The Denouement

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu!"

I have no idea why I'm using this lyric from The Sound of Music to start my final blog. Actually, I do. I find this movie to be overly saccharine and very nearly disastrous in nature. So why is the lyric stuck in my craw? Because even a nugget of gold can be found in a mound of shit. Even a bad movie can have something indelible contained within it, even if its only one scene. I don't see that as chance, I see it as the filmmaker got something right, if even for a moment. These moments can be found in many a mediocre film. What they represent, at least for me, is twofold:that the filmmaker should be commended and respected for at least trying to find his/her authentic voice and the filmmaker should also be reprimanded for failing to deliver on the promise, the fecundity, of that one indelible scene. As a moviegoer, I wish to see continuity of vision, not just drips and drabbles. Transcendence can only come by one's full immersion in the director's vision, an intense empathy of the tableaux of emotions and the vicissitudes of the characters' lives painted on the screen. As a moviegoer and critic, I'm doing my part. I'm stripping myself of any artifice and making myself completely emotionally and cognitively "naked"- completely receptive to the film's power through every pore of my being. It is not effortless, it demands commitment and patience and a honed critical acumen. In return for our effort, the filmmaker must reciprocate with equal commitment, equal dilligence.

This is why I started this column-to rally moviegoers out there to realize what they can invest, what they should invest, in their movie-going experiences and what they should demand from the filmmakers. As I stated again and again, cinema is an art form and should be discussed, analyzed and picked apart as such. Good cinema is not shallow and neither is good criticism. We all have the innate ability to demand transcendence and to articulate this demand in the most cogent way possible. And what better rallying cry than an extremely well-written and entertaining blog. I was pleased to find that this blog has reached a few people and has opened their eyes to the vastness, the power, of cinema. If I have opened only one person's eyes to this, then to me, the world on the whole is that much less blind, less naive.

So I urge all out there to realize their potential as critical thinkers and receptors of emotion to start voicing their opinions on films and their inherent faults and/or transcendent moments through either written or verbal exposition. Film must be seen as worthy of debate as the philosophical musings of Kant or the stylistic vagaries of Picasso. Film is the most powerful medium for expression out there and must be respected as such as well as being held accountable for its actions, for the power and influence it yields.

As I now relinquish my seat as movie blog critic, I hope a plethora of others will pick up the quill and continue the good fight to keep art alive and to make sure that it is consistently representative of the human condition, a cogent record of why we keep slogging through life, minute by minute, day by day, year by year...

"So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu!"

Fellini Follow-up

As I promised, I will go a little more in depth on my favorite filmmaker, Federico Fellini. He was born in 1920, the same year as my father. Both were Italian, both were robust characters. Fellini, however, trumped my father in talent. He was simply a genius. Even from his first film, the White Shiek, starring his wife and main actress for decades, Giulietta Masina, his talent could be discerned. Typical Fellini elements such as a jazzy, free-form, organic feel to the camera movements and scene after scene fecund with a beguiling blend of depravity and whimsy. Such was the convoluted mind of Fellini. His first masterpiece was La Strada (The Road) with , again, Masina and the late Anthony Quinn as downtrodden circus performers. His character is like Pagliacci, a whirlwind of emotions, but without the heart--pure id. Later masterpeices include La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, Julietta of the Spirits, Satyricon, Roma, and Amarcord. Four of his films have gone on to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, but he himself never won a directing trophy, although he was nominated four times. This calls into question the efficacy of the awards process in general.

I could extrapolate on these films until doomsday, but I will only focus on three. The first, La Dolce Vita (1961), is my favorite film of all time. It also contains my favorite film performance, by Marcello Mastraionni as the decadent journalist Marcello Rubini who is torn between the placidity of domestic life and the seemingly "sweet life" of the super rich and the famous. Mastraionni was Fellini's leading man in many films and he is just such an effortlessly brilliant actor. He can convey more emotions in one look than most actors can with an entire soliloquy. Next to Toshiro Mifune, he is my favorite actor. The second, 8 1/2 (1963), is his most well-known film. It reveals the trials and tribulations of a worn-out filmmaker trying to make sense of his new film project, all the while being hounded by ravenous agents, writers, stars, wifes, and mistresses. The director is played, again brilliantly, by Mastraionni. The movie was just remade last year as a musical by director Rob Marshall and it was called Nine, this time with the immortal Daniel Day-Lewis filling in for Mastraionni. The third and last film is Satyricon (1970). This is Fellini's loose adaptation of Petronious' "Satyricon" written in the time of Nero. The material is perfectly suited for Fellini for it shows in grand detail all the decadence and depravity of disintegrating Rome under the despot Nero. The film is a two hour orgy of garish images, music, and characters. The subheading on the movie poster perfectly captures the spirit of the film: "Rome. Before Christ. After Fellini." Any one of these movies is a masterpiece and deserving of your attention. Here is a filmmaker at the top of his form whose artistry will astound you in every frame.

Hello again!

You gotta love Roger Ebert. As I was perusing my links looking for a juicy article to write about, I stumbled upon the lastest entry in Roger Ebert's online journal. I ususally don't use his entries for my blog, I read them primarily for pleasure, for personal edification. He is not only a great writer,a great critic, but he is also a great conveyor of emotions. His new article entitled "See You at the Movies" discusses his probable return to the position of television movie critic. This got my heart beating erratically. You see, growing up, I was a huge fan of "At the Movies" with Ebert and his cohost, the late great Gene Siskel. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, their repartee was witty, jocular, and sometimes cutthroat. But underlying all the rhetoric of both was a deep love for cinema, the unequivocal fecundity of it. It was infectious. When Siskel passed away from brain cancer, Ebert plodded on with a series of cohosts unil he himself succumbed to a debilitating illness- he lost his voice. He is still however, perspicaciously writing reviews every week on his Chicago Sun Times website. Even though verbal articulation is gone, the words are still soaked with emotion, intonation, and deep passion. On top of his review column, he has started a personal online journal. These are mainly for personal musings, usually of a political or nostalgic origin. It seems that his inner voice has been sharpened to compensate for the loss of the outer because all his entries have a deep poignancy, resonance, to them and finally reveal the man behind the estimable critic. And what a man, what a mind! He would be my ideal interlocutor. Not only would we talk about movies, say by Herzog or Scorsese, but we would also hold discourse on Dickens, Yeats, philosophy, etc. We are both self-confessed Anglophiles and I could just imagine hours of conversation on his past perambulations in London or the countryside of Hardy, Eliot...

Oops. I digressed again. Sorry, can't be helped. Back to his recent article. In it, he claims that since he has been relegated to writing purely on the internet, he has a new-found respect, appreciation, for what the medium has to offer. He feels the power of being able to disseminate his closest thoughts to millions of people with just a single press of a "submit" button-certainly easier than slogging through a weekly, erudite TV show (sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?)ceaselessy trying to improve the ratings, competing with more inane, but audience-palatable shows. You would think that through all the vicissitudes his previous show went through,variegted hosts and different time slots and now cancellation,that he would be reticent to approach TV again. He probably would capitulate if it wasn't for his intractable hope in the average movie watcher. In the article, Ebert has analyzed the Red Box and Netflix phenomena and realized that many of the top rentals have been critically acclaimed films such as Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Milk, and Doubt. That's a good pedigree of films. This gives Ebert hope that there alot of people out there that will welcome his show.

His show,as he states, will not just review mainstream blockbusters, but will discuss foreign films, independent films, an obscure film by Herzog, or by Bahrani. It will run the gamut, and rightfully so. He will not be one of the hosts, due to his vocal constraints. He does have software that can replicate the sound of his voice, but not at the speed of extemporanous conversation. Therefore, there he will handpick the hosts as well as personally doing more self-contained pieces, perhaps a soapbox interlude, or highlights from festivals. Ebert and his wife Chaz will be coproducers. This, I know, will ensure the artistic dignity of the show. In the article, he is very reticent ot go into details, but it seems it will be going into production in the near future. I for one am very ecstatic by this news, as should every devoted cinema addict out there. In the meantime, check out Ebert's site as suntimes.com (click on Ebert's link) as well as his adjoining online journal. It is food for the mind as well as the soul.

Changing Perspectives

I can't believe Bloodsport used to be my favorite movie. It was 1988, my nascent years of movie collecting. At that time, I owned only a handful of movies. Another was Real Genius starring a young and hilarious Val Kilmer. I even owned the poster and had it plastered on my wall next to my desk. Adjacent to my desk lay my brand new Commodore 128 computer replete with floppy disk drive and orange-colored monitor. The computer was a conundrum to me. You see, after watching Wargames with Matthew Broderick (still one of my favorite films), witnessing him break into NORAD with his sleek IMSAI computer, I thought I could emulate his actions with my little beauty. How naive I was! The most I could do with it was to type inane code in for hours-the result being a little fireworks display. Talk about an anticlimax! It was my first real awareness of the glaring disparity between fiction and reality. Next to my computer was my bed, the place for many hours of supine comtemplation and intense comic book reading. Proudly placed above my bed on the wall was my prestigious Conan art print collection by Bart Sears. Just at the foot of my bed was my raison d'etre-my comic book collection. Thousands of books by glorious writers and artists neatly ensconsed within my acid-free oblong white boxes. That was my mythology growing up, the heroes and artists were my gods. The sweat I shed feverishly reading those books were my libations to them, water shed in deep admiration for the glory of their efforts. And Stan Lee was Zeus, his soapbox Mount Olympus. He was a benign god and one fecund with creativity and wisdom. He loved his devotees; he even made sure to address them in his monthly column without fail.
Alas, he was soon to be usurped by the God of Cinema, a redoubtable foe more frightening than anything witnessed in the Titanomachy! Ah, the vagaries of youth, the wonder and simple joys of youth...

I digressed. Sorry. Back to Bloodsport. I don't know why I liked this film. Watching it now makes me squirm. What the hell was I thinking? The simple answer is: I wasn't. My critical thinking faculty at the time was still bald and morphous in shape, like a growing foetus. It hadn't fully matured yet. Movies to me then were purely escapism. Transcendence didn't come until my first viewing of Amadeus (for more on that, check my earlier entry,"The Genesis"). This evolution in my cinematic tastes reminded me of our lesson this week in Expository Writing, about changing perpsectives through time and intellectual growth. What once semed to me an engrossing piece of celluloid seems inane and lugubrious to me now. It does even rank as a guilty pleasure like John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China from 1986.

I think my connecting to films, albeit mainstream or esoteric, stems from a need to connect emotionally with universal themes and emotions. I never really was an exigent person, so I allowed the actors/charaters in the movies to be so for me. They were articulating, to a frighteningly precise degree, what I felt deep down. It justified what I thought were aberrant, socially undesired emotions inside of me. From film, I segued into painting, music, and literature. I found the arts to be the panacea for all my ills, a conduit for my repressed emotions and intellectual proclivities. For example, I am a lover of anything pastoral. But I can't really share that with the average coworker or fellow student. So, I turn to Constable, turn to Hardy and Eliot, turn to George Meredith and Wordsworth, to Theocritus and Virgil, even a film by Herzog, and my longings, my desires, are satiated. I feel that I am not alone in the world, and that my passion is shared and appreciated by others much more acutely sensitve than myself. I can only hope to aspire one day to reach their level of "heightened awareness" (a true Wordsworthian concept).

Incidentally, my new favorite film is La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini, also my favorite filmmaker of all time. I'm convinced this man was born with a camera attached to him at birth, perhaps stitched into his thigh like Dionysus to Zeus. His films elate me, make me feel proud of my Italian heritage, and assure me that it is okay to rise into the ether supported only by my fantastical dreams and ecstatic visions. His camera movements feel organic, his directing is so natural, so faultless and his overall vision is crystalline. Fellini's inner world resembles that of Dali, but the main difference is that the emotions painted on Fellini's canvas are more blatant, more ecstatic, not nebulous and elusive as in Dali's aesthetic.

I will, as I previously promised, delve into Fellini (and other foreign filmmakers) more in my next column. My exhortations on that man will be estimable, I assure you.

Where do I find a great movie?

"Where does he get all those wonderful toys?" This quote from Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 stylish Batman film came amusingly to my mind as I read a comment on my blogsite. The comment was in response to a piece I wrote about some obscure, independent films such as Mulholland Drive, Elephant, and the Royal Tenenbaums. The comment's composer earnestly asked me where he/she (sorry, I don't know your gender)may obtain these and other independent/foreign film titles. Since Blockbusters are closing down ubiquitously, it will be hard to find these titles for rent. I would, however, try any Blockbuster that is open first. They have a wide array of both independent and foreign films. Another avenue might be the internet. I don't have an Ipod and am not tech-savvy like my commenter, but I believe there are libraries of films you can download to either a desktop, laptop, or Ipod (or any other I-device)from resources to be found online. I cannot give you specific sites, you will have to search for them. If you really want to be bold and just buy it blindly (and cheaply, mind you), you can go to any Movie Stop (their selection is enormous), Best Buy, or F.Y.E (in the mall, they have many used DVDs and for cheap prices). Red Box won't really help because they are predominantly new releases. Another cogent option is to try HBO on demand. They have many films, old and new and independent, for only $2.99 or less to rent. Many are even free! Their menus are easy to navigate through and they even separate films by genre.

What I can do, what I am educated enough to advise you on, is what titles to seek out. Let's start with David Lynch. This is an odd man, but what a brilliant visionary, what a skewed intellect! Start with Blue Velvet from 1986. It's brilliant, iconic opening montage of Americana is a metaphor for the Reagan era. Outwardly, its all roses, blue skies,and smiling faces, but behind that seemingly innocuous facade, was a surreptitous upwelling of anger and malfeasance from the country's malcontents (represented by the ants in the opening montage).This seedy underbelly of American society is what is brilliantly explored, albeit to an almost surreal degree, by Lynch in his acclaimed masterpiece. He creates such frightening, indelible images and draws brilliant performances from his cast, especially from Dennis Hopper.

The sweeter, more humane side of Lynch can be found in his other masterful films, the Elephant Man and the Straight Story. The former, from 1980, is a poignant, beautiful film about the real life personage of John Merrick, hideously deformed from birth, but with a soul deeper, more unfathomable, than the biggest ocean trench. John Hurt is absolutely brilliant in the role. It is not easy to convey emotions under all that makeup, yet he does it with a grace and pathos that is astonishing. There are other great performances too by Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft and the black-and-white cinematography is amazing. The latter, made in 1999, is another true story of a old man who one day decides to ride his tractor across many states to see his brother. The tractor's pace is languid, but the film's isn't. It is heartwarming and it contains another briliant lead performance by 80-plus year-old Richard Farnsworth who invests such dignity into this character. Incidentally, not too long ago, Mr. Farnsworth shot himself with his rifle, stuck it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, because he was dying of cancer and did not want a long, drawn out death. He had been in the movie business a long time, starting as a stuntman and then progressing into acting. He earned, as did John Hurt for the Elephant Man, a richly deserved Academy Award nomination for his work here. He was a stoic man,a modern-day John Wayne. They don't make men like him anymore, a true icon of cinema.

Next, I will discuss another giant of independent cinema, Gus Van Sant. He first came on the scene with 1989's Drugstore Cowboy featuring a magnificent Matt Dillon in the lead role. The film follws him and his cronies as they rob drug stores to feed their addictions. It is set in the 1970s and the attention to detail, the art direction, is unequivocally authentic. As usual with Van Sant, you get ubiquitous visual flourishes such as moving clouds, odd angles, and other surreal imagery. I think it is one of the best films of the 80s and Roger Ebert considers Dillon's work here one of the best screen performances ever. Other notable films by Van Sant are My Own Private Idaho from 1991 and Milk from 2008. The former contains an absolutely remarkable performance by the late River Phoenix. He was my generation's James Dean. The pathos he invests into the role of the narcoleptic street hustler (yes, that's right) Mikey is a true acting lesson for any aspiring actor. He takes an impossible and seemingly unlikeable character and makes him mesmerizing from start to finish. His sidekick in his adventures is played, in an absolutely great performance, by Keanu Reeves. These two are electric together! Van Sant's screenplay defies description. For the sake of brevity (and clarity), I will call it a road movie. But believe me, every inch of that road is paved with sorrow, regret, happiness, and a deep-rooted sense of what America should be, what is was, and the huge, heartbreaking disparity between the two. The latter Van Sant film, Milk, is easily accessible. It is the true story of the gay activist Harvey Milk. It is his life story. Sean Penn's performances defies adjectives. He is consistently the most briliant and versatile actor working in films today, alongside of Daniel Day-Lewis. He embodies Milk, he loses himself in this man's fight for equal rights for the gay community. His perspicacity and resilience in the face of adversity brilliantly shines through Penn's performance. This is Van Sant's most personal film, being a gay man and filmmaker. He makes us care so deeply about this man and his plight. This is truly an amazing film, one of the best, if not the best of that year.

I could go on endlessly about different filmmakers, but this last section will discuss foreign films. I will start with one of my favorite filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa. He is one of the masters of cinema, a guiding influence on some of the greatest and most successful filmmakers today such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas -the latter most directly. Kurosawa's 1957 film, the Hidden Fortress, directly inspired Lucas' Star Wars. All the characters are there- a princess,a knight, and two bumbling, antagonistic sidekicks, one small and fat and the other tall and thin (R2D2 AND C3P0). It is a very enjoyable film. His true masterpieces, though, are Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Rashomon, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, and Ran. Kurosawa was the most western of Asian filmmakers and was uniformly criticized for it by his contemporaries. His films are Western in conception and he was a vocal proponent of John Ford and his seminal Western films with John Wayne. And where Ford had his leading man, so did Kurosawa. His star was the incomparable Toshiro Mifune and their filmmaking partnership is the most fecund ever in the history of cinema (and routinely voted so by critics around the world). His most infuential films are Seven Samurai which was remade in America as the Magnificent Seven, Sanjuro was remade with Clint Eastwood in the "Man with no name" spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone, and Rashomon, which tells about a rape from several points of view. This latter tactic has been repeated ad nauseum in American movies, most recently with the immensely popular The Hangover. Mifune is brilliant in all these films. His versitality and talent knew no bounds. He has been routinely, and rightfully, called the Japanese Marlon Brando.

Kurosawa's most heartbraking film, and his best in my opinion, is Ikiru from 1952. It is about a dying bureaucrat whose spends his remaining days trying to get a playground built in a lugubrious district in Japan. His story is told in flashbacks and the ending shot of the film, as staged by Kurosawa, is one of the most brilliant in all of cinema-it made me cry. His later masterpieces are Kagemusha from 1980 and Ran from 1985. The former is about how a common thief, who is a doppelganger for the dead emperor, is forced to stand in for the deceased by the emperor's inner circle. It is humorous at first, but the thief starts to feel a sense of pride and admiration for the emperor's position and his countrymen that he never felt before. The ending is heartbreaking and the final image of a flag floating down a river is enormously moving and a personal statement by Kurosawa on the state of his country at the time. Ran is an ambitious retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear. This time, the emperor's kingdom is divided between his sons. Two are avaricious and have Macbeth-ish wives and lieges whose influence and lust for power over the brothers ineluctably leads to everyone's downfall. This is one of the best films ever made and is routinely voted by critics as one of the best films of the 80s. Kurosawa'a visual sense is precise and beautiful to behold and the lead performance by Tatsuya Nakadai (Mifune's successor), is one of the best I've ever seen- its like a fully realized Noh performance. This film is a perfect and rare example of how a master filmmaker can crystallize his vision onto the screen with seemingly zero effort. It is truly astounding. By the way, these few films I mentioned are readily avaliable at Movie Stop and most likely Blockbuster.

In later blogs, I will discuss other foreign filmmakers including my favorite, Federico Fellini. Perhaps I will do one a week. We'll see. But I think for now, I've given enough rental/purchase ideas for the lay film enthusiast. So enjoy my selections and please give me feedback as to your thoughts and feelings on these films.

Independent Vision

I wanted to expound on some of the films I discussed in my previous blog. Other films I discussed, such as Yi-Yi and In the Mood for Love, are foreign films and not readily accessible to renters, so I won't really delve into their merits. I'd rather discuss films that might be easier to obtain. The first is Mulholland Drive. It was conceived and directed by David Lynch, the oddball genius behind the 80s masterpiece, Blue Velvet. He also was the creator of my favorite TV series of all time, Twin Peaks. His films are very surreal in tone and sometimes difficult to decipher. Mulholland Drive is no exception. It is a brilliant melange of film noir and mysticism. Its dreamlike quality mirrors that of the city it is set in, Los Angeles. Its story is as nebulous as the highways and byways of that great metropolis and the ending will absolutely blow your mind! I recommend you see it more than once to notice all those little, surreptitious details ingeniously placed by Lynch throughout the movie. A paean to the "city of lights", Lynch has created a cinematic jigsaw puzzle, a brilliant enigma. The movie will haunt you, truly haunt you.

The second film I talked about was Gus Van Sant's Elephant. The film is like a sustained tone-poem, an elegy for the dead. Elephant tells the story of a Columbine-like shooting at a high school and the events that lead up to it. The film is only 80 minutes in length, but every second of it is mesmerizing. Van Sant's idiosynchratic shots of moving clouds, his ubiquitous use of Kubrickian tracking shots help to create a contemplative, almost emotionally placid, tone to every scene in the movie. The movie has a sort of portentous quality to it. Something frightening is going to happen and it will jar everyone, characters and audience alike, out of their self-enforced complacency. The film won the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This is the most respected film festival in the world and the Palm is its highest honor, quite prestigious. Van Sant also won Best Director. A haunting, thought-provoking movie.

The third and last film is Wes Anderson's Royal Tenenbaums. This movie is a marvel. Anderson's directing style is so distinct, so purposeful,so hilarious. He creates these hermetically sealed worlds populated by eccentric characters in ornate surroundings. The visuals and the art direction in this film are startling. The script by Anderson and actor Owen Wilson is slyly brilliant, at turns hilarious, poignant, and deeply philosophical. The actors are all uniformly excellent. Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover,Bill Murray, and Luke Wilson all deftly portray members/friends of the dysfunctional Tenenbaum family. The patriarch, Royal, is brilliantly portrayed by Gene Hackman in one of his very best performances. The movie itself mirrors Hackman's performance- mostly humorous but with a subcurrent of profound melancholy and real pathos. The scene at the end of the movie between Stiller and Hackman is so perfectly written, so crystalline in its execution, that it made me cry. Anderson has done some marvelous films in the past such as Rushmore (with a brilliant award-winning supporting performance by Bill Murray), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (this time starring Murray), and The Darjeeling Limited (my personal favorite). If you have not seen any of these truly unique and magical films, rectify that heinous mistake immediately.

Competing Cinematic Ideologies

To be or not to be...a true film enthusiast. An article from Blog Catalog presents their top ranked films of the decade. This list, according to the website, has been culled from numerous online surveys. This ostensibly infers public opinion. Following this article is another which elaborates on Film Comment's list of the "Top 150 Films of the Decade". For those who don't know, Film Comment is a magazine which covers the gamut of cinematic tastes, from old to new, from foreign to domestic, from narrative to documentary films. It is published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is considered the "official journal" of film society. I had a hunch that the two lists would be disparate in nature and to my absolute non-surpise, I was correct. This ineluctable disparity is the perfect example of the friction between dominant and fringe ideologies.

Let's start with Blog Catalog's list. The top THREE on their list are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This definitely smacks of the influence of the lay filmgoer. Don't get me wrong, these are noble films, each a beguling blend of artistic and technical virtuosity. However,they are slightly saccharine in tone, purposely so to make it more palatable for the average moviegoer. Ok, let's look at the top three on Film Comment's list: Mulholland Drive, In the Mood for Love, and Yi-Yi. Now, I know all three very well and their respective directors. They are all masters of their craft and their films are truly unique and powerful. But I bet if I asked random people from the public, let's say people from our writing class, they would certainly not have heard of any of them - an instant "deer in the headlights" look would return my query. The directors are, respectively, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, and Edward Yang. And I just know that everybody and their grandmother can name the director of the Rings trilogy, right?

As I perused both lists, I noticed a preponderance of Academy Award winning films on the "populist" (online) list and mostly independent and foreign films on Film Comment's. The former had films like the Best Picture winners Slumdog Millionaire and Million Dollar Baby. These choices are indicative of the power the multimedia/awards shows has on the lay public. Advertisements which aggrandize "Oscar-nominated" films are ubiquitous and insidiously ensconse themselves in the recesses of the lay public's psyche. As a result, we start to associate "Academy Award" with words like "grand" and "epic" and "dramatically brilliant". We then adopt the populist, or the dominant culture's, ideology that Oscar-winning films must be great. Everyone is victim to it, including me. Look at the Rings trilogy. People came out in droves to see these films because they were marketed as the "second coming".

Film Comment's list contained many independent film successes such as Elephant, Royal Tenenbaums, and Before Sunset. All these films were made for shoestring budgets compared to that of the Rings trilogy. The directors of these films, Gus Van Sant, Wes Anderson,and Richard Linklater respectively, have stayed out of the mainstream spotlight (excepting Van Sant for his film, Milk). Their films have an independent film sensibility- cerebral/ contemplative tone, stylistic directorial flourishes, and brilliantly incisive/witty dialogue. To the lay public, "independent" is a gentle euphemism for "fringe","esoteric", or "artsy-fartsy". The word frightens them, alienates them. Independent films are not big budget or formulaic in nature, actors sometimes work for scale, and they do not have wide distribution. They are on the periphery but this is what invigorates true film enthusiasts. They know that when they watch an independent film, they will see something out of the norm, maybe a little odd and eccentric, but continually fascinating. Even when an independent film fails artistically, one can still feel the passion of the filmmaker in every frame. Their earnestness, their striving for originality and deeper truths, is what usually sets them apart from more "mainstream", more marketable films such as the Rings trilogy. Let's face it, those films are spectacle. They're not probing for deeper human truths. The mantra for independent filmmakers is what the legendary director Jean-Luc-Godard coined the art of cinema: "Truth at 24 frames per second".

My rhetoric may seem elitist in tone, but it is not. All the films I mentioned in this article, from both the "populist" and critics' lists alike, I have in my collection. I don't solely watch independent film. I like mainstream films as well,as long as they are done effectively and with heart. I think Slumdog Millionaire and Million Dollar Baby are masterpieces. They both are powerful statements on the human condition and the resiliency of the human heart. The film enthusiast, like me, just yearns for a redefiniton of what a good film is in the eyes of a standard filmgoer. A good film can make you think, can be non-linear, contrapuntal, in its construction and tone. It doesn't have to be formulaic with a neatly wrapped, happy ending. Sometimes, you may have to contemplate how the characters' lives/story will unfold after the credits roll and after you have left the theatre. Great films, both mainstream and independent, don't give you all the answers. Instead, they provoke you, demand that you provide them. And they certainly don't have to win any damned Academy Awards or break box office records to earn your respect and gratitude.

Katherine Bigelow

I just wanted to say that I've been a huge Katherine Bigelow fan for years. I would suggest you start with her early film, Near Dark, a very stylish and energetic film about vampires. She also made the highly effective Blue Steel in 1990 with Jamie Lee Curtis (in one of her best roles). Her 1991 film, Point Blank, starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, has become a cult classic. I think it a highly energetic and original film. Her masterpiece, up until the Hurt Locker, was 1995's Strange Days, a futuristic, Blade Runner-like vision of a dystopic future. It is visually brilliant and has great performances by Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett,and Juliette Lewis. Now we come to the Hurt Locker. I think it is one of the best war films ever made, an equal to Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. It abounds with brilliant performances and brilliant style. Any one of these films will show a true film artist at work.

The Art of "Asterisking"

What is chasing my good name? Good God, it's an asterisk! In an article at Big Hollywood's website, authors Andrea Shea King and Dave Logan pose the question: "Is Katherine Bigelow Hollywood's Roger Maris?" The connection may be nonsensical at first glance. What would a film director have to do with a baseball player from the past? It has to do with the asterisk. The particular asterisk in question is the one that followed and forever haunted Roger Maris' name. The year he broke Babe Ruth's record was a controversial one. There were so many die-hard Ruth fans out there, that the fact that some hayseed was going to break the Sultan's record not only enraged fans, but baseball's commission as well. The latter enforced the rule, as the article states, " that unless the record was broken in 154 games, the same number Ruth played in 1927, the new record would go into the record books with an asterisk beside it, because baseball's season was now 162 games long, giving Maris an unfair unadvantage." As a result, when Maris did indeed break the home-run season record, and not in the prescribed 154 games, he never fully got to enjoy his accomplishment. The damned asterisk dogged him until his death. The removal of the asterisk came many years later, but Maris never felt that personal validation. It came too late.

The meat of the article comes from Avatar director James Cameron's interview with MTV. The article quotes an excerpt: "I would say that it's an irresistable opportunity for the Academy to annoint a female director for the first time. I would say that that's, you know, a very strong probability and I will be cheering when that happens." From this excerpt, they extrapolate that Cameron might be doing to Bigelow what baseball did to Roger Maris. They ask, "Is Cameron inadvertantly-or deliberately-attaching an asterisk to Bigelow's name if she wins for the Hurt Locker? Is Cameron poisoning the well? If Bigelow is awarded an Oscar, will it be because she was the best?" They seem to think that it is a distinct possibility.

I say, unequivocally, that if she does win, the consensus among the voters is that she will have deserved it wholeheartedly and that it is not in any way a sentimental or symbolic victory. Firstly, Bigelow has won the Best Director laurels from myriad of groups including the National Society of Film Critics, the Austin Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Association, the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the San Francisco Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the Washnigton D.C. Area Film Critics Association. Even to the layman's eye, this is quite an impressive and comprehensive list of accolades. In the film community, this solidifies the belief, among major film critic groups and film enthusiasts, that Bigelow did the best directing job of the year. And in all the cases excepting one, these awards groups named Hurt Locker the best film of the year. In effect, this means they believe she crafted the best film of the year beacuse let's face it, the director is the one that harnesses all the talent involved and is the one directly responsible for the final vision, the final success of the film. Most significantly, Bigelow just won the top honor from the Director's Guild of America. According to the Wall Street Journal, only six out of the guild's past 61 recipients of this prize have not gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Couple that with her recent win at the British Academy Awards, and one can see that the odds are in her favor. I personally could sing her praises, but instead I will defer to America's most estimable film critic, Roger Ebert:

Katherine Bigelow's film has a masterful command of editing, tempo, character, and photography. Using no stunts and CGI, she creates a convincing portrayal of the conditions a man like James [the protagonist] faces. She builds with classical tools. She evokes suspense, dread, , identification. She asks if a man like James requires such a fearsome job. The film is a triumph of theme and execution, and very nearly flawless.

By the way, this excerpt comes from Ebert's article on his ten best films of the decade, where Bigelow's Hurt Locker placed second.

After all this exposition, I think that what one person says will in no way malign Bigelow's Oscar win. It is clear that her peers in the Director's Guild as well as the most influential critics' groups in the country have proclaimed her the "best director" of the year. Both of these entities have historically voted with conviction and not out of sentimentality. Leave sentimentality and popularity to the Golden Globes, where, consequently, Cameron's Avatar won both the Best Director and Best Picture statues even though not one critic's group capitulated. One last and most important item: if one continues reading Cameron's interview, he calls Bigelow a "genius director". He said it, I didn't.

Follow up on Ebert's list

My previous entry provides a link to Roger Ebert's list of the best films of the decade. I wanted to comment a little on a few of his choices. His pick for the second best film of the decade is the Hurt Locker. I believe that this film, scene for scene, equals both the grandeur and verisimilitude of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Locker's director, Kathryn Bigelow, never falters. In scene after scene, she sustains a feverish intensity and a sure directorial hand. Just plain gritty, cinema-verite camerwork with minimal flourish. She is expected to be the first woman ever to win the Academy Award for Best Director next month at the Oscars. It is also widely expected to win Best Picture. Jeremy Renner, in an Academy Award-nominated turn, burns with brilliant intensity as the ballsy bomb expert. One hardly sees this level of acting in movies anymore. This isn't imitation, it is being. Other notable movies on Ebert's list is Monster. I agree with him that Charlize Theron's metamorphosis is astounding and clearly one of the best and most harrowing performances to ever grace a movie screen. Other, more innocuous efforts include the masterful Juno with brilliantly incisive and witty dialogue by Diablo Cody and an indelible performance by Ellen Page, and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, which I think is one of the most heart warming and spiritual experiences I've had in my film going life. Its joy is infectious as is its soundtrack. An endearing masterpiece.

Finally, I would urge all who visit Ebert's page to read his online Journal. The last few entries have been brilliant, Dickensian musings on London and his past perambulations there. His pieces are comic, endearing, bittersweet, and fecund with social observation. One can just sit back and admire great writing and bathe themselves in sumptuous settings. His entries are usually of a personal nature and reveal the estimable man, the mensch, behind the estimable critic.

Ebertiana

What the hell does Synecdoche mean? Websters defines "synecdoche" as a figure of speech, in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for the part. For example, a rich man can be coined a "Croesus" or a garishly made-up girl a "Monet".

In one of the recent entries in his online journal, Roger Ebert elaborates on his choice for the best film of the decade. His lists for the best films of the year, or for that matter the decade, are usually pretty eclectic, but the underlying element in all his chosen films is how well they present the human condition. The director of his "best film of the decade", Charlie Kaufman, has made some pretty unusual films that all deal with the vagaries of the artistic mind and how it blurs the line between what is fictive and what is real. Kaufman's writing is typically very nebulous but its aims are very ambitious. Ebert states that Kaufman's newest film, "Synecdoche, New York", is the director's most successful attempt yet to create a crystalline vision of the human condition. He writes:

"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives...Charlie Kaufman [the writer and director] understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.

Ebert explains that the "artist" in question, the theatre director played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, finds that his play is not just some ersatz reality, something non-subjective and hermetically sealed. No, he comes to realize that the play, the characters, and the actors playing these characters are organic in nature. They yearn to break free from their prescribed barriers. They are not points on a Cartesian grid, but living, breathing sentient beings. Ineluctably, they start to intermingle with the "real people" off the stage, affecting them in ways they never thought possible. The seemingly impermeable membrane between fiction and reality now becomes permeable and indistinct. Think about it, when an author writes characters, do you think he/she does so objectively, with no personal investment? Would he/she spend the time, all those arduous hours it takes to write something enduring and cogent and not make it personal? Isn't a character just an emanation, either slight or substantial, of the author's own persona or what he/she thinks of as an ideal persona? It is the same for actors. There job is to develop a persona, either culling it from personal experience or through total invention, to fit the role. Either way, there is personal investment in it. In real life,as Ebert states, we ourselves develop personae to deal with variegated aspects of our lives. Whether we are playing the dutiful son/daughter for our parents, the stoic husband/wife for our spouse, or the "cool", acquiescing friend to our buddies, we play a role to placate our intended audience. Kaufman is saying that the whole world, in essence, is a stage, and that we are actors upon it, that we are both real and fictive at turns. We simply can't dismiss our creations because we are our creations, at least in some part. To think that we cannot learn from them stems from an inner naivite or a recalcitrance to confront one's own inadequacies.

Consciously or not, whether we want to or not, for good or for bad, we are creating, action by action and choice by choice, a comprehensive representation of the human condition for future generations to judge. This is precisely Kaufman's goal with his films (or any other serious artist for that matter) and especially with "Synecdoche, New York", whose stage and settings serve as a microcosm of the real world. The stage, then, is the world. The word "stage", then, is a synecdoche.

A follow up to the "Bears" article

I want to digress for a moment and talk about Werner Herzog, the director of Grizzly Man (the documentary about Timothy Treadwell of whom I commented previously on). He, along with Martin Scorsese, is the best director working in movies today. He is ostensibly less well known by moviegoing audiences than his American counterpart. But in the film community, he is legend. He is known as a true visionary, who will venture to any clime, go to any length, to get a film made. He has nearly died during several of his productions, either by tribal threats, curses, or a severe case of dysentery. His films are thoroughly German in their aesthetic. They are contemplative, metaphysical, visually sumptuous ,and the characters have a Faustian madness about them (what German, in any artistic field, has not to tried to emulate Goethe?). Firstly,I urge you to watch his film, Aguirre: The Wrath of God about Pizarro's expedition. Klaus Kinski, an actor even more maniacal than Herzog, plays the titular character brilliantly. Roger Ebert has counted this film as one of the ten best of all time- better praise is not warranted. Other Herzog masterpieces include Stroscek, Nosferatu (his brillaint remake of the Murnau original with Kinski), Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and the Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. The latter is an especially poignant film about a true-life outcast, a wild-child, who was adopted, rather too zealously, into "modern" society and the disastrous consequences it has on him. Any one of these films is a true litmus test for any self-proclaimed film enthusiast. His films are truly transcendent and can leave an indelible mark upon you if you open yourself up to the experience. Yes, they are that powerful.

Lions and Tigers and Bears..Oh My!

What...Republicans don't like bearhugs? So let me get this straight...if Treadwell had a conservative mindset, he wouldn't have performed the acts he did? Are one's passions simply an emanation of one's political ideology? I think that is ludicrous. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you are damning the character and spirit of Republicans. You are saying that they do not have the drive or the audacity to do what Treadwell did for many years. All you can cull from his tapes is that he was a "madman", completely irresponsible and unheeding of numerous warnings from numerous, more rational folk. But if you listen to Treadwell, you may well concede that he was a pretty intelligent guy. Conceding that, do you really think he did not know the dangers of being in such close proximity to the bears? Of course he knew, but I believe that he felt a strong connection to these animals. Ostensibly, the love and affection was not reciprocal, it never could be. But it didn't matter to him. To you or me, it does seem completely nonsensical to travel to distant climes in order to cohabitate with an incohabitable species. But does that mean that I should label him a madman, simply because his beliefs do not align with my own? Apparenty, you do and that's the quintessence of conservatism- "What we think is right and any who oppose are maligned." I admire Treadwell. He had a vision, an "ecstatic" one, of man and beast living together harmoniously, one not superior to the other. He died living out his dream and who wouldn't desire that? How many of us live mundane lives with nary a shred of excitement or elation? How many of our dreams fall by the wayside due to lack of conviction or courage? Take the celebrated writer Yukio Mishima, a brilliant author and playwright. He chose to die for his beliefs, because he longed for a return to a bygone era of honor, servitude, and death in the line of duty. Yes, he was a romantic, but he did have a crystalline vision of how the world should be and when it fell short, he simply could not go on living a semblance of a life. Treadwell is exactly the same way, a romantic. He even cut his hair to look like a Medieval knight on a quest to earn the respect of a fair beauty (in his case, the fair beast). It was all the same to Treadwell. And it is this kind of fanaticism, this single-minded purpose, this adamantine resolve in the face of overwhelming logic, that attracted the visionary filmmaker Werner Herzog. This great German director would kill himself, and nearly has, to complete a film (take Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo). They are kindred spirits. They are also poets in the Wordsworthian sense. They feel more acutely the vagaries of man and the emotions they feel as well as the chaotic elements in Nature. The latter entices them, interests them. Herzog is on a mission to commit these ecstatic truths to celluloid beacuse as he puts it, "the modern world is starving for images"- transcendent images that lift us to a higher plane of emotion, of consciousness. Treadwell was "foolish" enough in this cynical day and age to try to live constantly in that plane. Don't beat a man down beacuse he had the balls, the chutzpah, to try!

The Genesis

I'm in 10th grade Chemistry class, way in the back, and I am dead to the world. The latter phrase works here as a sort of "double entendre"- I had become completely desensitized to school (and most other things) and I was,literally, fast asleep! Up until that time in my life I had played the part of the devoted scholar, earning nothing less than a B since 1st grade. School, homework, was my forte and I took a certain pride in my abilities. I was also a comic book collector and a rather serious one at that. I had amassed thousands of issues, Marvel posters were ubiquitously thrown onto my walls, and I frequently wore, much to the perplexity of my classmates (the uninitiates), my Cerebus T-shirt (a representative and renowned piece of my esoterica). Acting as a subcurrent just below my passion for comics was my fascination with cinema. In my household, one watched movies all the time, either on T.V. or on scratchy Memorex. Also, watching the annual Academy Awards was ritualistic as was debating the winners/losers afterward.


As I stated earlier, in about 10th grade, something changed in me. I simply stopped caring. Stopped caring about school, homework, pleasing people,etc. I simply wanted to escape from a world that seemed painted, or should I say caked, in lugubrious tones and shades. That, compounded with the fact that I was maturing, or at least I thought I was mature, precipitated me to sell my voluble (and I rationed "infantile") comics collection for an insanely small price (I believe it was around $300). I had a plan for all this money: buy movies. My reason for this was twofold: movies were the ultimate form of escapism and it satiated the compulsive collector in me. I 've ALWAYS had to collect something (now it is books), and movies seemed an acceptable, and more mature, successor to comics at the time. I had asked my mother to buy a certain movie for me while she was at the mall and I would pay her back for it when she came home. The movie was Amadeus and my first viewing of it changed my life.

I chose Amadeus because it dealt with a weighty, "artsy" subject, Mozart, and it had won many Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, and Actor. I found as I watched it, that I felt elated, moved, in ways that I have never experienced before. After I a while, I was able to pinpoint the source of these emotions. It was the magic of cinema and its uncanny ability to marry music, editing, lighting, writing, mise en scene, and acting into a harmonious whole. Naysayers would call it emotional manipulation, but I don't concur with this opinion. The elation comes when all these elements have unitedly and harmoniously expressed universal and what acclaimed German director Werner Herzog coins "ecstatic" human truths. Take, for example a scene from Amadeus. Antonio Salieri, once upon a time the illustrious court composer to the Emperor, is now an old man in a wheelchair, in a sparsely furnished room of a sanitarium (he has just tried to kill himself, believing he was guilty for Mozart's death), talking to a nebbish priest. He recounts the time when he first encountered the precocious, childish Mozart and his music at a concert held in an opulent salon. After the recital is over, Salieri surreptitiously strolls up to one of the podiums and looks at the notes on the page. He waves his hand in time, and hears the notes unfold beautifully in his mind (and we hear it on the soundtrack). The camera zooms in on the young Salieri's face as he is brought to tears by the pastoral beauty and musical genius of the composition. He alone, in a room full of aristocrats and sycophants, recognizes Mozart as "God's instrument on Earth".(F. Murray Abraham, who plays Salieri, is brilliant in this scene. He won the The Best Actor Oscar for this role and richly deserved it). This recognition by Salieri of his own mediocrity sets in motion a string of events that eventually leads to Mozart's demise. Scene after scene of this glorious film displayed such nuance of acting, such daring and insidious writing which dared to plumb the depths of the human soul, and such a brilliant aesthetic, that by the end of the viewing, I was emotionally drained!

Since that viewing, I have honed my critical acumen through watching many films from many different genres. I also realized that the power of cinema could transcend language barriers by watching and worshipping the films of Fellini, Kurosawa,Ozu, Bergman, Bunuel, and Herzog. All great visualists but, most importantly, all great HUMANISTS! What both pisses me off and perplexes me is that still, to this day, most people don't see film as an art form, a legitimate art form. I can honestly say that I've seen films that have moved me as much as a Rembrandt painting or a novel of Dickens or Dostoevsky. Well-construted films contain great themes, powerful writing, indelible images, and transcendent acting that bravely present the human condition. If people would stop limiting the efficacy of cinema by thinking of it as simply a diversion or brainless escape, they could really engage, and even enhance, their emotional and cognitive faculties.

What I can do to achieve this legitimacy is be absolutely perspicacious in my blog in trying to disseminate the power of film to the masses. There are many great filmmakers out there, notably Martin Scorsese and Mike Leigh, with something pretty darned imaginative and meaningful to say. We need only listen with a willing mind and an open heart.

More on the Mel Gibson post

I tried my upmost to not inject any personal invectives at the original author to whom I posted a retort. I find that presenting your case with a modicum of maturity gets the message across better, especially to someone you're unfamiliar with. But I have to say it is people like him who have precipitated this blog of mine. They have what I call "cinematic myopia". Their attention span is nil, they have no comprehensive view of cinema, its history, recurring themes, movements, genres, or knowledge of a certain director's/actor's idiosynchrasies. This gives him no frame of reference in which to compare the subtleties of Gibson's past performances with the one in Ransom. Neither can he discern the merely competent from the truly transcendent. I believe that if you are going to pontificate upon a certain thing or merely offer your opinion, make sure that you are INFORMED. The highest good that the movie Ransom, or my blog for that matter, can achieve is that is precipitates interest in diversifying your cinematic tastes as well as sharpening your critical acumen. Being able to critically analyze a film is akin to any other art form: you separate the individual elements, critique them, find major and minor themes and then expound on its overall coherence and cogency. Once you have this capacity, watching film can become a spiritual experience. Then, when you watch a masterful film, such as Schindler's List or Sideways, you feel it in the very marrow of your bones. It stimulates your mind and engages your heart. And, most importantly, it will stimulate conversation and debate because of the passion you feel for it. And what great conversations can occur!

My "Cinematical" post from 01/30

Ransom?! I have to say that I am more than a little shocked at this choice. Although I agree with the reviewer that Gibson is effective in it, I don't agree with his opinion that it is Mel Gibson's finest performance. In my opinion, it is only a minor entry in his vast body of work. If you want to see high caliber acting, and not just overwrought and manipulative emotional scenes, witness his daring performance in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film, Hamlet. The pedigree of actors who have essayed the role is astounding, ranging from Olivier's introspective turn to Branagh's more audacious, modern interpretation. Gibson brought pathos, energy and incredulity to the role that presages Branagh. Gibson's performance displays all the behavioral vagaries of youth- a wide-eyed incredulity, an unabashed sensitivity, as well as sporadic fits of rage. In fact, the scene when he lashes out in rage at his mother Gertrude for her carnal proclivities has the cathartic effect of the best Greek drama (Oedipus Rex comes to mind).

Gibson, I believe, did his best work in the eighties. He gave powerful performances in two films directed by the great Australian director Peter Weir. These films are Gallipoli and The Year of the Living Dangerously. The latter is the better known of the two because it costars Sigourney Weaver and another costar, the diminutive actress Linda Hunt, won the supporting actress Oscar for her role as male (yes that's right) wartime photographer Billy Kwan. In it, Gibson plays an Australian journalist in Indonesia who is reporting on the tumultuous events which occurred during Sukarno's presidency. The film contains powerful acting all around, cogent writing and direction, and some of the best uses of location ever in the history of cinema. Another not-so-well-known gem in Gibson's cannon is The Bounty from 1984. This is a a wonderful remake of "The Mutiny on the Bounty", beautiful as well as visceral. Both Gibson, as Fletcher Christian, and Anthony Hopkins, as Captain Bligh, are brilliant. The scene when he finally faces Hopkins and takes over the boat is a master class in acting and will send chills down your spine!

I now discuss Lethal Weapon with ambivalence. Yes, it is a powerful piece of acting, a beguiling blend of pathos and humor, but unfortunately, the complexity of his performance wasn't given its due respect. Admittedly, it made him a star and a household name, but excepting Hamlet, he really hasn't been given a role since that has flexed his acting chops. He seems now to be pigeonholed into playing the taciturn but sympathetic action hero. One sees abundant evidence of this in both Braveheart and the Patriot. Personally, I know that Mel Gibson is a gifted enough actor to give us something new, with delicate shadings, that we have hitherto not been privy. For evidence of this, watch the films he has directed such as The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. In his directing, he gives us depth, originality, and verisimilitude. It's about time we see it in his acting!

To return to Ransom, I believe that this is not a high point in Ron Howard's career either. From a man who has brought us Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and Frost/ Nixon, this is an exercise in skillful mediocrity. So, look at these films with Mr. Gibson and you will gain an appreciation for what he can do in front of the camera. I wish some filmmaker would disregard Gibson's personal rhetoric and other offscreen antics and give him a role that will utilize his considerable talents as an actor. It can be done. It is possible. Do you want proof? Okay...how about... THE WRESTLER with Mickey Rourke! 'Nuff said.

The reason for the whole damn thing

Matthew Arnold, the esteemed Victorian essayist and poet, writes in his Essays in Criticism: "It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is the highest function of man...but it is undeniable, also, that me may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of all men." This is how the Mr. Arnold humbly justifies the role of a critic. I agree with it 100%. Critics, let's say of movies for the purposes of this blog, know that they do not possess the creative genius to make a film, but they still feel compelled to lend what creativity they do have to the artistic process by sharing with the world their very informed comments about it. A good critic's review should be a healthy admixture of enthusiasm and erudition, even if it is negative in nature. He/she should not tolerate or accept anything less in the prose he/she is offering to the public.

This is what I intend to achieve in my reviews. They will nitpick, they will dissect, but most of all they will INFORM. I also agree with the estimable Mr. Arnold that the ultimate goal of criticism should be "creating a current of true and fresh ideas"- the "true" being well-established,universal truths(criteria) and the "new" being of our own invention, the offspring of our own creative power. Shouldn't keeping this continuum, this current, continually flowing be the highest and desired end for blogging as well? We have the power to influence and disseminate our ideas anytime, anywhere and to a multitiude of people. If this is the case, then let's say something that's worth saying and that will excite and precipitate argument or what I like to call "productive palaver".

I will give you a visual that elaborates on what I'm trying to say. The website you will be taken to is entitled "At the Movies". It was formerly hosted by the two greats of film criticism, Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel. There are two new hosts now that can't hold a candle to their predecessors. That's why I suggest searching the archive for movies made up to 1999 (for both) or after for Ebert alone. When you see these two banter back and forth, you will see what I mean about the art of criticism. Both inject their rhetoric with enthusiasm, invective and erudition. And, above all, it is damn enjoyable to watch. This is what I will try to achieve in the written word on my blog.