This is the thread where we discuss matters pertaining to the detrius that accompanies the "End of the Year in Cinema" -- 2007

this marienbad shit got debunked 40 years ago

elaborate please

I'm a big ol' fan of "Circles & Squares" by Pauline Kael. It's in her I Lost It At The Movies book if you haven't read it.

It basically tears Sarris and auteur theory (as it stood in the 60s, when it meant more than "directors are cool") a couple new cornholes.

Pauline Kael was a fine writer and a reverse snob. Never reviewed a Fassbinder film.

jaymc, with the same actors it would've been just as good a stage play.

xp

no Eric, way down. Cruel Winter Blues got a single #1 only and is 12th overall.

have you read 'circles & squares' morbs?

Maybe someone thought there were already too many American movies on the list?

I like a lot of the shorter reviews toward the end of I Lost It At The Movies (I think there was an appendix there, right?). Kael should've maybe considered devoting more energy to capsule reviews.

5001 Nights At the Movies condenses most of the long pieces into capsules.

nah, that's a different book. Her capsule reviews are great (I have a beaten up copy of 1001 nights at the movies) but I wish I'd see a dis that actually implies the person has actually considered her opinions rather than flinched when they saw she didn't like 8 1/2.

x-post, obv

xp Eric

or jaymc's theory, the Spielberg Quota of One.

I have no idea, croupier. I read a bunch of the collected book stuff in the '70s and '80s. Is that the "come dressed as the Sick Soul of Europe" piece?

So, of the few films I've seen so far this year, I'd say Day Night Day Night gets my "bipolar ambivalence of the year" award, where I can't seem to decide whether I like it a lot more or a lot less than I suspect. Previous winners of this award are Anatomy of Hell and The Notebook.

kiss kiss bang bang is the book with the appendix.

nah, sick soul deals with marienbad itself, but i was talking about her essay about people who say movies should be more filmic.

jaymc, with the same actors it would've been just as good a stage play.

Are you talking to me or Alfred? Because I mostly agree, but I also don't fault it for that. As I said before, just because it's on film doesn't make the script or the performances any less appealing.

(Although one thing that it would lose as a play is the spontaneity of Mark Ruffalo swatting a bug away from his face on the back porch. Or Laura Linney silently, happily waving at him from behind the restaurant window: on a stage, you'd lose the sense of separation in this image.)

If it's really a one-per-director thing, I have no problem ditching Munich for A.I. ...

Yeah, KKBB, then. I wasn't really talking about the condensed long form ones but the ones, rather, it appeared she really did write to be short.

there are good movies that could be good plays and bad movies that could be good plays. being a good play doesn't mean its a bad movie.

or vice versa. Network is like a great play turned into a so-so movie

clip from a different essay, but gives you the vibe

http://keepingmybrainalive.blogspot.com/2006/09/is-there-cure-for-film-criticism-or.html

(And I didn't mean the short reviews thing to be a dis. I am, after all, the resident De Palma nut who thinks her Dressed To Kill review is among the finest pieces of single-film criticism evah.)

(so croupier, was I reading Kael before you were a gleam in yr parents' eyes?)

my "bipolar ambivalence of the year" award wd possibly go to Colossal Youth -- did that make it to Mpls?

jmc, I only saw YCCoMe once, I'll have to pass on that level of detail. I only said it's not in the top 10 of the decade, fer Godsakes. It's very good!

Hey I'M the DePalma nut, buddy!

Film aestheticians are forever telling us that when they have discovered what the motion picture can do that the other arts can't do, they have discovered the "essence," the "true nature" of motion picture art. It is like the old nonsense that man is what differentiates him from the other animals . . . And what motion picture art shares with other arts is perhaps even more important than what it may, or may not, have exclusively. . . Except for the physical presence of the actors in a theater, there is almost no "difference" between stage and screen that isn't open to question; there is almost no effect possible in one that can't be simulated, and sometimes remarkably well achieved, in the other.

Who started this divide and conquer game of aesthetics in which the different media are assigned their special domains like salesmen staking out their territories - you stick to the Midwest and I'll take Florida?

for those who haven't read it and are interested, there's also this

this recording of Pauline Kael delivering a talk at (get this) San Fernando Valley State College sometime in 1963 does closely follow her essay Circles and Squares

Yep, Colossal Youth screened ... the week I was in Philly and N.Y.

oops! btw I have a lotta work to do today, so damn you for starting this...

(x-post) Awesome! That Charlie Parker blog also had that wonderful catty symposium with Kael, MacDonald and Simon too!

I'm staying out of the film vs. theater debate. I like that Godard rattled off a list of directors who could be considered in debt (in a positive sense) to various other arts. Of course, he was doing so in service of raging auteurism and leading up to the whole "Nicholas Ray IS CINEMA!!" thing.

I won't even mention a certain melancholy Swede.

yeah, apparently in Sweden IB is considered a better theatre director.

xp

jeez, I have a lot to listen to when I go to CT for T'giving.

I like theatrical elements of film too, and wasn't trying to set up a "vs." Count just didn't get under my skin the way it should've if it was a great film, thus my brows rose when I saw it on that list.

Linklater and effing Tu Mama got under my skin badly.

cuz they were more filmic?

"You know, like a running joke."

i thought it was. thanks!

xp

cuz they showed heterosexuality at its worst.

Anyway, gentlemen, we can't fight about the decade in here! this is the '07 thread!

You'll have to explain that one.

You want embarrassing depictions of het behavior? Try The Notebook.

I will admit that the first time or two I used "detrius," I wasn't actually aware I'd misspelled it.

So you liked The Simpsons Movie that much, huh Mobrs?

I laughed a lot, but everything after #3 is just a "B" elevated by my underwhelmed filmlog.

also, the first 2 reviews at my new outlet -- average rating: 0.75 star

weirdly enough, I'm going to be helping to contribute to the year-end music feature (at least in the singles capacity) at your new outlet this year, not movies

singles. what a concept.

Seriously, I'm worried a PR firm is going to ban me from screenings. I'm going to start walking like Peter O'Toole in Ratatouille.

Dr. M's "new outlet" = Sl@nt?

Morbs' Slant review of What Would Jesus Do is a polished compendium of his remarks on the 2008 prez thread.

This audio of Kael taking down Sarris is ... not quite as enjoyably bitchy as the symposium with MacDonald/Simon. It's sort of odd to listen to, actually, since she arguably succumbed to a lot of the stuff she complained about here.

kael is an okay controversialist but not really someone worth arguing with about film form.

mind you, i have no idea how chereau gets into morb's list of cinematic innovators.

I don't know why I'm posting on this thread exactly but here are the best movies I remember seeing this year:

Assassination of Jesse James etc.
Inland Empire
Knocked Up
Ratatouille
Zodiac

xp

he doesn't have to be an innovator, just closer to one than... whoever directed You Can Count on Me.

that's alphabetically, but shift Knocked Up to the bottom and the list is conveniently in order of preference.

oh, Lonergan directed as well as wrote. I thought he might've, then didn't.

and for you extreme fans, he has his first directorial effort since then coming out next Friday:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0466893/