1. "Shared, Not Preached": Prashin Chaturvedi's review of Days of Heaven, for Alex Jackson's site I Viddied it on the Screen.
["Why is Days of Heaven my favorite film? I have been asking myself that question ever since I read about the user-review idea at IVIOTS. First I couldn’t figure it out, like reading something too close to my face, but then after much contemplation I concluded that it is because Days of Heaven is the embodiment of everything I think great art must be. Great art, as I see it, must not be ego-driven, or in other words it must be a partnership between the artist and the audience. Maybe this has to do with my philosophy of life, that Man can become Infinite only through realization of his Nothingness. When you own twelve things, you’re the owner of twelve things; but when you own nothing, you’re the owner of it all."]
2. "People Will Be Arguing Over This Film": Sky News on Brian De Palma's latest film Redacted, with accompanying video. Thanks to Paul V. Sheridan for the link. David Hudson gathers the reviews from the film's Venice premiere at GreenCine Daily.
["Sky News gained exclusive access to the set of the film in April, and asked De Palma his hopes and motive for the production going on show in Venice this week."]
3. "Slave who led failed revolt in 1800 ‘pardoned’": Only 207 years...
["Gabriel Prosser, who was hanged for leading a failed slave revolt in 1800, has won a symbolic gubernatorial pardon."]
4. "Halloween": Walter Chaw parses Rob Zombie's remake.
["If Rob Zombie ever decides to direct a horror movie, watch out. To date, up to and including his remake of John Carpenter's legendary Halloween, he's presented us a series of family melodramas peppered with modest genre references and exploitation flourishes. His best film, The Devil's Rejects, is widely misread and underestimated, the most common complaint being that it isn't scary. It's a lot like complaining that Ordinary People isn't scary."]
5. "Mysterious Reflections of Hollywood Paranoia": Stephen Holden reviews The Nines.
["In the three loosely related stories that make up “The Nines,” a philosophical mind teaser with satirical fangs that marks the directing debut of the screenwriter John August, the stressed-out psyches of jockeying Hollywood muckety-mucks are disturbed by strange metaphysical intimations. Think of it as a kind of “Twilight Zone 2007” in which the paranoia endemic to an industry that runs on illusion, hype and extravagant grandiosity comes home to roost."]
Quote of the Day: Lily Tomlin
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): "Androgyne"; Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
Clip of the Day: The Virgin Mary, now appearing on a garage door near you...
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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.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Links for the Day (September 1st, 2007)
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11 comments:
JJ says:
--Interesting that the Days Of Heaven peice qoutes that Malick interview where he talks about what suffering does to you...this is kind've off topic, but does'nt that remind anybody else of some voice-over in The Thin Red Line..."War don't ennoble men. It turns 'em into dogs, poisons the soul."
I'm thinking De Palma wanted to tackle the Redacted story because he could re-use footage from Casualties of War.
Re: Video-
I'm glad that the reporter didn't even show the slightest bit of doubt or hesitation in explaining what the fuzzy reflection of light on the garage door was. It's obviously the Virgin! Nothing else could even make sense!
Hooray for local media!
It is un-American to criticise the government... Personally, I am not scared. I am the man they love to hate. I am sure they will say; 'It's another De Palma misogynist saga'.
This quote makes it seem as if De Palma doesn't know what "misogyny" means. I wouldn't automatically connect criticizing the government with misogyny -- one would think that portraying the brutality of US troops would be labelled something else. Then again, I haven't seen the film, so maybe he does spend its running time blaming all the ills of the world on women.
More than anything else, this short piece makes Redacted sound like The French Connection, which Matt pegged as sensationalist because that was what was fashionable at the time. The events of Redacted are based on something that really happened, but the soldiers involved were brought to trial and convicted. How does De Palma spin those events? Are we to understand that what happened was an anomaly, or is it supposedly representative of all the US armed forces?
There is a part of the population who believes that all soldiers are rapists and murderers, and they won't have any problems with a movie with that premise. From everyone else, I wouldn't expect must respect if the film reads as an indictment of everyone in uniform.
Joan: "This quote makes it seem as if De Palma doesn't know what "misogyny" means. I wouldn't automatically connect criticizing the government with misogyny -- one would think that portraying the brutality of US troops would be labelled something else."
I think De Palma is referring to the unthinking reception Casualties of War received from some quarters.
What Bruce said. "Casualties" was piled on for how it portrayed the young woman Oahn. I think De Palma is just anticipating more of the same with "Redacted" as it deals with a similar situation (the rape and murder of an underage Iraqi girl).
Sorry, guys, I'm not buying it, unless De Palma somehow manages to blame the Iraqi girl for what befell her and her family. "Another misogynist saga" only works if 1) he's been accused of misogyny before (which you say happened with "Casualties") and 2) the current work will be assessed the same way.
It's just stupid. De Palma is trying to preempt his critics by declaring he's not afraid, he knows what they're going to say about the film and dismisses it out of hand. But the fact that he can't even accurately predict (or label, maybe it is just a vocabulary issue) where the harshest criticism will focus demonstrates that he's not nearly as perceptive and smart as he thinks he is.
Speaking from my own research, De Palma's been down this road with a good many critics tons of times before, so I don't hold his cynical prediction against him. I see it as the defense mechanism of an artist who's been burned a helluva of lot, and pretty much with the same restated accusations, for years on end. In the end, it has next-to-nothing to do with his film.
All the more reason we should wait for "Redacted"'s release, live with it, and decide for ourselves.
Misogyny was a criticism leveled at De Palma so much midway through his career that in 1990 (a year after CASUALTIES OF WAR was released), Kenneth MacKinnon published a book titled: "Misogyny in the Movies: The De Palma Question."
I think DePalma's point is that the usual media forces arrayed against a "liberal" voice will employ typical misdirection to minimize and dismiss the work. (cf. "Michael Moore is fat" and "Sam Mendes isn't even American.")
And let's clear up a few things: Casualties of War is the greatest feminist film ever made, because it shows, in the most gruesome and literally awesome way, the price that a woman pays when men dehumanize her. I also think it's the greatest war movie ever made. If DePalma is a misogynist, we need more like him.
And, finally, I see Joan has brought her fancy fallacy bag chock full of false choices and straw men. Redacted doesn't have to indict ALL soldiers; it merely has to dramatize what some occupying soldiers are capable of. In these jingoistic, casket-censored, misleadingly-embedded journalistic times, I can only hope that such true awfulness as Redacted promises begins to counterbalance the glossy lies and abject omissions dignified under the phrase "war coverage."
War is ugly, and perhaps we should at least not turn our heads from what we have wrought.
Joan has brought her fancy fallacy bag chock full of false choices and straw men.
That's a great line, Penman -- how long have you been waiting for an opportunity to use it?
Too bad it doesn't apply -- I haven't seen Redacted but I have read some of the early criticism of it, enough to know that De Palma is being faulted for not making clear that the events he's portraying are far from the norm. You'll note that I didn't agree with those comments, but I'm as qualified as anyone to ask questions about what the film does and does not say, and to predict what different interest groups' reactions will be.
The misdirection angle would be plausible if De Palma hadn't started out by saying that it's un-American to criticize the government. He was on the right track, but then he de-railed himself. I wonder if he's just the victim of quote-compression by the reporter and/or editor.
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