June 2008 Archives

View image Kari Sylwan plays the maid who cradles a dead woman (Harriet Andersson) in Bergman's "Cries and Whispers."

One of the most prolific and intelligent contributors to the comments section of the blog is Solomon Wakeling. I wrote in curiosity, asking to know more about him. He replied that he is a 24-year-old law student from Australia, and that one of his problems is, "I read too many books." There was one thing he said that I felt I needed to write about in the blog: "I find your work is filled with an essentially humanitarian philosophy, dealing with concepts like redemption."

I've just finished viewing Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" (1935) for the second or third time, and it will be a Great Movie published June 27. Whether it is truly great or only technically qualifies because of its importance is the question. As faithful readers will know, I have been avoiding this particular opportunity with dread. I felt it would involve grappling with the question of whether evil art can be great art. Since moral art can obviously be bad art, the answer to the flip side would seem to be clear enough, but it took me a fearsome struggle to thrash out "Birth of a Nation," even though many more excuses (of time, place and context) can be offered for Griffith than for Riefenstahl.

View image Ennis Ermer and Peter Oldring are roommates who co-star with Natalie Lisinska in "Young People F***ing."

In my previous blog entry, I told of receiving a message from a reader in Montreal who wanted know how I would deal with reviewing a new Canadian film with the f-word in its title. Would my paper print the title? What were my thoughts? I now have an opportunity to deal directly with those questions, because Steve Hoban, the film's producer, has sent me a DVD, along with a bulletin about its June 13 opening date in Canada, and a U.S. release later this summer.

I will be using a word generally considered offensive a little later in this blog entry, so it's only prudent to tell you now. It is not an uncommon word, and I imagine every single one of my readers if quite familiar with it but nevertheless it's one of the new words that still possesses the power to offend.

Gidget Gormley, "the world's cutest dog," stars in SATC.

In the Answer Man column for Friday, June 13, I write: "Oddly enough, searching the AM's Google Mail account for questions about 'Sex and the City,' I found that all the messages, every single one, dealt only with matters of masturbating female dogs. But surely I was mistaken? Surely with such a popular film there would be messages about something else, especially since it was a popular movie, my review was negative, and my hit-counting software indicated that tens of thousands had read it? Was the only thing they wanted to write me about was the leisure activity of Samantha's pet dog? Surely not. Then I had a brainstorm.