I remember you

The emails have been arriving with depressing regularity. Often the subject line is only the name of a friend. With dread I know what the message will contain: That person has died. In recent weeks there have been seven such losses. Three came in a 10-day period, and I fell into sadness.

December 14, 2012

A roll of whose dice?

Is the universe deterministic, or random? Not the first question you’d expect to hear in a thriller, even a great one. But to hear this question posed soon after the opening sequence of “Knowing” gave me a particular thrill. Nicolas Cage plays Koestler, a professor of astrophysics at MIT, and as he toys with a model of the solar system, he asks that question of his students. Deterministic means that if you have a complete understanding of the laws of physics, you can predict with certainty everything that will happen after (for example) the universe is created in the Big Bang.

December 14, 2012

The Incredible Shrinking Man

I’ve revealed many personal details here, but the other day I discovered something I didn’t much want to share. I am shrinking. During a routine test of my bone density, a nurse backed me up against a wall and used a built-in device to measure me.

“Five feet, five and a half inches,” she said. If this was true, I had lost two and a half inches.

It could not be true, I reasoned. I must not have been standing up straight. My shoulders and back were damaged during surgery, and it’s harder for me to do the ramrod routine. My head tends to lean forward. And so on and so forth.

Okay, so let’s say I only lost two inches.

December 14, 2012

A few calm words about The List

The king is dead. Long live the king. Welles’ “Citizen Kane” has been dethroned from the Sight & Sound list of the greatest films of all time, and replaced by Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” It’s not as if nobody saw this coming. The list first appeared in 1952, and “Vertigo” (1958) made the list for the first time only in 1982. Climbing slowly, it placed five votes behind “Kane” in 2002. Although many moviegoers would probably rank “Psycho” or maybe “North by Northwest” as Hitch’s best, for S&S types his film to beat was “Notorious” (1946). That’s the one I voted for until I went through “Vertigo” a shot at a time at the University of Virginia, became persuaded of its greatness, and put it on my 2002 list.

December 14, 2012

I was born inside the movie of my life

The opening pages of my memoir, to be published September 13, 2011:I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don’t remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me. At first the frames flicker without connection, as they do in Bergman’s Persona after the film breaks and begins again. I am flat on my stomach on the front sidewalk, my eyes an inch from a procession of ants. What these are I do not know. It is the only sidewalk in my life, in front of the only house. I have seen grasshoppers and ladybugs. My uncle Bob extends the business end of a fly swatter toward me, and I grasp it and try to walk toward him.

December 14, 2012

How to read a movie

At left: Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” Bergman on strong axis. Grant at left. Bergman lighter, Grant shadowed. Grant above, Bergman below. Movement toward lower right. The attention and pressure is on her.

I’ve mentioned from time to time the “shot at a time” sessions I do at film festivals and universities, sifting through a film with the help of the audience. The e-mails I receive indicate this is perceived as some kind of esoteric exercise. Actually, it’s something anyone can do, including you, and you don’t need to be an expert, because the audience, and the film itself, are your most helpful collaborators. Of course it would be wise to research a film you hope to dismantle in public, and be familiar with its director and context, but I believe the process in its pure form could be applied to a film you’ve never even heard of. I want to tell you how.

December 14, 2012

And the nominees are…

With the 2013 Oscarcast moved up to Feb. 24, movie fans are already in a lather over the possible nominees, especially since again this year there can be “up to” ten finalists in the Best Picture category. I claim no inside knowledge (I’m still waiting to hear from my friend Deep Oscar), but it’s never too early to speculate.

December 14, 2012

Sundance and five Sundance-style movies

Scroll down for my earlier entries.

The first five Sundance entries I’ve seen are the kinds of film the festival exists to showcase. It is possible that many of them won’t ever open in most of the places you readers live, but you’ve impressed me with your resourcefulness in finding them anyway (and no, I don’t mean piracy). You guys demonstrate that if you want to find a movie badly enough, you often can.

One of them, “Homewrecker,” is for rent right now via YouTube, in keeping with the festival’s Reinvention/Rebirth/Renewal and its embrace of new distribution channels such as the net and regional art cinemas.

That one and “Armless” are playing in the new Sundance section named NEXT, which specializes in movies with “low to no budgets.” The guidelines specify budgets below $500,000, and both of these look closer to half a million than to “no.”

December 14, 2012

“Nobody has the right to take another life”

Yesterday I read this in an article in the British Guardian newspaper:

“Twelve of the last 13 people condemned to death in Harris County, Texas were black. After Texas itself, Harris County is the national leader in its number of executions.

“Over one third of Texas’s 305 death row inmates – and half of the state’s 121 black death row prisoners – are from Harris County.

December 14, 2012

Cannes #2: A magical curtain for Jacques Tati

I walked into Cinema Arcades, behind our hotel, for a Cannes market screening of “The Illusionist” and saw the magically melancholy final act of Jacques Tati’s career.

Tati of course was the tall Frenchman, bowing from the waist, pipe in mouth, often wearing a trench coat, pants too short, always the center of befuddlements.

If you’ve seen “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” you know who he was, and if you haven’t, it belongs in your holding pattern.

December 14, 2012

The Best Films of 2011

Making lists is not my favorite occupation. They inevitably inspire only reader complaints. Not once have I ever heard from a reader that my list was just fine, and they liked it. Yet an annual Best Ten list is apparently a statutory obligation for movie critics.

My best guess is that between six and ten of these movies won’t be familiar. Those are the most useful titles for you, instead of an ordering of movies you already know all about.

One recent year I committed the outrage of listing 20 movies in alphabetical order. What an uproar! Here are my top 20 films, in order of approximate preference.

December 14, 2012

Darwin survives as the fittest

On February 12, we celebrate the bicentennials of two of the greatest figures of the 19th century: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. In hailing Lincoln, bells will peal from sea to shining sea. The same date is also designated around the world as Darwin Day, and in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, his birthplace, a cake with 200 candles will be presented in the Square, and everyone will be offered a slice. If you’re of school age, living in Shropshire, and your birthday is Feb. 12, the city invites you to Darwin’s Birthday Bash. This is a grand celebration for a man whose Theory of Evolution promoted atheism, inspired Hitler’s genocides, and thinks your grandfather was a monkey.

None of those things are true, but such claims are what I’ve been dealing with since Dec. 3, 2008, when I published a blog entry praising Darwin’s Theory and castigating Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled,” which claimed the opposing theory of Intelligent Design was being silenced in a crime against freedom of speech. That entry has so far drawn some 280,000 visits and inspired nearly 1,300 comments comprising some 145,000 words, every one of which I have read. The thread is still active and growing every day.

December 14, 2012

The pot and how to use it

First, get the Pot. You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook, and Warm. Not expensive. Now you’re all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, plus a chopping block. No, I am not putting you on the Rice Diet. Eat what you like. I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room. You, solitary writer, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. You, parents with kids. You, night watchman. You, obsessed computer programmer or weary web-worker. You, lovers who like to cook together but don’t want to put anything in the oven. You, in the witness protection program. You, nutritional wingnut. You, in a wheelchair.

And you, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food. You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog’s documentary about life at the South Pole. You, early riser skipping breakfast. You, teenager home alone. You, rabbi, pastor, priest,, nun, waitress, community organizer, monk, nurse, starving actor, taxi driver, long-haul driver. Yes, you, reader of the second-best best-written blog on the internet.

We will begin with a scientific conundrum. You put Minute Rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. Minutes later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. Tomorrow night, you put whole grain organic rice and the correct amount of water into the Pot, and click to Cook. An hour later, the Pot clicks over to Warm. Both nights, the rice is perfectly cooked.

December 14, 2012

Car, Table, Counter, or TakHomaSak®

In my third or fourth year of life I ate my first restaurant meal, at the Steak ‘n Shake on Green Street near the University of Illinois campus. I dined on a Steakburger, french fries, and a Coke. I felt extremely important. The eyes of the world were on this capable little man, sitting on a stool at the counter, grasping a Steakburger in his hands and opening up to take the first bite. My dad passed me the ketchup bottle and I felt authority flow into my hands as I smacked it on the bottom. “Aim it on your plate next to the fries,” he advised. I did. “Good job, boy.”

If I were on Death Row, my last meal would be from Steak ‘n Shake. If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice were up to me, it would be Steak ‘n Shake–and they would be delighted. If the Pope were to ask where he could get a good plate of spaghetti in America, I would reply, “Your Holiness, have you tried the Chili Mac or the Chili 3-Ways?”

December 14, 2012

Toronto #1: Good films are back in season

The Toronto Film Festival is universally considered the opening of Academy Awards season, and the weary moviegoer, drained after a summer of exhausted superheroes and franchises, plunges in it with joy. I’ve been attending since 1977, and have watched it grow from a bootstrap operation, with the schedule improvised from day to day, into one of the big four (with Cannes, Venice and Berlin).

December 14, 2012

Cannes #7: A campaign for Real Movies

There’s something in the UK called the Campaign for Real Ale. It was started in The Guardian in the 1970s by Richard Boston, a journalist (naturally) who was alarmed by traditional British pubs being taken over by mass-produced, heavily marketed, rapidly brewed beer.

The real thing, he said, was not carbonated, was brewed in its own time, and had a distinctive flavor. It was drawn up by gravity from a cooled cellar, not forced through hoses under pressure. It wasn’t tweaked to make it taste like all other beers, matching some international formula like Budweiser or Heineken’s. I’ve tasted it. It went down smoothly, and you didn’t belch.

December 14, 2012

I met a character from Dickens

Oh, no. No. No. This cannot be. They’re tearing down 22 Jermyn Street in London. The whole block is going. Bates’ Hat Shop, Trumper’s the Barber, Getti the Italian restaurant, the Jermyn Street Theater, Sergio’s Cafe, the lot. Jermyn Street was my street in London. My neighborhood.

There, on a corner near the Lower Regent Street end, I found a time capsule within which the eccentricity and charm of an earlier time was still preserved. It was called the Eyrie Mansion. When I stayed there I considered myself to be living there. I always wanted to live in London, and this was the closest I ever got.

December 14, 2012

Doing the right thing

The Supreme Court has done us all a kindness. Obamacare shows the human community working at its best. For me, that’s what it finally comes down to. If all of us, even the least fortunate, have access to competent medical attention, isn’t that a wonderful thing? The poor, the old, the unemployed, those with pre-existing conditions?

December 14, 2012

The greatest films of all time

I am faced once again with the task of voting in Sight & Sound magazine’s famous poll to determine the greatest films of all time. Apart from my annual year’s best lists, this is the only list I vote in. It is a challenge. After voting in 1972, 1982 and 1992, I came up with these ten titles in 2002:

December 14, 2012

A campaign film in search of a campaign

“The Undefeated” is a documentary about Sarah Palin made by and for the faithful, who may experience it in the way believers sit through a rather boring church service. At nearly two hours, it’s a campaign advertisement in search of a campaign.

But that’s not surprising. What astonished me is that the primary targets in the film are conservative Republicans. Yes, there are the usual vague references to liberals and elitists (although I heard the word “Democrat” only twice). But the film’s favorite bad guys seem to be in the GOP establishment. This seems odd, considering that the target audience is presumably Republicans.

December 14, 2012
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