December 2006 Archives

The forthcoming "Grindhouse" notwithstanding, the motion picture double bill is a nearly dead art. Marquees have always been plugged with twosomes that just happened to be from the same distributor (it's the same kind of logic that gives us a "The Robert Altman Collection" on DVD, consisting of "M*A*S*H," "A Perfect Couple," "Quintet" and "A Wedding" -- simply because they were all released by 20th Century Fox). On a slightly more creative level (sometimes), today's few remaining revival houses might connect two films by language, genre, director or star.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a fairly straightforward double bill of, say, Scorsese/De Niro pictures ("Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver") -- or David Lynch LA nightmares ("Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive") or Michael Haneke puzzles ("Code Unknown" and "Cache" ) -- all of which are illuminating pairings. As I like to remind myself, you invariably view movies through the prism of the movies you've already seen -- particularly those you've seen recently, and never more so than when you see two of 'em back to back. You can't help but make associations, and a well-considered double bill can help you see both movies from new angles -- emphasizing some aspects over others, and creating a kind of conversation between the two films.

When I was in college, at the University of Washington, I got to program hundreds of movies in the student film series -- a different double bill every Friday and Saturday night (and sometimes Wednesdays and Sundays, too!) over a couple of years -- and I had a blast doing it. My favorite strategy was to put an older or less well-known (and cheaper to rent!) film with a more recent or recognizable title in hopes of pulling in an audience (and maybe blowing people's minds!).

Put "Citizen Kane" with "All the President's Men" and all kinds of things start happening: They're both detective stories, journalistic stories, overshadowed by famously flawed and powerful public/private men who remain essentially unknowable to the end... Or put Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" with Michel Deville's "Dossier 51," and you have two accounts of psychological meltdowns under the glare of intense surveillance -- one by the watcher and one by the watched -- but both from the perspective of the voyeur. Or how about Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" with Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"? Eric Rohmer's "Perceval" with Robert Bresson's "Lancelot du Lac"? I would love to have paired Brian DePalma's "Hi Mom!" with Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" -- for perverse structural and audience-freaking reasons. On the other hand, I don't recall exactly what I was going for when I put Bunuel's "L'Age d'Or" with Godard's "Weekend," except that I knew they were both shocking and transgressive... and, most of all, I really wanted to see them. Anyway, you can set up all kinds of thematic, historical and stylistic clashes and consonances reverberating between films....

So, that's what I've decided to do with some of my favorite movies of 2006. Rather than a traditional "ten best list" (which I've already contributed to MSN Movies), here are my suggestions for fruitful ways of viewing some of the year's best movies, alongside some of the best of past years. Make an evening of it -- in theaters and/or on DVD!

For 35 years, on and off, critics Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy have annually assembled a montage of memorable impressions from the year's movies in a feature called "Moments Out of Time." It began in the pages of the Seattle Film Society's magazine, Movietone News, and continued in Film Comment under Jameson's editorship. This year, it's at MSN Movies. Whether the films themselves are big or small, good or bad, "Casino Royale" or "Climates," nearly all of them have their indelible moments...

A few samples to whet your appetite:

• In "Brick," our hero's dreamgirl (Emilie de Ravin) dead in a drainage ditch...

• "Little Children": In a dark playground, the accused child molester (Jackie Earle Haley) hunches over on a swing ... all menace drained...

• Lucy, the dog in "Old Joy," always finding a stick to carry, and undeterred when it's too big...

• "Shortbus": The lights go out in all the windows of a colorful, handcrafted model that stands in for New York's skyscrapers, and a trick of shadow turns the buildings into crowded tombstones, a city of the dead...

• At the end of a New York pocket park in "Man Push Cart," Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) opens his cart for business just before dawn, as the lights in a line of little trees blink out one by one...

• "The Queen": The royal face arranged as public mask, softening imperceptibly when Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) asks a child if she can place a bouquet of flowers among the great drift of Diana's tribute, and is told: "It's for you."...

A commentary on The Year in Comedy from Judd Apatow, the co-creator of "Freaks and Geeks," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and... Seth Rogan:

It seems like comedy is more popular than ever right now. There have been many very successful comedies as of late: "Nacho Libre," "Click," "The Break-Up," "You, Me and Dupree," "Little Miss Sunshine," "Babel." But I think people always love comedies. I assume in the 1930s, people thought comedy was really popular because they had hit movies from the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and Laurel and Hardy. I think every decade has its huge comedies and comedy stars. We need comedy. Life can be brutal, and watching something funny with strangers in a large room somehow makes it a tiny bit more bearable.

When I saw "Borat" at the premiere, I was sitting near Eric Idle of Monty Python, one of the greatest comedy minds of all time. I said hello before the screening. I told him I made "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," but he had not seen it. Still, he was very nice. While the film was playing, he would turn to me every so often during one of the more hilarious and outrageous moments, like the naked fight. His eyes lit up with joy and a facial expression that said, "Can you believe this?" It was as if he was so delighted by the movie that he needed to share it with someone, even if it was just some drooling fan that made a film he hadn't seen.

(tip: MCN)

MSN Movies has published its main movie contributors' lists of the year's best films (and, yeah, we cheated freely -- our lists don't all contain ten titles). Here you'll find lists from me and (in alphabetical order) some other names you may recognize: Sean Axmaker, Gregory Ellwood, David Fear, Richard T. Jameson, MSN Movies chieftan Dave McCoy, Kim Morgan and Kathleen Murphy. As is my custom, I don't make what I see as artificial and qualitatively meaningless distinctions between categories (documentary, "foreign language") because, the way I see it, a feature film is a feature film, and a doc or a movie from somewhere else in the world is every bit as much a product of conscious and unconscious artistic decision-making, skill, planning, determination and luck as any other kind of picture with a running time of around an hour or more. (That, arguably, is a meaningless distinction, too. Heck, "Simon of the Desert" and "Wavelength" are only 45 minutes long, "Sherlock, Jr." is 44, " and "Un Chien Andalou" is only sweet 16!)

I'm cooking up a different sort of list I want to do for Scanners and RogerEbert.com, but if you want to see my faves (as of my deadline last week -- and nothing I've seen since then would change my rankings), use the link above and/or check after the jump. Please see my post about listmaking in general, below... and please, as always, feel free to post your own lists and responses in the comments section!

... and speaking of critical "best of" movie lists, here's a swell one called "50 Lost Movie Classics," from The Guardian. I might quibble with the terms "lost" (how "lost" can they be, when so many of them are available on DVD?) or "classics" (a "masterpiece" can be lost or overlooked, but can a "classic"?). But it is what it is. A group of British critics and filmmakers chose 50 movies (I have no quibbles with either of those terms) that... well, allow Philip French to explain:

This isn't just another list of great movies. It's a rallying cry for films that for a variety of reasons -- fashion, perhaps, or the absence of an influential advocate, or just pure bad luck -- have been unduly neglected and should be more widely available. You know that feeling when someone hasn't heard of a film you've always loved and you want to show it to them? Or, in a different way, when you get annoyed because a picture hasn't been accorded the position you think it deserves in cultural history or the cinematic canon? That's the sort of film we have included on this list.

And now, please permit me to add my own huzzahs for a few of the selections, several of which have also been featured on my personal "ten-best" lists over the years -- or would have been, in the event that I had made one that year. (And some were released before I was born, OK?) Several of these have already been discussed here at Scanners. Here are just a few of the choices I'd particularly like to second:

"Petulia" (Richard Lester, 1968) -- use the link to read about the opening shot.
"The State of Things" (Wim Wenders, 1982) -- one of the best movies about movies ever. And "Stranger Than Paradise" was made using the leftover b&w stock.
"Newsfront" (Phillip Noyce, 1979) -- charming account of Aussie newsreelers.
"Fat City" (John Huston, 1972) -- best boxing movie ever (and, yes, I include "Raging Bull" and "Rocky").
"Ace In the Hole" aka "The Big Carnival" (Billy Wilder, 1951) -- no excuse for this to still be unavailable on DVD.
"3 Women" (Robert Altman, 1977) -- just watched it again the night Altman's death was announced and was thrilled to find it as mesmerizing as ever...
"Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" (David Lynch, 1992) -- although I think the series is by far the best work Lynch has ever done, I didn't "get" this one when it came out. Now I think it's genius (and should be double-billed with "Mulholland Drive").
"Safe" (Todd Haynes, 1995) -- my choice for best movie of 1995.
"Housekeeping" (Bill Forsyth, 1987) -- my choice for best movie of 1987.
"The Parallax View" (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) -- NOT "Alan J. Parker" as The Guardian has it, fer cripes sake!!! Gripping paranoid thriller -- with a fight atop my beloved Space Needle!
"Dreamchild" (Gavin Millar, 1985) -- nice double-bill with "Pan's Labyrinth," I think.
"The Ninth Configuration" (William Peter Blatty, 1980) -- I see a big moon risin'...
"Cutter's Way" (Ivan Passer, 1981) -- my choice for the best movie of the 1980s.
"Wise Blood" (John Huston, 1979) -- I don't think I've ever fully recovered from the scars this one left on me.
"Two-Lane Blacktop" (Monte Hellman, 1971) -- this does qualify as a cult classic.
"'Round Midnight" (Bertrand Tavernier, 1986) -- Dexter Gordon as a version of Dexter Gordon, in gorgeous widescreen. One of the best evocations of cinema as jazz, and vice-versa.
"Grace of My Heart" (Allison Anders, 1996) -- pop music history mix-and-match (not unlike "Velvet Goldmine" in that respect) with terrific songs co-authored by Brill Building vets and contemporary artists. I watch this one over and over. Made me fall in love with Illeana Douglas.

Some of the choices I haven't seen: "Ride Lonesome," "Jeremy," "Under the Skin," "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," "The Low Down," "Quiemada!," "The Hired Hand," "Le Petomane," "Bill Douglas Trilogy," "Babylon," "Day Night Day Night" (just missed it in Toronto!), "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," "The Mad Monkey," "Terence Davies Trilogy" (not sure what individual titles they mean to include, but "The Long Day Closes" was my best movie of 1992 -- or was it 1993 in the US?). And there are others the list reminds me to revisit (like Monte Hellman's "Cockfighter") because it's simply been too long.

Take a peek and let us know which ones you treasure (or don't) -- and maybe suggest some additional titles for such a list...

I don't disagree at all with Andy Horbal's list of reservations about annual critics' "Ten Best Lists." Andy (host of the recent, too-marvelous-for-words Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon), sizes up the obvious shortcomings of such vain hierarchical endeavors:

The interest and the function of a list depends entirely on what the author decides to do with it and how well he or she explains that decision. This requires perspective: an awareness of what such a project can reasonably accomplish and what its significance in the larger film world is. It requires, for instance, a discussion of the films from the previous year that the critic saw in relation to the films that he or she missed. It definitely requires a discussion, as opposed to merely descriptions.

Couldn't agree more. When I was a full-time daily newspaper film critic, first in Seattle and then in LA, I saw virtually everything that was released (even stuff I didn't review), which sometimes amounted to 200+ movies a year. These days, when I'm asked to do a Ten Best list, I always feel like I haven't done my homework, because there's just no way I can see even the stuff I think might be ten-best-worthy -- which means I'm not likely to belatedly discover any surprises I haven't already come across earlier in the year because I'm so busy cramming during the overloaded November-December movie season, including watching DVD releases and screeners from previous months' releases. (How the hell did I ever do this in the years before home video, I wonder?) And I always try to provide a list of movies I haven't seen -- particularly when I've noticed they've been prized by critics and friends.

But we should acknowledge that there's inevitably an element of serendipity at work in anybody's movie year -- above and beyond the choices made by international distribution and local exhibition companies. Would I have seen Ramin Bahrani's "Man Push Cart" if I hadn't been introduced to it at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival in May? Would I have come to value Doug Block's "51 Birch Street" so highly if I hadn't seen it at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005, presented it at the 2006 Floating Film Festival, and then reviewed it for the Chicago Sun-Times more than a year after I'd first encountered it? Would I have chanced upon Neil Marshall's "The Descent" if Roger hadn't suffered complications from his surgery this summer and a friend (who'd watched the British DVD release) hadn't suggested it was worth seeing when the Sun-Times was looking for reviews? Would I have overcome my resistance to seeing "Flags of Our Fathers" (those artsy monochromatic images in the trailer and TV spots really turned me off) if I hadn't felt I needed to see it before making a ten best list? I have no way of knowing.

To me, a ten best list is like a personality inventory -- a rough sketch of who I was (and what mattered to me most) during a particular year. (I used to participate in critics' polls for music, too, but that's even more overwhelming.) Reviews of new releases (written on deadline) have their limitations as film criticism, and so do lists, as Andy smartly details, but at their best they can be creative and illuminating and thoughtful -- almost like critical haiku. This year, I'll be doing at least three such lists, with different sets of criteria set by the editors: for MSN Movies, for the LA Weekly critics' poll, and for myself, here at Scanners. Most of the lists will overlap, but I hope readers will find intriguing discoveries within them.

Never have I whined as much about making a ten best list as I did in 2006 -- mainly because I felt like I had so much stuff to watch -- and so little time. But before I present mine, let me offer a complementary list to Andy's (and he mentions some of these things, too):

What Can Be Good About Ten Best Lists:

1) They force a critic to try (usually in vain) to summarize what he/she values in each movie on the list. That can make for a worthy -- if almost impossibly difficult -- writing challenge, for those who attempt to rise to it.

2) They pique readers' interest in films they haven't seen, didn't want to see (boy, was I wrong about "Flags of Our Fathers" -- more on that later), or didn't like. Of course, that depends on how open a reader is to being persuaded, but my hope is that putting a title on my list will help some people make some exciting discoveries they might otherwise have missed.

3) They're a handy way to evaluate the critic (even more than the year -- which is an arbitrary consideration, anyway). Looking at somebody's list can tell you something about a person's taste and values -- not unlike looking at somebody's recent book, DVD, or music purchases. I don't know about you, but those are the first things I check out when I go to somebody's home for the first time. I dare say it's at least as revealing (to me) as rummaging through their medicine cabinet or underwear drawer -- and far more socially acceptable.

Yes, these lists are doomed, limited enterprises. And the number ten is almost arbitrary, although there are probably solid reasons we tend to think in groups of ten -- reasons that have as much to do with Darwinian development (ten fingers -- handy for counting!) as they do with our Arabic numeral system (where would we be without the introduction of the symbol for zero?). As enthusiasms wax and wane, you catch up with older movies from previous years, or you revisit movies you've listed and found them better, worse or different than you thought they were when you made your list, you may be tempted to revise your rankings. But that's just part of the game (and it is just a game). A ten best list is simply a snapshot of what you've seen out of what was released in your area during a calendar year, and what you've found worthwhile at the time you make the list. That's about it.

“It’s now fundamentally an information fight. The enemy gets that, and we don’t yet get that, and I think that’s why we’re losing.�
-- David Kilcullen

In "Knowing the Enemy," an essential article in the December 18 issue of The New Yorker, George Packer reports that some experts inside the Pentagon and Departments of State and Defense have been trying for years to explain (to Condoleeza Rice and others) why the US has yet to properly identify the enemies it's fighting in the "War on Terrorism" -- and, therefore, why we have been so shockingly ineffective at fighting it. As David Kilcullen, an Australian lieutenant colonel and political anthropologist currently "on loan" to the State Depatment, explains: "After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.... [I]t's not about theology. There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior.’"

Packer reports:

In a lecture that Kilcullen teaches on counterterrorism at Johns Hopkins, his students watch “Fight Club,� the 1999 satire about anti-capitalist terrorists, to see a radical ideology without an Islamic face.

That, I submit, is revelatory. I wonder if those who can't see what's going on in "Fight Club" -- the feelings of impotence and alienation and personal violation that fuel the rage and the desire to belong to a force larger than the individual, even if it's just a form of nihilistic fascism that lacks the religious, racial or nationalistic aspirations of Naziism, Soviet Communism or "Bin Laden-ism" (for lack of a better term) -- can even begin to comprehend contemporary jihadism and what we now call "the insurgency" (as if there were just one).

Just as the Bush administration misunderstood Saddam's motives (Why is he acting like he's hiding something? Is it because he's hiding WMD -- or because he knows he'd be gone in a second if anybody knew he didn't have them?), they have also misread the nature of Osama bin Laden's motives, power and strategy for Al Quaeda and global jihad:

Just before the 2004 American elections, Kilcullen was doing intelligence work for the Australian government, sifting through Osama bin Laden’s public statements, including transcripts of a video that offered a list of grievances against America: Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, global warming. The last item brought Kilcullen up short. “I thought, Hang on! What kind of jihadist are you?� he recalled. The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy.� Ron Suskind, in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,� claims that analysts at the C.I.A. watched a similar video, released in 2004, and concluded that “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection.� Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance. Indeed, in the years after September 11th Al Qaeda’s core leadership had become a propaganda hub. “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave,� Kilcullen said.

Kilcullen would make a good film critic. He understands human nature and has an eye for reading it in dramatic context. Thumbs up for him! (Bin Laden hadn't been a champion for the Palestinian cause before, either. It was obvious he was trying to create the perception of a war declared by the West against Muslims -- and Cheney, Rummy and Co. played right into that perception from Day One.)

Atlantic, Stax/Volt, Motown... Those are three (four?) of my favorite record labels -- and two of 'em are in the news now. Of course, Bill Condon's film of the 1981 musical "Dreamgirls" is loosely based on a slice of Motown history involving Diana Ross and the Supremes. (The slick diva lead singer is named Deena. Subtle.) "Dreamgirls" is playing roadshow engagements in LA, NY and SF -- and opens around the rest of the country on Christmas.

But on a far more significantly note: Last week, music mogul Ahmet Ertegun, founder of the great soul/jazz/pop/rock label Atlantic, died at age 83. Ertegun, along with several others whose names on LP jackets I came to associate with great music (his brother Neshui, Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, Arif Mardin...), made Atlantic into one of the greatest recording imprimaturs in American history. (In no small part thanks to its partnership with Memphis-based Stax and Volt.)

Today, the Atlantic/Stax/Volt legacy is in the hands of the brilliant archival label, Rhino, which recently released a terrific box set: "What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-77)" from the vaults of Atlantic, Atco and Warner Bros. Records (which includes stuff from Curtom, Cotillion, Reprise... -- labels are as fascinating to me as movie studios, and some have equally distinctive house styles). An earlier indispensable Rhino collection -- "Beg, Scream & Shout! The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul" -- has a lot of the Stax/Volt material, and comes in a replica carrying case for 7" 45 rpm singles. And I'm thrilled and relieved to see that the 203-track, 8-disc "Atlantic Rhythm and Blues 1947-1974" (which I originally had on LP, then repurchased on CD in the 1980s) is still in print -- along with many of the original albums.

The best appreciation of Ertegun and Atlantic that I've read is from That Little Round-Headed Boy, who even includes a convenient 45 adapter for use on 33 1/3 rpm long-playing turntables! (Bur remember: For best results observe the R.I.A.A. high frequency roll-off characteristic with a 500 cycle crossover.) Not only that, TLRHB adds his own list of favorite Atlantic sides. (And, yes, I've always had a soft spot for Clarence Carter's "Patches," too... and I fervently believe that Aretha Frankin's "Until You Come Back to Me" is to Atlantic what the Temptations' "My Girl" and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" are to Motown/Tamla -- single-slices of heaven on Earth.)

This is a mono posting and may be played on stereo equipment.

From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA:

The opening of Joe Dante’s cruelly misjudged and overlooked comedy "The ‘Burbs" begins with a vertiginous and hilarious parody of the God’s-eye view shot. Fade in on the familiar Universal logo—the planet Earth spinning, surrounded by incongruously Saturn-like circles of galaxy dust, particle and stars. But the world looks a little off, a bit more animated, more cartoony than usual.

The camera begins to move in on the planet as the words “A Universal Picture� dissolve away. The camera moves down closer and closer and closer onto the planet’s surface, onto the recognizable shape of the United States. Even closer now, dropping down into the Midwest somewhere, perhaps Illinois-ish. Closer. Closer. Now a city is recognizable. A neighborhood. A street. The camera continues “craning down� from above the rooftops (obviously a miniature set), swooping left and down across the front of a row of houses.

Suddenly, Jerry Goldsmith’s score, which has had up to now a liltingly comic grace, turns mock haunted-house creepy with a thunderous, sinister organ chord as the camera glides over to a dwelling that looks a scosh more gothic than its surrounding neighbors. Just as suddenly, flickering flashes of light are visible through the windows into lining the goth house’s basement foundation, and crackling electrical sounds are heard accompanying the flashes. Something mysterious, and very un-suburban, is happening down there…

JE: Thanks again, Dennis! You submitted this along with several others back in July -- and I had frame grabs for it and "Used Cars" ready to go before my "hard drive fatality." Gotta go back and order "Used Cars" from Netflix again. Meanwhile, a happy belated birthday to Joe Dante ! Check out Dennis's Dantean appreciation -- as part of Tim Lucas's recent Joe Dante Blog-a-Thon.

Also don't let 2006 expire before you take Professor Dave Jennings' Milton-Free, Universe-Expanding Holiday Midterm. It counts for 25 percent of your final grade this quarter.

(And, Dennis: Thanks so much for the Christmas gift!)

UPDATE: Um, OK, where were we? Within hours of retrieving my PowerBook from its brain-transplant surgery (the new brain/HD is blank, or mostly blank: It did say "Abby Normal" on the side, though...), the Storm of the Century swept through the Pacific Northwest and took away power, Internet access, phone service, etc., at my address until late Friday afternoon. Thousands of people in Seattle haven't had power since last Thursday night. I feel extremely fortunate that there was minimal damage in my neighborhood (plenty of horizontal trees, though) and all my lifelines -- including Comcast On Demand -- were restored so fast. (My storm experience is nothing compared to Girish's during the Buffalo Blizzard in October, though.). So, back to it....

P.S. My friend Dave McCoy (Lead Editor of MSN Movies), who lives less than a mile away, got a bit of a surprise at his condo Thursday night. This tree landed on his deck, narrowly missing his bedroom window and thus averting a "Poltergeist" experience.

From the AP Newswire:

The region's worst windstorm in more than a decade struck on Thursday, knocking out power to more than 1.5 million homes and businesses. Wind gusted to 113 mph during the storm near Mount Rainier and to a record 69 mph at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

About 200,000 customers were still without power in western Washington, utilities reported, as temperatures were in the low to mid 20s over most of the affected area early Monday. Authorities said it could be days before power is restored.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire declared a statewide disaster and the state National Guard was mobilized to help get fuel and supplies to hard-hit areas.

Sorry about the scarcity of posts in the last few days. I've been very, very busy catching up with year-end movies for ten-best list considerations. Then my PowerBook slowed to a crawl and went... bits up -- just as I was in the middle of writing a review for the Sun-Times. As the guy at the Apple Genius Bar delivered the diagnosis today: "Fatal hard drive error." I don't even want to think about how many frame grabs for future Opening Shots were on that drive.

Anyway, I hope to be back up and running soon.

From Jonathan Pacheco, Anna, TX:

When the release of "Eyes Wide Shut" drew near, a lot of the buzz was around it being a "sex film," and some (fools) went as far as to claim that its ambition was to be the "sexiest film ever" (after all, Kubrick had broken the molds of other genres). After "EWS" came out, the buzz was that it was a letdown -- due largely to the fact that it was "not sexy." Subsequently, many felt that it was a sub-par film, almost unworthy of the Kubrick moniker.

Unfortunately, they missed the point. The opening shot to "Eyes Wide Shut" is short and simple: Nicole Kidman's character getting undressed. I'm sure many saw this as a tease, a promise of what's to come. But I believe Kubrick was using it for the exact opposite purpose, telling us to forget about our preconceived notions of what this film was going to be (or, as you pointed out, Jim, what a narrative should be). In essence, the shot is so brief that it's almost as if Kubrick is saying "Okay, here: Nicole Kidman naked. Satisfied? Now get that out of your mind and let me tell my story." Many films don't have their nudity so early on, so perhaps Kubrick put that quick flash in there to see if we're paying attention. The next time we see Kidman, she's doing something very unsexy (using the toilet), and further events tell us that some things are not what we expect them to be (for example, Tom Cruise's character turning off what we believe to be the background score).

Yes, more nudity follows in the film, from Kidman and many others, but Kubrick is telling us that the nudity and sex is not really the point; he's not setting out to make the "sexiest film ever." What is his point, then? I'm not sure. It's a film that can be watched many times and still not be totally understood -- just like some other great Kubrick films.

JE: You're quite right, Jonathan. That eye-opening first shot IS a ravishing tease, but not in the way viewers might expect -- plucked out of time and space, floating in isolation between the white-on-black titles for Cruise/Kidman/Kubrick, and the name of the movie itself. Blink and you'll miss what Kubrick is doing from the moment the picture starts. "EWS" had been accompanied by the usual hyperbolic pre-release rumors that invariably swirled around rare and secretive Kubrick projects while they were still in the works. In 1979/80 "The Shining" had been touted in advance as "the scariest movie ever made" (did Kubrick really say that was his goal?) and in 1986/87 "Full Metal Jacket" was anticipated as as "the ultimate Vietnam movie" (whatever that was meant to mean). This sort of buzz, whether or not inflamed by Kubrick himself, helped intensify general interest in the movies but, as you point out, it was also ultimately misleading. Kubrick, more than any other filmmaker, taught me not to get distracted by the movie I was expecting, and to simply watch what was happening on the screen instead -- because "The Shining" and "Eyes Wide Shut" were absolutely NOT the movies I thought I saw the first time I watched them.

Allow me to riff a little on this "EWS" shot: The first thing you notice is, of course, Kidman dropping her dress. The dominant color is the (warm, feminine) red of the drapes that frame her -- and that are reflected in the mirrored closet doors to the left. The shot is not perfectly symmetrical, but in addition to the reflected curtains and the fleshly symmetry of Ms. Kidman, there is a lot of twinning going on here: Two pairs of identical columns mask the image; a couple of overlapping tennis rackets lean in the corner; pairs of shoes are lined up, rather haphazardly, underneath the window...

For five years now, one of the great film resources in America has been unjustly imprisoned, boxed up and sitting in the corridors of a film storage facility in Hamlin, Pennsylvania. It's a scandal, a tragedy, and an enormous disservice to film scholarship. In a recent e-mail, Mary Corliss, creator and curator of the Film Stills Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, the source of images for countless film-related books and publications (Corliss is also the stills editor for both Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" books), brings us up to date on the struggle to make this invaluable treasure accessible again:

I have been remiss in sharing the final chapter of the [National Labor Relations Board] vs. MoMA saga with all of you who supported me and Terry Geesken after our abrupt lay-offs and the closing of the Film Stills Archive in January 2002. This September, I received a document signed by the three Republicans appointed to the Washington office of the NLRB. (The Democratic minority on the panel was not represented). In their ruling, they not only fully agreed with MoMA's arguments; they reversed those points that the judge in the NLRB trial had decided in our favor.

Essentially, they found MoMA's decision to close the Film Stills Archive to be solely the result of the Museum’s need to reduce services and spaces during its $850 million expansion, and not a personal retaliation for our union activities. That verdict represents the end of the legal battle.

But the struggle to keep the Stills Archive alive does not, cannot end there. Since MoMA argued that the Archive was closed for temporary lack of space, it follows that, when even more space was made available, the Archive would reopen. That was Terry’s and my understanding when we took a low severence in order to have recall rights to our jobs of 34 and 18 years, respectively, returning when the Archive reopened. In other words, the future of the Archive bore no relevance to the disposition of the NLRB case.

This is another contribution to Andy Horbal's Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon at No More Marriages!, a blog which is itself devoted to the subject of film criticism. As Andy introduces the Blog-a-Thon: "I regard film criticism as simply the larger conversation about film, and this is a conversation about that conversation. Many of us read and write a great deal of film criticism, and this is a chance to think about what exactly we're doing." Here's to the occasion!

The few of us who are fortunate enough to get paid to write and think about movies are constantly asked for advice about how to do it -- or, even more often, how to get a job doing it.

My answer to the second question is simple: There is no "career track" for a movie critic. See a lot of movies. Read a lot of film history and criticism. Practice writing. If you're in school, submit reviews to your school paper. If they like your writing, they'll probably ask you to write more. Or publish your own blog or web site. The best way to get the attention of people who may give you writing assignments is to get your writing somewhere it can be read.

The first question (which boils down to: How do you write film criticism?) is far more difficult, because everybody does it differently. The worst thing that could happen would be for a critical Bob McKee to come along and turn film criticism into a formula, the way most Hollywood movies have become illustrated formulas. (Actually, most print reviewing has been an inverted-pyramid-type formula for a long time: Intro that sets up the verdict; plot description; something about the acting; something about the cinematography or costumes or sets or whatever; summary.)

But, as I've said before, reviews are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to film criticsm. But they're still a necessary part of the discussion that makes movies a living part of popular culture. As I wrote in September:

... I see films and film criticism as two sides of the same coin ("The unexamined film is not worth watching").... Imagine what it would be like if the conversation about movies (whether academic study, criticism, or casual after-movie talk) ended with the final credits. What if the movie was just over and you never thought about it or discussed it with anyone again? It's unthinkable, about as likely as the prospect that movies themselves -- storytelling with moving images -- would cease to exist.

But writing is only the first stage of critical engagement with film (or any art) -- or maybe the second, after initial verbal discussions (see David Bordwell's essay, "Studying Cinema," here). Next, come responses to the original written criticism, for which a blog Comments section is ideally suited. It gives readers a chance to critique and enlarge upon the initial post, the original writer the opportunity to clarify and refine his/her thoughts, and everybody a chance to discuss amongst themselves. This, to me, is where criticism really starts to get exciting. The primary piece stands, but can be read and re-read in light of the ensuing discussion. In ideal situations (as with my piece on two reviews of "Nashville" in light of "Bobby"), it's possible to quote not only from what the critics have written, but to "quote" (with frame grabs, or even clips) directly from the movie(s) under scrutiny.