Which film critics do you trust (if any?)

and while we are at it, go read Ebert on BI:2

Nicole Kidman is great in The Portrait of a Lady.

See the Seitz blog link comments for multiple angles on TV, film, distribution.

http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2006/04/cinema-dead-and-alive-interview-with_15.html

"...The rise of documentaries is related to the decline of European auteurs, and the failure of significant American auteurs to arise from and remain in the independent world in very significant numbers. If you look at the whole Sundance phenomenon, there was such promise there, but while you’ve got a few interesting directors coming up, most of them just go on to the majors or whatever. In the past, people would go to the independent theaters and art theaters for foreign films, and specifically the great tradition of European films. That has dried up."

Also, Seitz quotes Dave Kehr in the Comments: "In other words, ‘straight-to-video’ once meant ‘not good enough to be shown in theaters.’ Now it means ‘too good to be shown in theaters.’ That’s the reality.”

this is only wrong insofar as the studio/star system that made grahame/lombard possible died 45 years ago; but kidman is certainly 'as good'.

the studios were quite happy to let them make lots of basically quite similar films though, cos that's how genres work. there's something to be said for it, i guess, but not that much.

Ignoring for a moment that 'straight-to-video' still pretty much means the former -- it's still largely a ghetto for no- to mid-budget genre stuff by nobodies and for stuff that didn't get picked up by distributors -- what he's leaving out is the potential it has to increase the audience for this stuff. Twenty five years ago, people who didn't have access to indie/arthouse/repertory/etc. theaters would never, ever, ever get to see these movies. Now they might be able to get it off of Netflix or at Hollywood Video or what have you, if the movies are properly advertised, marketed, reviewed, etc. (The potential for reviews by key critics increases, too, if they don't have to wait for a screening that might never happen but can review from wherever they happen to be via DVD.)

All that, too, is eliding the fact that a lot of these movies are far, far, far from "too good" for theaters or anyplace else. Sturgeon's Law, etc.

that's interesting. in the uk lots of films get a nominal theatre release just so the film will get reviewed: my hunch is no-one bothers to review dtv stuff unless the marketing dept gets their act together.

The studio system would definitely have made a film in which AIDS is barely mentioned and the lesbianism is "tasteful" (see The Children's Hour)

This looks like a terrific fite, I wish I had got in earlier. On the TV / Cinema ?Mobile Phone debate, I think that certain media tend towards certain shot choices (TV is almost by nature more close up friendly) but this does not apropos lead to firm TV / Cinema / Mobile Phone / Play aesthetic choices when it comes to storytelling. Nevertheless, the play - cinema/TV dynamic does lead to certain ways of telling a story which cannot be done easily on stage (time lapse, multiple viewpoints, close-up) which can influence the semantic language of the presentation.

xpost

But those aren't the ones he's talking about. That Assayas' Clean -- an English language film, with 2 different types of 'names' in Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte -- took THREE YEARS to get distributed here is a scandal.

what the fuck?

I'm not sure how the syndication model works for New Times - I can read most of next week's Dallas Observer reviews today on the Voice site. If I don't need to pick up their paper, how's that going to effect their hooker-ad sales?

http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/

And we'll never know -- unless he chooses to elaborate on it elsewhere or at some late date -- what exactly Armond means when he describes Children of Men's aesthetic as "resembling the surreally distanced, uninterrupted viewpoint of a videogame." Which videogames? Certainly not first-person shooter videogames (which Elephant mimics at one moment in order to make a connection to the fps games the teenage killers play at home) because the film's celebrated long takes are not pov shots. The long takes' panoptical surveys -- with action occurring on multiple planes and often disappearing beyond the scope of the lens -- would only resemble videogame aesthetics for the most unsophisticated and -- dare we say -- cynical viewer. For one thing, the moviegoer cannot interact with the image in the same way a videogame player can -- an obvious point that White conveniently ignores. For another, the film maintains spatial integrity in presenting and exploring its realistic environments, an integrity that stands in sharp contrast to the comic book nonsense of V for Vendetta, the film that Armond White compares to Children of Men without properly explaining thier distinctions.

seems like this guy makes the leap that "resembling a videogame" automatically = "shitty movie"

I thought parts of CoM were gamelike in a good way

btw i really like that blog!

Anonymous said...
Rivette is a bore.

January 10, 2007 12:19 PM

C'mon Morbius at least sign your name to it! besides doesn't it bore you to say how boring he is all the time?

hahah the accidental truth revealed!