Eulogy/Elegy to the film crtic

Roger Ebert just did a very moving piece on the end of the professional film reviewer, without ever mentioning his own contributing role in its destruction. Surprisingly, there's no focus on the advent of internet "amateurs" either -- only on the print media's focus on "celebrity." Despite my criticisms, it's a piece well worth reading here.

Chip Kidd

Some of you have heard me wax poetically about the design skills of Chip Kidd. Personally, I think he's the most influential graphic designer in the business right now. Well, he's got a brand new book out this week that's a must read for manga fans, comic fans, Batman fans, and for anyone who's just interested in publishing design and layout.

Read his interview with the LA Times here.

WGA Strike

Many of you will be impacted by the writer's strike: (1) Will Lost even have a season? (I need to know what was up with last season's final episode) (2) How do you get real news without the Daily Show? (3) what do I do at my internship? (4) What's the proper etiquette for crossing a picket line? and so forth. Impress your new L.A. friends and bosses by knowing some history. The New Republic has an informative piece on the WGA strike here.

film criticism

In our upcoming semester of intense genre study, one topic will be how critics use and interpret genre. In that discussion, it is hard not to bemoan the drastic weakening of the critical voice -- writing about film was once a literary art, now it is mostly a matter of digit manipulation. It is no wonder that the public, and therefore the studios, have lost interest in the critic's opinion. But once upon a time, Manny Farber, James Agee and, later, Pauline Kael walked the Earth. I quote from an old Time magazine piece on Kael: When Quentin Tarantino was 15, he saw something on TV that changed his life: Pauline Kael. The New Yorker movie critic was being grilled by Tomorrow host Tom Snyder on her rave review of Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and she refused to back down. "I thought, Who is this wild old woman?" the writer-director of Pulp Fiction recalls, "and soon I was going to the library to find her books. She was as influential as any director was in helping me develop my aesthetic. I never went to film school, but she was the professor in the film school of my mind."

Are any of you currently reading reviews today that make you feel like you're in film school?
Actually what inspired this post is that I did read such a review this morning -- I have long maintained that when A.O. Scott of the NY Times truly "gets" a movie (which is not as often as I'd hope) he can write so precisely that is actually improves one's enjoyment of the film. So take a moment today and read his review of "No Country for Old Men." Here's what I'm talking about:

"'No Country for Old Men' is purgatory for the squeamish and the easily spooked. For formalists — those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design — it’s pure heaven.

So before I go any further, allow me my moment of bliss at the sheer brilliance of the Coens’ technique. And it is mostly theirs. The editor, Roderick Jaynes, is their longstanding pseudonym. The cinematographer, Roger Deakins, and the composer, Carter Burwell, are collaborators of such long standing that they surely count as part of the nonbiological Coen fraternity. At their best, and for that matter at their less than best, Joel and Ethan Coen, who share writing and directing credit here, combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits, as if they were playing Franz Liszt’s most treacherous compositions on dueling banjos. ...

The script follows Mr. McCarthy’s novel almost scene for scene, and what the camera discloses is pretty much what the book describes: a parched, empty landscape; pickup trucks and taciturn men; and lots of killing. But the pacing, the mood and the attention to detail are breathtaking, sometimes literally.

In one scene a man sits in a dark hotel room as his pursuer walks down the corridor outside. You hear the creak of floorboards and the beeping of a transponder, and see the shadows of the hunter’s feet in the sliver of light under the door. The footsteps move away, and the next sound is the faint squeak of the light bulb in the hall being unscrewed. The silence and the slowness awaken your senses and quiet your breathing, as by the simplest cinematic means — Look! Listen! Hush! — your attention is completely and ecstatically absorbed. You won’t believe what happens next, even though you know it’s coming."

Wow. So Kudos to Mr. Scott this morning for giving us that film school feeling, fleeting as it will be.

Something to start getting in the mood.

Blogs you may want to read - One in a series. If you're a budding politico, but you're also interested enough in the entertainment industries to be a part of Duke in LA this coming semester, you might combine those interests by following Wilshire & Washington. This Variety blog highlights "the enduring relationship between entertainment and politics. More than a mere curiosity, the intersection of these worlds play out daily in fund raising, celebrity causes, show business lobbying and creative expression (not to mention Stephen Colbert) . Variety managing editor Ted Johnson provides the daily dose with contributions from reporters in L.A. and D.C."

Seinfeld Superman interview

If you've never seen the Am EX Seinfeld/Superman web commercials, they are very funny. This is not one of them, but is a Today Show interview. Listen to the genre references.

The actual commercials are also on YouTube.

Giant Kudos to the NY Times

TimesSelect is now free for University Students and Faculty

It is offering a complimentary subscription to TimesSelect. You must be a student or faculty member with a valid college or university e-mail address to be eligible for this offer. You no longer need an access code to activate your TimesSelect University Subscription.

To start the process, please provide your school e-mail address here.

Docu-dramas

Here's a good piece from the British Guardian. My question is if what genre is docu-drama a subgenre of? Drama or documentary? And how does that fit with Borat? Or Spinal Tap? I think it has to be treated as a genre in its own right, not a subgenre.

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - film
No Oscars for the docu-drama
Xan Brooks

February 21, 2007 01:02 PM

For the whole article (worth reading) click here.
"In the rumble-tumble rush for Oscar, some hotly-tipped films will inevitably fail to make the cut. At various stages over the past six months, the likes of Borat, Bobby and United 93 have all been talked of as possible best picture nominees. All conspicuously fell by the wayside. There are probably numerous reasons for this, ranging from the rash of lawsuits that trailed Borat to the general suckiness of Bobby (though that never stopped Titanic). A friend of mine recently suggested another factor. "The Academy doesn't know how to deal with docu-dramas," he said.

Was there ever a more slippery sub-genre than the docu-drama? It is, in fact, so slippery that it travels under a variety of alter egos (the drama-doc, the re-enactment and - most troublingly - the "docu-fiction"). Until now it would never have occurred to me to bracket Borat alongside United 93, or for that matter Bobby alongside Touching the Void. Yet here they are - all members of the same shadowy masonic lodge.

The more I think about it, the more I understand the Academy's problem: I don't know how to deal with docu-dramas either. Like a fussy child with a plate of food, I prefer my facts not to mix with my fiction. ..."

Why Westerns matter

I offer this from the Huffington post, not as a political comment, but as another example of how genre iconography can reach way beyond the films themselves (and yes, some stars, like Wayne or Karloff, became so associated with a genre that they became part of the semantics):

Casting: the One Word that Explains Hollywood's Embrace of Obama

Ever since the news broke that, much to the consternation of Team Hillary, some of Hollywood's major players -- including David Geffen, Jeffery Katzenberg, and Ari Emanuel -- were throwing their support behind Barack Obama, I've been asked the same question again and again: Why?

It's not "Why?" as in, "Why in the world would they want to do that?" Obama's appeal is too obvious for that.
The question is more an attempt to understand the intensity of Hollywood's embrace of his candidacy, despite many long and pre-existing loyalties to other candidates. ...
Sure, Obama is young, brilliant, handsome, charismatic ... and, yes, Sen. Biden, "clean as a whistle." But the reason why Hollywood has gone ga-ga for Obama can be summed up in one word: "Casting."...
As much as we may not want to admit it -- as much as we may wish that politics was about policies and the perfect health care plan -- the truth is unavoidable: casting matters. It matters very much....
For a long time now, America has been besotted with the idea of President as Macho Cowboy. Think John Wayne. Or Ronald Reagan epitomizing the John Wayne archetype. The tough-talking, straight-shooting, no-crap-taking role model has captured the public's fancy -- especially in a post-9/11 world.

It's one of the reasons Bush was able to win reelection despite all the massive failures of his first term. He was seen as a brush-clearing, pick-up-driving, big-belt-buckle-wearing, terrorist-ass-kicking kind of guy. The sort of fellow you could have a beer with, as opposed to John Kerry's equivocating, wind-surfing, Chardonnay-drinking persona.

But after 6 years of Bush's all-hat-no-cattle leadership, the American public seems ready to abandon the John Wayne fantasy. The question is: to be replaced by what?

A Jimmy Stewart-style Everyman? An honest-as-the-day-is-long Gary Cooper type? A Gregory Peck-does-Atticus Finch moralist?"

With that last question, I wonder if Huffington isn't actually moving from semantics to syntax -- fighting out the struggle between outlaw and classic hero that we saw in Casablanca and the Man who Shot liberty Valance. Her full post can be read here.

NPR genre strangeness

NPR Analysis
Listen to this story here.

Talk of the Nation, January 24, 2007 · Following the president's State of the Union address, we'll move past the political analysis and punditry and hear from innovative thinkers and creative minds about their view of the state of the country.
Guests:

Nora Ephron, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood and Sleepless In Seattle, which she also directed; author of I Feel Bad About My Neck

Elizabeth Nunez, author of Prospero's Daughter; distinguished professor at Medgar Evers College at City University of New York

Merle Haggard, singer-songwriter

Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of Cosmopolitanism, professor of philosophy at Princeton University

Frank Miller, comic book artist

Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor of Time.com

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

In defense of the '76 Ballers

First of all, go down and read the two graffiti posts and look at the Bob's Big Boy mailbox. I'll wait.

Okay. When I posted that Bob's Big Boy mailbox yesterday I thought it was gross, it was wrong, etc. This morning when I posted the London phone booths photo, I thought it was a powerful statement of art. (In both cases, I'm somewhat overstating the case, but I think I'm accurately stating what the programmed response is supposed to be)

It got me thinking about the '76 ball preservationists that we spent so much time with last Saturday. Isn't there a real parallel between what they are doing within the cityspace and what street artists do? Aren't they rebelling against the system by trying to force Conoco-Phillips to respect its past. Aren't they trying to make an impact on our surroundings? Even if its a questionable cause, one might also say that not all graffiti artists have to be as talented as the best -- there is a political as well as artistic aspect. Same thing with city preservationists, including the '76 ballers.

At least think about it. I know it's not the exact same, but there is a connecting thread.

Also, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about re: '76 Balls, click here. There's also a BBC story on the history of the balls, with interviews with our Project1947 friends, Kim and Nathan, here. The BBC piece makes a better argument for the cause than any we heard the other day.

graffiti part 2

A graffiti piece also just popped up in the British paper, The Guardian. Fascinating in its subtle differences in tone and understanding from the more commercial LA Times piece.

The interesting part for me:
"There is also a violent edge to graffiti's visual approach. Sometimes the illegibility of graffiti text is part of what makes it feel threatening. The scene has always played with the language of war and conflict: painting is called bombing, while writing your name is a tag, echoing soldiers' dog tags. The friction between writers and the authorities - which in the UK has become increasingly heated as government legislation becomes increasingly strict - is a form of war. The artists become guerrillas and spies fighting to create art; as a result, graffiti often takes over the non-spaces of the city - train yards, backlots and odd hidden walls. It is only here that individualism and identity is allowed to exist."

The whole piece is here.

Get a second Life.

Cinematical (link to the right) reported this nougget for those of you not heading off to Sundance:
"Sundance and YouTube Team Up for Some Monster Blogging

I'm sure you're probably already aware of that online virtual world called Second Life, and how the Sundance Channel has created a little island within Second Life in an attempt to bring indie fanatics from around the world together in one spot for screenings, interviews, parties and extra special exclusives. Recently, the Sundance Island officially opened up shop with a free screening of the buzzed-about flick Four Eyed Monsters, with directors Arin Crumley and Susan Buice on hand to answer questions afterwards.

Since things worked so well, Crumley and Buice have been asked to travel to Sundance to shoot daily videos which will be broadcast through YouTube as part of a collaboration (their first) with the Sundance Channel. Like Cinematical (which should be your first source for all things Sundance), the two filmmakers will skip around town interviewing filmmakers, attending panels, parties and (I imagine) having a blast, all the while providing us with the kind of uninhibited creativity they're known for.

And, for a sneak peak at what they have in store for us, Cinematical exclusively brings you their first official Sundance video -- essentially, an introduction to what lies ahead. Enjoy!"

Okay, it's not the same thing, but it's better than not knowing what's happening. Note that if you go to the actual cinematical post here, there's a lot of useful links in the text that didn't transfer during my cut and past.

Sequels and comparative reading

Both the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly write today about the inundation of sequels coming to theaters in 2007, including the smaller second films like The Hills Have Eyes 2 and third entries into major franchises such as Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Shrek the Third. More about the sequel phenomenon at the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly.

The story is the same in both papers, and its the same recycled one we get each year -- studios like sequels. What I was struck by, however, is just how boring to read the LA Times article was, compared to the LA Weekly column. Here's an example from the Weekly (but worth reading in full):

Orgy of Sequels Climaxing in 2007
Will the public get off? Or is it just studio masturbation?
By NIKKI FINKE
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - 2:20 pm
It’s official: Hollywood has run out of original ideas.If you thought 2006 was bad, just wait. In 2007, the studios will give up on birthing blockbusters and concentrate instead on cloning them to knock off lame sequel after lamer sequel after lamest sequel. Familiar titles will be followed by so many numbers that filmgoers looking for a Friday-night flick will need a calculator just to figure out which of the threequels and fourquels they want to see — if any at all.Oh, and if the year of living sequentially doesn’t destroy the movie biz, then the expected labor strike (also a sequel) will.
...it simply takes too much moola to create awareness for new product — in marketing parlance, this is known as “audience creation.” It’s a given that with franchises and remakes, the awareness for under-25 males — the most coveted category of moviegoers — approaches 100 percent. But with original stories, that awareness level drops below 60 percent. And, when the average cost to make a movie (as of 2005) stands at $96.2 million, and marketing costs at $36.2 million per pic, it stands to reason that studios are loath to gamble on unproven concepts. Riding coattails takes the risk out of a notoriously risky biz, which means moguls can have fewer Maalox moments in what is tantamount to a life on meth. Production has dwindled to just a dozen films from each major each year, most of them sequels."

Now compare that to the Times:

Sequels come back to rule box office in '06
Pirates, mutants and animated mammals lead the charge to box office riches.
By Josh Friedman and Claudia Eller, Times Staff WritersDecember 19, 2006

The star of Hollywood's 2006 box-office recovery: the sequel.Led by "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "Ice Age: The Meltdown," grosses in the U.S. and Canada are poised this week to overtake the $8.9 billion in receipts for all of 2005.Six of the year's 12 biggest movies were sequels. Successors to previous hits grossed $2 billion, some 40% more than they did last year."While nothing is a slam dunk in this business," said Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook, "at least going in there's a comfort level knowing that audiences have embraced these characters and the worlds that have been created."And get ready for more. The next few months are shaping up as an arms race of sequels, with studios rolling out new versions of some of their biggest all-time blockbusters ..."

No wonder the daily newspaper is struggling. What's interesting is that while the articles are both about studios playing it safe, and doing better financially for it, the opposite is true in publishing where writing for mass consumption no longer seems viable as blogs and podcasts which allow for more specialized (and "hipper") coverage draws away readership. Any thoughts? (Probably not, as we go about moving to LA, etc.)

"in my day ..."

The New Yorker has two very good writers reviewing film. I enjoy their writing abilities. That does not make them especially useful critics. I love film criticism, but it should be young and vibrant. It should embrace the new, while still being aware of history.
Here's the New Yorker:

Memorable Movies of 2006
by Anthony Lane
"Most moviegoers will end the year unsatisfied. If you had been cast adrift for the whole of 2006, what would you have missed at the movies? Not a great deal. A soldier fighting abroad in 1942, with no access to motion pictures, would have had some enviable catching-up to do on his return, starting with “The Palm Beach Story,” but it’s not like that these days. ...

My saddest moment in a movie theatre came a month ago, when I screened “All About Eve” to a bunch of acquaintances, one of whom came up to me at the end. “What happened?” she asked. “Well,” I replied, “Anne Baxter got the award, and Bette Davis sat there all steamed up, and George—” “No,” she said, tapping her foot, “what happened to movies like that? Movies with four great parts for women and lines you want to quote? Where did they go?”
No idea, but they sure as hell aren’t coming back. "

Yawn. No wonder film criticism seems more irrelvent every day. Is anyone reading a film critic today that actually matters.?

I just finished writing the above and realized that I'm no better than Anthony Lane; I was doing the exact same thing, only about film criticism rather than film. In fact, if I hadn't stopped, I'm certain I would have invoked Pauline Kael as the last critic that mattered, or some such nonsense.

Do any of you read film critics for pleasure, or do you skip down to the letter grade/number of stars? (Crap, I did it again, didn't I?) Any thoughts?

The Weinsteins enlist in the war on Christmas?

A Hollywood Reporter blog has a blistering attack on the Weinstein Company for releasing a Christmas-themed slasher film. The full story is here.

"Weinsteins & MGM To Release Xmas Crap
Shame, shame, shame on Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and their distributor MGM's Harry Sloan, for opening a holiday-themed slasher movie on Christmas Day. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the ads and release date for Black Christmas from Dimension/MGM. The promos even make fun of "people who express outrage" as well as the plot's body count. And the entertainment industry wonders why it continues to have a huge PR problem as promoters of garbage? Showbiz marketing calls this counter-programming. Still, I don't understand: just how many disturbed human beings does The Weinstein Company and MGM think actually want to go see a gory movie on December 25th -- specifically, a remake of a 1974 horror flick in which a college sorority house is terrorized by a psycho who makes frightening phone calls and murders the girls during the holiday break. Is the intended audience supposed to be non-Christians? Really, investors in The Weinstein Company, and MGM, need to protest this deplorable decision. It should be noted that, in 2003, the Weinsteins made Bad Santa, a distasteful comedy which at least wasn't released on Christmas Day. The only other Christmas-themed slasher movies I could find in the records was 1996's little-seen Santa Claws, and 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night, released by TriStar that November and so repugnant that it prompted protests at theaters where it was shown. Unfortunately, it did big box office and spawned 4 sequels. Moviegoers, don't let this happen again."

I'd be really curious what people thought on this. I think it's absurd to suggest that the film is targeted at "non-Christians." So jews are all going to go see Black X-Mas on the 25th as some protest against their office Christmas party? No, it's about the teen market! And the article is about genre bias -- action movies are okay fror Christmas (Like Rocky's going to turn the other cheek), but horror is unacceptable for the holiday. Anybody agree with the Hollywood Reporter?