1. In memoriam: William Styron, 81, author of the novels Sophie's Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner and the memoir Darkness Visible, about his own long struggle with depression.
["Above all, however, my joy flowed out from some source I had not known since I had come to New York months before, and thought I had abandoned forever--fellowship, familiarity, sweet times among friends. The brittle aloofness with which I had so willfully armored myself I felt crumbling away utterly. How wonderful it was, I thought, to have Sophie and Nathan--these warm and bright and lively new companions--and the urge I had to reach out and hug both of them close to me was (for the moment at least, despite my desperate crush on Sophie) freighted with the mellowest brotherhood, cleanly, practically devoid of carnal accents. Old Stingo, I murmured, grinning foolishly at Sophie but toasting myself with the foaming Bud, you've come back to the land of the living.--Sophie's Choice, 1976]
2. A man identified as UrgeIt recites Robert W. Service's poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" in faux-archival black-and-white while Arctic winds howl in the background. The bulk of this 8 minute, 13 second piece is a monologue in closeup with no cuts. David Milch should see this.["There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee."]
3. The ashes of a love child of the Titanic are scattered at sea.
["Their love affair aboard the Titanic featured twists that could have inspired the the blockbuster film. But when Kate Phillips was separated from Henry Morley in the seafaring tragedy, the real life story was far from over. For the illicit couple, who were eloping to the US, had conceived a child aboard the doomed liner. And their daughter, Ellen Walker, tirelessly campaigned to have her dead father officially recognised as her parent. But now that fight has come to an end - as her ashes were scattered in the same ocean that claimed Mr Morley's life 94 years ago."]
4. Baywatch costars David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson reunite at beachside to shill DVD box sets of the show's first two seasons.
["Every day was so fun," she recalled. "It's the best job in the world, being at the beach every day with my dog and my kids...Nothing has compared to it since."]
5. David Bordwell ruminates on the video iPod, and on Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern's apparent fear of it.
["I don’t love it or worship it, but I do admire and respect it and like to hang around with it. Part of the attraction is...the cool mystique of it. It is a good object. Its subtle heft and operating ease make it a pleasure to fondle. Then too, the very idea of it is entrancing. How can something so small store so many things that matter so much to us? But there’s another factor at work in the video iteration. I think that iPods also make the film viewing experience intimate in a way that other media don’t."]
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Links for the Day (November 2nd, 2006)
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18 comments:
Regarding Styron and Sophie's Choice, not a great film by any means (haven't read the book), but props for (a) taking the notion of Hobson's Choice to its logical ends (b) giving us The Most Stunning Meryl Ever. And this coming from a guy who's had a crush on her since her Julia/The Deer Hunter days.
Nice post, but I think that Darkness Visible was his memoir about depression. Lie Down in Darkness was his first novel, which I've never read. I'm not sure what it's about, though it might be depression, too.
Fixed, thanks.
I'm not a teenager anymore but I still fall into the general target demographic for HO'wood's movies, 18-24, and I do lament the fact that MARIENBAD is out of print on DVD. I think younger viewers are gaining more sophistication thanks to outlets like Netflix, region-free players, sites like DVDBeaver & Senses Of Cinema, and the invaluable Criterion Collection. In my time off from school, Criterion has worked as a minor film school in and of itself since most of the essays are available on the website if you rent the discs. I think HO'wood routinely underestimates its audience. That said, there have been a number of good to great studio pictures this year. But I still won't buy them on iTunes.
Ryland: Regarding the Bordwell and Morgenstern link, I can see why there'd be some trepidation on their part, coming from a different generation (more Morgenstern than Bordwell, who seems less threatened), and I have to agree that the iPod mindset does encourage short attention spans -- and the video iPod is definitely no way to watch a movie with any pretension of scope. But the shuffling and playlist features also deepen the way we experience media in that they tease out connections between genres and modes.
For instance, I let my iPod work through my entire library alphabetically by artist, and at one point it played Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Aguas de Marco," Arrested Development's "Children Play with Earth" and the second movement of Arvo Part's "Cello Concerto" -- and I was amazed at how neatly they complemented each other, even though they outwardly have nothing in common. The iPod's greatest strength is its ability to allow people to lift art out of its usual context -- its label or category -- and look at it/listen to it with fresh eyes.
Well count me personally glad if a lot of kids aren't watching Cache and are instead delving into Resnais. I've always found that "kids don't watch what they're supposed to" comment pretty condescending and suspect, and not just because I have a 19 year old film school friend who's into Stan Brakhage.
Seems to me "old-fuddy-duddyism" is the more glaring problem that needs remedying. I do my best every day to make sure that my circle of friends and acquaintances expands beyond set age and taste groups. Bemoaning the (supposed) state of things so rarely seems to help, anyway. Better to contribute the things you think are missing from the culture, however that may be accomplished.
xThe "kids don't watch what they're supposed to" often translates as, "kids don't watch the stuff I watched when I was a kid." Which isn't to say art and entertainment should have shelf lives -- there's something valuable in work from every era if you have patience and a sense of context -- just that it's not as easy to devise a canon as some critics seem to think. (Right now the canon seems comprised mainly of movies from the mid-60s through the early 80s, and directors who came of age in that era and kept working up till the present; most prominent critics are of that same generation. Coincidence?) Susan Sontag's much discussed 1995 New York Times piece on the so-called death of cinephilia was really more of a requiem for the specific way in which she and others of her peer group used to experience movies -- a way that was being subsumed by other forms that were different but not necessarily invalid. The language was sharp and the feelings sincere, but there was still a "grrr, kids today" undertone.
Generationally, this stuff is a two-way street. If not for those Cahiers punks over in postwar France, America movies' "canon," such as it is, wouldn't exist -- the elder tastemakers over here were still, by and large, partial to prestige pictures and distrustful of the artistic merit of westerns, gangster pictures, horror movies and the like.
What effect will the iPod and YouTube have on cinephilia? We don't know yet, and it would be churlish, not to mention premature, to rule out the possibility that these forms might deepen our understanding of moving pictures rather than retard it.
I read "Sophie's Choice"- and it was not a light read, but a very good read. The descriptions of the concentration camp, Brooklyn, and the characters inhabiting those spaces and times are lyical nad haunting. (The movie was very good, Kline and Streep where wonderful.)
Thank you for noting the passing of a wonderful artist whose book touches me 15 years after I read it.
First: I loved my iPod, but after a couple years its battery has deteriorated so much that I can only listen to it if plugged into a power source. I plan on getting a new one sooner or later but I'm mostly amazed that I can carry around most of my library of sounds. I cannot enjoy the shuffle. Like any music fan I made mix tapes and then CDs but I can't relinquish control of collaging, it's more aggrivating than enlightening for me.
Second: I saw some of my first images of Bela Tarr's on YouTube when nostalghia.com linked over there. I may just have to buy that new SANTANTANGO set, or ask for it for Xmas.
Third: Fuddy duddy tacts never work, agreed.
Finally: CACHE needs to disappear: really. I can't believe Haneke is remaking FUNNY GAMES in America. Is that necessary? I love Naomi Watts but I don't love the idea of putting her through that. And Michael Pitt is one of the evil troublemakers, I think, which spells disaster.
I've been waiting for an appropriate time to post this, but now that it's all over the Internet, I guess I'll just do so apropos of nothing.
Plus, it's funny!
Ken Levine writes Aaron Sorkin writing baseball.
Remaking Funny Games???!!! That was a college favorite, though I think it was because I hated the world then. That the remake's being photographed by the great Darius Khondji doesn't particularly sway me. Why do I get the sense Naomi Watts is gonna come out on top at the end of this version?
Haneke goes Hollywood - never would have guessed.
Further to the iPod situation: Godfrey Cheshire once remarked to me how different (and not necessarily in a bad way) it was to watch movies on his iBook computer. He said it wasn't a passive experience like television and wondered why no one had yet written an essay on it. I recall he delved into the experience in a review of him (don't remember which one), but an interesting topic for discussion.
As I recall, he talked about it in terms of physicality: movies in a theater make one lean forward, tv makes one lean back, a computer (placed in the lap) makes one lean over. Hope I'm not misquoting - at the very least that describes my own experience, in general, between the mediums.
Todd: Thanks for that faux-Sorkin link. It contains a line I wish I'd written:
"If baseball is a metaphor for life, then responsibility is its first cousin simile."
Keith: On a flight to LA a couple of months ago, I watched "The Graduate" and "Contempt" on a laptop with headphones. It was an incredibly intense experience, so I know where Godfrey's coming from.
Via Tom Sutpen at If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger...", here's George Plimpton interviewing Styron for The Paris Review.
Naomi's got EP so who knows.
I actually dig watching movies on my laptop. And with headphones, you're totally enveloped in the movie. It's the opposite of watching something on cable where you're encouraged to get up and roam and keep distancing yourself.
I can't believe Haneke is remaking FUNNY GAMES in America... And Michael Pitt is one of the evil troublemakers, I think, which spells disaster.
Good grief. What's he going to do, pout them to death?
The video iPod, "a pleasure to fondle." Can't overestimate the value of pleasurable fondling. Why, that alone . . .
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