tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70478722000686944672024-03-13T05:22:32.561-04:00Petrified Fountain of ThoughtMostly about movies.StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-70108013616487390712017-05-18T13:09:00.000-04:002017-05-18T13:09:52.782-04:00Stromboli, Europa '51, Viaggio in Italia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px;"></span>Stromboli </b>(Rossellini, 1950) <b>Rating: 10/10 stars.</b><br />
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Like an Italian Flannery O'Connor story. (Both influenced by Simone Weil: "Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it . . .") Aside from the New Wave and Antonioni, this must have had a major impact on Kiarostami--<b>The Wind Will Carry Us</b> is practically a more self-reflexive remake.</div>
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Here's Rohmer on its personal impact: "It was Rossellini who turned me away from existentialism. That took place in the middle of <b>Stromboli</b>. In the first minutes of the film I recognized the limits of the Sartrian realism to which I believed the film was going to limit itself. I hated the way of seeing the world it encouraged me to take, until I understood that it was also encouraging me to move beyond it. And then the conversion happened. That's what is amazing about <b>Stromboli</b>, it was my road to Damascus: in the middle of the film I was converted and I changed my way of seeing things."</div>
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<b>Europa '51 </b>(Rossellini, 1952) <b>Rating: 10/10 stars.</b><br />
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Perhaps the least praised of the Rossellini/Bergman trilogy, no doubt because it seems the most melodramatic and least modern, I found it by far the most moving. True, the final act is forced in the way it seems to leave plausibility behind as society punishes Bergman's transgressions, but in another sense it is just as inexplicable as the endings of the other two films, though here tragic rather than eucatastrophic. Grace can come to an individual, but not to society as a whole. And if Bergman's character is inspired by St. Francis, she is a a Francis with no followers and no freedom--the film is an investigation of what someone would have to go through to truly view the world the way Francis did, and it turns out to be incredibly painful, unnatural, and perhaps unsustainable. Yet the challenge remains.<br />
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<b>Journey to Italy </b>(Rossellini, 1954) <b>Rating: 10/10 stars.</b><br />
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There have been several times in cinema history where a single filmmaker has created an entire trilogy to explore the state of modern of Europe: Antonioni's <b>L'Avventura</b>/<b>La Notte</b>/<b>L'Eclisse</b>, Kieslowski's <b>Three Colors</b>, Gomes's <b>Arabian Nights</b>, and I guess Seidl's <b>Paradise</b> trilogy. Rossellini is the only director to give us two such trilogies, and inside of a single decade as well. (Though I wonder how <b>Fear</b> fits into the series--I need to see it as soon as I can.) Both Antonioni and Kieslowski owe an obvious debt here--indeed, <b>Three Colors</b> seems modeled on this earlier trilogy to a surprising extent, and someone should compare Kieslowski's use of his actresses to Rossellini's use of Bergman.</div>
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What else is there to say about this film that hasn't already been said better by so many others? Well, for one thing, it appears to me that Paul W.S. Anderson watched it before making <b>Pompeii</b>--and got something out of it, too.</div>
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<b>The Flowers of St. Francis </b>(Rossellini, 1950) <b>Rating: 8/10 stars.</b><br />
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What is it to have the faith of a child? Look here, and know.</div>
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Wonderful Easter viewing.</div>
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-62690375358804747142017-02-27T16:13:00.000-05:002017-05-18T16:14:17.342-04:00If I Gave the Oscars: 2016 Edition<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As usual, these are how I would give out awards to the movies of 2016, if that was a power that I had. Best Picture nominees are top 10 from my <a href="http://petrifiedfountainofthought.blogspot.com/2017/02/best-of-2016.html">Best of 2016</a> post.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Martin Scorsese (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Terrence Malick (<b>Knight of Cups</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Terence Davies (<b>Sunset Song</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Kenneth Lonergan (<b>Manchester by the Sea</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Robert Eggers (<b>The Witch</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Kenneth Lonergan (<b>Manchester by the Sea</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Whit Stillman (<b>Love & Friendship</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Richard Linklater (<b>Everybody Wants Some!!</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Robert Eggers (<b>The Witch</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Casey Affleck (<b>Manchester by the Sea</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Tom Hanks (<b>Sully</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Andrew Garfield (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Josh Brolin (<b>Hail, Caesar!</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Michael Shannon (<b>Midnight Special</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Actress</u></b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Kate Beckinsale (<b>Love & Friendship</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Agyness Deyn (<b>Sunset Song</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Anya Taylor-Joy (<b>The Witch</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Amy Adams (<b>Arrival</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Emma Stone (<b>La La Land</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Supporting Actor</u></b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Mahershala Ali (<b>Midnight</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Issey Ogata (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Silence</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lucas Hedges (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Manchester by the Sea</b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Glen Powell (<b>Everybody Wants Some!!</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Alden Ehrenreich (<b>Hail, Caesar!</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Supporting Actress</u></b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Michelle Williams (<b>Manchester by the Sea</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Zoey Deutch (<b>Everybody Wants Some!!</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Kirsten Dunst (<b>Midnight Special</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Janelle Monae (<b>Midnight</b>, <b>Hidden Figures</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Margot Robbie (<b>Suicide Squad</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Cinematography</u></b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Emmanuel Lubezki (<b>Knight of Cups</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Rodrigo Prieto (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Michael McDonough (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Sunset Song</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Khalik Allah, Par Ekberg, Snatiago Gonzalez, Chayse Irvin, Dikayl Rimmasch, Malik Hassan Sayeed (<b>Lemonade</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. James Laxton (<b>Midnight</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Editing</u></b></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Geoffrey Richman, Keith Fraase, A. J. Edwards (<b>Knight of Cups</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Thelma Schoonmaker (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Blu Murray (<b>Sully</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Bret Granato, Maya Mumma, Ben Sozanski (<b>O. J.: Made in America</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Gilbert Adair (<b>Everybody Wants Some!!</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Scene</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Going to church (<b>Sunset Song</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. The final apostasy (<b>Silence</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Grand finale (<b>La La Land</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Hold Up (<b>Lemonade</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Airport fight (<b>Captain America: Civil War</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. History of the Louvre in one shot (<b>Francofonia</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">7. Final penthouse fight (<b>Kill Zone 2/SPL 2: A Time for Consequences</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">8. Running into your ex (<b>Manchester by the Sea</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9. Calling a girl (<b>Everybody Wants Some!!</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10. Triple crucifixion (<b>Silence</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">11. O.J.'s second criminal trial (<b>O.J.: Made in America</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">12. 155 Safe (<b>Sully</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">13. "Drive It Like You Stole It"--final concert (<b>Sing Street</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">14. Diner interrogations (<b>Hell or High Water</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">15. Police station scene--Trying to describe a mermaid (<b>The Mermaid</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">(actually posted Mary 18, 2017)</span></div>
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-76304709037546398242017-02-26T12:00:00.000-05:002017-05-18T16:14:29.423-04:00Best of 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>1. Silence </b>(Martin Scorsese)</div>
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<b>2. Knight of Cups</b> (Terrence Malick)</div>
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<b>3. Manchester by the Sea </b>(Kenneth Lonergan)</div>
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<b>4. Sunset Song </b>(Terence Davies)</div>
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<b>5. O. J.: Made in America </b>(Ezra Edelman)</div>
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<b>6. Everybody Wants Some!! </b>(Richard Linklater)</div>
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<b>7. Love & Friendship </b>(Whit Stillman)</div>
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<b>8. Francofonia </b>(Aleksandr Sokurov)</div>
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<b>9. </b><b>Sully </b>(Clint Eastwood)</div>
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<b>10. The Witch</b> (Robert Eggers)</div>
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<b>11. Sing Street </b>(John Carney)</div>
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<b>12. Hell or High Water </b>(David Mackenzie)</div>
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<b><u>Honorable Mentions:</u> Arrival </b>(Denis Villeneuve), <b>La La Land </b>(Damien Chazelle), <b>Lemonade </b>(Beyonce Knowles), <b>Moonlight </b>(Barry Jenkins), <b>Pete's Dragon </b>(David Lowery), <b>Kill Zone 2/SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (</b>Soi Cheang), <b>Three</b> (Johnnie To), <b>Hail, Caesar! </b>(Joel & Ethan Coen), <b>Kubo and the Two Strings </b>(Travis Knight)</div>
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<b><u>Most Overrated:</u> Zootopia </b>(Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush) (but also kinda <b>Moonlight</b>)</div>
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<b><u>Most Underrated/Underseen:</u> Knight of Cups </b>(Terrence Malick), obviously, but also <b>Pete's Dragon </b>and <b>Sunset Song</b> and<b> Francofonia</b></div>
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<b><u>Favorite Guilty Pleasure:</u> The Mermaid </b>(Stephen Chow)</div>
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<b><u>Worst Movie I Saw This Year:</u> Whiskey Tango Foxtrot </b>(John Requa, Glenn Ficarra)</div>
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Complete list of movies I saw in 2016 <a href="https://letterboxd.com/stephen_morton/list/2016/">HERE.</a></div>
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<b><u>Top 20 Older Films I Saw for the First Time in 2016:</u></b></div>
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<b><u><br /></u></b><b>1. Children of Paradise </b>(Carne, 1945)</div>
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<b>2. Where Is My Friend's House? </b>(Kiarostami, 1987)</div>
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<b>3. Daughters of the Dust </b>(Dash, 1991)</div>
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<b>4. Point Break </b>(Bigelow, 1991)</div>
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<b>5. Night of the Living Dead </b>(Romero, 1968)</div>
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<b>6. The House of Mirth </b>(Davies, 2000)</div>
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<b>7. I Walked With a Zombie </b>(Tourneur, 1943)</div>
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<b>8. Risky Business </b>(Brickman, 1983)</div>
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<b>9. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes </b>(Hawks, 1953)</div>
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<b>10. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg </b>(Demy, 1964)</div>
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<b>11. Stage Door </b>(La Cava, 1937)</div>
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<b>12. Arsenic and Old Lace </b>(Capra, 1944)</div>
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<b>13. Extreme Prejudice </b>(Hill,1987)</div>
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<b>14. Speed Racer</b> (Wachowskis, 2008)</div>
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<b>15. La Promesse </b>(Dardennes, 1996)</div>
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<b>16. Near Dark </b>(Bigelow, 1987)</div>
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<b>17. The Awful Truth </b>(McCarey, 1937)</div>
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<b>18. Metropolis </b>(Lang, 1927)</div>
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<b>19. Late Spring </b>(Ozu, 1949)</div>
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<b>20. Great Day in the Morning </b>(Tourneur, 1956)</div>
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That's the Top 20, but you can find the Top 40 in color <a href="https://letterboxd.com/stephen_morton/list/first-time-viewings-2016/" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</div>
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-91425658614398011102017-01-10T14:46:00.000-05:002017-05-16T14:05:47.821-04:00Best Criticism I Read in 2016I read a great deal of criticism this past year, some of it bad, much of it very good. I read books, magazines, online articles, and bog posts, listened to podcasts and radio interviews, and watched video essays and DVD extras. And since internet criticism and opinion journalism has exploded to such an extent over the past few years, it seems to me worthwhile to single out a few of the best pieces of criticism I encountered in 2016 for others to check out as well. So here's a small, by no means exhaustive list.<br />
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Among the books I read, none of which are really available online (and most of which are already well-known cinephile circles), I would like to single out:<br />
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<li><b>When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade </b>by Dave Kehr (2011)</li>
<li><b>Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia </b>edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin (2003)</li>
<li><b>An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema </b>by James Naremore (2014)</li>
<li><b>Confessions of a Cultist: On the Cinema, 1955-1969 </b>by Andrew Sarris (1970)</li>
<li><b><i>Cahiers du Cinema</i>: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave </b>edited by Jim Hillier (1985)</li>
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And two major works of criticism that are not about cinema: <b>Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century</b> by Greil Marcus (1989), which starts with the Sex Pistols and ends up linking punk rock to the Situationist International, Dadaism, and the Paris Commune of 1871, and <b>The Last War in Albion </b>by Phil Sandifer, an <a href="http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/tag/last-war-in-albion/" target="_blank">ongoing blogging</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Last-War-Albion-Early-Morrison/dp/1540482189" target="_blank">self-publishing</a> project that starts with the comic books of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and ends up linking them to William Blake, William S. Burroughs, and almost every corner of the sci-fi/fantasy genres.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
(As a side note: Modesty compels me to admit that I did not read every one of these books cover to cover--they are after all mainly composed of individual reviews and essays. But what I did read was challenging, mind-expanding stuff that I heartily recommend to all.)<br />
<br />
On the individual essay front, here are several notable articles available online that I encountered for the first time this year:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Greil Marcus on <a href="https://greilmarcus.net/2016/12/04/john-wayne-listening-021179/" target="_blank">John Wayne</a> from February 1979, soon after Wayne's death</li>
<li>Andre Bazin's analysis and attempt to partially curtail the <a href="http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/la-politique-des-auteurs-bazin.shtml" target="_blank">"Politique des Auteurs"</a> in <i>Cahiers du Cinema</i>, 1957</li>
<li>Jacques Rivette on <a href="http://www.dvdbeaver.com/rivette/ok/hawks.html" target="_blank">"The Genius of Howard Hawks"</a> in 1953</li>
<li>A fascinating <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/jacques-rivette/rivette-2/" target="_blank">Jacques Rivette interview</a> from <i>Les Inrockuptables </i>in 1998, where he gives off the cuff opinions on a few dozen films and directors from the '40s to the '90s</li>
<li>An extraordinary<a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/interactive/yuri-norstein-the-little-gray-wolf-will-come/" target="_blank"> long profile</a> of the great Yuri Norstein on MTV.com (I know! where did this come from?)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/article/jackie-chan-samo-hung-profile/" target="_blank">Dave Kehr</a> on Jackie Chan in <i>Film Comment</i> 1988</li>
<li>Alan Jacobs <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/article/jackie-chan-samo-hung-profile/" target="_blank">compares</a> Lena Dunham with Jane Austen (from 2013)</li>
<li><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110308071615/http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/tgbfr12a.htm" target="_blank">Tag Gallagher</a> on auteurism and the problem with "reading" a film in 2001</li>
<li>Lionel Shriver's notorious and necessary speech on "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad">Fiction and Identity Politics</a>" from the 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival</li>
<li>Ignatiy Vishnevetsky consistently writes some of the best obituaries on the net at The A.V. Club, and, alas, he got to write many of them in 2016. Here's his take on <a href="http://www.avclub.com/article/rip-alexandre-astruc-uncle-french-new-wave-237035" target="_blank">Alexandre Astruc</a>.</li>
</ul>
<br />
And finally, two heroic and necessary essays on the current problems in critical discourse that aren't afraid to call out political puritanism for what it is, even when the authors agree with the overall progressive political project: Richard Brody on <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110308071615/http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/tgbfr12a.htm" target="_blank">"Why Movies Still Matter"</a> and Nick Pinkerton on <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/article/talking-in-circles/" target="_blank">"Talking in Circles"</a>.<br />
<br />StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-11257729508414148222016-09-07T03:25:00.001-04:002016-09-14T17:15:56.711-04:0038 Sentences<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(With apologies to <a href="http://soundsimages.blogspot.com/2010/08/68-sentences.html" target="_blank">this post</a> by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Like Clara Bow for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>It</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and Maria Falconetti for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Passion of Joan of Arc</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, Alicia Silverstone will live forever because of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Clueless</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While for Miyazaki, filmmaking is primarily emotional, even physical--measured in how many frames he draws personally, how much of himself he pours into the film--for Takahata, filmmaking is primarily intellectual; he’s always rethinking the way animation works, redefining its limits. Sofia Coppola shoots hotel rooms better than anyone in the history of cinema. Lightning McQueen & Mater = Bob the Tomato & Larry the Cucumber, particularly in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Cars 2</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Are we approaching a point when we will no longer be able to speak of “human nature” because it’s too “essentializing,” too rigid and meaningless and even offensive? The major problem with Stephen Curry is that he mispronounces his first name. Terrence Malick has left the proscenium further behind than anybody in narrative cinema: we are constantly aware of a world around us, a vast space stretching in every direction (even the city is Big Sky Country). The thing about the various (supposedly cuckoo) interpretations of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Shining</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (and I am not the first to point this out), is that the sundry clues and motifs studied by the movie’s obsessives (Native American imagery, visual nods to the space program, oblique allusions to the Holocaust, constant verbal acknowledgment of colonialism, conquest, and Westward expansion) are in fact really there, and can, moreover, be nearly all integrated into a single vision when we realize that the Overlook Hotel is a nightmare maze of History, where sins and crimes (y’know, ghosts) of the past swirl everlastingly and threaten to drag the present and future of humanity down with them into eternal cycles of power, dominance, violence, and cruelty. Amy Schumer isn’t funny. On </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Focus </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(2015): The camera glides along, the colors are pleasingly balanced, and everything is modulated to look “classy,” but somehow there’s not a single memorable image in the entire movie. One of the central appeals of the apocalypse as a fictional trope is the way it shatters the postmodern confusion of the current world situation, bringing good and evil back into view and clarifying absolutes. Appreciating art is mostly a matter of orienting oneself properly toward the aesthetic goal of the work--appreciating what it does well, not asking it to be something it’s not. I bet I can think of over a dozen different TV shows off the top of my head that were directly influenced by or had their ways paved for them by </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">: there’s the obvious ones like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Angel</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Firefly</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Dollhouse</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, the WB fellows like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Charmed</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Smallville</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Roswell</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Supernatural</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, plus others like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Veronica Mars</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> The Vampire Diaries</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Teen Wolf</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>iZombie</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Jessica Jones</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, Russell T. Davies’ revival of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Doctor Who</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, and even</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> Kim Possible</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Lubitsch treated his scenarios, his characters, and his audience with unfailingly good manners, and it’s always good manners to keep your guests entertained and at ease. Looking through these lists of things only ‘90s kids will get, a thought occurs to me: I really envy Baby Boomers’ ability to be nostalgic for things that actually happened. Zack Snyder’s visual style is primarily influenced by comic panels and pulp cover art, and seems to be more concerned with bringing these still images to life than telling a coherent story--which, in the case of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Batman v Superman</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, gives the images a weird sort of power; they feel so disconnected that the movie has a sense of a plunge into the void. Malick sees philosophy, religion, and art as a continuum, and it is because of this that we can examine each of his films from the framework of multiple philosophical theories and theological stances and find illumination and worth through each of them. If </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Grave of the Fireflies</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is Takahata’s neorealist film, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Only Yesterday</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>My Neighbors the Yamadas</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> are his Ozus, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Tale of the Princess Kaguya</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is his Mizoguchi. Looking around at all his producing work, so focused on recreating the various undervalued genres and styles of his youth, one gets a sense of George Lucas as the square Tarantino. Clichés in art: the problem isn’t that they’re false, the problem is when they’re lazy, when the artist doesn’t work to find the truth in the cliché which made it a cliché in the first place. Scariest movies I’ve ever seen: (7) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Psycho</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (6) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Shining</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (5) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Alien</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (4) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (3) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Pinocchio</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (2) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Dumbo</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, (1) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Mickey Mouse in</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> Runaway Brain</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Johnnie To’s signature images--crane shots and full-bodied medium shots of people standing on eerily-empty streets (that just might be sets)--remind me of nothing so much as 1940s MGM musicals, particularly those starring Gene Kelly. What makes </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Girl, Interrupted</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> interesting and genuinely valuable as a movie is the extent to which it is a direct ideological response and correction to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. In a ’50s Hollywood landscape hyped up on the Method, John Ford often stood out as a poet among dramatists. Lana Del Rey = Nancy Sinatra + Joan Didion + lip injections. Watching the final act of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> on stage recently (where the Athenians kick back and mock the players), I was surprised and overjoyed to discover that Shakespeare had invented </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Mystery Science Theater 3000</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> four hundred years early. Amy Sherman-Palladino > Amy Heckerling > Nora Ephron > Eli Roth > Lena Dunham. For Hitchock, the cinema was all about the temptation/repulsion of voyeurism; for David Fincher, it’s all about the terror/yearning of being watched. It might not be out of place to consider </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Eyes Wide Shut</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> in light of Nathaniel Hawthorne: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Young Cruiseman Brown</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, as it were. If sentimentality and brutality are linked, and they are, this might be a clue to the dark side of fandom and internet bullying: obsession and giddy investment in fictional relationships/melodrama/etc. can leads to lashing out with anger/hatred/violence at anyone who criticizes or takes it away. Orson Welles once said of Jean-Luc Godard, “[H]is gifts as a director are enormous, I just can’t take him seriously as a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>thinker</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">;” </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>F for Fake</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> can be read as Welles showing Godard how to use his style to think. I find praise of Spike Jonze’s </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Her</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> for its romanticism to be deeply disturbing; </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Her</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> is a horror story or it is nothing. Comic books ≠ superheroes of course, though the stereotype has been limiting to both the medium and the genre. The reason many movie polls are so boring is the same reason Top 40 radio makes everything sound the same--they lack a motivating intelligence/sensibility, a sense of actual opinions being held that have a little risk and personality to them; instead, good movies/songs coexist next to bad ones with so little differentiation that it becomes one big stew of mediocrity. If cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out, too often television seems to be a matter of what comes before a commercial break and what comes after. Watch </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Thief </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Blackhat </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">back-to-back and you might think the latter is a high-tech remake of the former. Miyazaki places his small moments among his large setpieces, Takahata places occasional setpieces among his small moments. High aesthetic ideals for art sound great until you realize they don’t let you enjoy your disreputable favorites; might that tension be the point at which new critical tastes are formed? </span>StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-37582206835774848872016-08-10T11:46:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:14.726-04:00" "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Bad filmmakers (sadly for them) have no ideas. Good filmmakers (it's what limits them) tend to have too many. Great filmmakers (especially the inventors) have only one. This id</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">é</span><span class="Apple-style-span">e fixe enables them to keep moving on, to take the idea through ever-renewing and ever-interesting landscapes. The price to pay is well-known: a certain solitude. What about great critics? It is the same thing, except there are none. . . All but one. Between 1943 and 1958 (the year of his death: he was only forty) Andr</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 23px;">é</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> Bazin was this one.</span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">--Serge Daney </span></div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-84505317220499918372016-07-18T01:17:00.000-04:002016-07-18T01:17:45.283-04:00Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/19LQx_wbGTw" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
There have already been a great many significant deaths this year, but Abbas Kiarostami's hit me harder than most. I do not have the learning or experience to write a great eulogy for him, and his major features have all been lauded far beyond my poor power to add or subtract, so instead let me here mention a film of his that I believe many have overlooked.<br />
<br />
In 2013, to celebrate its 70th anniversary, the Venice Film Festival commissioned short films from 70 world directors, broadly suggested to be about the future of cinema. The films were all a minute-and-a-half in length, and have been posted to YouTube on the festival's channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2J3c5AtY5K_dINEXUacWHDW4C-NnloIs" target="_blank">here.</a> I watched many of them at the time, and it is still fascinating to view them now, because despite their brief run-times they nearly all clearly reflect the sensibilities and concerns of their directors. (Claire Denis is one of the few exceptions: her short appears to be the view of a cell phone inside of a cloth bag--incongruously scored to the Tindersticks.)<br />
<br />
This is not always a good thing: Catherine Breillat's short is bitter and ideologically puritanical, as is her wont; James Franco's is pretentious, semi-ironic, and self-exhibitionist, as is his; and Todd Solondz's film is kind of funny and kind of ugly and mocking. On the other hand, Atom Egoyan manages to evoke <i>mono no aware</i> while deleting pictures from his phone; Ermanno Olmi the nostalgist presents a brief elegy for the moviola; and Apichatpong Weerasethakul creates something remarkably beautiful out of a dashboard shot of windshield wipers, catching strange yellow light and sound that suggests waves on a beach. <br />
<br />
Fascinatingly, Jia Zhang-Ke and Wang Bing provide two opposing views of modern China: Jia depicts young professional millennials watching the classics of Chinese cinema on phones, tablets, and projected in malls--yet being moved by the emotions of the films nonetheless. The environments depicted are hyper-modern, and the short seems like it could be a TV commercial for the newest iPhone. Wang shows us a few moments of a poor dirt farmer whose livelihood has likely been the same for millennia, and seems to have little need for or experience of cinema in any form. Thanks to cinema, however, thousands of people around the world have now seen a small part of his life.<br />
<br />
Yet of all these films, my favorite would have to be Kiarostami's, embedded at the top of this post. Within this brief 90-second window, we find a surprisingly large number of the themes of Kiarostami's career: children, the relation between young and old, a documentary-like depiction of life, non-professional actors, minimal camera movement or editing, a careful parceling out of information to the audience, the capabilities of the digital camera, sound design which is just as important as the image, and above all, a concern with the nature of cinema and how it reveals truth. Of course, none of this is intrusive or even assertive, and the film can easily be appreciated and understood by a child. (One is reminded of his early short films for children, though this is not nearly as didactic.) With this short, Kiarostami puts his faith in the future of cinema; it is significant also that the boy-director he shows us is making a film that harks back to the slapstick values of early film: to move forward, it is still necessary to remember the past and take its lessons with us.<br />
<br />
Let us hope the filmmakers of the future remember the lessons of Abbas Kiarostami, for we shall need them.StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-4588443710758599852016-07-01T23:09:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:49.241-04:00" "Gutenberg and post-Gutenberg literature contains <i>communal</i> dreams, shared myths or archetypes. And it is distinguished by the mythopoeic color of its creators, their ability to sense what already existed in the popular mind, rather than by any unique vision or ability in executive skills. For this reason popular works of literature tend to pass immediately into the public domain.<br />
. . .<br />
As a matter of fact, one of the distinctions between popular and high literature can be made on the basis of this, as Edgar Allan Poe, in a review of James Fenimore Cooper, pointed out. There is a certain kind of book, he wrote, which is forgotten though its author is remembered (High Literature); and there is a certain kind of book whose author is forgotten though the work is remembered.<br />
. . .<br />
It is a characteristic of popular literature that it changes its medium because it never really belonged to any medium to begin with. Popular Literature is not "words on the page," as some critics would have us believe. Like all literature, it is finally, essentially, images in the head. Once its images pass <i>through</i> words (the text is transparent, downright irrelevant) into our heads, such primordial images, or archetypes, or myths . . . can pass out again easily into any other medium. . . . They still retain their authenticity and the resonance of feeling that was originally connected with them.<br />
. . .<br />
But in the realm of Popular Art, overt and conscious ideas could not matter less. What matters is the stirring up of the collective unconscious, the evocation of closely shared nightmares of race and sex: the drama of protecting little sister against the rapist, whoever she may be and whatever color: Black/White, White/Black. You can mix them and match them and it makes no difference in popular appeal. Is it white innocence assaulted by black bestiality? Is it black innocence assaulted by white brutality? The audience loves it in any case. And this leads me to my final point about popular culture: It is neither good nor bad--<i>it is beyond good and evil, as we define the terms, in whatever culture we may live</i>.<br />
. . .<br />
Maybe, then, just <i>maybe </i>it is possible for us to say that the value of popular literature, like the popular arts in general, is that it joins together at the level of the unconscious people who are, on ever conscious level, in this post-industrial society <i>divided</i>. Our religion divides us, our politics divides us, our attitude toward education divides us: the only thing that holds us together is <b>Kojak</b>, <b>Star Wars</b>, <b>Rich Man, Poor Man</b>. . . . All literature--all art--is the same. . . . When I think of the books I have loved best in my life, I realize that what I admire in them is what I love in pop art at its most gross, flagrant, vulgar, brutal and unrefined: the mythopoeic power of the author. Never mind his ability to instruct and delight, to create beautiful, elegant, architectonic forms to teach those thins which we think are important for the future of mankind. Instruction and delight are optional . . . What really moves us to transport--what Longinus calls "<i>ekstasis</i>"--taking us out of our heads and out of our bodies, out of our normal consciousness is the ability of all great books, great pop books, great elite books, to turn us again into savages and children; and releasing us thus from bondage not merely to the restrictions of conscience or superego, but to consciousness and rationality, which is to say, the ego itself.<br />
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--Leslie Fiedler, "Giving the Devil His Due"</div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-6110616601267825092016-05-31T23:09:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:49.253-04:00" "Art was the speech of the folk revival--and yet, at bottom, the folk revival did not believe in art at all. Rather, life--a certain kind of life--equaled art, which ultimately meant that life replaced it. The kind of life that equaled art was defined by suffering, deprivation, poverty, and social exclusion . . . the poor are art because they sing their lives without the false consciousness of captialism and the false desires of advertising.<br />
. . .<br />
When art is confused with life, it is not merely art that is lost. When art equals life there is no art, but when life equals art there are no people.<br />
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--Greil Marcus, <b>The Old, Weird America</b></div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-21122122122656627982016-05-24T21:53:00.000-04:002016-07-25T13:52:17.041-04:00Dylan @ 75<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(image <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/58688-bob-dylan-goes-film-noir-in-the-night-we-called-it-a-day-video/" target="_blank">source</a>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Happy 75th Birthday to Bob Dylan!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">When I type "bob dylan" into the search box in my iTunes library, I come up with 551 items (including covers, duplicates, and alternate versions). And yet I know that there are vast depths out there that I haven't even heard, much less own, and my silly boasts wouldn't impress any of the long-time Dylan fans out there who have lived with his music for decades and know obsessive details about every song he's ever released. But as a salute <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">to one of the great American artists, I hereby offer my (as of this minute and sure to change) Top 25 Bob Dylan Songs:</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">1. <b>Tangled Up in Blue</b> (<i>Blood on the Tracks</i>, 1975)<br />2. <b>Mr. Tambourine Man</b> (<i>Bringing It All Back Home</i>, 1965)<br />3. <b>Like a Rolling Stone</b> (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)<br />4. <b>Ring Them Bells</b> (<i>Oh Mercy</i>, 1989)<br />5. <b>A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall</b> (<i>The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan</i>, 1963)<br />6. <b>Ain't Talkin'</b> (<i>Modern Times</i>, 2006)<br />7.<b> Shelter from the Storm</b> (<i>Blood on the Tracks</i>, 1975)<br />8. <b>Visions of Johanna</b> (<i>Blonde on Blonde</i>, 1966)<br />9. <b>It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)</b> (<i>Bringing It All Back Home</i>, 1965)<br />10. <b>Sign on the Window</b> (<i>New Morning</i>, 1970)<br />11. <b>Blind Willie McTell </b>(<i>The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991</i>, rec. 1983)<br />12. <b>I Was Young When I Left Home</b> (<i>The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack</i>, rec. 1961)<br />13. <b>Every Grain of Sand</b> (<i>Shot of Love</i>, 1981)<br />14. <b>The Times They Are A-Changin'</b> (<i>The Times They Are A-Changin'</i>, 1964)<br />15.<b> All Along the Watchtower</b> (<i>John Wesley Harding</i>, 1967)<br />16. <b>I Want You</b> (<i>Blonde on Blonde</i>, 1966)<br />17. <b>Ballad of a Thin Man</b> (<i>Highway 61 Revisited</i>, 1965)<br />18. <b>Love Sick</b> (<i>Time Out of Mind</i>, 1997)<br />19. <b>Highway 61 Revisited</b> (<i>Highway 61 Revisited</i>, 1965)<br />20. <b>Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again</b> (<i>Blonde on Blonde</i>, 1966)<br />21. <b>Bob Dylan's 115th Dream</b> (<i>Bringing It All Back Home</i>, 1965)<br />22. <b>High Water (For Charley Patton)</b> (<i>Love & Theft</i>, 2001)<br />23. <b>Lay Lady Lay</b> (<i>Nashville Skyline</i>, 1969)<br />24. <b>When I Paint My Masterpiece [Demo version]</b> (<i>The Bootleg Series Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait, 1969-1971</i>, rec. 1971)<br />25. <b>Mississippi</b> (<i>Love & Theft</i>, 2001)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span>StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-19963653060077372072016-05-01T02:44:00.000-04:002017-05-18T13:04:36.361-04:00Midnight Special, Lemonade, Heat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Midnight Special </b>(Nichols, 2016) <b>Rating: 8/10 stars.</b></div>
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It could be a feature-length episode of <b>The X-Files</b>, or perhaps <b>Escape to Witch Mountain</b> as directed by John Carpenter. Or it may answer the question, What if <b>Tomorrowland</b> was good? The ending is a problem--Nichols always seems to have problems with endings--but I do not think it is an insurmountable one. Sometimes you just have to go where a movie wants to take you.<br />
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One thing I found gratifying about the film was the faces. In the Hollywood of past decades, particularly the 1970s, there were plenty of actors with weathered, craggy faces to fill roles of weathered, craggy men and women living in the American interior, or else the hard, meaty faces of blue-collar factory and dock workers from the coasts. Lee Marvin, Warren Oates, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Strother Martin, Harry Dean Stanton, John Cazale--the list goes on. Among actresses, we might mention Sissy Spacek, Shelley Duvall, or Talia Shire--but the demands on beauty have always been much greater for actresses. These faces were memorable because directors then knew how to use them, knew that performers like that brought an authenticity you can't fake to their films. Such faces have died out in modern Hollywood. To a certain extent they have died down in American society, what with good plumbing and acne medication and all (most of the performers I just listed lived through the Great Depression, and a few fought in World War 2). <br />
<br />
Jeff Nichols is one of the few directors in current American movies who seems to go looking for such faces, and even if what he finds can't equal the past, he still manages to create a convincing rural American through face and texture alone. Here he casts Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Adam Driver, and Sam Shepard (not to mention character actors like Bill Camp and David Jensen), and even manages to transform Kirsten Dunst into utterly convincing Pennsylvania Dutch motherhood. Such actors <i>feel</i> like blue collar America in a way so many others do not. And when one takes a wider lay of the land and sees character actors like Shea Wigham, Jason Clarke, Ben Mendelsohn, and Scoot McNairy gaining in prominence and getting cast all over the place, why, it's almost enough to make one optimistic about Hollywood.<br />
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<b>Lemonade </b>(Knowles et al., 2016) <b>Rating: 8/10 stars.</b><br />
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Watching this, I'm reminded of the review I read when <b>Watch the Throne </b>came out, which said the big thing that distinguished Kanye from Jay-Z was--humility. Paradoxically true then, obvious now.<br />
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Love to see the references to everything from <b>Ganja & Hess</b> to David Lynch--Beyonce is really stretching herself, and this is going to lead a lot of people in a lot of new directions in their movie-watching. I put <b>Daughters of the Dust</b> on my watchlist like 9 months ago and I still haven't gotten around to it, and now I feel like I'm late to the party or something! I gotta get on that. [UPDATE: I did, and it's wonderful.] Beyonce reads Warsan Shire's poetry with rich and biting intonation that lends suspense to every line; I suspect these poems sound better aloud than read on a page. The synergy between the music and the images is remarkable, with both visual and musical compositions striking and memorable.<br />
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I do have a few caveats, though: I remain a little uncomfortable with the way Beyonce, surely the second most powerful black woman in the country (maybe the world?), equates her personal problems with a cheating husband to the larger historical oppression of all poor and enslaved African-American women. But the usual identity politics activists don't seem bothered by this point at all, and I'm a lot more uncomfortable with ever coming off more politically puritanical that that sort of commentator on such issues, so I guess I'll just shut up about it. On more aesthetic grounds, let's get one thing clear: as much as this apes Malick throughout (in ways so obvious I'm not even going to list them), it's not "better than" or even (IMO) "as good as" Malick. The editing here is nowhere near as radical, the interplay between music, voice, and image is nowhere near as complex, and the artistic risk and ambition is not as great. <b>Knight of Cups </b>is in a different order of magnitude--and has more to say about the world we live in today besides. <br />
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(Not to mention the pacing problems--this is still a pop album first, experimental film second.) <br />
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But still, this is pretty darn good, and way better than I expected.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><b>Heat </b>(Richards, Jameson, 1986) </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><b>Rating: 6/10 stars.</b></span></div>
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Odd, twisty little Las Vegas-set crime movie. Twisty not in the sense that it effectively manipulates the audience, but in the way it keeps shifting gears and tones in unusual/surprising ways. After opening with a fake-out confrontation that posits Burt Reynolds as a neanderthal attempted-rapist who gets beaten up by a weak-chinned but righteous boyfriend, the movie then reveals him as a weird cross between lovable loser and unbeatable hitman, and his various jobs include playacting, gambling, extortion, bodyguarding, and fight training (all taken in a quixotic attempt to move to Italy and retire).<br />
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The action scenes are chopped up into shards of slow-motion bloody violence in a way that isn't really successful, and the whole thing is alternately gritty and goofy, but it can still surprise with moments of poetry. I'm thinking here of the scene where Reynolds and his rich-kid trainee/employer bond while gazing out on the vividly lit Vegas strip from a balcony, and Reynolds admits:<br />
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-"I've never been here when the sun's up."<br />
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-"Why?"<br />
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-"I have a feeling it turns into the real world then."</div>
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-85339118318703866522016-04-28T23:19:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:49.265-04:00" "Many of our ideas about how cinema works and what a filmmaker is grow out of an idea of gesture and intention. This is understandable: in the 20th century, cinema brought some of the grandest gestures in history. . . . In turn, we came to understand and attribute authorship in cinema based on obvious gestures. The theories that form the foundation of both filmmaking and film criticism concern themselves not with small or subjective properties, but with grand designs: montage, mise-en-scene, camera movement, framing. All of these things could be called the "obvious properties of style."<br />
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Cinephilia set itself aside from mere film buffery by becoming the hunt for small moments and small films, things that appeared to exist outside the realm of obvious gesture. Criticism sought to explain the tracking shot; cinephilia looked for the meanings of drifting cigarette smoke, stray glances and apparent accidents, and to divine the patterns of hats, cars, and donkeys.<br />
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--Ignatiy Vishnevetsky</div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-54869378403544101722016-04-23T23:09:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:49.247-04:00" "There are many criteria of merit in moviemaking--or, rather, there are none. A movie is a whole experience--actually a lot of experiences, indivisible and unlimited, and often occurring within a single moment. Submitting to the biomorphic phantasmagoria of even the simplest cinematic image is a potentially mind-wrenching, soul-shuddering blow, or nudge, or whirl, or caress. That's why banal, profligate, rote images are abject and repellant: they trade on a power that they don't hazard, they borrow the inspiration of the cinema itself and give nothing back, basking in its reflected glory.<br />
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--Richard Brody</div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-1872771372510619592016-03-30T23:14:00.000-04:002017-05-19T13:19:49.227-04:00" "There is no theme richer for an American artist than the spirit and the themes of the country and the country's history. We have never figured out what this place is about or what it is for, and the only way to even begin to answer those questions is to watch our movies, read our poets, our novelist, and listen to our music. Robert Johnson and Melville, Hank Williams and Hawthorne, Bob Dylan and Mark Twain, Jimmie Rodgers and John Wayne. America is the life's work of the American artist because he is doomed to be an American.<br />
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--Greil Marcus, review of <b>Self Portrait</b></div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-22137489858543381782016-03-17T19:05:00.000-04:002016-04-19T19:21:37.167-04:00Joy, The Big Short<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Joy</b> (Russell, 2015) <b>Rating: 7/10 Stars.</b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial";">Another year, another, shouty, distracted, over-excited David O. Russell movie. This one has a reminiscent voice-over from a character who dies halfway through, and a narrative structure in the first half-hour that mixes events so achronologically it almost seems like it’s going for Malickean abstraction, but instead just ends up deeply confused and broken. It picks itself up, though, and somehow coheres into a fairly stirring ode to feminine enterprise and determination, anchored by a performance from Jennifer Lawrence that absolutely deserves to be called “powerhouse.” </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The politics are kind of fascinating, too: It starts off with an onscreen dedication to “daring women” so on-the-nose it can make you snort, and there’s no doubt it considers itself a feminist film--but it’s the feminism of Loretta Lynn or Norma Rae here, not that of, say, Lena Dunham. In fact, the film could almost be aimed at the archetypal Trump voter--white working class, bitter about declining Rust Belt jobs, lacking in education and social capital, resentful of the cultural elite, devoted watchers of daytime and reality TV, attempting to hold a family together in a hostile world. Joy herself is a capitalist success story of the type Hollywood has always been weirdly reluctant to celebrate. Movie makers worship artist types and celebrate sports stars, but they seem strangely blind to characters who achieve self-actualization through achievement in business or commercial enterprise, despite the fact that that is a far more common and relatable story for everyday Americans. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In truth, as much as I tend to resist Russell’s style, he is valuable for being the only major filmmaker out there actually depicting this demographic, and demonstrating understanding and respect. And it rests on the shoulders of a performance this magnetic and exciting, I gotta give it a passing grade.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOAJ7NuiJ9VEb2Dd4re7yy_9Kt9sdDy9wJh00pfUy3MyuBFzbDr5g4e2L5oaaIukpsVsebRlFaXPvDEW_r3Y6U-AdP4Bv0jD2HULzxIUQH3upsaQLfB2XHorQflHBQ2OXcj1iicHLo4Ww/s1600/The_Big_Short_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOAJ7NuiJ9VEb2Dd4re7yy_9Kt9sdDy9wJh00pfUy3MyuBFzbDr5g4e2L5oaaIukpsVsebRlFaXPvDEW_r3Y6U-AdP4Bv0jD2HULzxIUQH3upsaQLfB2XHorQflHBQ2OXcj1iicHLo4Ww/s200/The_Big_Short_poster.jpg" width="128" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b style="font-weight: bold;">The Big Short </b>(McKay, 2015) </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b> Rating 7/10 Stars.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Can be read as the coda or epilogue to the great “culture of excess” cycle of 2013 that included <b>The Great Gatsby</b>, <b>Spring Breakers</b>, <b>Pain & Gain</b>, <b>American Hustle</b>, <b>The Bling Ring</b>, <b>Blue Jasmine</b>, and <b>The Wolf of Wall Street</b>. While those films described a culture and critiqued the underlying values, showing us what American society has too long valorized, <b>The Big Short</b> is the final afterword that runs down the real-world economic consequences when such cultural values hit the mainstream, complete with names and dates. As such, it risks feeling a little like the doctor’s explanation at the end of <b>Psycho</b>. It compensates with jokes and a supposedly adventurous aesthetic that rather pales in comparison to those earlier entries, but its jargon-heavy explanations really are appreciated and necessary. It’s just a shame it couldn’t manage to say <i>more</i>: government housing policy, perhaps the most important culprit, gets off stock free here (pun intended), and there’s but a single brief mention of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite those two buying up more toxic securities than anybody by far. (Plus, just as an aside, I found the cutaways to Margot Robbie and Anthony Bourdain to be cut and sound mixed in a highly distracting manner that required me to watch them a second time to understand what they were trying to tell me. And then I was a little insulted that McKay didn’t think I would understand that info if he’d just put it in the dialogue.) But again, as most people have said, I’m still glad it exists.</span></span></div>
<br />StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-91421040293613790462016-03-10T23:09:00.000-05:002017-05-19T13:19:49.270-04:00" "Rock 'n' roll is, today, too big for any center. . . . In one sense, this is salutary and inevitable. The lack of a center means the lack of a conventional definition of what rock 'n' roll is, and that fosters novelty. Rules about what can go into a performance and, ultimately, about how and what it can communicate are not only unenforced, they're often invisible, both to performer and audience. That rock 'n' roll has persisted for so long, and spread to such diverse places, precludes its possession by any single generation or society--and this leads not only to fragmentation but to a vital, renewing clash of values . . . [But] The fact that the most adventurous music of the day seems to have taken up residence in the darker corners of the marketplace contradicts rock 'n' roll as aggressively popular culture that tears up boundaries of race, class, geography and (oh yes) music; the belief that the mass audience can be reached and changed has been the deepest source of the music's magic and power.<br />
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--Greil Marcus, 1980</div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-10503593331199527972016-02-28T16:58:00.001-05:002016-03-15T22:43:01.869-04:00If I Gave the Oscars: 2015 Edition<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As usual, these are how I would give out awards to the movies of 2015, if that was a power that I had. I'm not going to go through all the exact same categories as the Academy Awards, because some of them are just tiresome and others require inside knowledge that I do not possess. This post is obviously meant to be complementary to my </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://petrifiedfountainofthought.blogspot.com/2016/02/best-of-2015-write-ups-to-come.html">Best of 2015</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> post, where I listed all my favorites, so I have left out Best Picture nominees here; they would be the same as the top 10 from that post, so no need to list them twice. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Each category is listed in order of preference, with the first director/actor/etc. being my choice for the winner. Things should be fairly self-explanatory from there.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. George Miller (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Michael Mann (<b>Blackhat</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Ryan Coogler (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Hou Hsiao-Hsien (<b>The Assassin</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. David Robert Mitchell (<b>It Follows</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Nick Lathouris, George Miller, Brendan McCarthy (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Ronaldo Del Carmen, Josh Cooley (<b>Inside Out</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer (<b>Spotlight</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Alex Garland (<b>Ex Machina</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. David Robert Mitchell (<b>It Follows</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Actor</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Michael B. Jordan (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Michael Fassbender (<b>Steve Jobs</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Tom Hardy (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Michael Keaton (<b>Spotlight</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Jennifer Lawrence (<b>Joy</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Charlize Theron (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Emily Blunt (<b>Sicario</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Maika Monroe (<b>It Follows</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Supporting Actor</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Oscar Isaac (<b>Ex Machina</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Sylvester Stallone (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Walton Goggins (<b>The Hateful Eight</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Benicio Del Toro (<b>Sicario</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Mark Rylance (<b>Bridge of Spies</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Supporting Actress</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Alicia Vikander (<b>Ex Machina</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Tang Wei (<b>Office</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Jennifer Jason Leigh (<b>The Hateful Eight</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Viola Davis (<b>Blackhat</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Tessa Thompson (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Cinematography</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Mark Lee Ping-Bin (<b>The Assassin</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Roger Deakins (<b>Sicario</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Emmanuel Lubezki (<b>The Revenant</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. John Seale (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Stuart Dryburgh (<b>Blackhat</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Editing</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Margaret Sixel (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Mako Kamitsuna, Jeremiah O'Driscoll, Stephen E. Rivkin, Joe Walker (<b>Blackhat</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Julio Perez IV (<b>It Follows</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Joe Walker (<b>Sicario</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Claudia Castello, Michael P. Shawver (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Musical Score</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Ennio Morricone (<b>The Hateful Eight</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Junkie XL (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rich Vreeland (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>It Follows</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Michael Giacchino </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Inside Out</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Johann Johannson (<b>Sicario</b>)</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Best Scene</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Into the Sandstorm (<b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Putting on New Skin (<b>Ex Machina</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Single-Shot Boxing Match (<b>Creed</b>)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Standoff on the Bridge of the Americas (<b>Sicario</b>)</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Parking Garage--Learning the Rules (<b>It Follows</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. Chase Through the Skies of Chicago (<b>Jupiter Ascending</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">7. Pit of Forgotten Memories (<b>Inside Out</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">8. First Flight of the Millennium Falcon (<b>Star Wars: The Force Awakens</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9. Sending a Message with the <i>Pathfinder</i> Probe (<b>The Martian</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10. Car Bomb and Ambush in the Street (<b>Blackhat</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">11. Eavesdropping on the Governor and his Mistress (<b>The Assassin</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">12. Pet Sounds Sessions (<b>Love & Mercy</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">13. Playing Soccer With Restrictions (<b>Timbuktu</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">14. Shoot-Out in an Opera (<b>Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">15. Abstract Thought (<b>Inside Out</b>)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">(actually posted March 14, 2016)</span></div>
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-51511226348014833272016-02-28T16:55:00.000-05:002016-05-29T17:44:36.914-04:00Best of 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLsrQIuRJw6CjVr0hqLRwpPYa00EbMLEZ3X6MPQH_B-OrvC8K7Kn0zCeGy3vZ1uj8hGlrnpbBWG9WXGs64E8MQx_ntfOR-hygvoDaSae11KHYrVY7UichWpyZd4KYc9U4gZoTH6kmjHM/s1600/mad+max+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpLsrQIuRJw6CjVr0hqLRwpPYa00EbMLEZ3X6MPQH_B-OrvC8K7Kn0zCeGy3vZ1uj8hGlrnpbBWG9WXGs64E8MQx_ntfOR-hygvoDaSae11KHYrVY7UichWpyZd4KYc9U4gZoTH6kmjHM/s320/mad+max+poster.jpg" width="226" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <b>1. Mad Max: Fury Road </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(George Miller)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anchored by two co-leads giving equally brilliant performances in two different registers that complement each other nicely (Theron with the blazing, passionate star turn, Hardy with the precise, subtle inward one), <b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b> works as well on a character level as it does on the levels of spectacle and theme. George Miller’s <b>Mad Max</b> trilogy, now a quartet, was already one of the major works of post-apocalyptic vision the cinema had produced, its visual influence extending through film, television, and comics as widely as <b>Blade Runner</b>’s. With <b>Fury Road</b>, he proves his Aussie auto-wasteland future boundless in its potential and ambition; it stands out among our current glut of blockbusters on apocalyptic themes like a tyrannosaur among wildebeest. The series’ survey of the extremes of human society has now cycled through the final moments before a tired civilization’s collapse (<b>Mad Max</b>), nomadic existence plagued by brigands (<b>The Road Warrior</b>), the growth of trade hubs into cities with a semblance of order (<b>Beyond Thunderdome</b>), and now an empire, ruled by a dictator who styles himself a god and stratifies society by class and gender. Remarkably, there is room in every tale for the softer sides of humanity to bleed through, for the eternal principles of morality, justice, and compassion to prove themselves more forcefully in their battles with nihilism and absolutism. In the end, whether you wish to count it as a work of action cinema harkening back to <b>The General</b> and <b>Stagecoach</b>, a work of dystopian science fiction in the vein of Harlan Ellison or RIchard Matheson, or a work that explores the nature of the human through the use of the grotesque, as <b>Freaks</b> and <b>The Elephant Man</b> did before, you just have to call it cinema.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>2. Blackhat </b>(Michael Mann)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Full review to come.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>3. It Follows</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (David Robert Mitchell)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A slasher flick made with the precise framing and careful parcelling of information of an art film, few movies this year had as much control of mood and tone as <b>It Follows</b>. Director David Robert Mitchell took the images and themes laid out by John Carpenter’s <b>Halloween</b>--high school and college students, sleepy Midwestern suburb, a killer lurking in the background as an ominous Shape, and most notoriously, the equation of sex and death--and reconfigured them with enough artistry that they transcend the clichés they had become, reasserting their original primal power. With a young cast that actually feel genuine and relatable, and a spine-tingling musical score, Mitchell has created one of the most haunting horror films I have ever seen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>4. Inside Out </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The image of personified figures inside one’s head, acting out internal human conflicts, is very old. The oldest version I can think of is John Bunyan’s <b>The Holy War</b> (1682), an allegory of Christian spiritual conflict in the town of “Mansoul,” featuring characters like Mayor Understanding, Lord Willbewill, and Conscience the town Recorder. <b>Inside Out</b> is an allegory of emotional growth for a secular age that views humanity primarily through the lens of psychology, with the attendant insights and limitations such a perspective allows. A fascinating depiction of what the end of childhood feels like from the inside, its elegant metaphors are worked out in astonishing detail, leading to hours of potential thought and investigation. Pixar’s visual style, here influenced by Dr. Seuss and Bill Watterson, achieves a new peak of sophistication (even if it’s not as gorgeous as <b>Brave </b>or <b>Wall-E</b>), and continues to prove its character animation is the best in the world.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>5. The Assassin </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Hou Hsiao-Hsien)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Easily the most visually beautiful film of the year, and an early contender for most beautiful of the decade--which, in an era of multiple Malick films, is saying something. An art-film variation on the <i>wuxia</i> genre (the Chinese martial-arts epic), it reminded me of Wong Kar-Wai’s <b>Ashes of Time</b> in its focus on emotion, contemplation, and stillness, rather than brief, sudden sword-fighting--though it takes stillness much further than Wong ever has. More importantly, it acts as a commentary on the traditional revenge-tragedy plot of the <i>wuxia</i>, rejecting such fatalism in favor of choice and mercy, and in the process achieving a moral beauty commensurate with its images.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>6. Spotlight </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Tom McCarthy)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A procedural, yes. A celebration of old-fashioned journalism in a world plagued by click-bait, absolutely. More than that, an exploration of institutions: both the Church and the Newspaper, the First and Fourth Estates. Tom McCarthy’s underrated direction maps the inside of the Boston Globe offices for us, arranging his characters in shots with careful attention to power and relational dynamics and a perceptive eye for the way working conditions are shaped by office geography. As the clues of the case are laid out carefully, we discover the world-famous story along with our characters, each factual revelation evoking dawning horror and deepening our understanding of hidden connections and structural issues. We begin to understand what a “culture of silence” really is, its limits and its effects. And as one institution is indicted, its blindspots and hypocrisies exposed, another is commended--though not unconditionally. The print newspaper’s inner workings are revealed, its potential for heroism through plodding legwork, the necessity of good editing as well as good reporting, the ways it is tied to the community, and its limits and disadvantages. For it is clear that part of the horror of the story is the importance of the Church’s role, the way its sacred purpose has been perverted; and the newspaper as an institution is similarly capable of corruption, of bowing to outside pressures, even of succumbing to the culture of silence itself. No one gets off easy here. But always, always, the impact on the individual human being in the midst of these institutions is kept paramount.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>7. Creed </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Ryan Coogler)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As many have noted, <b>Creed</b> takes the racial politics of the original <b>Rocky </b>series and turns them on their ear. While the first couple films in the franchise were by no means racist in their depiction of individual black characters, they gave voice unavoidably to a white working class in the newly defined "Rust Belt" that felt itself slipping and falling behind while blacks appeared to be culturally ascendant for the first time, generating resentment and desperation; and the movies did focus on defeating black boxers who could be fairly described as arrogant, perhaps bordering on "uppity." Where the original <b>Rocky</b> was realistic and insightful about what it meant to be a young Italian-American man in 1976 (the bicentennial year), <b>Creed</b> is insightful and (mostly) realistic about what it means to be a young African-American man in 2015 (nearing the end of the Obama era). Straddling the lines of black experience almost as comprehensively as Kendrick Lamar’s <b>To Pimp a Butterfly</b>--Adonis is both rich and poor, oppressed and privileged, juvenile delinquent and business school graduate, fatherless and perpetually under his father’s shadow, desperately searching for an identity of his own he can be proud of--<b>Creed</b> is ultimately the more open, inclusive, and optimistic statement (perhaps inevitably, as an entry in this franchise). Just as significant for the success of the film, though, is the way director Ryan Coogler genuinely understands the conventions of the underdog boxing movie, and how thoroughly he rethinks and revises them. Whether it’s by shooting an entire boxing match in one take that puts us inside the ring, or re-imagining the training montage to include both triumph and tragedy (strengthening muscles and enduring chemotherapy at the same time), or a bravura final fight scene that shifts between multiple editing strategies as if they were movements in a symphony, Coogler proves himself a major filmmaker in both theme and style. This one is gonna be a classic.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>8. Ex Machina </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Alex Garland)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is a small but remarkably focused sci-fi film that reveals new layers with new scene, gradually building a thesis not just on the nature of what makes us human, but on gender roles, sexual fantasies, power dynamics, and particular strains of modern masculinity, as well. It’s elegant use of special effects in the service of character should be a model for the future filmmakers. A deft switch in viewer identification towards the end leaves events unresolved and morally ambiguous, but provides us with some absolute certainty about the nature of individuality. A worthy companion to <b>Blade Runner</b> and <b>A.I. Artificial Intelligence</b>. (Incidentally, does the academy have it in for Oscar Isaac or what? Snubbed for both <b>Inside Llewyn Davis</b> <i>and</i> his brilliant role here--in favor of Tom Hardy’s worst performance ever in <b>The Revenant</b>? Come on!)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>9. The Martian </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Ridley Scott)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is the kind of giddy, completely satisfying crowd-pleaser only Hollywood can make, but they only seem to actually put out once in a blue moon. Ridley Scott has ppossibly never been more optimistic, and the whole thing glides along with a cheerful can-do attitude rather incongruous with its story of desperate survival. Based on a book that began life as an amateur online blog fic with an audience of science nerds, a large part of the thrill of the film is how rigorous, believable, and realistic it is (with a couple exceptions: Mars doesn’t have enough atmosphere for the type of storm that kicks off the whole plot). For an old homeschooler and Science Olympiad alum like me, the valorization of geeky problem-solving and scientific expertise here felt like it was made especially for me and my high school crowd. Along with <b>Interstellar</b> and <b>Tomorrowland</b> (and Steven Moffat’s <b>Doctor Who</b>), <b>The Martian</b> is finally a statement of simultaneous nostalgia and optimism--an implicit rejection of the pessimistic apocalyptic vision that has dominated the science fiction of the 21</span><span style="font: 8.0px Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> century, a resurrection of the triumphal vision of mid-century sc-fi, and an assertion of faith in the human capacity for innovation, cooperation, and perseverance. These movies represent a call for new stories, and a belief that the stories we tell about our future are in some sense self-fulfilling prophecies. Whatever happened to how we felt at that moment in 1969 when man first walked on the Moon?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>10. Office </b>(Johnnie To)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Fans of Hong Kong director Johnnie To have been hoping for years that he would make a musical, yet when he finally offered one this year many responses were underwhelmed. Based on a stage play, the film is shot on elaborately stylized and artificial sets, and scored with Cantopop that sounds foreign and thin to Western ears (including mine). Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised at the stylization; To tends to make real locations look like sets, anyway, and his elaborate camera moves in movies like <b>Breaking News</b> are already legendary. More importantly, he is in firm command of his characters and themes here, and the stylization serves them well. In </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Office</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">, To harkens back to King Vidor's </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Crowd </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">in his vision of corporate capitalism as one more collectivist constraint on individualism, and to Billy Wilder's </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>The Apartment</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'helvetica neue', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> as ambition, competition, and obsequiousness distort romantic relationships, but it is ultimately angrier and blunter than both, railing not merely against corporate culture, but the whole system of engrained and globalized capitalism. And despite its theatricality, obvious schematization, and sense of predictability usually missing from To's films, the film actually manages to convince me. It is not a call for revolution or socialist thesis statement; the alternatives longed for are individualism, honesty, a break from competition, and a return to a quiet and peaceful hometown where there is no opportunity for advancement but no desire for it either.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>11. Sicario</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (Denis Villeneuve)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Sicario’s</b> central problem is that it has two thematic objectives which work at cross-purposes with each other: it wants to be both a ripped-from-the-headlines journalistic expose and a journey-to-the-heart-of-darkness plunge into moral ambiguity. These oppositional objectives really should cripple the film, and they probably do prevent it from being a truly great one, but the truth is that <b>Sicario</b> is far too good on a scene-by-scene basis to let this failure pull it under. Working in a generic line that stretches back through <b>Breaking Bad</b>, <b>Zero Dark Thirty</b>, and <b>No Country for Old Men</b> all the way to <b>Chinatown</b>, director Denis Villeneuve crafts a supremely tense, detailed narrative of crime and law enforcement along the Mexican-American border. In this he is hugely indebted to cinematographer Roger Deakins, who’s been a legend for a decade already and keeps proving just how great he is with each new film (not that the Oscars will ever let him win). But even when Deakins isn’t doing amazing things with balanced compositions and light and shadow, the film is anchored by superlative performances from Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro. And the plotting is tight and exact--the occasional dumb line aside--taking us through the horrifying realities of the Drug War today and its moral compromises better than any fictional film has done since <b>Traffic</b> in 2000, at least.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>12. The Hateful Eight </b>(Quentin Tarantino)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Full review to come.)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Honorable Mentions:</u> Brooklyn</b> (John Crowley), <b>Timbuktu </b>(Abderrahmane Sissako), <b>Bridge of Spies </b>(Steven Spielberg), <b>Shaun the Sheep Movie</b> (Mark Burton, Richard Starzack), <b>Love & Mercy </b>(Bill Pohlad)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Most Overrated:</u> Trainwreck </b>(Judd Apatow)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Most Underrated/Underseen:</u> Blackhat </b>(Michael Mann), <b>Office </b>(Johnnie To)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Favorite Guilty Pleasure:</u> </b><b>Jupiter Ascending </b>(The Wachowskis)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><u>Worst Movie I Saw This Year:</u> True Story </b>(Rupert Goold)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Link to my complete list of "movies I saw this year" on Letterboxd <a href="http://letterboxd.com/stephen_morton/list/2015/">HERE.</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I have also compiled a list of the best older movies I saw for the first time this year. You can find the complete list of 30 films in full color on <a href="http://letterboxd.com/stephen_morton/list/first-time-viewings-2015/">Letterboxd</a>, but here's the Top 10 in black and white:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. <b>Heaven Can Wait </b>(Lubitsch, 1943)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. <b>The Shop Around the Corner </b>(Lubitsch, 1940)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. <b>The Women </b>(Cukor, 1939)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. <b>Kiss Me Deadly </b>(Aldrich, 1955)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. <b>Thief</b> (Mann, 1981)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. <b>The Lady Eve </b>(Sturges, 1941)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">7. <b>Femme Fatale </b>(De Palma, 2002)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">8. <b>Ninotchka </b>(Lubitsch, 1939)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9. <b>Videodrome</b> (Cronenberg, 1983)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10. <b>Vivre Sa Vie </b>(Godard, 1962)</span><br />
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-2075602938086042892016-02-09T17:19:00.001-05:002016-03-10T22:30:19.953-05:00TV 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Alright, last year this list was quick and easy, but the way I did it then won't quite cut it here. Television schedules being what they are in the U.S., starting in the fall and ending in the spring, I listed each half-season of a show that I watched separately to indicate their relative quality. But my TV-watching load increased this year, and listing every half-season would become too complicated--even though a couple of these shows had better half-seasons in the spring than they did in the fall, and vice versa. I suppose this must be something television critics deal with all the time when compiling their lists, but I'm just a guy who watches some shows, so I never really thought about it before.<br />
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Anyway, as you can tell, I watch a lot of superhero shows, despite their large gaps in quality and significant limitations they've tended to show in format. But I do love superheroes in general, and I think the superhero as a character still has a great deal of untapped potential in film and television, so I keep watching--and sometimes, in the case of my top two series especially, I'm rewarded.<br />
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I should note that I do like every show on here, otherwise, well, I wouldn't watch them. The exception is <b>Teen Wolf</b>, probably the most inexplicable series on here for those who don't watch it. I caught up with the first several seasons of it in autumn 2014, and mostly enjoyed them. The show starts off with a goofy, pulpy, over-done premise, but it chases it with such gusto that it's easy to get sucked in. Then, in the big two-part Season 3, it actually turned into something like genuinely excellent television, with a striking visual style, vivid, memorable imagery, and a number of uniquely structured episodes. But Season 4 left behind key characters and fell apart, and the first half of Season 5, which aired last summer, are only slightly better-focused, and end up being both ridiculously bleak and surprisingly boring; instead of dashing through plot like it used to, it left the impression that hardly anything had happened after 10 episodes. So I will no longer be following <b>Teen Wolf </b>in the future.<br />
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As for my quick-and-dirty opinions on the other series here, presented in one sentence each from the bottom of the list up: <b>Archer</b> is still funny, but the last few seasons have felt like treading water to me. <b>Arrow</b> peaked in its second season, which was genuinely incredible, but it's third season was overstuffed and rocky and its fourth season has only partially improved. <b>Agent Carter</b> has such a terrifically fun concept that I'm willing to almost completely overlook it's uneven execution and thematic heavy-handedness. <b>Agents of Shield</b> took a huge step up in its second season and became something I have great affection for; it's third season has so far been a bit disappointing, but I think it will improve soon. I have not often followed <b>South Park</b> in the past, but its incisive skewering of both PC-culture and the Trump backlash this year was absolutely brilliant. <b>The Flash</b> was pretty up-and-down in its first season, but so far its second season has thrived with wacky comic-book concepts like time travel, parallel worlds, and doppelgangers, that keep it relentlessly fun and engaging. <b>Game of Thrones</b> is still far more pulpy and disreputable than it's prestige status would suggest, and its constant foregrounding of rape and violence can be off-putting in the extreme--but then something like the 8th episode, "Hardhome," comes along, and you're left gaping on the floor with awe. <b>Orphan Black</b> is just too much. <b>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell </b>is a wonderful adaptation of a masterful book--perhaps slightly more jokey than I would have preferred and missing a couple fine details, but overall highly satisfying. <b>iZombie</b> is the most purely enjoyable thing on television right now, and it's second season is rolling right along, steadily expanding and improving on what the first season set up last spring. <b>Doctor Who</b> is excellent as ever, Steven Moffat is a genius, Peter Capaldi is a fantastic Doctor, and all the haters should shut up and enjoy it while they can. And finally, both <b>Jessica Jones </b>and <b>Daredevil</b> delivered just about everything I want in a TV show, with acting/shooting/directing/plotting/theme-ing all being top-notch. If I give a slight edge to <b>Daredevil</b>, it's because the whole plot seemed to play out in a slightly more effective and satisfying manner, though <b>Jessica Jones</b> did probably have the edge in characters and ideas.<br />
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1. (tie) <b>Daredevil </b>(Netflix)<br />
1. (tie) <b>Jessica Jones</b> (Netflix)<br />
3. <b>Doctor Who </b>(BBC America)<br />
4. <b>iZombie </b>(The CW)<br />
5. <b>Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell </b>(BBC America)<br />
6. <b>Orphan Black </b>(BBC America)<br />
7. <b>Game of Thrones </b>(HBO)<br />
8. <b>The Flash </b>(The CW)<br />
9. <b>South Park </b>(Comedy Central)<br />
10. <b>Marvel's Agents of Shield </b>(ABC)<br />
11. <b>Marvel's Agent Carter </b>(ABC)<br />
12. <b>Arrow </b>(The CW)<br />
13. <b>Archer </b>(FX)<br />
14. <b>Teen Wolf </b>(MTV)<br />
<br />StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-1779365028545036672016-01-31T23:56:00.000-05:002016-02-09T18:49:48.278-05:00Music of 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Most years, I do not buy very much new music. I listen to the radio, and I'm continuously discovering older music that I was unfamiliar with before, but I generally only acquire 2-3 albums of new music per year, and maybe a couple songs here and there. In terms of older music, I've spent the last few years deeply under the influence of critic Greil Marcus, particularly his books <b>Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music</b>, <b>The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes</b>, and <b>Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010</b>. With these as guides, I have been diving ever deeper into the works of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley, not to mention Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and the early classics of Sam Phillips's Sun Studio, and even some tentative explorations of punk rock. Plenty of my old opinions about music have been upended, and I have a new appreciation for the history of American popular music and the many blind alleys and winding paths that broke from the main Top 40 highways of the 20th century. The depth and power of this music at its best can be enough to reshape your understanding of American identity; it's exhilarating.<br />
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In terms of 21st century music, my tastes are probably pretty standard for a 20-something Midwestern white guy with hipster-ish tendencies. I read Pitchfork and the AV Club for my music reviews, but I have been to relatively few concerts, and I do not claim to have an especially sophisticated taste in comparison to the hundreds of music bloggers and online commenters who engage in protracted debates about particular artists and albums. I do not follow music news very much, whether tours or appearances or interviews, and I watch relatively few music videos even of the artists I like. I prefer it this way, for the most part, because it keeps the music paramount in my mind; I only care about the way it sounds to me, not what the artist looks like while they're singing, or what they do in their personal lives, or the political stands they take. There are exceptions to this, and I don't go out of my way to ignore all news and controversy in the pop world, but that's the way I tend to go about things.<br />
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Anyway, in 2015 I actually acquired enough music that I feel I can offer a few opinions on it. My sample size is still small, and I don't feel capable of giving detailed explanations of all my choices, but I offer the lists below anyway as a record of what I listened to and liked in 2015.<br />
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<u>Favorite Albums</u><br />
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1. <b>Carrie & Lowell </b>by Sufjan Stevens<br />
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2. <b>Art Angels </b> by Grimes<br />
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3. <b>To Pimp a Butterfly </b>by Kendrick Lamar<br />
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4. <b>Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper</b> by Panda Bear<br />
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5. <b>Sound & Color </b>by Alabama Shakes<br />
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6. <b>Emotion </b>by Carly Rae Jepsen<br />
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I also really liked and recommend <b>Coming Home</b> by Leon Bridges, <b>Pageant Material </b>by Kacey Musgraves, and <b>Traveller</b> by Chris Stapleton. I haven't listened to <b>Every Open Eye </b>by Chvrches much yet, but I like it so far, and I think Sam Outlaw's EP <b>Outlaw</b> shows a lot of promise. In contrast, I was a bit mystified by <b>In Colour</b> by Jamie xx; it has a few excellent tracks towards the end, but I find the first half to be frustratingly unrewarding. And while I have loved Mumford & Sons' first album since I first heard it in 2010, I think their turn away from folk on <b>Wilder Mind</b> was idiotic and drained them of whatever uniqueness they still possessed (though I have to admit I enjoyed a couple tracks when they played on the radio and stood out among the other Top 40 dreck).<br />
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<u>Favorite Songs</u><br />
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1. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTeKpWp8Psw">Fourth of July</a>" </b>by Sufjan Stevens<br />
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2. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8">Run Away with Me</a>" </b>by Carly Rae Jepsen<br />
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3. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prBaZzYmQrI">Boys Latin</a>" </b>by Panda Bear<br />
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4. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJT00wqlOo">Should Have Known Better</a>" </b>by Sufjan Stevens<br />
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5. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9XKLqGqwLA">REALiTi</a>" </b>by Grimes<br />
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6. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRK7PVJFbS8">King Kunta</a>" </b>by Kendrick Lamar<br />
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7. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVZUBMUekck">John My Beloved</a>" </b>by Sufjan Stevens<br />
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8. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv9YoYCKNoE">Flesh without Blood</a>" </b>by Grimes<br />
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9. "<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9luRtEqjc">Loud Places</a>" </b>by Jamie xx, feat. Romy<br />
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10. "<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5OX7CO26c">Don't Wanna Fight</a>" </b>by Alabama Shakes<br />
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11. <b>"<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A">Hello</a>" </b>by Adele<br />
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I also really enjoy and recommend <b>"Tennessee Whiskey"</b> by Chris Stapleton, <b>"Kill vs. Maim"</b> by Grimes, <b>"Fool for Love" </b>by Lord Huron, <b>"The Blacker the Berry" </b>by Kendrick Lamar, <b>"River" </b>by Leon Bridges, <b>"Your Type" </b>by Carly Rae Jepsen, and <b>"Family is Family" </b>by Kacey Musgraves. Plus a tip of the hat to <b>"Same Old Love" </b>by Selena Gomez (which took me by surprise), and <b>"Only One" </b>by Kanye West, feat. Paul McCartney, which is the kind of deeply personal noodling by a great artist that could fit easily on Paul's first album, <b>McCartney</b> (1970). And while I should note that the song was technically released in 2014, there's no doubt <b>"Uptown Funk" </b>by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars deserves all of its success as one of those hits that breaks through into the wider culture and turns up everywhere you look, until even your parents are humming it.<br />
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-69577878265171743152016-01-17T09:59:00.000-05:002017-05-19T13:19:49.259-04:00" ""Perhaps poetry replaces something in me that others receive more naturally," Linda Gregg once wrote, and poetry, both in Gregg's conception and in the context of what we're discussing here, should be defined as something other than verse. Cinephiles are, by nature, outsiders. They study the images of pasts remembered and made-up, where even their backyards become something strange and far-off. As a practice it remains, rightly or wrongly, a rejection of living life moment-to-moment or day-by-day--instead, it's a way of slipping into the dreams of others, of glimpsing, however briefly, all the not-quite-realities that will never be their own. What Gregg's "others" receive through work or community or family the cinephile receives by watching people they will never know.<br />
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--<a href="https://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/finding-ford-the-sun-shines-bright-1953/">Peter Lenihan </a></div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-4402350655968972872016-01-13T23:53:00.000-05:002016-01-15T01:29:30.486-05:00RIP, David BowieMovie scenes with Bowie music that came to mind today. More below the jump.<br />
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Also, this. We must always remember this as well:<br />
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<br />StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-64771601183749160312016-01-07T02:05:00.000-05:002016-02-11T16:24:33.758-05:00His Girl Friday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>His Girl Friday </b>(Hawks, 1940) <b>Rating: 10/10 stars.</b></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Grounded in Ben Hecht’s experience in journalism in the 1920s and 1930s, the satirical elements of the film feel outdated today. Sure, journalism is still a dirty business and Chicago politics are still corrupt, but the specifics here seem foreign and unconvincing to me as a representation of even historical reality. Instead, what impresses is the way the entire film is one long verbal competition, every scene about clever characters trying to best each other. Russell and Grant are evenly matched adversaries and totally unscrupulous, tricking and manipulating every less-sharp character and turning every new development to their advantage. It’s conversation as tactical warfare. Every exchange is a game played for high stakes with no morals or rules, and the more risked the more fun; verbal and intellectual dexterity are the only virtues.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And they’re playing that game from the very beginning, though not everyone is aware of it (and those who aren’t are used as pawns by the real players). Whether she admits it to herself or not, by walking back into the office Hildy is effectively dealing Walter back in, and giving him one last shot at the jackpot. The rest of the movie is a dazzling display of power plays disguised by compliments, declarations of love used as insults, the trumps vs. the chumps; comedy as war, as verbally brutal as <b>Game of Thrones</b>. There’s casual racism here, cruelty galore, ambulance chasing, lawbreaking, and attempted suicide leveraged for cheap escape by our supposed heroes; the film definitely requires a strong stomach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hawks keeps everyone in frame and all expressions visible (and often doesn’t cut for ages), so you can watch individuals’ faces throughout the conversations. But do so too closely and you’ll probably get lost--the expressions/emotions/reactions move as fast as the dialogue, and it’s near impossible to keep both in focus at once. The crowded frame allows for a plethora of bits of business and body language to be introduced. Cary Grant’s performance is justifiably legendary, but for my money, Rosalind Russell just about runs circles around him for half the movie. The whole thing is a thrilling experience to watch, as well as a challenge--you’re almost certainly going to miss something whatever you do, so every time you watch it there are new clever/funny/witty details to pick up on. The film ends up feeling inexhaustible, if only on the level of sheer cleverness. There’s almost nothing else like it.</span></div>
StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-30265666625952755282015-12-29T23:46:00.000-05:002017-05-19T13:19:49.234-04:00" "[Velazquez] would paint a turnip seriously; but never with that blatant materialism that seems to say in every line, "this is a turnip; you have often seen one before." His picture would say, the one lesson of all art all philosophy, all religion, "this is a turnip. You have never seen one before."<br />
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StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7047872200068694467.post-20620874630279900662015-12-26T00:45:00.000-05:002016-03-15T22:43:47.480-04:00Two Christmas Movies: Miracle on 34th Street, The Snowman<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: , , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 10px;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: , , "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>Miracle on 34th Street </b>(Seaton, 1947) <b>Rating: 8/10 Stars.</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Disapproves of public drunkenness, single mothers, apartments in the city, overly-serious children, commercialism, capitalists, money in politics, skepticism, psychiatrists, and common sense.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">On the other hand, the profit motive, political cowardice, and bureaucratic shortcutting can work together for the good of all.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Reactionary and wonderful.</span><br />
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<b>The Snowman </b>(Jackson, Murakami, 1982) <b>Rating: 10/10 Stars.</b></div>
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Superficially similar to <b>Frosty the Snowman</b> but superior in every respect, this utterly simple, old-fashioned film is one of the great classics of world animation. Hand-drawn very consciously with colored pencils to imitate the style of Raymond Briggs' children's book--which in its wordless frame-by-frame storytelling is practically a storyboard already--the pictures shimmer and breathe with cel-by-cel crosshatching, every image labored over with human fingers. (Incidentally, this aesthetic would have fit Chris Van Allsburg's <b>The Polar Express</b> far better than dead-eyed, slack-jawed motion-capture.) The film is wordless but for Briggs' deep-voiced intro and the central song, but still enthralling for even small children, as Howard Blake's beautiful score guides us through the rhythms of the narrative. The way the horse moves, the way the fields and towns--not simply background paintings--flow by beneath the boy and the snowman; the whole film has a dreamlike sense of being magicked to life. And the song, "Walking in the Air," performed by choirboy Peter Auty, endows it all with a sense of the sacred. So of course it's so beloved in the UK that they have profaned its memory with multiple inferior sequels and licensed the Snowman's image for dozens of commercial products and TV advertisements. Ah, well.</div>
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While it's almost unheard of in the gen. pop. of the U.S., my sister and I watch it every year. I love few films more dearly.</div>
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</span>StephenMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16588260639227694557noreply@blogger.com0