1. "'Wonder Woman' finds body floating in river": From CNN.
["The actress who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s says she didn't do anything extraordinary when she discovered a body this week on the Potomac River in Washington. Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn't have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body."]
2. Three updates from Stream: Eric Kohn helps Joe Swanberg 'splain himself; Jamie Stuart breaks down the digital divide (excerpt below); and Kohn again, reporting on Albert Maysles' recent IFC Center appearance.
["Here's the thing: Film acquisition and distribution are going digital. Got it? Great. Now that that's understood and out of the way, critics and journalists need to comprehend that the motion picture form is transitioning from a medium (celluloid) to a series of formats (digital data). And they need to know what those formats are, or they'll look dumb to the filmmakers who use them. ... As confusing as all of this sounds, if you're a critic or journalist, it's your job to know and understand these things. You need to know them the same way as in the past you needed to know the difference between Super-8, 16mm, Super-16, 35mm (1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, etc.), and 70mm. And if you don't know the difference between any of those things you're incompetent."]
3. "Announcing the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon: July 9-13, 2008": Culture Snob calls it in honor of his fifth.
["Put simply, the Self-Involvement Blog-a-thon is about the intersection of movies and life. My hope is that it will serve as a celebration of the power of the moving picture removed from the critical, cultural, and financial contexts in which it is typically considered. Of course, we bring baggage whenever we talk or write about movies, but this is meant to be more personal — intensely idiosyncratic reactions and analyses, difficult times when movies became more than movies, brushes with movie stars, crushes on movie stars, memories from youthful encounters with film, embarrassing revelations, cinematic epiphanies, meticulous drawings of Darth Vader from your eight-year-old self, ... . The only rule is that contributions have two central elements: movies and you."]
4. "McCabe & Mrs. Miller": That Fuzzy Bastard on one of Altman's greatest.
["When I first saw McCabe in college, the professor talked about the classic Western narrative of the guy who built the town being unable to live in it. But really, the film's even crueler than that: McCabe really doesn't build the town at all. He shows up, buys up some property, and starts a business, but the one thing he brings that wasn't there before---a classy brothel which serves as the movie's ironic symbol of civilization---wasn't his idea at all; he just put up the capital that Mrs. Miller put to work. Ultimately, McCabe is a good-time irrelevance---not only can he not adjust to civilized life, he's not much use on the frontier either. Fortunately for Altman, he's got the immense charisma of Warren Beatty on his side; otherwise it'd be awfully hard to pay attention to what's ultimately the story of a great nonentity."]
5. "Eastwood fires back at Spike Lee": From The Star-Ledger.
["Lee, you may remember, admonished Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood last month for Eastwood's failure to include African-American soldiers in his recent companion films about World War II, "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima." In an interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper, Eastwood hit back, saying that black soldiers didn't raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi, immortalized in the iconic photograph. ("Letters" is about the battle from the Japanese perspective, and we're guessing African-Americans were in short supply.) "Has he ever studied the history?" Eastwood says. "The story is 'Flags of Our Fathers,' the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go: 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." Then, referring to Lee, he adds, "A guy like him should shut his face." Snap, grandpa!"]
Quote of the Day: Gustave Flaubert
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Some teaser art for Oliver Stone's upcoming biopic of the best president ever. (Hattip: Jonathan Pacheco)
Clip(s) of the Day: Wonder Woman transforms, takes on a laser, and uses her tiara as a boomerang.
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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. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Links for the Day (June 7th, 2008)
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5 comments:
Re #5: Next, Spike Lee will complain that there were any black characters in "Schindler's List". Lee's shameless self-promotion does his own movies a disservice. Not mentioned above, but he criticized the Coen Brothers the same time he did Eastwood.
If Lee is going to criticize other filmmakers, how about how black people are portrayed as clowns, buffoons, assistants to rich white people, funny sidekicks, or (excuse me for the use of the term) "magic niggers
"? Where was Lee when "Norbit" was released? Or is it okay when Eddie Murphy denigrates black people?
Hasn't Clint Eastwood had a history of casting actors of different colors in his movies and not having them play stereotypes?
I agree Steven...Lee is a very good director, but his public proclaimations are often a distraction from his talent (sort of like Charlton Heston on the other side).
In the interview, Eastwood also points out:
He (Lee) was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else.
You go Clint!
The bizarre thing about all this is that there ARE black soldiers in Flags Of Our Fathers: black Marines, no less.
You see them during the briefing scene on board the troop transport ship, standing in a group and watching the officers talking off screen.
I remember this really jumping out at me the first time I saw the film and being glad that Eastwood and his collaboraters had at least acknowledged the presence of black soldiers, sailors and Marines during the battle, even if they did'nt explore it any further.
And Eastwood has a point. I mean, in reality, yes, aside from Ira Hayes the men who were involved with the flag-raising were basically an all white outfit. What would Lee prefer, some kind of trumped up, fictionalized freindship between a historical character and a black Marine or sailor that would reek of the tokenism of mid-60s Hollywood?
I sincerely hope that Lee does'nt look at the "Look Who's Coming To Dinner" mascot-like treatment of Dorie Miller in Pearl Harbor (wherein one of the truest heroes of Pearl Harbor could only appear in scenes with the trio of fictionalized, white leads--I mean, the scene where Miller is boxing has more footage of Hartnett, grinning, nodding, and waving his hand in the air then the actual fight) and nod going, "MmmHmmm, that's the way to do it!"
It reminds me of Lee's similiar criticism of "The Green Mile": instead of pointing out the character John Coffee's stereotyped "Yassuh, boss" mannerisms, he complained Coffee was using his magical powers to help only white people instead of liberating blacks from oppression. Well, that's a good idea but IT'S NOT THE STORY! The story is about a black man on Death Row and the Christ-like message of love he imparts to a group of white men--forcing them to rethink their part in the Jim Crow system. If Spike Lee wants a story about a black superhero going around stopping lynchings and freeing chain gangs, why does'nt he tell it himself? If he wants stories about black soldiers in World War II, why does'nt he make these films? I don't want to dismiss so much of his great work ("When The Levees Broke" is arguably the best American documentary of the past ten years), but where does he get off sniping at people like Eastwood and Stephen King when he's spending his time making She Hate Me and Inside Man?
Hmm, should have read the other comments and seen everything that Clint said before unwittingly repeating him. Oh well, still valid, I guess.
Spike Lee is a fantastically talented filmmaker and sharp mind, but he has an implacable, deadly enemy who lives under his nose and above his chin.
But the thing is, for all the trouble it creates, it's impossible not to notice how much the immense anger he carries around is the engine of his creativity---sometimes that even becomes his subject, as with the end of "He Got Game". A Lee who wasn't constantly burning with (often unjustified) rage would be a Lee who doesn't make the films he makes, and that would be a real tragedy.
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