Links for the Day (March 30th, 2008)

Links for the Day (March 30th, 2008)

By Keith Uhlich on March 30, 2008 in Links for the Day Jump to Comments (0)

1. "Jones/Kael": The thread on Nathan Lee at The Reeler is visited by Kent Jones, offering a lengthy riposte to a commenter who took issue with several of his statements on criticism and Pauline Kael. Scroll down the page to see his entry.

["I never realized that I'd destroyed Pauline Kael's cultural authority, let alone intended to do so. And just think: it was pointed out to me in a post about a writer who was just fired from his job, and who you wasted no time in denigrating. Do you really believe that I, or anyone else for that matter, is capable of lessening Pauline Kael's cultural authority, let alone destroying it? Find me a film critic who is more widely cited in the mainstream press and I'll send you all the money in my pocket. There are no entries on Andrew Sarris or Manny Farber in A Biographical Dictionary of Film. Louis Menand would never dream of writing a New Yorker piece on Stanley Kauffman. No one is quoted more frequently, and apart from James Agee no one else's writings have been so lovingly and exhaustively collected. Almost seven years after her death, she remains a powerful cultural force."]

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2. "No God for Anton Chigurh?": By Jim Emerson at Scanners.

["The "faith" that man had isn't in God, but in the future of his species right here on this earth. What do you think?"]

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3. "Clinton Shouldn't Feel Forced to Quit Race, Obama Says": From The New York Times. Related, from the Washington Post: "Clinton Seeks to Cash In on 'Drop Out' Talk".

["There's a silver lining in every dark cloud, or at least that's the approach Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign is taking when it comes to recent comments made by surrogates for Barack Obama that Clinton should drop from the Democratic presidential race. Just hours after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) told Vermont Public Radio that there was "no way" Clinton could win enough delegates to claim the nomination and, therefore, "she ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama," an e-mail entitled "The Pattern" arrived in The Fix's inbox. "Have you noticed the pattern?" Clinton asks in the message, adding: "Every time our campaign demonstrates its strength and resilience, people start to suggest we should end our pursuit of the Democratic nomination. "Those anxious to force us to the sidelines aren't doing it because they think we're going to lose the upcoming primaries. The fact is, they're reading the same polls we are, and they know we are in a position to win.""]

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4. "Cities Switch Off Lights for Earth Hour": An Associated Press report.

["From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to the Sears Tower's famous antennas in Chicago, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change. The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were. The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe to North America in cadence with the setting of the sun."]

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5. "Oldest Voice Recording, A French Folksong": From Information Week. Listen the audio here.

["A group of researchers has played what is thought to be the oldest recording of a human voice. The recording played Thursday predates Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph (previously thought to have recorded the first sound) by 17 years. It captured about 10 seconds of the French folksong "Au Clair De La Lune" on April 9, 1860. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded the voice by using a "phonautograph" to scratch sound waves onto a sheet of paper covered in black smoke from an oil lamp. He never intended to play the sounds. Instead, he archived the recording and patented a method for understanding sound. Researchers recently unearthed the recording at the Academy of Sciences (French) in Paris."]

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Quote of the Day: Dr. Martin Henry Fischer

"Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Lead image for the story "Japan recovers oldest animation films"

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Clip of the Day: Snow-covered windshield + telephone pole + rowdy teenagers =

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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.

TAGS: links for the day

It would've taken a lot less effort for you if you'd simply taken a mini-DV camera and made a short video to express yourself...
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-04-02 00:06:00 Have you noticed all the scaffolding going up around Brooklyn, the construction dust and jackhammering? It's not Atlantic Yards, don't worry.

BAM Cinematek's been doing the J. Hoberman film series, so me and my crew of DIY, on-site critics have decided to construct a thoughtful, bricks and mortar response to Hoberman's eclectic curatorial choices.

We haven't gotten all that far, though. Every time BAM screens a Chantal Akerman film, we have to take a three hour coffee break, stare pensively at ourselves in a mirror, and take stock of our lives.
Posted by Justine Elias on 2008-04-01 20:21:00 I simply believe that to argue a non-verbal form of art, whether it's music or painting or filmmaking (not that they can't include lyrics or dialogue), cannot reach its true height until it's been rendered or analyzed in a verbal manner is a position akin to ankles without feet.

The whole point of experiencing those other forms is to experience a non-verbal form of communication. Music or images work on people in a different manner than the written word, and I just find that something gets lost in the translation.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-04-01 18:11:00 You're conflating literary communication with all forms of communication that involve words. Words aren't the janitor; they're the partner of the image. Even early silent films had titles and intertitles. And thousands of years ago, when a tribe's resident painter put a new set of pictograms up on a cave wall, I suspect his audience didn't all immediately rush to make their own pictograms in response -- they talked about it among themselves.

We don't disagree about the need for criticism to expand its aesthetic vocabulary to take advantage of new technologies. Nor do we disagree that there's been an imbalance (picture-driven cinema answered by word-driven criticism) for quite some time. But by denigrating the verbal/literary aspects of communication, you're overreaching and overstating your case.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2008-04-01 17:43:00 "but they only flower fully as art when they are discussed, with words, verbally or in print."

And that's where we disagree. I don't view literary communication as the height of intelligence but the janitor.

And yes, movies of various forms use everything from dialogue to music to add to the experience. That's a given. But the foundation of the form is still the image. There is no motion picture form without the picture.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-04-01 17:23:00 That's an oversimplification, anon. Remove the audio from certain films, and you'd still have a comprehensible story or statement. But a good many other films (ones that are primarily dependent on dialogue -- and musicals, for that matter) would be rendered vague or even incomprehensible.

You're also presuming that the primary duty of movies, or the essence of movies, is story. That may be true from a marketplace standpoint, but it's not an aesthetic given.

Related to which: experimental films, and even intelligent, Hollywood-level picture-driven spectacles such as "2001," may be fascinating to behold in a darkened theater, but they only flower fully as art when they are discussed, with words, verbally or in print.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2008-04-01 17:01:00 Motion pictures are stories told with pictures. By definition. If you take away the moving image from the equation you no longer have a motion picture. You would have nothing to add music or sound to and nothing that can be edited.

Once again, a motion picture is a story told with pictures.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-04-01 16:51:00 Anon: "The only thing a review should be about is the specific on-screen content of the film. And films are by nature image-based."

So you think this whole "Talkie" / sound, sound effects, music stuff might be just a temporary phase, then?

Because it's been 100+ year fad and it seems to be sticking.

And I keep noticing that movies have an audio visual nature.
Posted by Justine Elias on 2008-04-01 16:43:00 Words as part of an interview. The movie itself tells its story primarily through images -- as that's what a motion picture is, and that's why Kubrick is refusing to explain the movie.

The point is, if somebody is going to write a critique of a painting, let's say, then it would pretty much make sense to include some kind of reproduction of that painting so people can see what's being talked about. The same should apply to film criticism as well. And the internet now offers a great opportunity to reinvent the form. It doesn't have to be completely video-based, but there's no reason critiques can't at the very least include shot breakdowns via screen caps.

The greatest flaw in most film writing (oxymoron) is that the writer is rarely writing about what's on the screen in terms of the actual content. More often than not, reviews wind up being about themselves and their own use of language -- and furthermore, they spend too much time comparing that particular movie to other movies or other things completely unrelated to that movie to prove their point. The only thing a review should be about is the specific on-screen content of the film. And films are by nature image-based.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-31 23:11:00 "It's not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialog. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to "explain" a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. I think that if 2001 succeeds at all, it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought to man's destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms of life. But even in the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain ideas found in 2001 would, if presented as abstractions, fall rather lifelessly and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories; experienced in a moving visual and emotional context, however, they can resonate within the deepest fibers of one's being."

Um, aren't these, well, you know, words?
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-31 20:17:00 You should post your action-paintings to the internet.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-31 19:41:00 "...lots of art was never intended to be verbalized. And there's kind of an intellectual fascism that dictates everything must be rationalized through the written word, otherwise it is intellectually non-existent."

It's true. To this day Film Comment refuses to publish any of my action-paintings about the Apu Trilogy. And the series of ambient tones I produced in response to Satantango may as well not exist, at least according to the "word Nazis" who run things these days.
Posted by futurefree on 2008-03-31 17:46:00 Nomi, the thing is, lots of art was never intended to be verbalized. And there's kind of an intellectual fascism that dictates everything must be rationalized through the written word, otherwise it is intellectually non-existent.

To quote a certain filmmaker:

"It's not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialog. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to "explain" a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film -- and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level -- but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. I think that if 2001 succeeds at all, it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought to man's destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms of life. But even in the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain ideas found in 2001 would, if presented as abstractions, fall rather lifelessly and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories; experienced in a moving visual and emotional context, however, they can resonate within the deepest fibers of one's being."
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-31 14:42:00 who was it that said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture?" writing is simply one method of expressing language in a way that is permanent and reproducible. saying that one cannot understand writing about something non-literary is kind of like saying one cannot understand talking about something non-verbal. there has to be a way to share ideas and language is that primary mode.

anon does have a point about mainline professional critics doing more literary wheelies than actually stating something useful, but this is common to all types of criticism and writing in general. the fact is that there are more people who can write well than people who actually have novel ideas and can also write well. but, these people do exist and they are out there and discriminating readers seek out their valuable commentary.

the economics of film criticism are a lot like the economics of anything truly specialized and valuable in the sense that the market is limited and changes in technology are limiting the market further. but this is the thing, creative people will find ways to capitalize on these technological changes in order to carve out a niche for themselves and thoughtful people will follow. it is always been difficult to "make it" as a writer--particularly a principled, intelligent writer. it seems to me that instead of writing more about how the field is becoming more rarefied, it is time for creative people with things to say to get creative about using technology to find that niche. i'm not saying i have the answer, but i am saying that it is out there, as are the people who are consumers of intelligent content.
Posted by david e. ford, jr on 2008-03-31 09:30:00 Anon: I've never quite understood the idea of writing about an art form that is by its nature visual and not literary.

I don't understand. Non-literary things are written about all the time. Isn't that what language tries to do, to put the non-verbal into words? And I don't see how language is any more adequate when used to try to illuminate literature than anything else.
Posted by Nomi Lubin on 2008-03-31 01:29:00 Well, not everything has to start off as a legit money-earning gig. There's no reason this can't be experimented on and built up as a form in an illegitimate, underground manner. Lots of new ideas start that way. It's just a question of getting it good enough that people are willing to pay for it.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-30 23:04:00 i semi-agree with anon's statement, but the essence of making a living vs. performing it as a hobby is extremely important.

i think the essential idea ("I've never quite understood the idea of writing about an art form that is by its nature visual and not literary") is bunk, though. does this mean the only viable option to show news is by TV or streaming video? To do away with printed words because that forms a "literary" world?

nitpicking aside, i'm against the concept for a video review--as matt said, EPKs limit what you're allowed to show. they're also the "greatest hits" meant more for photos--my favorite one being the epk for Stick It that had a gymnastics coach (Jeff Bridges) smiling as he stood down a row of girls all performing splits, his smiling face framed neatly above.

not to mention the time involved for video, let alone recording--I'd go insane if I had to write out a video package, edit it and then sit down to crank out a separate written review.

then again, does anyone really want to see vadim rizov getting drunk and screaming about low-brow film culture ruining "modern cinema?"

i mean, i only do because i have to.
Posted by John Lichman on 2008-03-30 22:09:00 anon: "Why not create video pieces that use, in part, actual clips from the movie in order to dissect what's going on in it?"

A number of interesting contemporary critics, including Jim Emerson and our own contributor Kevin Lee, are doing exactly that.

The problem, as I'm sure you're aware, is that one can't thoroughly analyze shot sequences from a film (which I gather is what you're calling for) when the film is in theaters. The EPK rarely includes more than thirty second or one-minute snippets of scenes, and sometimes the scenes have been truncated or re-cut to play well on talk shows and are not exact representations of the actual content of the film. Such snippets are also of only limited help if you're trying to analyze a long sequence, or talk about the style of the movie as a whole, not just the moments that were pulled for EPKs because they were TV-friendly.

For now, written criticism is the only viable option for writing about current theatrical releases.

When the movie comes out on DVD, obviously a critic can go deeper, and it seems to me that whatever he or she grabbed and commented upon would be OK under the provisions of Fair Use, as long as he or she was not simply reproducing the movie, or long sections of the movie, without commenting via voice-over, marking it up with Monday Night Football-style lines, etc.

It's possible to do the same thing with current releases downloaded from extra-legal sources. But if you do that, there's no legit media company that will pay you for your analysis, because they won't want to piss off studios, DVD companies, etc.

Also: You've conflated two issues we've been discussing on this site. One is the future of film criticism itself -- the actual nuts and bolts of doing it. The other is the possibility of making a living from it, something that was always tough but seems to be getting more unlikely by the week. Your comment addresses the first part but skips over the second -- unless it's implied that writers/filmmakers should not have any expectation of being paid to do the sort of work you describe.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2008-03-30 21:31:00 The problem isn't so much that print sources are cutting back on their critics. What criticism needs is a complete reinvention. Blogs and the ability to stimulate debate are one step. But, it seems to me, the real place it needs to go, now that we have the web and consumer editing software, is in a direction away from the written word.

I've never quite understood the idea of writing about an art form that is by its nature visual and not literary. Literary critiques of motion pictures invariably devolve into showcases either for the writer's use of language or his liberal arts education. What critics really should be doing is using the new technology to alter the form of criticism.

Professional film critics shouldn't have any difficulty attaining EPK's from publicists (and for DVDs, there's a multitude of screen capture programs). The point is, if somebody purports to understand film form to the point that they're qualified to critique those who make films, then they should put their ideas to work. Why not create video pieces that use, in part, actual clips from the movie in order to dissect what's going on in it?

This is where it needs to go. Put up or shut up.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-03-30 20:41:00