the virtues and flaws of Paul Schrader's "building a film canon" article in Sept-Oct Film Comment

I agree with Kurzweil that humankind is on an evolutionary cusp. We can foresee both the end of the 20,000-year reign of Homo sapiens and the beginnings of the life-forms that will replace it (something Kurzweil and Garreau predict will happen in the next hundred years). Art looks to the future; it is society’s harbinger. The demise of Art’s human narrative is not a sign of creative bankruptcy. It’s the twinkling of changes to come. Such thoughts fill me not with despair but envy: I wish I could be there to see the curtain rise.

ok he might actually just be a little crazy.

well i liked it, but i was more just pointing out that when given the choice between the two dude picked one with the antiquated sensibilities.

(neither would make my super awesome filmographic cannon.)

anyone who thinks most great movies were made before 1970 is probably an asshole.

Since nearly two-thirds of the Century of Cinema falls in this period, you need more than a drive-by one-liner to be taken seriously with this. And since the aesthetics of film developed and matured almost entirely in this time, its supremacy seems even more undeniable. This strikes me as the kind of thing somebody who hasn't even bothered to see hardly any Renoir, Bresson, Ford, Ozu, Sturges, Rossellini etc. would say. Have you?

Over 90% of great Hollywood studio films were likely made before '70, maybe '65. (The early '70s is balanced out by the preeminence of crap in the last 25 years.)

The "broken down horse" thing makes sense to me, as I don't think there's any question we're going to be watching exclusively digital media in theaters in 10-20 years (hello, NOT FILM. Most of what either gets discussed heavily or anticipated on ILX -- Borat, Inland Empire, Jackass 1 & 2, or my recent favorite The Joy of Life -- is not cinema).

re the Kurzweil and Garreau stuff (which I plan to look at) about our imminent evolutionary leap: Can't you see people already using their phones and PDAs with the frequency and utility of organs? They're already half-machine. (Which is why I'm kinda surprised Cronenberg didn't make Schrader's 60.)

semantics!

over 90% of great Hollywood studio films were likely made before '70, maybe '65. (The early '70s is balanced out by the preeminence of crap in the last 25 years.)

this would only constitute an argument if no one else was making movies. (and of course there were tons in the 70's).

re the Kurzweil and Garreau stuff (which I plan to look at) about our imminent evolutionary leap: Can't you see people already using their phones and PDAs with the frequency and utility of organs? They're already half-machine. (Which is why I'm kinda surprised Cronenberg didn't make Schrader's 60.)

half-pointy stick > half-plow > half-tv > half-smart-phone: the evolution of man!!!

(and yeah i've seen movies by all those dudes you mentioned w/ozu being the one i have true affection for. although why everyone loves toyko story so much better than good morning {which has fart jokes, hello!} is a mystery to me.)

We're not talking about whether you have a great affection for them, we're talking if they made canonical films.

semantics!

No, something's either made on film or isn't, or is a stitched-together TV sketch show or isn't.

celluloid is not a medium. that's like saying literature is paper or some shit.

well some of them can be in my cannon any day, but i must warn you it's gonna be based on affection. and of course i wasn't partiularly saying that movies after 1970 were better, just that there's a lot of good ones there too, right?

woman under the influence, terminator, mulholland dr, borat - how u be leavin these out?

xpost

tbh tv >>>>>> the cinema for a long-ass time. but then cinema used to be more like tv; films would be melted down; it was an ephemeral medium.

Literature is experienced via paper (this may change, let's see); film is experienced via projected light through celluloid.

i wasn't partiularly saying that movies after 1970 were better

More films were made en toto before '70; you said "most great movies were made before 1970" is assholism. You were, by the math, saying they're better since.

that's all you're doing! but just claiming high art values for it, universalizing it.

dude has two movies post 1990 on his list!!!!!!!

But that math says that there are many fewer canonical films since '90, which I wouldn't quarrel with -- for one thing, by Schrader's criterion of Repeatability, we don't entirely know their place in the firmament yet.

where was schrader's criteria, i was just looking for it? morality was included lol.

where was schrader's criteria, i was just looking for it? morality was included lol.

This explains you purty well.

xp

No, it doesn't, but since it speaks so directly to his cause (and conveniently uses the language of "the enemy"), I can see why he temporarily lowered his lofty standards.

How is Schrader anti-theory -- isn't setting up "refurbished criteria" for creating a film canon a theory?

Also, to clarify, I love compelling criticism, regardless of the presence/lack of solid theory. I don't use it (by "it" I mean theory, though I suppose it's also fair to say "compelling criticism"), but it if's there and used in a way that makes sense, I have no arguments. I don't think Schrader's anti-theory so much as he's anti-new-theory, or boring stuff to that extent.

I especially love overweening articles that attempt to tear down an entire way of thinking (i.e. "Trash, Art and the Movies"). Even though there's probably no real way to quantify the success of these articles, in the case of this particular article, the defensiveness doesn't sit well with Schrader's aims, and he's even further undercut by Gavin Smith's introduction (the this-is-a-grand-moment-in-film-culture-because-it's-the-second-longest-article-we've-ever-run). Couple that with a canon that introduces nothing other than what Sight & Sound just re-confirmed for the third or fourth straight decade, and I think it's a failure.

who knows maybe schrader is talking abt compelling moral dynamics in film, in which case, by all means. (don't know, don't have the magazine)

but no, i wouldn't say that roth is generally moral at the core, whatever that means.

Yeah, otm. A lot of us consider Schrader "humorless" because he's not compelling enough a writer or thinker to consider how any lengthy essay needs irony and wit. "Trash, Art, and the Movies" has both, whatever else.

As for Schrader's essay not being "A MOMENT in film culture." I agree, it fails. (We might fail similarly in our early 60s -- maybe that'll be yr comeuppance, Eric Amberson Minafer.) But the questions intrigue me. Do wejust to continue to stack Spielberg next to Jenni Olson next to Apichatpong Weerasethakul without knowing why?

I think lit-crit has more agreed-upon canonical criteria than film-crit, but since I don't read much of it that could be a delusion.

as noted elsewhere, his tormented clergyman movie is getting him his best press in eons

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4875-the-daily-venice-toronto-2017-schrader-s-first-reformed

^it's one of his best, indeed.

also has a revised edition of his transcendental film book out next year

Dog Eat Dog never really topped the insane opening sequence, but the cartoonish gruesomeness of the film on the whole was hmmm memorable.

The point is not to *get* the canonical movie, but use it as a tool to learn a different style or perspective or world (KANE got its position because it’s an extremely teachable movie in terms of narrative / aesthetic strategies)

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) March 20, 2018

^^ a point often missed by conservatives bemoaning what lib English faculty are doing.

Girish Shambu on the male canon and auteurism

https://filmquarterly.org/2018/09/21/times-up-for-the-male-canon/

gee i wonder why pic.twitter.com/nQstniXRHM

— paul schrader's facebook posts (@paul_posts) August 4, 2021

gee i wonder why pic.twitter.com/nQstniXRHM

— paul schrader's facebook posts (@paul_posts) August 4, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvGktPaDAPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6psa1ptpGTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJhhwtBt70

The possibly 9/11-anniversary-timed (hard to say with release schedules right now) The Card Counter is supposed to be cathartic, I suppose, but I found it to be more and more of an ordeal as it went along. The truly dreadful soundtrack played a part in that. I thought I was headed out to see a good poker film.

You do what you must. But I was impressed that Schrader got such a wide opening for a film exploring the impact and legacy of Abu Ghraib. Has this, or other episodes of the War on Terror, been treated in such detail before?

Also, I hope that the desk jockeys who defended "enhanced interrogation" will be questioned again. But somehow I suspect once again they'll not experience material or professional discomfort.

Just saw it, unsure if I “get” it. The first movie in a while (in a theater, anyway) where I feel like I missed something.

https://www.facebook.com/1631212662/posts/10223350640467517/?d=n

As ever, the use of “woke” as an epithet makes me less likely to take someone seriously.

Thanks, Eric. I aged ten years reading those comments.

Card Counter was good. That camera trick in Abu Ghraib was pretty good.

oh, i was going to look and see if anyone had posted about it and i forgot. i did NOT like the card counter. goofy, unbelievable story. it was like what if i made first reformed again, but this time it's bad?

it wasn’t as good as first reformed but i liked it a lot

noticed this name as an exec producer lol - https://m.imdb.com/name/nm13254828/?ref_=m_ttfcd_cr1

this movie was largely tedious and bad btw but i couldnt help thinking if you play everything about the last scene exactly as it was but have the USA poker bro instead of tiffany haddish visit oscar isaac in prison the movie would be improved

On Facebook:

I’M SEEING DEAD FILM CRITICS. Attending film festivals was always a buzz. You would go, meet filmmakers whose work you knew, run into old film critic friends, make new ones, talk, argue, drink. That moment has passed. Earlier tonight I spotted Richard Corliss in the lobby of the Excelsior. I went over to greet him then realized he’d died two years ago. So many ghosts.