond their control. When another soldier comments that he's "just doing my job," the scene is utterly chilling.

In confronting these representation issues, the troops appear to be a blank slate, aginst which multiple political narratives can be written, whether that's Michael Moore's exploitation argument in F911 or Ken Tucker's "mean slackers" argument. What I find interesting is that Gunner Palace seems to permit both readings, and possibly many others as well.

Update: The cinetrix discusses this story in further detail, specifically Wolcott's reference to Jerry Lembcke's The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, which explains that stories about anti-war folks spitting on Vietnam vets were impossible to document or verify.

Posted by chuck at 12:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Harlan County Links

Just a quick link or two for future reference. I'm teaching Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA, this week, and just wanted to note that Robert Yahnke's notes on the film were partcularly helpful, especially in terms of showing how the film's plot is organized (also see his Resources for Teaching Documentary Film). Yelladog also has an interesting review of the film. I haven't taught Harlan in several years, so I'm looking forward to talking about it again.

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March 1, 2005

More Gunner Palace Reviews

I'll come back to these reviews later, but these reviews of Gunner Palace are worth reading. First, James Wolcott criticizes Ken Tucker's review of Michael Tucker's film. I need to re-read both of them before I take a position on their debate, but this is a good occasion to remind myself that I should be reading Wolcott more often. Meanwhile, J. Hoberman reads the film, much like I do, in terms of the "rap and reality TV" the soldiers use to mediate their experiences of the war.

Thanks to GreenCine for tracking down all of these reviews and for mentioning the fact that Outfoxed and Uncovered director Robert Greenwald now has a blog. Yep, we really do read these things!

Update: Also worth noting is Mary Ann Johanson's review of A Company of Soldiers and Gunner Palace at Flick Filosopher. Like her, I think these films should be viewed together if at all possible.

Update II (3/6): I just came across this interview with Michael Tucker on the Apple website. I didn't realize that Tucker and Epperlein substantially assembled the film on their Macs using Final Cut Pro, reminding me of Jonathan Caouette's similar work on Tarnation. Also worth noting in the interview is the role of communications technology in changing the relationship between the war and the home. The interview quotes one of Tucker's diary entries, noting that "Nothing is more bizarre than watching a soldier argue with his wife about which bills to pay as a firefight plays in the distance. The irony is, all the technology in the world can’t bring them home. You feel close, but in reality, you are further away than you thought."

Posted by chuck at 2:23 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack