1. Opera Jawa and its controversies: First heard about this New Crowned Hope commissioned film from Nathan Lee, who reviews it in this week's Village Voice. Then GreenCine pointed up a mini-controversy, sparked by Jeannette Catsoulis' New York Times review, which Jonathan Rosenbaum responds to on the Chicago Reader blog. Discuss -- and see the movie if you can.
["I've been reflecting lately that the film coverage these days in the New York Times -- thanks to the lively prose of Manohla Dargis, the literary intelligence (if not the film background) of A.O. Scott, and the critical and scholarly chops of Dave Kehr -- may be better than it's ever been before. But then I read the ugly, xenophobic, tossed-off review of Opera Jawa by Jeannette Catsoulis in today's paper, and I realize that in some ways we might as well be back in the 60s, when a barbarian like Bosley Crowther was smugly ruling the roost."]
2. "'Rent' is ready to close on Broadway": So one more time from the top, here we go...
[""No show runs forever" was one of the more astute observations of Broadway director-choreographer Michael Bennett, the man behind "A Chorus Line," itself a model of longevity. Bennett's theater truism was re-enforced this week with the announcement that the pop-rock musical "Rent" will close June 1 after a 12-year run, 5,012 performances and an assortment of prizes and awards, including the Tony and Pulitzer -- not to mentions grosses of over $280 million."]
3. Every eight days in 2008, Nathaniel Rogers is celebrating the 8th something of something: this week, the 8th character in Showgirls.
["Bitch aint' playin"]
4. From Edward Copeland on Film, the BAFTA nominations. Congrats to the few nods to This Is England and make sure, all you nominees, to bring your Ray Stokes dolls.
["The British equivalent of Oscar has released its nominations."]
5. Time for our first ever "Readers pick the 5th link" contest because it's getting late, and damned if the editor can find anything worth including today. Submit your "5th Link" below. First prize will be a big, wet, gobsmacking kiss from the cutie above. 
Quote of the Day: Michel Houellebecq
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Don't let David Lynch catch you watching a movie on the iPhone. (Thanks Godfrey.)
Clip of the Day: Bless you, Vadim Rizov, your mama's on crack rock.
_____________________________________________________
"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Links for the Day (January 17th, 2008)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
32 comments:
My sperm sparkles in the heavens.
Whose doesn't?
Nathaniel Rogers's idea is brilliant. If I could suggest a subject, I would nominate the eigth song from The Rolling Stones' eighth live album, which, incidentally, is Honky Tonk Women on Live Licks. Now you know everything.
Link suggestion: Surprisingly positive review of Gregg Araki's latest, "Smiley Face" recently out on DVD.
RE: Fifth link - Hmmm... so none of us posted anything worth including huh? Why I oughta...
Okay, for a fifth link how about
The Almost Greatest Teams by the Cold Hard Football Facts. Hey, it's playoff time and I'm as passionate about football as I am about film.
So will the Pats be the greatest and go undefeated through the SuperBowl or will they be humiliated, losing in the Conference game or SuperBowl and forever be known as the team that went 16-0 and then lost it all?
I say... they win it all.
Is this mysterious absentee fifth link The Missing Link?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbXc-BEovg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN30FfsQcDw
Hmmm....
Weren't the Patriots already humiliated when they got caught cheating in the first game of the season, against the lowly Jets? They will forever be known as the team with an asterisk next to their 16-0 season, and next to all their Super Bowl wins. It's not movie related, but perhaps the 5th link should be to a reminder of what an unsportsmanlike creep Bill Belichick is. (Sorry, Jonathan. I just have no patience for people's selective memory of what the Pats have done this year.)
New Fleming Hardback Covers
http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/articles/literary_2008_fleming_hardbacks.php3?t=&s=
["The new cover designs have been revealed for Ian Fleming's series of James Bond novels due to be republished by Penguin this year. To coincide with the Ian Fleming centenary, all 14 novels will be re-released in hardback under the Penguin 007 imprint on May 28th 2008.
The covers are by artist Michael Gillette. Originally from Wales but now based in San Francisco, USA, Gillette has worked for some of the world's biggest clients including Capitol Records, Greenpeace, Levi and MTV]
Basically, each cover is a different naked chick (yeah, baby) with the title written across her back.
To me, they evoke Maurice Binder's opening credits more than Ian Fleming's writing, but what do I know?
5th link: Tom Sutpen's latest miniseries, from last week, called "Movie Directors and the Means of Production."
On the Dole - I would call Belichick more of a prick than a creep but I suppose that's splitting hairs.
Hey I've been a fan because of a Boston connection since I was a wee naif going back some 35 years now so I'm rooting for them (I spent decades with them as lovable losers) but I agree Belichick is a paranoid moron who tainted their name. As for this season, spygate happened in the first quarter of the first game so I can't really see it accounting for their record (which would be the point of an asterisk - to say they got this record by cheating). The players achieved the record by their play on the field, not by their lowly coach's cheating ways.
Unless of course Belichick has been doing something else all year that we don't know about yet, which is possible.
And as a Patriots fan let me say this: I get so sick and tired of hearing sportswriters say Belichick is a genius. Funny how he wasn't a genius with Drew Bledsoe huh? Or with the Browns? Take Tom Brady out of the equation and Belichick is a half-way decent defensive coach with middling .500 records.
I was so hoping after SpyGate that Kraft would fire him and we would all see that the team would go on winning without him and wherever he went they would have mediocre records but alas, Kraft didn't have the balls - or the ethics.
In keeping with the dog meme, a Hungarian computer program translate barking?
(A skill most dog owners pick up anyway, of course.)
5th link suggestion. This started making the rounds a couple of days ago, so it may be too old, but how about The GOP Field as Buffy villains:
http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2008/01/the-gop-primary.html
Or a use for Cloverfield promo stuff:
http://www.progressiveruin.com/2008_01_13_archive.html#4001278711893608685
I think I'm gonna make "Pick the 5th Link" a weekly staple.
I just left this comment on the Chicago Reader blog:
"I admire your work, JR, and am proud to have published an interview with you on my blog. But you're about as far off-base on this topic as you could possibly be. The review in question is not negative by a long shot; quite the contrary, it is designed to use 200 words to intrigue people who might not otherwise be inclined to seek out a film like this one. Brief as it is, the review makes the film sound like a challenge to adventurous moviegoers who feel like spending their money on something other than the Hollywood usual.
Beyond that, I'm very sorry to say that this blog entry is written from a position of ignorance of how newspapers other than the Chicago Reader work. At the Times, as well as other dailies, the lead critics (in this case, A.O. Scott and Manohla) make first choice of what's out there, followed by Holden, then the freelancers -- me, then Catsoulis, then the rest of the pool. (I've been taking a couple of weeks off from the Times to work on a personal project, so I wasn't in the lineup the week this one was handed out -- otherwise I might have picked it, and been the object of your ire. Dodged that bullet!)
At the Times, freelancers are rarely allowed to write longer than 200 words on a movie. If Catsoulis had included the information you chastised her for omitting from her capsule review, and explained it at a level of detail sufficient to satisfy you, she would have lost about half of her word count.
I was going to say that this entry should have been a classic Jonathan Rosenbaum rant against the system that would relegate a movie like this to a non-mainstream thater in New York, and coverage of the movie to a daily newspaper's back pages -- but that would have required you to come at this subject from a position of knowledge that you apparently lack.
You've traditionally been one of the few critics consistently hammering on Hollywood movies for adopting the "one bad apple" approach to drama, wherein larger systemic ills are pinned on a single bad guy. I'm sad to see you do that very thing here."
Matt - You left off, "Burn!" at the end of your comment.
Matt:
I love Rosenbaum, but suspect he'll only get more contentious in semi-retirement. On the plus side, I now plan to seek out Opera Jawa.
Jonathan:
Agreed that Belichick is to blame, Brady and the other players are great, and they didn't need to cheat to beat the Jets. But they did, and got caught, and Mangini said he knew how to catch them because they'd done it when he was an assistant. So, all their championships are now tainted, and we can't help but wonder whether they cheated and didn't get caught at other points this season. The asterisk definitely belongs, whether they got any benefit from cheating or not, because they did cheat. And you're right, that's on Belichick.
As a Pats fan I can't tell you how much I hate Belichick for doing this because it taints everything. Let me tell you, it sucks to be a fan of a team and hate the head coach.
And I agree about Rosenbaum - now that he's retired he's really going to get grumpy.
5th Link:
I started acupuncture to help my broken ankle heal and discovered an amazing world.
Here is Acupuncture Happy Hour. Also click over to Colleen's main site.
http://www.acupuncturehappyhour.com/
5th link:
www.bizbash.com
www.masterplanneronline.com
because i'm a soulless, trade mag employee now.
As a Bears fan I gotta say we're being naive if we think the Pats are the only team pulling such stunts. Nah, the Pats are a pretty astonishing team with a really excellent, prepared coach who happens to have a grating personality. Dude deserves all the credit he gets and I'd be unwilling to put an asterik on their accomplishments in a league where such an infraction is a tip of the iceberg. It would have been incredibly stupid to fire Belichick, btw, because his players love him. The other teams should shut up and just play ball (same advice should have gone to the Bears at the beginning of the year when they felt like a repeat trip to the Super Bowl was something they could take for granted, esp. with that lousy QB and unproven RB).
Matt:
On a completely unrelated note, I caught up with The Lookout last night, and came across your NY Times review of it today. Very sharp work, under tight word-count limitations. You nailed both what I liked a lot about the movie, and where it fell short. (The only comment I would add is that Carla Gugino deserved more screen time.)
I just posted a comment on the Chicago Reader blog as well. I think JR is right that Matt's response doesn't really address the issue of the review's snickering xenophobic undertones:
"I've been reading J. Rosenbaum's writings for quite a while, and find myself disagreeing with him as often as agreeing, but on this one I'm totally with him. Keeping in mind space restrictions, the original review is still snide and dismissive, while not really giving much of an idea of what the film (which I haven't seen) might be like. I don't mind the lack of context or references to New Crowned Hope (though "wells" is right - that'd be much more important than namedropping Madonna) but I do take exception to the condescending way the review treats the film, while not writing about it aesthetically in any way. There's an undercurrent of snickering throughout the review.
On the plus side, this little controversy has made me really want to see the film."
Hey, that 5th link is my fiancee! She told me she had a "past" but I didn't know there were tongue pictures on the Internet!
Justin:
I don't know anybody who thinks the Pats are the only team that cheats, but they're the only ones who got caught red-handed. Hence, a completely deserved asterisk next to their accomplishments this season, with the blame resting squarely on Belichick's shoulders. He may be a great coach anyway, but he cheated and got caught, and thus has cast an ugly pall over a great team. Bonds and Clemens were sure-fire Hall of Famers before they ever used steroids, but that doesn't excuse what they did, and Belichick shouldn't be let off the hook either.
Matt: While you were writing your follow-up comment over at the Reader blog, I was making a similar observation. When I submitted it, you'd beat me to it!
There was a piece in the NYT recently about a revival of "Last Year at Marienbad." I don't mean to be facetious when I say that describing a film as "guaranteed to test the fortitude of all but the most adventurous viewer" (or "audacious, undeniably challenging, in fact downright mind-boggling avant-garde" -- masterpiece or no) may appeal directly to potential viewers most likely to be interested (and receptive to) it: i.e., those who appreciate feeling adventurous and challenged. Surely there are enough of them in NY to fill up some seats at MOMA, which isn't exactly hard to get to. Those who already know about the New Crowned Hope series should already be up for it, so I hope the screening goes well. I also hope that the days when Bosley Crowther or Vincent Canby could kill the distribution prospects of a film with a negative review are over. To look on the bright side: For an avant-garde musical like this, Nathan Lee's rave in the Voice may be the best publicity possible.
Thanks, Jim--As you've seen, I'm sure, JR responded to my comment, and I left one more comment.
Ed: I would have written a different capsule -- probably concentrating more on the filmmaking, to the extent that such a thing is possible in 200 words. But the one JC wrote isn't the audience repellent that JR seems to indicate. It makes the movie sound fun, and an adventure for moviegoers who (like JC, she pretty much admits implicitly) aren't familiar with this filmmaker or this type of film.
Sorry Matt, she makes it sound less like an adventure and more like an endurance test. I'd wager that 'A colorful and confounding head trip, “Opera Jawa” is guaranteed to test the fortitude of all but the most adventurous viewer' is not a hugely attractive proposition to many, including those who may potentially enjoy it.
Keith: We're coming up on midnight. Which proposed fifth link wins the gobsmacking kiss?
Jonathan: "Take Tom Brady out of the equation and Belichick is a half-way decent defensive coach with middling .500 records. "
You mean he's a grouchier, less smug Brian Billick? I totally buy that.
And the winner is... John Lichman! Because after what he told me tonight over drinks, he deserves a gobsmacking kiss from Jim Emerson's fiancee. :-)
My fie-AN-see sure is cute, though.
Re: Reviews (and reviews of reviews) of "Opera Jawa": I was reminded of Roger Ebert's story, which he relates in his latest Answer Man column (I just now published it online), about a phone call he once got from a reader:
Caller: "We live near the Wilmette Theatre, which is showing 'Cries and Whispers.' What can you tell us about it?"
Ebert: "I think it is the best film of the year."
Caller: "Oh, that doesn't sound like anything we'd want to see!"
Hmmm, those new Bond covers don't do much for me. I think I prefer those Penguin paperback covers done by Richie Fahey a few years back.
The "For Your Eyes Only" cover is especially good.
For British Eyes Only...
Justin: You mean he's a grouchier, less smug Brian Billick? I totally buy that.
Excellent call.
Post a Comment