I Liked III

Magnifique, Le
(Philippe de Broca, 1973)

I Liked II

Titicut Follies
(Frederick Wiseman, 1967)

Chicago, Peanut Butter & Jelly, and Documentaries

MY TRIP TO CHICAGO
AND (IN THE SUBTEXT)
HOW IT CHANGED ME

For some of us accessibility is a serious obstacle. All considering on what exactly you're looking for, accessibility can always be an issue, but, for some people, it's that much more of a daunting task when attempting to see a particular movie. I live in Northwest Indiana, in a town called Valparaiso. I'm just about the poorest, sickest, and happiest person I know. On top of my poverty, I'm also jobless and without car - this is both a reflection and a cause of my aforementioned happy-poverty. All I mean to say is this: I'm in a small town with little cultural advantage, and I have no money to sustain a Netflix account or an obsessive DVD-purchasing habit. So, for me, accessibility is one of those obstacles which forever haunts me in my path towards filmic enlightenment.

Last week I had the privilege of receiving a vision: the city. Valparaiso is about an hour and a half from Chicago and taking the pilgrimage isn't exactly rare. However, what is rare, at least for myself, is spending anymore than a night in the city. As I have quite a number of friends living in the city, the opportunity is actually quite open to myself. Last week, the morning after the Perseid meteor shower, I finally took that opportunity. I stayed with my art studenty, furry friend Robbie D. in his sort of dirty, but very welcoming Logan Square apartment. The first night I was in we took a very long and aimless walk full of philosophically tangential conversation dotted with moments of ghostly inwardness. I knew that this trip was important, something big.

I was having just about the closest thing to a spiritual experience an atheist can have. I was in a new land, with a good person, and predisposed to a great deal of introspection. But, for some reason, everything just kept coming back to film - as if my states of contemplation all began with a title card and ended with rolling credits. As Robbie is a film enthusiast himself, we decided it would be appropriate if we spent a considerable amount of time watching movies together. Well, nothing was playing at the Gene Siskel, or the Music Box, or, really, anywhere for that matter. So, Robbie brought me to the John M. Flaxman Library at the Art Institute. This is where my envy, free in my excitement, began to claw at my insides; not until I began to flip through the video catalog did the monster bend my ribcage and tear itself from my flesh.

I knew then, in absolute certainty, that I needed to be somewhere that actually served to cultivate my enthusiasm. Netflix and other extra-medial services will always be dear and near to my heart, my head, and my cock, but the welcomeness and open exchanging quality of the art and cultures within the city is penetratingly intoxicating. There were so many things that I wanted to see, needed to see - and, it was all there, right in front of me. It all seemed so easy and so encouraging. This was the sort of accessibility I craved! Oh, rapture!

In the course of three days, I think we watched nine movies (mostly documentaries, mostly at the library itself, big screens are nice). It felt really good. And, I wouldn't call it dread, but there was a sinking feeling the entire time; I knew I was to return home Netflixless, Flaxmanless, and completely broke (Chicago, for all its accessibility, is fucking expensive). Now that I'm home, I'm actually stupid comfortable, but part of that may be because that sense - that I can just take the Blue Line to the Flaxman and watch whatever I like - hasn't exactly disappeared yet. In a somewhat related note, I'm really happy I don't sell Bibles for a living.


When I did get home (Friday afternoon), I immediately went to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona (playing at a theater nearly forty minutes from my home) and think I cared for it as much as I did merely because of the idea of anyone, ever, going to some foreign place (literally), but actually going somewhere much further (experientially, metaphorically), and then returning home a different person. Woody's dialogue was clichéd and rigid, Scarlette Johansson's "hotness" was talentless, and Javier Aquirresarobe's photography was uninspired, but I didn't care! The music was cool, and, and... Vicky and Cristina we're whispering things to me in their going-back-home-awkwardness. The next morning I shaved my mustache (of which I have great affection).


__________________________

This post has no finality and little contingency, in a sense, it's perfect in expressing, in form, the sort of feeling I have right now. I'm going to wake up in seven hours, take a shower, have two eggs, hashbrowns, and toast (with mixed fruit jelly and butter) for breakfast, watch "Conversations with Dead People" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer 7x07), and then leave for a meeting with my supervisor for undergraduate admissions and registration at PUC in Hammond. I'm excited. I want to watch a really good movie right now, any suggestions? Who wants to do some VHS trading? Oh, by the way, I got these two guys at this little-big cool pawn shop (the sort of place I think I might live at) somewhere in Chicago (I never caught the name, oops):

I Didn't Like I

Another instance of Roman Numeral (proper) confusion: "I didn't like #1" is the first of another series which will play parallel, in a sense, to the "I liked" series. In contrast with its cousin series, the "I didn't like" series will showcase films I've seen recently that didn't exactly thrill me (makes sense, huh?). More or less, this is just an extension of the primary idea of letting you know a bit more of what I'm doing while, at the same time, increasing content (despite the fact that this is more less just an excuse to define my taste, log it, and post a pretty picture). I have screening logs which I have been keeping since June, perhaps they will find their way here sometime soon as well. In either case, I applied to college really late and I'm really anxious now. Also, I think I'm a bit passive-aggressive personality disordery.














Satan's Playground
(Dante Tomaselli, 2005)

I Liked I

That is, "I like," numero uno. Or, like, "Movies that I liked," and the first of a series. But, it's not "#1" cause, I thought, Roman numerals would be cool. So, I guess it's roman numerals (is that proper?), Roman Numerals? In either case, this is my solution to a simple series (ongoing) and the more immediate problem of letting you know (more easily) exactly what I'm doing. So, every once and a while, I'll throw a screenshot and title out (maybe a few thoughts) of a movie I recently watched and enjoyed. In the future, you can also expect a series of detailed reviews and or analysis.

















Sombre
(Philippe Grandrieux, 1998)

Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR Auteurism v. Love

Andrew Sarris v. Pauline Kael OR:
Auteurism v. Love

Alright, I'll concede that my title is unfair. The analogy drawn is not only asymmetrical (person to theory & person to emotion), even further, it is a simplification. Worse, I'm not particularly well-read on either Sarris or Kael (rival heavy-weight champions of American film criticism past). Nonetheless, I hope to propose several questions in my title alone (hopefully questions which are sufficiently endearing; I don't intend to write that much): Does the introduction of theory minimize visceral experience? Does the preference of elastic non-theory minimize extended awareness? How do we watch movies? How should we watch movies?

The auteur theory was at once reinterpreted, translated, and transposed, by Andrew Sarris, from the French periodical Cahiers du cinéma in the 1962 essay "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (Film Culture, Winter 62/63). This development inarguably changed American criticism. Suddenly, the sexiest thing a writer could do, especially a young one, was to celebrate a film as if it were penned by a singular author, or auteur, and that that premise was a critical starting point above any other. However, the celebration was not, according to Sarris, without serious scholastic concern. Sarris 'academianized' film by attempting to make criticism the part of a scientific method: Notes is defined by its many tiers and rankings. This theoretical approach would dominate film journals and magazines all over the nation.

Although, Sarris and his giant swinging mace of an auteur theory could not, for all the violence of it, coerce every person - in specific, the witty, sardonic, and many-other-things-of-marvel (no sarcasm there) Pauline Kael. Sarris' infamously opinionated colleague (of whom I have already quoted) could not be seduced by the mechanized model of Sarris. In the following year, after Sarris had published the notes of his model, Kael printed a biting and absolutely condemning rebuttal entitled "Circles and Squares" (Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, Spring, 1963, pp. 12-26) This entry into the debate would secure what could be the greatest rivalry in all of American film criticism.

As I myself could not do the rivalry justice, nor could I detail either side of the argument comprehensively (both of which, I feel, have proved true and useful), I will, instead, leave you with a recording of a lectured near verbatim reading of "Circles and Squares" by Pauline Kael herself (which I graciously found here, thank you!*). The talk takes place sometime in 1963 at the San Fernando Valley State College in California. Kael delivers the speech with her nose taped up to her forehead, possibly holding a glass of elegant, but not too expensive, wine, and taking each moment of pause as an opportunity to smugly grin. Her snideness most profound when she transparently chastises Sarris, "I do not understand what goes on in the mind of the critic who thinks that a theory is what his colleagues need because they are not great critics." The passive aggressive brutality alone makes this worth lending your ear. Though, a sense of stubbornness and a high note of hypocrisy might have you hearing no evil.


Nonetheless, Kael's movie talk is exciting. It demonstrates a passion and a love, outside of the bounds of theory. Further, it is a beacon of impassioned and intelligent filmic discourse. I mean, there is a reason this woman, who, according to David Lean himself, "kept me from making a movie for 14 years," [1] is so influential, so remembered. Her attack does not leave her frothing at the mouth. Somehow, despite all its nastiness, Kael's argument leaves her saintly and majestic (which is, even from her own admission, far from the truth). And, really, I'm just left wondering why today's popular critics can't (or won't) talk this way.


"Circles and Squares" lecture at San Fernando Valley State College (Pauline Kael, 1963)

---------

*Thanks to all the fantastic contributors at the amazing "Gunslinger." If you haven't checked out this collage of extra-media culture yet, you simply must. (http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/)