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Fine art trainspotting

Or, what happens to the instructor who may have watched Children of Men a few too many times. Exhibit A gives us Clive Owen in front of Picasso's Guernica. Note the mourning mother to his right [our left].

Exhibit B comes at the end of the film, in what the cinetrix calls the second birth scene. Why, what's that cave painting on the wall behind Clive, again to his right [our left]?

Fetish objects

The cinetrix has been busy with the day job, which currently includes dealing with the ramifications of the library's, shall we say, questionable decision to shelve its newly relocated collection of DVDs in their cases in open stacks. [They'd previously been on another floor where the discs were stored in locked cabinets accessible only by staff and the empty boxes sat on the shelves.] Its brilliant anti-theft solution--applying expensive security strip stickers to the DVDs--has already resulted in the permanent damage of untold numbers of double-sided discs by unwitting staffers. So much awesome.

Let this and the following serve as correctives for those freaking out about the economy and misguidedly imagining a cushy stint in academia is the solution:

Soon after I entered a master's program in cinema studies in 1985, I knew that I probably wouldn't be going on to a PhD. My moment of truth arrived when the brilliant film historian Janet Staiger, saddled with teaching an introductory film theory lecture class, announced that she "didn't fetishize the object." My friend Chuck Stephens, another film critic in the making, turned to me and silently mouthed "I do."

I laughed. It was precisely because I fetishize movies that I had gone to graduate school for cinema studies in the first place. I had no plans to teach or to write about film; at that point, I had no plans at all. I was just delaying dreaded adulthood by doing one of my favorite things in life – watching and thinking about movies.

[That's none other than Ms. Manohla Dargis, writing in the LAT back in 2003.]

Prognosticating

1:45	[Comment From cinetrix]  What's you take on the best doc feature nominees? Any chance we'll get Herzog on the stage, or is James Marsh's Man on Wire unstoppable?

1:47	Ty Burr:  Hard to say in a year without a Holocaust doc. (Although "The Betrayal," about Laotian refugees, almost counts).

1:47	Ty Burr:  I would love to see Werner Herzog take on an Oscar-night audience -- I just want to see what he'll wear -- but it might be fun if Philippe Petit wirewalked across the stage of the Kodak Theatre.

I couldn't help myself. It was this or actually grade quizzes.

Punch and pie*

So Glenn Kenny graciously bestowed a Premio Dardos on the cinetrix yesterday. He asked first because that's just the kind of guy he is. I was suspicious because that's just the kind of gal I am.

You may have noticed that I'm not much of one for blogathons [if that's how you spell that neologistic monstrosity] and the like--mostly because I'm lazy. This Dardos thing sounded like work. [Or, worse, one of those "celebrate mediocrity" bumper stickers that boast about the driver's progeny being a "terrific kid" at some middle school.] Also, there were, apparently, rules. Then I read up.

"The Dardos Award is given for recognition of cultural, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the web.

The rules are: 1)Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog. 2) Pass the award to another 5 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know that they have been selected for this award."

Well, the sentiment is kind of lovely, and the fraternization between bloggers had nothing to do with copious amounts of brown liquor and subsequent bad decisions [cough, karaoke] for a change. I was even willing to overlook the colon after a verb [a losing battle] and the misspelling of "acknowledgment"[perhaps the originator is British].

But who to cite in turn?A lot of my favorite film bloggers have already been recognized. Then I remembered I also read all sorts of Interweb prose that has nothing to do with the seventh art. Really! So, forthwith, my candidates:

The Gurgling Cod. Yes, I'm biased--I live with the 'Fesser, but the Cod offers live links into the recesses of his brain.
The Pinocchio Theory. I'll admit outright that sometimes I find Shaviro's writing dauntingly dense, but it makes me feel like not all of my time spent dicking around on the Web is squandered because I get to watch his brain work. [Case in point, his recent post on post-cinematic celebrities.]
....and another thing! Carrie writes just like she talks, titles posts after snippets of song lyrics I recognize, and creates the most amazing array of crafts EVER. In a just world, Martha would be out on her ass, and Carrie would be showing us how it's done.
Tomorrow Museum. Curator Joanne McNeil's lowercase "c" catholic interests send me down all sorts of rabbit holes. How to describe? Well, just imagine a frequently refreshed html edition of Dave Hickey's Air Guitar. The William Gibson quotation on her site sums it up nicely: "The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed." [Next time I'm in Boston, I'm totally stalking her.]
Magic Molly. OK, it's a Tumblr. By Molly Young. Recent posts include a charticle listing some of her favorite scleras [sclerae?] and this question: "Do you ever feel like an actual boob? Bouncy, brainless, slightly asymmetrical, answering to no one yet contained in somewhat restrictive casings?" Plus, she wrote an amazing "review" of Adderal in the last n+1. It's hard to explain. Just trust me on this one.

So, um, "tag," or whatever. As Murph of Magic Tones fame might say, "Don't you go changin'." The rest of you should update your feed reader of choice.

*

Déjà vu all over again

The cinetrix is perfectly OK with it just being me [it so often is], but I ask you to watch this trailer for 500 Days of Summer and then tell me the announcer isn't riffing on the delivery of the announcer for the Mean Streets theatrical trailer. Which, if intentional, is fucked up and kind of marvelous.

The sheriff is near

The 'Fesser and the cinetrix watched Blazing Saddles last night. What, you had a better idea?

Man, the Seventies truly were different.

New slang

I kinda love this. [I know, I would. Still.]

"500 Days of Summer" star Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks about how director Mark Webb helped him build his character via iPod. (And maybe this does represent the triumph of the playlist mentality in indie Hollywood movies but Gordon-Levitt still makes an interesting point: The actors never hear the music until they see the final product.) [via]

I'll work like a soul inspired 'til the battle of the day is won

Our capacity remains undiminished.  But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed.  Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

The cinetrix was a little startled at first by the Tin Pan Alley reset in Obama's inaugural address, but I suppose it makes some sort of sense to invoke a Fields/Kern song popularized by the Depression's First Couple of escapism, elegance, and pluck.

Movie metonymy

A fair number of reviewers invoked the F-word--Fellini--and 8 1/2 when reviewing Synecdoche New York. But the cinetrix can't be the only one out there who thought of the video that Michel Gondry, Kaufman's collaborator on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, shot for Bjork's "Bachelorette," right? [OK, the video also ganks from the "Broadway Melody" number in Singin' in the Rain, but then, so does the video for Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet," which just happens to have been directed by--wait for it--Spike Jonze. The conspiracy is bigger than we know!]

Everybody's a critic, redux

The cinetrix has an RSS reader lousy with film blogs, yet the only mention she's heard of this year's edition of the Slate MovieClub was in a phone conversation she had with the Filmbrain on Monday, when we were talking about how it was time for a new one--right before the first entry went up. Do check it out, if you haven't yet. Dana Stevens has assembled a gynotastic group of film critics this go-round that the surprisingly hilarious Jeanette Catsoulis dubs "the Vagina Movie Monologues." Well worth a read.

Once you have, perhaps you can help me puzzle out this love affair the ladies seem to have with Anna Faris in The House Bunny. What a singularly odd little movie. The 'Fesser and I watched it the other night and, aside from now growling people's given names, the one thing I brought away from this trifle is a renewed love for Kat Dennings. Yet Dana's inaugural entry asks, "Is it possible that Anna Faris' itinerant centerfold in The House Bunny was the breakout performance of the year?" Um. maybe?

Now that I've shared my love for the distaff film critics, let's hear it for the boys. The aforementioned 'Brain let loose with a cri de coeur worth reading that builds on his Benten pal Aaron's inaugural "pubcast" over at GreenCine. Both make a renewed commitment to advocating on behalf of films and nurturing cinephilia, and both cite the video essays of Kevin Lee as one way forward in this business we call show. I agree.

Which is why this post has to end by showing the Times' A.O. Scott some love for his ever-better Critic's Picks clips. I've said it before, but the brother is on a tear, particularly with his latest, on All About Eve. There's always some nominal news peg, in this case the beginning of awards season, but really it just seems to be Scott talking about movies he likes.

As he says of the great Addison DeWitt, "He's cruel, snide, cynical--obviously a man after my own heart."