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Abecedary

The cinetrix hates lists. She hates memes even more. And memes involving lists? Of so-called favorites? Forget it.

But! She likes Some Came Running, Category D, and whomever else it was who "tagged" her. So here's the Alphabet meme list, with appropriate links etc. to come after I finish the work from which this foolishness took me away for far too long.

After Life
Before Sunset
Chinatown
Daratt
Eight and a half
Finally, Lillian and Dan
Gimme Shelter
His Girl Friday
Irma Vep
Johnny Guitar
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Lady Eve, The
My Man Godfrey
Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht
Out of Sight
Philadelphia Story, The
Queen Is Dead, The (1986)
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Swing Time
Trust
Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The
Vanda’s Room, In
Walking and Talking
X
Yi Yi
Zazie dans le Metro

*Did I mention there were also rules? I mean, who has time for this? If you want to read them, go to one of the blogs linked to above. Me, I just keep hearing Harvey from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ask incredulously, "Rules? In a knife fight?"

Dems da rules

Bless the Quad's Elliott Kanbar for getting all Emily Post on the cine-ignorant in this week's newsletter:

MOVIE ETIQUETTE: 10 rules which apply not only to the QUAD but all movie theaters:

(1) After buying your ticket, don't hold up the line by counting or putting away your change in front of the box office. Move to the side and do what you have to do.

(2) A baseball cap is a hat. Don't wear it in the theater.

(3) If the theater is not too full, don't take a seat right in front of the patrons behind you.

(4) On the other hand, if the theater is full, don't put your jacket on the seat next to you if you're not holding it for someone but only because you want more room.

(5) Feet on the seat in front of you are never acceptable, even if the theater is empty.

(6) Chatting should stop as soon as the theater is dark, even though the only things on the screen are trailers.

(7) With concession prices high, it's understandable to buy some of the food (like sodas) on the outside. But don't bring with you big bags of smelly food from fast food restaurants.

(8) Like all retail businesses, movie theaters (especially the art houses) are hurting. Don't take advantage by buying senior tickets when you don't qualify, age-wise.

(9) Even though you may not be talking, the light from a BlackBerry or iPod during the film is distracting to the patrons around you.

(10) If the line at the box office is long, have your money ready when you get to the window.

The rules above, if violated, can irritate and annoy many patrons. Despite the competition from Netflix and Pay-Per-View, people still go to a movie house because it gives them a special experience they can't get watching a movie at home. Please don't diminish this pleasure by violating any of the above.

Everybody's a critic

The cinetrix has her head down over some [at long last] paid writing, but there's always time to flack her pals.

First off, it's been quite a week for Boston film critic Gerald Peary. Gerry showed three of his favorite films at the Brattle last Wednesday and was feted at the theatre's swanky fundraising gala at the Charles Hotel on Sunday. To mark the occasion, he spoke with a reporter from a paper at BU, where he runs the Cinematheque. [via]

Why is film criticism important?
It’s hard to say why it’s eternally important. But certainly, right now it’s very important because we’re in a strange time where there are too many movies coming out. Every Friday, an extraordinary amount of films are released. And the ones with the largest advertising budgets get people to the movies. So the only way a little movie can be discovered by an educated audience is to have a film critic champion it and write about it in a way that will excite an audience to see it.

So the boosterism of criticism is really essential. And that’s not coming just from me as a critic. A lot of distributors are frightened by the fact that, as newspapers are getting smaller, over 30 major film critics have lost their jobs. And since those voices are gone, the films just open and close and nobody has anything to say about them. And it’s very hard for a little film or a documentary — unless it’s about penguins or Michael Moore — to get an audience.

There was a time when you could find FOC A.S. Hamrah in the booth at the Brattle, threading up the day's double feature. Now [among many other pursuits] he contributes to n+1, where he writes about the cinema. The Tisch Film Review recently interviewed Scott about--shocker--the current state of film criticism. Per usual, he doesn't pull any punches and makes it almost impossible for me to choose only one excerpt.

Post-Star Wars, film criticism really started to cave in to the film industry, especially as Kael-era film critics began to age and miss their salad days, when Fellini and Bergman, and then Antonioni and the Nouvelle Vague and, lastly, the New Hollywood of the early 1970s were new to American screens. Many critics essentially abandoned the cinema in favor of blockbuster entertainment. They decided to go along to get along, and all of a sudden they had no patience for anything - but they couldn’t get enough of Jaws. I think they began to identify, even over-identify, with the industry in general, more than they identified with any of the filmmakers they once professed to love. They just didn’t seem to care about anything important anymore, and they did nothing to bring new critics along. The result is that younger critics cling in desperation to the one model they can respect, and they all become the same, interchangeable, post-Hoberman critic, writing like cultural studies grad students auditioning for jobs at Variety.   

What are your thoughts on academic film writing?

Being an academic and being a writer are two different things. I know academics I wouldn’t read a postcard from. To me, it’s apparent that, since the mid-1980s, even as young film academics had more and more access to more and more movies -- and know more writing on the cinema from the past -- they were becoming worse writers. I can’t think of one book or article by any American or English academic film writer of the last 25 years that I’ve read and would re-read today. If a lot of film critics write like grad students auditioning for trade papers, a lot of academics write like technical writers who love gossip columns. I’m thinking of the jovial gleefulness of a David Bordwell, which is a classroom version of Leonard Maltin’s television bonhomie. No doubt Bordwell inspires his students just as Maltin entertains his viewers, and both are prolific authors with employees or acolytes. Both know their film history, and both seem like nice guys. That doesn’t make me want to read their books or whatever they put on the web. Having said that, I’d prefer either one of them to the generic film academics of the 1980s and 1990s, practitioners of a discipline that could have been called Blade Runner Studies. I mean the post-Questions of Cinema world of American academic film studies before Slavoj Zizek trounced it. If it has produced anything of lasting interest, please send me a copy.

You begin to see why we're friends.

[The full Peary article may be read here. Read the rest of Hamrah here.

Apparatus theory

Money's tight and the news is unrelentingly grim. But! There is a big, blank, whitish wall in my house. The university that employs me makes LCD projectors available for checkout from the library. And Netflix recently launched a beta test of its Watch Instantly platform for Mac users. All of which is to say I've been busy creating a home cinematheque,* and not a moment too soon.

Readers might recall that the only theater in town shut down abruptly in mid-August when the national chain that ran the space opted to pull out. But it didn't own the building. Which is why there's a rally that will close downtown this Friday afternoon meant to save the wee three-screen theater. I love living in a town that'll shut down the streets for cinema, but the pessimistic part of me fears the site will be razed and more bullshit condos erected in its place. Thus, the retreat to the de facto bunker. But I'll keep you posted about the state of the seventh art here.

*OK, fine. I've mostly burned through the first season of 30 Rock so far. I may have a touch of the cinema anxiety that's going around. Plus, those 21-minute episodes are addictive.

This season, remember the wookiest

Teacher says every time someone votes for the Paley Center for Media to screen the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special in New York and Los Angeles between December 10 and 24, 2008, the cinetrix gets her wings.

Read the post ganked wholesale from Seven Deadly Seans, then vote early and often. Sí, podemos!

sevendeadlyseans:

the paley center (neé the museum of tv and radio) is holding a vote for which of their many tv holiday specials they should screen next month.

there are some great classics on the list -- all the rankin & bass specials, crosby & sinatra, john denver & the muppets -- but there’s one that absolutely needs your support: the star wars holiday special.*

if you’re not familiar with this televised tragedy, it’s probably because george lucas has done everything in his power to keep this black sheep of the star wars family out of sight.  it’s never rerun or never released on video, and george himself will bitch-slap you if you dare bring it up (i’m assuming).

imagine watching everything you cherished as a child crapped on by c-grade comedy shtick, bargain-basement production values and mild prescription drug abuse.  then smother the original cast with scenery-chewing bea arthur, art carney and harvey korman in drag, plus musical numbers by diahann carroll and jefferson airplane and circus-y dance numbers that would make even donny and marie quit the business in shame.

and it’s two hours long.  although, to be fair, it feels more like six.

the story, what there is of it, surrounds an effort by han and chewie to get back to the wookie home planet in time for ‘life day,’ which is kind of like wookie rosh hashanah.

three of the main character are chewie’s wife malla, son lumpy (yes, lumpy) and father itchy (i swear i’m not making this up).  they’re wookies, of course, so they can’t speak. that’s right, three leads on a network television special are walking bearskin rugs reduced to pantomime and gargling.

the one bright spot is that the special gets credit for introducing boba fett to the world in a cartoon segment, years before his big screen debut in return of the jedi.

i’m guessing the paley center has a better quality print in its archives than the 3rd generation vhs copies uploaded to youtube.

the special is way behind in votes right now. but if it makes the top five, it’ll screen next month in both new york and los angeles. we all need to go see this -- possibly while drunk. so please, please, please vote now.

(images borrowed from here and here)

*Which I might own on VHS and DVD, were such a thing possible.

Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Two thumbs up for Ebert's latest, from a defense of Synecdoche, NY:

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit.

Mo' taters

These Ph.D.s love their spuds!

I am surprised no one has yet mentioned the "potatoes dancing" scene in Chaplain's "The Gold Rush."

The killer in Alfred Hitchcock's "Frenzy"  dumps one victim's body into
a truck full of potatoes and then has to retrieve  some incriminating
evidence  from the corpse  buried under all the potatoes -- an example
of Hitchcock's macabre sense of humor.

No one mentioned Animal House?  "Look, I'm a zit!"

I would also add the scene in Animal House where the John Belushi character fills his mouth with mashed potatoes and pretends to be a zit and spits out the potatoes on the others around him.

My favorite potato moment, beyond those in Toy Story and Toy Story 2 with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (including a Picasso homage) was in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  I am adding a link for a clip of the actual scene and also for a few spoofs I found on You Tube and had found a couple of years ago when popular, being passed around on Facebook and MySpace.

I'm curious what your project is regarding potatoes . . . more than curious, intrigued actually!

LOTR Po-ta-toes Clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jpb0HTw2uY

Parodies (I pray nothing is offensive, for I do not have sound
availble in this computer lab.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwRrysOMYs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reV9WH_DcVk&feature=related
   
I believe (if my memory doesn't fail me) that there is a scene showing Flemish workers eating potatoes,evocative of van Gogh's THE POTATO EATERS, in the Steijn Connix film DAENS. 

There's a short comic film ( I think it may be twenty or more  years old) called "Tater People."  Recently it played at Film Forum in New York, so they could probably put you in touch with the director if you want to follow up  on that.  Here's a relevant passage from Janet Maslin's  New York Times review of the shorts package:

Then there's Bill Garrison's '' 'Tater People,'' a subdued 8-minute parody of a farmland film in which the main character is a man who somehow sheds a potato or two every time he moves. ''You married a spud farmer and he's like all the rest,'' his wife is consoled. ''He's proud and he's hard-workin', and covered with 'taters.''

While it's been a lifetime since I saw the film, I recall an early scene in Vincente Minnelli's _Lust for Life_ (1956) that recreates the Dutch peasants' family meal that Van Gogh (Kirk Douglas) immortalized in "The Potato Eaters."

Coincidentally, the painting is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in its exhibition "Van Gogh and the Colors of Night" (through January 5).

Hitchcock's Frenzy has a memorable scene in the back of a truck carrying potatoes and a female murder victim, and in Polanski's Repulsion a potato is left out with the rotting rabbit and grows "eyes," during Catherine Deneuve's lapse into catatonia.

You might also want to see five-minute long scenes of peeling potatoes in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (1975); actually, the potatoes in that (3 hour long) film also have a narrative role.

The one image that comes to mind immediately is the potato sack that Bob Rusk stuffs Babs Milligan's body into in Hitchcock's FRENZY

Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Sort of.

This might come from too far away, but in the Finnish children's film "Heinähattu ja vilttitossu", distributed abroad as "Hayflower and Quiltshoe" there is a father who is obsessed with growing and always eating potatoes while the two little girls would prefer pasta every now and then.

Kaisa Rastimo's endearing film won Children's Jury Award - Certificate of Merit at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival in 2002

A very popular Swedish film by Lars Molin (1996) is "Potatishandlaren" (=the potato trader). The potato is used as an implicit plot device, motivating the appearance of one of the central characters. The film is available for purchase at http://butiken.svt.se/system/search/product.asp?id=365 You might want to check out beforehand whether the DVD has English subtitles.

A famous miniseries for children, from SVT 1975, was "Vilse i pannkakan" (= lost in the pancake), where a central character, and the bad guy!, was The Big Potato. It frightened many children of its time and is still talked about. The Big Potato can be interpreted as an evil capitalist. The series also is available for purchase at http://butiken.svt.se/system/search/product.asp?id=563

I misquoted the line from OUR DAILY BREAD, which should read:  "I got ten pounds of taters in the back end of my Plymouth."  Sorry for the original misquotation.  The car trunk was auto specific.

I seem to recall that in "The Tin Drum" an earthy peasant woman is digging potatoes - and eating them - on the plains outside the city.  Food has many levels of meaning in TTD, but my impression (sorry, it's years since I saw it) is that the potatoes, as in so many films, refer to primitive needs, earthy hungers, and the brute uncivilized state of many - or all - humans.

I'm curious - what is your research about?

Spuds

The cinetrix is apparently busier than some of her fellow film teacher types. How else to explain the multiple responses to this list-serv query: "Can list members think of any films in which the humble potato appears, either as a plot device, character, etc.?" Well, far be it from me to stem the tide of knowledge. [Names are stripped out to protect these tater tots.]

In James Whale's spoof horror movie, The Old Dark House (1932), there's a
dinner party scene in which Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), the head of a
very strange family, solemnly intones, "Have a po-ta-to".  Once heard, never
forgotten....

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) constructs
a model of the mountain he longs to find out of mashed potato.

On the Fiddle (1961):  a long-forgotten British comedy in which Alfred Lynch
plays a wide boy drafted into the army, and a just-pre-Bond Sean Connery
plays his dimwitted chum.  The pair spend a lot of time peeling potatoes.

All I can think of is the scene in A Christmas Story, in which they are
trying to get the little one, Randy, to eat his supper, which consists
largely of mashed potatoes and turns into (if I remember right) a food
fight.  (This, though, reminds me of another: the crater rendered in mashed
potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.)

Dying to know what you're doing with potatoes on film over there....

"Ah got ten pounds of taters in the back end of my car" says one down-and-outer who shows an interest in communal sharing in King Vidor's Depression film OUR DAILY BREAD, if that helps.

D. W. Griffith's ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL.

Probably the most famous scene in the Soviet film Chapaev (1934) is
the one in which the unlettered Civil War commander Chapaev moves
potatoes around a map to demonstrate his battle strategy.  This was
the most popular Soviet movie of the 1930s.

It has a strong presence in Agnes Varda's "The Gleaners and I"

Close Encounters of the Third Kind has a rather memorable potato sculpture
which later gets parodied in UHF.

There's also a documentary called Rice and Potatoes in which we learn that
"Potato" is - or was - Asian slang for gay Caucasians in San Francisco.

titles escape me but I remember 3 or 4 about the potato famine in
Ireland. (at least one was Brit, i think) Then there were the potato
head animated films.

One of my favorite uses of the potato is in Pudovkin's "The End of St. Petersburg" (1927). The leading character at the beginning of the film is understandably stingy with offering guests and even her own daughter the meager measure of potatoes which is all they they have to eat. By the end of the film, after the Revolution, she gives away all the potatoes she has brought for her husband to wounded soldiers. It is a particularly powerful symbol and metaphor, subtly employed but very effective.

Hot Potatoes
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/hp.html

Spudfest Film Festival:
http://www.idahofilminstitute.org/spudfest/home.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpyMUJY9yJc

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=hot+potato&x=0&y=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpAJOPzKK-M

How Do They Make Potato Chips (NFB)
http://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=33458

Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I, a french documentary that begins with the
question of why some potatoes are fit for the market and others are dumped to
rot in fields.  Heart-shaped potatoes recur, especially in the sequel.

Also, while it may not be entirely useful, IMDB has 46 films/TV episodes with
the keyword potato, including The Potato Hunter and The Fresh Vegetable Mystery.

Well, there's a significant part of Tolstoi's War and Peace where a
potato becomes significant, and Sergei Bondarchuk's adaptation does a
fine job with the scene.  The film is, however, 12 hours long, and I
can't remember which section it's in.  Sorry.

Potatoes and their role as a staple of the Russian diet play a crucial
role, particularly at beginning and end, of Vsevolod Pudovkin's "The End
of Saint Petersburg" (1927).

Quod erat faciendum

100% Hapa*

Back in September, Chicago Reader critic grise Jonathan Rosenbaum made an observation during the NYFF Film Criticism in Crisis? panel that the cinetrix has been thinking about a lot this week. He was making a point that perhaps journalism is what's in crisis--"freedom of the press v. truth," my scribbles read--when he used the example that then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama was identified by the press as black, yes, but he's also white.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the cinetrix would argue, given Obama's Hawaiian upbringing, hapa. It's a tricky term for multiracial folks of various stripes and, as such, should be wielded with care, but I'd like to see the concepts behind it get more play in the media at large. A girl can dream, right?

My pal Tommy introduced me to this word back in 1992, and I've been thinking about him a lot this week, too. He and my friend Sumathi and I spent a magical night at the Falcon Inn, a townie bar in Hyde Park, [gulp] sixteen years ago, drunkenly watching the returns that decided the last election to leave me feeling this giddy.

One place to start exploring hapa culture is at the Anthology Film Archives this coming Monday, November 10, at 7:30 p.m., where the Flaherty Seminar will present the second portion of its NYC monthly screenings series, featuring works based on the 2008 Flaherty Seminar theme "The Age of Migration."

The November 10th program will feature short works from German-Japanese filmmaker Sylvia Schedelbauer, whose films negotiate the space between broader historical narratives and personal, psychological realms mainly through poetic manipulations of found and archival footage, and Canadian-Japanese filmmaker Alison Kobayashi, who plays the part of every character in her rich narratives inspired by found objects that contain traces of private experiences. Alison Kobayashi will participate in a post-screening discussion moderated by Pamela Cohn.

Films and videos to be screened:

· Remote Intimacy (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2007/8, 14 min., USA) A meditation on dreams, nightmares, desire and the im/possibility of belonging.

· From Alex to Alex (Alison Kobayashi, 2006, 6 min., Canada) Kobayashi plays the roles of two teenage boys in this exploration of performance, gender, and desire.

· Memories (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2004, 19 min., Germany) A complicated family lineage shapes this filmmaker's construction of identity, memory and history.

· Dan Carter (Alison Kobayashi, 2006, 15 min., Canada) The life of an unseen man is revealed through his found answering machine messages.

General admission tickets to the Flaherty NYC series at the Anthology Film Archives are $10. Tickets are $8 for Anthology members and students with valid I.D. Tickets can be purchased online by visiting http://www.flahertyseminar.org/rffs_flah_NYC_tickets.asp.

*Post title taken from Kip Fulbeck's photography exhibit. Top still, Kobayashi in Dan Carter. Bottom still, Kobayashi in From Alex to Alex.

Cartoon! Cartoon!

BRAND NEW teaser

A few years ago, the cinetrix was fortunate enough to hang out for an evening with the wonderful Tara Wray while she was touring with her documentary debut, Manhattan, Kansas. This unflinching look at her relationship with her truly loopy [albeit undiagnosed] mother just happens to be available on DVD November 18 from filmmakers Ashley Sabin and David Redmon's Carnivalesque distribution shingle. So, see that.

But what I really wanted to draw your attention to was the teaser trailer for Tara's work-in-progress, Cartoon College,* which she describes as a film about artists, outcasts, and nerds, and a school made especially for them where the motto is “draw comics or die.” The cinetrix has been to White River Junction, VT, where the Center for Cartoon Studies is located [and where--no shit--Way Down East was shot], and it's the kind of scrappy place that makes you understand the impulse that lead dreamers to form utopian communities. </shill>

*Once the president elect magically fixes the economy and makes us all taller, smarter, and more attractive, do consider contributing to the finishing of this doc.