1. "On Violence and Restraint in The Dark Knight": Ed Howard responds to my review of the latest Batman film. I'll also post a link to it in the comments section of the DK thread.
["There something, let's say, interesting about a critical perspective that simultaneously lambastes a film for being "sadistic" while also criticizing the filmmaker for not showing more onscreen violence. This contradictory criticism aligns Uhlich, ironically, with that peculiar breed of fanboys disappointed in the film's PG-13 rating, thirsting for Saw-level blood-splatter and gore. The film itself has little patience for such base urges, and the violence in the film is depicted with an economy and tact that communicates the horror of the Joker's actions while never satisfying the desire to ogle his atrocities firsthand. This isn't flinching away from horror, it's tastefulness, a quality that has long been absent from mainstream filmmaking, and a quality that Uhlich doesn't seem to miss. Conditioned on one bloody violence-porn fantasy after another, have we really come to a point where we feel compelled to criticize the rare film that depicts violence without splattering the screen with it?"]
2. "Theater goes dark for Ebert, Roeper": Oh, yes, please replace them with Ben Lyons. Please! *ahem* Anyways: Roger's statement is here. Richard's is summarized here.
["The curtain has come down on "At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper." The aisle may vanish too. Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert and columnist Richard Roeper are cutting ties with the TV franchise that Disney-ABC Domestic Television has syndicated nationally for 22 years. Each cited major changes they say Disney plans to make to the movie-review program that for three decades has forced filmmakers and studio executives on both coasts and beyond to pay heed to judgments of their work in Chicago, the heart of flyover country."]
3. Lichman, what would I do without you? Click here for an online community dedicated to the study of Cult Media.
["This website encourages the formation of a global network of students, academics, scholar-fans, and fan-scholars studying cult film, television, and other media. As online fan communities continue to thrive, likewise grows the need for a more cohesive community among those whose research interests actively span both fannish and academic quarters. This site's centerpiece is a discussion forum for conversing about cult media studies and the objects of its analysis. Announcements of events, new releases, and calls for papers are welcomed. Selected events will be posted on the main page. There is also a section of the site for uploading or embedding videos as visual aids or potential objects of interest for other members. Members may also post blogs, photos, comments, or other content on their personal pages."]
4. "The X-Files as '70s cop show": Todd VanDerWerff's latest entry in The X-Files blog-a-thon.
["There's been a lot of talk about how The X-Files just didn't feel like anything else when it first came on, but, really, it felt EXACTLY like something else. It felt like a really good 70s cop show. Like, maybe the apex of the format. But it DID change two things in that format in pretty interesting ways. It rejuvenated the "He's a loose cannon! He plays by the rules!" dialectic of many a cop show by twisting it on its ear and showing a new side of it ("He believes crazy stuff! She believes rational stuff!"), and it created new methods for the "what," allowing the show to approach its cases through a new genre lens. It says something, I think, that the previously most successful sci-fi series -- Star Trek: The Next Generation -- ALSO took a discarded TV template (the Western, though, obviously, it borrowed that from the original Star Trek) and revitalized it in new ways. In general, TV sci-fi crosses over from the cult to the mass audience when it exists AS sci-fi, but also as something else. This probably also explains why the first season of Lost, when the show was more or less a sci-fi spin on a show like The Love Boat (stay with me here -- the show was about a large band of characters, and it dug into why each character was having some sort of emotional crisis, then semi-resolved that crisis within the episode -- just like The Love Boat!), was far more successful in the ratings than subsequent seasons, when the show embraced its sci-fi nature hard-core."]
5. "Court overturns CBS fine over Janet Jackson flash": Tits and a$$.
["The U.S. government's campaign against television indecency was dealt a blow on Monday when a court overturned a $550,000 (275,000 pound) fine against CBS Corp television stations for airing a glimpse of pop singer Janet Jackson's breast during the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said the Federal Communications Commission had "arbitrarily and capriciously departed from its prior policy" that exempted fleeting broadcast material from actionable indecency violations. Jackson's right breast was exposed to almost 90 million TV viewers for a fraction of a second during the live 2004 Super Bowl football halftime show in what fellow pop singer Justin Timberlake later called a "wardrobe malfunction." Timberlake ripped off part of Jackson's bustier exposing Jackson's breast during the show. Despite the brevity, lawmakers and regulators were outraged and vowed a crackdown on broadcast indecency."]
Quote of the Day: André Gide
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Santa Claus is a war criminal? (Hattip: Ali Arikan)
Clip of the Day: The rare and elusive wild pug.
_____________________________________________________
"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.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Links for the Day (July 22nd, 2008)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
9 comments:
re #2:
so, any second, vadim and myself will be contacted by Disney, right?
Re #1: It was good to read a measured, intelligent response to Keith's review after what was going on here the entire weekend.
As I mentioned in the comments section there, I personally found The Dark Knight to be more complex than most of its supporters and detractors are suggesting. Hopefully, a serious discussion on this will happen once the hype dies down and rationality takes over.
Unfortunately, we seem to be living in the Age of Hyperbole where arguments are to be declared, but not supported or discussed.
Re #5: Now, on the subject of rationality, while a misbegotten war continues to be waged and our economy fails, the non-issue of Janet Jackson's tit has made it all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
4 1/2 years later, this subject has been discussed while people lose their houses.
I barely watch any television and, yet, I'm still offended when the FCC (kowtowing to religious groups seeking to influence government policy with their ideology) wants to decide for me what is offensive.
Our government continues to treat us like children and yet there is no outrage from the public.
Lichman - I was thinking more along the lines of Keith Uhlich and IHateKeithUhlich. Should the latter prove unavailable, there is always the guy obsessed with Keith's eyebrows. Now there was an astute fella.
scratch that. Ben Lyons? Ben Mankiewicz? they're the new hosts?
wtf, yo. if anything has been taught to us, it is that a Lyons needs an infinitely smarter and wittier British woman at his side.
Who also drives an Acura everywhere.
I keep going back and forth regarding Dark Knight.
But I still think the biggest flaw is the screenplay. The Nolan team, as per Memento, write movies built on contrivances or sort of reverse deux ex machinas.
And while it is suppose to build to a climax or big "philosophical" point, does it really?
- The surveillance thing? Seriously, a movie where Dent, Gordon, Fox, and Batman aid, abet, and perform probably cause-less warrants, torture, and prisoner brutality, there is suppose to be something sacred left? Right, outright killing of the Joker, though Batman more or less did the same in the first movie by letting the villain dude die there.
- The ferry quandary? Hasn't the Joker already won his point when the police and regular citizens tried to kill the accountant? Or the upright citizens vote? Or the omission when it seem either the prisoner dude or the upright citizen dude was ambiguously going to pull the trigger.
I guess, I don't fault the direction or the acting or the action pieces or whatever. It seemed with the restriction/limitation of the Batman legacy, and the rating system, and so forth, most everything was serviceable to pretty good (acting).
Damn, Batman is such a perfect movie for discussion. Richly flawed and with plenty of supporters and detractors.
The problem with bad sci-fi is that it confuses "setting" and "plot". Too much of it is bad or mediocre plotting and stories that sci-fi fans are supposed to glom onto because it's set in some alterna-reality/future/other planet/etc.
Good sci-fi and fantasy however, is where the stories are good, and "happen" to be set in such a universe (yes, the universe is part of what drives the plot, but it isn't mistaken for the plot). Battlestar Galactica, or Buffy, or close encounters, or the best of star trek, are good not because they're "sci-fi/fantasy". There good because they tell original, compelling stories that draw you in. The sci-fi aspects serve the story, not the other way around.
It's a shame, but any sort of interesting discussion that could have been taken place about "The Dark Knight" has been killed by the majority of its fans who attempt to halt any discussion of the film unless it is preceded by a proclamation that it is the cinema's greatest achievement to date. I think it has already been voted the greatest film of all time on IMDB, if you can believe that.
I enjoyed the film - it's certainly no "Memento" in my book nor even the best Hollywood film of the summer, but much better than your average comic book film.
But how can anyone honestly engage in a film's discussion if, should you disagree with the picture's rabid fanbase on its merits, it is being presented as FACT that the film is some sort of masterpiece? It's almost laughable how TDK's fans are proclaiming that all of the film's detractors know nothing about film?
so yeah . . . i just wanted to say that i am with you on the batman review even though the comments there are disabled. i saw the movie and couldn't wait for it to end. if i hear one more person go on about how great it was i just might lose that last bit of hope that i have for humanity.
batman begins i rather liked though. you may go on about the overuse of fear but i believe it to be a legitimate usage. heidigger himself said that all was 'anxiety'. (or soemthing like that)
anyway . . . these filmmakers who wannabe philosophers have a lot of catching up to do. the movie was not so complex as santos or the directors would have us believe. the dichotomies could easily be shown to be haphazard and invalid by a second year philosophy student. and pretty much all of your criticisms were spot on.
actually i don't know anymore. maybe spinoza was wrong . . . he was only a glass grinder afterall . . . was there a point to batman there, at the end? i didn't really get it. am i retarded? all i remember was wanting to go home.
i am suprised you didn't mention pan's labrinyth though in referring to the cheek cutting. i love that scene where she 'guts him like a pig' . . . or something to that effect. but alas americans can't read and most don't speak spanish so they would have never seen that film.
one thing your detractors said that i can agree with thogh is that you sound a bit of an ass with the diction and the word choices. should we really make them feel stupid? it's not like they don't already know . . . even though they would never admit it.
tolstoy himself recognized this just before his death in his regrets of the reception of anna karenina by the public. the thing is with genius is that the majority can only undestand you long after you are dead because educated people are finally paid to teach children that what you had to say was worth saying. sorry . . . i don't mean to predict the future there but i hope you get the point.
schopenhauer will never get that point . . . consider yourself lucky.
I thought that the strength of the "pencil gag" was exactly that it was so sudden, unexpected, and "blink and you'll miss it." It took a brief moment to even register what had happened - it was all over in a flash. That's a positive, not a negative, for me! The audience I saw the film with certainly gave a sharp intake of breath and then a smattering of nervous, appreciative laughter and "wows" after.
Post a Comment