Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:58am
Subject: Re: BackLot Pass from Fox Movie Channel
During 1955-1957 there was a hour long American TV series, "The Twentieth
Century Fox Hour". The shows have recently been revived on the cable TV channel,
"The Fox Movie Channel" (FMC), under the new title, "Hour of Stars". FMC also
occasionally shows an interesting documentary about the restoration of the
episodes; the documentary is part of the series, "BackLot Pass from Fox Movie
Channel". This documentary takes us to the salt mines under Oklahoma (or was it
Kansas?) where Fox stores the negatives of all its film classics. Neat stuff.
There will be a test on all of this later!
I regularly watch FMC. It is the American cable TV home of movies from 20th
Century Fox. They show "Laura" (Preminger), "Slave Ship" (Tay Garnett), "The
Nickel Ride" (Robert Mulligan), etc, all in restored versions.
The channel also shows an episode of "Hour of Stars" each week. Each episode
is a 45 minute remake of a Fox movie, done with new casts, director and
condensed script.
The pilot of the series now known as "Hour of Stars" was "The Ox-Bow
Incident". This was a 1955 remake of the Wellman film, directed by Gerd Oswald.
Oswald, as Bill Krohn pointed out, is a genuine, blessed-by-Andrew Sarris auteur.
I've been a big fan of Oswald for decades, but have just recently caught up with
"The Ox-Bow Incident". There have been quite a few posts in a_film_by in
which Oswald's work is enthusiastically discussed - he is much admired by many
people on the list.
The other episodes sampled so far of "Hour of Stars" have not been as good. I
did not like their version of "House of Strangers", with talented John
Cassavetes trapped in a hopelessly dull remake of the original film.
Mike Grost
PS In the mid-1970's I had a dream, in which I was working as the Assistant
Director to Gerd Oswald on a movie. Very happy dream! Had never seen a photo of
Oswald at the time. In the dream, he looked a lot like Otto Preminger. When a
photo of Oswald finally emerged, the real Oswald did not look anything like
my dream version - he is quite baby-faced!
10302
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 8:49am
Subject: Re: auteurs and Monty Python
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> > Slightly OT: Is it just my wishful thinking, or is that a very
young
> > Catherine Zeta-Jones jogging topless in slow-motion, leading the
> > soccer-garbed beauteous executioners in the skit of the man who
> > picked his method of death near the end of Meaning of Life?
>
> Don't know, but according to the IMDb she was 13 when the film was
> released. - Dan
Uh-huh. Sure.
10303
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 8:59am
Subject: Re: our favorite
Actually, if Bush had written anything by which his IQ could be
> > measured, it's likely that it would be around 91. He's certainly
> the
> > stupidest man ever to be President, although I'm sure Gerald Ford
> is
> > a close second.
>
> Does that mean you disagree with Godard?
I never disagree with Godard.
> Seriously, I watched the "Journeys with George" documentary, and it
> did make me think he's a dangerous man to underestimate.
He's a dangerous man, period.
He was
> very fast on his feet, and capable of some serious manipulation --
I watched it too. He struck me as a charmless glad-hander with all
the animal cunning of the breed.
> He did charm that press plane, and that's no small accomplishment.
I guess getting a blow-job on upper Sunset Boulevard isn't, either.
> Considering the difficulty of maintaining a totally false persona
> for very long stretches of time, his vocal flubs seemed more a
fault
> of improvisational acting skills than IQ.
It's an IQ that can't grasp any subject more complex than a Sunday
sermon, compounded by a rather endearing form of self-sabotage when
he tells lies that rub his vicious nature the wrong way. Mark Crispin
Miller nailed it when he said Bush gets totally tongue-tied whenever
he tries to spout compassionate conservatism, whatever that is, but
miraculously starts completing sentences when he's talking about war.
Bill Clinton was a kind of
> perfomance genius --
Clinton was pretty smart all-around.
> I agree Bush may be dumb as presidents go, but i'm sure that's a
> high average --
Maybe, but since 1980 it has plummetted. That's when, in the immortal
words of Joan Didion, "the White House became a cargo cult."
10304
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 11:16am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
> Well, to me it seemed like business as usual: a couple of matchlessly
> dynamic thrill-ride setpieces (the best in the business), some black
> humor for the arty crowd (the Dr. Eyeball sequence), some enjoyable
> sci-fi juvenalia (those spider thingies), gobs of depressive male
> weepie stuff (his virtual snapshots of the son), a completely loony
> premise (the wooden balls of pre-criminality), some New Age-y vibes
> (woozy pre-cogs sitting in a pool), plus Spielberg's customary
> inability to find a satisfactory ending. The visuals were fine,
> especially since Janusz Kaminski retired the cathedral lighting for
> awhile. All I see is the formula, but that's how I remember the
> film.
Well, there you go. It's kind of hard to make the product placement
in the film even remotely defensible, then.
I think it's a great film, thus, the shit that bothered you didn't
bother me. Easy peasy.
-Jaime
10305
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 0:14pm
Subject: Re: Re: Product Placement
Sounds like wish fulfillment to me.
g
Our talk of justice is empty until the
largest battleship has foundered on the
forehead of a drowned man.
--Paul Celan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Damien Bona"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:53 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Product Placement
> My own favorite example of product placement was Pepsi-Cola board
> member Joan Crawford's insistence that William Castle place Pepsi on
> the kitchen counter in Strait Jacket -- the pause that refreshes for
> serial ax murderers. A nice additional post-modern touch: one of
> the victims in the movie was an actual Pepsi-Cola vice-president
> (Mitchell Cox).
>
>
10306
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 2:09pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Even more OT: Did anyone tape TUESDAY night's American Idol
episode?
> My ex-wife thought Fantasia Barrino's performance last night showed
> her to be the best thing since Aretha Franklin, but my ex-wife
> doesn't know how to use a VCR to record something. Anyone?
From the brief clip I heard on CNN this morning she (Fantasia,
not your ex)is a screamer, like all pop singers have been for
decades. Every single word of a song has to be belted out at maximum
lung power. Not my cup of tea (although I used to get a thrill from
Tina Turner doing "Proud Mary" way back when...)
Until fairly recently I couldn't quite figure out what "American
idol" was -- I thought it was some kind of reality show but
apparently it's not. Since 65 millions people watched that show, or
voted for it or whatever, I guess it has sociological interest
(Barthes could have written a "Mythologie" about it...)
Your ex-wife is in good company. A friend of mine, who is a full
professor in a prestigious French University, was given a VCR for
Christmas a dozen years ago and could never figure out how to operate
it -- even to play a cassette, let alone record. (I'm not all that
more technologically sophisticated myself).
To get back to "On Topic" -- every time I watch Psycho now I think
of your ex-wife's snide remark ("la soi-disant mere...")
JPC
10307
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 2:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: BackLot Pass from Fox Movie Channel
> PS In the mid-1970's I had a dream, in which I was working as the Assistant
> Director to Gerd Oswald on a movie. Very happy dream! Had never seen a photo of
> Oswald at the time. In the dream, he looked a lot like Otto Preminger. When a
> photo of Oswald finally emerged, the real Oswald did not look anything like
> my dream version - he is quite baby-faced!
Maybe you made him look like Gert Frobe in your dream. I think I have
that association in my mind as well. - Dan
10308
From: Michael Lieberman
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 2:23pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
Shamefully, I watched it...sad individual I am. But only for Fantasia, who was really astonishing...though the song she had to sing achieved a new level of
vapid sentimentality.
----- Original Message -----
From: "hotlove666"
Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 04:51:03 -0000
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [a_film_by] American Idol
Even more OT: Did anyone tape TUESDAY night's American Idol episode?
My ex-wife thought Fantasia Barrino's performance last night showed
her to be the best thing since Aretha Franklin, but my ex-wife
doesn't know how to use a VCR to record something. Anyone?
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10309
From: samfilms2003
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:18pm
Subject: Re: The Product as Auteur
> There is a long history to product placements, that does
> extend back into the 40's and 50's –if the products seemed
> generic, I'm sure it was producer's timidity concerning trademark
> laws and clearances (it's still standard practice to tell film
> students to black out all the logos).
Well that's about the only defense -- you avoid the lawsuit by going
to the source.
There's a difference between an iconogrphy of products and selling screen
space ! (I like the floating billboards in Blade Runner - I don't know if=
Coca Cola paid $ or not....)
-Sam
10310
From: Robert Keser
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:41pm
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
> > All I see is the formula, but that's how I remember the
> > film.
>
> Well, there you go. It's kind of hard to make the product placement
> in the film even remotely defensible, then.
>
> I think it's a great film, thus, the shit that bothered you didn't
> bother me. Easy peasy.
Clearly, you're looking for (and finding?) something very different
in the film. More power to you, sez I !
--Robert Keser
10311
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Product as Auteur
--- samfilms2003
>
> There's a difference between an iconogrphy of
> products and selling screen
> space ! (I like the floating billboards in Blade
> Runner - I don't know if=
>
> Coca Cola paid $ or not....)
>
Oh Coca Cola padi alright -- through the nose. In
fact advertisers line up to get that sort of movie
placement. I'm sure there's a record somewhere of who
else bid for placement in "Blade Runner."
Tere is, of course, a downside to all of this.
Consider Pam American Airways. It went belly-up years
ago thus, making its prominent appearance in "2001"
odd, to say the least.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10312
From: Doug Cummings
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Product as Auteur
>Oh Coca Cola padi alright -- through the nose. In
>fact advertisers line up to get that sort of movie
>placement. I'm sure there's a record somewhere of who
>else bid for placement in "Blade Runner."
>
>Tere is, of course, a downside to all of this.
>Consider Pam American Airways. It went belly-up years
>ago thus, making its prominent appearance in "2001"
>odd, to say the least.
Funny you should mention this, David, I remember reading an article
ages ago about "the curse of 'Blade Runner'" and how so many of the
advertising you see in that film is for companies or products that
didn't survive the '80s. Atari is a prime example, I can't remember
the others at the moment.
Doug
10313
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:55pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> From the brief clip I heard on CNN this morning she (Fantasia,
> not your ex)is a screamer, like all pop singers have been for
> decades. Every single word of a song has to be belted out at
maximum
> lung power. <
My beloved had American Idol on last night, so I saw some of it.
This competiton is not really about singing, it's all about bombast
and hitting emotionally meaningless high notes. Genuine
interpretive singers like Rosemary Clooney, Blossom Dearie, Matt
Dennis, Susannah McCorkle, Chet Baker, hell, even Sinatra, wouldn't
make it past the first round. And God only knows what the American
Idol people would make of Neil Young or Tom Waits.
10314
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:57pm
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
>
>
> > > All I see is the formula, but that's how I remember the
> > > film.
> >
> > Well, there you go. It's kind of hard to make the product
placement
> > in the film even remotely defensible, then.
> >
> > I think it's a great film, thus, the shit that bothered you didn't
> > bother me. Easy peasy.
>
> Clearly, you're looking for (and finding?) something very different
> in the film. More power to you, sez I !
>
> --Robert Keser
I'm going to buy the world a Coke or...something!
;)
-Jaime
10315
From: Robert Keser
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 3:59pm
Subject: Re: The Product as Auteur
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003"
> > There is a long history to product placements, that
does
> > extend back into the 40's and 50's –if the products seemed
> > generic, I'm sure it was producer's timidity concerning trademark
> > laws and clearances (it's still standard practice to tell film
> > students to black out all the logos).
>
> Well that's about the only defense -- you avoid the lawsuit by going
> to the source.
Fifty years ago, four or five companies did not yet own practically
everything on earth, so cross-marketing was not a requirement. As it
happens, last night I showed Pickup on South Street in my class and,
given yesterday's discussion, I couldn't help noticing that not one
product name was identifiable, not a single one, despite many
opportunities with newspapers, cigarette packs, beer bottles, subway
billboards, etc. The wonder was that this never looked like a
self-conscious masking of names; it just seemed that the film's
narrative was so strong and vital that brand names would be a
pointless distraction. How far the cinema has fallen into
commercial functions!
--Robert Keser
10316
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 4:14pm
Subject: Re: The Product as Auteur
> Oh Coca Cola padi alright -- through the nose. In
> fact advertisers line up to get that sort of movie
> placement. I'm sure there's a record somewhere of who
> else bid for placement in "Blade Runner."
The doc on Gilliam's failed DON QUIXOTE features a scene in which TG
muses about the legal restrictions that apply to *including* a
billboard or advertisement in a film, documentary or otherwise.
Apparently there's all this draconian red tape, so thick that you can
get potentially get in trouble for featuring an ad (like a billboard)
in a shot, and simultaneously piss off the big dogs for *excluding*
ads from shots, as Sam Raimi did in the SPIDER-MAN scenes set in
Times Square - excluding but also digitally altering them to place
different products!
Gilliam observed with not a little wry bitterness that the ad
agencies need no permission to clutter up our sight lines in real
life, but filmmakers need to jump through hoops to get them in or out
of the frame.
-Jaime
10317
From: Seth Tisue
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 4:28pm
Subject: Re: our favorite
>>>>> "Joseph" == Joseph Kaufman
>> Actually, if Bush had written anything by which his IQ could be
>> measured, it's likely that it would be around 91. He's certainly the
>> stupidest man ever to be President, although I'm sure Gerald Ford is
>> a close second.
Joseph> Doesn't Al Franken report Bush's SAT scores, math and verbal=20
Joseph> combined, to add up in the 700s? (At least that's what a
Joseph> neighbor=20 told me.) --=20
I don't know what Al Franken reported, but that isn't the right figure.
see e.g. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010622.html
(sorry this is off-topic, but I don't like to see wrong facts running
around free)
==
Seth Tisue - seth@t... - http://tisue.net
"It is better to stay indoors and not mess around
with useless experiences." - Rudolph Wurlitzer, _Nog_
10318
From:
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 0:35pm
Subject: OT Re: American Idol
Ugh, here we go again - film, music, the planet, etc. was sooooooooo much
better before...before what, though? The 1960s? The 1970s? Certainly not the
1980s? The 50s? Before I lost my virginity? Before I entered the workforce? Pass
the freakin' puke bucket!!!!!!
I planned a lengthy tirade against such rockist cant but I don't want to give
Fred Camper apoplexy. Bill, I didn't tape last night's Idol but I have
several earlier shows with Fantasia on them. If you want a copy, email me offlist
with your address. She's jaw-dropping.
Extremely enraged and repulsed,
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10319
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 4:40pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
> > From the brief clip I heard on CNN this morning she
(Fantasia,
> > not your ex)is a screamer, like all pop singers have been for
> > decades. Every single word of a song has to be belted out at
> maximum
> > lung power. <
>
> My beloved had American Idol on last night, so I saw some of it.
> This competiton is not really about singing, it's all about bombast
> and hitting emotionally meaningless high notes. Genuine
> interpretive singers like Rosemary Clooney, Blossom Dearie, Matt
> Dennis, Susannah McCorkle, Chet Baker, hell, even Sinatra, wouldn't
> make it past the first round. And God only knows what the American
> Idol people would make of Neil Young or Tom Waits.
Damien, it makes me so happy you mentioned the wonderful
Susannah McCorkle, one of my true "idols". I have all her recordings
and saw her live twice. She had fans but they numbered in the (few)
hundreds rather than in millions. I was devastated when she threw
herself out of her Manhattan apartment window four years ago... Among
many great moments of pleasure she made me discover how good a
song "How Little We Know" really is (the song is thrown away, wasted
in "To have and Have Not"). And every cinephile should listen to her
albums "Music of Harry Warren" and "Songs of Leo Robin".
JPC
10320
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 4:44pm
Subject: OT Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Ugh, here we go again - film, music, the planet, etc. was
sooooooooo much
> better before...before what, though? The 1960s? The 1970s?
Certainly not the
> 1980s? The 50s? Before I lost my virginity? Before I entered the
workforce? Pass
> the freakin' puke bucket!!!!!!
>
> I planned a lengthy tirade against such rockist cant but I don't
want to give
> Fred Camper apoplexy. Bill, I didn't tape last night's Idol but I
have
> several earlier shows with Fantasia on them. If you want a copy,
email me offlist
> with your address. She's jaw-dropping.
I agree with your "state of the world" thing, but what is rockist
cant?
At least we can all agree that Tom Waits' golden throat blows all
that R&B yodelling clean off the map.
-Jaime
10321
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 5:36pm
Subject: OT Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Ugh, here we go again - film, music, the planet, etc. was
sooooooooo much
> better before...before what, though? The 1960s? The 1970s?
Certainly not the
> 1980s? The 50s? Before I lost my virginity? Before I entered the
workforce? Pass
> the freakin' puke bucket!!!!!!
>
> I planned a lengthy tirade against such rockist cant but I don't
want to give
> Fred Camper apoplexy. Bill, I didn't tape last night's Idol but I
have
> several earlier shows with Fantasia on them. If you want a copy,
email me offlist
> with your address. She's jaw-dropping.
>
> Extremely enraged and repulsed,
>
> Kevin John
Maybe a lengthy tirade would have helped understand what you're
talking about, or what you are enraged at and repulsed by. I for one
have no idea what you mean.
JPC
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10322
From: Robert Keser
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 6:18pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
> wrote:
> > This competiton is not really about singing, it's all about
bombast
> > and hitting emotionally meaningless high notes. Genuine
> > interpretive singers like Rosemary Clooney, Blossom Dearie, Matt
> > Dennis, Susannah McCorkle, Chet Baker, hell, even Sinatra,
wouldn't
> > make it past the first round.
>
> Damien, it makes me so happy you mentioned the wonderful
> Susannah McCorkle, one of my true "idols". I have all her
recordings
> and saw her live twice. She had fans but they numbered in the
(few)
> hundreds rather than in millions. I was devastated when she threw
> herself out of her Manhattan apartment window four years ago...
Among
> many great moments of pleasure she made me discover how good a
> song "How Little We Know" really is (the song is thrown away,
wasted
> in "To have and Have Not"). And every cinephile should listen to
her
> albums "Music of Harry Warren" and "Songs of Leo Robin".
What a loss! I remember having to call four or five friends with the
sad news when Susannah McCorkle died. Not only did she have that
unique smoky quality to her voice and matchless interpretative
skills (the Cole Porter album is my favorite), but she was also a
scholar. She wrote essays about Irving Berlin and Ethel Waters and
others, and was published in the NYT magazine; had a short story in
the running for the O. Henry Prize; earned a degree in Italian
literature, but also translated works from Spanish, German, and
Portuguese! Unhappily, I never had a chance to see her perform.
--Robert Keser
10323
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 6:37pm
Subject: O Susannah
Trying to keep this on topic -- McCorkle had a great flair for
digging up obscure or semi-obscure film songs from the '30s and '40s
and bringing them to life... I remember I annoyed Stanley Donen once
in Paris when he was raving about Diana Krall (he had just bought
some of her CDs) and I told him I thought Susannah McCorkle was so
much better and he had never heard of her. Actually no one I talked
to in France seemed to know her but they all knew Krall, that pure
product of marketing.
Great to know Susannah has a few fans on this Group!
JPC
10324
From:
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 4:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Schindler's List 3
Bill Krohn wrote:
>30 yrs ago Walmart wanted to build in my little home town in Texas
>and the city fathers, fearing that it would wreck other businesses,
>said no. So they built in the next town up the road, and the only
>business open in my hometown today is the pharmacy, thanks to
>Medicare probably. They're really bad news.
"Do you really think they're gonna change the face of the land?" -- Major
Amberson
I think that if Welles were making "The Magnificent Ambersons" today, he'd
change the automobile to the giant corporations like WalMart eating up small
towns, as they did yours, Bill. As far back as 1975, in his AFI Life Achievement
Award acceptance speech, he was contrasting the neighborhood grocery store to
the supermarket - in that context, of course, the neighborhood grocery store
meant OW! He was talking about himself.
Peter
10325
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 9:12pm
Subject: Pam American Airways
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> Tere is, of course, a downside to all of this.
> Consider Pam American Airways. It went belly-up years
> ago thus, making its prominent appearance in "2001"
> odd, to say the least.
Here's a better one. On an application I was filling out, it said
LIST ACHIEVEMENTS (books written, honors, like President of ENRON):
It's a recurrent application and I know it has been there for a few years.
Wonder when they will change it.
I remember the PAN AM AIRWAYS looking like an oxymoron.
I was surprised that food was not so well handled in the future.
First... still with the sandwiches, which aren't bad even today, but
the crew was not looking forward to them. And what's with the
wrapping paper... still no good way to package food?
10326
From:
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 5:20pm
Subject: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
In a message dated 5/27/04 11:47:22 AM, j_christley@y... writes:
> I agree with your "state of the world" thing, but what is rockist cant?
>
> At least we can all agree that Tom Waits' golden throat blows all that R&B
> yodelling clean off the map.
>
No, we can't ALL agree on that! I cannot believe you actually said that!!! As
if it were common knowledge, tacit even!!! Grrrrrrrrrr!!! But I will explain
why at least I can't agree by explaining what rockist cant means.
Just as one can spout off racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. cant, one can also
spout off rockist cant and there are correlations between the two
afflictions. It comes from the term rockism and has its origins in that moment when
rock-n-roll matured into rock, its modernist manifestation, and began to foster a
variety of myths that helped define 1960s countercultures. One characteristic
of the discourse is the desire to maintain a distance from the commodification
it associates with mass culture and all the attendant fears that association
carried, particularly an engulfing femininity. Another characteristic would be
a transasethetic quality that it shares with the great monuments to modernity
in architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe). In
short, rockism is the upholding of rock’s modernist virtues as they became
institutionalized and, as with most institutions, averse to change.
What happens, then, is that a high/low stratification gets replicated within
mass culture. And the tension gets played out as a series of rock vs. pop
dichotomies, with various disenfranchised social groups associated with the pop
side of the equation: albums vs. singles; author vs. consumer; interpretive vs.
utilitarian, etc.
Now, like any critical framework, you can Swiss cheese this up and find
countless artists that straddle both categories, thus making the framework
supposedly untenable. I'll preempt by nominating the Pet Shop Boys and, perhaps my
all-time fave band, New Order. But I still think the rock/pop dichotomy is a
useful precept because it reminds us that one can never assume certain values in
music (interpretation, Tom Waits) to be universal.
So, for instance, if you believe all music must be available for the mind to
interpret, then you're not going to understand tons of music that is available
for the body to dance to (heaven forbid!): disco, house, some techno, R&B.
If, perhaps in an auteurist spirit, you privilege the author for providing you
with such mind work (or the music itself begs interpretation), then you'll be
deaf to music that privileges the consumer, music that resists interpretation
or renders it moot. Most of the lyrics in disco, R&B, etc. are blank so that
the consumer can project upon them, dance to them, fuck to them, whatnot. And
sometimes, as in tons of dance music, there's not even an author in any
traditional sense to privilege.
Again, there are fine to distinctions to made, especially to buck some sort
of mind/body dualism. Creedence Clearwater Revival mean to mean, privileging
John Fogerty if not Stu Cook. But if you can't dance to much of their music, you
oughta get your butt cheeks checked (I recall a DJ throwing the meaning-laden
"Fortunate Son" into the mix to excellent effect one euphoric evening of
clubbing in the mid-90s). Similarly, Black Box and Next are designed for the
dancefloor and the bedroom but you can't help guffaw at the cheek of the samples in
"Ride on Time" or the single entendres in "Too Close" or "Butta Love." And
dancefloor mainstays Pet Shop Boys are so heady that they make you wonder
whether any political platform should be based on rational, face-to-face
communication.
One of the many things that makes American Idol so thrilling to look forward
to each week is that my man Simon articulates this pop side equation without
even explicitly trying to. Rock voices get continually shafted not only for
their indifference to pitch but also for their difficulty in being recuperated by
the song doctors and image consultants of the pop machine. Take the World
Idol extravaganza, for instance. The Norway entry sang "Come As You Are" (I
believe) by Nirvana. He did a good job but Simon asked him if he realized the
incompatibility of singing a Nirvana song (standing for noncomformity and a disdain
for the commercial) on a show where you're vying for a chance to be a puppet.
Or a kinder way of putting it - on a show where you don't get to be an author
who means to mean.
This pop machine burps up more masterpieces than you can possibly imagine.
But it's also responsible for hours and hours of dreck and for that reason, I
fear for Fantasia. She's really the only candidate in the history of American
Idol to have any art in her voice. Thus I don't think she'd be well served by
the Idol machine. She needs to go down to Muscle Shoals for some greasy ass
funk, some classic blues. I'm thinking Ann Peebles, Millie Jackson, Esther
Phillips. Instead, she'll be fed Diane Warren and Desmond Child hand-me-downs
(although some nuggets from Linda Perry and Gregg Alexander might work).
And she'll still be great. She'll sing her ass off on those, right, vapid
slabs of bombast just like Mary J. Blige sang her ass off on a typical piece of
Warren product back in 1999. But I pray she gets some unvapid ones or gets to
write her own.
But it won't matter that much with her. Because I'm also thinking of Aretha
Franklin. Yes, Bill, she's that good. And here's where we get into that
"screaming" (yodelling?!???) stuff. Fantasia proved her enormous flexibility with a
subtle, gut-wrenchingly gorgeous reading of "Summertime" (yes, don't worry -
tradition lives!!). But reaching for the rafters isn't always dreaded excess or
a will to power. Robert Christgau said it best in relation to Aretha: "Guided
indiscretion, that's the key--her great gift is her voice, but her genius is
her bad taste." The same can already be said for Fantasia. Her "screaming" will
be its own reward and she'll transform that vapidity into something you just
gotta hear again and again.
All this is why I am so enraged with the blanket condemnations of pop in the
Idol screeds here. They're so unexamined. Jamie, what kind of R&B are you
talking about exactly? I assume you're not referring to the 1950s R&B of Hank
Ballard, Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, etc. But you're not going to understand
Babyface or Lisa Stansfield or Aaliyah or Kelly Price or Brandy or Boyz II Men or
Next or Mary J. Blige or Erykah Badu or, ok, R. Kelly with a Tom Waits
framework. He means to mean; most of the above don't. And if you don't think Waits'
croak get wearying across a full-length, then you owe it to yourself to at least
seek out the Sugar & Poison compilation released in 1996 by Virgin in England.
Critic/compiler David Toop goes against the idea of post-60s R&B as little
more than smooth groove, quiet storm fuck songs and instead plumbs 70s Isley
Brothers, Tashan, Loleatta Holloway, Loose Ends, Zapp, Luther Vandross, etc. for
premillennial tension and unspecific dread. A landmark recon job!
For the record, I like Waits a great deal but he's sitting on one mighty
inconsistent oeuvre (that Alice thang from a year or so ago was a disaster). And
I'll take Neil Young over any of the R&B named above, inconsistencies and all.
Yes, of course, neither would make it on Idol. But to assume that
automatically makes for great art while winning Idol wouldn't is to succumb to the
vagaries of rockism.
Damien's post is more problematic because the era of (hell even???) Sinatra,
Dearie, Clooney, Dennis, Baker, etc. is typically referred to as pre-rock pop.
Nevertheless, interpretation and the author (as singer) are clearly central
to the judgment. And while it wouldn't be 100% correct to call this rockist, it
certainly shares with rockism an aversion to change. If you think great
interpretations of the great pre-rock songwriters are dead, you clearly didn't hear
Fantasia own "Summertime." And if you think the songwriters themselves are
dead, check out Stephin Merrit/The Magnetic Fields.
But the really infuriating thing about your post is that there actually WAS a
crooner obsessed with this pop past on American Idol this season. No matter
what anyone thought of John Stevens, no one could possibly claim that his voice
was "all about bombast." Emotionally meaningless, maybe. I found it a bit
one-note myself although he could do wonders with the songbook of Paul Heaton
(look him up). But that's besides the the point. You obviously didn't watch Idol
enough to know what it was "all about" and thus shouldn't have made such a
sweeping condemnation of it.
J-P, your post didn't bug me as much. But there's tons of 80s/90s stuff out
there for a Tina Turner fan. Check out Blige and Badu above. They're
jaw-dropping! In general, though, how much do people on this list actually know about
artists who rose in the 1980s and 1990s to rip on them so ignorantly? All this
reminds me of an anecdote from an early Pauline Kael book (it may be Kiss
Kiss). It's been eons since I read it so my memory may be clouded. But it was
about her encounter with a sort of jaded aesthete who could barely get out of bed
or couldn't wait to get to bed or something like that. Kael was enraged at his
chic laziness while she tried to make her days longer in order to incorporate
all the things she wanted to see/write about. Mind you, I'm no big fan of
Kael but I admire this sentiment. I spend so much time trying to keep up with the
new (o9, Kanye West) and the old (my man James Reese Europe beat Berlin out
of the gate, though not Cohan) (and that's just music) that it really turns my
stomach to hear these "things were better" cries.
Please please please, people! No more! They take too long to respond to.
Exhausted,
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10327
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 9:47pm
Subject: Vecchiali and the Avance sur recette
Some irony in this late follow-up: I've just heard that the last
movie by Vecchiali, shown at Cannes (6 years after his Victor
Schoelcher for TV), is about a filmmaker who, tired after so many
refusals, decides to eliminate one by one all members of the "Avance
sur recette" commission...
10328
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 10:10pm
Subject: Minority Retort
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
> But what does that subvert? It makes advertising seem creepy and
> oppressive, but still gives The Gap a big fat loud plug (you didn't
> hear them complaining, did you?) He could just as easily have made
> up a company name, after all.
>
Forgive me as I may have the details fogged up (it was years ago that
I read it), but Frederic Jameson wrote an essay on THE BIG SLEEP
where he compared the descriptions of real life products and brands
in Chandler's book to the fictionalized ones in Nabokov's LOLITA.
While both authors employed these brands to vividly describe their
fictionalized American landscapes, Chandler, I think Jameson wrote,
used them as FACTS, realities, whereas for Nabokov they were
ABSTRACTIONS, concepts. Either approach is fine, but my argument
with MINORITY REPORT is that it confronts you with the real life
possibility that our perception of the world will be (if it isn't
already) 90% advertising, and to employ real life brands to
illustrate this trend for me only underscores the chilling reality of
this prophecy. It's too convenient to dismiss the product placement
in this film as Spielberg having his cake and eating it -- one has to
look at what's there on screen and what it has to say about our
lives. The futuristic vision of this Gap was all the more effective
because it was presenting a reality in which we are already
immersed , where products are increasingly presented as being
customized to our tastes, giving us the illusion of power and
control, while simultaneously cementing the control of the product
and its producer on the consumer, us. I think that criticizing
Spielberg for allowing all these real-life brands to populate his
screen distracts us from the real onscreen reality that needs to be
reckoned with.
What also freaks me out is how Spielberg's vision of future
advertising is connected to the film's central concept of pre-crime --
both corporate and state institutions employ a pervasive tactic of
profiling human beings and accumulating so much knowledge about them
that the concept of privacy is effectively nullified. Anyone who
does transactions on the internet or even has an email account knows
that we have already entered this reality.
MINORITY REPORT isn't a perfect film, especially on a narrative
level, but what it has to offer cinematically (esp. in laying out a
vision of the commercial and state interests that influence --
"conspire to influence" as Rosenbaum would put it -- how human
beings perceive their surroundings in the 20th century - God, what
could be more relevant to the world we live in now???) is certainly
worthy of Fritz Lang's equally flawed but visionary METROPOLIS.
re: the last line of your essay, who are we kidding, Spielberg IS neo-
con! He's very much an advocate of using the status quo (in all its
patriarchal glory) as a tool for effecting positive social outcomes
and solving people's problems. If he didn't espouse this in his
movies he'd be a total hypocrite! But that doesn't mean he's not hip
to the problems of the institutions he embraces; what you consider
hipocrisies of a flawed, immature filmmaker, I consider paradoxes of
a filmmaker contending with the paradoxes of art and commerce that
define contemporary mainstream filmmaking, tensions too significant
to ignore. I think we're being just a tad hasty to dismiss him as an
objectionable apologist/exploiter of mainstream white suburban
capitalist values, without taking the pathology of this worldview
seriously and wanting to learn from its shadows and light. I think
someone who dances with the corporate devil can be just as
fascinating to examine (as opposed to scapegoating) as an indie
maverick.
One thing I really admire about Rosenbaum's writing on Kubrick is his
argument that Kubrick blurs the lines that uphold the conventional
dichotomies of human vs. non-human, social vs. individual, mechanical
vs. natural, such that we need to come up with new approaches for
these concepts. I think that in taking Spielberg seriously, one
might want to consider that Spielberg's films are complicated enough
that it's less useful to argue whether he is pro- or anti-capitalist
(I think there's sufficient evidence on both camps), but as with
Kubrick, one is compelled to reflect on the nature of the concept
itself in more ambiguous ways.
10329
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 10:20pm
Subject: Fwd: Re: Preston Sturges - Sullivan's Travels - opinions sought
> And it's pretty clear from what we see that whoever
> makes the films that speak for the poor, it can't be
> Sullivan - he just doesn't know the subject.
>
> >
Wait, are you saying the film is saying that Sullivan doesn't know
the subject of poverty? But the film has put Sullivan through the
phenomenological wringer!!! I think Sullivan comes out with a new
reverence for poverty -- his decision not to make a film isn't
because he doesn't know poverty but because he has gained to much
respect for it through his experience to feel qualified as a
spokesman. (the irony being that he IS making a statement, much in
the same way that certain Jewish scholars think that there should be
no works of art depicting the Holocaust, which they consider to be
the ultimate un-depictable event. the other irony being that Sturges
himself has depicted the experience of the poor by making this movie!)
I think it would be great to compare Sturges approach and his
argumentation on the ethics of filming the "impoverishment" of others
to one of Abbas Kiarostami's films, such as THE WIND WILL CARRY US or
ABC AFRICA, films that are very sensitive to the filmmaker's presence
as the implicit spokesman for the poor people he is filming.
10330
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 10:32pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
is
>
> J-P, your post didn't bug me as much. But there's tons of 80s/90s
stuff out
> there for a Tina Turner fan. Check out Blige and Badu above.
They're
> jaw-dropping! In general, though, how much do people on this list
actually know about
> artists who rose in the 1980s and 1990s to rip on them so
ignorantly?
I don't know about others, Kevin, but as far as I'm concerned, I
must plead guilty. I am totally ignorant of the pop music of the past
20 or 25 years, I never listen to it unless forced to -- in which
case it invariably at best bores me, at worst drives me crazy. I
haven't even heard the names of most of the musicians or singers you
mention. I wasn't presuming to express an educated judgment. And it's
quite true that, like "rockism", I have an aversion to change. I'm
an old foggy. I live in the past. I'm an unconditional jazz fan
(Tina Turner was slumming, although quite a thrill, have been since
I was 14 or 15 -- old enough to have heard most of the great ones
live -- yes even Billie, Prez, Hawkins, Bird and so many others. I
was into pop when jazz and pop straddled each other (Gary Giddins in
this week's NEW YORKER speaks of the "hotly contested border" between
the two). Rock changed everything. Maybe I'm missing some greatness
somewhere. But then the music that turns me on is probably as alien
to you as yours is to me.
JPC
> > Please please please, people! No more! They take too long to
respond to.
>
> Exhausted,
>
> Kevin John
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10331
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 10:52pm
Subject: Re: O Susannah
The thought of you annoying Stanley Donen is
absolutely delicious, J-P.
I've enjoyed much of Susannah McCorkle's work, though
not as much as that of others. Her death is a
horrendous tragedy.
Krall can sing but she's never "grabbed" me much at
all. My favorites include Judy Garland, Lena Horne,
Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Marianne Faithfull, Dawn
Upshaw, Irene Bordoni, Sylvia McNair, Nancy Morano,
Pinky Winters and -- of course -- Nico.
Slightly off-topic, my critical colleague John Powers
on "De-Lovely" : "De-less said about it De-Better."
--- jpcoursodon
> Trying to keep this on topic -- McCorkle had a great
> flair for
> digging up obscure or semi-obscure film songs from
> the '30s and '40s
> and bringing them to life... I remember I annoyed
> Stanley Donen once
> in Paris when he was raving about Diana Krall (he
> had just bought
> some of her CDs) and I told him I thought Susannah
> McCorkle was so
> much better and he had never heard of her. Actually
> no one I talked
> to in France seemed to know her but they all knew
> Krall, that pure
> product of marketing.
>
> Great to know Susannah has a few fans on this Group!
>
> JPC
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10332
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 11:13pm
Subject: Fwd: Re: Preston Sturges - Sullivan's Travels - opinions sought
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
> >
> > >
>
> Wait, are you saying the film is saying that Sullivan doesn't know
> the subject of poverty? But the film has put Sullivan through the
> phenomenological wringer!!! I think Sullivan comes out with a new
> reverence for poverty -- his decision not to make a film isn't
> because he doesn't know poverty but because he has gained to much
> respect for it through his experience to feel qualified as a
> spokesman>
>
Sullivan has not experienced "poverty". He has been wrongly
sentenced and he ended up on a chain gang. To be on a chain gang is
not to experience a life of poverty. Most poor people are not
criminals and don't end up in jail, let alone on a chain gang.
Sullivan goes back to his privileged life and will never know what it
is to be poor. But that's no reason to abstain from making comedies.
I think it would be great to compare Sturges approach and his
> argumentation on the ethics of filming the "impoverishment" of
others
> to one of Abbas Kiarostami's films, such as THE WIND WILL CARRY US
or
> ABC AFRICA, films that are very sensitive to the filmmaker's
presence
> as the implicit spokesman for the poor people he is filming.
Neither Sturges nor Kiarostami impress me as "filming
the 'impoverishment' of others." In "The Wind..." AK is not a
spokesman for the "poor people" he is filming (they don't need a
spokesman and I'm sure AK is aware of that): he doesn't dwell at all
on their "poverty" -- which is such only for outsiders (ourselves,
and perhaps the TV crew) I doubt that the people of the village
consider themselves as poor and destitute. I never felt that in any
Kiarostami film (although I haven't seen ABC Africa). Of course you
can see a relationship between Sullivan and the protagonist of "The
Wind..." since both are filmmakers but I wouldn't push it much
further.
JPC
10333
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 11:45pm
Subject: Re: O Susannah
Wow, JP, you saw Billie and Bird and Lester Young play? I am so
jealous (although I did manage to see Ellington, Count Basie, Roy
Eldridge, Ella, Dizzy, Benny Goodman, Benny Carter, among others).
I was also fortunate enough to see Susannah twice. JP, I agree with
you about her version of "How Little We Know." I heard her sing the
song before I had seen To Have and Have Not and was thus surprised at
what a throwaway it seemed in the movie. Susannah's Johnny Mercer
album was the first "standards" album I ever bought, and it remains
one of my desert island discs. Her version of Skylark is an
especially affecting version of that great Mercer/Carmichael song.
I love your Stanley Donen anecdote, and he should certainly have
known Susannah. I like Dianna Krall, but she seems pretty minor in
comparison. (I remember a few years ago when Krall was getting the
big build up, Gary Giddins said all this attention should be going to
Etta Jones.)
Susannah's suicide devastated me (and I foundout about it from a news-
zipper on a building in Times Square). What a tragedy.
10334
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu May 27, 2004 11:57pm
Subject: OT Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Ugh, here we go again - film, music, the planet, etc. was
sooooooooo much
> better before...before what, though? The 1960s? The 1970s?
Certainly not the
> 1980s? The 50s? Before I lost my virginity? Before I entered the
workforce? Pass
> the freakin' puke bucket!!!!!!
>
Kevin I know you didn't want any more responses, but I have to point
out that this is not a question of competing eras, but simply a
prerence of one style over another. There was empty bombast
signifying nothing back in the 50s and 60s (Johnnie Ray, Shirley
Bassey), just as from the 80s on, we've endured the caterwauling of
Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and their ilk.
Sarah Vaughan and Aretha Franklin indulged in musical pyrotechnics,
but unlike the Whitneys and Fantasias and Barbras, there was meaning
and passion behind the soaring vocalizing, it wasn't about just
showing off.
My point in mentioning Tom Waits and Neil Young was simply to show
that there are great singers out there who exist in a parallel
universe from what gets sold on American Idol.
Hey, I love a lot of dance music. Karen Young's "Hot Shot" is one of
the most sublime records of all time.
10335
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 0:07am
Subject: Re: O Susannah
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> The thought of you annoying Stanley Donen is
> absolutely delicious, J-P.
>
Well, he is easily annoyed. He is testy. I guess I'm entitled to
annoy him, I wrote the first big article on him in 1958 (which of
course he wasn't aware of).
> I've enjoyed much of Susannah McCorkle's work, though
> not as much as that of others. Her death is a
> horrendous tragedy.
>
> Krall can sing but she's never "grabbed" me much at
> all.
She's a better pianist than she is a singer, but that's not saying
much.
> Slightly off-topic, my critical colleague John Powers
> on "De-Lovely" : "De-less said about it De-Better."
" I understand the reason why you're sentimental for so am I"
But these days alas there is too much of the antipantithesis of
melody.
>
> --- jpcoursodon
> > Trying to keep this on topic -- McCorkle had a great
> > flair for
> > digging up obscure or semi-obscure film songs from
> > the '30s and '40s
> > and bringing them to life... I remember I annoyed
> > Stanley Donen once
> > in Paris when he was raving about Diana Krall (he
> > had just bought
> > some of her CDs) and I told him I thought Susannah
> > McCorkle was so
> > much better and he had never heard of her. Actually
> > no one I talked
> > to in France seemed to know her but they all knew
> > Krall, that pure
> > product of marketing.
> >
> > Great to know Susannah has a few fans on this Group!
> >
> > JPC
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10336
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 0:35am
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
> Totally agree. I'm not a fan of the Pixar look so far, although I
> should admit to not having seen a lot of it. On the other hand I
> loved the animation in Osmosis Jones!
How did you like Osmosis as a whole, though?
It's not a very impressive lineup, I think. Uh--South Park the movie
and series, Beavis and Butthead, movie and series, maybe some of the
Adult Swim cartoons for their attempt at subversive humor, The
Simpsons (early seasons, anyway), Spongebob Squarepants, The Iron
Giant, that's about it for American animation as far as I know.
But for all the eccentricity of the American Adult Swim cartoons,
you just take a look at Cowboy Bebop or Gainax's Fooly Cooly, or
above all the Studio Ghibli features and, well, realize the Japanese
have been doing better work for years.
And watch out for the Chinese. There's this Hong Kong film "My Life
as McDull" that I thought was a real find, rueful and bittersweet
and very Chinese.
10337
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 0:48am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
> > Not just out of curiosity, but how do you feel about MINORITY
REPORT
> > on the whole?
Just my two cents' worth, it's Hollywoodized Philip Dick. One of his
short stories (they can't seem to handle his major novels) pumped up
with action and a major star in the lead (if they wanted to cast
more accurately, William Macy, Harry Dean Stanton, Philip Baker Hall
would be on the shortlist). Plus a happy ending to wrap it all up.
Paycheck is about the same.
10338
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 0:56am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> > > Not just out of curiosity, but how do you feel about MINORITY
> REPORT
> > > on the whole?
>
> Just my two cents' worth, it's Hollywoodized Philip Dick. One of his
> short stories (they can't seem to handle his major novels) pumped up
> with action and a major star in the lead (if they wanted to cast
> more accurately, William Macy, Harry Dean Stanton, Philip Baker Hall
> would be on the shortlist). Plus a happy ending to wrap it all up.
Faithfulness to a Holy Text like a Dick short story has never been one
of my measuring sticks, but I had to laugh when I learned that Cruise
was cast as Anderton. The very first line of the story seems to
outlaw this: Anderton is over the hill, balding, fat, unattractive:
a Paul Giamatti kind of guy. I wonder why we didn't hear more from
outraged Dick fans.
To be completely honest, though, while I prefer the sad logic of
Dick's ending to the Columbo logic of Frank/Cohen's screenplay, I'm
more apt to revisit the film again and again over the years...the
story, not so much.
-Jaime
10339
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:13am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
> To be completely honest, though, while I prefer the sad logic of
> Dick's ending to the Columbo logic of Frank/Cohen's screenplay, I'm
> more apt to revisit the film again and again over the years...the
> story, not so much.
>
> -Jaime
To be fair, it's enjoyable, and Spielberg's on top of his game at
entertainment filmmaking (his best recent one though, in my opinion,
is Catch Me If You Can), I like it better than his more "serious"
efforts, and it captures the flavor of Dick, however imperfectly,
better than say Total Recall (The Governator as a Phil Dick
protagonist--imagine that!).
The ads were a clever conceit, but I wish they spent more effort
trying to capture the flavor instead of commissioning all those
think-groups to come up with designs and ideas and whatnot.
My favorite Phil Dick movie is possibly The Terminator (a ripoff, of
course). I'm aware of Ellison's lawsuit--he had money for a lawyer,
Dick didn't.
10340
From: Hadrian
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:41am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
It's hard to complain as a Philip K. Dick fan, because individually,
the books aren't that fantastic --it's only after I read several
novels, and pieced together a larger mosaic, that he began to
become my favorite. With someone writing six novels year, with
plenty of short stories to boot, as he did in the early sixties,
doesn't create detailed masterpieces, as much as streaks of
brilliance.
I've always thought some of the best Philip K. Dick movies
weren't actually based on Philip K. Dick stories. "Videodrome" for
example, feels like a much better adaptation of Dick's spirit than
"Blade Runner".
10341
From:
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 0:04am
Subject: Re: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
In a message dated 5/27/04 6:25:03 PM, jpcoursodon@y... writes:
> But then the music that turns me on is probably as alien to you as yours is
> to me.
>
Not me. That's why I mentioned James Reese Europe whose heyday was from 1905
until his senseless murder in 1919. Also, a HUGE jazz freak here. Worship
Billie (I prefer the late ravaged to the early pyrotechnic), appreciate bebop but
never keep it in my heart, have an altar to Monk (as well as his son's disco
band T.S. Monk), love Miles (but his 70s stuff is toppermost). And Louis
Armstrong was the greatest popular musician of the 20th century. But oh god, The New
Pornographers make me sob with joy!
<
behind the soaring vocalizing, it wasn't about just showing off.>>
Damien, did you honestly hear enough of Fantasia to make that judgment? But
really, you're exempt from answering since you recognize the greatness of "Hot
Shot" (and for dissing Barbra - pee-yew!!).
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10342
From: Damien Bona
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:10am
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> Damien, did you honestly hear enough of Fantasia to make that
judgment? But
> really, you're exempt from answering since you recognize the
greatness of "Hot
> Shot" (and for dissing Barbra - pee-yew!!).
>
> Kevin John
>
Well, I saw an hour and 15 minutes of the show (the only time I had
seen it this year) but what I saw led me to my opinion. Maybe if I
had seen more of Fantasia, I might have had a different opinion.
Conan O'Brien joke tonight: "Fantasia is the first black woman to
win American Idol which means she's the perfect combintion of Rubin
Studdard and Clay Aiken."
Kevin, I'm glad you also appreciate "Hot Shot." The late Karen Young
is pretty much forgotten today, and the song doesn't seem to get
played even on retro-disco stations.
Another interesting case is Patti Labelle, who early in her career
(when she was with the Bluebelles especially) was a thrilling singer -
- "Down The Aisle" and "Over The Rainbow" cause chills -- and her
work from the Labelle days is great fun. But from the 80s on, she
seems to have adopted all the worst aspects of diva-dom, both in her
attitude and her performances.
10343
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:13am
Subject: Re: Re: American Idol
> Among
> many great moments of pleasure she made me discover how good a
> song "How Little We Know" really is (the song is thrown away, wasted
> in "To have and Have Not").
When you say it's thrown away, do you mean that the delivery doesn't
bring out all the virtues of the song? Because it isn't thrown away
from a dramatic point of view: not only does occupy a prominent place in
the narrative, but we even hear an earlier version of the song in the
movie, with lyrics that Hoagy eventually discards. - Dan
10344
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:16am
Subject: Re: Drums and Canons
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> > Totally agree. I'm not a fan of the Pixar look so far, although I
> > should admit to not having seen a lot of it. On the other hand I
> > loved the animation in Osmosis Jones!
>
I thought it was hilarious, although the Farrellys' own section were
the least of it, obviously. I love the Cold Pill: "Ah, Fever and
Swollen Glands, we meet again!" I thought the film was also a great
set-up for imparting health lesson for kids, as I assume the series,
which I didn't see, tried to do.> How did you like Osmosis as a
whole, though?
> It's not a very impressive lineup, I think. Uh--South Park the
movie
> and series, Beavis and Butthead, movie and series, maybe some of
the
> Adult Swim cartoons for their attempt at subversive humor, The
> Simpsons (early seasons, anyway), Spongebob Squarepants, The Iron
> Giant, that's about it for American animation as far as I know.
That's a good list. Not a shiny 3-D digital critter in it.
>
> But for all the eccentricity of the American Adult Swim cartoons,
> you just take a look at Cowboy Bebop or Gainax's Fooly Cooly, or
> above all the Studio Ghibli features and, well, realize the
Japanese
> have been doing better work for years.
>
> And watch out for the Chinese. There's this Hong Kong film "My Life
> as McDull" that I thought was a real find, rueful and bittersweet
> and very Chinese.
I'm woefully behind on the Orient in this and other departments. My
lame standard reply is that the only anime I know anything about is
Anna May Wong. Pardon me if I've used it here before.
10345
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:23am
Subject: Re: Gap Me If You Can
> I've always thought some of the best Philip K. Dick movies
> weren't actually based on Philip K. Dick stories. "Videodrome" for
> example, feels like a much better adaptation of Dick's spirit than
> "Blade Runner".
So do the good parts of the Matrix films.
As I noted when Minority Report was in theatres, Dick actually
endorses Precrime in the story. But of course Precrime in the story
isn't the Dante-esque affair it became in the film, for no
discernable reason except to "up the ante" and make Precrime a bad
idea. Dick thought it was a great idea! But he also wasn't thinking
of it as a metaphor for thought crime -- an analogy made so timely
and pertinent by Jose Padilla's arrest for thinking about bombs when
the film was just coming out.
10346
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:27am
Subject: Paycheck, Dick
> Just my two cents' worth, it's Hollywoodized Philip Dick. One of his
> short stories (they can't seem to handle his major novels) pumped up
> with action and a major star in the lead (if they wanted to cast
> more accurately, William Macy, Harry Dean Stanton, Philip Baker Hall
> would be on the shortlist). Plus a happy ending to wrap it all up.
>
> Paycheck is about the same.
I'm no fan of MINORITY REPORT (can't remember it well enough to say why,
but I was disliking it after a just few moments), but I actually found
PAYCHECK interesting. Woo moves so quickly that he almost seems to be
doing meta-action instead of action - and there's something ingenious
about the way that the story (about memory erasure) provides a
justification for the anything-goes shock-a-minute style that today's
action films use. The protagonist experiences something like what the
audience does at the hands of an Avid-crazy editor.
I really like what I've read of Dick, and the cinema hasn't come near
capturing his style, which is full of reflective moments, poetry, and
stillness. The French film CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST by Jerome Boivin
probably came closest. - Dan
10347
From: Damien Bona
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:40am
Subject: Re: what is the "canon history" for these Fords?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
> Was it Sarris who held WEE WILLIE WINKIE to be one of the most
Fordian of his '30s films, moreso than something like STAGECOACH or
>THE HURRICANE?
My recollection is that Sarris noted that back in the 30s, critics
used Wee Willie Winkie as Exhibit Number 1 for the vapidity of
Hollywood: How mindless was a place/industry/system where a Great
Artist who made a Masterpiece like The Informer was forced to direct
a Shirley Temple vehicle?
Sarris's attitude was that the joke was on those critics for, he
said, Wee Willie Winkie was an undeniably Fordian piece with many
beautiful moments.
My own take is somewhere in between. Winkie is to me a very minor
Ford (and colonialist adventures are far from my favorite genre), but
then again so is The Informer. There is one exceedingly lovely (and
nvery John Ford) sequence in Winkie in which Shirley brings flowers
to an injured soldier and sings "Auld Lang Syne."
-- Damien
10348
From: Andy Rector
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 7:56am
Subject: Gehr movie online
I still look at our groups home page stills in wonder...
I inadvertantly stumbled upon this, the only Gehr movie
posted online that I know of:
http://www.viennale.at/english/trailer/
Yours,
andy
10349
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 9:18am
Subject: Time & Tide
Inspired by Kevin's atack on "rockism," and in the spirit of not
remaining totally ignorant about recent developments in HK cinema, I
took a break from writing tonight and watched Time & Tide. When Tsui
Hark first appeared with Butterfly Murders and Wu, Warriors of the
Mystic Mountain, in my capacity as resident bigmouth film-buff at Fox
I told WD Richter's producing partner to consider TH to direct Big
Trouble in Little China, and Carpenter told me later he drew great
inspiration from watching WWOTMM before he undertook the project,
still one of my favorites. But I had my fingers crossed behind my
back the whole time -- the truth is that I thought TH had a long way
to go to be as good as the HK masters of the previous generation, and
I still thought that re: the comparison between Painted Faces and
Chinese Ghost Story, which was the last time I checked in on TH, many
moons ago. As far as I can see, he's become a master in the meantime,
and Wong Kar Wai, whose influence on T&T is obvious, helped him get
there. What a lovely film! Now I have to eat my hat and play ketchup.
10350
From: Robert Keser
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:14pm
Subject: Re: Minority Retort
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
> >
> Forgive me as I may have the details fogged up (it was years ago
that
> I read it), but Frederic Jameson wrote an essay on THE BIG SLEEP
> where he compared the descriptions of real life products and brands
> in Chandler's book to the fictionalized ones in Nabokov's LOLITA.
> While both authors employed these brands to vividly describe their
> fictionalized American landscapes, Chandler, I think Jameson wrote,
> used them as FACTS, realities, whereas for Nabokov they were
> ABSTRACTIONS, concepts.
There's a third way, too, which is simply to ignore opportunities
to showcase brand names (without self-conscious abstracting). When
Richard Widmark offers Jean Peters a cigarette in Pickup on South
Street, what possible value would it have to specify whether he's
offering a Chesterfield or a Lucky Strike? Why would you want to
know that? However, if we see the brand name and she says "No,
thanks", then we are left to parse out whether she's reacting to
Widmark or to his brand of cigarettes. This is how specifying
brand names serves to "infect" commercial considerations into
the narrative.
>Either approach is fine, but my argument
> with MINORITY REPORT is that it confronts you with the real life
> possibility that our perception of the world will be (if it isn't
> already) 90% advertising, and to employ real life brands to
> illustrate this trend for me only underscores the chilling reality
of
> this prophecy. It's too convenient to dismiss the product
placement
> in this film as Spielberg having his cake and eating it -- one has
to
> look at what's there on screen and what it has to say about our
> lives. The futuristic vision of this Gap was all the more
effective
> because it was presenting a reality in which we are already
> immersed , where products are increasingly presented as being
> customized to our tastes, giving us the illusion of power and
> control, while simultaneously cementing the control of the product
> and its producer on the consumer, us. I think that criticizing
> Spielberg for allowing all these real-life brands to populate his
> screen distracts us from the real onscreen reality that needs to be
> reckoned with.
To my mind, you're extrapolating the talking Gap ad -- which
Spielberg sets up as a joke (and the audience laughs at it)
-– into a "criticism" that's consistent throughout the film.
Given Dreamworks' press releases proudly drawing our attention
to the all-time record number of product placements in the film,
I'm not ready to accept all of them (or indeed any of them) as
mini-statements about "the control of the product and its
producer on the consumer". Once again, here's the test: if
this "criticism" -- which I believe is more accurately
called a "joke" -- had serious teeth as social criticism,
then why didn't The Gap complain? (or even attempt to block
it?)
>
> What also freaks me out is how Spielberg's vision of future
> advertising is connected to the film's central concept of pre-crime
--
> both corporate and state institutions employ a pervasive tactic of
> profiling human beings and accumulating so much knowledge about
them
> that the concept of privacy is effectively nullified. Anyone who
> does transactions on the internet or even has an email account
knows
> that we have already entered this reality.
>
> MINORITY REPORT isn't a perfect film, especially on a narrative
> level, but what it has to offer cinematically (esp. in laying out a
> vision of the commercial and state interests that influence --
> "conspire to influence" as Rosenbaum would put it -- how human
> beings perceive their surroundings in the 20th century - God, what
> could be more relevant to the world we live in now???) is certainly
> worthy of Fritz Lang's equally flawed but visionary METROPOLIS.
>
> re: the last line of your essay, who are we kidding, Spielberg IS
neo-
> con! He's very much an advocate of using the status quo (in all
its
> patriarchal glory) as a tool for effecting positive social outcomes
> and solving people's problems. If he didn't espouse this in his
> movies he'd be a total hypocrite! But that doesn't mean he's not
hip
> to the problems of the institutions he embraces; what you consider
> hipocrisies of a flawed, immature filmmaker, I consider paradoxes
of
> a filmmaker contending with the paradoxes of art and commerce that
> define contemporary mainstream filmmaking, tensions too significant
> to ignore. I think we're being just a tad hasty to dismiss him as
an
> objectionable apologist/exploiter of mainstream white suburban
> capitalist values, without taking the pathology of this worldview
> seriously and wanting to learn from its shadows and light. I think
> someone who dances with the corporate devil can be just as
> fascinating to examine (as opposed to scapegoating) as an indie
> maverick.
Certainly, and that's one reason we all line up to see his
movies, but I doubt that Spielberg would identify himself as
a neo-con, nor does the general public so identify him, as he
is invariably lumped together with such notorious "liberals"
as Streisand and Paul Newman. Anyway, there's something
disturbingly contradictory about the argument, rather like
the Chinatown bitchslap: he's a corporate nabob
a critic of corporate control
capitalist
>
> One thing I really admire about Rosenbaum's writing on Kubrick is
his
> argument that Kubrick blurs the lines that uphold the conventional
> dichotomies of human vs. non-human, social vs. individual,
mechanical
> vs. natural, such that we need to come up with new approaches for
> these concepts. I think that in taking Spielberg seriously, one
> might want to consider that Spielberg's films are complicated
enough
> that it's less useful to argue whether he is pro- or
anti-capitalist
> (I think there's sufficient evidence on both camps), but as with
> Kubrick, one is compelled to reflect on the nature of the concept
> itself in more ambiguous ways.
Fair enough! I think Jaime's buying us all a sugar-based carbonated
beverage.
--Robert Keser
10351
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:33pm
Subject: Re: American Idol
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> > Among
> > many great moments of pleasure she made me discover how good a
> > song "How Little We Know" really is (the song is thrown away,
wasted
> > in "To have and Have Not").
>
> When you say it's thrown away, do you mean that the delivery
doesn't
> bring out all the virtues of the song?
Yes. As performed it is a most forgettable song.
Because it isn't thrown away
> from a dramatic point of view:
You're right of course.
not only does occupy a prominent place in
> the narrative, but we even hear an earlier version of the song in
the
> movie, with lyrics that Hoagy eventually discards. - Dan
10352
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:34pm
Subject: why do I even bother?
No comment, really, I couldn't read too much of this review (posted
yesterday or this morning), since I could already tell it's just
exactly the same, dispiriting LIST-bashing that I've been dealing with
since I decided many years ago that the film was worth defending.
Just that much more self-assured this time.
(Oh, but I'm told, the film doesn't need to be defended, since it's
already been canonized by Hollywood and the Oscars, etc. Give me a
fucking break.)
http://www.moviemartyr.com/1993/schindlerslist.htm
It's going to be a long day.
-Jaime
10353
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:47pm
Subject: Re: what is the "canon history" for these Fords?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
>
> > Was it Sarris who held WEE WILLIE WINKIE to be one of the most
> Fordian of his '30s films, moreso than something like STAGECOACH or
> >THE HURRICANE?
>
>
> My recollection is that Sarris noted that back in the 30s, critics
> used Wee Willie Winkie as Exhibit Number 1 for the vapidity of
> Hollywood: How mindless was a place/industry/system where a Great
> Artist who made a Masterpiece like The Informer was forced to
direct
> a Shirley Temple vehicle?
>
> Sarris's attitude was that the joke was on those critics for, he
> said, Wee Willie Winkie was an undeniably Fordian piece with many
> beautiful moments.
>
Tag Gallagher, a member of this Group, called WWW "perhaps the
most seminal of Ford's pre-war films."
JPC
> My own take is somewhere in between. Winkie is to me a very minor
> Ford (and colonialist adventures are far from my favorite genre),
but
> then again so is The Informer. There is one exceedingly lovely
(and
> nvery John Ford) sequence in Winkie in which Shirley brings flowers
> to an injured soldier and sings "Auld Lang Syne."
>
> -- Damien
10354
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 1:54pm
Subject: McCarey interview (Re: Good Sam, anyone?)
Here's an interview with Leo McCarey by Serge Daney and
Jean-Louis Noames:
http://www.panix.com/~pcg/McCarey.htm
McCarey makes some interesting comments about _Good Sam_.
I put a few more film-related documents online here:
http://godard.cjb.net
Paul
10355
From: samfilms2003
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 2:27pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
> Conan O'Brien joke tonight: "Fantasia is the first black woman to
> win American Idol which means she's the perfect combintion of Rubin
> Studdard and Clay Aiken."
Honestly I have no idea what any of this means. I must be really really
out of it !
> Another interesting case is Patti Labelle, who early in her career
> (when she was with the Bluebelles especially) was a thrilling singer -
> - "Down The Aisle" and "Over The Rainbow" cause chills --
If we're this far off topic, can we talk about Lillian Leach and The Mellows ? ;-)
-Sam Wells
10356
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 2:43pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
> If we're this far off topic, can we talk about Lillian Leach and
The Mellows ? ;-)
>
> -Sam Wells
I think, at this point, we can safely talk about the texture and
consistency of our belly-button lint and such discourse would fit
right in with the general line.
-Jaime
10357
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 3:26pm
Subject: Re: what is the "canon history" for these Fords?
> >
>
> Tag Gallagher, a member of this Group, called WWW "perhaps the
> most seminal of Ford's pre-war films."
>
> JPC
Maclaglen's burial symbolizes the death of the failed Ford Hero of
the 30s; WWW's advent symbolizes the arrival of the definitive
version of the Ford Hero -- as a child, of course. So that he can be
appear fully-grown in the dolly-in to Wayne in Stagecoach. By the
way, why on earth would anyone not like Stagecoach?!
10358
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 3:28pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
>
> > If we're this far off topic, can we talk about Lillian Leach and
> The Mellows ? ;-)
> >
> > -Sam Wells
>
> I think, at this point, we can safely talk about the texture and
> consistency of our belly-button lint and such discourse would fit
> right in with the general line.
>
> -Jaime
False. Kevin's "rockism" screed is an esthetic statement, just as
applicable to film as to music.
10359
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 3:31pm
Subject: Re: Time & Tide and American Idol Errata
I still thought that re: the comparison between Painted Faces and
> Chinese Ghost Story, which was the last time I checked in on TH,
many
> moons ago.
I mean Painted Skins.
Also, Kevin's screed on rockism isn't am esthetic statement - it's an
esthetic theory, hence applicable to the Topic, and we don't get
enough of that around here.
10360
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 3:58pm
Subject: How Little We Know
>>>Among
>>>many great moments of pleasure she made me discover how good a
>>>song "How Little We Know" really is (the song is thrown away,
> wasted
>>>in "To have and Have Not").
>>When you say it's thrown away, do you mean that the delivery
> doesn't
>>bring out all the virtues of the song?
>
> Yes. As performed it is a most forgettable song.
I guess Bacall's performance doesn't mean a lot to me in itself, but I'm
very fond of Hoagy's delivery in the early version with the discarded
lyrics ("I run to the telephone whenever it rings/I can't be alone, it's
just one of those things/I tell a star my little woes/Hang around in a
bar till it's ready to close/So it goes"). Hia approach feels delicate
and emotional. - Dan
10361
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 4:39pm
Subject: Re: McCarey interview (Re: Good Sam, anyone?)
> Here's an interview with Leo McCarey by Serge Daney and
> Jean-Louis Noames:
> http://www.panix.com/~pcg/McCarey.htm
Thanks, Paul! David Thomson relied so heavily on this interview in his
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY that I felt as if I'd read it already. - Dan
10362
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:13pm
Subject: Fwd: Re: Preston Sturges - Sullivan's Travels - opinions sought
JP, prior to the chain gang sequence there is an extended montage
sequence where McCrea and Veronica Lake are both slumming with the
homeless. It's a very very bizarre mix of Hollywood sentiment and
documentary realism -- as such I guess it answers the question
of "did Sullivan experience poverty?" with a resounding "maybe".
Kevin
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> >
> > Wait, are you saying the film is saying that Sullivan doesn't
know
> > the subject of poverty? But the film has put Sullivan through
the
> > phenomenological wringer!!! I think Sullivan comes out with a
new
> > reverence for poverty -- his decision not to make a film isn't
> > because he doesn't know poverty but because he has gained to much
> > respect for it through his experience to feel qualified as a
> > spokesman>
> >
>
>
> Sullivan has not experienced "poverty". He has been wrongly
> sentenced and he ended up on a chain gang. To be on a chain gang is
> not to experience a life of poverty. Most poor people are not
> criminals and don't end up in jail, let alone on a chain gang.
> Sullivan goes back to his privileged life and will never know what
it
> is to be poor. But that's no reason to abstain from making
comedies.
>
>
>
>
> I think it would be great to compare Sturges approach and his
> > argumentation on the ethics of filming the "impoverishment" of
> others
> > to one of Abbas Kiarostami's films, such as THE WIND WILL CARRY
US
> or
> > ABC AFRICA, films that are very sensitive to the filmmaker's
> presence
> > as the implicit spokesman for the poor people he is filming.
>
>
> Neither Sturges nor Kiarostami impress me as "filming
> the 'impoverishment' of others." In "The Wind..." AK is not a
> spokesman for the "poor people" he is filming (they don't need a
> spokesman and I'm sure AK is aware of that): he doesn't dwell at
all
> on their "poverty" -- which is such only for outsiders (ourselves,
> and perhaps the TV crew) I doubt that the people of the village
> consider themselves as poor and destitute. I never felt that in any
> Kiarostami film (although I haven't seen ABC Africa). Of course you
> can see a relationship between Sullivan and the protagonist of "The
> Wind..." since both are filmmakers but I wouldn't push it much
> further.
> JPC
10363
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:42pm
Subject: Re: Gap me if you can
> It's hard to complain as a Philip K. Dick fan,
> because individually,
> the books aren't that fantastic --it's only after I
> read several
> novels, and pieced together a larger mosaic, that he
> began to
> become my favorite.
Looking at the works together as a whole is helpful;
that's Brian Aldiss' approach. But individually--why,
the portrait of any number of characters in any of his
novels stay in mind. Hapless Mr. Tagomi in Man in the
High Castle; despairing Horselover Fat in Valis; the
confused and desperate Jason Taverner in Flow My
Tears; likeable Hoppy Harrington, who turns malignant
in Dr. Bloodmoney. He's a master at characterization.
And his depiction of schizophrenia, a common theme in
his works (and something none of the major Hollywood
adaptations have even begin to try adapt), feels
unnervingly true.
>With someone writing six novels
> year, with
> plenty of short stories to boot, as he did in the
> early sixties,
> doesn't create detailed masterpieces, as much as
> streaks of
> brilliance.
That carelessness and prodigious flow, I'd argue
that's part of the unique flavor of his works. They
don't look or sound or feel like literature, hence
their low reputation at first; the brilliance emerges
later, when the books sink in.
> "Videodrome" for
> example, feels like a much better adaptation of
> Dick's spirit than
> "Blade Runner".
I stand corrected; Videodrome is the best "Dick novel"
to date (actually indirect adaptation might be our
best bet to really capture great works of literature
on film--adapt the spirit, not the story). But The
Terminator parts 1 and 2 are recognizably Dick, a
cobbling together of two of his short stories, "Second
Variety" and "Jon's World."
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10364
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 5:53pm
Subject: Re: Paycheck, Dick
> Message: 12
> Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 01:27:27 -0400
> From: Dan Sallitt
> Subject: Paycheck, Dick
> but I actually found
> PAYCHECK interesting. Woo moves so quickly that he
> almost seems to be
> doing meta-action instead of action - and there's
> something ingenious
> about the way that the story (about memory erasure)
> provides a
> justification for the anything-goes shock-a-minute
> style that today's
> action films use. The protagonist experiences
> something like what the
> audience does at the hands of an Avid-crazy editor.
Or Keaton's fantasies out of Sherlock, Jr.
Sorry, here I am having to qualify my diss at
Paycheck. That was fun too, and as you point out,
partly because they use a Dickian conceit (induced
memory loss) to justify the kind of grab-bag action
sensibility found in movies nowadays. And aside from
the pain of seeing Affleck in the lead (again, think
of the film with say William Macy in the role), it is
pretty okay Hollywood Woo--maybe not as fairly
well-made as Face/Off, but arguably better than the
wretched Mission Impossible 2.
__________________________________
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10365
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 6:02pm
Subject: Re: Time and Tide
> I told WD Richter's producing partner
Oho, you know Richter? I enjoy almost everything he's
been involved in.
> Carpenter told me later
> he drew great
> inspiration from watching WWOTMM before he undertook
> the project,
> still one of my favorites.
Big Trouble in Little China is a keenly felt guilty
pleasure on my part, and I think an underrated popcorn
flick.
> I thought
> TH had a long way
> to go to be as good as the HK masters of the
> previous generation
Hark's gone a long way to catching up, but he hasn't
surpassed them, I think.
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10366
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 7:21pm
Subject: Re: Time and Tide
>
> > I thought
> > TH had a long way
> > to go to be as good as the HK masters of the
> > previous generation
>
> Hark's gone a long way to catching up, but he hasn't
> surpassed them, I think.
When you're talking King Hu, Chang Cheh and Liu Chia Liang, that's
doing pretty good.
I knew Richter during aBanzai and Big Trouble. He lives it Ct. Seems
to be kind of sidelined. De Bont's announcement he would do a Richter
script called Ghost Riders in the Sky was the last I heard - never
materialized.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10367
From: Charles Leary
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 7:19pm
Subject: Re: Paycheck, Dick
PAYCHECK is no masterpiece, but for Woo fans (like myself) its
interesting to watch the film with an auteur approach as maybe the
"reverse engineering" of film criticism. Woo's signatures get
overloaded toward the end - with the flying doves/pigeons that seems to
further date his sentimentality with each new film - but then at the
very end (here I have to reverse engineer and give away the ending that
many on the list have probably seen - or at least had the chance to
see) there is the reference to one of his great scenes in the film that
is often referred to as his Hollywood calling card - the teahouse scene
in HARDBOILED. Except instead of guns hidden in the bottom of the
birdcage, its a winning lottery ticket. He's hit the jackpot, although
not enough money I guess to make his epic story of Chinese and Irish
immigrants working on America's railroads, with Chow Yun-fat and
Nicholas Cage.
-Charley
10368
From:
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 7:14pm
Subject: W. D. Richter; products
I loved both "Buckeroo Banzai" and "Late for Dinner". These are films of real
charm. Wish there were more!
Also
I really dislike product placements in films. But oddly, usually enjoy when
famous designers do costumes for films. While these constitute adverstising of
sorts for the designer, they also have some distinct virtues: 1) Clothes are
works of art, unlike most products placed in films. 2) The clothes are there to
give pleasure to viewers, while products are there to manipulate them.
Mike Grost
10369
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Fri May 28, 2004 11:47pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> False. Kevin's "rockism" screed is an esthetic statement, just as
> applicable to film as to music.
I'm curious how it would apply to film. I'm not sure what the
equivalents to pop and rock are in the cinema.
The rock critic I'm most familiar with is Robert Christgau. It got
my attention when he described how Kael's film criticism influenced
him, since I've generally admired his work, but I don't care
for Kael's work. Several rock critics -- if I remember
correctly, Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs -- were influenced by Kael.
So I wonder what the specific influence has been. Does
rockism = auteurism and popism = Kaelism? That can't be right,
but Christgau's description of rockism does sound like auteurism:
The blanker music is, the more you can project on it--
the more listeners (and also professional interpreters)
can bend it to their own whimsies, fantasies, needs. Hence,
pop function empowers the consumer ... where
rock meaningfulness privileges the author (and by
implication patriarchy and hierarchy)...
Rockism wasn't just liking Yes and the Allman Brothers--
it was liking London Calling. It was taking the music
seriously, investing any belief at all not just in its
self-sufficiency, which is always worth challenging, but
in its capacity to change lives or express truth.
( http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/decade-89.php )
This essay might be interesting to examine for parallels to
the cinema.
It reminded me of Charlotte Garson's essay in Cahiers du Cinema
on Kael. Despite Kael's hostility to theory, Garson compared
her to Barthes. For example, she compared Kael's review of "The
Sound of Music" -- "The Sound of Money" -- to Barthes' review of
Sacha Guitry's "Affairs in Versailles." (And that review
apaprently influenced Christgau, who stated that "The Sound of
Music" exemplfied the "perils of popular culture in general...
By offering simplistic solutions to problems that are
unreal in the first place, it can only separate its audience
from the details of their real-life difficulties, thereby
exacerbating them.")
Garson doesn't think Kael's motive in attacking auteurism
was to defend the spectator's pleasures against the vapidity
of theory. Instead she thinks Kael was opposed to reinterpreting
Hollywood cinema according to aesthetic codes that exceed
[depassaient] it. Garson cites Kael:
Because of the photographic nature of the medium and the cheap
admission prices, movies took their impetus not from the dessicated
imitation European high culture, but from the peep show, the wild
west show, the music hall, the comic strip - from what
was coarse and common.
I was also reminded of a comment by Christgau:
I got into pop out of the conviction that America and Europe
are at war culturally, and statuswise it's clear to me that
America is still the underdog--that Europeans, the British
and the French and the Germans each in their own way,
continue to look down their noses at American vulgarity,
and Americans continue to suck it up.
Which seems like a particularly Kael-ite statement. Auteurist
critics of course defend American cinema, but I haven't seen
that kind of antagonism to "old Europe."
Paul
10370
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 4:53am
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Gallagher"
wrote:
>
> The rock critic I'm most familiar with is Robert Christgau. It got
> my attention when he described how Kael's film criticism influenced
> him, since I've generally admired his work, but I don't care
> for Kael's work.
I haven't read through an entire Robert Christgau column since
probably 1975. But I can certainly understand how he and other rock
critics were influenced by Kael because he (and Marcus) seemed to be
writing about their primal responses to music much the same way that
Kael wrote of her reactions to movies, bereft of critical theory and
responding like an 8-year-old jumping up and down on her seat. This
kind of "criticism" is much more appropriate, I feel, to music, which
is probably the most subjectively-appreciated of all the arts.
10371
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 1:15pm
Subject: Fwd: Re: Preston Sturges - Sullivan's Travels - opinions sought
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
> JP, prior to the chain gang sequence there is an extended montage
> sequence where McCrea and Veronica Lake are both slumming with the
> homeless. It's a very very bizarre mix of Hollywood sentiment and
> documentary realism -- as such I guess it answers the question
> of "did Sullivan experience poverty?" with a resounding "maybe".
>
> Kevin
>
"Slumming" is the correct word. He is playing at being poor for
research purposes, but you can't really know what it is to be poor
when at any time you can go safely back to the lap of luxury. So
maybe he 'experienced" poverty (like one experiences a drug once out
of curiosity) but he didn't "live" it the way those who have no
choice do. I think Sturges himself is making this very point (or else
the whole first part of the film becomes somewhat pointless).
Moreover, Sullivan's final decision to make comedies is brought about
not by his "experience" with the poor (or at least not directly) but
by his experience with the convicts watching the cartoon and laughing.
JPC
10372
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 2:30pm
Subject: RIKER's LA CIUDAD / THE CITY
LA CIUDAD uses workshop-trained "actors" from pools of real-life
immigrants who clearly show what it means to understand and live
the role you are playing, essentially yourself.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> "Slumming" is the correct word. He is playing at being poor for
> research purposes, but you can't really know what it is to be poor
> when at any time you can go safely back to the lap of luxury. JPC
10373
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 4:21pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
Great post, Paul. Thanks for running with my possibly falky
suggestion.
>
> The rock critic I'm most familiar with is Robert Christgau.
The one I like is Richard Meltzer, but he was over ages ago.
It reminded me of Charlotte Garson's essay in Cahiers du Cinema
> on Kael. Despite Kael's hostility to theory, Garson compared
> her to Barthes.
How nice to have our own Kael................
10374
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 9:45pm
Subject: Recent product placement and loud cinema screenings
Guess we'll be seeing this product placement soon...
Pat Benetar to Hawk Hearing-Aid Batteries
May 29, 4:33 PM (ET)
ST. LOUIS (AP) - Energizer Holdings Inc. (ENR) is appealing to the rock
'n' roll sensibilities of baby boomers by enlisting 1980s rocker Pat
Benatar to boost sales of hearing-aid batteries.
"Our generation has helped shape American culture, especially since
we're the first to be raised on rock 'n' roll," Benatar says in a
brochure for Energizer's new marketing campaign, "It's Hip to Hear."
"From Aerosmith to the Rolling Stones, our music defines us, but all
those years of rockin' are beginning to take a toll," she says.
Mini-batteries used in hearing aids are just 8 percent of Energizer's
total sales, but the St. Louis-based company sees a potentially huge
growth market, said Ernie Petrus, director of sales and marketing for
Energizer Miniature Batteries.
Benatar, 51, does not need a hearing aid, but Energizer is betting
that she will break the stereotype associated with wearing one, Petrus
told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Friday's editions.
Matt Thornhill, founder of the Boomer Project, a Richmond, Va.-based
consulting firm that helps companies reach the over-50 market, said
Energizer's choice of Benatar is "fabulous."
"Boomers buy eyeglasses by the tens of thousands," Thornhill said. "As
they start to lose their hearing, I don't think they'll have a
reluctance to (buy) hearing aids."
Benatar is known for such hits as "Love Is a Battlefield,""Hit Me With
Your Best Shot" and "Invincible."
10375
From:
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 5:47pm
Subject: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
Bill and Paul, thanx for actually engaging in a discussion rather than
ignorantly shutting one down. Bill, your tape is on the way.
Paul, excellent post! Christgau is my idol. In fact, I just had a dream about
him (a bad one - he was ripping on my thesis). My interview with him appears
on his website and the piece you quoted on rockism is one of my all-time fave
pieces of rockcrit.
Bill, re: Meltzer, I LOATHE him as a rock critic. But as a writer overall,
he's quite possibly the funniest I've ever read, funnier than even Bangs who I
think is wildly overrated as a rock critic as opposed to a writer. Check out
the Meltzer anthology A Whore Like The Rest - the dadaist concert previews from
the San Diego Reader had me in tears!!
Paul, I think you got to the Kael-Xgau connection perfectly. Still, I've
never developed a Kael obsession, probably due to my differing views on film and
music.
As for rockism in film, a new term would definitely need to be adopted.
Artism? Bill, I think you talked about this on the list eons ago - something along
the lines of the predilection of critics to constantly rip on films loaded
with car chases, CGI, spectacle, style over substance, whatnot. So maybe an
"artist" statement might go something like this: "At least we can all agree that
Kiarostami's indirect direction blows all those car crashes and explosions in
action films clean off the map."
And I suppose this brings me back to my lukewarm reaction to Kael which stems
from the site specificness in film and music. I had no trouble whatsoever
sitting through La Région Centrale but three CDs of Japanese noise terrorist
Merzbow was a chore. Similarly, I found Brooklyn noise terrorists Black Dice
rather cleansing in concert but tried very hard to say something nice about their
latest CD. The same goes for watching more "challenging" films at home. I have
tons of Raul Ruiz films on video that I have difficulty watching (esp, if
they're shitty bootlegs..and you have a husband who hates most variety of art
films...and four bratty kitties...and a cell phone you cannot shut off) but sat
mesmerized during Time Regained sitting on the floor two feet from the screen in
a sold-out-plus theatre. I guess the perceptual changes fostered by a La
Région Centrale or a Time Regained are harder to foster at home. Too many
potential distractions, often self-imposed.
In the end, I gravitate more (keyword: more) towards pop since I listen to
music mostly at home and toward art in film since I see much of it in a theatre.
And welcome to Seth Tisue, elusive (and sexy) founder of the epochal A Guide
to Jandek website and related mailing list.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10376
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 11:22pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
Kevin John:
> So maybe an "artist" statement might go something like this: "At
> least we can all agree that Kiarostami's indirect direction blows
> all those car crashes and explosions in action films clean off the
> map."
But we do need to have a certain amount of common biases or
communication is impossible. I'm curious as to where you draw the
line between an "-ist" statement and one that merely engenders
communication. For instance: "At least we all can agree that
conversing with someone at a singles bar is preferable to a boss
blatantly harassing his secretary." Would anyone disagree with
this? It seems unlikely, but it surely presumes a bias that
involves evaluations of good and bad. So what precisely is the
distinction between this statement and Kiarostami contra explosions
(or Waits contra r&b)?--I'm definitely not arguing there is none,
but I'm interested in hearing how you'd characterize it, Kevin.
(And I do presume that you're not attacking someone who might hold
the above opinion about Kiarostami contra explosions--from what I
gather you're against the possibility that this idea becomes the
calcified bias rendered invisible, right?)
> and four bratty kitties...
Oh, I'm sure they're adorable.
> And welcome to Seth Tisue, elusive (and sexy) founder of the
> epochal A Guide to Jandek website and related mailing list.
Wow, we are drawing people from all over here. Excellent.
--Zach
10377
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 11:44pm
Subject: at least we can all agree
Whoa. Am I to take it that my assumption-of-tacit-Tom-Waits-approval
was not received by all as tongue-in-cheek? If I failed to make this
utterly clear, I apologize. My impression in writing this drive-by
provocation would sound so brazen and arrogant that it could only have
been received in irony. Guess I miscalculated.
I welcome all kinds of music, film, and art love. My idea of utopia
is one where each of us can relish our loves and fetishes and
fixations, with the Clement Greenbergs and Armond Whites of the world
contributing to this aesthetic utopia in other ways besides pissing on
things they don't/didn't like and expressing their corrosive distrust
for other lovers.
For some time now, I have endeavored to write about film - whether in
short form (like a one-paragraph comment) or long (essay, full-blown
review) - in such a way that, whether or not I like the film in
question, a reader will come away seeing the film more clearly.
Writers like Manny Farber, Mike Grost, Dan Sallitt, Fred Camper, Bill
Krohn, Zach Campbell, Sky Hirschkron, Gerardo Torres, a dozen other
list members at least, even Pauline Kael and (bite my tongue!) Roger
Ebert, and many more, have shown me how this can be done.
So my "at least we can all agree" statement was intended in jest. It
should have been funny because I'd like to think I'm the last person
who would say such a thing.
-Jaime
p.s. Nevertheless, Tom Waits rocks.
10378
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat May 29, 2004 11:47pm
Subject: idiot with the typewriter (re: my last post)
When I said:
> Whoa. Am I to take it that my assumption-of-tacit-Tom-Waits-approval
> was not received by all as tongue-in-cheek? If I failed to make this
> utterly clear, I apologize. My impression in writing this drive-by
> provocation would sound so brazen and arrogant that it could only have
> been received in irony. Guess I miscalculated.
I meant to say "...in writing this drive-by provocation WAS THAT IT
would sound..." Bad grammar, hopefully this engendered no further
confusion, etc.
Love,
-Jaime
10379
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 0:59am
Subject: Re: idiot with the typewriter (re: my last post)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
> When I said:
>
> > Whoa. Am I to take it that my assumption-of-tacit-Tom-Waits-
approval
> > was not received by all as tongue-in-cheek? If I failed to make
this
> > utterly clear, I apologize. My impression in writing this drive-
by
> > provocation would sound so brazen and arrogant that it could only
have
> > been received in irony. Guess I miscalculated.
>
> I meant to say "...in writing this drive-by provocation WAS THAT IT
> would sound..." Bad grammar, hopefully this engendered no further
> confusion, etc.
>
> Love,
> -Jaime
I'm SO glad you clarified, James. Who's Tom Waits? (just joking).
JPC
10380
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 1:03am
Subject: Re: idiot with the typewriter (re: my last post)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
>
> > When I said:
> >
> > > Whoa. Am I to take it that my assumption-of-tacit-Tom-Waits-
> approval
> > > was not received by all as tongue-in-cheek? If I failed to make
> this
> > > utterly clear, I apologize. My impression in writing this drive-
> by
> > > provocation would sound so brazen and arrogant that it could only
> have
> > > been received in irony. Guess I miscalculated.
> >
> > I meant to say "...in writing this drive-by provocation WAS THAT IT
> > would sound..." Bad grammar, hopefully this engendered no further
> > confusion, etc.
> >
> > Love,
> > -Jaime
>
>
> I'm SO glad you clarified, James. Who's Tom Waits? (just joking).
> JPC
Who's James?
What kind of name is Yossarian?!
-Jaime
10381
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 1:08am
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
>
> I haven't read through an entire Robert Christgau column since
> probably 1975. But I can certainly understand how he and other rock
> critics were influenced by Kael because he (and Marcus) seemed to be
> writing about their primal responses to music much the same way that
> Kael wrote of her reactions to movies, bereft of critical theory and
> responding like an 8-year-old jumping up and down on her seat. This
> kind of "criticism" is much more appropriate, I feel, to music, which
> is probably the most subjectively-appreciated of all the arts.
I don't understand the appeal of Pauline Kael, but I think Christgau
is worthwhile. It might be that Christgau's responses are much closer
to mine, whereas Kael's are so far from mine I wonder if she
has actually seen the films she's writing about.
Also, Kael's writing conveys a personality that I find unpleasant. I
sometimes get the impression that her mean-spiritedness
is the reason for her appeal. For example, on the Usenet newsgroup,
rec.arts.movies.past-films -- a group with many Kael admirers --
I disapproved of the sentiment with which she dismissed _Hiroshima,
Mon Amour_: "what people take to be the most important things
about themselves, the innermost truths and secrets .. is very
likely to be .. drivelling nonsense ... slop." But another poster
responded to this: "I like Pauline more and more."
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=20010610152306.13635.00007080%40ng-ch1.aol.com
I came across a review of one of Kael's books in an old Sight and
Sound. Nowell-Smith's more sympathetic to Kael than I am, but he does
articulate some reasons why she is admired.
I LOST IT AT THE MOVIES, By Pauline Keel. (An Atlantic Monthly
Press Book. Little, Brown and Co., Boston/Toronto. $6.00.)
THIS IS AN UTTERLY exasperating book. It is incredible that someone
should be so sensitive at one moment and so crass at the next, so
lucid and yet so incoherent, so brilliant in flashes and yet so
fundamentally blind to much of what movies are about. It is
doubly incredible that someone who, like the little girl in the
rhyme, is sometimes so very, very good (which is when she is
actually talking about films to which she has responded), should
waste four-fifths of her time on wayward and irrelevant assaults on
films she has not bothered to understand and on other people's
attitudes and opinions; and that her publishers should go along
with this waste of energy and talent.
And yet it all figures. In an American context the attacks on the
"inimitable" Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, on Time
magazine, campus liberals and culture-vultures are pointed and
serve a function. We could use a similar sniper taking pot shots at
similar targets over here. And Miss Kael's crassness is a direct
corollary of her sensibility. All her writing is based on
subjective
responses and the principle that if you don't dig it, it's nothing.
(The idea of love and understanding being inseparable was good
neo-Platonic doctrine long before hipsterism.) In what she has to
say about a select few films-Jules et Jim or The Golden Coach for
example----her ability to communicate a total response is dazzling.
She writes from right within the film, by imaginative transfer with
the director, or, more often, the central character-Moreau
Catherine or Magnani-Camilla as the case may be. But where no
such transfer takes place her writing flags and becomes listless.
The film itself takes second place and she springs to life again
only when some critical idiocy goads her back into the fray.
The destructive emotionality of her polemical pieces, which
appear to have been hammered away on the typewriter in a fine
frenzy of personal indignation, makes rational counter-criticism
difficult. Hiroshima mon Amour is not a bad film just because some
silly people had silly reasons for liking it. The so-called "auteur
theory" is not pure nonsense just because some of Andrew Sarris'
statements in defence of it are pretty nonsensical when taken
out of context. But the theory evidently annoys Miss Kael,
partly because
she is intolerant of other people's nonsense, and partly because
consideration of authorship demands a measure of critical
objectivity
and messes up the purity of her precious responses. When
Miss Kael goes to La Notte she is bored by the film and listens to
the back-chat of the audience. It may not be Antonioni's best, but
it is an Antonioni film and it develops the same preoccupations as
the others and in a similar way. Granted that it did not
elicit from
her the same personal response as L'Avventura, nevertheless not so
much the auteur theory but sheer commonsense demands that it
should receive consideration. And this Miss Kael obstinately (and,
I think, egotistically) refuses to give.
Criticism of this kind, always following a will o' the wisp,
consistent only in its devotion to a personal feeling about what is
and isn't in some way truly artistic, is enough to make an
ideological Stalinist or a Cahiers mystagogue of the least
dogmatic of
readers. But the temptation must be resisted. An open mind shall
be kept. To redirect what Miss Kael herself said about Siegfried
Kracauer: someone who likes Singin' in the Rain so much can't be
all bad.
GEOFFREY NOWELL-SMITH (Sight and Sound, Summer 1965)
10382
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 1:13am
Subject: Re: idiot with the typewriter (re: my last post)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
> >
> > > When I said:
> > >
> > > > Whoa. Am I to take it that my assumption-of-tacit-Tom-Waits-
> > approval
> > > > was not received by all as tongue-in-cheek? If I failed to
make
> > this
> > > > utterly clear, I apologize. My impression in writing this
drive-
> > by
> > > > provocation would sound so brazen and arrogant that it could
only
> > have
> > > > been received in irony. Guess I miscalculated.
> > >
> > > I meant to say "...in writing this drive-by provocation WAS
THAT IT
> > > would sound..." Bad grammar, hopefully this engendered no
further
> > > confusion, etc.
> > >
> > > Love,
> > > -Jaime
> >
> >
> > I'm SO glad you clarified, James. Who's Tom Waits? (just
joking).
> > JPC
>
> Who's James?
>
> What kind of name is Yossarian?!
Sorry I mis-typed. Too much to drink. If you knew how many times
my name has been misspelled and mispronouced... Some of my best
friends are Armenians anyway.
JPC
>
> -Jaime
10383
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 5:50am
Subject: Re: Time and Tide
> When you're talking King Hu, Chang Cheh and Liu Chia
> Liang, that's
> doing pretty good.
I don't think Tsui Hark is on their level, but he's
one of the best of that period from mid-'80s to early
'90s filmmakers, definitely, before they all emigrated
to Hollywood.
> I knew Richter during aBanzai and Big Trouble. He
> lives it Ct.
Is this California or Conneticut?
I loved his screenplay for Kafuman's Invasion of the
Body Snatchers.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10384
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 0:13pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> > The rock critic I'm most familiar with is Robert Christgau.
>
> The one I like is Richard Meltzer, but he was over ages ago.
I hadn't heard of him, but after a little research on the
web I'm very curious. Christgau wrote:
His hands seem to hang to his knees; in fact, for metaphorical
purposes it ought to be asserted that his hands do hang to his knees.
Just like Bob Cousy. Meltzer is the Bob Cousy of the rock criticism
game--plenty of feints and ape-like grace. Not since Walter Kaufmann,
that beacon of our Frankie Avalon years, has a rock critic promoted
himself with such assiduous indirection. Meltzer is the crawdaddy of
us all.
I have no idea what any of this means, but it makes me want to
find out.
Paul
10385
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 1:48pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Bill and Paul, thanx for actually engaging in a discussion rather
than
> ignorantly shutting one down. Bill, your tape is on the way.
>
> Paul, excellent post! Christgau is my idol. In fact, I just had a
dream about
> him (a bad one - he was ripping on my thesis). My interview with him
appears
> on his website and the piece you quoted on rockism is one of my
all-time fave
> pieces of rockcrit.
I enjoyed the interview. The question of celebrity is interesting --
I'd think the equivalents in terms of celebrity to pop stars are
movie stars. I'm trying to find parallels to the cinema, but
it's difficult.
>
> As for rockism in film, a new term would definitely need to be
adopted.
> Artism? Bill, I think you talked about this on the list eons ago -
something along
> the lines of the predilection of critics to constantly rip on films
loaded
> with car chases, CGI, spectacle, style over substance, whatnot. So
maybe an
> "artist" statement might go something like this: "At least we can
all agree that
> Kiarostami's indirect direction blows all those car crashes and
explosions in
> action films clean off the map."
I'm not sure -- movies never seem to me disposable, ephemeral,
the way popular music can be. Maybe one factor is that films
are so expensive. Maybe the idea of overproduction is useful here.
Music is relatively cheap to produce. It's closer to the model
of mass production. Plus the market for it is more fragmented
than the market for films. Perhaps television series, music
videos, TV commercials, etc., are closer to the "pop music" model.
To put it another way, when I look at the top 10 selling singles
of all time and the top grossing films of all time, they seem
very different.
The singles:
1. Candle In The Wind 1997, Elton John
2. I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston
Macarena, Los Del Rio
We Are The World, USA For Africa
Whoomp! (There It Is), Tag Team
Hey Jude, the Beatles
Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel, Elvis Presley
6. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
(Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Bryan Adams
Gangsta's Paradise, Coolio
I'll Be Missing You, Puff Daddy & Faith Evans
Love Me Tender/Any Way You Want Me Elvis Presley
The movies:
1. Titanic (1997)
2. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003)
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
4. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
5. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
6. Jurassic Park (1993)
7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
8. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)
9. Finding Nemo (2003)
10. Independence Day (1996)
11. Spider-Man (2002)
12. Star Wars (1977)
13. Lion King, The (1994)
14. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
15. Matrix Reloaded, The (2003)
16. Forrest Gump (1994)
17. Sixth Sense, The (1999)
18. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
19. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
20. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997)
I think of hugely popular films as aesthetic
objects similar in kind to "art" films. Titanic is a Cameron
film, Spiderman is a Sam Raimi film, etc. They exist in
different cultural contexts than a Kiarostami film, and I think
the Kiarostami's films are better, but they occupy a
similar aesthetic space, so to speak.
Whereas most of the singles seem ephemeral -- several are novelty
songs. That doesn't mean I don't like them. I prefer the Macarena
and I'll Be Missing You to Hey Jude, for example, but it seems
obvious to me the cultural role of Los Del Rio or P. Diddy is
insignificant compared to that of the Beatles.
On the other hand, my guess is popular music, taken as a whole,
has a much bigger effect on "mass consciousness" than films do.
Titanic and Star Wars are part of a common cultural vocabulary in
the US, for most younger Americans, but I don't think they changed
lives the way a handful of rock and pop personalities have.
I'm not sure where I'd place self-consciously
pop films, like "Charlie's Angels" or "Torque." But in any case
TV series, etc., with certain exceptions, seem to occupy a
different aesthetic space, more like pop music. For example,
at Cahiers du Cinema, the praise for Terminator 4, whether
correct or not, seems entirely consistent with the auteurist
tradition (as I conceive it), but the praise for Friends felt
like a rupture -- although maybe a necessary one.
Also, there's different kinds of popular music -- some is
omnipresent, some is invisible. I'm particularly aware of that
lately. I don't listen to music often, but since I have some
friends who are closely involved with clubs and DJ's, the music
I most hear -- I'm not even sure the proper genre description (
house-derived dance music?) -- isn't even mentioned by Christgau
and other critics outside of specialized magazines and web sites.
I'm not sure that kind of fragmentation exists in the cinema --
maybe on a national level -- films made for local consumption
in India, Nigeria, Thailand, etc..
The same goes for watching more "challenging" films at home. I have
> tons of Raul Ruiz films on video that I have difficulty watching
(esp, if
> they're shitty bootlegs..and you have a husband who hates most
variety of art
> films...and four bratty kitties...and a cell phone you cannot shut
off) but sat
> mesmerized during Time Regained sitting on the floor two feet from
the screen in
> a sold-out-plus theatre. I guess the perceptual changes fostered by
a La
> Région Centrale or a Time Regained are harder to foster at home.
Too
many
> potential distractions, often self-imposed.
>
> In the end, I gravitate more (keyword: more) towards pop since I
listen to
> music mostly at home and toward art in film since I see much of it
in a theatre.
>
That's an excellent point, and it reflects my own experience very
well, since I strongly prefer watching films in the theater,
but when I'm at home I'd rather watch, say, The Simpsons over and
over. For example, TCM frequently shows great films, but I
rarely watch it.
That might reflect a parallel between pop and TV. I notice a
similar parallel with records and mp3's. When I bought records
(I never really cared for CD's) I'd buy major works -- but I'd
rarely listen to them. I almost never buy records anymore (apologies
to the RIAA), and now I usually prefer to listen to catchy songs
on mp3's. I've probably changed -- I've become superficial in
my old age -- but the medium seems to make a difference as well.
Paul
10386
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 2:39pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Gallagher"
wrote:
> I almost never buy records anymore (apologies
> to the RIAA), and now I usually prefer to listen to catchy songs
> on mp3's. I've probably changed -- I've become superficial in
> my old age -- but the medium seems to make a difference as well.
One fascinating study (described in Malcolm Gladwell's book "The
Tipping Point") shows that people tend to follow new developments and
new groups in popular music, but only until the age of approximately
thirty-nine. After that age, for reasons that are unclear (but open
to speculation, of course), people tend to lose interest in
up-and-coming artists. They either get mired in nostalgia for the
music of their youth or else start exploring the historical roots
of whatever music they prefer. In my personal experience, this
seems to hold up as a principle, although maybe I held out a year
or two longer.
Now, this makes another area suggesting knotty comparisons between
music and film. Naturally, we look back fondly at "breakthrough"
film experiences (like my epiphany at first seeing Hiroshima Mon
Amour—which I'm convinced rearranged my DNA—or Bill's
recent example of Red Line 7000). However, from what I've
observed, it doesn't seem true that we lose interest in new
cinematic developments, except maybe those that have specific
ties to new cultural phenomena. But why should information
processed through the eye and ear together (film) follow
different rules from information through the ear alone (music)?
Of course, there's also the question of figuring out what
"new" means.
--Robert Keser
10387
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 2:40pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
Kevin,
Correction accepted on Meltzer - I like the writing, and have no way
to judge the content. My experience of rock began and ended with my
intense period of drug use in (pardon the reference) the 60s. I also
note that Meltzer's writing has become kind of routine and futile,
but I liked his millennial blast at rock crit (and Almost Famous) in
the Chicago Reader.
I saw Time Regained in a theatre, but I'm pretty sure I'd love it on
tape and still have problems w. other Ruizes in theatres. He's like
Oliveira -- prolific and uneven. Central Region, of course, wouldn't
exist on tape.
I suspect my desire to import the witty "rockist" idea to film
wouldn't work - "artist" doesn't, for me. But I was thinking about it
watching Time & Tide, where I could barely follow the plot but had a
wonderful time. Action films are the disco of cinema, and share non-
negligible qualities with formalists of a whole different stripe than
Tsui Hark.
Thanks a million for the Fantasia tapes in advance!
10388
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:08pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
To redirect what Miss Kael herself said about Siegfried
> Kracauer: someone who likes Singin' in the Rain so much can't be
> all bad.
>
Yes she can.
I saw a new book at Samuel French yesterday - Kael and Sontag:
Opposites Attract Me, by a salon.com critic. I have no idea how good
the book is, but the choice of dialectic suggests to me that the guy
is playing in another universe than I am. While I tepidly enjoy
Sontag, I find her the Sammy Davis Jr. of critical thinking: her
political writing doesn't even deserve mention beside Joan Didion's,
her literary criticism is recycling of her betters, and a joke in
comparison with the real thing (Shoshana Felman, say), her film
criticism ditto.
Sontag writes polished prose, like Kael, whom I loathe of course, so
maybe that's what the book's author likes about them. If so, his book
should be interesting at a minimum for spelling out the puzzling
sensibility of Kaelites, who certainly don't "get" film and
discovered in Kael a model for a certain kind of essayistic prose,
which they seem to think she invented. Or maybe it is just the
meanness of Kael and the pretentiousness of Sontag that he likes!
For Sontag fans, my apologies in advance -- there is a lot to be had
from her if you haven't gotten around to reading what she's
recycling, although generally the originals are less heavy-handed
than she is. She certainly seems to have good taste, unlike Kael. And
I really do think, on the basis of one screening of Duet for
Cannibals, that she's a good writer-director. I'd love to see that
film again, and I'd love to see Brother Karl and Forbidden
Lands...but how?
10389
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:10pm
Subject: FILM / MUSIC under 10 crowd
Many of the films listed are much influenced by the under 10 year
old audience who probably are not so interested in 'romance' songs.
(I don't even want to mention the Barney word.) I know a few of
the songs (We Are the World, etc) are not intended as romance
songs.
Interesting that SHREK 1 is about an ogre in a swamp saving a
princess in a castle guarded by a dragon with the help of a side-kick
donkey. Children like it.
SHREK 2 is about meeting the in-laws, romantic competition, potions
and a manipulative fairy godmother ... much less interesting to
children.
It would be a more appropriate comparision to look at the more
adult (or at least teen-age and up audience) films lists and music
lists.
10390
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:17pm
Subject: Re: Time and Tide
> Is this California or Conneticut?
The one neither of us is sure how to spell!
>
> I loved his screenplay for Kafuman's Invasion of the
> Body Snatchers.
Ditto. And Greg Ford, who shared a house in H'wd with WDR and some
other misfits when he was writing Slither, told me that it was much
better before Howard Zeiff toned it down. I love the ending: "Two
weeks ago I didn't know any of you people!"
For some reason Richter gets messed with a lot. Mike, I love Home for
Dinner too, even though I happen to know that it was mercilessly
hacked up by the production company. The company's head publicist --
who is a wonderful person, by the way -- expressed satisfaction in
retrospect at the mutilation. Knowing the source on this case, I
would say that Richter-bashing simply has to do with the fact that he
hasn't had a commercial success. If Buckaroo Banzai had been the
blockbuster eveeryone thought it was going to be....
Some of us still haven't given up on someday seeing The Revenge of
Hanoi Xan, however.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10391
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:22pm
Subject: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
Not since Walter Kaufmann,
> that beacon of our Frankie Avalon years, has a rock critic promoted
> himself with such assiduous indirection.
Great writing right there! I assume he isn't comparing Meltzer to
Walter Kaufman, the popularizer who brilliantly introduced some of us
to Hegel, Nietzsche and Existentialism a million years ago. Is there
really a rock critic named Walter Kaufman????
10392
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:27pm
Subject: long time since music was solely an audio phenomenon
I think it has been a long time since music was solely an
audio phenomenon. Not just today's MTV, but go back to ELVIS and
the BEATLES TV appearances, as well as the early TV shows
essentially dependent on music numbers... Ed Sullivan, Mitch Miller,
etc. MTV is sometimes more interesting visually. Look at the
huge production numbers in concerts. MUSIC is not just
audio. I've never purchased a music - DVD, but they must be
filled with images.
As an aside, I often had images in my head when hearing
contemporary lyrics when young; who can't see Butch riding
his bicycle when hearing "RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD?"
Joplin's ragtime music of THE STING always evokes cinematic images.
But for the most part, I like to keep lyrics out of movies.
(Of course, I am dating myself, but MTV's influence on cinema is not
always welcomed.)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
>But why should information
> processed through the eye and ear together (film) follow
> different rules from information through the ear alone (music)?
> Of course, there's also the question of figuring out what
> "new" means.
10393
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:30pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
Again, all very interesting, and I agree with you. I don't know how
old you ar, Paul, but there actually was a time when film directors
got some of the attention rock gods do. If Other Side of the Wind is
ever finished, people will be puzzled by that aspect of it.
One place where the pop/cinema axes seem to cross is Cinefile,
Hadrian Belove's videotheque here in LA, which has a DJ on Friday and
Saturday nights (and at least three future great filmmakers who
occasionally man the cash register). Cinefile embodies everything I
love about a_film_by and don't find anywhere else. Hadrian, by the
way, is habelove, who wrote the post on Castaway and Fedex.
10394
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: Rockism explained! Kael mentioned!
--- hotlove666
>
> I saw a new book at Samuel French yesterday - Kael
> and Sontag:
> Opposites Attract Me, by a salon.com critic. I have
> no idea how good
> the book is, but the choice of dialectic suggests to
> me that the guy
> is playing in another universe than I am.
It's reviewed in the NYT today. Looks pretty dumb.
Sontag and Kael have nothing in common, nad little is
leaned through compare/contrast.
While I
> tepidly enjoy
> Sontag, I find her the Sammy Davis Jr. of critical
> thinking: her
> political writing doesn't even deserve mention
> beside Joan Didion's,
> her literary criticism is recycling of her betters,
> and a joke in
> comparison with the real thing (Shoshana Felman,
> say), her film
> criticism ditto.
>
That's speaking quite poorly of Sammy Davis Jr.
She's a lot more like P. Diddy -- "sampling" her
betters (Barthes, Brigid Brophy, Mary McCarthy)
> Sontag writes polished prose, like Kael, whom I
> loathe of course, so
> maybe that's what the book's author likes about
> them. If so, his book
> should be interesting at a minimum for spelling out
> the puzzling
> sensibility of Kaelites, who certainly don't "get"
> film and
> discovered in Kael a model for a certain kind of
> essayistic prose,
> which they seem to think she invented. Or maybe it
> is just the
> meanness of Kael and the pretentiousness of Sontag
> that he likes!
>
That would make Kael Margo to Sontag's Eve. A
thrilling dramatic idea. Call Ken Russell!
> For Sontag fans, my apologies in advance -- there is
> a lot to be had
> from her if you haven't gotten around to reading
> what she's
> recycling, although generally the originals are less
> heavy-handed
> than she is. She certainly seems to have good taste,
> unlike Kael.
That's because she sat at the feet of a lot of smart
gay men: Alfred Chester and Elliot Stein in
particular.
And
> I really do think, on the basis of one screening of
> Duet for
> Cannibals, that she's a good writer-director. I'd
> love to see that
> film again, and I'd love to see Brother Karl and
> Forbidden
> Lands...but how?
>
>
John Waters is a big fan of "Duet For Cannibals."
She certainly got some great actors for her Bergman
rip-offs (Adriana Asti, Laurent Terzieff) but she
never won the critical respect the Woodman got for
his.
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10395
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 3:39pm
Subject: B'way Musicals
David, my apologies to Sammy. Now let me ask if anyone knows a book
I'm reading on breaks from Bunuel: Place for Us. Anyone?
Like/dislike? I discovered D.A. Miller through a book called The
Police and the Novel (or vice versa) and finally pried this one away
from whoever at LA Public has been sitting on it -- it's about B'way
musicals and gay identity. Actually, it's mostly about Gypsy. He also
seems to have written ab ook on Barthes I'd like to find - Bringing
Out Roland Barthes.
10396
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 4:13pm
Subject: Re: B'way Musicals
Oh that's a fantastic book. And D.A. Miller is a
marvelous writer. The Barthes book is packaged along
with the translation of "Incidents" -- Barthes
posthumously published attempt at a novel.
Miller has written a lot about film too. His "Anal
Rope" is in the collection "Inside/Out: Lesbian
Theories, Gay Theories" edited by Diana Fuss
(Routledge, 1991) and is essential reading for
Hitchcock scholars.
His "Visual Pleasure in 1959" -- an analysis of
Mankiewicz's "Suddenly Last Summer" is in the
collection "Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and
Film" edited by Ellis Hanson (Duke Universty Press,
1999)
"Place For Us" is especially interesting in that it
deals with how work is experienced and interpreted by
audiences on a very personal level. It starts out as a
kind of explanation of why gay men of a certain
generation are hung up on Broaday musicals before
honing in on "Gypsy" and the pivotal figure of
"Tulsa." He's the charact that meant the most to
Jerome Robbins as his number "All I Need is the Girl"
was all that wasleft of Robbins' original plan for the
show to be a panorama of vaudeville. But as Laurents'
discovered when he write the libretto "It's about the
Mother" -- and therefore it was "about" Merman.
"Tulsa" is the most interesting gay character in the
history of musical theater (until "Bounce") His key
line: "This step is good for the costume."
--- hotlove666
> David, my apologies to Sammy. Now let me ask if
> anyone knows a book
> I'm reading on breaks from Bunuel: Place for Us.
> Anyone?
> Like/dislike? I discovered D.A. Miller through a
> book called The
> Police and the Novel (or vice versa) and finally
> pried this one away
> from whoever at LA Public has been sitting on it --
> it's about B'way
> musicals and gay identity. Actually, it's mostly
> about Gypsy. He also
> seems to have written ab ook on Barthes I'd like to
> find - Bringing
> Out Roland Barthes.
>
>
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10397
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 4:23pm
Subject: Re: B'way Musicals
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Oh that's a fantastic book. And D.A. Miller is a
> marvelous writer. The Barthes book is packaged along
> with the translation of "Incidents" -- Barthes'
> posthumously published attempt at a novel.
Thanks, David - glad to know we share that taste. And thanks for the
tips about where to find the Barthes essay and some filmcrit by
Miller. I hereby formally recommend Place for Us to the group as an
example of English-language Barthes-informed criticism (of a popular
genre) by someone who brings quite a bit more to the table than
Sontag.
10398
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 4:56pm
Subject: stylish clothing
Seeing stylish clothing is always a treat, and is missed in
contemporary films showing more skin than clothes.
Stylishness was part of the star system. When I catch
some talk shows (my husband likes ELLEN), I'm always
amazed how shabbly some are dressed. Stylish class is
passe for many.
Men all seem to have their shirts hanging out; nobody
tucks them in anymore. Even dress shirts have gone
the way of the polo? Don't men want to show their
trim waist lines? I guess not if the pants are hanging
so low.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
But oddly, usually enjoy when
> famous designers do costumes for films. While these constitute adverstising of
> sorts for the designer, they also have some distinct virtues: 1) Clothes are
> works of art, unlike most products placed in films. 2) The clothes are there to
> give pleasure to viewers, while products are there to manipulate them.
> Mike Grost
10399
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 5:03pm
Subject: Re: stylish clothing
It's an awful time, Elizabeth. Yves Saint Laurent was
right to retire.
The recent documentaries about him, showing him making
his last collection, are a stunning reminder of what
we've lost.
I don't understand why so many people seem to belive
that looking grotesque is chic.
--- Elizabeth Anne Nolan
> Seeing stylish clothing is always a treat, and is
> missed in
> contemporary films showing more skin than clothes.
> Stylishness was part of the star system. When I
> catch
> some talk shows (my husband likes ELLEN), I'm always
> amazed how shabbly some are dressed. Stylish class
> is
> passe for many.
>
> Men all seem to have their shirts hanging out;
> nobody
> tucks them in anymore. Even dress shirts have gone
> the way of the polo? Don't men want to show their
> trim waist lines? I guess not if the pants are
> hanging
> so low.
>
>
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10400
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Sun May 30, 2004 5:53pm
Subject: Re: Bill/Paul praised! Rockism in film? Seth welcomed!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> I also
> note that Meltzer's writing has become kind of routine and futile,
> but I liked his millennial blast at rock crit (and Almost Famous) in
> the Chicago Reader.
That piece appears to be only accessible at the Reader's website
for a nominal cost, but I also found a copy of it here:
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/rock/meltzer-afrev.html
Dave
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