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

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.

pdf of the whole essay here:

http://www.m31films.com/?p=8

Schrader on morality, for jhoshea (as mayb you shouldn't snicker at the word, but how he defines its role in his aesthetic):

I'm reluctant to introduce the oldest (and hoariest) artistic criterion, morality, a criterion that streches from Plato... to Ruskin and Leavis (every great work is a great moral work). It's not that I feel moral arguments have no place in the discussion of art, just that they are better implied than spelled out... It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance. I just don't see the aesthetic value of setting one moral resonance against another. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will is arguably the quintessential motion picture, the fulcrum of the century of cinema ...of course, it's a work of moral resonance. Good or bad resonance? Most everyone would agree it's evil, but that's beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical.

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

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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.