August 2010 Archives

While reading Dwight Macdonald's famous essay, "Masscult & Midcult," the first version of which was published in 1944, I want to interject a "Yes, but --" or "No, and --" or "Bad example because --" or "But that's not the point!" after almost every sentence. Still, it's endlessly fascinating and, as they say, provocative. In the preface to the later version republished in his 1962 collection, "Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture," Macdonald stated, "If serious and ambitious works of quality are now less likely to be overlooked, serious and ambitious works of no quality are more likely to be praised."

You see what I mean? I appreciate, even partially sympathize with, what I think he's saying (especially since it goes against the grain, or the Conventional Wisdom, these days), but... it's basically an emotional response to anecdotal evidence, selectively interpreted and expressed in the form of generalizations so vague that they can't possibly be confirmed or disputed. Yeah, I think that sums it up.

Also, there are loads of fogey-isms, like: "But now we have pianos playing Rock 'n Roll and le sanglots longs des violons accompanying torch singers." Horrors.

Does this photo ring any (wedding) bells with you? Can you tell me who these people are and what movie they inspired? I'll let you think about it and I'll get back to you...

UPDATE: Answer after the jump...

Last week I used a clip from the AMC series "Rubicon"¹ (re-posted after the jump) to illustrate what I felt could be interpreted as a parable about film criticism. Since then, it has come to my attention that "President Obama is a secret Muslim" and somebody is planning to build a "terror mosque" at Ground Zero. OK, those notions have been floating about for a while, but people have very, very strong opinions about them. I haven't seen any evidence that the president is a Muslim, secret or otherwise, and I'm not sure what a "terror mosque" is, but I know that the proposed Park51 Islamic cultural center (at the site of a defunct Burlington Coat Factory outlet) isn't at Ground Zero because I used Google Maps to look it up. The Pussycat Lounge, a strip club one block south, is closer, but people aren't expressing their opinions about it, maybe because it's been there for many years, like some of the other mosques in the neighborhood. So, I'm wondering: Where are all these opinions coming from and what are they grounded in? Mostly, it turns out, they have sprung from other opinions. Which are, in turn, based on disinformation or just something somebody heard somebody else say they heard from somewhere.

Fortunately, facts do exist independent of anyone's opinion about them. They are verifiable. Once you know what they are, you might be able to form some opinions. But, to return to the parable, until you know what the tie actually looks like, your position regarding it (whether you approve or disapprove, like or dislike) is worth, as Edwin Starr once said of war, absolutely nothin'.

Here's something from an Opinionator column by Timothy Egan, a National Book Award-winning nonfiction author, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and writer for the New York Times (and a former colleague of mine at the University of Washington Daily!) called "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings" that ought to be read by anyone who thinks they have an opinion about something.

The first time I remember seeing Lesli Linka Glatter's name was in a directing credit on "Twin Peaks." She directed four episodes of David Lynch's television masterpiece, 13 installments of "E.R.," eight of "The West Wing," five of "Gilmore Girls" and segments of other series, including "Freaks and Geeks," "House, M.D.," "Law and Order: SVU," "Numb3rs," "Weeds," "The Mentalist," "The Unit" and "True Blood." She's worked a lot. "The Crysanthemum and the Sword" is her sixth episode of "Mad Men" -- and the one that reminded me the most of "Twin Peaks," mostly in little visual touches.

(Although, come to think of it, she also directed the episode with the riding lawnmower accident, which could be seen as a Lynchian in-joke about "The Straight Story"...)

A few images, and then a few thoughts about other possible "Twin Peaks" connections:

Above: What this picture needs is some RED.

I forgot to mention that, while Roger is up at his lake place working on his memoirs, I've done a few reviews for the main site (RogerEbert.com) and the Chicago Sun-Times. This week, I think you'll find that I'm one of the very few critics to cite Yasujiro Ozu in a review of Neil Marshall's handsomely gory "Centurion," and among the minority of reviewers who find a reason to compare the tank in the Israeli war film "Lebanon" to the Nostromo in "Alien," though I could be wrong.

As it turns out, without intending to do so I reviewed both of the movies I was covering this week almost entirely in terms of style, almost as if they were abstract non-narrative films. Actually, I guess I probably do that more often than not, but... judge for yourself:

The Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu once made a film called "The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice." "Centurion" might be thought of as "The Color of Red Guts Over Mountains," because that, as much as anything, describes what it is about.

Because this is a blog about critical thinking, and everyone in the world needs to see and appreciate this "Daily Show" clip, "The Parent Company Trap."

Everybody should also read Nicholas Kristof's column, "Taking bin Laden's Side":

In short, the proposed community center is not just an issue on which Sarah Palin and Osama bin Laden agree. It is also one in which opponents of the center are playing into the hands of Al Qaeda.

These opponents seem to be afflicted by two fundamental misconceptions.

The first is that a huge mosque would rise on hallowed land at ground zero. In fact, the building would be something like a YMCA, and two blocks away and apparently out of view from ground zero. This is a dense neighborhood packed with shops, bars, liquor stores -- not to mention the New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club and the Pussycat Lounge (which says that it arranges lap dances in a private room, presumably to celebrate the sanctity of the neighborhood).

A few images from last week's "Mad Men" (or, as I often think of it, "The Peggy Olson Show Featuring Don Draper") to illustrate why composition and framing (aspects of what you might call cinematic architecture) make a world of difference in how a scene works... or doesn't. This episode, "The Rejected," was directed by John Slattery (who, as Roger Sterling, perfectly accents the new office design) and photographed as usual by Christopher Manley (overseen, of course, by series creator Matthew Weiner). Captions appear beneath the frame grabs below:

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is falling apart, and the first shot shows him tethered to a phone cord, chain smoking, backed into a corner, with the ceiling closing in on him (as ceilings often do on "Mad Men"). The sight of Don compulsively puffing, lighting one smoke with the butt of another (he's on the phone with the notorious Lee Garner [Darren Pettie] from Lucky Strike, Sterling Cooper Draper Price's most financially important, and asshole-ish, client) is just the opposite of the way you would expect the well-groomed star of a TV series would be introduced -- especially in 1965. It turns out the subject of the call has to do with both cigarettes and television: the new FCC regulations for advertising cigarettes on TV. There's a delayed punchline a few shots later, when Don explains to Lee that certain camera angles are also prohibited -- like low angles or wide lenses, "anything that makes the smoker appear super-human." Yeah, we've seen that at work.

So far (four episodes in) I am enjoying AMC's Sunday night "Mad Men" companion, "Rubicon," the "seductive conspiracy thriller," as the ads say. What I like most about it is its "Twin Peaks"-like snail's pace (a two-chord repetition in the score echoes Angelo Badalamenti's) when it comes to unraveling the central mystery, which has something to do with crossword puzzles and four-leaf clovers and suicide and murder/accidents and sets of characters who haven't even met each other yet. I'm in no hurry. The worst parts of any mystery come when they start explaining things.

But this speech, in which a CIA intelligence analyst analyst tries to explain to officials at a National Security Council meeting something about the reliability of subjectivity, taste and evidence, struck me as an interesting parable for the practice, and uses, of criticism. Check it out and see what you think...

"Mad Men" has always been about compartmentalization: personal and professional, past and present, city and suburbia, accounts and creative... At first I didn't much like the new, glass and monochrome office spaces, about which silver fox Roger Sterling (John Slattery) remarked: "I feel like with my hair you can't even see me in here." Leave it to director Slattery to make the most out of these spaces in one of the finest episodes of the series (and leading contender for my favorite movie of 2010), "The Rejected" (Season 4, Episode 4). I put together this little wordless video essay about doors, windows, mirrors, transoms, hallways, pillars, screens, reflections... and I'm working on a frame-grab photo essay that gets into more detail about the exquisite direction and composition.

I've deliberately left out huge, important chunks of the episode that don't take place in the office -- but had to include Pete's magnificent shrug (with mirror, bar, decorative screen, and the unseen room down the hall), to contrast his apartment with his office, and the small framed mirror with the wall-sized observation mirror at work. The episode is mostly about Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) going in different directions, discovering new ways to open or close doors between their work and personal lives, contrasted with Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who begins the episode chain-smoking and drinking during a four-way phone call, his office a tangled web of coiled cords. Notice all the cross-sight-lines communication going on (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) -- people watching other people, exchanging glances or sight-unseen, through various frames in their separate compartments -- culminating in Don's seduced-and-ignored secretary Allison (Alexa Alemanni) staring the wrong way through the two-way mirror and looking Don right in the eye, unsettling him by seeing him for who he really is.

Both Pete and Peggy find themselves banging their heads against work surfaces in frustration/resignation, but the episode gives them a moment of grace, through glass doors in the reception area, in a brief, wordless coda I've included almost in its entirety. Peggy is leaving for lunch with some of her new boho friends; Pete is standing around with some suits ("new" clients, including his father-in-law), waiting for Don so they can have a business lunch. (BTW, I couldn't squeeze it in, but the shot of Pete knocking his forehead against the post in his office is followed by a shot of Peggy getting into the elevator -- much like the last shot here -- in which she first meets the LIFE photo editor who introduces her to the Village crowd who come by to get her at the end.) Man, what a terrific movie this is!

(via Radiolab)

Los Angeles. It's not just a very spread-out geographical area in lower California. It's not merely an attitude or an array of styles. It is a language with words and names for things.

(tip: Dan Ireland)

After some movie-critic friends and I came out of Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids are All Right," we just had to have a steak dinner -- because the one in the movie looked so delicious. It's that kind of "hang-out" movie, one that leaves you feeling that you've just spent some time with friends (who, OK, can be sometimes be a little annoying and unreasonable and even unlikeable) and wanting to extend the experience.

The film stars three of the best actors in the known universe -- Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo -- along with two excellent young performers, Mia Wasikowska (with whom I was already smitten after her role as the testy teenage gymnast in "In Treatment") and Josh Hutcherson, as the titular "kids." But what we found ourselves talking the most about was how well-made a movie it was -- how smartly written, directed, shot and edited. There were times you would have thought we were talking about the techniques of a complex action-thriller or science-fiction extravaganza.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Imagine a film in which all the characters are manifestations of a single consciousness, and the main way they communicate is by telling each other (and the movie audience) the story in which they, as characters, are participating -- while they are actively in that story. In other words, what if the driving consciousness of the picture belonged to... Basil Exposition!?!? That's my tongue-in-cheek take on a typically brilliant and enlightening shared dream post by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell on "Inception" at Observations on Film Art.

KT says that the first time she saw Christopher Nolan's multi-leveled narrative she didn't particularly enjoy it until about the last 36 minutes, when the van started falling into the water -- the section that "marks the end of what we've called the Development portion of the film and the beginning of the Climax."

At that turning point, it dawned on me that Nolan has elevated exposition of new premises to the main form of communication among characters. Discussion of their personal relationships, hopes, and doubts largely drops out. As the Russian Formalists would say, exposition, usually given early on and at wide intervals later in a plot, becomes the dominant here. That's an unusual enough tactic to warrant a closer look.

Quite a few reviews of "Inception" noted that its multi-leveled dreamscapes resembled those of video games, with each new level getting the players deeper into the gameworld and closer to mastering the key task, which is ostensibly to implant an idea in someone's brain. Now, usually when a critic compares a movie to a video game it's meant to be a slight, but in "Inception" the similarities are so apparent that it would have been irresponsible to ignore them.

Ty Burr (in a generally appreciative column, for those of you to whom that kind of thing matters most), wrote in the Boston Globe:

Crucially, "Inception" never establishes -- or even wants to establish -- a waking reality that would make the death of Cobb's wife hurt the way it's supposed to. Ironically, I connected more emotionally with Marion Cotillard's Mal, a dream abandoned by her dreamer and filled with the rage of Medea. Her name carries an echo of mal-ware, which makes me wonder if Nolan might be a better writer of code than of human beings. Certainly "Inception" unfolds at times like genius software, revealing new apps and ideas with each push of the movie's buttons and ours.

The production team of Aaron Aradillas (writer, producer), Steven Santos (writer, producer, editor), Matt Zoller Seitz (writer, producer, editor) and Richard Seitz (producer, editor) have posted the sixth and final chapter of their extraordinary video essay series, "Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies," a rather dazzling prismatic look at how the cinema has dealt with the power of celebrity.

Totaling about 70 minutes all together, the segments are all available at Moving Image Source: Part 1: The Pitch; Part 2: The Hero; Part 3: The Fraud; Part 4: The Parasite; Part 5: The Maverick; and Part 6: The Takeaway.

The series reaches its apotheosis in this final chapter, in which images, ideas and speeches from movies and television -- factual and fictionalized, journalistic and infotainment -- collide with one another, as if you were watching TV with a remote run amok. "The Takeaway" focuses on the movies' treatment of other mass media, from TV news to talk radio, mashing together the quick and the nimble ("The Insider," "Videodrome," "Being There," "A Cry in the Dark") with the leaden and fumble-footed ("Network," "Talk Radio," "Absence of Malice," "Natural Born Killers") and letting them kick it out amongst themselves...

Is this where it all began? Did Disney really implant this idea in Christopher Nolan's subconscious, the way it implants things in everybody's? Read the full comic here, or download as a .pdf. Don't stop reading in the middle or you'll get stuck in limbo.

(via I Watch Stuff)

Looks like people still feel like discussing "Inception" and its relationship to other Christopher Nolan movies... Among the observations most frequently made in the hundreds of comments here (and they're still coming in) are those to the effect that the dreams in the movie aren't supposed to be particularly dreamlike because: 1) they're controlled, architecturally designed experiences; 2) not everyone has the same dreams; and, 3) they are supposed to be "realistic," so that the dreamer doesn't know he's dreaming.

Now, I've only seen "Inception" once, and I suppose all of these suppositions may be valid, given the world Nolan has created for the film, but rather than mollify my reservations about the movie, they only deepen my sense of dissatisfaction. Why would Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) guide their new architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) through such nifty surreal dreamscapes as the exploding neighborhood cafe, the origami Paris and the Escher staircase if she's not allowed to create any such environments herself? Why would Nolan intentionally stick the movie's most tantalizing images up front, instead of saving them for when the real action gets underway? Wouldn't it have made for a better story (and better showmanship) if the dreams got more spectacular as the movie went along? Wouldn't a chase through the streets of a folded city be more dazzling than, say, regular old gridlock (even if somebody does throw a runaway locomotive into the middle of it)?

This is what @dcairns gets at in a most illuminating Shadowplay post:

The reviews of "Salt," re-teaming Angelina Jolie with director Phillip Noyce, fell into two distinct camps: those that treated it as an action/espionage thriller, and those that saw it as something rarer: an old-fashioned star vehicle. Of course it's both, but (as I said in my second paragraph) I think it's even more fascinating as an examination and appreciation of Jolie's persona, on- and off-screen.

Kathleen Murphy observed that Noyce "has turned 'Salt' into a movie about being a movie star, about gorgeous Angelina Jolie dressing up and down, working up a sweat, displaying her exotic self for our voyeuristic pleasure...."