Ramin Bahrani and Ahmad Razvi after the screening of "Man Push Cart" at the Overlooked Film Festival.
"Man Push Cart": Alfred Hitchcock supposedly said that while most movies are a slice of life, his were a slice of cake. He's right about the last part, although most movies are not slices of anything resembling life as most of us experience it. But "Man Push Cart," the film by Ramin Bahrani, a director born in Iran and raised in North Carolina, is not only an exquisitely realized slice of life but a slice of filmmaking perfection. I didn't know, as I became absorbed in this portrait of a New York City street vendor whose life is slowly slipping from his grasp (like his heavy pushcart on one occasion), that it would become one of my favorite movies of recent years until moments after its inexplicably magnificent ending.
All I can tell you is that when the moment came, a thought flashed through my mind: "Wow, I would just end the movie right here -- wouldn't that be great?" And then, one more shot, and the movie was over. So, yes, I felt absolutely in synch with the vision of the filmmaker (whose manifest influences include some of my favorite directors: Robert Bresson and Lodge Kerrigan -- not to mention Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus"), but the film also had me so completely in its spell that it subtly prepared me for arrival at this ending (which, in formulaic conventional movies, would hardly be considered a conclusion at all). It just felt absolutely, ideally right. (Hitchcock also liked to say he played the audience like an organ; "Man Push Cart" is no less masterful, but its method and effects are not the bravura manipulations of Hitchcock but the subtle, underplayed shadings of Bresson or Yasujiro Ozu.)
On the most prosaic level, the story of Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi, a former restauranteur who'd never acted before), a Pakistani-American who pushes (or pulls) his breakfast cart to 54th and Madison every day, could be seen as something of a downer. But, as Roger Ebert is fond of saying, no good movie is ever depressing -- because the experience of being in the presence of such artistry is elevating. (A friend and I, in the grips of a paralyzing mutual depression, once made a pilgrimage to "GoodFellas" and the experience -- though it's hardly an upper of a movie -- temporarily, at least, lifted us out of our low-seratonin stupor because it was just so exhilarating to watch something so beautifully composed and performed.) "Man Push Cart" is that kind of movie. More later. Gotta go see Lodge Kerrigan's "Clare Dolan" now!
University of Illinois President B. Joseph White (center), his wife Mary (left) and volunteer host Judy Tolliver (right) outside the Virginia Theatre.
So many movies and filmmakers and conversations, so little sleep. Well, that's a film festival for you. I was especially impressed with Ramid Bahrani's "Man Push Cart" -- a film of extraordinary attention to detail in every aspect. Not only does it closely observe the behavior of its central character Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), a Pakistani pushcart vendor at 54th and Madison in New York City, but every image and sound and gesture accumulate to create a Sisyphean portrait of a life slowly rolling out of control. More about it and other Overlooked events later. Meanwhile, check out the photo album(s) and MP3 audio of selected Ebert on-stage interviews.
After eight months of existence, Scanners has finally grown up and become (not unlike Pinocchio) a real live blog. With a Moveable Type publishing platform and everything. While I continue with unabated enthusiasm in my capacity as founding editor-in-chief, webmaster and contributor to RogerEbert.com, the new interface for Scanners should make it even more clear than it was before that what appears here is... just totally my fault. Don't blame Roger. According to the principles of separation of church and state upon which our nation was founded (though it's not clear which site represents the church and which represents the state), RogerEbert.com and Scanners exist, side by side, as distinct entities. Scanners is devoted to the criticism and opinionated observations of Yours Truly alone -- hence the new logo and byline and design and URL and e-mail address and wee goofy picture that collectively say, with wry understatement, "You're not in RogerEbert.com anymore." But you're never more than a click away, as the top navigation menu indicates. Remember: If you're seeing gold, you're in Ebert's fold; if you're seeing blue, it's You-Know-Who.
(Thanks to Roger and Cath and John and everybody else at the Sun-Times who made this possible.)
EbertSwag: Love that Hitchockian coffee mug design, although nobody's going to mug Lauren Bacall over this stuff... (photo by Jim Emerson)
URBANA, IL -- All the guests of Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival stay in the Illini Student Union building on the campus of Ebert's alma mater, the University of Illinois. That's right -- the third and fourth floors are a hotel -- with Wi-Fi access in the rooms, too. Take the elevator to the main floor and -- voila! -- you're in college again! And that's the spirit of the Overlooked -- discovering and learning about terrific movies (and movie-makers) you may otherwise have missed. But it's not just the movies: Ebert interviews the filmmakers after the screenings, the audience gets the chance to ask questions, and panels debate the present and future of independent production and exhibition.
A room with a view: Overlooked Fest guest rooms overlook the quad at the University of Illinois. (photo by Jim Emerson)
Once again, I'll be posting (mostly photo albums) from the Overlooked this year. For information on the festival itself, which runs Wednesday through Sunday, check out Roger's intro, or the official EbertFest web site.
As Roger writes:
Some films are born overlooked. Others have it thrust upon them. Among this year's festival entries, "Ripley's Game" has never had a theatrical release in the United States, and "Duane Hopwood" had a release so spotty it seemed designed to hide the film. Yet these are the kinds of films a movie critic views with joy: Films that are a meeting of craft and art. Being able to share them is an incalculable pleasure; everybody should have their own Overlooked Film Festival in the glorious Virginia Theater, all the year around. You have no idea how much fun it is.
British filmmaker Paul Greengrass, as I've mentioned before, is surely the most accomplished action-thriller director around these days. "Bloody Sunday" and "The Bourne Supremacy" are evidence enough of that. This week, Greengrass's "United 93," about the September 11, 2001, flight now commemorated in a Pennsylvania field, opens the Tribeca Film Festival and then moves into theaters.
David Poland, over at "The Hot Blog," saw the film recently and writes:
The question on people's lips is, "Is it too early for this film."...
My reaction is that it was too early for the filmmakers, and perhaps the studio, to make the movie they meant to make. I don’t imagine the filmmakers believe this, but I felt like the dramatic choices you would make with this story could not be made out of respect for the dead. It is not too early to tell this story, but it is too early, I guess, to mythologize it.
I'm not quite sure what Poland means about the dramatic choices that "could not be made out of respect for the dead." But I do agree it's too early to mythologize it -- though perhaps I mean it in a different way than Poland does. As I said in an earlier Scanners post, I hope the film will resist the temptation to mythologize or propagandize what we know (and what we don't know) about what happened to Flight 93, and avoid attempts to create "heroes," like the Department of Defense did prematurely with Private Jessica Lynch, before enough of the facts were known. Not that those who helped prevent Flight 93 from reaching its apparent intended target in Washington, D.C., were not heroic; but their actions (as far as they are known) should be allowed to speak for themselves.
(Roger Ebert has his own take on this, which you can read in his review Friday. Meanwhile, he has an interview with Greengrass here.)
Take, for example, the question of whether the passengers entered the cockpit. After the Flight 93 cockpit tapes were played in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, The Washington Post published a story ("At Trial, Flight 93 Myth Finally Becomes Reality," April 13, 2006) in which it reported:
Much of the tape is unintelligible. There was loud static, and the voices, some speaking English and others Arabic, were often inaudible. It cannot be determined whether the passengers entered the cockpit, although it is certain they came close and forced the hijackers to abandon their attack on Washington.
But Jere Longman of the New York Times, who covered the story for the paper and has also seen the film, reports:
In truth, no one can know precisely who did what during the rebellion that prevented the hijackers from reaching their presumed target in Washington. None of the 33 passengers and 7 crew members survived when the plane crashed into a spongy field outside Shanksville, Pa.
Not everyone could charge the cockpit along the narrow aisle of a 757 jetliner, family members concede. But they believe strongly that everyone did what he could in the face of horrific fear and certain death — consoling, encouraging, planning, praying.
In this widely held view, everyone should be considered equal in a collective act of bold resistance.
In fact, the evidence and eyewitness testimony have not established with 100 percent certainty what brought down Flight 93. We can only guess.
Longman describes the movie's version of events in the flight's last half-hour:
In the movie, it is Mr. Glick, a former national collegiate judo champion with an outsized body and the skills for close-quarter fighting, who leads the revolt, leveling a hijacker with a running kick. Later, he appears to break a terrorist's neck....
Mr. Greengrass was inclusive in his depiction of valor: Donald Greene announces to other passengers that he is a pilot and may be able to fly the jetliner if the hijackers can be overtaken. When they are, Mr. Nacke, a toy company executive with a weightlifter's physique, holds aloft a bomb wrestled from one of the terrorists and yells that it is a fake. Richard Guadagno, a federal fish and wildlife agent, screams for the attacking passengers to get inside the cockpit or they will die.
Early on, Lauren Grandcolas, an emergency medical technician, tends to another seriously wounded passenger. Flight attendants try to calm the passengers and later boil water and hand out forks and knives as weapons.
Finally, passengers break into the cockpit, and a thicket of arms reaches to wrest control from the hijacker pilot, Ziad Jarrah, as he drives Flight 93 toward the ground. It is not known if the passengers actually breached the cockpit. But the scene carries the symbolic truth of collective intent, said Paula Nacke Jacobs, the sister of Louis Nacke.
As you can see, there is plenty of room for speculation and dramatic license here. It will be up to the individual viewer to determine the line between false mythologizing and artistic liberties.
And John Patterson of The Guardian, a Brit reporting from the States, thinks all this "too soon" stuff is just rubbish, an indication of American ignorance of British documentary (or docu-drama) conventions:
Inevitably, given America's story-hungry media, the impending release of the movie was covered in the stupidest of terms. Is it too early? (It's been five years.) What do the families think? (Greengrass secured the cooperation of them all.)...
I'm inclined to think a lot of the problem with "United 93" comes from the American media's lack of familiarity with the essentially British quasi-documentary tradition that informs the film.... America has no equivalent to the work of Peter Watkins, which is almost Brechtian in its desire to expose the tricky mechanics of media presence at real or reconstructed events -- or of Ken Loach, who sought to import documentary realism to maximise the impact of his political message...
An American reconstruction of real events, usually in the form of a made-for-TV movie, will seek out "characters" and ensure they are played by stars. British film-makers, such as Alan Clarke in "Contact," will often strive to downplay dubious redeeming features or personal crises that might permit us to find points of identification within the drama. And certainly, as is the case in "United 93," there will be no stars for us to root for: it's a thoroughly honourable way to equalise the characters and to let the drama breathe.
Another part of the reaction to "United 93" is a certain craven American fear of looking at terrifying or unpalatable moments in history head-on....
It's as if examining these events or ideas might be too disturbing or challenging - as if we were all five years old -- and it somehow coalesces with the fact that 9/11 footage has been more or less banned from TV here, along with coverage of Saddam Hussein's trial or any discussion of the Bush administration's cutting back of funds to prevent nuclear proliferation. It's Homer Simpson logic: if we can't see it, it isn't real. It isn't happening. It will all go away.
That last paragraph reminds me of the depiction of Americans reacting to the prospect of a televised cartoon of Mohammed on "South Park": Everyone decided, out of fear and avoidance of responsibility, to bury their heads in the sand, so as not to appear complicit in case "terrorists" were enraged by the offensive cartoons.
Initial reports indicate that "United 93" is no cartoon. It will be interesting to see how critics and commentators and audiences interpret what, exactly, it is.
Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove. True, he's no Jim Carrey, but...
My list of "101 Movies You Must See Before You Die" has generated some provocative e-mail. As I mentioned in my original posting, this was a list I came up with in 1999, providing what I'd consider to be the most important common cultural touchstones in films from the 20th century. It's not a list of the best films (some I don't even like much), or the most important films, or even my favorite films. (The latter list, circa 1998, is here -- and it needs some updating.) I could easily have listed 202 titles (or, perhaps, even 1001, as a certain book with a similar title does), but I limited myself to a short list. That wasn't enough for everybody, though...
John Wilson writes:
In his recent post, Emerson provided the list of 101 essential movies, and asked readers "How many have you seen?"
I like to think of myself as a person who fits in between the average movie goer and the more sophisticated cinephile. So I'm aware of the issues that are important to cinephiles, and I concede their validity – but frequently I'm just looking for "entertainment" rather "art".
I've seen 17 of the movies on Emerson's list. Interstingly, the average "birthdate" of the ones I have seen is 1956. Only one movie is as late as 1980, only four in 1970s. I also checked which movies I haven't seen, but told myself at one point I would like to. There are 9 – the average birthday of these is "1952".
There are 5 movies on this list which I have told myself that I will never see under any circumstances. The average birthday of these movies is 1979.
Which makes me think that either my taste in movies tends toward the older, or their has been a serious decline in quality in the last 30-40 years.
As a supporting exhibit of the latter explanation, I cite the AFI's list of the top 100 American films of the 20th century. You have to go down to 15th before you find a film made after 1970. You have to go down (if memory serves) to 25th spot to find one made after 1980.
Emerson's list also supports this contention, based on the count by decade:
So, am I (and others) right in saying most movies made today are not as good? Or should I view films from this list starting with the oldest – "Intolerance"?
It's kind of cool to see it broken down like this, even though I didn't do it consciously. After all, it takes time to see if a movie has lasting impact (otherwise I might have listed "Independence Day" or "Gandhi" or "Titanic" -- films that had considerable impact when they were released, but haven't endured well). I'm kind of surprised there were so many films from the '80s and '90s -- not only because they're the most recent, but because I don't think they were distinguished by nearly as many landmark films as in earlier decades.
For another point of view, there's this from Nick Dingle:
I find it interesting, Mr. Emerson, that your "101 movies you must see" list contains only 13 movies from the past 25 years. Only 6 from the past fifteen. Has no other worthwhile work been created in all this time? How depressing.
There is something tiring about these "100 most ____ movies of all time" lists - about the constant insistence that anyone who doesn't think "Citizen Kane" is the best film ever made (or *gasp*... hasn't seen it!) is somehow "movie-illiterate." Can we please try to shed the idea that movie-making peaked somewhere between the fifties and the seventies? That anyone who is age thirty-five or younger grew up during some kind of dark age of cinema?
Give me a list of "must see movies" that has the courage to admit that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is better than "North by Northwest." That "The Truman Show" is better than "Dr. Strangelove." That "The Silence of the Lambs" is better than "Psycho." And not only better examples of their genres, but more tightly paced, stronger narratives, better acting, improved color and film quality. Films which will give even the most pretentious intellectual just as much an appreciation of the art as movies from half a century ago.
Let's stop living in the past. It hasn't all been downhill, has it? Be the first to show us a list with something new.
Oh, Nick -- I'd hardly be the first to show you a list with newer movies. That's exactly the skewed perspective I was trying to address with my list. There's a prevailing notion in our culture nowadays that newer is better, purely for technological reasons. That's why we keep getting these unnecessary (and vastly inferior) remakes of movies from as recently as the '70s and '80s and '90s -- with "improved color" and such. But, in fact, since the birth of three-strip Technicolor, film color has not "improved" at all. Color and black and white reflect aesthetic choices. And I'm inclined to agree with Roger Ebert when he says he'd take a black-and-white movie over a color one, generally speaking, because it gives you a more stylized vision: "You can get color for free. Life is in color. Only film is in black and white."
As for acting styles having "improved" -- that, too, is hogwash. There are different styles of acting, but one is not inherently "better" than another. It all depends on how these styles are used to create the world of the film. As for your movie comparisons: I think "Silence of the Lambs" is a magnificent film (and would easily include it on my list if there were more room), but it has nowhere near the revolutionary impact, or exquisite shot-by-shot precision of "Psycho." "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a wonderful popcorn movie, a loving tribute to Saturday matinee serials, but no more substantial than the cheesy cliffhangers on which it's based (ditto "Star Wars" -- although I did include the best "Star Wars" movie, "The Empire Strikes Back," on my list because it deepened and extended the mythology). As for "The Truman Show" and "Dr. Strangelove"... you've got to be kidding. "The Truman Show" is a terrific idea for a movie (and Laura Linney and Ed Harris are fantastic in it), but in the end it plays it safe, whereas "Dr. Strangelove" is as outrageously funny and shocking today as it ever was. Of course, that's my opinion. But, hey, it's my list!
From Tom Wolfe of Alexandria, VA:
You’re joking, right?
“They're what I like to think of as the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."�
There are at least a dozen of these that I haven’t seen, including a couple that I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of. And I’m certainly “movie literate,� in the normal sense of the term. In no sense can this list said to represent the “common cultural currency of four time,� even if you restrict your idea of “culture� to just include art-house film geeks.
Now, if you had said that this was a list of “basic cinematic texts� that should be known by anyone professing to an expert on film culture, I would have less of an argument with you, but “somewhat movie literate?� I’d say someone who has only seen half of these films could easily be considered that.
My first inclination was to say you're right, that maybe I overstated my case for "movie literacy." But then I started thinking about a comparative list of books. Sure, you can be literate (or, at least, not illiterate) without having read, say, Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," Dostoyevsky's "Notes From the Underground," Kafka's "The Trial," Nabokov's "Lolita," Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Heller's "Catch-22," Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," and Carroll's "Alices Adventures in Wonderland" (to name just a few of the most important books in my own life). But I would hope you've read 'em all, and hundreds more besides.
I guess my list would form the foundation of a good, basic film education. You might even be deemed the cinematic equivalent of "well read" if you'd seen 'em all. But these are only the beginning. Even considering that about 80 percent of movies are crap, and another 15 percent are somewhat worthwhile, that leaves hundreds and hundreds of terrific movies to be seen. (And, to re-address the previous letter: Far more movies were made under the studio system in the '20s-'50s than in the decades since then, so the odds of finding lasting achievements in those earlier, pioneering years are indeed likely to be greater.)
John Young writes:
As is the case when critics post lists, I'm sure you've already received numerous e-mails from readers demanding to know why a certain film was missing.
I thought your list served its purpose extraordinarily well. Of course, there are titles that I feel aren't that necessary to cinematic knowledge ("Mad Max 2"?). But overall, you did a fine job of hitting the essentials.
Except, and here's where the nagging film reader part comes in, you forgot one film that absolutely deserves the recognition ... "Apocalypse Now." It's the greatest war film, or anti-war film, or anti-war film posing as a metaphor of the subconscious; regardless, I feel "Apocalypse Now" belongs on your list.
I think you're probably right. I think "Apocalypse Now" is only 2/3 of a great film (I'm let down by the murky final third every time I see it -- like it's struggling to express something but it isn't quite sure what), but it has indeed become the popular myth of the war in Vietnam, and it has so many now-classic moments and sequences that are enshrined in the pantheon of American pop culture. It is indeed one of those "texts" that you simply expect every American adult has (or should have) seen. Consider it added! (Now I'll have to find something else to bump off -- but "The Road Warrior" stays! Or maybe it can be "102 Movies...")
You must remember this: one of the movies' iconic images.
Further reflections on the 2006 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO: John Lennon said life is what happens to you when you're making other plans. Life is also the process of finding connections between everything that happens to you (there he goes with that "We're all pattern-seeking animals" thing again!). So, last week at the CWA, three panels I was on ran together in my head in ways I think are interesting. But then, it's my head we're talking about, so I'm probably inclined to think my digressions and free-associations are interesting, otherwise I wouldn't have spent so much time mucking about with them.
The three panels I'm thinking of were about the nature of "pop" music, "Brokeback Mountain," and romantic myths in popular culture (particularly movies and pop songs) that create a falsely idealized and superficial image of "love." What did they have in common? Well, for me, they were all about the common cultural touchstones that we share as Americans living in the early part of the 21st Century.
On the pop music panel, I found myself wondering what "pop" means today. It used to be a category that helped you find radio-friendly "popular" stuff in record stores. But with the increasing fragmentation and niche-marketing of pop culture (movies, TV, magazines, music, the Internet, you name it), I wondered what the definition of "popular" music has become. "American Idol" finalists, maybe?
On the "Brokeback Mountain" panel, I talked mainly about the film as a work in the tradition of the classical American Western, exemplified by John Ford ("Stagecoach," "The Searchers") and Howard Hawks ("Red River," "El Dorado"), and the Hollywood love story, as exemplified by Douglas Sirk ("All That Heaven Allows") and many others. You can't fully understand a contemporary work of art or pop culture unless you know at least something about its heritage -- just as Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" (which Roger Ebert dissected shot by shot with an audience during the conference) would be meaningless without the classic private eye movies and films noir it invokes and subverts, especially "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon." "Brokeback Mountain" is not an "anti-Western," but (in the parlance of 1973), you could definitely say that "The Long Goodbye" is an anti-noir. It's like jazz: You have to know the notes Altman isn't playing to understand how he's riffing on and around the familiar melody of the generic private detective movie.
Finally, there was the romantic myths discussion. I quoted from a few popular songs to make my point about how we are conditioned, through constant exposure to idealized myths of "one true love" and "I will always love you" to have an unrealistic and exalted notion of what love is. This Neil Diamond tune from 1967 (made famous by The Monkees) pretty much sums up the standard:
I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me
Love was out to get me
That's the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all my dreams
And then I saw her face
Now I'm a believer
Not a trace
Of doubt in my mind
I'm in love
I'm a believer
I couldn't leave her if I tried
This, I submit, is the equivalent of the kind of brainwashing one would expect from a religious cult: "I'm a believer"... "not a trace of doubt in my mind"... "I couldn't leave"...
This kind of thing was not unique to the Baby Boomer generation, however. Indeed, back in 1930, another great song (quoted in "I'm a Believer") by George and Ira Gershwin outlined the plight of the disillusioned romantic in a world saturated with facile Happy Endings:
They're writing songs of love
But not for me
A lucky star's above
But not for me...
When every happy plot
Ends with a marriage knot
and there's no knot
No, not for me
It struck me (and things strike me all the time, like a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist) that I wasn't sure how many people in the audience would be familiar with both these song references. I mean, when it comes to pop music, I know as much about the Gershwins and Cole Porter as I do about The Beatles and The Monkees and Bob Marley and Elvis Costello and Nirvana and Wilco. (I'm also well-acquainted with Schubert and Mahler and Bartok and Prokofiev, but that's a whole other post.)
Then I was in this book store (I know this is beginning to seem like a shaggy dog story, and maybe it is) and I saw a book called 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Well, back at the end of the 20th century (1999, to be exact), I had come up with a similar title and list for a big, encyclopedic movie web site start-up called FilmPix. I called it "101 Movies You Must See Before You Die." This isn't like Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" series. This isn't like Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" series. It's not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there's some overlap here), or limited to my personal favorites or my estimation of the most important or influential films. These are the movies I just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate." I hope these movies are experiences we can all assume we share.
So, I looked up the list and here it is, with only a couple changes. (I added "Fight Club" because it's essential and it hadn't been released at the time I made the list.) I remember I tried to represent key examples of all important genres, movie stars, directors, historical movements, and so on -- like an overview of the 20th century in 101 movies. Yes, there are many more I'd like to add, but remember, this is only a primer. How many have you seen?
There was a buzz circulating among students at the University of Colorado at Boulder during the Conference on World Affairs last week about "Silent Hill," the new horror film by director Christophe Gans ("Brotherhood of the Wolf," "Crying Freeman") with a screenplay by Roger Avary ("Pulp Fiction," "Killing Zoe"). Their hope is that it just might turn out to be one of the first good movies based on a video game. However it's received, I do like the director's taste in horror movies.
In an Los Angeles Times article earlier this week, Gans chose his "Seven Best Modern Horror Films." One of his more unusual choices, John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness," was among the four underrated horror films I wrote about last year here (the others: David Cronenberg's "The Brood," Roman Polanski's "The Tenant" and Neil Jordan's "In Dreams").
Ganz has a beautiful description of "Prince of Darkness," too: "It's a beautiful movie in a way because it is a very abstract movie — completely abstract. It was produced almost the same year as "Blue Velvet" by David Lynch, and they both lead the audience into abstraction. It is something that is difficult to explain, something that you feel. It was a new step in horror film."
Among his other choices: Dario Argento's "Deep Red," Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Jack Clayton's "The Innocents" and George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead." See Gans's entire list, and his comments about the films, here.
At last week's Conference on World Affairs, I was on a panel somewhat facetiously titled "An Epic Debate: Are Video Games an Art Form?" with Roger Ebert (whose answer to the titular question is, as you probably know, "no"). Sun-Times tech columnist Andy Ihnatko was supposed to join us, but at the last minute he couldn't make it. Fortunately, we were able to recruit author, brain expert and laparoscopic surgeon Leonard Shlain to join us.
Since the panel ended Thursday afternoon (April 13), I've seen a couple accounts of it on the web, including a speculation on the gamer blog Kotaku that predicted the whole thing was bound to be "a sham" because I was the editor of RogerEbert.com:
[H]e’s not just a film critc, no even that might offer too much possible contention for Ebert. No Emerson is also the the founding editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com.
Wow, that must have been one heck of a debate. Ebert and his biggest fan. I’m sure a lot of interesting ideas were discussed, like how AMAZING Ebert is and how he is also so SUPER COOL.
Hey, I am a big "fan" of Ebert's, otherwise this job wouldn't interest me. Trust me, I wouldn't want to be the editor of michaelmedved.com or geneshalit.com. But, as actual readers of this site know, Roger and I don't always see eye-to-eye ("Million Dollar Baby," "Crash," "Fight Club," "Mississippi Burning," "Natural Born Killers" and so on) -- any more than any other two people on the face of the planet do.
Going in to the video game panel, I'd been hoping the audience (mostly students) would be fired up about the subject and challenge the panelists, but they were unfortunately pretty passive. Maybe they were intimidated by the rather formal (for Boulder) theater setting, I don't know. Ebert began by explaining why he felt a game (particularly the shoot-shoot, point-scoring kind) was not an experience equivalent to that of reading a great novel like, say, "The Great Gatsby," because games don't delve very deeply into what it means to be human.
Shlain countered that his son-in-law Ken Goldberg, an Internet engineer and artist, had created some interactive, multi-user web experiences (like one installation involving a robotic Ouija board that was selected for the 2000 Whitney Biennial) that were quite game-like and also considered "art" -- by one of the top art museums in America, at that.
Schlain also spoke about the less artistic pastime of repetitive game play and its effects in the brain. When you are first learning a game (or just about any task, from driving a car to playing the piano), many areas of the brain show electrical activity. But as you learn the "rules," the task becomes more autonomic and after becoming accustomed to the task, the brain shows stimulation only in one small area. That, he said, is how you can drive a car while listening to music or talking to a passenger without even being aware that you are driving.
For my bit, I began by reading a few selections from e-mails sent in by readers of RogerEbert.com on several sides of the issue, asking such questions as:
Why does a game have to be legitimized by calling it "art"?
Who can deny the artistry (graphical, musical, animation, narrative) that goes into making a video game? Surely these people are artists every bit as much as animators, composers and storytellers in film and literature.
So, are we talking about the artistry that goes into creating the game, or comparing the experience of playing the game to the experience of apprehending a work of art, such as a film or a novel or a painting or a piece of music?
If the game is simply a matter of hand-eye coordination or simple puzzle-solving, then is it art? Is a crossword puzzle art? Is chess art? Checkers? Ping-pong? Are athletic games art?
My feeling was (and is) that the panel's title question itself was kind of silly and oversimplified. It's the same as asking "Are movies art?" or "Are books art?" Of course, it depends on the individual movie or book. Are we talking "The Benchwarmers" or "2001: A Space Odyssey"? "The Bridges of Madison County" or "Emma"? Pac Man or Shadow of the Colossus?
Although I haven't played many shoot 'em up video games (I find them as dull as rote gunfights and car chases in movies), I have played open-ended narrative games such as Myst, which I consider to be an immersive experience that creates an artistic world in which the player is encouraged to explore. I compared it to entering and getting lost inside a David Lynch movie (think "Twin Peaks" or "Blue Velvet" or "Mulholland Drive" or "Lost Highway"). It's a mystery, and like any mystery it draws you in and you try to make sense of what you discover. That's just what we do, as pattern-seeking animals, and it's an essential aspect of how we respond to art. (I'd say The 7th Guest and The Residents' Bad Day on the Midway, both of which I've also played, fall into this category as well.)
Our curiosity is stimulated when we encounter pieces of information of any kind, and we invariably try to connect the dots and put them together into some kind of meaningful gestalt. It's at the root of everything we do -- from learning how to do new things, to creating art, to conspiracy theories, to positing the existence of a Creator. (Art and religion are very closely related in the brain.)
(Ebert said he'd also been intrigued by Myst, but that he'd wished it had just played itself like a movie rather than as a game where the user was called upon to unlock parts of the riddle in order to move on to the next level of the game.)
On the other hand, I've also watched friends play more simplistic, stimulus-response games such as Doom and, as a critic, that's where I draw the line. Sure, a lot of artistry and technical know-how goes into the creation of the game, but the experience of playing it is purely mechanical. Any emotional involvement is purely visceral and reactionary. There are movies like that, too (many of them directed by Alan Parker or Michael Bay) that do nothing but provoke knee-jerk spasms in the viewer, and I don't consider them "art," either.
Of course, there's so-called "highbrow art" and "lowbrow art" -- or elitist art and popular art, or formal and informal art -- in all media. You might put Bartok's string quartets and Shakespeare's "King Lear" and the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer in one camp and The Beatles' "Revolver" and Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and the cartoons of Chuck Jones in the other. Or maybe not. Right now, games are generally considered to be popular entertainments rather than works with artistic ambitions. But, for what it's worth, we should probably remember that much of what we now call "classical" music -- like, say, Mozart -- was, in fact, the pop music of its time.
For many years I have had a rubber stamp that reads: "This is not art." I think it's hilarious, and I thoroughly enjoy stamping it on things, particularly when I can use it ironically. Video games are not just a new style (like abstract expressionism in painting, or Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, or Duchamp's Dada urinal -- all of which were not accepted as art by many). They are a new form, a new medium entirely. Movies are more than 100 years old; video games are still in their adolescence.
Some in the audience at the Flatirons Theater in Boulder seemed to feel that, even if games hadn't reached an artistic zenith yet, the medium holds promise, in the hands of sufficiently ambitious artists. Now, the bulk of games are just commercial product -- as are most movies and books in the marketplace. That's not to say that even some of these lesser games are not entertaining or involving, but they're not shooting for anything more than a quick buck. Some say the best Japanese game designers are already doing work that is light years beyond what American gamers are familiar with.
During the Q&A (and at the CWA, most of the 90-minute panels are spent in discussion with the audience; they are not formal "debates" by any stretch), some seemed to feel the validity of their gaming experience was being denied if it couldn't be called "art" -- and that was an unfortunate misunderstanding.
I look at it this way: Gamers are on the cutting edge of a new form of expression. I think a game like Myst qualifies as art, but any artwork can only be apprehended and evaluated one work at a time. So, even if games haven't achieved the highest levels of artistic expression yet, it's not up to them to conform to anyone's idea of what art is. They have the potential to expand the boundaries of what we consider art to be.
P.S. If you really want to hear this whole panel discussion -- or any of the others -- you can order them on CD for five bucks apiece from Tapes Again, a local company in Boulder.
A trio of guys try and make up for missed opportunities in childhood by forming a three-player baseball team.
A serious breach of security has ripped through the movie industry. Somehow, some way, a critic in Florida (of course) got in to see "Benchwarmers" -- and leaked it to the press! Well, OK, so maybe that shouldn't be considered much of an intelligence leak (more like a diaper leak), but it happened to Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, and he's going public about it. On his blog, Frankly, My Dear..., Moore says he got an invitation to a screening Monday night at a local theater, where seats were saved for the press. It seems the regional Sony publicist had forgotten to inform him that the press had been uninvited. (He should have read Scanners last week!)
His review, which he describes as "not the nastiest ever, but close enough," was posted on the Knight Ridder Tribune syndication service, where he says "it's the only one" (so lots of papers will be running it on Friday). And that's when, according to Moore, Sony started coming after him like the Bush administration after Joseph Wilson (or Richard Clarke or Cindy Sheehan or John Kerry or John McCain or...):
And next thing you know, Sony people, from marketing, advertising and the like (apparently not communicating with one another) are calling us, and newspapers planning on running the review. Calls to Dallas, Kansas City, Toledo, and on down the line.
And with the calls from Sony, come the lies. The review is "bogus," they tell one editor. "Unauthorized." That I "disguised" myself to get in (a roped-off row for "press" is not exactly incognito) to another. That KRT subscribing papers have to "pay" extra to run the review.
I had an invitation. "You and a guest are cordially invited..." Regional studio rep. forgets to uninvite me, if the studio ever told her to do so. Local rep knows nothing of such shenanigans. And I've since been told that the Jacksonville paper also got to see it. Sony, there's a hint as to where your problem is. Two Florida papers were somehow invited to two separate screenings. Get the connection?
I saw the movie, with an audience. No disguise, no nothing. And nobody has to pay extra for a wire service they already get.
As for the movie itself, Moore says:
It's a dog. Nine-12 laughs, maybe. Some involving booger-eating. Not my fault. From the review...
"Welcome to Adam Sandler World, where groins are for kicking, gas is for passing, jokes are for choking and jocks are for sniffing.
"It's a happy, stupid planet where director Dennis Dugan ("Problem Child," "Big Daddy") enjoys the status of a Hitchcock, and Sandler himself no longer needs to make an appearance. He can hire proxy Sandlers such aslike David Spade (career.. .. . OVER) and Jon Heder, who proves that his booger-and-bug-eating skills were ignored in "Napoleon Dynamite."
Moore reminds us that Sony got caught making up quotes for another Rob Schneider movie (2001's "The Animal") and suggests that maybe the company just isn't "real good at this manufacturing good 'buzz.' And silencing bad buzz."
But, he concludes:
Why should you care? Well, please don't. Not a lot, anyway. Not like a White House that denies access to the press to control news about a trumped up war and cover up its own misdeeds and missteps. But still, if Hollywood is spending millions on it, and they're proud of their product, what're they afraid of? The answer is, they're not proud. They know it's garbage. And they expect to sucker enough people in opening weekend to be able to afford the next junk-picture they whip up. Don't let them.
Meanwhile, KRT stands by their man, according to a piece in the Kansas City Star that has a few more choice tidbits about the fiasco:
Roger Moore, who for the last six years has been the movie reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel, gave the film one star out of four.
“How sad does a movie have to be,� Moore wrote, “for Rob Schneider to be ‘the cool one,’ ‘the normal one’ and ‘the jock’?�
Then things got really interesting. Tuesday evening The Star received a call from Christine Gutierrez of Universal McCann, Sony’s advertising and public relations agency. Gutierrez said Wednesday that she was asked by Sony to call newspapers subscribing to the Knight Ridder Tribune wire services and advise them that Moore’s review was “unauthorized.�...
[Moore said:] “Obviously Sony’s local field representative made a mistake. She wasn’t supposed to let critics see the film and she did. It’s probably going to cost her her job.
“The crazy thing is that this is a critic-proof movie that’s going to do business no matter what I or anybody else writes about it. I don’t understand why Sony has its panties in such a bunch.�
In a statement, the newspaper’s editors said: “The Orlando Sentinel is attempting to clear up the misunderstanding, but in the meantime, we want you to know that Knight Ridder Tribune stands by Roger Moore’s work. This is a legitimate review by a nationally respected film critic.�
The funny thing is: Would an instantly disposable and forgettable thing like "Benchwarmers," which the studios churn out like the Charmin factory spews tp, ever have gotten this much publicity if it weren't for the cancelled critics' screenings? Maybe the Sony publicists aren't so bad at their jobs after all...
