A Non-Commercial Decade Of Dominance!
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Webliography: Title/Subject/Author
251) Opening Night/DVD Review John Cassavetes’ 1977 film ‘Opening Night’ is what critics usually call the work of such a significant artist ‘overlooked’. It is an excellent film, in its own right, and one of the best portraits of a midlife crisis ever put to film. It’s not a perfect film, in that, at two hours and twenty four minutes it’s about a half hour too long, and there’s a bit too much emphasis on the drunkenness of the lead character Myrtle Gordon, played by Gena Rowlands....
Cassavetes in the groove.
252) Frenzy/DVD Review Have you ever wondered about what a famous artist's work would be like if they were living in the present age? Imagine Van Gogh living in Los Angeles, or Dante writing of the military debacle in Iraq. Well, imagine what Alfred Hitchcock - either of the early British thrillers or 1950s vintage era Hollywood classics, would be like if he were given a free hand in the 21st Century. Fortunately, cineastes need not strain their imaginations too much, for his penultimate film, 1972's Frenzy - his first film made in England in over twenty years, gives hints as to what a 21st Century Hitchcock would provide; and it's assuredly good. In fact, save for a too rushed last fifteen or twenty minutes, it would be the equal of his three or four greatest films....
Near-masterpiece.
253) Black Orpheus/DVD Review Marcel Camus's 1959 French film, Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), made in 1959, in Portuguese, is by no means a great film, but it is a landmark film; an odd amalgam of modernity and the worst stereotypes about black culture worldwide. The whole film is practically one long festival of song and dance, which while apropos for the setting- Rio de Janeiro's Carnival, nonetheless kills off any hope for a real story. Yet, despite the dancing, singing, and merrymaking, it is not a musical, per se, and quite a bleak film, in that it reinforces the notion, however true, that poverty is something that no amount of merriment can deny....
Enjoy!
254) Forbidden Planet/DVD Review When one thinks of 1950s science-fiction films, one thinks of the sort of schlocky black-and-white B-movies that were parodied on the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 television show. Yet, while there were a whole lot of films like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Robot Monster, the 1950s did have some very good, if not great, sci-fi movies....
Robby the Robot kicks ass!
255) The Decalogue/DVD Review Art that can claim greatness deals with complex issues in complex ways. If the answers or questions posed were simple they could be framed in a single sentence, or a ten second film, then the art would not be its own best explanation. This thought stuck with me as I watched Krzystof Kieślowski's complex and fascinating, if flawed, The Decalogue....
Kieslowski on keel.
256) The Bad Sleep Well/DVD Review Akira Kurosawa’s 1960 black-and-white Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru / The Bad Sleep Well, is often compared to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but that’s an inapt comparison. While Shakespeare’s play has a higher sense of poetry, Kurosawa’s film — though a high-class melodrama — has far more relevance, realism, and complexity....
Shakespeare with a topknot?
257) Two Poems/Jessica Schneider
258) Diary Of A Country Priest/DVD Review Robert Bresson's 1950 breakthrough film, Diary Of a Country Priest (Journal D'Un Cure de Campagne), is one of those films that is absolutely antithetical to everything a Hollywood film stands for. It is obsessive, detailed, slow, and opaque. This, however, does not mean it is a great film, as so many knee-jerk critics claim it is. It is not; but it is a very interesting film. Ostensibly, it may seem to be a film on religion and/or suffering, or, as film critic Fréderic Bonnard claims, in The Criterion Collection's DVD essay on the film, a film 'about imprisonment,' but it's neither, really. It's more cogently a film about masochism, guilt, and pathological privation, although it does touch upon religion, suffering, and imprisonment....
Hang the dog.
259) A Woman Under The Influence/DVD Review John Cassavetes was one of those rare artists of whom it could be said that his flaws were his strengths, and his strengths were his flaws. On a purely technical level, his 1974 film, A Woman Under The Influence, is not a very good film. It is often poorly lit, edited, and at times poorly acted, almost as badly as Cassavetes' own Minnie and Moscowitz. Yet, there are moments when its dramatic power rivals that of his first great triumph, Faces, or any other work of drama or fiction....
Interesting.
260) Amarcord/DVD Review Federico Fellini’s 1973 Amarcord has often been linked with Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny och Alexander / Fanny & Alexander as films made by old men looking back on their youth. While this is true, in the main Amarcord has a loose narrative structure in which the lives of many characters are detailed in comic vignettes, whereas Fanny & Alexander is a straight drama....
Gradisca rules.
261) Everyday People/DVD Review In 2004 HBO Films decided to try their hand at the polemical subject of race in New York. Usually, this results in ill wrought PC material like Spike Lee's 1989 fantasy, Do The Right Thing. Instead, they crafted an improvisational workshop concoction called Everyday People, about the closing of a fictive Jewish deli and restaurant called Raskin's in the heart of Brooklyn....
Solid.
262) The Jimmy Show/DVD Review In order to be a good critic one has to rise above one's personal biases. Period. If one cannot get past hating love stories or action films, then one should not practice the craft, because there are good films that are mere love stories or action films. It is the excellence of the film, and how it achieves its excellence, that is more important than what sort of a film it is. This basic lack of understanding how to separate one's likes from the objective ability of art to effectively communicate, is why most critics fail in their task....
Neglected film gets its due.
263) Fanny And Alexander/DVD Review Why Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s 1982 final ‘filmic film,’ Fanny och Alexander / Fanny & Alexander bears the appellation it does is a mystery — one of many in the film — since the first titular character, Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) is at best a third- or fourth-level supporting character, and in the three-hour theatrical version she is not even mentioned by name for nearly an hour into the film. Fanny & Alexander should have been called "Alexander & Fanny," or simply "Alexander," since it most closely follows two years in the life of young, handsome, brown-haired Alexander Ekdahl (Bertil Guve) — the original ‘boy who sees dead people’ — from 1907 to 1909....
Great, yet overrated.
264) Downfall (Part 1)/DVD Review In the annals of film, the greatest screen portrayal of an evil world leader was undoubtedly Anthony Hopkins’ 1995 turn as President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone’s Nixon. Within five to ten minutes of one’s first glimpse of Hopkins- a Brit who looked and sounded nothing like the 37th American President, one almost forgets what the real Nixon looked like. But, now there’s a contender who could knock Hopkins off his perch- or at least give him a good fight, and that is Bruno Ganz’s turn as Adolf Hitler in the 2004 Academy Award nominated Best Foreign Language Film from Germany, Downfall (Der Untergang- literally The Downfall)....
Hitler lives!
265) The Double Life Of Veronique/DVD Review The Double Life Of Véronique (La Double Vie De Véronique) is the 1991 French-Polish film by Krzysztof Kieslowski, written by himself and Krzysztof Piesiewicz that was the presage for the greatness of the Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, and Red), and was an international sensation at both the Cannes and New York film festivals, for here is where the gilt-hazed camera work of Slawomir Idziak, the music of Zbigniew Preisner (although slyly credited to the fictional Van den Budenmayer in the film- a running joke within Kieslowski’s later works), and Kieslowski’s own vision first touched greatness- even if it is a conditional greatness, more of sensuality than sense....
Irene Jacob is yummy!
265) Marnie/DVD Review After his back to back commercial and critical triumphs of Psycho and The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock decided to go ‘interior.’ By that, I mean he decided to get unfortunately Freudian in his approach to crime, as he had throughout his career. Unfortunately, all but a few of his films suffer from their reliance on the outmoded and simplistic approaches to psychology that he employed....
Rape?
266) Downfall (Part 2)/DVD Review Some of the weakest parts of the film come from the performances of the other lead characters- the ‘usual suspects’ of Nazi lore. There is Ulrich Matthes as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Matthes plays Goebbels as an almost insectoid parody of evil....
Hitler dies!
267) Signs Of Life/DVD Review No filmmaker’s career has been more defined and structured by the musical choices he has made than German film director Werner Herzog. This claim is evident from his first full-length feature, Lebenszeichen / Signs of Life (1968), which he made when he was twenty-four....
Werner gets going.
268) Downfall (Part 3)/DVD Review Much of this lack of the substantive inner circle of Nazism can be pawned off on the meager screenplay, by Bernd Eichinger, and director Oliver Hirschbiegel, rather than the actors. They adapted the material found in Junge’s memoirs, Bis Zur Letzten Stunde- written by Melissa Müller, and the book Inside Hitler’s Bunker, by Joachim Fest. The actors merely had to make do with what was tossed to them. Yet, the larger problem the film faced was not how to squeeze so many Nazis into the 155 minute film, but where to place the focus....
Germany razed.
269) I Am Curious/DVD Review Time is the great leveler of all things, but most especially so in the arts. This Ozymandian verity applies to the great and the petty. There are works of art and artists that go ignored in their own time, because they are ahead of the field- think Gerard Manley Hopkins, Franz Kafka, or Emily Dickinson, to name the obvious, and then there are works of art and artists that have great immediate success, but are forgotten by time....
Not really.
270) Even Dwarfs Started Small/DVD Review Werner Herzog's black and white 1970 film, Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge Haben Klein Angefangen) is one of those films that is beyond such grounded definitions as good and bad, and, like its American predecessor, Freaks, is simply one of the oddest films ever made. Bad critics have praised it for all the wrong reasons- such as being a statement on politics, the Vietnam War, the partition of Germany, against religion, and prudish ignorants have condemned it for similarly wrong reasons....
Oddball.
271) The Known World/Book Review Edward P. Jones wrote a terrific book of short stories in 1991, Lost In The City, that was justifiably critically praised, for nine of its fourteen tales are great, but it was forgotten until his 2003 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning novel, The Known World, came out. Then his publisher, Amistad Press, rushed to reprint the earlier work, to cash in on the publicity, after years of pulping old copies....
Long on wind.
272) The Passings/Poetry
Long gone.
273) Gates Of Heaven (Part 1)/DVD Review Roger Ebert is perhaps the most famous film critic in America. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. It should be noted, however, that that award was for the writing, not his analytical skills. What separates Ebert from most published critics is that he is better with words than most. A dozen or more of his reviews are classics whose words stick with me to this day....
1970s. California. Death.
274) Gates Of Heaven (Part 2)/DVD Review Not much else occurs in the film, although there is a montage, near the end, of animal plots, with engravings and photos, which is strangely moving- somewhat akin to seeing photos of the war dead from Vietnam or Iraq, or a listing of Holocaust victim names. Yet, the Morris of the later, greater films, is still in utero here. There is not much in the way of plot- just as the MGM DVD is bare bones, with only a few trailers....
The end.
275) Deliverance/DVD Review New on the Fox Network: When Good Movies Go Bad! Or, a review of John Boorman’s 1972 film Deliverance, which he produced and directed, based upon James Dickey’s 1970 novel of the same name. Dickey also wrote the screenplay, which explains a lot, especially if you are familiar with his ‘poetry.’ The actual look of the film, however, is sensational....
Torpedo time!
276) Straw Dogs/DVD Review If there has ever been a more over-interpreted and stolidly misinterpreted film than director Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 Straw Dogs, I’ve yet to encounter it. Films like Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey have had more ink spilled over them, but most of the ideas tossed about are on the money, and far less is read into them. Also, those two classics have one big thing going for them that Straw Dogs does not. They are great films....
Not again!
277) Late Spring/DVD Review If one were to think of an equivalent to the film style of director Yasujiro Ozu it would have to be long novels suffused with detail, but never superfluous detail. Books such as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—with its descriptions of the whaling industry and vessels; John Steinbeck’s The Grapes Of Wrath—with its detailed rendering of the lives of migrant workers; and especially Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows In Brooklyn—with its child-like view of a world that overwhelms fresh senses, come to mind, even though the film checks in at a mid-length range of an hour and forty-eight minutes....
Masterful.
278) Empire Falls/Book Review I first encountered Richard Russo earlier this year when I saw tv ads for a miniseries based upon his bestselling book Empire Falls. It looked little better than the atrocious Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven miniseries. A few months later I came across reams of his short story collection, The Whore's Child, in a book discounter, and was amazed at how poorly the tales' opening and closing paragraphs were- a sure sign of a writer's worth, or lack thereof....
Total crap.
279) Story Of Floating Weeds & Floating Weeds/DVD Review Yasujiro Ozu was perhaps the greatest obsessional filmmaker in history. Thus, it's no surprise that not only did he rework the same themes over and again in his films, but that he also redid earlier films of his own years later, such as 1932's I Was Born But... as 1959's Good Morning....
Ozu rules.
280) Clouds Of May/DVD Review I am usually very wary when people recommend art to me- be it a poem, a book, or a film. Usually they are in love with a certain work or artists, and are blinded to its manifest flaws because of some emotional attachment to it. It’s the first poem that ever touched them, it’s the first book that gave them the secret to life, or it’s the first movie where a girl ever allowed them to grope her breasts without screaming....
Ok.
281) Juliet Of The Spirits/DVD Review Federico Fellini's first color film, 1965's Juliet Of The Spirits (Giulietta Degli Spiriti), which was written by Fellini and longtime collaborators Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, is, simply put, the female and color companion piece to 8�. Unlike that prior film, often considered Fellini's best, Juliet Of The Spirits was a critical and financial failure when it came out. The criticism of the film was too harsh for, while it is not as great nor good a film as some earlier Fellini classics, it is still Fellini, which makes it better than the overwhelming majority of films by others, for even when Fellini fails he succeeds at more things than most....
Color!
282) The 400 Blows/DVD Review In 1959, a pair of newly released French films were instantly hailed as classics, going on to become the twin pillars of the Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave. One, Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle / Breathless, was bad; the other, François Truffaut’s Les Quatre cents Coups / The 400 Blows, was good. But in fact, despite their reputations neither film can be called great cinema....
Hit'em again!
283) Maid Of Wilko/DVD Review Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda’s 1979 film Maids Of Wilko (Panny Z Wilka- also translated as Young Girls Of Wilko) shows that, like such filmmakers as Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Yasujiro Ozu, he is an artist more interested in endurances than mere ‘scenes.’ His characters speak as if philosophers, but in a naturalistic style. They are not the hyper-educated bourgeoisie of Bergman, the spiritual elitists of Bresson, nor the everyday philosophes of Ozu. Yet, there’s something more to them, and Wajda, than what is on the screen, even if the film, as a whole, fails to reach great heights....
Contemplative.
Battle of wits.
285) Stan & Ollie/Book Review The one thing I’ve always wanted to know about the comedy team of Laurel And Hardy was, who was the straight man? If one thinks of all the other great comedy teams of the Twentieth Century, the answer is obvious. Moe Howard was the straight man for Curly Howard and Larry Fine in The Three Stooges, Zeppo Marx was the straight man for Groucho, Harpo, and Chico in The Marx Brothers, and Bud Abbott was the straight man for Lou Costello in Abbott And Costello....
Who's straight?
286) The Return Of The Secaucus 7/DVD Review Independent filmmaker John Sayles’s 1980 feature-film debut, The Return of the Secaucus 7, has the typical feel of the low-budget productions from that era — even those in the horror genre, such as Last House on the Left or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Indeed, prior to embarking on his directorial career Sayles had been a screenwriter and script doctor for Roger Corman’s cheapo horror fare. Unfortunately, the excellence of Sayles’s later films only points up the flaws of this first effort. Like many low-budget indies, The Return of the Secaucus 7 is long on talk and short on both action and visual razzle-dazzle. Worse yet, it is filled with amateurish acting and unrealistic dialogue....
Sayles' first time.
287) Belle De Jour/DVD Review There was something about the 1960s that brought out a playfulness in filmmakers which allowed them to not have to condescend to audiences and wrap up every little aspect of the film in a neat little bow. When the films' techniques and narrative strengths worked, as in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, or Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the result was a great film. When neither worked, the result was a pretentious mess, like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby or Luis Bu�uel's Belle De Jour- his 1967 foray into color film, based upon the same titled novel of Joseph Kessler, released in 1928....
Passe.
288) Early Summer/DVD Review Early Summer (Bakushû) is the middle entry in what has been called director Yasujiro Ozu’s Noriko Trilogy (bookended by Late Spring and Tokyo Story). All three films feature women named Noriko (all played by Setsuko Hara), who are without husbands, and embroiled in family dramas. The names of many of the other major characters recur in the trilogy, as well, which gives the films a feeling of almost being alternate world versions of each other- ala the way comic books have ‘canonical’ superhero tales, and those set in alternate universes. Released in 1951, the 124 minute black and white film was written by Ozu and his co-writer Kôgo Noda....
Contemplative.
289) Diary Of A Country Priest/DVD Review Robert Bresson’s 1950 breakthrough film, Diary Of A Country Priest (Journal D’Un Cure De Campagne), is one of those films that is absolutely antithetical to everything a Hollywood film stands for. It is obsessive, detailed, slow, and opaque. This, however, does not mean it is a great film, as so many knee-jerk critics claim it is. It is not; but it is a very interesting film. Ostensibly, it may seem to be a film on religion and/or suffering....
On to something?
290) You Are All Desire/Poetry
You alone.
291) Native Son/Book Review Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son, violates two of the basic tenets of modern MFA dogma. The first is that it starts off very slowly, then builds up a powerful narrative steam (although not of the simplistic plot-driven variety), and the second is that it is a tale that overwhelmingly ‘tells’ what is happening, rather than ’showing’, which violates all the simplistic MFA workshop prohibitions against same....
Classic.
292) Through A Glass Darkly/DVD Review Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film, Through A Glass Darkly (Såsom i en spegel), is not one of his best films, although it is one of his most lauded, winning an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. That said, it’s quite a good film that simply has not held up that well over the years as a de facto Chekhovian drama- partly due to the melodramatic acting of its lead character, Karin (Harriet Andersson), but more importantly because its handling of psychology and religion seems quite dated, in light of what we now know about mental illnesses and the structure of the brain....
Bergman off-key.
293) The Hidden Fortress/DVD Review Those film viewers who equate foreign films with pretense need to sit down for a couple of hours and watch director Akira Kurosawa's first widescreen (Tohoscope) film, the black and white The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi-Toride No San-Akunin — literally "The Three Villains Of The Hidden Fortress"), from 1958. While it is a very good film, it a great movie in the feel good sense of the term. Filmmaker George Lucas claims this film was the inspiration for his third-rate Star Wars films....
Better'n Lucas.
294) Blue/DVD Review Krzysztof Kieslowski was one of the more interesting filmmakers of the last quarter century, and the centerpiece of his claim to greatness is the Three Colors (Trois Couleurs) trilogy of films that he wrote and directed in the early to mid-1990s, filming them all at the same time. Blue, White, and Red represent the three colors of the French flag, and symbolize the three virtues of liberty, equality, and fraternity respectively. Blue (Bleu) is the first film in the series, and was released in 1993. The color blue also resonates for its associations with depression and coldness, that are well demonstrated in the film....
Opus.
295) Hour Of The Wolf/DVD Review Vargtimmen / Hour of the Wolf, a 1968 film by Ingmar Bergman, proves the nostrum that even lesser work by a great artist surpasses the better work of lesser artists, for Bergman can get more from the prosaic than just about any other director....
Howling.
296) The Fearless Vampire Killers/DVD Review One of the overlooked aspects of most of the vintage 1960s and 1970s Hammer Studios horror films is that they were quite funny, often unintentionally so. Yes, Christopher Lee had a certain charm, but is it not true that he was also far more grandly silly than scary? Looking back on those films, they certainly do not hold up as well as even the Universal Bela Lugosi takes on the genre, let alone such superior vampire films as the silent F.W. Murnau classic Nosferatu....
Bravery undone.
297) Winter Light/DVD Review Winter Light (Nattvardsgästerna- literally The Communicants) is the middle film in Ingmar Bergman’s Spider Trilogy (as it too references the God as a spider imagery), following Through A Glass Darkly, and preceding The Silence. Made in 1963, it represents a dramatic notching upward from the well made, but often melodramatic and symbolic, Through A Glass Darkly. Where the first film of the trilogy suffers from the overacting of Harriet Andersson, and some over the top displays of incest....
Socrates in ascension.
298) The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie/DVD Review John Cassavetes’ The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie is a film that is one of those overlooked gems that is not only a great film, but a great record of its time, even if it might have more properly been titled The Murder Of A Chinese Bookie. As much as I love the early raw films of Martin Scorsese — who reputedly thought up this tale with Cassavetes a few years earlier — no film I’ve ever seen so perfectly captures the mid-1970s underworld as I knew it as a child. There is a sense that one can even smell the cheap liquor and cigarette smoke that pervades its images....
Masterpiece.
299) White/DVD Review The middle film of Polish-French film director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors (Trois Couleurs) trilogy of Blue, White, and Red is a very black comedy, and generally considered the weakest of the three films. This is true, although, given the high quality of the tercet, White (Blanc) is still an excellent film....
Comedic intensity.
300) The Passenger/DVD Review Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film, The Passenger (Professione: Reporter in Europe, and at one time called Fatal Exit), written by Antonioni, Peter Wollen, and Mark Peploe, is a terrific film that falls just shy of some of his truly great films like La Notte, L'Eclisse, and Blowup. That's because, despite Antonioni's usual visual brilliance, daring use of silences, and a unusually reserved performance from Jack Nicholson- one that is a bit of true acting, from long before he started phoning in performances....
Antonioni in quietude.
301) Brinkley's Beat/Book Review (2nd review down) David Brinkley was an important figure in the history of television news. But, that fact has no consequence on the fact that the man was not a particularly good writer. Before his death in June of 2003 he penned a slim book for Alfred A. Knopf called Brinkley's Beat: People, Places And Events That Shaped My Time, which consisted of minor essays on topics that concerned his career in journalism. Although divided into three sections- People, Places, and Events (real creative, eh?), and featuring essays on topics such as Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, J. Edgar Hoover, Normandy, and the Kennedy Assassination (Jack, not Bobby), the book is a dull and tedious read....
Yawn.
302) Smiles Of A Summer Night/DVD Review Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens Leende) was the film that first garnered him international recognition. It would be a couple of years before The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries cemented his reputation as an international film auteur, but looking back on this film half a century later and half a world away only shows how different tastes in humor can be....
Bergman laughs.
303) Good Morning/DVD Review Of the Big Three Japanese film directors from last century, who were known in the West, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa, and Yasujiro Ozu, Ozu is by far the least well known, and this is because he was probably the least technically innovative of the troika. But that is not the same as saying he was the least accomplished. In fact, his 1959 social comedy of manners, Good Morning, set in a modern Tokyo suburban subdivision, is in many ways far more relevant than the more famed period pieces the other directors made for it has a definite Western sensibility. Ozu seemed to be obsessed with documenting history, but history as it was lived, not re-imagined....
Ozu farts.
304) Gertrud/DVD Review Apologists for bad art almost always speak of ‘intent’, and, in a similar vein, bad critics always try to justify their ‘liking’ a bad film by praising it obliquely, often using words like ‘abstract’ in place of ‘dullness’, or calling a boring film an ‘etude’, even if it is trite. Such is what one will find if one reads the reviews for Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s final film Gertrud....
Bad and dull.
305) The Life Aquatic/DVD Review Screenwriter and film director Wes Anderson has made a career out of quirky films that have an avid following, even while offering little depth. He rarely pushes himself, and why his latest film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) was considered worthy of treatment by The Criterion Collection, which usually reserves its accolades for films of stature — both American and foreign — is a puzzle. Granted, they deemed Anderson’s prior mediocre effort, The Royal Tenenbaums, and the 1998 mega-flop sci-fi action flick Armageddon worthy of their treatment, but that still is not enough reason to justify this entry into their pantheon — their three hundredth title, in fact....
Gurgle.
306) The Silence/DVD Review The last film of Ingmar Bergman’s Spider Trilogy, The Silence (Tystnaden), is not as good as the film which directly preceded it, Winter Light, but is closer to it, in quality, than the trilogy’s comparatively weak first film, Through A Glass Darkly. This is because the weak link in Bergman’s filmic repertoire is his ability to handle sexuality....
Not so silent.
307) Amadeus/DVD Review In all the years since its release, I'd never seen the 1984 Oscar winning best film Amadeus, partly because classical music did not interest me, and partly because I have an aversion to 'period dramas', and all their costumery. As the years have gone on, and my wife has nagged me to see this favorite of hers. I finally gave in and bought the two DVD Director's Cut version, released in 2001....
Not so great.
308) White Teeth/Book Review I get really tired of the bland sort of reviews that pass for negative criticism. You know what I mean. In it, a reviewer who is scared shitless of making an enemy of a writer, or a publishing house, writes a few mild rebukes of the writer, but comes around in the end to praise the writer as being terrific, as a writer and person, and that it was just this book, or a portion of it, that failed....
Ugh!
309) Fitzcarraldo/DVD Review I first watched Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo back in the late 1980s, on PBS, and found it to be a great film. All these years later I still find it to be a great film, if not quite in a league with Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s other most famed filmic pairing, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God....
Kinski, again.
310) Red/DVD Review The final film of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors (Trois Couleurs) trilogy, Red (Rouge), released in 1994, is almost universally acclaimed as the best of the films. For once, the common consensus is correct. Of course, if one is to believe some of the online reviews of this film, and the whole trilogy, there are plenty of people who seriously question whether or not Three Colors is a better trilogy than the two Star Wars trilogies, that of The Matrix, or even The Lord Of The Rings. Let me end that debate, once and for all....
Irene Jacob rocks!
311) Where The Green Ants Dream/DVD Review There are three distinct styles of German director Werner Herzog's films. There are his great, deep, and memorable fictive films - such as Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, and Fitzcarraldo, there are his smaller evocative documentary-like films - such as Fata Morgana, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, and Grizzly Man, and then there are his unclassifiable films....
Outback adventures.
312) The Double Life Of Veronique/DVD Review The Double Life Of Véronique (La Double Vie De Véronique) is the 1991 French-Polish film by Krzysztof Kieslowski, written by himself and Krzysztof Piesiewicz that was the presage for the greatness of the Three Colors Trilogy (Blue, White, and Red), and was an international sensation at both the Cannes and New York film festivals, for here is where the gilt-hazed camera work of Slawomir Idziak, the music of Zbigniew Preisner (although slyly credited to the fictional Van den Budenmayer in the film- a running joke within Kieslowski’s later works), and Kieslowski’s own vision first touched greatness- even if it is a conditional greatness, more of sensuality than sense. The film has been rhapsodized by international film critics as Kieslowski’s ‘coming out’ film, but one can see it is clearly a bridge between the direction he was headed with his tv series The Decalogue, and where he ended up in the Trilogy....
Irene Jacob rocks.
313) La Strada/DVD Review Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini’s 1954 black and white film La Strada (The Road) is one of those films that is midway between his early neo-realism and his later magical realism, with touches of both aplenty. It made stars of both him and its female lead, his wife Giulietta Masina, won the 1954 Venice Film Festival’s top award and the 1956 Best Foreign Picture Academy Award, yet there is something missing from it....
Fellini's first flirtation with the fabulous.
314) Short Cuts/DVD Review Short Cuts, the three-hour-plus film written and directed by Robert Altman (with co-writer Frank Barhydt), based upon a series of short stories by Raymond Carver, is an odd film. It's not a bad film, nor is it even remotely a great film- the only two sorts of films that the hit (Nashville) and miss (Vincent And Theo) Altman has plenty of experience with. The nine stories and one poem of Carver's, from the same titled anthology book, have been transplanted from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles, and many of the stories are made to cross over with each other, where they were unconnected in print, as well from different story collections, with several characters being based upon more than one character to help achieve that end....
So-so.
315) Blowup/DVD Review Blowup was Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English language film, made in Great Britain, in 1966, and it’s a flat-out great film, at a crisp 111 minutes. It was nominated for two Academy Awards; Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay- by Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, and Edward Bond- adapted from the short story Las Babas Del Diablo, by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, and won the National Society Of Film Critics title as best film of 1967. Having first seen the two Hollywood films most influenced by it- Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation....
Masterful.
316) The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad/DVD Review Perhaps I was five or six when I first snuck into one of the cheapo movie theaters off of Myrtle Ave., in Queens, to see The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Or perhaps I saw it first on WABC-TV’s “The 4:30 Movie,” or late at night, on “Chiller Theater” or “Creature Feature."....
Fun, fun, fun....
317) North By Northwest/DVD Review The addition of pretense can be a killer in a film. It is precisely the lack of such a quality that makes Alfred Hitchcock’s two and a quarter hour long 1959 color thriller North By Northwest a better and more enjoyable film than his preceding film, Vertigo, even if the film comes nowhere near the excellence of his following film, Psycho. Whereas the two films that end in –o attempt to impose a deeper psychology into their screenplays, North By Northwest is a popcorn eater's gala, pre-James Bondian Cold War thriller. It’s no wonder the film was a popular smash while Vertigo was a financial flop....
Cary at his Grantiest.
318) Solaris/DVD Review I first saw the 2002 Steven Soderbergh version of Solaris, starring George Clooney, then read Stansislaw Lem’s novel, then watched this- Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 169 minute film version of the book, Solaris (Solyaris), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year, and each successive interpretation I’ve seen of the work is better than the last, even though Lem publicly disavowed Tarkovsky’s film....
Masterwork.
319) Distant/DVD Review Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2002 film Distant (Uzak), his third feature film (his first was 1997’s black and white The Small Town [Kasaba]), is a significant step up from his good but flawed 1999 film Clouds Of May (Mayis Sikintisi)....
Masterful.
320) Autumn Sonata/DVD Review Ingmar Bergman's almost-fated 1978 filmic teaming with Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata (Hostsonaten), is amongst the very best of the films in his canon. It is also the most emotionally intense of the series of Strindbergian or Chekhovian chamber dramas he has filmed over the years, which includes his Spider Trilogy....
Bergman chambered.
321) The Collected Stories/Chester Himes In reading The Collected Stories Of Chester Himes I was reminded of another short story writer who made his name in the 1930s and 1940s as a social realist writer, and then made his mark writing pulpy novels toward the end of his career. That writer was Irwin Shaw....
Da Man!
322) The Wild Bunch/DVD Review Director Sam Peckinpah’s two hour and twenty-five minute long 1969 Western classic, The Wild Bunch, is certainly an influential and important film, but, compared to the other great Western released that year, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, it has not held up nearly as well....
Spaghetti's better.
323) Ugetsu/DVD Review Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari), a 1953 film by Kenji Mizoguchi, which won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize (the Silver Lion Award for Best Direction) that year, is one of the best films to ever deal with the subject of human desire, and not only the obvious sexual aspects of the emotion....
Ghostly.
324) All The President's Men/DVD Review Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 hit film All The President’s Men is as good an example of a filmmaker as craftsman as there is. Pakula was never a great director/auteur, a man with a ‘vision.’ Rather, he was a journeyman filmmaker who tried to best shape whatever scripts came his way. The film is a good one, but it falls shy of greatness because it is a film that is all surface level....
On the trail.
325) Things Behind The Sun/DVD Review The best way to kill a technically well made film is through a bad screenplay. Exhibit 1A: filmmaker Allison Anders’ 2003 Showtime film Things Behind The Sun. Ostensibly based upon Anders’ real life ‘trauma’ of being raped as a child, the film wallows in every manner of cliché on the subject of victimhood imaginable....
PC Police.
326) The Searchers/DVD Review Films, like artists or authors, tend to have their critical reputations wax and wane through a few cycles until a consensus is finally reached. Of course, consensus has little to do with real world excellence or failure. As good an example of this trend as can be shown certainly is John Ford’s famed 1956 John Wayne western, The Searchers....
Overrated.
327) The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter/Book Review Not long ago I was blown away by the 1943 novel, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, which tells the tale of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, during the first twenty years of the 20th Century, via the life of a young girl named Francie Nolan....
Not quite.
328) THX1138/DVD Review Many years ago I came across a VHS tape of THX 1138, the first film from George Lucas, released in 1970, and was amazed by it- not only for what it was, but because of who was responsible for it. It certainly was unlike any other film he subsequently made- the lightweight American Graffiti and the Star Wars films, both in tone and quality. It was more like a Samuel Beckett work than the schlock that his later films represented. It had a combination of Oriental zeitgeist and European technique, and moved at the pace of the Eastern European animated sci fi film Fantastic Planet. It was thoughtful and literate and, vis-a-vis his later crap, only begged the question, 'Whatever happened to George Lucas?'....
What happened, George?
329) Cat People/DVD Review Every so often there comes an artist who works in a disrespected genre, yet who has enough talent and vision to almost make that whole genre seem respectable; at least in his own takes on it. And, when two such artists get together, their synergy is even greater....
Meow!
330) L'Avventura/DVD Review Some films that are labeled classics, or great films, are not even good films. Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless immediately comes to mind. Others, like Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, whose title literally means The Adventure, as well as Italian slang for a one night stand, are not necessarily bad, but still only interesting failures, and not worthy of their reputation. L’Avventura was the first in a trilogy of black and white widescreen films Antonioni would make about alienation and personal anomy....
Ho-hum.
331) Heat And Other Stories/Book Review When one thinks of the great mysteries in life one is often drawn to the spectacular, such as whether or not aliens in UFOs have landed or whether or not there ever was an Atlantis, or to the deep, such as what it the meaning of existence. Yet, just as great a mystery, to me, at least, is how a writer like Joyce Carol Oates has first gotten into print, and second, stayed there....
Joyce Carol Oates sucks.
332) Knife In The Water/DVD Review Roman Polanski is at his best as a filmmaker when he focuses on the realist and small moments of horror in a human life. When he goes a bit overboard, and into the grotesque or surreal, such as in The Fearless Vampire Killers, or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck, Rosemary’s Baby, or Chinatown, his films tend to lose their way, even if still good....
Polanski debuts.
333) The M&C Interview 1: Charles Johnson, 6/07
334) It Happened One Night/DVD Review It is a very rare thing when a light-hearted comedy, something that is quintessentially the stuff of a ‘good movie,’ breaches into that territory where the term ‘good film’ can also be applied, but Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) may be an exception....
Yes it did!
335) La Notte/DVD Review La Notte (The Night), the 1961 film by Michelangelo Antonioni, and the second of his Alienation Trilogy, after L’Avventura and before L’Eclisse, is a huge artistic leap up from its predecessor film. It’s not so much that L’Avventura was such a bad film- it’s not. It has its moments, and a good premise that swiftly decays into anomie and melodrama, whereas La Notte, even at an hour and fifty-five minutes in length, is a highly focused, layered, and concentrated, adult drama about the ennui that occurs in a marriage of dilettantes....
Antonioni rules.
336) Lightning Over Water/DVD Review The more that I watch of the 1970s New German Cinema (Das Neue Kino) the more manifest it becomes that, despite the usual namedropping of Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Werner Herzog as a trio, it truly was only a one-man movement. Herzog is and was so far above and cinematically dominant over his two rivals that to speak of the lesser two in the same breath as Herzog is like mentioning the Gawain poet whilst going on about John Donne’s or William Shakespeare’s poetic skills....
Wim blows.
337) The Monolith Monsters/DVD Review Perhaps it is all because of Grant Williams. Williams was a B-film actor who was best known for his starring role in The Incredible Shrinking Man, a 1957 release that has been generally acknowledged as one of the most literate B sci-fi films of the 1950s. In watching the DVD of his other notable 1957 film, The Monolith Monsters, I was struck by how well written this other B sci-fi film was....
Gravity rules.
338) Le Petit Soldat/DVD Review Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) was the second film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, pioneer of the French New Wave of filmmaking, and after the unexpected success of his first film, Breathless- a banal, poorly acted, and dull attempt at (or satire of?) film noir, this second film was greeted with a swift banning in France- for its portrayal of the similar way Right- and Left-Wing terror groups behave....
Godard gets better.
339) Cries And Whispers/DVD Review Cries And Whispers, (Viskningar Och Rop) a 1972 film of Ingmar Bergman's, which was consistently and highly lauded around the world, upon its release, is not a great film, nor anywhere the masterpiece that it's claimed to be....
Shame, Ingmar, shame!
341) Colossus: The Forbin Project/DVD Review There was a time, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when science fiction films seemed to be emerging from their cult status, and into the mainstream as films that could express the deepest and highest aspirations of mankind in ways that mere literary sci-fi could not. There were a plethora of intelligent films in that era.....
Neglected classic.
340) Bread/Poem
342) Grand Illusion/DVD Review Jean Renoir’s 1937 black and white film, Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion), is often bandied about with Citizen Kane on the list of all time great films, but unlike that film, Grand Illusion was a commercial and critical sensation from its initial release. While both are arguably great films, neither is really within sniffing distance of any mythic top spot....
Classic, but not great.
343) The Mole People/DVD Review Sometimes bad films get reputations they thoroughly deserve, e.g., Plan 9 from Outer Space, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and Robot Monster. These films are so ineptly staged, directed, written, and acted that they are actually very funny, if not necessarily "good." Sometimes bad films get reputations they do not deserve — in the sense of being thought of as good or even great films. These films even lack the kitsch factor of the aforementioned examples....
Not as bad as can be.
344) Throne Of Blood/DVD Review Akira Kurosawa's black-and-white 1957 film Throne of Blood (Kumonosu j�- literally Spider-Web's Castle) is a very good film, but not quite up there with the best of his films, like Seven Samurai, Ikiru, nor The Bad Sleep Well, despite its vaunted adaptation from Shakespeare's Macbeth. That said, the hour and forty-nine minute long film, written by Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Ryuzo Kikushima, features one of the best performances by its star....
Akira kicks ass!
345) O. Henry/Book Review O. Henry is famed for his ‘twist’ endings, and as such, many of his short stories fall into a formula. That said, it’s a pretty good formula, and if more writers that are published could find themselves a formula that works as well it would be alot better world to read in....
Pretty good.
346) L'Eclisse/DVD Review Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (The Eclipse), his 1962 black and white capstone of his Alienation Trilogy that began with L’Avventura and continued with La Notte, is arguably a great film, but still a cut or two below its immediate predecessor, the indisputably brilliant La Notte, simply because it lacks the story and excellent portrayal of a human relationship that that earlier film has. It is, however, a superior film to L’Avventura, in that its sustains it sublime weirdness and disaffecting qualities throughout the film, whereas that first film in the trilogy petered out into a dull ending after an intriguing and mysterious premise....
Antonioni fractalizes.
347) The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser/DVD Review Werner Herzog is a nonpareil filmmaker. Yes, one might argue that a Stanley Kubrick or an Ingmar Bergman, a Federico Fellini or an Akira Kurosawa were greater directors of films, but all of them have a more fundamental connection to the central, if not conventional, core of the art of filmmaking. Herzog is farther off into his own cinematic dimension than any other director. If there can be such a thing as instinct into so rigorous an art as filmmaking, then Herzog is as close to a pure beast in that art as one can get....
Herzog's ecstasy.
348) At A Glance: Blondes/Jessica Schneider So I saw something recently on CNN that was addressing the tired question of whether or not blondes were dumber than people with darker hair colors. Even Paris Hilton made the point that every decade there is at least one blonde that the culture fusses over, and now she is that blonde. Just where does this stereotype stem? From Paris to Anna Nicole, to Pam Anderson, to Britney Spears, to Marilyn Monroe, all have exuded that ‘dumbness’ quality....
Paris Hilton?
349) Nights Of Cabiria/DVD Review Before Federico Fellini became the audacious and surrealistic film auteur of the 1960s he was a lauded and accomplished Italian Neorealistic film director of the 1950s, more in league with Vittorio De Sica and Lucchino Visconti. No film better represents this era of Fellini’s art than his sterling 1957 film Nights Of Cabiria (Le Notti Di Cabiria), written by Fellini, Tulio Pinelli, and Ennio Flaiano (with Pier Paolo Pasolini scripting the Roman street slang), and starring his wife Giulieta Masina....
Giulieta in fine form.
350) The M&C Interview 2: Daniel Dennett, 7/07
351) Fearless/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I’ve always believed that a great children’s tale is a great tale. When thinking of the great works in children’s literature, one might think Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, or E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web or Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass....
Or not?
352) War-Gods Of The Deep/DVD Review/Dan Schneider War-Gods of the Deep is one of those films whose title makes no sense, but is right in keeping with the whole tenor of the film itself. Made in 1965, this American International Pictures production the studio’s first non-Roger Corman release based on a Edgar Allan Poe’s story, and was a part of the Big Four of the horror/sci-fi genre of that era. The three other competitors in the field were the giant-monster films from Japan (Gojira / Godzilla, Mosura / Mothra, Gammera the Invincible, etc.), the stop-motion action-adventure-monster films of Ray Harryhausen, and the British Hammer Studios horror productions....
Silliness.
353) At A Glance: Birth Control/Jessica Schneider There aren’t a lot of discussions about this, and from what I gather, few men know much about the birth control pill and all the side effects that go along with it. To assume that any and every female can just ‘go on the pill’ as a reasonable form of contraception is untrue. Many women and their systems cannot handle it, and suffer terrible side effects from it. I was one of these people, and I thought I would share my experience....
No nos.
354) Crumb/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I recently came across a DVD version of Terry Zwigoff’s lauded documentary Crumb, and bought it because I recall how perversely fascinating I found it on a first go-round, when I saw it in the theaters with a pal of mine over a decade ago. However, upon rewatching the film, the first thing that stands out about it is how poorly it has held up as a filmic ‘portrait of an artist’....
Overrated.
355) Minnie And Moskowitz/DVD Review/Dan Schneider All choice entails risk, therefore John Cassavetes’s artistic choice to structure his films based mostly on improvisation rather than hard scripted dialogue is a decision that can result in great films, like Faces, ok films like Shadows, and bad films like Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), an awkwardly written and poorly acted comedy. Admittedly, the film offers a few brilliant moments that reveal Cassavetes at his filmmaking best, but it also shows far too much sloppy editing, amateurish overacting, and a really forced love story between two characters that have nothing in common and are not given any reason to bridge that gap....
Overrated deux.
356) The Stuff Of Thought/Book Review/Dan Schneider Take One: Steven Pinker is the premier purveyor of the parsed poesy of plain prose. No, that won’t do. No matter how accurate that statement is, its excessive alliteration is bound to sound too cutesy for such an engaging read as his latest foray into the way mankind thinks and speaks....
Pinker hits another four-bagger.
357) The Wrong Man/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Alfred Hitchcock was the consummate Hollywood director in that his films had high production values, big name stars, were immaculately composed and scored, usually by Bernard Herrmann, as in this film. Yet they also tended to lack heart, or real human emotion. They were all basically plot-driven vehicles that usually had twist endings, that stretched the bounds of the reasonable. In a way he was the M. Night Shyamalan of his day, except that he was a far superior filmmaker in every way. Every so often, however, he would try his hand at a different style of film, like Mr. And Mrs. Smith, Jamaica Inn, and Under Capricorn....
Hitch unleashed.
358) An Artist Of The Floating World/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Kazuo Ishiguro is a Master of the novel. No wait, I’ll go as far as to say he’s one of the best novelists ever to have written in the English language. I’ve just finished his 1986 published novel An Artist of the Floating World, and I have to say that it is one of the best books I’ve ever read about an artist. In so many ways, Ishiguro breaks all the rules....
Ishiguro rocks.
359) Love And Death/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s an odd thing to experience art fresh and then re-experience it with greater knowledge about it and its sources. As example, as a Woody Allen fan I’d watched his terrific 1975 satire Love And Death, filmed in Hungary and France, probably ten or twelve times, fully getting all the references to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s and Leo Tolstoy’s works, but I had never been in the position of viewing the film having knowledge of all the sly European cinema references; especially those which poke fun at Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s canon.....
Woody rolls.
360) Shame/Film Review/Dan Schneider I should no longer be surprised when critics miss the most obvious things in works of art, because they are human beings, and the vast majority of human beings are lazy by nature. That said, the simplistic notion that Ingmar Bergman’s great 1968 film Shame (or Skammen) is merely an anti-war film does a great deal of damage to the reputation of this very complex, and highly nuanced, film. Compared to its more filmically showoffy predecessors, Persona and Hour Of The Wolf, Shame is seemingly a more classic film, in terms of narrative....
Shamefully neglected.
361) Siddhartha/Book Review/Dan Schneider Siddhartha, a bildungsroman by Herman Hesse, first published in 1922, is simply one of the greatest books ever written. I say that not because I agree with its essential philosophy (which is problematic in some of its over-simplicity), a predisposition that far too often accounts for why critics recommend or do not recommend a work of art, but because it is the embodiment of one of the oldest maxims that defines great literature: saying the most in the least amount of words....
Classic.
362) Uncommon Arrangements/Book Review/Jessica Schneider In the postscript to her latest nonfiction book, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles (1910-1939), Katie Roiphe comments that "these hours lived, painful, messy, exhilarating, richly chaotic, are another kind of art." The belief in this very sentiment - that, amid the creativity of the artists' work, there lives the "art" of the everyday and, likewise, the artists' way of coping with it - is why books like this are written....
Marriage fails.
363) Uncommon Arrangements/Book Review/Jessica Schneider In the postscript of her latest non-fiction book, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles (1910-1939) Katie Roiphe comments on the ideas of these marriages having been, “These hours lived, painful, messy, exhilarating, richly chaotic, are another kind of art.” It is the belief in this very sentiment why books like Uncommon Arrangements are written. That, amid the creativity of the artists’ work, lives the ‘art’ of the everyday, and likewise, the artists’ way of coping with it....
Marriage fails. again.
364) Suite Française/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is difficult to review a work that one not only knows is unfinished, but also one that reads that way. Such has never been a stronger case than with Irene Nemirovsky’s ‘novel’ Suite Française. The book has been marketed as a novel when really it is two unfinished novellas....
So-so.
365) Amy Hempel/Career Hack/Dan Schneider Over the years I have encountered and criticized many sorts of bad writers, from hack poets like James Tate and Donald Hall, to greeting card doggerelist Maya Angelou, to literary necrophile Thomas Steinbeck, to the deliterate prose of writers like Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace, who cannot even construct competent nor compelling sentences, to prose hacks like T.C. Boyle, Richard Russo, and Joyce Carol Oates....
Ugh!
366) Night And Fog/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Let me get this out of the way. I am not an anti-Semite. And Night And Fog is not a good documentary, assuming it can even be called a documentary. I say this because the near universal praise for Alain Resnais’s 1955 black and white, and color, film is ill-founded. Most of it has to do with a) the seeming impolitic nature of criticizing anything that displays Nazi butchery, and b) the fact that the 31-minute long film was the first "real" attempt at categorizing the Nazi horrors of World War Two to the world at large....
Yawn.
367) Undertow/DVD Review/Dan Schneider When does the seep of an artist’s talent get to be too much? Is it the first time he ’sells out,’ the third time, or when all of the early potential has drained away? This was what I was thinking as I watched David Gordon Green’s third effort, Undertow, released in 2004. Oh, it’s not a bad film, but then again it’s nothing more than a stylized, updated version of Night of the Hunter, and that was a vastly overrated mediocrity of a film to begin with, directed by Charles Laughton in 1955, and starring Robert Mitchum as a murderous psychopath who stalks children who run away from him....
Yawn.
368) Contempt/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Of the films I’ve seen so far of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, his best is Le Mépris/Contempt (1963), adapted by Godard from Alberto Moravia’s novel Il Disprezzo (published in English as The Ghost at Noon). That statement should not be taken as an acknowledgement of greatness, for although this is his best film, it is not close to being a great film.....
Lang dominates.
369) Roma/DVDReview/Dan Schneider The 1972 film Roma, by Federico Fellini, lies somewhere between his 1968 film Satyricon and his 1973 film Amarcord, not only chronologically, but creatively (The Clowns, from 1970, is a minor work, by comparison).....
So-so.
370) A Tree Grows In Brooklyn/Book Review/Dan Schneider I only recently got around to reading Betty Smith’s 1943 memoir-cum-novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, mainly because it had a reputation as an Oprah Winfrey sort of book, meaning I thought it must be one of those tomes filled with good intentions but short on literary merit. After all, the first mention of it I can recall was a snide comment in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 1940s. Boy, do I love to be wrong about things like this. The novel is a total masterpiece....
Masterpiece.
371) Variety Lights/DVD Review/Dan Schneider If you have ever wondered why Federico Fellini's film Eight and a half was called Eight and a half, the reason is simple. It was the eighth full film he had directed, till that point, along with a half film credit, which was his debut effort, 1950's co-direction in the 97 minute long black and white film Variety Lights (Luci Del Varietà), along with Neo-Realist film directing veteran Alberto Lattuada....
So-so start.
372) The Maytrees/Book Review/Jessica Schneider When I first heard about Annie Dillard’s latest novel The Maytrees, I was inclined to read it because the reviews had spoken of Dillard’s nature bent in her work, as well as leaning to the likes of Thoreau and Emerson. Being that I have been a long time devoted reader of nature writing and nature literature, from Thoreau and Emerson to Loren Eiseley....
So-so.
373) At A Glance/Marie Antoinette/Jessica Schneider Last night I watched the film Marie Antoinette, directed by Sofia Coppola, and it was a really bad film. What irritates me though, is that this film, directed by a person who has only gotten where she is due to her lineage, now has convinced me that she really has no talent as a filmmaker. I’ve never seen The Virgin Suicides, and I’m one of the few who appreciated and defended her film Lost in Translation as being something that shows ‘potential’, even though the fact that she won the Oscar for the writing is ridiculous....
Pass the cake.
374) The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Werner Herzog is a nonpareil filmmaker. Yes, one might argue that a Stanley Kubrick or an Ingmar Bergman, a Federico Fellini or an Akira Kurosawa, were greater directors of films, but all of them have a more fundamental connection to the central- if not conventional, core of the art of filmmaking. Herzog is farther off into his own cinematic dimension than any other director. If there can be such a thing as instinct into so rigorous an art as filmmaking, then Herzog is as close to a pure beast in that art as one can get....
The man.
375) Camera Buff/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Krzystof Kieslowski directed one of the more interesting self-reflexive films in 1979, when he filmed Camera Buff (Amator, literally Amateur), his second feature film, which runs an hour and fifty-two minutes. It is the one which made him a known commodity in the film world....
Good try.
376) Flatland: The Film/DVD Review/Dan Schneider This year has seen the release of two films based upon Edwin Abbott Abbott’s great 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions. One calls itself Flatland: The Movie, and is a half hour-long animated educational film featuring the voices of Martin Sheen and Michael York....
So-so.
377) At A Glance: Bad Luck/Jessica Schneider I’m depressed. Why? For the past ten months I’ve been having literary foreplay with a literary agent who told me she thought I was a ‘terrific’ writer, had excellent credentials and that she loved my work. She loved it so much that throughout this time, we spoke twice on the phone, and I shared with her 3 of my manuscripts. It seemed like she was pretty focused on having me as a client....
Sucks.
378) Landscape In The Mist/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There is a superlative scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s 1988 film Landscape In The Mist (Τοπίο στην ομίχλη or Topio Stin Omichli) that is amongst the best filmic depictions of sexual abuse ever shown, and should be shown as a primer to Hollywood directors on how to be subtle and poetic, especially when dealing with such terminally PC topics....
Titanically good.
379) A Generation/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Sometimes films get reputations way out of proportion with their artistic merit simply because they expound a point of view with which the public and/or the critics agree. Such is the case with the first feature by Polish film legend Andrzej Wajda. Released in 1955, the 87-minute black-and-white Pokolenie / A Generation is not a particularly good film. No, it’s not a bad film, either, but it visually resembles a mediocre 1940s film noir admixed with a touch of Italian Neo-Realism through its blighted and impoverished landscapes. As for the film’s characters, they are unrealistic one-dimensional tools for the agitprop that is at the heart of A Generation....
Halt, young Commie!
380) A Certain Kind Of Death/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Where would contemporary documentaries be without the Michael Moore style of self-promotional agitprop, or without PBS’s Burns Brothers’ solemnly historical talking heads and recitations form of docudrama? Well, back to straightforward journalistic techniques, of the sort employed in the outstanding 70 minute long 2003 documentary from directors Grover Babcock and Blue Hadaegh, A Certain Kind Of Death....
Excellent doc.
381) Little Dieter Needs To Fly/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Little Dieter Needs to Fly is another in the remarkable body of Werner Herzog’s film work, one that is without peer. Having recently rewatched it on DVD, nearly a decade after its initial US release in 1997, it has lost none of its power. I could see its influence on documentaries as diverse as Herzog’s recent Grizzly Man....
Excellence.
382) Transcendental Style In Film/Book Review/Dan Schneider Filmmaker Paul Schrader, whose most cogent claim to fame is as the screenwriter for Martin Scorsese’s classic film Taxi Driver, got his first ‘in’ to the world of film with the publication of Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, a book which was lauded as a seminal work of criticism upon its 1972 release, but which the years have not been kind to....
Dullor exemplified.
383) A Decade Under The Influence/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In 2003 the Independent Film Channel produced a nearly three-hour long three-part documentary called A Decade Under The Influence (a nod to the 1974 John Cassavetes film A Woman Under The Influence), about American cinema during the 1970s. The general posit of the film, co-directed by Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese, is that the 1970s were a ‘tweener period between the collapse of the old Hollywood film studio system and the rise of the Lowest Common Denominator summer blockbuster mentality....
Critical fellatio on film reaches new lows.
384) Native Son/Book Review/Dan Schneider Richard Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son, violates two of the basic tenets of modern MFA dogma. The first is that it starts off very slowly, then builds up a powerful narrative steam (although not of the simplistic plot-driven variety), and the second is that it is a tale that overwhelmingly ‘tells’ what is happening, rather than ‘showing’....
Classic.
385) Heart Of Glass/DVD Review/Dan Schneider German filmmaker Werner Herzog is not an artist to be underestimated, even in his lesser films, like 1976's Heart Of Glass (Herz Aus Glaus) because his films tend to have a cumulative power, in that they get better with each successive viewing. Ok, technically, the films are the same, but because they are so dense, layered, and multifarious, an appreciation and understanding of them is almost inevitable with a second or third viewing- one of the benefits that foreign films, and films with DVD commentaries afford. The film in the Herzog canon this most reminds me of is his Even Dwarfs Started Small, another film that is so 'out there' it holds a fascination over the viewer, even if it fails to achieve greatness, or even coherence....
Herzog on high.
386) On The Road/Comments/Jessica Schneider I’ll admit that I’m not a big Kerouac fan. But today marks the 50th anniversary of his Classic On the Road, which was published today back in 1957. Of course that’s easy to figure–just do the math. The publisher, Viking, has released not only the 50th Anniversary of the novel, but also the ‘Original Scroll’ form. Kerouac supposedly wrote the novel on a scroll, where the book is more memoir than novel, since he uses the original character’s names. Dean Moriarty, his cross-country friend in On the Road, is really Neal Cassady, for example. I was recently in a Barnes & Noble and picked up the ‘Scroll Form’, and what you’ve got is no punctuation and no spacing–just one long excursion of text....
Deadly.
387) The Virgin Spring/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 film The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan) is, despite its winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1961, one of his lesser outings. Part of this is, no doubt, due to the fact that the bulk of the film was not written by Bergman, but by novelist Ulla Isaksson, who based her thin script upon a medieval ballad called Töre’s Daughter At Vänge....
Death.
388) The Knock At The Door/Book Review/Jessica Schneider For anyone who has ever wanted an introduction to the Armenian Genocide, reading Margaret Ajemian Ahnert’s memoir, The Knock at the Door, would be a good place to start. The book deals with Ahnert’s mother, Ester, and how at the ages of fifteen through nineteen, the Armenian girl has to endure starvation, beatings, and rape—yet manages to survive. This story, based on the stories that Ester relayed to Ahnert, talks about how the Armenians were forced out of their houses....
The ranking of death.
389) Lifeboat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Sometimes greatness can be achieved in a singular way, even if the totality of a work of art is not great. This came to me upon watching one of my dad's all time favorite films, and one which I have watched several dozen times in my life - Alfred Hitchcoc's 1944 black and white Lifeboat, which is also one of the three or four best films Hitchcock ever made, and did receive Academy Award nominations for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay....
Overlooked film.
390) Eternity And A Day/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1998 film by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, Eternity And A Day (Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera or Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα), is not merely another film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display....
Theo scores again.
391) Il Grido/DVD Review/Dan Schneider So much attention has been paid to Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s later New Wave films that his earlier Neo-Realist efforts has been overlooked, as if they represented the work of nothing more than a talented tyro. But even though Antonioni was not as consciously ‘experimental’ in those films as he was in those of the ‘L’Alienation’ trilogy....
A forerunner.
392) Into The Wild/Opinions/Jessica Schneider I am feeling a little agitated. Ok, so I found out that on September 21, 2007 the release of Into the Wild will be coming to theatres, and then opening nationwide in the U.S. on October 5th. What is this all about, you ask? His name is Chris McCandless, and—well let me just quote myself from my own blog to give you a bit of background....
Dumb ass?
393) Now Dig This/Book Review/Dan Schneider Let me state up front, one of the greatest films ever made, in any genre or form, and one of my all time personal favorites, is Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. Stanley Kubrick’s Camelot Era satire on mutually assured destruction and nuclear brinksmanship is not only one of the funniest films ever made, but one of the most important. Its brilliant screenplay was penned by Terry Southern, with some help from Kubrick, and for many years I had tried to find other writings by Southern, to little avail, as most of his work had long fallen out of print....
Horrid.
394) A Passion/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Ingmar Bergman’s 1969 drama En Passion / A Passion (in the U.S., mistitled as The Passion of Anna) is a great film — in fact, it may be the best of Bergman’s mid-to-late-1960s efforts dealing with human relationships and the Self — e.g., Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Shame....
Ingmar rocks.
395) Agitprop/Nazis/Jessica Schneider I just finished reading Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife that talks about a Polish couple who hides Jews in their Warsaw Zoo during the war. It’s non-fiction, and I’ll have a review up soon enough....
Yuck!
396) The Zookeeper's Wife/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I have to say that I was pleasantly pleased after having read Diane Ackerman’s latest non-fiction book, The Zookeeper’s Wife. This is my first time reading anything of hers, and I was also surprised to find that she has talent as a poet. I say ‘surprised’ because more often than not, those who claim to have written poetry really don’t succeed at it very much at all, but Ackerman, who has a nature bent to her work, possesses both literary quality and a good sense of historical and scientific background, which makes this book work. The story is about a Polish married couple named Jan and Antonia Zabinski who also run the zoo in Warsaw. Set during World War II, what we get is not just a war story of Jews hiding in the zoo from the Nazis, but also we are shown how the animals were affected during this period....
Good stuff.
397) The Weeping Meadow/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Of the three Theo Angelopoulos films that I have watched, currently available on American DVDs, all have been truly great films. 1988’s Landscape In The Mist is a terrific tale of two children on an unattainable quest; 1998’s Eternity And A Day is a great film dealing with the complexities of imminent death; but, having just watched his most recently completed film, 2004’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Trilogia I: To Livadi Pou Dakryzei), I can honestly say, "There’s great, and then there’s Great!"....
Masterpiece.
398) Suite Francaise/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is difficult to review a work that one not only knows is unfinished, but also one that reads that way. Such has never been a stronger case than with Irene Nemirovsky’s ‘novel’ Suite Française. The book has been marketed as a novel when really it is two unfinished novellas, and according to the appendix in the back of the book, Nemirovsky was intending to make the final book contain five parts but unfortunately she was sent to die in the Auschwitz death camp in 1942 before she was able to finish it. Her daughter, Denise Epstein, then kept the manuscript for 64 years, not really reading it and assuming the notebook was only scribblings of everyday observations. When she finally opened it, however, she found it was something of a narrative structure, albeit one that was in desperate need of revision and never got it....
Sweet?
399) US Guys/Book Review/Dan Schneider If there is one thing more depressing than bad writers, it is bad critics, who are clueless as to what constitutes bad writing. As example, how many blurbs for books have you read that basically state: ‘’I knew exactly where this story was going from page 7, and loved every banal minute of the book!- BIG NAME AUTHOR/WHORE’? Then there are the bad quotations of the bad writing, seemingly given as proof that the bad writing is really good writing....
Classic in the making.
400) Embers/Book Review/Dan Schneider Perhaps as critical as the production of great art and literature is the ability to recognize it, and then promote it. Over the years the massive weight of bad literature- poetry, and especially fiction (for it’s far easier to write prose than poetry)- gets more daunting with the tens of thousands of books released every year by writers whose transparent lack of talent makes one question the very motives of the editors, publishers, and critics, especially considering most of the bad writing is also manifestly incapable of being a bestseller due to its subject matter or style....
Great novel.
401) Turning The Wheel/Book Review/Dan Schneider Charles Johnson is a fictionist best known for his award winning novels like Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage, and Dreamer. He is one of the rare published writers and intellectuals willing to publicly state his displeasure with the current low state of American writing. Yet, despite his novels and short story collections, Johnson is also an essayist and Buddhist. In 2003 he published a small volume of Essays titled Turning The Wheel: Essays On Buddhism And Writing....
Rub the Buddha.
402) Schulz And Peanuts/Book Review/Dan Schneider I am really glad I decided to review Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. I had known a bit about Schulz in the past, in that he was somewhat a reclusive and quiet person, as well as melancholic. I had also wondered to what degree Charlie Brown played a part in being Schulz’s ‘alter ego’, and now after having read the book, I see how much a part his personal life made its way into his comic strips....
You blockhead!
403) Curse Of The Cat People/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Rare is it when a sequel outshines its original film. Rarer still is it when that sequel and the original are both considered B films. Films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or Aliens, have been posited as greater than the first films in those series, although there are good arguments back and forth, but they were both big budget A films....
Supernal.
404) Au Revoir, Les Enfants/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In 1987, Louis Malle, after a run of American produced films that worked (My Dinner With Andre, Atlantic City) and failed (Pretty Baby, Crackers), decided to return to his roots and write and produce a small budget French film, Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye, Children) about a supposedly true experience he had as a child, in Vichy France, toward the end of World War Two, at a privileged French boarding school....
So-so.
405) The War/Review/Dan Schneider In regards to art, greatness is not merely a difference of scale, but a difference of kind, in that the elements that constitute greatness force an almost alchemical change in the nature of the beast. The brushstroke, wordly coinage, motion of the camera, or whatever it is that constitutes the given art, becomes more than the brushstroke, wordly coinage, or motion of the camera....
So-so.
406) 20 Million Miles To Earth/DVD Review/Dan Schneider 20 Million Miles To Earth is visual effects wizard Ray Harryhausen’s 1957 black and white interplanetary King Kong remake, as well as a tribute to his stop motion photography mentor Willis O’Brien. No, it’s not a direct analogy, but there are so many scene for scene knockoffs from Kong that one must believe that only Harryhausen could have gotten away with so much theft (read that as ‘homage’) from his mentor without facing a lawsuit. Yes, technically, the film was directed by noted B-film maven Nathan Juran (The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad), but it’s a very standard film, wholly carried into the memory by Harryhausen’s skills....
Classic campfest.
407) Landscape In The Mist/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There is a superlative scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s 1988 film Landscape In The Mist (Τοπίο στην ομίχλη or Topio Stin Omichli) that is amongst the best filmic depictions of sexual abuse ever shown, and should be shown as a primer to Hollywood directors on how to be subtle and poetic, especially when dealing with such terminally PC topics. In it, the young ten or twelve year heroine of the film, Voula (Tania Palaiologou), who is on the run, in search of her nonexistent father (whom her never seen onscreen mother has told the children resides in Germany....
Theo rocks.
408) Doris Lessing/Short Stories/Dan Schneider One of the troubling aspects of contemporary literature is that people do not think for themselves. This is true on both ends of the spectrum, with writers, and especially readers. Like the American electorate, that constantly bitches about the poverty of good candidates to vote for, yet never steps outside the Democratic-Republican axis, contemporary readers are either part of the small subset of deliterate PC Elitists that delude themselves into feeling that we are living in a Golden Age of poetry and prose, or they are in the vast majority that knows that writing isn’t nearly what it used to be, but haven’t got a clue why....
Home run.
409) Fire In The Blood/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I was interested in reading the second American released fiction work by Irene Nemirovsky whose book Suite Française had achieved much popularity—mainly due to the author’s tragic death. She died in Auschwitz in 1942 just shy of turning 40. Now in this novella, called Fire In The Blood (also translated from the French by Sandra Smith) I have a bit better indication of where Nemirovsky stands as a writer....
Hmmm?
410) Japan's War In Colour/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Recently, the PBS network ran Ken Burns’ 15 hour magnum opus, The War, about America’s involvement in World War Two, and while it was a passable effort, detailing the war from our point of view, both militarily and on the home front, there was a great deal of room for improvement, stylistically, and in the effective use of music on the soundtrack....
Excellent.
411) Fitzcarraldo/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I first watched Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo back in the late 1980s, on PBS, and found it to be a great film. All these years later I still find it to be a great film, if not quite in a league with Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s other most famed filmic pairing, Aguirre: The Wrath Of God....
Herzog's forgotten classic.
412) The Saddest Music In The World/DVD Review Guy Maddin is a filmmaker I’ve heard a lot of. Not good, not bad, but weird. So, it is no surprise that his hundred minute long 2004 film The Saddest Music In The World is not good, not bad, but simply weird....
Interesting failure.
413) Into The Wild/Film Review How did the bus get there? Of all the questions (pseudo and real) that Sean Penn’s latest film, Into The Wild, is so manifestly trying to provoke- and in a semi-retarded hippy-cum-tree hugger sort of way, this most basic and elemental plot point is never addressed. But, more on that later....
Ugh!
414) Mr. Deeds Goes To Town/DVD Review There is a tendency among some to think that all the art produced by a great artist is great. This is false, but it gives cover for bad critics who just recycle old blurbs about said artist. Think of the fawning that goes on in discussions of Shakespeare. Yes, he was a great writer, though all but a dozen or so of his sonnets were mediocre tongue-twisters, and two-thirds of his thirty-seven known plays range from mediocre to terrible. In other words, by being uncritical one actually diminishes the great art that has been produced, for an uncritical stance makes it seem as if greatness is a quality alien to all but the blessed few. That sort of approach negates the hard work that all great endeavors require....
Capra triples.
415) Kafka On the Shore/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is the first time I’ve ever read a novel by Haruki Murakami. I’d read a collection of his short stories called After the Quake a while back and found them to be good. So I wanted to try one of his longer works. Overall, I have to say that this is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read. He delves into both the real and surreal, the dream and waking—that you are not sure which world you are in. Maybe both at once....
Good?
416) Eternity And A Day/DVD Review The 1998 film by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, Eternity And A Day (Mia Aioniotita Kai Mia Mera or Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα), is not merely another film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display. Yes, it’s true that, technically, neither are onscreen, but it is a superior film about a supposed poet wherein the art of poetry and the act of poesizing are never on display, for the film does capture the dead cliché of ‘a soul of a poet’ as well as just about any I’ve ever seen. It does it with imagery, and Angelopoulos’s patented long takes, but it does capture it, and exceedingly well. The film was not only directed by Angelopoulos, but he wrote the screenplay. That it won that year’s Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palm D’Or shows that, sometimes, quality still counts....
Theo strikes again!
417) Sonny Liston Was A Friend Of Mine/Book Review When reading the postmodern preenings of a Rick Moody or David Foster Wallace there is always a suspicion that behind the poses there might be a writer capable of an occasionally compelling sentence or metaphor, and that they simply choose imposture instead because of hubris or lack of self. With Thom Jones’ writing there is no such suspicion at all. He’s simply a bad writer....
Thom Jones cannot write.
418) Whole Grain/James Emanuel When thinking of overlooked contemporary books, I think of the novels of William Kennedy and Charles Johnson; but, on reflection, since they write prose and have won Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards, how neglected can they be? True, they don’t sell like Frank McCourt nor Dan Brown, nor get the praise lesser contemporaries John Updike and Toni Morrison do, but overlooked would have to be reserved for a poet, and a great one.....
Da Man.
419) Elizabeth: The Golden Age/Film Review To flee the brats of Halloween, my wife dragged me to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age, even though the reviews I’d seen of it made Halloween, and the need to get out of the house for a night, the only viable excuse to see the film. It is a sequel to a mediocre film from 1998: Elizabeth, which made a star of actress Cate Blanchett....
Ugh!
420) Mr. Sebastian And The Negro Magician/Book Review While I’ve not read Daniel Wallace’s second and third published novels, I have read his first, Big Fish, and now fourth, Mr. Sebastian And The Negro Magician. While both books are similarly good in quality, they are quite different in approaches, even if both subvert expected narrative strategies. However, the real question I have, after reading such a book is, why is Wallace not considered a top tier ‘name writer?’ Yes, one can argue that neither of his novels is unadulteratedly great, as both have some manifest flaws, but, compared to what is consistently published by houses that are clueless as to how to edit a book, his books should have a larger audience than they do. Whether this inattention is due to the failings of agents and editors, publishers and critics, or simply due to the backhanded bigotry that consigns writers into ghettoes- Wallace is in the ‘white Southern male writer of quirky tales’ genre, I cannot say with metaphysical verity, but something’s askew....
Proving he's no one hit wonder.
421) Stalker/DVD Review Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker (Сталкер) is not the great or masterful film its most ardent critical supporters proclaim it to be, nor is it the slow, boring Eurotrash that its most vocal critics counterclaim. It lies somewhere in between: a film that risks and occasionally fails, although it is far closer to greatness than trash....
Interesting.
422) The Mind Of The Market/Book Review Michael Shermer has a new book coming out in early 2008, titled The Mind Of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, And Other Tales From Evolutionary Economics. Shermer is perhaps the foremost skeptic in the land, and founded Skeptic magazine. He has written a number of excellent books in the past- Why Darwin Matters, Denying History, and Why People Believe Weird Things, to name a few. The Mind Of The Market is also a well-written book, but it is not in a league with the others, because of its biased thought and lack of critical thinking within....
Great style, eh on substance.
423) Young Stalin/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Because I was interested in learning some history behind Josef Stalin, I wanted to read Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Young Stalin. As the title reveals, the book deals with Stalin’s early years and how he eventually evolved into a megalomaniac. Although I think this book would make an excellent film, actually reading it reminded me more of an encyclopedic read than an actually engaging story....
Before the blood.
424) Major Dundee/DVD Review Sam Peckinpah’s 1965 Western Major Dundee is a near-great film that has a checkered history. The tale of its mangling by its studio, Columbia, which took it out of Peckinpah’s hands is as well known as the butchery that accompanied Erich von Stroheim’s Greed, and Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil. That said, Columbia’s restored 136-minute DVD version really shines....
Neglected classic.
425) Forever/Book Review Sometimes a skill that works well in one area, or art, is not as suited for another. That's my working thesis as to why Pete Hamill's 2003 novel Forever is not as good as some of his shorter fiction, such as the brilliant stories in his terrific collection Tokyo Sketches....
Coulda been.
426) The Rape Of Nanking/Book Review/Jessica Schneider The Rape of Nanking is a well-written account of what happened in Nanking in 1937 when the Japanese invaded and slaughtered 300,000 Chinese. Known for being “The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II,” this book goes into the detail not only of the Rape itself and what it entailed but also addresses the ways the Japanese tried to deny it ever happened and likewise cover it up....
Death.
427) Robot Monster/DVD Review Ok, a DVD review is not exactly what this is. Yes, I watched the 1953 legendary schlock B sci fi film Robot Monster on a DVD, but since it was on one of those cheapo 50 movie DVD packs, there were no extras whatsoever- ok, there was a chapter selection. Yippee! But, given the level of the ‘art’ the film attains, is there anything wrong with going virtually featureless?....
So bad it's....
428) The Weeping Meadow/DVD Review Of the three Theo Angelopoulos films that I have watched, currently available on American DVDs, all have been truly great films. 1988’s Landscape In The Mist is a terrific tale of two children on an unattainable quest; 1998’s Eternity And A Day is a great film dealing with the complexities of imminent death; but, having just watched his most recently completed film, 2004’s Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Trilogia I: To Livadi Pou Dakryzei), I can honestly say, ‘There’s great, and then there’s Great!’ As excellent as the first two films are, this film is superior in almost all ways- from the camera movements and screen compositions, to the acting and character development, to the most basic elements of the picaresque story. Fortunately, many European critics agreed, and it won the 2004 European Film Academy Critics Award....
Theo does it again.
429) On Chesil Beach/Book Review/Jessica Schneider On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan is an OK book, but nothing more than that. It’s not bad, and nor is it really good either. It’s actually one of those books that after having finished it, upon reflection, I do not think it’s as good as I first thought. I actually do not understand the public’s obsession with McEwan. Critics seem to praise him to no end, talking about how immensely talented he is. Is he a bad writer? No. Is he a great writer? Still no....
Hmmm....
430) Intervista/DVD Review Old men tend to make art that is shallow, imitative of their earlier, better works, and which would never garner an ounce of praise were it not for their backlog of greater works somehow letting their patina still rub off....
Dreck.
431) The White Diamond/DVD Review Lessons Of Darkness, Fata Morgana, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, My Best Fiend, Grizzly Man... These are just a few of the documentary type films that Werner Herzog has unspooled at the public, over the decades. They are unlike typical documentaries seen on PBS or the BBC, in that they are never really about the putative thing itself. His ninety minute long 2004 documentary, The White Diamond, follows in these footsteps, although it's not as visually stunning as Fata Morgana nor Lessons Of Darkness, nor is it as bizarrely fascinating as My Best Fiend nor Grizzly Man, and it certainly does not reach the ethereal the way that Little Dieter Needs To Fly does. Yet, it has something that makes it fascinating to watch, for one feels that to turn away would be to miss something unseen before....
Floating away?
432) In The Shadow Of Man/Book Review Jane Goodall is of course known for her observational work with chimpanzees. In the Shadow of Man is a highly interesting read for anyone who has ever wanted to know more about her work, and the nature of chimpanzees in general. While humans seem to take for granted the intelligence of the chimpanzee—our closest relative whose brain resembles ours more than the gorilla—this book will give you a new appreciation for the species as well as the individual chimps themselves....
Hmmm....?
433) An Artist Of The Floating World/Book Review Kazuo Ishiguro's 1986 novel, An Artist Of The Floating World, which won that year's Whitbread Prize, may be a great novel, but it just misses out on that elite company. Of course, the fact one can make arguments pro and con means the book is worlds above the tripe one would read were the author's surname Oates, Boyle, or Eggers. The reason for the miss, in my mind, is that the novel never fully sores - it never takes that Keatsian leap into the subconscious, to wrench the reader into an experience he or she can get nowhere else....
Good stuff.
434) Santa Claus Conquers The Martians/DVD Review When is sweetness that thing that rescues the tart from bitterness, and when is it the thing that makes the already sweet sweeten to vomitus? I pondered this whilst rewatching the 1964 color film ‘classic’ Santa Claus Conquers The Martians....
So bad it's good?
435) Gates Of Eden/Book Review There are many ways that bad writing makes its way into print. I’ve detailed too many of them over the years, but, what the hell — let’s have another go at it....
Oy!
436) A Walk For Sunshine/Book Review/Jessica Schneider 2,160 miles in 147 days. Could you hike such a distance? In Jeff Alt’s A Walk for Sunshine he describes his adventure hiking the Appalachian Trail from March 1, 1998 to July 25th....
John Denver stuff?
437) Woyzeck/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the signs of a great artist is that even when not at the top of his game said artist is still capable of flashes of utter brilliance. Such is the case in Werner Herzog’s 1979 film Woyzeck, starring his friend and bane Klaus Kinski in the third of five films made by the director-actor team....
Kinski, again.
438) The Golden Notebook/Book Review/Jessica Schneider There is an old joke among writers, poets mainly, about how one of the worst types of poems is that which involves a speaker talking about sitting in a café writing a poem about writing a poem. The Golden Notebook is essentially the novel equivalent of that—only this is about a writer trying to write a novel....
Too long?
439) Ringers & Rascals/Book Review/Dan Schneider In the plethora of books that see print in any given year there are only a handful that will ever make any impact in the world. A good 99.9% will be, ultimately, wastes of time and effort. However, other than those few books that have any literary, historic, cultural, or scientific value, there are simply books that entertain — however briefly — as well as those books that are just plain interesting. Eclipse Press’s 2004 book, Ringers & Rascals, by David Ashforth, is one of those books that belong in the final category....
Interesting stuff.
440) Taro And Tomi/Book Review/Jessica Schneider For anyone out there who is a cat lover, I’d like to recommend this short yet delightful story about a woman adopting her 2 cats and her experiences with them. From demanding attention, to plopping on desks while work needs to be done, to being warm and affectionate to then turning cold and distant, the story begins with her adoption of her male cat Taro. From fleas, to getting him settled into her apartment, to his unconditional love, this book briefly chronicles the development of the human-cat relationship....
Kitties.
441) Network/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Film director Sidney Lumet is, with the possible exception of Robert Wise, the most underrated director in Hollywood history. When one looks at the list of great films in Lumet’s career: 12 Angry Men, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, and a handful of others, one marvels, not only at what he accomplished, but that he’s spent a quarter-century having churned out nothing but mediocrity since 1982’s The Verdict....
Prescience defined.
442) Lacombe, Lucien/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Every so often a director makes an inspiring casting choice to not hire a real actor for a role, but go with an unknown, an amateur. Perhaps the best example of this was in Vittorio De Sica's 1952 film Umberto D., wherein he cast Carlo Battisti, a retired college professor from the University of Florence, as the lead character. Yet, not that far behind has to be Louis Malle's decision to cast the lead character for his 1974 film, Lacombe, Lucien with an amateur named Pierre Blaise. No actor would likely be able to capture the natural ferality that Blaise brings to the role of a none-too-bright French farm boy who unwittingly, at first, becomes an accomplice and collaborator with the Gestapo in the final months of Vichy France, in late 1944....
Better than thought of.
443) Anton Chekhov’s Ward No. 6 And Other Stories/Book Review/Dan Schneider I’d long heard that Russian writer Anton Chekhov had written short stories, but like most people it was on the strength of his plays, those intense little mood pieces, that I knew him best. Granted, I thought the plays uniformly strong, and considered him of a stature near that of a Tennessee Williams or George Bernard Shaw....
Masterful.
444) The Red Desert/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Michelangelo Antonioni is often referred to as a director whose work is not for all tastes. Well, what artist is? What the utterer of such sentiments usually means is that they do not ‘like’ his films, because they are not filled with insipid action, worse dialogue, lack of character development, etc....
Antonioni in top form.
445) Revolutionary Road/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I first became acquainted with Richard Yates after having read his Collected Short Stories, which was very good. Following up, I finally had a chance to read his most famous novel Revolutionary Road, which was also nominated for the National Book Award in 1961 and lost to Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer. And just as proof that prizes don’t matter in the long term, I say so what? While I can’t claim to have read The Moviegoer, Revolutionary Road is an excellent and realistic read about 1950s suburban America and the people who hate to live in it....
Good stuff.
446) The Magic Flute/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film/tv version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (Trollflöjten) is a serviceable film, and nothing that really takes advantage of either of its media- opera and film, to its fullest; although it begs the question as to why it was ever made? It is basically a filmed version of the play (although the singing was recorded beforehand and looped in to the film, thus allowing the actors to emote without worrying of their singing)- replete with shots of a gawking audience, but very little new is added to the tale. Yes, it’s sung in Swedish....
Ingmar on remote control.
447) Fata Morgana/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Fata Morgana, the 1971 documentary-like film by German filmmaker extraordinaire Werner Herzog, filmed over several years in the late 1960s, is one of those rare DVDs that should be listened to with the commentary turned on. It is a visual feast of North African (mostly Saharan) imagery that is timeless. You simply could not tell that it was made over thirty-five years ago....
Mesmeric.
448) The Mascot/Book Review/Jessica Schneider A Jewish Nazi? Just reading the title with those two incompatible words, and one can see why this book has been published and pushed. If you think you’ve heard all the stories involving World War II, well clearly you haven’t....
Hmmm?
449) The Fallen Idol/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1948 drama The Fallen Idol is the third film that I’ve seen by British filmmaker Carol Reed. I’d previously watched the dreadful Oscar-winning musical Oliver! (1968), the stolid Charlton Heston biopic of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and now this. True, I’ve also seen The Third Man, the 1949 thriller attributed to Reed, though I’ve always hedged upon taking the stance that it was Reed’s film alone and not an Orson Welles film merely bearded by Reed....
Carol Reed- genius?
450) Planet Of The Apes/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Whilst searching Amazon a while back, I happened to come across a copy of Planet Of The Apes: The Ultimate DVD Collection which was significantly cheaper than the other editions sellers had listed, yet was listed in excellent condition. I could not resist the urge, so splurged for this massive thirteen disk collection that includes the five original films, the 2001 remake by filmmaker Tim Burton, the 1974 CBS television series, and the 1975 NBC Saturday morning television cartoon. For a fan of all of the named, as well the great original dystopian novel, La Planète Des Singes, by Pierre Boulle (who also penned The Bridge On The River Kwai), it was a no brainer....
A classic revisited.
451) Viridiana/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The criticism of intent is a killer on bad films that have no real depth and do not last a few years beyond their intent’s purpose. Such was re-emphasized to me during a viewing of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s vastly overrated black and white 1961 "shock classic" Viridiana....
Not good.
452) Betty Smith/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Although a hundred years has not passed since Betty Smith’s death in January of 1972, as of yet she seems to have been right in her assessment. With more than 35 years since her death, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has elevated into the rankings as one of the greatest classics of all time. And this is the first published biography ever written about Smith, which I have the pleasure of reviewing....
A classic on a classic?
453) Interview/Valerie Raleigh Yow/Jessica Schneider Interviewing Betty Smith's biographer.
Tell me....
454) God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is hard not to enjoy Vonnegut. Although Slaughterhouse Five still remains my favorite book of his, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is a quick and entertaining read that cleverly pokes fun at capitalism and greed while being fun all the way through. Eliot Rosewater is a fat slob. His family has recently inherited a large sum of money ($87,472,033.61 to be exact)....
Vonnegut's classic.
455) Red River/DVD Review/Dan Schneider A great genre film is not necessarily a great piece of cinema, for the dictates of genre often run counter to the dictates of art; namely that genre demands familiar elements (aka clichés). As good an example of this dictum that can be found is director Howard Hawks’ 1948 (although filmed in 1946) black and white western Red River....
Wayne not plain?
456) I Am Curious/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Time is the great leveler of all things, but most especially so in the arts. This Ozymandian verity applies to the great and the petty. There are works of art and artists that go ignored in their own time, because they are ahead of the field- think Gerard Manley Hopkins, Franz Kafka, or Emily Dickinson, to name the obvious, and then there are works of art and artists that have great immediate success, but are forgotten by time....
Porno or art, or something else?
457) Ulysses' Gaze/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos‘ 1995 effort To Vlemma tou Odyssea / Ulysses’ Gaze is the first of that director’s four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Although there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, the film’s 173-minute running time is much too long, especially considering that Ulysses’ Gaze is the least poetic of those four films. (For the record, the others are Landscape in the Mist, Eternity and a D ay, and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow.)....
Almost great.
458) Kagemusha/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Watching Akira Kurosawa's three-hour-long epic color film (his third) from 1980, Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior) reminded me of the historical plays of William Shakespeare. While more famed for adapting the dramas of Shakespeare (Ran from King Lear, The Bad Sleep Well from Hamlet, The Hidden Fortress from Macbeth), Kurosawa's long film reminds me more of the detailed histories, where a single character is less important than the whole milieu (as well as being a more epic version of the old The Prince And The Pauper fable). And he succeeds very well at it. While the overall film is a bit too slow paced to be considered great, there is no doubt that it is an intricate work that abounds with astonishing color imagery, and is suffused in details that the screenplay by Kurosawa and Masato Ide slip in very subtly....
Almost great, Part 2: The Revenge Of Akira!
459) Day For Night/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Perhaps it has to do with his name, Truffaut. It sounds so much like truffles that it's hard to imagine anything of real intellectual heft emanating from him. Yes, in his films he shows considerably more technical skill, overall, than his great rival, Jean-Luc Godard; but even when Godard woefully misfires, as in some of his early films, he's at least striving for something....
Yawn.
460) Snow/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is my first time reading a novel by Orhan Pamuk and given his large reputation, my expectations were high. Reading it, however, left me cold—and that’s not meant to be a pun off the title. It really did. Although the work is itself very “ambitious” for its political agenda, ultimately the narrative is plodding and disjointed with no real purpose for either....
Yawn II?
461) An Inconvenient Truth/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Let me state, up front, I have never been a fan of former Vice President Al Gore. He was a right of center Democrat who worked in an administration whose environmental record was considered, by most ecological groups, worse than the two Republican administrations that preceded his, and held that office at a time when the earliest stages of global warming, which he now decries, were first becoming known....
Yawn.
462) Paws And Effect/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I admit that I am a dog liker but a cat lover. Still, despite my like for dogs I was interested in reading Paws & Effect because as an animal lover, I have always been curious in knowing more regarding their “healing power”. It has been observed that dogs have an uncanny ability to not only sense physical danger (as in natural disasters) before it happens, but also an ability to detect cancers and illness in people....
Warm things rock.
463) The Reserve/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This being my first time reading Russell Banks, I had high hopes. Yet after reading his latest novel, The Reserve, coupled with the many negative reviews it has gotten, my hopes have been a bit deflated, yet not totally. It turns out that while The Reserve is not a great book, it’s not as bad as some of what the reviewers said....
So-so.
464) Ulysses' Gaze/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos‘ 1995 effort To Vlemma tou Odyssea / Ulysses’ Gaze is the first of that director’s four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Although there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, the film’s 173-minute running time is much too long, especially considering that Ulysses’ Gaze is the least poetic of those four films. (For the record, the others are Landscape in the Mist, Eternity and a D ay, and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow.)....
Just shy.
465) Desperate Passage/Book Review/Jessica Schneider The Donner Party. When I first learned about them I recall my history teacher telling me about a comic strip involving two pieces of bread with a leg sticking out of it. Yet we all remember learning about this in history class, about how these families became trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for months, having to live off the flesh from those who died. It is the ultimate survival tale, and also one that could have been avoided had certain egos not gotten in the way....
Shit happens.
466) The Quiet Earth/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1985 sci-fi film from New Zealand, The Quiet Earth, is one of the best of the 'Last Man/Woman On Earth' apocalyptic films. That said, since that is a sub-subgenre of film (subgenre being Apocalyptic films in the genre sci-fi), it's merely a good film overall, for it progressively gets weaker as it goes on, as do all films in that vein. Like most films in this sub-subgenre, it falls prey to tropes that undermine it- the first being the predictability of sexual or racial conflict (two for two), and the second being following the Dumbest Possible Action, wherein characters do really dumb things no one would do in real life, just so the film can move along....
Ok stuff from the Kiwis.
467) The Prisoner/Poem/Dan Schneider
468) Jason And The Argonauts/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen is perhaps the only technical person in the history of the film business to be treated as the primum mobile behind the films he worked on. In effect, to use the European cinema parlance- he was the “auteur” of his films; the directors were utterly interchangeable. In fact, the only constant through many of his classics was producer Charles Schneer....
Good stuff.
469) Chinese Coffee/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Watching the 2000 film Chinese Coffee, starring and directed by Al Pacino, I smiled because yet again a film proved to me the utter primacy of the written word over the moving image, even in an art form that would not exist without pictures....
Pretty good java.
470) Against The Machine/Book Review/Dan Schneider Sometimes the mere knowledge that one is not alone in the cosmos is enough to suffice one’s view. But if that ‘other’ not only exists, but elucidates their own similar and cogent viewpoints well, it is cause for celebration. Such was my feeling when I finished Lee Siegel’s latest book, Against The Machine: Being Human In The Age Of The Electronic Mob....
The rapier strikes!
471) Of Time And The River/Book Review/Dan Schneider The things people have told me about Thomas Wolfe. Descriptive. Long. Boring. Plodding. Misogynist. Etcetera. Ok so yes, Of Time in the River isn’t exactly a short book since the version I have finishes at 866 pages with small print and it took me a little over a week to read. But am I glad I did....
Swing low?
472) Fidel Castro/Book Review/Jessica Schneider There are many different ways one could approach when reviewing this book. On one hand, it’s an excellent source when thinking of Fidel Castro. Not so much because of historical and objective accuracy, but one of Castro’s character. On the other hand, could one claim this a pleasant read? Unless you are just a die-hard Fidel fanatic, I think most readers would find this boring....
Hohum.
473) Park City/Book Review/Dan Schneider Reading Ann Beattie is an odd experience. She's not a good writer, but not a bad writer either. She's that most forgettable of all writers: barely competent, dull, and uninspired. She is perhaps the best living practitioner of the classic New Yorker formula tale about upper crust New Yorkers who vacation in New England and worry of their fading sexuality, or sip champagne with brie at chichi art galleries and museums, bemoaning the encroachment of barbarianism or philistinism in one form or another- for the better or the ill....
Ugh.
474) Tabloid Dreams/Book Review/Dan Schneider After winning a Pulitzer Prize for his 1992 short story collection of Vietnam-based stories, A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler followed it up with a collection of a dozen tales, Tabloid Dreams, based upon the sort of headlines ripped from the tabloid weekly newspapers one finds on checkout lines....
Eh.
475) The Lucifer Effect/Book Review/Dan Schneider Everyone has their biases, but the thing that distinguishes a real intellectual from a phony is recognizing the bias and moving on. This thought struck me as I read social psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s 2007 book, The Lucifer Effect. Immediately I thought of the book The Lucifer Principle, by Howard Bloom, a man I’d interviewed a few years ago....
Good ideas.
476) Sansho The Bailiff/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the nostra about Japanese film director Kenji Mizoguchi is that he is ‘the most Japanese of all filmmakers.’ Another is that, compared to his two titanic contemporaries, Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, Mizoguchi was the hardest to pin down in a style or genre. Having just watched Sanshô Dayû / Sansho the Bailiff (1954) I can agree with both of the above sentiments....
Brilliance.
477) Portnoy's Complaint/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is an odd book. Yet, highly entertaining is it as long as excessive sexual details don’t deter you. Honestly, this book was better than I thought it would be—it’s quite funny actually, and I found myself laughing out loud. Here’s the thing: I had read Philip Roth in the past, two novellas of his, and found them to be rather humorless and silly. Portnoy’s Complaint, however, is rather silly and full of humor. So that’s not so bad....
Ok.
478) US Guys/Book Review/Dan Schneider If there is one thing more depressing than bad writers, it is bad critics, who are clueless as to what constitutes bad writing. As example, how many blurbs for books have you read that basically state: ‘’I knew exactly where this story was going from page 7, and loved every banal minute of the book!....
Cool.
479) A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints/DVD Review/Dan Schneider If one has never directed a film before one should not, I repeat (with even greater emphasis), should NEVER direct an adaptation of one's work. This is because one will have enough problems trying to learn the new medium that those problems borne out of adaptation will only bog one down, especially if the work adapted, itself, has problems. That said, let me introduce you to Dito Montiel, director of the 98-minute-long 2006 independent film, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, adapted from his similarly-titled nonfiction work. Some have labeled the book a memoir, but if the film is anything like the book, it is a hagiography, not a memoir, which would be appropriate, given its title....
Yawn.
480) Dr. King's Refrigerator/Book Review/Dan Schneider In his long career, American novelist Charles Johnson has published three collections of short stories. His first, The Sorceror's Apprentice, in 1977, was the best. Soulcatcher And Other Stories, in 1998, was solid, if unspectacular, while this third collection, released by Scribner's in 2005, is by far the weakest....
Chuck's done better.
481) The Race Card/Book Review/Dan Schneider In reading Richard Thompson Ford's The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, I was put in mind of one of William Shakespeare's most quoted bon mots. To paraphrase: Kill all the social psychologists!....
Incisive insights.
482) Russian Ark/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Russian Ark (Russkiy Kovcheg) is one of those films more notable for the technical expertise it exhibits (or preens of) than any real artistic merit. It reminds one of Mike Figgis’s 2000 film Timecode, wherein that whole film was supposedly done in four separate single takes in real time. That claim was debunked by a simple watching of the film, and the film itself was notable for being a screenplay disaster. The four stories, which occupied one fourth of the whole screen the whole time, had volume turned up on one section while the others were put in the background, and then switched, which made it difficult for the viewer to even stick with whatever tale he preferred.....
Yawn....
483) Breakfast Of Champions/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Why ruin a Vonnegut review with a plot summary? Could I possibly? For those who are wondering, Vonnegut is definitely an acquired taste. [“The use of the identical expression as the title for this book is not intended to indicate an association with or sponsorship by General Mills, nor is it intended to disparage their fine products”]. A taste that happens to soothe my buds just fine....
Funny stuff.
484) Salo/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Why is it that bad artists always try to justify their garbage by claiming to be experimental, political, or any other label that does not pertain to the quality of the artwork itself? Well, it’s simple — they cannot justify it in any other way. Naturally, when the film or novel or painting has been banned in many places, it only allows the puerile artist to stroke himself more. But since that’s the only reason such art exists — witness all the art made from or with bodily excretions and/or simply used to evoke outrage by lowest common-denominator means — the base reaction sought is easily achieved. Of course, astute art lovers and critics easily see through such crap, while a few dilettantes do not. Yet, the latter are the ones who seem to always be quoted....
Yawn.
485) Tin Lizard Tales/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Upon reading this book, there are several ways in which it could be classified. On one hand, it is definitely travel writing, and yet it is also a compiled memoir broken down into separate essays—which discuss not only Wallace’s actual month long trip but a history of all the places he and his wife visited, the food that they ate, the people they encountered. So in other words, it is a little bit of everything....
Scaly stuff.
486) Knockemstiff/Book Review/Dan Schneider One of the most reliable tipoffs to the fact of a writer’s not being of high quality is when he is overpraised, and overpraised in a way that stresses nothing of a literary nature, usually by a published writer who lacks any skills of his own. Such was reinforced to me upon reading the new collection of short stories by first time writer Donald Ray Pollock, Knockemstiff....
Horror and horrid.
487) Irene Nemirovsky/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Generally I find it a good rule of thumb that if one is searching for book reviews regarding a literary “classic” writer or even a “rediscovered classic” writer like Irene Nemirovsky, one can pretty much forget finding any reasonable criticism. Why? Because people have it so ingrained into their heads that if a writer lived a long time ago and has maintained his or her name in print, then the public just assumes that writer is great....
So-so.
488) Dubliners/Book Review/Dan Schneider Many years ago I got into an argument with a drunken professor over James Joyce. My contention was that no scholars had ever looked into the role that Joyce’s syphilis had in the breakdown of his narrative abilities. Most have taken for granted that all of the dashing of Joyce’s style from Dubliners, his first published fiction, through Finnegans Wake, his last, was by choice. I disagreed....
Great.
489) The Beast Of Yucca Flats/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I watched the legendary The Beast Of Yucca Flats for the first time ever on one of those cheapo 50 movie pack DVDs, so there were no extras, save for chapter selection. Given my years of childhood staying awakings throughout the 1970s, and watching every film, it seemed, in the catalogs of such legendary shows as Chiller Theater and Creature Feature, how I missed this is beyond me; especially given that its lead star is the truly legendary Tor Johnson, of Plan 9 From Outer Space infamy....
Not great.
490) The Secret Of Roan Inish/DVD Review/Dan Schneider If John Sayles, the independent American filmmaker, is not the greatest director in the history of the medium, he certainly has to be considered among the most daring and diverse filmmakers ever. From tales set in America’s past (Matewan), to yuppy dramadies (The Return Of The Secaucus Seven), to urban social satires (The Brother From Another Planet), to more modern looks at American life (Sunshine State, Lone Star, Casa De Los Babys), Sayles has shown a desire to explore things no other filmmaker has....
Good stuff.
491) The Philosopher At The End Of The Universe/Book Review/Dan Schneider Most books on philosophy are a bore because a) unlike art, which is ideas in motion, philosophy is merely ideas (no matter how wonderful or complex they may be), and b) most philosophers (who claim that title in primacy) are simply bad writers — the two most notable exceptions to that rule being Plato and Friedrich Nietszche....
Makin' the medicine go down easy.
492) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is always frustrating to begin a book that has some potential but ultimately just doesn’t deliver. Such is the case with Mark Haddon’s debut novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It is not so much that this is a bad book, just one that could have been so much better than what it was.....
So-so.
493) Autumn Sonata/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Ingmar Bergman’s almost fated 1978 filmic teaming with Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten), is amongst the very best of the films in his canon. It is also the most emotionally intense of the series of Strindbergian or Chekhovian chamber dramas he has filmed over the years, which includes his Spider Trilogy (Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) and such other films as Cries And Whispers....
Classic.
494) The Naked Ape/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Every human on the planet should at one time take a look at the human species from a detached point of view: consider them from the mind of some alien species and then question if you think we’re a bit odd, predictable, or whatever descriptive word you want to use. Desmond Morris’ 1967 classic The Naked Ape does just that. No, he is not pretending to be some alien species, but he is analyzing the human as an animal, from the view of a zoologist, rather than the more common means of a psychologist or sociologist....
Revisiting a classic.
495) Mad, Bad, And Sad/Book Review/Jessica Schneider The catchy title of Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors says it all. With actual text finishing just under 500 pages and an extensive list of source notes, Appignanesi has provided readers quite the thorough read. From the history of psychiatry and early mental health institutions, to both the artistic and non-artistic woman, she discusses many cases of individuals who, either due to their madness, badness, or sadness, have been a little emotionally off course - causing them to sometimes commit crimes, or just perpetuate their own cycle of madness, badness and sadness with more self-loathing and/or self-inflicted injury, emotional or otherwise....
Yawn.
496) The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian/Film Review/Dan Schneider One of the major problems with all film series is what might be called middle filmitis. This is when films that are not first in a series rely too heavily upon an audience's memories of earlier films to inform them of the traits of characters, the chronology of prior events, and a general knowledge of the world the film series is set in....
Oy!
497) Not My Turn To Die/Book Review/Jessica Schneider When I think back to the early 1990s, I was in high school and worried about boys and where I should apply to college. Being a teenager, I, like so many other teens, would melodramatically label our lives as "hellish" since we were going through that typical adolescent rebellion and complaining about too much homework. Add to that the acne and one can see what a "nightmare" it all was....
Death.
498) Ellen Gilchrist/Collected Stories/Dan Schneider Having read Thom Jones' Sonny Liston Was A Friend Of Mine and overdosing on its phallic ejaculations I turned to the Collected Stories of Ellen Gilchrist for a change. In a sense I went a hundred and eighty degrees. These tales are dripping with femininity, but I also went a full three hundred and sixty degrees, in that Gilchrist's tales are as bad in their own clitoral way as Jones' are masculinely....
Yawn.
499) Cobra Verde/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Twenty years ago saw the release of the final Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski collaboration, Cobra Verde. It is a good film, but not nearly on par with such classics as Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, Nosferatu, Phantom Of The Night, nor Fitzcarraldo, and it is a film even Herzog has expressed dissatisfaction with. The film was written by Herzog, who adapted it from a novel by Bruce Chatwin, The Viceroy Of Ouidah; but it’s probably the least affecting screenplay of the major Herzog-Kinski films, as well as the film the two made together that has the least for Kinski to do- i.e- strut his stuff and dominate whole scenes....
Good one.
500) Surprised By Joy/Book Review/Dan Schneider For those interested delving past the Narnia world, I invite you to read C.S. Lewis’ “spiritual autobiography,” Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, where the author discusses the Christianity of his early youth, his later denouncing of such (leading him to atheism), and then to his eventual full circle back to Christianity. All the while, Lewis is discussing his search for joy and what that really means....
Yea!
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