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19301


From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:15pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
Hi Tom. Welcome to the list.

> Wait. Perhaps I'm reading this poorly. You're saying
*millions*
> were invested in some Nan Goldin video piece?

No, probably not. Maybe tens of thousands.

> One of these (the
> Goldin piece) was conceived as a work of capital-A Art, which
almost
> by definition precludes mass-distribution;

Have you seen the Goldin piece? Or for that matter, Sophie
Calle's Unfinished (or her earlier No Sex Last Night)?

Whether Goldin's installation qualifies as capital-A-art does not
interest me. The habits of people interest me -- where they are
going, what they are watching, how they are receiving it. The
qualification of art is fake to me. And it's the only thing separating
Goldin from Caouette.

> It
> wouldn't matter if Jonathan Caouette were merely "satisfied
with the
> presentation" as Goldin was in that instance.

It doesn't matter, either, that Goldin's piece was a three screen
installation, inside of a church......

My point earlier wasn't about how many people the work is
reaching or the mechanism that allows for a work to reach a
larger number of people. Or about money. These are things
easily ignored, but film critics are not very culturally adept; they're
lost when forced to maneuver through another art form; they get
away with only seeing what comes to them. That's how most of
their columns read, anyway.

Maybe you can say the same thing about art, food, literary, and
music critics. They're only into what they're into. I find the
columns of John Powers, Meredith Brody, and David Hickey, to
cite just three of the most versatile critics out there, to be a breath
of fresh air. I wish there were more like them. I like David
Ehrenstein's writings as well.

What i see is an abuse to the film world by the art world -- by the
likes of Matt Barney, for exampel -- that means we've made
ourselves too vulnerable by qualifying what's film and what isn't.
That's why film critics' lists all look the same. Why is the
avant-garde so troubling, for example?

My friend Jim Trainor, a student of Lewis Khlar and a successful
filmmaker in his own right, told me that when he started making
films he came to accept that his work would only be shown at
places like the Whitney Biennial.

For me this is kind of sad since Jim is a great filmmaker, and I
would look at his work in the same way as Scorsese or Wes
Anderson.

> The distributor, as a
> matter of sheer survival, cannot settle for that.

Who's talking about distributors?

> Well, aren't you presupposing that said critics are arriving at
> these lists on the basis of how they wish to appear to their
> colleagues, and not because their choices honestly reflect
their
> judgement?
> I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm merely asking if this is your
> contention.

At the risk of being attacked, I would say critics are so delusional
about these films already that it's impossible for them to reflect
honestly on anything.

Gabe
19302


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:22pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Merci!

I've been working on putting that one into wider
circulation for the past year or so.

--- Patrick Ciccone wrote:

>
>
> >Triumph of the Will & Grace
> > alliance with James Broughton
>
> David, you're our auteurist La Rochefoucauld and
> Oscar Wilde. Quite a
> bon mot.
>
>
>
>
>




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19303


From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:29pm
Subject: Re: Critics (Was: top tens)
 
Gabe Klinger wrote:

>... At the risk of being attacked, I would say critics are so delusional
> about these films already that it's impossible for them to reflect
> honestly on anything.

If you're talking about TV critics or those who write for major daily
newspapers or "mainstream" magazines (excluding, for example, the
"Chicago Reader"), here's something to keep in mind. In most cases these
critics were hired because their editors thought/hoped that their tastes
would mirror the tastes of their readers. Whether this idea originates
with editors or readers, I don't know, but readers either want or are
told they want criticism that's a kind of consumer guide to what's
entertaining: "Go to this movie. It's a rollicking thrill ride and
you'll have barrels of fun." Or: "Skip this turkey. It's a snooze."
That's a lot of what "mainstream" film criticism is today, and critics
tend to feel, perhaps rightly, that they have to continue in this vein
to keep their jobs. I don't know about you, but I can't find similar
words for Sophie Calle or Nan Goldin, whatever I may think of their work.

How "mainstream" readers would react to a more adventurous critic, I
don't know, but I suspect a somewhat more adverturous critic would do
fine, and expand some people's tastes, but one who utterly forsakes
"thrill ride" praises would not survive.

Fred Camper
19304


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:35pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger" wrote:


> At the risk of being attacked, I would say critics are so delusional
> about these films already that it's impossible for them to reflect
> honestly on anything.
>
> Gabe

Don't forget "overworked." While you're no spring chicken, Gabe, you still
have more physical stamina than Roger Ebert. Can you imagine seeing all
the films he does - many of them bad - and writing them up, year in and year
out?

BTW, when I shy away from critiquing the assumed audience, it's not because
audiences, marketing and distribution are extraneous to serious discussion of
film. But assumptions about anything can get you in trouble. For ages critics
have been making assumptions about critical reactions to films based on the
three publications they happen to read. Now we have Rotten Tomatoes, and
anyone who consults the whole range of reviews that appear on a given film
at that site is usually in for a surprise that his assumptions won't have
prepared him for.

John Powers has deadful taste.
19305


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:38pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
David Ehrenstein wrote:

>The ecstasy of his own "mastery."
>
>
This is starting to sound like that episode of Seinfeld.

But I really wonder whether you're getting this vibe from the films
themselves or from his persona--the films are overwhelmingly inflected
with a rare kind of humility (unfortunately I can't comment on the rest,
never having met HF).


>Having been present through much of this --
>particularly a Kael denunciation of film poetry ("I
>was married to one," she quipped for the benefit of
>those unaware of her Triumph of the Will & Grace
>alliance with James Broughton) -- I know all to well
>what you're talking about.
>
Fair enough. Still, I thought it was worth keeping this fact in the
background, even if the story you recounted wasn't an instance of it.
There is something about the "arrogance" of a marginalized artist that
strikes me as much less objectionable than the arrogance of someone who
has attained a certain level of success.

-Matt

19306


From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:45pm
Subject: Re: Critics (Was: top tens)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Gabe Klinger wrote:

> How "mainstream" readers would react to a more adventurous critic, I
> don't know, but I suspect a somewhat more adverturous critic would do
> fine, and expand some people's tastes, but one who utterly forsakes
> "thrill ride" praises would not survive.

Our own Dan Sallitt used to review movies weekly for the LA Reader. More
than once, I heard a civilian stumbling out of a film he had sent them to
moaning, "Why me?!" When Greenspan was at the Times, they sent him
packing after a year. Etc.

Generally speaking, people do need advice from someone whose taste
mirrors theirs. During our many debates about film in the 70s John Hollander
told me more than once that whatever I thought of Kael, her taste mirrored his,
so he read her to know what to see, in the limited time he had.

The critic as consumer guide has a function to fulfill, and if he/she can
smuggle in an occasional rave for a good film that would go unnoticed, he/
she probably needs to preface it by saying that the recommendation is for
people who like..., or people who have seen..., or people who don't mind....

Polemical as he is, JR usually mentions in passing that some H'wd film he's
dissecting will satisfy people in search of a thrill-ride, or whatever. He didn't at
first, but he does now, and he's right to do it.

Query: Why do so many critics automatically call an actor they like "fine"?
Never "good," never "great" - "fine." It makes me want to puke for some
reason.
19307


From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:58pm
Subject: Re: Re: Ten Best Lists
 
Gee, why am I not surprised?
Thanks for this tidbit.
g


samadams@e... wrote:

>Actually, according to online columnist David Poland, Travers
>specifically demanded the right to be quoted in advance of
>publication when he took the Rolling Stone job. You may speculate
>freely as to why he might want such a right.
>
>Sam
>
>
>
19308


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:09pm
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
> wrote:
> >
>> Ouch.
>
> I don't see any similarities in Brooks's and McCarey's work either,
> apart from a tendency toward the sentimental (and even *that*
wasn't
> branded on every film Leo McCarey made). The sentimentality in
> McCarey's work is more akin to the sort of thing you encounter in
> certain people who've had too much to drink; an unfortunate
> emotional lurch he takes that one can excuse and even, under the
> right circumstances, share in to a degree. When James Brooks's
> movies turn on the soft music it's nothing more than the labor of a
> skilled TV producer working a response out of a willing audience.
>
> Leo McCarey was never that cynical.
>
Having heard Brooks comment on his filmmaking, I don't think it's so
much cynicism as insecurity that drives that music and other canned
devices. I think it's worth tearing through that security blanket,
but not because I want to denounce the naked emperor cowering
beneath, but to understand him and why he's up to what he's up to.
Because like Jonathan I am genuinely intrigued by the personality at
work here, the strategies of self-examination, evasion and
sublimation that it employs. Tom, that lurching you're talking about
in McCarey is there in Brooks as well, though I'd attribute it more
to symptoms of Prozac withdrawl than alcohol. His characters talk
and act much like how I suspect Brooks acts in real life --
essentially unhappy and trying desperately to cope through gestures
that may or may not pass as genuine accomplishments or signs of
personal development. This leads to moments of catharsis ("You make
me want to be a better man") that may strike some of you as uttrely
bogus happy ending bullshit, but for me it only underscores the
tragic distance between who the person saying that line really is and
who he's trying to be -- and it's a recurring awareness of that
distance, and the desperate urge to bridge that gaping void of
despair, that makes the fake emotional displays work for me. It's a
character depiction that's perhaps less impeccable in design and
execution than what Alexander Payne cooly accomplishes, but for that
same reason it's more emotionally transparent to the eyes I've been
given.

On this score Wes Anderson fans (including Damien?) might be able to
relate to what I'm talking about, even if I still can't fuly embrace
where he -- another would-be contender for McCarey's mantle -- has
taken his art.

Anyway, thanks Damien for offering me the names of half a dozen
artists whose work I'll have to bone up on in order to really know
what you are talking about. I'll have to revisit my thoughts on
McCarey vs. Brooks with future viewings. (And you remain the first
person I'd think of to watch a McCarey movie with.) I agree with some
of what you're saying but again, I don't think the artificiality of
Brooks' effects is grounds for dismissal; rather I find it the thing
that becomes interesting in itself.

Kevin
19309


From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:14pm
Subject: Re: Critics (Was: top tens)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote

> If you're talking about TV critics or those who write for major daily
> newspapers or "mainstream" magazines (excluding, for example, the
> "Chicago Reader"), here's something to keep in mind. In most cases
these
> critics were hired because their editors thought/hoped that their
tastes
> would mirror the tastes of their readers.

The question of the proper role of the "critic" has a long history in
drama (or perhaps meta-drama). Certainly Moliere tackled the core of
this issue in his "La Critique de l'École des femmes", way back in
1663 . A bit more recently, Bernard Shaw examined the role of
reviewers/critics in his prologue and epilogue to "Fanny's First
Play". In both cases, the dramatists took barbed and/or friendly
shots at some of their more prominent critics. The conceit of Shaw's
play is that a rich gentleman (with a talented daughter) procures the
attendance of sevveral top critics for the premiere of a new play by
an unidentified author. The prologue (or Induction) introduces the
cast of the framing scenes -- and the epilogue has them critiquing the
play the audience has just watched with them.

Here's an amusing (and perhaps pertinent) excerpt from the epilogue:

THE COUNT. Mr Bannal: you know that it is the custom at a Court
Martial for the youngest officer present to deliver his judgment
first; so that he may not be influenced by the authority of his
elders. You are the youngest. What is your opinion of the play?

BANNAL. Well, whos it by?

THE COUNT. That is a secret for the present.

BANNAL. You dont expect me to know what to say about a play when I
dont know who the author is, do you?

THE COUNT. Why not?

BANNAL. Why not! Why not!! Suppose you had to write about a play by
Pinero and one by Jones! Would you say exactly the same thing about
them?

THE COUNT. I presume not.

BANNAL. Then how could you write about them until you knew which was
Pinero and which was Jones? Besides, what sort of play is this? thats
what I want to know. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? Is it a farce or a
melodrama? Is it repertory theatre tosh, or really straight paying stuff?

GUNN. Cant you tell from seeing it?

BANNAL. I can see it all right enough; but how am I to know how to
take it? Is it serious, or is it spoof? If the author knows what his
play is, let him tell us what it is. If he doesnt, he cant complain
if I dont know either. I'm not the author.

THE COUNT. But is it a good play, Mr Bannal? Thats a simple question.

BANNAL. Simple enough when you know. If it's by a good author, it's
a good play, naturally. That stands to reason. Who is the author?
Tell me that; and I'll place the play for you to a hair's breadth.

(end extract)

Michael Kerpan
Boston
19310


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:21pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> Indeed, I think he recognizes teh
> inherent falseness of the rituals while simultaneously
acknowledging
> their necessity. John Ford did pretty much the same thing. [ducks]
>
Thanks for making me feel less sheepish about comparing James Brooks
to Leo McCarey! I see what you mean though. But I don't think Ford
ever gave off the same vaguely condescending vibe that Payne does, or
the self-loathing. I also think that they are different in that
Payne seems to betray an urge to tear the existing social structure
apart (only to talk himself out of it), whereas Ford worries
desperately about its fate and preservation.

> *-Of course, the balance here is also why I think ABOUT SCHMIDT is
a
> superior film to SIDEWAYS. I'm surprised nobody has caught onto
> Payne's somewhat Olympian sensibilities here, as I think they're
> fairly overt.

I'd actually disagree with this, if you mean that Payne exhibits more
of an overhead view here than in his previous films. I think in this
film he feels more personally implicated in this world, its values,
its rituals, than in his other work.
19311


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:33pm
Subject: Re: Re: top tens
 
--- hotlove666 wrote:

>
> John Powers has deadful taste.
>
>
>
>
What were you thinking of in particular in relation to this?

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19312


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
--- Matt Teichman wrote:


> There is something about the "arrogance" of a
> marginalized artist that
> strikes me as much less objectionable than the
> arrogance of someone who
> has attained a certain level of success.
>
But Frampton wasn't marginalized. From his very first
appearance he was hailed as Major Artist. "Zorns
Lemma" was the first avant-garde film to get a
screening in The Big Room at the New York Film
Festival back in 1970. It was a major event. And to
say something in Frampton's favor I recall his
squaring off with John Simon in the Q & A that
followed. Simon undobtedly thought from Framptpn's
appearance that he was some sort of mindless hippie.
It didn't take long for him to find out he was dealing
with someone even more intellectually arrogant than he
was.


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19313


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 8:45pm
Subject: Re: top tens/Sideways
 
Thanks Zach, Sam, Bilge. Let me take a moment to make a contrived
year-end salutation and say how much I've enjoyed this board since I
joined at the start of the year.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, samadams@e... wrote:
I also agree
> with Bilge that there's nothing wrong with "having it both ways",
and
> the tension between those two characters/ways of seeing is
> intentional. The film (lovingly) skewers Giamatti in the opening
> scene, as he orders his latte, rolls the r in "croissant" and does
> the Times crossword in ink, but it's also clearly on his side.

My problem with this is that it's exactly what contributes to the
overall shepherding effect on a viewer. It doesn't confront them or
disrupt us, instead it offers us social or behavioral artifacts that
we know, lets us chuckle or cluck about them, and then puts them back
on the shelf and moves us to the next display. What puzzles me about
SIDEWAYS is that there are a lot of events that disrupt the
equilibirum of the two men's lives, and yet by the end nothing has
really been disrupted. So my problem with "having it both ways" is
that I'm often left wondering, what's really at stake here? I
actually feel kind of the same with a lot of Fellini, not to mention
another Fellini disciple, Woody Allen. And of course Sofia Coppola.
Compare this to how Cassavetes or Rossellini depict disruptions in
everyday life and this eviscerating sense of emotional violence -- by
the end, things can never be the same with their characters.

But it's the kind of movie I can, for
> instance, take my mother and my two younger siblings to see over
the holidays, and then have a good conversation with them about
> afterwards (as opposed to, say, the bafflement and hostility
> occasioned by ETERNAL SUNSHINE).

This is a depressing statement, if "ordinary" moviegoers really can't
get ETERNAL SUNSHINE.

I am okay with my family and friends watching SIDEWAYS and enjoying
it. I guess I am left confronted with the daunting question of
whether I can bring what I feel is a more socially progressive
perspective on the film, a greater awareness of how the film operates
on the viewer, and have them understand where I'm coming from. I
like to think that what I've said about SIDEWAYS is rooted in
plainspoken common sense, and yet I find it near impossible to
communicate my concerns verbally to others. Which would make a film
like SIDEWAYS seem like conciliatory comfort food to me -- but to
accept it is to accept defeat.

Kevin
19314


From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:00pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
Gabe - I'm not sure - are you arguing Nan Goldin *shouldn't* do
the installation ?




> What i see is an abuse to the film world by the art world -- by the
> likes of Matt Barney, for exampel

No comment on Barney, not having seen the stuff yet. Otherwise,


-- that means we've made
> ourselves too vulnerable by qualifying what's film and what isn't.

I have to agree, TOTALLY I think.

-Sam Wells
19315


From:
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:21pm
Subject: John Powers
 
My sample size isn't large enough for me to have an opinion on this, but
in a moment of perverse grace, I recall him declaring on Fresh Air, a
program I otherwise consider a pestilent blight, that Flowers of Shanghai
was the best film of the year. Of course this was after he hedged his bets
by nominating a film in wide release for the same.

Fred.

>
> John Powers has deadful taste.
>
19316


From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:23pm
Subject: Re: Critics
 
> Gabe Klinger wrote:
>
>> ... At the risk of being attacked, I would say critics are so
>> delusional
>> about these films already that it's impossible for them to reflect
>> honestly on anything.
>
> If you're talking about TV critics or those who write for major daily
> newspapers or "mainstream" magazines (excluding, for example, the
> "Chicago Reader"), here's something to keep in mind. In most cases
> these
> critics were hired because their editors thought/hoped that their
> tastes
> would mirror the tastes of their readers. Whether this idea originates
> with editors or readers, I don't know, but readers either want or are
> told they want criticism that's a kind of consumer guide to what's
> entertaining: "Go to this movie. It's a rollicking thrill ride and
> you'll have barrels of fun." Or: "Skip this turkey. It's a snooze."
> That's a lot of what "mainstream" film criticism is today, and critics
> tend to feel, perhaps rightly, that they have to continue in this vein
> to keep their jobs. I don't know about you, but I can't find similar
> words for Sophie Calle or Nan Goldin, whatever I may think of their
> work.
>
> How "mainstream" readers would react to a more adventurous critic, I
> don't know, but I suspect a somewhat more adverturous critic would do
> fine, and expand some people's tastes, but one who utterly forsakes
> "thrill ride" praises would not survive.
>
> Fred Camper
San Diego critic David Elliot (who hails from Chicago so some of you
might know him) is skewered by readers on a regular basis, with the
great compliment that some readers reverse his star ratings and then
determine what they will go see. It must be hard for learned critics
to deal with much of what is out there. Yesterday I had the option to
see a free screening of the Fat Albert movie; instead I opted for OZU's
A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS and FLOATING WEEDS on DVD. I guess it is
like ER MD's who see every patient who comes in the door... never
really know what you might see until you see the patient.
19317


From: Charles Leary
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:24pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
>
> p.s. Annette Michaelson announced October will be publishing this
> soon.
>

The last issue of OCTOBER is largely devoted to Frampton, and includes
some of his writing.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
19318


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 0:18am
Subject: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
I don't want to make excuses for anyone, least of all Roger Ebert or any
of the other mainstream daily critics, but there is something you all
might want to keep in mind when we talk about the job of the full-time
critic.

Our fellow list-member Damien Bona has been keeping a 'master list' of
films released in NYC since we were both in college during the John
Quincy Adams administration (okay, I'm exaggerating; Rutherford B.
Hayes). The criteria for theatrical release that Mr. B goes by is that
the film is reviewed in the NY Times -- arbitrary, perhaps but logical
and consistent. I want you to consider these figures:

2001: 432 films
2002: 472 films
2003: 455 films.

(Mind you, that's up by nearly a hundred from the late '80s, the
by-product of the multiplexing of large houses and the growth
of indie screens in the city.)

Now I will readily agree that in most other US cities the numbers are
probably not as large, but I don't imagine they are so
much smaller that the job is somehow exponentially easier in, say,
Boston or Miami, to pick two off the top of my head.

To see every single film released in New York City in any of the last
three years would mean seeing more than a film a day, which doesn't
sound like a big task until you add in the time necessary to write and
file stories, to see any other films (this is only the stuff that gets
released, remember), to read any books, eat an occasional meal and even,
heaven forbid, sleep. (Okay, you could sleep in some of the films, but I
won't suggest which ones.)

Joking aside, I don't think one person can cover this many films on a
regular basis for any period of time and preserve his/her sanity. So you
have to make choices and skip some things.

And if you are on a major daily, your editors are making those choices
for you. Their choices will invariably be biased towards the mainstream.

To borrow a trope from Dr. Johnson, the amazing thing isn't that so few
non-traditional narrative films are reviewed outside alternative
publications but that any are. The idea that John Powers would pick a
Hou Hsiao-Hsien film as his best of the year (even hedging with a
mainstream alternative) in a large media forum like NPR is amazing to me.

I strongly urge you to go back through the daily newspapers in your city
and look at what was being released and reviewed in, say, 1949 (an
inside joke for Damien). Then compare it with what is playing right now.
This may not be the Golden Age of filmmaking, but it's a damned sight
better time for watching movies than fifty or sixty years ago. And
that's not even including TCM, Sundance and IFC, video and DVD. (Yeah,
I know, there is no substitute for seeing a film properly projected in a
theater but for most people that just isn't a viable option for anything
but a current first-run.)

Incidentally, I'm not saying this is the worst job in the world. Writers
love to complain about how tough their lives are -- I do it all the
time. But I've been earning a living exclusively from my writing for
twenty years and it's a hell of a lot easier than working on a garbage
dump, being a file clerk or a word processor -- and I've done all of
those. We have it pretty damned easy; the worst most of us have to put
up with is stupid editors, bad movies and small checks.

George (Ask me about the garbage dump sometime) Robinson

--


The vanquished know the essence of war -- death.
They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that
war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals
of hatred and destruction.

--Chris Hedges
New York Review of Books
12/16/04
19319


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 0:45am
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> >
> > John Powers has deadful taste.
> >
> >
> >
> > I haven't kept a list, but I've read John for years because he's a witty writer
- I enjoy his column in the Weekly - and have developed a habit of not taking
his advice on films, after seeing what he picks and poops on over the long
haul. I still read him when he reviews - unlike Ella Taylor, who is also boring -
but I don't trust his taste.
19320


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 0:57am
Subject: Re: Critics
 
> >
> > How "mainstream" readers would react to a more adventurous critic, I
> > don't know, but I suspect a somewhat more adverturous critic would do
> > fine, and expand some people's tastes, but one who utterly forsakes
> > "thrill ride" praises would not survive.

Our own Dan Sallitt used to review movies weekly for the LA Reader. More
than once, I heard a civilian stumbling out of a film he had sent them to
moaning, "Why me?!" When Greenspan was at the Times, they sent him
packing after a year. Etc.

Generally speaking, people do need advice from someone whose taste
mirrors theirs. During our many debates about film in the 70s John Hollander
told me more than once that whatever I thought of Kael, her taste mirrored his,
so he read her to know what to see, in the limited time he had.

The critic as consumer guide has a function to fulfill, and if he/she can
smuggle in an occasional rave for a good film that would go unnoticed, he/
she probably needs to preface it by saying that the recommendation is for
people who like..., or people who have seen..., or people who don't mind....

Polemical as he is, JR usually mentions in passing that some H'wd film he's
dissecting will satisfy people in search of a thrill-ride, or whatever. He didn't at
first, but he does now, and he's right to do it.

Query: Why do so many critics automatically call an actor they like "fine"?
Never "good," never "great" - "fine." It makes me want to puke for some
19321


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, George Robinson
wrote:

>
>
> I strongly urge you to go back through the daily newspapers in
your city
> and look at what was being released and reviewed in, say, 1949 (an
> inside joke for Damien). Then compare it with what is playing
right now.
> This may not be the Golden Age of filmmaking, but it's a damned
sight
> better time for watching movies than fifty or sixty years ago. And
> that's not even including TCM, Sundance and IFC, video and DVD.

Well, I don't know about "your city" in 1949 (I was 14 and my
city was Paris, France) but while they didn't have video or DVD or
TCM and the rest, they did have some pretty good movies in the local
movie palace (and not just in New York and L.A.) Just a few titles:
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, White Heat, They Live by Night, Under
Capricorn, Adam's Rib, On the Town, A Letter to Three Wives, The
Fountainhead, The Set-Up, Champion, The Heiress, Criss-Cross, Twelve
O'Clock High, Caught, I Shot Jesse James, Not Wanted, All the King's
Men... How many years in the past few decades can match such a line-
up? Of course many of these were underrated by critics at the time,
but that's beside the point.You can't compare viewing opportunities
then and now, and viewing opportunities have nothing to do with the
daily reviewer's plight.

By the way, Hollywood released about 365 features in 1949 -- one
a day on an average.Not very different from what's going on today.
I remember a French film critic who had a column in a major Paris
daily paper in the early fifties. The column was called "Un film par
jour" (One film a day)and he came out with one (very brief) review
everyday except Sundays (no Sunday papers in France, at least in
those days). The level of "criticism" was so low that I doubt that
it was much strain on the guy, and I don't think the job kept him
from having enough sleep or doing any of the various things people
(especially French people) are supposed to do beside watching movies
and reviewing them.

JPC

JPC

>
19322


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:26am
Subject: Re: Critics
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>
> > >
> > > How "mainstream" readers would react to a more adventurous
critic, I
> > > don't know, but I suspect a somewhat more adverturous critic
would do
> > > fine, and expand some people's tastes, but one who utterly
forsakes
> > > "thrill ride" praises would not survive.
>
> Our own Dan Sallitt used to review movies weekly for the LA
Reader. More
> than once, I heard a civilian stumbling out of a film he had sent
them to
> moaning, "Why me?!" When Greenspan was at the Times, they sent him
> packing after a year. Etc.
>
> Generally speaking, people do need advice from someone whose taste
> mirrors theirs. During our many debates about film in the 70s John
Hollander
> told me more than once that whatever I thought of Kael, her taste
mirrored his,
> so he read her to know what to see, in the limited time he had.
>


But are such venues as the LA Reader or the Chicago Reader
considered "mainstream"? Or have they become mainstream by virtue of
their comparative success?
19323


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:45am
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger" wrote:
>
> Hi Tom. Welcome to the list.

*****
Thank you, Gabe. I thought it best to slip in unnoticed and unremarked
upon, as befits my Freshman standing here. So I appreciate the
greeting all the more.

> > One of these (the
> > Goldin piece) was conceived as a work of capital-A Art, which
> almost
> > by definition precludes mass-distribution;
>
> Have you seen the Goldin piece? Or for that matter, Sophie
> Calle's Unfinished (or her earlier No Sex Last Night)?

*****
No, I haven't. I should have prefaced my remarks about Goldin by
saying I was unfamiliar with the piece you referred to in virtually
every respect, but I did not. My apologies for that.

> Whether Goldin's installation qualifies as capital-A-art does not
> interest me. The habits of people interest me -- where they are
> going, what they are watching, how they are receiving it. The
> qualification of art is fake to me. And it's the only thing separating
> Goldin from Caouette.

*****
It *is* fake. And arbitrary. Why anyone invests meaning in the term
these days, apart from certain social impulses, is a mystery to me.

> > It
> > wouldn't matter if Jonathan Caouette were merely "satisfied
> with the
> > presentation" as Goldin was in that instance.
>
> It doesn't matter, either, that Goldin's piece was a three screen
> installation, inside of a church......

*****
Then wouldn't that piece be more comfortably described as belonging to
the realm of Interior Decoration?

> My point earlier wasn't about how many people the work is
> reaching or the mechanism that allows for a work to reach a
> larger number of people. Or about money. These are things
> easily ignored, but film critics are not very culturally adept; they're
> lost when forced to maneuver through another art form; they get
> away with only seeing what comes to them. That's how most of
> their columns read, anyway.

*****
This may be rank speculation, but I think it's not-bad speculation:
There is a tendency on the part of at least some critics to
strenuously avoid the appearance of elitism in public. Not elitism
itself, mind you; merely the appearance of it. I remember seeing Elvis
Mitchell in a television interview once and, at a certain point during
the discussion, he suddenly halted himself midway through uttering the
very word 'Cinema' and just as quickly substituted the word 'movies'
in its place. It happened quick as a blink, but I've never forgotten it.

It was as though he were mortally afraid that if he was caught using
such terminology (terminology which, to you and me, is as natural as
breathing), particularly in a mass-medium, he would forever be tarred
with the epithet 'elitist'.

That, I think, is why you don't see a lot of critics . . . especially
those who write for mass-market publications . . . tote references to
other disciplines into their reviews (provided they have the
wherewithal to actually do it, of course). Showing any sign of
erudition in public might be too risky.

> What i see is an abuse to the film world by the art world -- by the
> likes of Matt Barney, for exampel -- that means we've made
> ourselves too vulnerable by qualifying what's film and what isn't.
> That's why film critics' lists all look the same. Why is the
> avant-garde so troubling, for example?

*****
Not being a professional (or even amatuer) critic anymore, I can only
share in your mystification. When I was plying the trade I reviewed
avant-garde material no one else was gonna see, right along with Art
House/Revival House/Multiplex fare. And I never gave undue weight to
any one species of film, since they all belonged to the same medium as
far as I was concerned. To me it seemed like a natural approach. I
don't understand why other critics don't do it.

> My friend Jim Trainor, a student of Lewis Khlar and a successful
> filmmaker in his own right, told me that when he started making
> films he came to accept that his work would only be shown at
> places like the Whitney Biennial.
>
> For me this is kind of sad since Jim is a great filmmaker, and I
> would look at his work in the same way as Scorsese or Wes
> Anderson.
>
> > The distributor, as a
> > matter of sheer survival, cannot settle for that.
>
> Who's talking about distributors?

*****
I was; at least as far as this issue of who gets to see what is
concerned. The audience for a film shown only at the Whitniey Biennial
may well be pitifully small in comparison to something more widely
distributed, but ultimately that shouldn't matter to critics at all.
For some reason it does. That's why you're see this near-cringing
unanimity among these Top Ten lists. Most critics only pay attention
to films that have roused the interests of distributors, be they major
or minor. Anything that plays a museum simply isn't on the radar for
them. It might as well not exist.

You're quite correct that a film is a film, regardless of whether you
see it in a museum or a multiplex. It should all be admissible matter
for the attentions of a critic.

> > Well, aren't you presupposing that said critics are arriving at
> > these lists on the basis of how they wish to appear to their
> > colleagues, and not because their choices honestly reflect
> their
> > judgement?
> > I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm merely asking if this is your
> > contention.
>
> At the risk of being attacked, I would say critics are so delusional
> about these films already that it's impossible for them to reflect
> honestly on anything.

*****
That's pretty harsh, but I'll be damned if I say you don't have a
point there.

Tom Sutpen
19324


From: J. Mabe
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:08am
Subject: Re: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> Well, I don't know about "your city" in 1949 (I
> was 14 and my
> city was Paris, France) but while they didn't have
> video or DVD or
> TCM and the rest, they did have some pretty good
> movies in the local
> movie palace (and not just in New York and L.A.)
> Just a few titles:
> She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, White Heat, They Live by
> Night, Under
> Capricorn, Adam's Rib, On the Town, A Letter to
> Three Wives, The
> Fountainhead, The Set-Up, Champion, The Heiress,
> Criss-Cross, Twelve
> O'Clock High, Caught, I Shot Jesse James, Not
> Wanted, All the King's
> Men... How many years in the past few decades can
> match such a line-
> up? Of course many of these were underrated by
> critics at the time,
> but that's beside the point.You can't compare
> viewing opportunities
> then and now, and viewing opportunities have nothing
> to do with the
> daily reviewer's plight.



While I’m in grad school I’m working microfilming
South Carolina newspapers that range from the very
early 1800s till about 1980. Besides the fascination
at being able to read and see the political and social
changes of a given city over, say, a 50 year span in
about 3 weeks of filming, I’ve been getting
increasingly jealous of the movie choices people had
back in the 30s through the mid 70s. Even in the
smallest towns there was at least one theater, and it
seems like they changed the schedule every week, if
not more often. The programming at these places was,
I’m sure, standard for their day, but looking back I’m
so envious of the folks in Fort Mill -just to site my
most recent filming- who got to see 2 different Howard
Hawks pictures during the same year that the local
drive-in seems to have been on Jerry Lewis binge.
I’ve been photocopying the papers for myself and
placing the ads for films like Rio Bravo, The Girl
Can’t Help It, and the Wild Racers (which I haven't
seen - simply reminds my of the Lewis Klahr film) all
around my microfilming station.

-Josh

Also, during the first few years of the 1950s I’ve
seen De Toth’s Slattery's Hurricane play as the third
film on the bill about once every three or four months
at the Chester, SC Drive-in... it must have been a
cheap print to buy, or else someone was a big fan.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
19325


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:10am
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
> >
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
> > wrote:
> > >
> >> Ouch.
> >
> > I don't see any similarities in Brooks's and McCarey's work either,
> > apart from a tendency toward the sentimental (and even *that*
> wasn't
> > branded on every film Leo McCarey made). The sentimentality in
> > McCarey's work is more akin to the sort of thing you encounter in
> > certain people who've had too much to drink; an unfortunate
> > emotional lurch he takes that one can excuse and even, under the
> > right circumstances, share in to a degree. When James Brooks's
> > movies turn on the soft music it's nothing more than the labor of a
> > skilled TV producer working a response out of a willing audience.
> >
> > Leo McCarey was never that cynical.
> >
> Having heard Brooks comment on his filmmaking, I don't think it's so
> much cynicism as insecurity that drives that music and other canned
> devices. I think it's worth tearing through that security blanket,
> but not because I want to denounce the naked emperor cowering
> beneath, but to understand him and why he's up to what he's up to.
> Because like Jonathan I am genuinely intrigued by the personality at
> work here, the strategies of self-examination, evasion and
> sublimation that it employs. Tom, that lurching you're talking about
> in McCarey is there in Brooks as well, though I'd attribute it more
> to symptoms of Prozac withdrawl than alcohol. His characters talk
> and act much like how I suspect Brooks acts in real life --
> essentially unhappy and trying desperately to cope through gestures
> that may or may not pass as genuine accomplishments or signs of
> personal development. This leads to moments of catharsis ("You make
> me want to be a better man") that may strike some of you as uttrely
> bogus happy ending bullshit, but for me it only underscores the
> tragic distance between who the person saying that line really is and
> who he's trying to be -- and it's a recurring awareness of that
> distance, and the desperate urge to bridge that gaping void of
> despair, that makes the fake emotional displays work for me. It's a
> character depiction that's perhaps less impeccable in design and
> execution than what Alexander Payne cooly accomplishes, but for that
> same reason it's more emotionally transparent to the eyes I've been
> given.

*****
Well, that's a far more inriguing analysis of what lies behind
Brooks's movies than any I've yet encountered, Kevin, and it certainly
raises him to a compelling figure on some level (what messed-up
auteur hasn't been at least a *little bit* compelling?). But even with
all of that in mind, I don't think it pushes his movies toward any
status beyond that of 'Interesting Curiosities'. A lightweight artist
riven with insecurities that may or may not inform his work is still a
lightweight artist.

Tom Sutpen
19326


From:
Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:13pm
Subject: Re: Peter Tewksbury (was: Brooks & McCarey)
 
After sending director Peter Tewksbury a fan letter in the 1970's, received a
very nice reply. He said that his best work was a one season TV show called
"It's A Man's World" (1962). This was a comedy about three guys living on a
houseboat, and their misadventures. Have never seen this at all - DVD
distributors, where is this?

Mike Grost
19327


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:15am
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "J. Mabe" wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > Well, I don't know about "your city" in 1949 (I
> > was 14 and my
> > city was Paris, France) but while they didn't have
> > video or DVD or
> > TCM and the rest, they did have some pretty good
> > movies in the local
> > movie palace (and not just in New York and L.A.)
> > Just a few titles:
> > She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, White Heat, They Live by
> > Night, Under
> > Capricorn, Adam's Rib, On the Town, A Letter to
> > Three Wives, The
> > Fountainhead, The Set-Up, Champion, The Heiress,
> > Criss-Cross, Twelve
> > O'Clock High, Caught, I Shot Jesse James, Not
> > Wanted, All the King's
> > Men... How many years in the past few decades can
> > match such a line-
> > up? Of course many of these were underrated by
> > critics at the time,
> > but that's beside the point.You can't compare
> > viewing opportunities
> > then and now, and viewing opportunities have nothing
> > to do with the
> > daily reviewer's plight.
>
>
>
> While I'm in grad school I'm working microfilming
> South Carolina newspapers that range from the very
> early 1800s till about 1980. Besides the fascination
> at being able to read and see the political and social
> changes of a given city over, say, a 50 year span in
> about 3 weeks of filming, I've been getting
> increasingly jealous of the movie choices people had
> back in the 30s through the mid 70s. Even in the
> smallest towns there was at least one theater, and it
> seems like they changed the schedule every week, if
> not more often. The programming at these places was,
> I'm sure, standard for their day, but looking back I'm
> so envious of the folks in Fort Mill -just to site my
> most recent filming- who got to see 2 different Howard
> Hawks pictures during the same year that the local
> drive-in seems to have been on Jerry Lewis binge.
> I've been photocopying the papers for myself and
> placing the ads for films like Rio Bravo, The Girl
> Can't Help It, and the Wild Racers (which I haven't
> seen - simply reminds my of the Lewis Klahr film) all
> around my microfilming station.

*****
What, you don't think future generations who have your job will look
back upon this era and marvel at the goldmine of cinephilic
opportunity provided by our local cinemas?

> Also, during the first few years of the 1950s I've
> seen De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane play as the third
> film on the bill about once every three or four months
> at the Chester, SC Drive-in... it must have been a
> cheap print to buy, or else someone was a big fan.

*****
Sounds like my kind of Drive-In.

Tom "Andre deToth freak" Sutpen
19328


From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:30am
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, George Robinson wrote:

> 2001: 432 films
> 2002: 472 films
> 2003: 455 films.

I don't mean to volunteer him, but I'm curious as to the figures of
our own Bilge Ebiri for said years, which must approach these levels.
So I guess I mean to volunteer him. Bilge?

PWC
19329


From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:36am
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
Kevin wrote:

Tom, that lurching you're talking about
> in McCarey is there in Brooks as well, though I'd attribute it more
> to symptoms of Prozac withdrawl than alcohol. His characters talk
> and act much like how I suspect Brooks acts in real life --
> essentially unhappy and trying desperately to cope through gestures
> that may or may not pass as genuine accomplishments or signs of
> personal development. This leads to moments of catharsis ("You
make
> me want to be a better man") that may strike some of you as uttrely
> bogus happy ending bullshit, but for me it only underscores the
> tragic distance between who the person saying that line really is
and
> who he's trying to be -- and it's a recurring awareness of that
> distance, and the desperate urge to bridge that gaping void of
> despair, that makes the fake emotional displays work for me. It's
a
> character depiction that's perhaps less impeccable in design and
> execution than what Alexander Payne cooly accomplishes, but for
that
> same reason it's more emotionally transparent to the eyes I've been
> given.

We don't have SPANGLISH or SIDEWAYS here in Australia yet, and I
don't see why JLB should be presumed to be more nuts than most
filmmakers, but Kevin, I share your high valuation of AS GOOD AS IT
GETS (and Jonathan R's 1996 review thereof). To my mind it's a less
sentimental film, with a far more interesting Nicholson performance,
than ABOUT SCHMIDT.

For what it's worth, when AGAIG came out in 1996 I was still
discovering what was special about directors like Hawks and Minnelli
(not so much McCarey, at that point) and JLB seemed to me one of the
few present-day filmmakers who shared anything of their broad modus
operandi. Even today I can't think of many people now in Hollywood
with his ability to smuggle moments of emotional delicacy into movies
that operate within the traditional parameters of "light
entertainment" (by comparison, ETERNAL SUNSHINE, Wes Anderson's films
and even Payne's all announce themselves as "art" in one way or
another). AGAIG takes place in a sealed fantasy universe, which is
normal practice in Hollywood; what's unusual in the contemporary
context is that this universe consists of only three people (and a
dog). But as on a stage without props, the very lack of plausible
background detail helps generate the intimacy that brings the film to
life: drama in AGAIG consists almost solely of the struggle to
communicate, and the hesitations and false steps in this struggle are
brought out in each scene with agonising clarity, as if there were no
more momentous events occurring anywhere.

No question, I find a special exhilaration in seeing this level of
performance energy invested on "artificial", cartoonish or threadbare
scenarios, as if the fiction were only kept alive by the commitment
of the actors. It's a tightrope act, as Jonathan R puts it. Yet I
wouldn't call JLB a "guilty" pleasure -- no more than (for example)
an explicitly reflexive film like NEW YORK NEW YORK, which is as
emotionally exhausting as AGAIG, and comparably unreal and
underpopulated. That's one reason I'd love to see the I DO ANYTHING
musical! From a different angle, a useful non-TV cross-reference for
JLB might be Neil Simon, and the various films made of his work.

JTW
19330


From: Dave Kehr
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:49am
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
George, I have been a mainstream movie critic for 30 years and I can
assure you of one thing: it does indeed make you crazy.

Dave Kehr
19331


From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:51am
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
>
>>
>
> It doesn't matter, either, that Goldin's piece was a three screen
> installation, inside of a church......
>
> My point earlier wasn't about how many people the work is
> reaching or the mechanism that allows for a work to reach a
> larger number of people. Or about money. These are things
> easily ignored, but film critics are not very culturally adept;
they're
> lost when forced to maneuver through another art form; they get
> away with only seeing what comes to them. That's how most of
> their columns read, anyway.

Nan Goldin's THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY was presented as a
slide show with music at various venues around NYC and was reviewed
as a movie by the Village Voice which named it as one of the ten
best movies of the year. Because of that recognition she got a show
at the Apreture Gallery and the publication of her first book. So
here we have a film critic (I think it was Hoberman) effectively
launching the career of a "serious" (as opposed to a popular)
artist. Very likely an exceptional case but there it is.

Richard
19332


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:19am
Subject: Re: top tens/Sideways
 
I suppose it's all in how you look at it, since one of the things I
like most about the film is that "nothing has been disrupted" at the
end. Or almost nothing. Jack goes into what will almost certainly be
a loveless and miserable marriage, and Miles takes the tiniest of
steps towards improving his life. Based on my extra-filmic
experience, my opinion is that, barring major "life events" and not
always then, people *don't* change. I think the notion of what you
aptly characterize as the "emotional violence" in Cassavetes is at
least as romantic and romanticized as any Mondavi-commercial moment
in Sideways -- the debased form of which is the cliche scene where
two characters yell at each other until one finally says the thing
they've both been avoiding. (At least in my life, screaming fights
tend to exacerbate problems, not clarify them.) I think it's fair to
say that Sideways doesn't do much to disrupt the audience's
equilibrium, but I'm not sure that's a deal-breaker, nor do I think
it's axiomatic that films that disturb/disrupt the viewer necessarily
produce meaningful or more lasting results than those that don't.
(One likes to think so, but then...) I don't think Payne has the
upper-crust complacency of a Woodster or Sofia; there's no closing
kiss like the one in Lost in Translation, to put a period on the
"magical" experience and send the characters back to their previous
lives. I don't know if anyone else if tiring of this discussion, but
I'd be happy for you to keep writing until you feel like you've
crystallized what you've got to say.

Based on the box-office returns, I don't think too many "ordinary"
moviegoers saw Eternal Sunshine at all, but I am pleased to report
that at least among whatever peer group I might belong to, it was
almost universally liked. My mom didn't get it, and my sister
violently hated it, but I like to think the latter was because it got
under her skin in ways she didn't want to deal with.

Sam
19333


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:35am
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
David Ehrenstein wrote:

>
> But Frampton wasn't marginalized. From his very first
> appearance he was hailed as Major Artist. "Zorns
> Lemma" was the first avant-garde film to get a
> screenin....

I don't think this is right, though I'm willing to be corrected. I don't
think I'd heard much about him until "Zorns Lemma," and that film's
release was not his very first appearance; he'd already been making
films he showed publicly for four years. I believe I recall hearing that
his first one-person show, pre-"Zorns," at Millennium Film Workshop, was
poorly attended.

Also, in the context of the films usually shown at the New York Film
Festival, *all* North American Avant-Garde filmmakers are "marginalized"
figures. For one thing, while a director of sync-sound narrative
features typically earns a living making films, no North American
avant-gardist, Brakhage included, has ever been able to make a living
from filmmaking. Consider the disparate budgets, too, of "Zorns"
compared to even a low-budget Tunisian feature in 35mm.

About Frampton's "arrogance," I can hardly claim to have known him
really well, but I spoke with him on many occasions, one to one on the
phone a number of times and in group events and dinners, and saw him
present and lecture on his films and other films many times in public
and at seminars. I don't think he was ever unusually arrogant in my
experience. For example, I heard him compliment James Blue on Blue's
excellent French, wishing his own was that good, without asking Blue how
good his Latin and Greek were (which I believe Frampton had both of).

I remember one story that perhaps gets it exactly right. He was having a
one person show at Millennium Film Workshop in the early 70s, and
someone asked him of "Autumn Equinox," "What kind of camera did you use,
and what kind of film stock did you use." Millennium is a place where
filmmakers went to use equipment and sometimes learn their craft, and
you often heard this kind of amateur-photographer question, "What was
your f-stop" and that sort of thing. Frampton sighed and said, "I had
hoped we had gotten beyond such questions at Millennium," but then
proceeded to answer, and the answer was actually pretty interesting: he
had shot it with several different cameras so that he could keep each
loaded with a different filmstock. Even before he spoke, I had felt the
dismay he voiced first. Arrogant? Perhaps. Humble? Perhaps not. But not
very arrogant, and not especially un-humble either, aa he did go on to
answer the question.

Fred Camper
19334


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:47am
Subject: Re: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
I completely agree. I published my first piece 34 years ago next March
and I'm definitely not sane.
(By the way, I love your DVD column in the Times; wish they'd let you do
more, but then that's exactly what we're talking about, isn't it?)

g


Dave Kehr wrote:

>George, I have been a mainstream movie critic for 30 years and I can
>assure you of one thing: it does indeed make you crazy.
>
>Dave Kehr
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>

--


The vanquished know the essence of war -- death.
They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that
war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals
of hatred and destruction.

--Chris Hedges
New York Review of Books
12/16/04
19335


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:18am
Subject: The Sanity Clause (was: Daily Film Criticism)
 
No insane person ever admitted to being insane. Therefore, neither
Dave nor George are insane, no matter how much they doth protest.
19336


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:45am
Subject: Re: The Sanity Clause (OT) (was: Daily Film Criticism)
 
jpcoursodon wrote:

>
> No insane person ever admitted to being insane. Therefore, neither
> Dave nor George are insane, no matter how much they doth protest.

Though I know you're being cute, this is also a serious issue, and what
you write is just not true. I have an old friend from college who is
schizophrenic. In the last decade or so they've finally got his meds
right, and he's relatively functional, but before that he would have
bouts of insanity that stretched across two decades, which required
hospitalization and that he recognized as insanity. He also came up with
a great metaphor for his hyperactive mind (he was a fellow MIT student,
so it can only be appreciated by somone with a basic knowledge of
electricity and Ohm's law): "I'm over-amping on low voltage."

Fred Camper
19337


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:40am
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
The audience for a film shown only at the Whitniey Biennial
> may well be pitifully small in comparison to something more widely
> distributed, but ultimately that shouldn't matter to critics at all.
> For some reason it does.

Some papers review some museum fare.

The only time I ever communicated w. Pauline Kael was thru a friend
at the New Yorker when the Bleecker was doing a Semaine des Cahiers
in 77 and premiering Numero Deux and Ici et ailleurs - exciting new
films by a director Kael had written some of her best articles on.
Thru the friend she sent back the reply that she couldn't review them
unless they had a distributor. This after reviewing a roughcut of
Nashville 2 years before and being savaged by her fellow critics for
doing so. (What's wrong with reviewing a work-in-progress to keep it
from being tampered with by the studio? That's just the sort of
things critics should do. But tell that to Renata Adler, who wrote a
viciously accurate parody of Kael reviewing an Altman film about a
convention of department store Santas that she was simultaneously
editing for him...) In this case, Kael was a victim of the Herd, and
it kept her, as far as I know, from ever seeing two of Godard's best
films. Sad.
19338


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:43am
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "J. Mabe" wrote:
>
> While I'm in grad school I'm working microfilming
> South Carolina newspapers that range from the very
> early 1800s till about 1980. Besides the fascination
> at being able to read and see the political and social
> changes of a given city over, say, a 50 year span in
> about 3 weeks of filming, I've been getting
> increasingly jealous of the movie choices people had
> back in the 30s through the mid 70s. Even in the
> smallest towns there was at least one theater, and it
> seems like they changed the schedule every week, if
> not more often.
'
Highly recommended, JR's Moving Places, about that era and its
aftermath - still his best book, and one of the best books of its
period.
19339


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:47am
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Fred Camper wrote:

>Also, in the context of the films usually shown at the New York Film
>Festival, *all* North American Avant-Garde filmmakers are "marginalized"
>figures. For one thing, while a director of sync-sound narrative
>features typically earns a living making films, no North American
>avant-gardist, Brakhage included, has ever been able to make a living
>from filmmaking.
>
Yes, this was what I had in mind. Even the best known of the a-g crowd
can only be said to occupy a marginal position, relative to anything but
the minuscule population of experimental film enthusiasts (though
Brakhage is finally beginning to break out, thanks to the DVD). Outside
of New York, has anyone heard of Frampton? At most, a handful of
microcinema programmers, film critics, and art world folks.

-Matt
19340


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:50am
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
a useful non-TV cross-reference for
> JLB might be Neil Simon, and the various films made of his work.
>
I can see your point, but Brooks at his best is much more interesting
than Simon, as brilliant as Simon is at one-liners. (Still haven't
seen Spanglish...or Sideways.) And McCarey, for me, is doing
something very different - formally, dramatically, politically - from
Brooks. I don't agree with everything Cavell says about The Awful
Truth, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to read that much
intellectual content (a favorite word of Farber's) into As Good As It
Gets.
19341


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:54am
Subject: Re: top tens/Sideways
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, samadams@e... wrote:
> Based on the box-office returns, I don't think too many "ordinary"
> moviegoers saw Eternal Sunshine at all, but I am pleased to report
> that at least among whatever peer group I might belong to, it was
> almost universally liked. My mom didn't get it, and my sister
> violently hated it, but I like to think the latter was because it
got
> under her skin in ways she didn't want to deal with.
>
> Sam
Our taste is directed at the ultraviolet end of the film spectrum. My
sister and niece - two smart people - walked out in disgust after 20
minutes of DVD viewing of Memento, whose ingenuity I thought they'd
enjoy, and a cultivated animal rights activist friend was horrified
by Au hasard Balthasar. Sometimes these attempts to reach out to the
non-cinephile part of my entourage leave me feeling like Travis
Bickle after he takes Cybill Shepherd to see that porn film.
19342


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:43am
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
> >
> The audience for a film shown only at the Whitniey Biennial
> > may well be pitifully small in comparison to something more widely
> > distributed, but ultimately that shouldn't matter to critics at all.
> > For some reason it does.
>
> Some papers review some museum fare.
>
> The only time I ever communicated w. Pauline Kael was thru a friend
> at the New Yorker when the Bleecker was doing a Semaine des Cahiers
> in 77 and premiering Numero Deux and Ici et ailleurs - exciting new
> films by a director Kael had written some of her best articles on.
> Thru the friend she sent back the reply that she couldn't review them
> unless they had a distributor.

*****
That's interesting. I wasn't aware they had that policy over at 'The
New Yorker', but I'm not surprised by it either. The question is, of
course, does the policy still obtain at that magazine? Also, how many
others have drawn the same line. Personally, I think this attitude is
beyond stupid, because what ought to prevail among the editors is how
do their writers cover the largest variety of Cinema available to the
readers, not simply restricting their coverage only to those films
that've attracted the fiduciary interest of a distributor.

> This after reviewing a roughcut of
> Nashville 2 years before and being savaged by her fellow critics for
> doing so. (What's wrong with reviewing a work-in-progress to keep it
> from being tampered with by the studio?

*****
Absolutely nothing. I never understood why Kael got knocked around for
reviewing "Nashville" ahead of schedule. It's something that should be
done as often as humanly possible. Anything that can get between a
film and the tendency of a studio to alter it fully deserves our honor
and respect.

> That's just the sort of
> things critics should do. But tell that to Renata Adler, who wrote a
> viciously accurate parody of Kael reviewing an Altman film about a
> convention of department store Santas that she was simultaneously
> editing for him...) In this case, Kael was a victim of the Herd, and
> it kept her, as far as I know, from ever seeing two of Godard's best
> films. Sad.

*****
Well, we don't know that she never saw those films. But she was
certainly prevented by a blinkered policy from writing about them, and
that's more than sad.

Tom Sutpen
19343


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 8:04am
Subject: Re: The Sanity Clause (was: Daily Film Criticism)
 
Aha! Catch-22.
Does that mean we have to fly more missions over Germany?

g


jpcoursodon wrote:

>No insane person ever admitted to being insane. Therefore, neither
>Dave nor George are insane, no matter how much they doth protest.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>

--


The vanquished know the essence of war -- death.
They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that
war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals
of hatred and destruction.

--Chris Hedges
New York Review of Books
12/16/04
19344


From: Paul Fileri
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 8:11am
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
That recent issue of _October_, along with the Frampton conference and
Princeton/Anthology Film Archives screenings certainly mark something
of a potential Frampton revival.

His film LEMON is currently "on display" in the new MOMA. Though it is
not exactly being exhibited under good conditions, and I presume, they
wouldn't be approved of by Frampton. LEMON is being video-projected on
a bare wall, in a loop. The wall is not even within the dark (but not
dark enough) Media & Video gallery space. Instead it is near one of
the gallery's entrances on the second floor, out in the open with
ambient light flooding in from the central atrium to yield a pitiably
faint image.

- Paul
19345


From: Noel Bjorndahl & Carole Dent
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 8:24am
Subject: Re: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
My kind of drive-in too Tom."Slatterys Hurricane" among many other De Toths, should be more widely known.

I'm especially frustrated that "Ramrod", one of the greatest westerns of the 40s , is unavailable on DVD to date even though it was released on Republic home video. On the other hand,"Four Faces West", an interesting but minor western of the same vintage with the same star, has made it to DVD no problem.

Noel----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Sutpen
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 1:15 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']



--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "J. Mabe" wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > Well, I don't know about "your city" in 1949 (I
> > was 14 and my
> > city was Paris, France) but while they didn't have
> > video or DVD or
> > TCM and the rest, they did have some pretty good
> > movies in the local
> > movie palace (and not just in New York and L.A.)
> > Just a few titles:
> > She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, White Heat, They Live by
> > Night, Under
> > Capricorn, Adam's Rib, On the Town, A Letter to
> > Three Wives, The
> > Fountainhead, The Set-Up, Champion, The Heiress,
> > Criss-Cross, Twelve
> > O'Clock High, Caught, I Shot Jesse James, Not
> > Wanted, All the King's
> > Men... How many years in the past few decades can
> > match such a line-
> > up? Of course many of these were underrated by
> > critics at the time,
> > but that's beside the point.You can't compare
> > viewing opportunities
> > then and now, and viewing opportunities have nothing
> > to do with the
> > daily reviewer's plight.
>
>
>
> While I'm in grad school I'm working microfilming
> South Carolina newspapers that range from the very
> early 1800s till about 1980. Besides the fascination
> at being able to read and see the political and social
> changes of a given city over, say, a 50 year span in
> about 3 weeks of filming, I've been getting
> increasingly jealous of the movie choices people had
> back in the 30s through the mid 70s. Even in the
> smallest towns there was at least one theater, and it
> seems like they changed the schedule every week, if
> not more often. The programming at these places was,
> I'm sure, standard for their day, but looking back I'm
> so envious of the folks in Fort Mill -just to site my
> most recent filming- who got to see 2 different Howard
> Hawks pictures during the same year that the local
> drive-in seems to have been on Jerry Lewis binge.
> I've been photocopying the papers for myself and
> placing the ads for films like Rio Bravo, The Girl
> Can't Help It, and the Wild Racers (which I haven't
> seen - simply reminds my of the Lewis Klahr film) all
> around my microfilming station.

*****
What, you don't think future generations who have your job will look
back upon this era and marvel at the goldmine of cinephilic
opportunity provided by our local cinemas?

> Also, during the first few years of the 1950s I've
> seen De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane play as the third
> film on the bill about once every three or four months
> at the Chester, SC Drive-in... it must have been a
> cheap print to buy, or else someone was a big fan.

*****
Sounds like my kind of Drive-In.

Tom "Andre deToth freak" Sutpen




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19346


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:16am
Subject: Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein
 
Sam:

I wanted to ask you about this before, but somehow it got swallowed
up--where do you see Eisenstein in the OUATIC series? I ask because
I've heard friends who aren't normally attentive to such things as
mise-en-scene and editing complain that the editing in these films was
"weird." Which suggests you're on to something.

-Matt



samfilms2003 wrote:

>>That comparison doesn't do much for me, not as much as Eisenstein, or King Hu.
>>
>>
>
>If I were going to make an Eisenstein comparison, I'd make it to
>"Once Upon A Time In China Pt. 3" not "Hero" or "Daggers"
>
>Liked "House of Flying Daggers" anyway. Maybe all that green while
>being here in NJ winter ;-)
>
>
>-Sam Wells
>
>
19347


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:07am
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
In a message dated 04-12-22 01:50:32 EST, Matt Teichman writes:

<< Outside of New York, has anyone heard of Frampton? At most, a handful of
microcinema programmers, film critics, and art world folks. >>

Well, we've certainly heard of Hollis Frampton here in Detroit - but
distributors rarely give us a chance to see his films!
There is an emergency need to get a lot more experimental film on DVD. It
would allow vastly more people to see it. (I've only seen "Zorn's Lemma" - how
many other films are logically equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?).
My favorite Structural film:
"S:tream:S S:ection S:ection:S S:ectioned" (Paul J. Sharits, 1968 - 1970)

Mike Grost
Michigan deserves experimental films, too!
19348


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:44am
Subject: Why mainstream critics don't go to Experimental Films
 
A different take on this:
There are suggestions in recent posts that mainstream film critics don't go
to experimental films, or review films shown in art museums or galleries,
because they are stupid, lazy, corrupt, conformist, etc. I disagree.
Instead, one suspects this is a matter of aesthetics.
Mainstream US critics are deeply committed to "realism". They only value
films that show the "daily life of ordinary people in modern times". They value
films such as "Sideways", "American Beauty", "You Can Count On Me", "Yi Yi",
etc, which depict lives and lifestyles of ordinary people. This reflects years of
academic training (indoctrination?), in which realist writers such as
Flaubert and Dreiser were held up as the summit of art.
These critics correctly know that there is little or nothing in Brakhage,
Belson, Anger, Sharits, Deren, which depicts modern day sociology, or shows us
"how we live today", or other chief concerns of these critics. Therefore, they
regard Brakhage et al as being completely without interest or substance!
It is time for auteurists to wake up and smell the coffee!
Mainstream critics are dead serious about their belief that "Sideways" is the
summit of World Cinema and Film Art. They found the year's film that has the
most to say realistically about contemporary lifestyles, and are telling the
world that "Sideways" is what matters about film. These people are Not Kidding.
They think that Lang, Sternberg, Mizoguchi and all the rest are just garbage,
just as they think Brakhage is a worthless non-realist hack.

Mike Grost
19349


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:56am
Subject: Re: Why mainstream critics don't go to Experimental Films
 
PS - Hope everyone knows that Brakhage, Belson, Anger, Sharits, Deren are
some of my favorite filmmakers - the last post did not make this clear.

Mike Grost
19350


From: thebradstevens
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 0:07pm
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
"AGAIG takes place in a sealed fantasy universe, which is normal
practice in Hollywood; what's unusual in the contemporary context is
that this universe consists of only three people (and a dog)."

But surely this is evidence of Brooks' inability to transcend those
stylistic limitations traceable to his background in television sit-
coms (which usually take place in 'universes' that consist of nothing
but the lead actors and the occasional guest star interacting on a
single set). I really think that Brooks' defenders should be aware of
exactly what it is that they are defending - his films have nothing
to do with McCarey or Scorsese, and everything to do with episodes of
TAXI.
19351


From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:30pm
Subject: Re: Why mainstream critics don't go to Experimental Films
 
Mike write:
> Therefore, they regard Brakhage et al as being completely without
> interest or substance!
[cut]
> These people are Not Kidding. They think that Lang, Sternberg,
> Mizoguchi and all the rest are just garbage, just as they think
> Brakhage is a worthless non-realist hack.

Mike, I don't know that your point really extends so far as this.
How many critics actually cite Brakhage as a worthless hack? (I've
never heard it said, myself.) I think more often what happens with
Brakhage and other "experimental" filmmakers is that, if their work
is known at all, critics simply ghettoize them rather than denigrate
them. (The results are sometimes the same, but it's important to
distinguish, I think.) Now there's a lot of Brakhage that
is "accessible" because it is immediately very beautiful, and I
think all but the most obtuse reviewers probably respond well to
these films if and when they see them. But they think, "These
aren't feature films with stories, and they aren't commercially
released, so they must be a mere curiosity--a periphery of the
cinema."

As for Lang, Sternberg, and Mizoguchi--I don't know that there are
any critics around who would seriously knock their work. Kael's
influence hasn't extend so far that someone writing about SHANGHAI
EXPRESS today would call it "garbage," has it? And if a brand new
print of METROPOLIS, THE BIG HEAT, UGETSU, or SANSHO DAYU were to be
released in cities across America, I have a feeling that most
reviewers would praise them.

Where I think you have a point is in genre films and other
disreputable 'entertainments'--the ones that have *not* had
generations of auteurists stick up for them like they did for the
films by Hawks, Lang, Ulmer, et al.

--Zach
19352


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:27pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Well sure, of course I was including you when I alluded to that
handful. But I would be interested to hear who else you're referring to
when you say "we in Detroit." Surely you must be thinking of a tiny
circle of cinephiles.

-Matt

P.S. Interesting that you should mention Sharits in a post calling for
experimental films on DVD--I doubt that MPEG-2 would be in any way
capable of handling flicker films.



MG4273@a... wrote:

>In a message dated 04-12-22 01:50:32 EST, Matt Teichman writes:
>
><< Outside of New York, has anyone heard of Frampton? At most, a handful of
> microcinema programmers, film critics, and art world folks. >>
>
>Well, we've certainly heard of Hollis Frampton here in Detroit - but
>distributors rarely give us a chance to see his films!
>
>
19353


From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:06pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein
 
Nicole Brenez, on a letter to the Cahiers du Cinéma in february 2000 (#543),
said of John Woo's "Hard Boiled" that it is "our Battleship Potemkin".

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Teichman"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 7:16 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein


>
> Sam:
>
> I wanted to ask you about this before, but somehow it got swallowed
> up--where do you see Eisenstein in the OUATIC series? I ask because
> I've heard friends who aren't normally attentive to such things as
> mise-en-scene and editing complain that the editing in these films was
> "weird." Which suggests you're on to something.
>
> -Matt
>
>
>
> samfilms2003 wrote:
>
> >>That comparison doesn't do much for me, not as much as Eisenstein, or
King Hu.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If I were going to make an Eisenstein comparison, I'd make it to
> >"Once Upon A Time In China Pt. 3" not "Hero" or "Daggers"
> >
> >Liked "House of Flying Daggers" anyway. Maybe all that green while
> >being here in NJ winter ;-)
> >
> >
> >-Sam Wells
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
19354


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:21pm
Subject: Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein
 
That's an incredibly lucid observation -- I never thought of it
before, but yes, the hospital rescue sequence is the Odessa Steps of
the '90s. And possibly just as loaded with political outrage.

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> Nicole Brenez, on a letter to the Cahiers du Cinéma in february
2000 (#543),
> said of John Woo's "Hard Boiled" that it is "our Battleship
Potemkin".
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Teichman"
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 7:16 AM
> Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein
>
>
> >
> > Sam:
> >
> > I wanted to ask you about this before, but somehow it got
swallowed
> > up--where do you see Eisenstein in the OUATIC series? I ask
because
> > I've heard friends who aren't normally attentive to such things as
> > mise-en-scene and editing complain that the editing in these
films was
> > "weird." Which suggests you're on to something.
> >
> > -Matt
> >
> >
> >
> > samfilms2003 wrote:
> >
> > >>That comparison doesn't do much for me, not as much as
Eisenstein, or
> King Hu.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >If I were going to make an Eisenstein comparison, I'd make it to
> > >"Once Upon A Time In China Pt. 3" not "Hero" or "Daggers"
> > >
> > >Liked "House of Flying Daggers" anyway. Maybe all that green
while
> > >being here in NJ winter ;-)
> > >
> > >
> > >-Sam Wells
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
19355


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:37pm
Subject: Re: Daily Film Criticism -- A Nearly Impossible Job [Was: 'Top Tens']
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>> Highly recommended, JR's Moving Places, about that era and its
> aftermath - still his best book, and one of the best books of its
> period.

A wonderful book, combining autobiography and film criticism in
the most engaging fashion. And it's even been translated into French
(title: "Mouvements") in the "Trafic" collection.

JPC
19356


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:07am
Subject: Re: Denial (was: Why mainstream critics don't go to Experimental Films)
 
Richard Maltby's book "Hollywood Cinema" (2003) opens with an enthusiastic
quoting of Kael's "Trash, Art and the Movies". He quotes Kael referring to
"Morocco" (Sternberg, 1930) as "great trash" and "trash doesn't belong to the
academic tradition".
Maltby's lavish, 700 page textbook just showed up at my Public Library. It is
clearly designed as an Official Work, telling what the Academic Community
Ought to Think and Teach About Film. It has a quote on back from James Naremore
calling it "the best single textbook on the subject... essential reading for
every serious student of film".
I was distressed to read that official academic belief in many quarters is
that Sternberg is "trash".
And you should see the long, long painful denunciation of Howard Hawks.

I could be wrong... but I think auteurists are in denial.
Auteurists should take a long hard look at Maltby's book. It is like having a
bucket of cold water dropped over your head.

On Brakhage: I never said that Brakhage's films are not "accessible" to the
average viewer. I think Brakhage's work is wonderful.
I claimed that US mainstream critics are rejecting them, because they want
"sociological realism" in their films - and Brakhage is just not that kind of a
filmmaker. His works just do not resemble "Sideways" or "American Beauty", the
kind of films they support.

Mike Grost
19357


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Paul,

Thanks for the negative "evidence" of the Frampton "revival" in the form
of your account of the MoMA's installation of "Lemon."

Would the MoMA even consider showing a commercial narrative feature this
way? Talk about marginalization, and from *the* museum that pioneered
giving serious attention to film as an art form.

There exists in the Frampton file at Anthology some rather sad
correspondence between him and the MoMA, in which he pleads with the
museum that for the retrospective that they wanted to give him, they
should pay at least some rentals for his films; I believe he even
offered them a discount. They at the time were hoping to obtain the
films rent-freed, though a few years earlier they had paid rentals to
Brakhage after he made a big stink about it.

It has always appalled me that art museums will present films in video
projections with ambient light and so on as if they were paintings but
under conditions as inappropriate to film as it would be to show
paintings under far-too-dim illumination. They apparently don't get that
most films are made to be shown in darkened rooms to seated audiences
and not as gallery installations, and that a video of a film is a
reproduction in the same way that a photograph of a painting or a fresco
is a reproduction. It's one thing to justify videos of films in the home
on the grounds of accessibility, just as one uses art books (don't
worry, I'm not now reopening that debate again, whatever side you are on
in it), and quite another for a museum whose mission is to show original
art objects to do this. When they show reproductions of paintings,
typically as part of a show when they feel they need "evidence" of
something that can't travel (a Mantegna fresco in a Mantegna show, for
example), they identify it as a photo of a painting, but just as
typically art museums don't identify a videos of a film as a video of a
film. I won a small victory when I got a young assistant curator at
Northwester's Block Gallery to change a wall label to read something
like "Video copy of 16mm film," from a label that had just listed the
title and filmmaker. If you return to MoMA, Paul, I'd be interested to
know what the MoMA's label says; they, of all museums, they, being such
an early collector and preserver of film, should be able to get it right.

For what it's worth, Marilyn Brakhage has been getting requests from art
museums to show Brakhage films in this way, as loops off the DVD, and
has been turning them down.

This is not the first time that "Lemon" has been severely if
unintentionally dissed by culterati who display no understanding of this
wonderful little film. About ten years ago "Wide Angle" published an
article by a SUNY Purchase professor named Greg Taylor about Robert
Breer, an article that contended (not completely unreasonably) that
conventional strategies of interpretation and finding meaning were
inappropriate to avant-garde film, and that Breer's films were "beyond
meaning." (I don't have the article in front of me so my summary will be
inexact.) Taylor opened by citing two examples of finding meaning in
avant-garde films from a book by Maureen Turim, the second more dubious
than the first. This is a typical academic strategy: use the existing
literature to show problems therein that help support your thesis, if
possible to make it clear that your thesis is sorely needed, even
inevitable. In his third and final example, meant to outdo the first two
and "prove" his case, he quotes Turim to the effect that in Frampton's
"Lemon" the fruit obviously serves as both a metaphor for the female
breast and for the solar system. Taylor concludes this introduction with
a flip comment to the effect that we can thus see how absurd the
interpretation of avant-garde film can become.

I read this in shock and amusement and also horror, thinking, "Oh my
god, he's never seen 'Lemon'"! If you have, you know that the Turim
quote he cites is hardly an "interpretation" at all, but rather more of
a pretty banal plot summary. Frampton's eponymous title character (whose
performance style might be described, in light of our recent discussions
of acting, as uber-Bressonian) is filmed in "profile," with the
protruding nub or bud pointing horizontally to the right; while not
every person seeing this may immediately think of a female breast, it's
hardly an exceptionable thought. I've temporarily placed a scan of an
image from the film's opening at http://www.fredcamper.com/T/Lemon1a.jpg
for all to see. Frampton's film depends in part on the bright, thick
saturation of the lemon's colors; I can't imagine its beauty would come
through under the conditions described at MoMA. Again, Paul? How do the
colors compare?

But more, the film apparently consists of a single take in which an
offscreen light moves around the lemon (at least, that seems to be how
it was filmed), first illuminating it head on as shown, then from the
side so that part is bright and part is dark
(http://www.fredcamper.com/T/Lemon2a.jpg ), and finally from the rear,
most certainly suggesting via the light changes the effects on planets
and moons of planetary rotation, something that I thought of the first
time I saw it.

I found it incredibly depressing that an academic supposedly sympathetic
to avant-garde film would choose to write, even indirectly, of a film
he'd never seen. And I know that Frampton, who craved acceptance and
respectability, especially academic respectability, would have been
really depressed too, were he to have read the article, which appeared
well after his death. It also seemed sadly typical of academia that what
is at least a pretty good journal would print such an article, with no
corrections or apologies forthcoming. Professors all over the world
presumably read it, none being interested enough to actually have a look
at "Lemon." Writing and reading papers takes precedence over viewing
films, I guess.

Shortly after I read this article I had the occasion to meet Taylor; a
colleague of his invited me to give a talk to her class at Purchase, and
he wanted to have lunch with us in order to meet me. I gathered he's a
really nice guy, but I never really found out for sure, because I
started the conversation, rather uncollegially, by asking if he'd seen
"Lemon," and I still recall the sheepish expression on his face as he
admitted that he hadn't.

I later heard second-hand Taylor's own not inaccurate description of
this lunch, which was something like this: "I had always wanted to meet
the well-known critic Fred Camper, but when I finally got to have lunch
with him, all he wanted to do was attack one of my articles."

Fred Camper
19358


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:24pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
>Outside
> of New York, has anyone heard of Frampton? At most, a handful of
> microcinema programmers, film critics, and art world folks.

And the readers of Vogue magazine ;-)

-Sam Wells
19359


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:27pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
Bill, your anecdote on Kael/Godard/Renata Adler resonates with my
viewing of the extras on the outstanding Criterion DVD of Gilliam's
BRAZIL. There's a one hour documentary about the bumpy road the film
took towards its US release. Critics Kenneth Turan and Jack Mathews
talked about how the LA Film Critics Association members rallied
behind the as yet unreleased film after getting their own screening
of it, and deciding to vote it Best Picture that year, likely as a
statement to Universal to get the film in the theaters pronto. It
goes on to mention that the NY critics shunted the film entirely from
their awards, and someone speculates that this was a reaction to what
was preceived as grandstanding on the behalf of the critics. What's
up with this backbiting and infighting? (Though I still prefer it to
this year's SIDEWAYS juggernaut).

What's interesting is that the documentary tries to get a fair and
balanced view of the struggle between Gilliam and Universal -- but
the suits they interview come off as well-meaning but overcautious
and culturally insipid bureaucrats (not unlike those in the film!),
while Gilliam plays the role of a charismatic rebel to the hilt.

I'm not old enough to remember any of this when it happened, so I
wonder if others on this board can corroborate this account with what
they remember going down.

Kevin


--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> The only time I ever communicated w. Pauline Kael was thru a friend
> at the New Yorker when the Bleecker was doing a Semaine des Cahiers
> in 77 and premiering Numero Deux and Ici et ailleurs - exciting new
> films by a director Kael had written some of her best articles on.
> Thru the friend she sent back the reply that she couldn't review
them
> unless they had a distributor. This after reviewing a roughcut of
> Nashville 2 years before and being savaged by her fellow critics
for
> doing so. (What's wrong with reviewing a work-in-progress to keep
it
> from being tampered with by the studio? That's just the sort of
> things critics should do. But tell that to Renata Adler, who wrote
a
> viciously accurate parody of Kael reviewing an Altman film about a
> convention of department store Santas that she was simultaneously
> editing for him...) In this case, Kael was a victim of the Herd,
and
> it kept her, as far as I know, from ever seeing two of Godard's
best
> films. Sad.
19360


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:30pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
> P.S. Interesting that you should mention Sharits in a post calling for
> experimental films on DVD--I doubt that MPEG-2 would be in any way
> capable of handling flicker films.

That's what I thought - until I burned a DVD of some very flickery/stroby
stuff of mine.


(I actually had more issues with th DV codec, but I don't wanna get technogeeky
here)

-Sam Wells
19361


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:35pm
Subject: Re: Tsui meets Eisenstein
 
> I wanted to ask you about this before, but somehow it got swallowed
> up--where do you see Eisenstein in the OUATIC series?

Matt will you let me take another look (I'll borrow my nephew's copy of
Part 3) because I think this is pretty interesting. Can I say for now,
the kind of cascading construction of destructing moving architecture
in the last 1/2 hr of Part 3 ?



> I ask because
> I've heard friends who aren't normally attentive to such things as
> mise-en-scene and editing complain that the editing in these films was
> "weird." Which suggests you're on to something.

Well that makes my day ;-)

-Sam Wells
19362


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 0:43pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
I confess that I've never heard anyone mention Hollis Frampton in a
supermarket check-out line here in Detroit. So knowledge of HF is probably not very
deep here.
A good DVD could change all that.
Public libraries here are very determined to bring world cinema to everybody.
Every library in Detroit seems to have copies of "What Time Is It There?",
"Esther Kahn" & "My Sex Life", lots of Kiarostami, "Gabbeh", etc. They circulate
them free to everyone.
They would probably stock experimental DVD's too - if someone would put them
out.
Librarians are my heroes!

Mike Grost
19363


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:51pm
Subject: Re: Re: Brazil (Was Re: top tens)
 
--- Kevin Lee wrote:


>
> I'm not old enough to remember any of this when it
> happened, so I
> wonder if others on this board can corroborate this
> account with what
> they remember going down.
>
I was there, and I remember it like it was yesterday.
Gilliam had screened "Brazil" for us in the hopes of
getting it released somehow. We all loved it and
decided to consider it eligible for the voting. It won
fair and square. This ENRAGED New York -- which
considers the residents of Los Angeles to be moronic
vulgarians ( forgetting a rich cultural history that
includes Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and
Thomas Mann -- who wrote "Doctor Faustus" in Santa
Monica.) But there's no snob like a New York snob.



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
19364


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
> For one thing, while a director of sync-sound narrative
> features typically earns a living making films

Uh...do you mean sync-sound narrative features made for a film industry?
Because, otherwise, I'd guess that the ones who earn a living at it are in
a distinct minority. - Dan
19365


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:59pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
WAY too many interesting threads for this Holliday season !
(on the plus side, maybe it's good for me to get away from
the computer and Final Cut for a few days).

One of the interesting things in the group discussion @ the
conclusion of the HF conference was Chrissie Isles quoting
Jonas Mekas to the effect that "If we [Anthology] were a museum
we'd be a huge success (VERY rough paraphrase) ... and Chrissie
stating her very great interest in trying to expand the possibilities
of "ag/exp" work in instalation format.

I agree with Fred on all the issues of proper presentation, but I do
feel 'crossing the boundaries' re "theatrical" and "exhibit" is a path
well worth exploring.

I think we have to talk about how to do it right. Not just what kind of
projection, but what kind of space.

I love movie theaters but I think it's time to think "outside the box"
of them also. Well for me personally I know it is.

And I say that in part because some of the horses have "left the barn"
i.e. the "theater" NOW, 2004-2005 is often in fact the DVD playback device
etc. in so many cases.

-Sam Wells
19366


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:03pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
> Would the MoMA even consider showing a commercial narrative feature this
> way?

Probably not, but if someone accidentally left the lights on during a MOMA
screening, you wouldn't be able to find anyone who could turn them off....
MOMA has always seemed contemptuous of its film audiences, and takes less
care with its screenings than any outlet of its kind. Don't know yet
whether the "new MOMA" will do any better. - Dan
19367


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Dan Sallitt wrote:

>>For one thing, while a director of sync-sound narrative
>>features typically earns a living making films
>
>
> Uh...do you mean sync-sound narrative features made for a film industry?

Yes, of course, sorry. I didn't want to write "commercial narrative"
because many on-U.S. film industries are heavily state-subsidized. But
there are plenty of sync-sound filmmakers whose "business model," or
perhaps more appropriately "non business model," is identical to
avant-gardists': cobble together what money you can, including your own
as necessary, and make a film out of passion with little or no hope of
recovering its cost. Such people spend part of their income in order to
make their films, rather than earning income from directing them, and in
this sense they function just like the non-narrative avant-gardists.

Perhaps my annoyance at the word "film" being used by many as a synonym
for "sync sound narrative film with hired professional actors walking
around and talking" is showing.

Fred Camper
19368


From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:34pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
> I confess that I've never heard anyone mention Hollis Frampton in a
> supermarket check-out line here in Detroit. So knowledge of HF is probably not
very
> deep here.

Well I *live* in Princeton and unless the person in front of me in the
supermarket check-out line is P. Adams Sitney (which happens on
occasion !) I'm not gonna hear mention of Hollis Frampton when I
go for groceries either, and even then..... ;-)

-Sam
19369


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:46pm
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> "AGAIG takes place in a sealed fantasy universe, which is normal
> practice in Hollywood; what's unusual in the contemporary context
is
> that this universe consists of only three people (and a dog)."
>
> But surely this is evidence of Brooks' inability to transcend those
> stylistic limitations traceable to his background in television sit-
> coms (which usually take place in 'universes' that consist of
nothing
> but the lead actors and the occasional guest star interacting on a
> single set). I really think that Brooks' defenders should be aware
of
> exactly what it is that they are defending - his films have nothing
> to do with McCarey or Scorsese, and everything to do with episodes
of
> TAXI.

That's what I like about him. He has done more than anyone to evolve
a film style out of the tv style that he helped perfect. Michel Chion
talked about the visual implications of this in his CdC review of
Broadcast News.
19370


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:50pm
Subject: Re: top tens
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
wrote:
>
> Bill, your anecdote on Kael/Godard/Renata Adler resonates with my
> viewing of the extras on the outstanding Criterion DVD of Gilliam's
> BRAZIL. There's a one hour documentary about the bumpy road the
film
> took towards its US release. Critics Kenneth Turan and Jack
Mathews
> talked about how the LA Film Critics Association members rallied
> behind the as yet unreleased film after getting their own screening
> of it, and deciding to vote it Best Picture that year, likely as a
> statement to Universal to get the film in the theaters pronto. It
> goes on to mention that the NY critics shunted the film entirely
from
> their awards, and someone speculates that this was a reaction to
what
> was preceived as grandstanding on the behalf of the critics.

I can't confirm that, but it sounds about right. Out here we live in
the shadow of the industry and see who it is and how it works every
day. NY critics live in a cocoon, and act accordingly. This
phenomenon doesn't exist in France, which is cyclopean.
19371


From: Matt Teichman
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:53pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
That's lovely, Fred. Thank you.

As I recall, the Donnell Library has a pretty good print of this film.
In case any MOMAgoers would like to compare...

-Matt




Fred Camper wrote:

>I've temporarily placed a scan of an
>image from the film's opening at http://www.fredcamper.com/T/Lemon1a.jpg
>for all to see. Frampton's film depends in part on the bright, thick
>saturation of the lemon's colors; I can't imagine its beauty would come
>through under the conditions described at MoMA. Again, Paul? How do the
>colors compare?
>
19372


From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:46pm
Subject: The avant-garde (seen from here)
 
Dear friends - I don't want to sound like a grump from the 'outlands', but I
have to observe that discussions of avant-garde cinema by Americans can
become stiflingly America-centric. As great as these filmmakers are, I tire
of the endless invocation of Snow/Deren/Brakhage/Rainer/Frampton, as if the
cause of the avant-garde begins and ends with these figures. It's a kind of
hegemony that ones sees promulgated in OCTOBER magazine and plenty of other
places.

Truly international discussions of the avant-garde are far rarer. But, for
me, the 'greats' have to include Marcel Hanoun (France), Kurt Kren
(Austria), Len Lye (New Zealand), Stephen Dwoskin (Britain), Marcus Bergner
(Australia), and so many others. But compare the amount of writing in
English on these people to the endless spillage on that aforementioned Mt
Rushmore of the American Avant-Garde.

I was fortunate enough to get an education in the avant-garde from the
experimental filmmaker and teacher Arthur Cantrill (co-publisher with his
wife Corinne of CANTRILLS FILMNOTES for many years) - whose idea of teaching
film history was to have marathon 5 hour classes comprising screenings and
introductions, firmly grounded in the twin-towers of 'early cinema'
(Griffith, Keaton, Chaplin, Clair, Vigo, Lang, etc) and the international
avant-garde. Due to the activism of a few splendid cinephiles, there was
(still is, in faded form) a vast lending library of avant-garde work
available to schools, universities and film societies here in Australia,
from the earliest stuff up to Rappaport (this was the late '70s) - and so I
belong to a generation of film-workers for whom the first pedagogic
experience of 'visceral, formally complex psychodrama' was not Scorsese or
even Cassavetes but the wonderful Frampton film of two people arguing!!!!

Ah, for the days when our hearts were ablaze !!!!

Adrian
19373


From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:17pm
Subject: Re: top tens/Sideways
 
You do a good job of putting me in your frame of reference, Sam, and
in how you bring your own observations on how life works to validate
the film's worldview. Looking at your response I guess there should
be more discussion about the idea of a good movie "disrupting" the
viewer's sense of complacency. I'll take a shot and say that any
great film has to cause some kind of disruption in what the viewer is
accustomed to experiencing or thinking -- that's how I see the
function of art, to disrupt us from our routinized lifestyles and
challenge ourselves to look harder at what's around us and learn from
it. At least this is the kind of film that excites me most.

Having said that, I think you make a reasonable suggestion that
SIDEWAYS may satisfy this criteria, even if the characters themselves
may not experience that change. Even if what I've been saying is
true, that many viewers will experience the film as an opportunity to
displace their alternating loathing and loving of their middle class
values on an onscreen surrogate (much in the same way that the
term "yuppie scum" got to be tossed around so much in the 90s that
even people who were obvious yuppies would join in the bashing), a
way of viewing that reinforces the established order, you've made me
wonder if it's possible that this film can cause some lasting
ruptures in the viewer (though whether you agree that this is even
necessary for it to be considered great art is another matter).

Jack goes into what will almost certainly be
> a loveless and miserable marriage, and Miles takes the tiniest of
> steps towards improving his life.

Let's say that we agree that Payne is pretty much impeccable at
burrowing into the behavioral mechanics of these two men, so that we
come to understand how these guys respectively end up where they are
at the end. I guess where we disagree is whether this is enough. A
painter can render an impeccable portrait of a person, show all their
distinct facial features, beauties and blemishes with pinpoint
precision, and the painting may still not have anything to say about
that person that excites me or takes me beyond the mundane. Is it
enough to say, "Yes, that's exactly how it works in real life!" if
you're not satisfied with how it works in real life? For one thing,
it leads to strategic cop-outs like the ending with Giamatti at the
cusp -- will he or won't he? I mean, did the ending surprise you in
any way? You can argue that Payne respects his viewers enough to let
us decide, but I can counter-argue that Payne is doing that because
he doesn't have the fucking balls to come down either way.

Based on my extra-filmic
> experience, my opinion is that, barring major "life events" and not
> always then, people *don't* change.

One of the reasons I like Kubrick is that he confronts me with this
theory in a most persuasive and startlingly original way -- but I
think it's because he comes
up with a new perspective for arguing his point (and one that lends
itself as much to socially progressive action as cynical
conservativism.)

I think the notion of what you
> aptly characterize as the "emotional violence" in Cassavetes is at
> least as romantic and romanticized as any Mondavi-commercial moment
> in Sideways -- the debased form of which is the cliche scene where
> two characters yell at each other until one finally says the thing
> they've both been avoiding. (At least in my life, screaming fights
> tend to exacerbate problems, not clarify them.)

For myself, the cliche scene you described is exactly how it works
with me in arguments that occur in real life (for me that "thing
they've been avoiding" can be so hard to say upfront that a painful
argument is what it takes to extract it), so maybe our differing
opinions attest to our different personality traits. However, you
make a great point that this can be depicted in movies as if it were
a commercial for histrionic temper tantrums. And I agree that
there's an element to Cassavetes' style that coddles and justifies
itself (but isn't this what all styles do?), dare I say "advertises"
itself as an ideal worthy of emulation by a legion of impressionable
minds, a considerable percentage of which come from Boston
University.

So maybe it's not the artist's vision, but the viewer's relationship
and engagement with it, that determines whether a film challenges or
reinforces the viewer's sense of the status quo.

I think it's fair to
> say that Sideways doesn't do much to disrupt the audience's
> equilibrium, but I'm not sure that's a deal-breaker, nor do I think
> it's axiomatic that films that disturb/disrupt the viewer
necessarily
> produce meaningful or more lasting results than those that don't.
> (One likes to think so, but then...)

Well as I articulated above, I think the lasting result stems from
some kind of disruption in the viewer. I see the only alternative
for a film to last in a viewer is the opposite: that it reinforces
what the viewer already sees and believes, fostering an acceptance of
how things are. And this goes back to my describing SIDEWAYS as a
picture-perfect description of The Way Things Are without really
sparking a desire to do something about it. I guess it's up to each
of us to determine to what extent this is a good thing.

It might be worth bringing Ozu into this (Payne has been compared to
him before -- I think Dave Kehr called ABOUT SCHMIDT the TOKYO STORY
of Nebraska). I think both you and I can find equal ground for our
arguments in Ozu's films (is he telling it like it is to foster
acceptance, or un-acceptance, of the way things work in the world?)

Sadly, that's it for me for the rest of the year -- but I hope this
continues either on or offline. Have a good one and thanks for
helping me work this out Sam.

Kevin
19374


From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:26pm
Subject: NYC: rare movies
 
I was startled to see the very rare John M. Stahl film STRICTLY
DISHONORABLE on the new Film Forum calendar on April 5, as part of a short
series of films written by Preston Sturges.

I'm no fan of Minnelli's ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, but you can
actually see it on a screen tomorrow (Thursday) at the Clearview Chelsea 9
theater. I believe this film is the exclusive property of the auteurists:
no one else wanted it. - Dan
19375


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:48pm
Subject: Re: The avant-garde (seen from here)
 
Adrian Martin wrote:

> ....hegemony....

I'm not sure I've ever seen a usage of this word in writing on
aesthetics that I thought made any sense, including yours, Adrian.

The way to makes cases for the films of Marcel Hanoun (which I think are
very great, and who I brought to Chicago over 20 years ago), Kurt Kren
(which I think are interesting but never great), or Marcus Bergner
(which I have never seen), is to make a case for those films. Art should
not be an "inclusive" affirmative action game but rather a real
meritocracy. Of course film historians will want to see as much as
possible, and a good film historian will want to see the films of Marcus
Bergner simply because a critic of Adrian Martin's stature finds them
important (and some of us "aestheticians" (a Brakhage word) will want to
see them for that reason too), but in the end I believe in discussing
and showing films that I love, whether famous or lesser known, not films
that are given little attention solely because they're given little
attention.

Fred Camper
19376


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:53pm
Subject: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
Dan Sallitt wrote:

>I'm no fan of Minnelli's ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, but you can
>actually see it on a screen tomorrow (Thursday) at the Clearview Chelsea
>9
>theater.

Wow! I'd love to see this - maybe my favorite of the very late Minnellis -
on film. But for those of us who can't make it to the New York screening, this
might be a good time to mention that a letterboxed DVD is going to be
released in February from Paramount.

Peter
19377


From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:20pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman
wrote:

> As I recall, the Donnell Library has a pretty good print of this
film.


i'm assuming we can't just go there and project the film. can we?
or do they just have a table with rewinds, etc? do you have to be
faculty or something?

yoel
19378


From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:24pm
Subject: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
I saw Clear Day on screen and on acid.Weird experience. It looked like Lions
Love.
19379


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:24pm
Subject: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
Am showing my age here: but loved seeing "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever"
(Minnelli) in the theater when it came out. It was badly butchered and
re-edited by the studio, and have no idea if any sort of director's cut has ever
surfaced. It is probably not first rank Minnelli, but it is endearing anyway.
Have seen "Strictly Dishonorable" (John M. Stahl) on Cable TV. Found it
inoffensive, but terribly disappointing - static and not especially visually
creative. Am still trying to see more of the highly talented Stahl. Major works seen
& liked here: Imitation of Life, Parnell, The Keys of the Kingdom, Leave Her
to Heaven. Even the nutty musical "Oh You Beautiful Doll" has its moments.

Mike Grost
19380


From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:30pm
Subject: Brooks & McCarey (was: Re: acting '04)
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
> wrote:
> >
> > "AGAIG takes place in a sealed fantasy universe, which is normal
> > practice in Hollywood; what's unusual in the contemporary context
> is
> > that this universe consists of only three people (and a dog)."
> >
> > But surely this is evidence of Brooks' inability to transcend
those
> > stylistic limitations traceable to his background in television
sit-
> > coms (which usually take place in 'universes' that consist of
> nothing
> > but the lead actors and the occasional guest star interacting on
a
> > single set). I really think that Brooks' defenders should be
aware
> of
> > exactly what it is that they are defending - his films have
nothing
> > to do with McCarey or Scorsese, and everything to do with
episodes
> of
> > TAXI.
>
> That's what I like about him. He has done more than anyone to
evolve
> a film style out of the tv style that he helped perfect. Michel
Chion
> talked about the visual implications of this in his CdC review of
> Broadcast News.

To stir the plot a little more, I find Brooks a lot more interesting
than Scorsese in his excavation of character--though certainly less
accomplished than McCarey. Where I find that Brooks and McCarey have
something in common is in the insights into character that can't be
intellectually systemized (pace Bill's observation), despite the
efforts of both writer-directors to do so (e.g., the primitive
understanding of what communism is and means to Robert Walker in MY
SON JOHN; the ideological innocence of BROADCAST NEWS that values the
realness or falsity of an anchorman's tears over whether what he's
saying is actually truthful or not). Where I find Brooks more
interesting than Scorsese is in the specialty of both directors--the
self-destructive neurotic. Maybe because Brooks is a writer and
Scorsese isn't, the former is both more analytical and--because this
gives him more rope to hang himself with--more self-deceiving. The
fact that Brooks starts out by making Nicholson's character in AS
GOOD AS IT GETS a racist and homophobe simply in order to furnish his
movie and his audience with a tightrope to walk across is a good
example of the falseness that can arise from his methods (because we
all know that the character will eventually turn out to be some sort
of nonracist and nonhomophobic sweetie-pue in spite of himself). Many
critics reject his films because of the crassness involved in that
sort of manuever, and I certainly understand where they're coming
from. Yet taken by itself, without reference to Nicholson's
character, Brooks's idea of setting up a tightrope for him and his
audience to walk across is something that I find thrilling, and he
does it repeatedly in all sorts of ways. Sometimes truth is involved
in this idea, sometimes falsity (which--dare I say it?--is also true
in McCarey), but the idea of emotional challenge is fairly constant.

A lot of it comes out in the writing. A few key moments: Albert
Brooks trying to tell Holly Hunter he loves her in BROADCAST NEWS and
then confessing, "I buried the lead"; Helen Hunt in AS GOOD AS IT
GETS insisting on reading aloud the letter it took her so long to
write to Nicholson in a crowded restaurant, even though he doesn't
want to read or hear it; Julie Kavner's realization in I'LL DO
ANYTHING that Albert Brooks's compulsive table-hopping in a
restaurant amounts to a flight from his own feelings, which leads to
her breaking up with him on the spot (an emotion expressed in the
musical version both by her song and his and many other people's
dancing--but still apparent, if not fully expressed or realized, in
the nonmusical version). But where I think Brooks excels as a
director is in how he articulates these moments with his actors,
above all in the desperation and sense of entrapment conveyed in
these three instances by Brooks, Hunt, and Kavner (as well as in the
choreography of what's happening around them, especially in the
second two examples).
19381


From:
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:35pm
Subject: Re: Commercial? Films (was:Hollis Frampton)
 
<< > For one thing, while a director of sync-sound narrative
> features typically earns a living making films

Uh...do you mean sync-sound narrative features made for a film industry?
Because, otherwise, I'd guess that the ones who earn a living at it are in
a distinct minority. - Dan >>

The statistics bear Dan Sallitt out.
Apparently, the majority of narrative feature length films made in North
America are not distributed. The films that make it to the art houses and
multiplexes constitute much less than half of all narrative feature film production.
Most of our filmmaking is "invisible" - films that are not distributed.
The same is true of fiction writers. Most fiction writers are rarely if ever
commercially published.
There are lots of forums for little known writers on the Internet. They are
full of people who have written a dozen novels, none of which have ever found a
publisher. Some of the forums have over a thousand writers of this type as
members. Unpublished fiction writing is a bigger category than published
writing, by far.
Today, many such writers are either putting their works out on the Internet
for free, or self publishing them, usually as trade paperbacks.

Mike Grost
19382


From: J. Mabe
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
--- Yoel Meranda wrote:

>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman
>
> wrote:
>
> > As I recall, the Donnell Library has a pretty good
> print of this
> film.
>
>
> i'm assuming we can't just go there and project the
> film. can we?
> or do they just have a table with rewinds, etc? do
> you have to be
> faculty or something?
>
> yoel

It's a tiny screen, but yes you can go and screen
anything you want (you can even check out some of
their 16mm films... but I've never done that). The
Donnell is the only film place I don't miss going to
everytime I'm in New York... if only to tick a few
more Robert Breers off my list of films to see. And
their staff, including archivist Elena Rossi Snook, is
first rate... very helpful. Here's the Frampton's
they have:

surface tension
tiger balm
yellow springs
zorns lemma
critical mass
lemon
nostalgia
otherwise unexplained fires

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19383


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:54pm
Subject: Re: Why mainstream critics don't go to Experimental Films
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:
>
> Mike write:
> > Therefore, they regard Brakhage et al as being completely without
> > interest or substance!
> [cut]
> > These people are Not Kidding. They think that Lang, Sternberg,
> > Mizoguchi and all the rest are just garbage, just as they think
> > Brakhage is a worthless non-realist hack.
>
> Mike, I don't know that your point really extends so far as this.
> How many critics actually cite Brakhage as a worthless hack? (I've
> never heard it said, myself.) I think more often what happens with
> Brakhage and other "experimental" filmmakers is that, if their work
> is known at all, critics simply ghettoize them rather than denigrate
> them. (The results are sometimes the same, but it's important to
> distinguish, I think.) Now there's a lot of Brakhage that
> is "accessible" because it is immediately very beautiful, and I
> think all but the most obtuse reviewers probably respond well to
> these films if and when they see them. But they think, "These
> aren't feature films with stories, and they aren't commercially
> released, so they must be a mere curiosity--a periphery of the
> cinema."

*****
But isn't that just as bad . . . probably worse . . . than consigning
him and his work to Worthless Hackdom?

Tom Sutpen
19384


From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:18pm
Subject: Re: For New Yorkers (Was: Hollis Frampton)
 
J. Mabe wrote:


> It's a tiny screen, but yes you can go and screen
> anything you want ....

That's a great collection of Framptons they have. "Otherwise Unexplained
Fires" is amazing. The enlightened Marie Nesthus, who was written
extensively on Brakhage, has long been in charge of film buying there,
and New Yorkers should take advantage of the Donnell's great collection
(which I believe includes Brakhage).

There was a time when public libraries in most major U.S. cities had
film collections, and in many cases the films circulated. The Chicago
Public Library didn't have any Framptons, but they did have things such
as Rossellini's "La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV." A few years ago
they took their collection out of circulation, and recently donated it
to a new organization, the Chicago Film Archives, which will show
examples from time to time but, for obvious reasons, can no longer
circulate it. One of the obvious reasons: many prints in the collection
could no longer be purchased anymore, should a replacement be needed.

In the future, fewer and fewer things will be see-able on film. HDTV
will probably cause an even bigger shift to video. Film labs are still
closing. The Donnell may still have prints made in Frampton's lifetime;
how closely supervised the quality of new prints will be, of films by
him or other filmmakers, is not clear. Now is the time to see films on film!

Fred Camper
19385


From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:18pm
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
thanks J.Mabe,
i had no idea. and they have breers too? this is amazing... i'll go
check what they have soon.
yoel
19386


From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:46pm
Subject: Re: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
Are you sure it wasn't?
And if you saw Lions Love on acid, would it look like a Minnelli?

g

hotlove666 wrote:

>--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
>
>
>>Dan Sallitt wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>I saw Clear Day on screen and on acid.Weird experience. It looked like Lions
>Love.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>

--


The vanquished know the essence of war -- death.
They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that
war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals
of hatred and destruction.

--Chris Hedges
New York Review of Books
12/16/04
19387


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 0:12am
Subject: Re: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
--- MG4273@a... wrote:

> Am showing my age here: but loved seeing "On a Clear
> Day You Can See Forever"
> (Minnelli) in the theater when it came out. It was
> badly butchered and
> re-edited by the studio, and have no idea if any
> sort of director's cut has ever
> surfaced. It is probably not first rank Minnelli,
> but it is endearing anyway.

Occasionally.

Studo "butchering" was less the problem than the
original conception. As directed it's a series of very
long static scenes; almost "Getrud: The Musical."
Rivette's recent criticism of Minnelli is far more a
propos here than with "Some Came Running."
Barbra prety much directs herself -- which is fine
because the film's best scene is the "What Did I Have
That I Don't Have" number. Montand is OK, but
sometimes appears to be on the verge of falling
asleep. The flashbacks suggest Minnelli is having a
flashback about "Gigi." Streisand has fun doing a Joan
Greenwood accent. But there's no point in Jack
Nicholson's being in this filmwith nothing to do, and
having heard the number of his that was cut I doubt
anyone will launch a defense as with "I'll Do
Anything" (whose numbers don't impress me anywhere
near as much as they do our Johnathan Rosenbaum.)

"On A Clear Day You Can See Forever" was Barbara
Harris' BIG ONE on Broadway. In fact in a famous
interview she did around that time a reporter asked
Streisand what it felt like to be a big Broadway star,
to which Babs replied "I'm not a star. Barbara Harris
is a star."

SING OUT LOUISE!



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19388


From:   Tom Sutpen
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 0:32am
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Paul Fileri wrote:
> That recent issue of _October_, along with the Frampton conference and
> Princeton/Anthology Film Archives screenings certainly mark something
> of a potential Frampton revival.
>
> His film LEMON is currently "on display" in the new MOMA. Though it is
> not exactly being exhibited under good conditions, and I presume, they
> wouldn't be approved of by Frampton. LEMON is being video-projected on
> a bare wall, in a loop. The wall is not even within the dark (but not
> dark enough) Media & Video gallery space. Instead it is near one of
> the gallery's entrances on the second floor, out in the open with
> ambient light flooding in from the central atrium to yield a pitiably
> faint image.

*****
Did you ask anyone at MOMA why they were subjecting this work to that
kind of shabby treatment?

Tom Sutpen
19389


From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 0:40am
Subject: Re: NYC: rare movies
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, George Robinson wrote:
> Are you sure it wasn't?
> And if you saw Lions Love on acid, would it look like a Minnelli?

I did, and it looked like Lions Love. That's my baseline for the comparison.
19390


From: Craig Keller
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 1:00am
Subject: Criterion in March
 
Criterion added to their website this evening the slate of March
releases -- several masterpieces with (taken collectively) a mammoth
amount of supplementary material.

-'The River' by Jean Renoir

-'The Sword of Doom' by Kihachi Okamoto

-'Young Törless' by Volker Schlöndorff

-'L'eclisse' by Michelangelo Antonioni

-'Jules and Jim' by François Truffaut

-Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films box set
--'A Generation'
--'Kanal'
--'Ashes and Diamonds'

Criterion must have reobtained the rights to the last from Facets, as
their released-not-too-long-ago editions were by all accounts dreadful.

Cover art thus far plus bonsues info at
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/coming_soon.asp

craig.
19391


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 1:25am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
--- Craig Keller wrote:


>
> -'Young Törless' by Volker Schlöndorff
>
An excellent Musil adaptation. Barbara Steele tells me
that Matthieu Carriere was "terrified" of her. Ha!

> -'L'eclisse' by Michelangelo Antonioni
>
I have this on a Japanese laserdisc in French.
No ti wasn't dubbed. All the sound was post-synched.
Alain Delon ( at arguably his most beautiful) spoke
with his own voice, and Vitti spoke French too.
Antonioni's greatest film, IMO.



__________________________________________________
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19392


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 2:44am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Craig Keller wrote:
>
> > -'L'eclisse' by Michelangelo Antonioni
> >
> I have this on a Japanese laserdisc in French.
> No ti wasn't dubbed. All the sound was post-synched.
> Alain Delon ( at arguably his most beautiful) spoke
> with his own voice, and Vitti spoke French too.
> Antonioni's greatest film, IMO.
>
> I've never seen it and intend to, but I would take exception to
the notion that a film with all the sound post-synch could be
anybody's "greatest". Of course this is an indictment of pratically
the entirety of Italian sound film production from the origins until
last week (slight exageration. They have begun to do a bit of direct
sound. It's so unusual for Italian cinema that they indicate "direct
sound" on credits, for ex. in "The Son's Room.") This is a huge
problem, possibly more important than whether we like or know about
Frampton, and it's not usually dealt with, because there are so many
Italian masterpieces we are supposed to love,and no one seems to
care that the sound -- the dialogue track -- sounds so awful, but I
must say I have always been turned off by the practice of dubbing in
Italian moviemaking. And it never seems that anybody is willing to
talk about it.
JPC
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
19393


From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 3:26am
Subject: Re: Re: Criterion in March
 
--- jpcoursodon wrote:


> there are so many
> Italian masterpieces we are supposed to love,and no
> one seems to
> care that the sound -- the dialogue track -- sounds
> so awful, but I
> must say I have always been turned off by the
> practice of dubbing in
> Italian moviemaking. And it never seems that anybody
> is willing to
> talk about it.

Well let's talk.

"L'Eclisse" is less problematic than most Italian
films because the leads are bilingual. Shot silent the
soundtrack was created from scratch. This is scarcely
a new or reprehensible practice. Consider "Breathless"
and "Playtime" for example.

Italian cinema becomes more auditorially abrasive when
we get to Rossellini's Bergman films (Giulietta
Masina's dubber must be heard to be disbelieved in
"Europe '51") and Sergio Leone films.

Pasolini's "English Language" "The Cantebury Tales" is
equally bizarre.

Personally, I can take a certain level of "suspension
of auditory disbelief" and no more.

A very interesting exception to the Italian rule is
Bertolucci's "Partner." Pierre Clementi speaks French
and everyone else speaks Italian. Bertolucci refused
to dub Clementi.



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19394


From: Sam Adams
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 4:49am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
Indeed they were, in what must lamentably be described as true Facets fashion. KANAL
(which I recall as the undisputed champ) looked as if it had been not only filmed in a sewer
but stored in one. It's getting to the point where I half-dread Facets' new release
announcements, since they presumably make better editions (like a decent-looking
DEKALOG) even less likely.

Glad L'Eclisse is at last on its way. I will now hold my breath until they announce LA
NOTTE.

Sam

--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller wrote:
>

> -Andrzej Wajda: Three War Films box set
> --'A Generation'
> --'Kanal'
> --'Ashes and Diamonds'
>
> Criterion must have reobtained the rights to the last from Facets, as
> their released-not-too-long-ago editions were by all accounts dreadful.
>
>>
> craig.
19395


From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:00am
Subject: Re: Léaud in Brazil - query
 
>
> Can any of our Brazilian members verify this, from IMDB,
about Jean-Pierre
> Léaud?
>
> "In 1968, during the military dictatorship government in
Brazil, as seen in
> the documentary "Barra 68 - Sem Perder a Ternura" (2001),
Jean-Pierre Léaud,
> who was a political militant too, made a speech for
hundreds of students at
> Brasilia University, in the capital of Brazil."
>
> Has anyone seen this doco?

I don't remember if there's a Leaud clip in the doc, but he
was in Brazil in 68 shooting Carlos Diegues's Os Herdeiros
around the same time the militar government shut down the
Brasilia University (the doc's subject).



Filipe

>
> Adrian
>
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -------------
-------~-->
> $4.98 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
> http://us.click.yahoo.com/Q7_YsB/neXJAA/yQLSAA/b5IolB/TM
> ------------------------------------------------------------
--------~->
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________________________________
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AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
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19396


From:
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:04am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
JPC:
>
>
> > there are so many
> > Italian masterpieces we are supposed to love,and no
> > one seems to
> > care that the sound -- the dialogue track -- sounds
> > so awful, but I
> > must say I have always been turned off by the
> > practice of dubbing in
> > Italian moviemaking. And it never seems that anybody
> > is willing to
> > talk about it.

Personally, it's never bothered me, and Italian cinema is probably
my favorite national cinema. There's good dubbing and bad dubbing,
and poor dubbing in one's native language can often be a problem.
(It's one of the reasons I find most Turkish films insufferable,
never mind the fact that most Turkish films *are* insufferable.)

But the Italians I think have turned it into an art. And they've
made up for their technically lackluster sound quality with a visual
film practice that blows just about everybody out of the water: For
me, the greatest visual stylists are almost all Italian -
Bertolucci, Leone, Antonioni, Visconti. One could say that the
Italians carried on the great silent tradition while almost
everybody else switched over to production sound. The French seem to
have a monopoly on language, and their accomplishments in sound have
resulted in some remarkable films, many of them dialogue driven. But
there's a reason why Antonioni is an Italian and Rohmer is a
Frenchman. (No disrespect meant to either of them. I love them both.)

Also, the Italians have better music in their films. [ducks, again]

David E:

>
> A very interesting exception to the Italian rule is
> Bertolucci's "Partner." Pierre Clementi speaks French
> and everyone else speaks Italian. Bertolucci refused
> to dub Clementi.
>

Odd. The version I have has Clementi speaking Italian, at least when
he's Jacob 1. I think Jacob 2, the double, speaks French, though.

-Bilge
19397


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:08am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
Well let's talk.
>
> "L'Eclisse" is less problematic than most Italian
> films because the leads are bilingual. Shot silent the
> soundtrack was created from scratch. This is scarcely
> a new or reprehensible practice. Consider "Breathless"
> and "Playtime" for example.
>
> Italian cinema becomes more auditorially abrasive when
> we get to Rossellini's Bergman films (Giulietta
> Masina's dubber must be heard to be disbelieved in
> "Europe '51") and Sergio Leone films.
>
> Pasolini's "English Language" "The Cantebury Tales" is
> equally bizarre.
>
> Personally, I can take a certain level of "suspension
> of auditory disbelief" and no more.
>
> A very interesting exception to the Italian rule is
> Bertolucci's "Partner." Pierre Clementi speaks French
> and everyone else speaks Italian. Bertolucci refused
> to dub Clementi.
>
>
> So David you basically agree with me. But the level
of "suspension of auditory disbelief" in most cinephiles has always
amazed me. Unfortunately it seems to be a taboo subject. I didn't
expect to get much response to my bringing it up. Although it's one
of my pet peeves, I mostly brought it up in hope to get away from
Hollis Frampton and Ten Bests.

JPC
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
19398


From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:16am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ebiri@a... wrote:
>
> JPC:
> >
> >
> > > there are so many
> > > Italian masterpieces we are supposed to love,and no
> > > one seems to
> > > care that the sound -- the dialogue track -- sounds
> > > so awful, but I
> > > must say I have always been turned off by the
> > > practice of dubbing in
> > > Italian moviemaking. And it never seems that anybody
> > > is willing to
> > > talk about it.
>
> Personally, it's never bothered me,

Well then, there's no point in arguing. It's a visceral thing to
me. Just cannot stand it.


and Italian cinema is probably
> my favorite national cinema. There's good dubbing and bad dubbing,


No, there's bad dubbing and worse dubbing. Dubbing is evil and
therefore cannot be good.
>
and poor dubbing in one's native language can often be a problem.
> (It's one of the reasons I find most Turkish films insufferable,
> never mind the fact that most Turkish films *are* insufferable.)
>
> But the Italians I think have turned it into an art.

An art?! Come on! Just a craft they practice with an appalling
low level of competence and total carelessness.
And they've
> made up for their technically lackluster sound quality with a
visual
> film practice that blows just about everybody out of the water:
For
> me, the greatest visual stylists are almost all Italian -
> Bertolucci, Leone, Antonioni, Visconti. One could say that the
> Italians carried on the great silent tradition while almost
> everybody else switched over to production sound.both.)

If only they had continued making silent films! Unfortunately,
talking pictures talk.
>
> JPC
19399


From: Paul Fileri
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:16am
Subject: Re: Hollis Frampton
 
Fred wrote:

> If you return to MoMA, Paul, I'd be interested to
> know what the MoMA's label says; they, of all museums, they, being
such
> an early collector and preserver of film, should be able to get it
right.

In fact, I was at MoMA earlier today, and the label reads, "16mm film
transferred to DVD, silent, 8 minutes" etc.

> while not
> every person seeing this may immediately think of a female breast,
it's
> hardly an exceptionable thought. I've temporarily placed a scan of an
> image from the film's opening at
http://www.fredcamper.com/T/Lemon1a.jpg
> for all to see. Frampton's film depends in part on the bright, thick
> saturation of the lemon's colors; I can't imagine its beauty would
come
> through under the conditions described at MoMA. Again, Paul? How do
the
> colors compare?

Projected on the wall, the lemon's colors were admittedly not as bad as
I had thought I remembered them when I posted yesterday. But they
don't match the vibrancy of these scanned still images, and I think it
would be quite hard for somebody who had little to no knowledge of
Frampton and this film to begin to appreciate it (or even feel like
stopping to watch it) under these conditions. I would place less blame
on the video projection hurting the colors than I would on the ambient
light ruining the possibility of having sufficient contrast for there
to be a dark black background and bright white highlighting. That
said, MoMA's current exhibition conditions don't affect one's ability
to notice the female breast/solar system associations the work calls to
mind.

- Paul
19400


From:
Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:34am
Subject: Re: Criterion in March
 
>
> Well then, there's no point in arguing. It's a visceral thing
> to
> me. Just cannot stand it.
>

That's understandable. I know a lot of younger film buffs who are
totally turned off on Italian cinema for that reason. But it's also
the reason they're turned off on the Russians and some others. I
dunno -- when it bothers me it bothers me, and when it doesn't it
doesn't. And for a long time a lot of us had to suffer through
versions of foreign language films that had been dubbed into
English, as they were the only versions available. My first 35
viewings of THE CONFORMIST were of the English dubbed version. (So
much so that today I can still recite that dubbed version -- when I
see the subtitles on the original version the words seem slightly
off). If I had a serious problem with dubbing, I might not have
bothered with cinema back in the day. And I'd probably be a rich
investment banker now.

>
> No, there's bad dubbing and worse dubbing. Dubbing is evil and
> therefore cannot be good.
>

Well, a lot of post-synching happens still, in films that are
ostensibly not dubbed. I know John Boorman dubs religiously, usually
because he often winds up shooting in adverse conditions where noone
else dare go because it would be bad for sound. Didn't Welles dub a
lot, too?

>
> An art?! Come on! Just a craft they practice with an appalling
> low level of competence and total carelessness.

What I meant is that they've used it to their advantage, like a
blind man with highly sensitive hearing.

>>
> If only they had continued making silent films! Unfortunately,
> talking pictures talk.
> >

And some of them talk way too much.

-Bilge

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