1. "Bigmouth Strikes Again": From The Guardian, a strong-worded interview with the great, neglected filmmaker Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives; The Long Day Closes; The House of Mirth).
["Now you'll get money to make a film if you're a television comedian because people think lots of people will go. A Cock and Bull Story, a postmodernist comedy! What's that when it's at home? Is it funny or is it not? When I've seen Steve Coogan on television he's about as funny as tertiary syphilis."]
2. "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre": Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central on the new 2-Disc Ultimate Edition of Tobe Hooper's classic horror film.
["More than the typical bumpkin-reckoning horror conceit, it is, along with John Boorman's Deliverance from two years earlier, the classic example of a film that isn't about what it's ostensibly about. Look at the assiduous reduction of wheelchair-bound outcast Franklin (Paul A. Partain), a character who remains for the efforts of Hooper and Partain (apparently so irritating in real life that his cohorts were relieved by his on-screen demise) one of the most unapologetically irritating and pathetic figures in film and find noteworthy not that a handicapped person is allowed to be a self-pitying asshole, but that we're not let off the hook (as it were) for our own prejudices. Franklin is an anchor--and we're glad that he's dead, too.]
3. "Halloween on the Big Screen": See the night HE came home on the night HE came home.
4. "A Desolate Flute is Heard": Writer Chris Fujiwara looks at seven Korean films made during the Japanese colonial period.
["Some of the most exciting films at the 11th Pusan International Film Festival could be found in the Korean Retrospective section, which featured a new restoration of Shin Sang-ok's outstanding 1962 melodrama Arch of Chastity (Yeolnyeomun), along with seven recently rediscovered Korean feature films made during the Japanese occupation. The historical importance of these seven films—the only Korean features from that period that are known to survive—is, of course, inestimable, but all seven are rich and interesting aesthetically, formally, and ideologically. They are all films of ambiguity and internal contradiction. Here are some first impressions..."]
5. "Lane Strikes Out": Eric Kohn takes The New Yorker's Anthony Lane to task for his review of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. (Be sure and read our own Ed Gonzalez's take on the House main page.)
["Look, Lane, you're totally entitled to hate on movies if it gets you the badass reputation you seem to relish without fail. But at least do your homework."]
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Links for the Day (October 31st, 2006)
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4 comments:
Kohn's piece on Lane is funny, but as others have noted on this site, Lane's established himself as less a critic than an entertainer who writes about movies and sometimes musters a good insight or two, and his editors are all right with that, so I expect he's going to be there until the bitter end, regardless of what anyone says about him. (I still miss Kael, even though -- or maybe I should say because -- she was so excitable and eloquent and often nuts, and really seemed to want to steer the critical consensus in surprising directions. Lane's got a bully pulpit and he's using it for a standup routine.)
Regarding Davies, well, if you're curious as to why nobody wants to give him money, read the interview -- he's got less political sense than any great filmmaker alive, with the possible exception of Spike Lee, who's managed to make his take-no-prisoners shit-stirring persona an integral part of Spike Lee, the brand (thus making himself at once dangerous and safe, a neat trick). I do like this Davies quote, though, bitter as it is:
""No, I'm angry and I'm disillusioned. Because we once had an industry of our own, we once had a culture of our own and now it's just been subsumed by America. In 20 years' time we'll be little better than Hawaii, and why we're not admitted to the union I don't know because we're no longer our own country. We swallow hook, line and sinker everything from America. And we've become cheap and shoddy and we do nothing well. And abroad we are despised, and we deserve to be."
Yee-ouch.
Davies certainly comes off, to put it mildly, as impolitic, and his loathing (self- and otherwise) is so pure and total it carries an odd grandeur. That bit about living alone being a blessing because his debt affects only himself is kind of breathtaking when you think about it.
So the prospect of him doing a romantic comedy is about the most fascinating movie news I've heard in a while. Hell, any excuse for one of my favorite directors to finally get around to his sixth film in 30 years.
Lane is an entertainer, and that lets him off the hook somewhat. Like Kael he's writing more about the movie experience than about the movies themselves, and thus as long as he's true to his impressions he arguably doesn't run foul of his mandate.
But he abuses this privilege, I think. I've noted myself (and fellow blogger Harry Tuttle echoed my sentiments in the first installment of his "Critical Fallacies" series) that he's occasionally guilty of misrepresenting the films that he's reviewing in fairly significant ways.
This happens enough that it even obstructs his pieces from being entertaining. His credibility is so frayed that when I read a Lane review I feel like I'm reading the review of an imaginary movie that he's made up, and thus whatever social or cultural commentary he makes becomes social or cultural commentary about an imaginary world. Which isn't terribly funny or interesting, really...
In an effort to understand Mr Davies some more I read a bit about him and his films on the internet yesterday. After many sterling reviews of DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES I happened to go over to imdb to look at his brief filmography. This may be a cheap shot but "Check out the big brain on Brett!" Or, uh, mrjack21, imdb user and critic. His insights are invaluable:
"If you enjoy seeing an already tedious film repeat itself over and over, not only in plot and events, but in camera angle, effect and music, then you'll enjoy this film."
I can't wait to find a copy of this. I bet Scarecrow has one...
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