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The Return of the Autobiographical Dictionary of Film

Jim Emerson

Ever since David Thomson’s “A Biographical Dictionary of Film” was published in 1975, browsers have said that they love to hate Thomson’s contrarian arguments — against John Ford or Frank Capra, Coppola or Kubrick, for example.¹ Fans and critics can cite favorite passages of resonant beauty, mystifyingly vague and dismissive summary judgements, and entire entries in which the man appears to have gone off his rocker. And that’s the fun of it.

To be fair, Thomson broke faith with (or has been suffering a crisis of faith in) American movies at least far back as “Overexposures: The Crisis in American Filmmaking” (1981), and he’s been writing about his crisis ever since. To put it in a sentence that could serve as the ending of one of his entries: I am willing to believe that he loves (or once loved) movies even if he doesn’t like them very much. (Wait — how does he conclude the Katharine Hepburn piece? “She loved movies, while disapproving of them.”)

When I encountered the first edition of this book, the year I entered college, I immediately fell in love with it because it was not a standard reference. It was personal, cranky, eloquent, pretentious, pithy, petty, ambitious… It was, as I think Thomson himself suggested in the foreword to the first or second edition (this is the fifth), more accurately titled “An Autobiographical Dictionary of Film.” Many times over the years I have implored my employers or partners to license digital rights to Thomson’s book so that it could augment and be integrated with other movie databases and references (at Cinemania, FilmPix, Reel.com, RogerEbert.com)… but we’ve never done it. What, they would ask, is the “value-add”? (Really. Some people used to talk that way.) As a reference, its coverage is too spotty (Ephraim Katz’s Film Encyclopedia is much more comprehensive but also has loads of incomplete filmographies), as criticism it’s wildly idiosyncratic (nothing wrong with that) and as biography it’s whimsically selective and uneven, leaving as many holes as it fills.

The AFI Top 100

Jim Emerson

View image Still the One. I’ve tried, but I can’t think of a better, more thoroughly entertaining and endlessly rewarding American movie.

Here’s Roger Ebert’s take. Some oversights have been corrected since the first list was compiled (by polling film “critics, historians and experts” — categories that are mutually exclusive?) in 1998. To me, that’s “the day before yesterday.”

Anyway, the good news is that “Nashville” went from 0 (i.e., not on the list) to 59. At this rate, it will easily reach its rightful place in the top ten by 2017. Buster Keaton (previously unrepresented) scored with “The General” at number 18, which means it will surpass “Citizen Kane” by next Tuesday. And “Sunrise” finally made it aboard at 82. Other new additions include: “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Titanic,” and “The Sixth Sense” (all newly eligible) and “Cabaret,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “All The President’s Men,” “Spartacus,” and “A Night at the Opera.”

More good news: “The Searchers” leapt from 96 to 12. Maybe people are starting to understand it after 51 years.

Welcome, too, to these new arrivals in the Class of ’07: “Intolerance” (much more engaging than “Birth of a Nation”), “Sullivan’s Travels” (though I’d prefer “The Lady Eve” or “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”), “Cabaret,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “All the President’s Men,” “A Night at the Opera,” “Swing Time,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Blade Runner” (maybe the next version Ridley Scott has planned will finally make it the masterpiece we’ve always wanted it to be).

Still MIA: “Miller’s Crossing,” “Scarlet Street,” “The Woman in the Window,” “Blue Velvet” (which even I don’t think belongs — though perhaps “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Dr.” or “Inland Empire” would), “Lone Star,” “Boogie Nights,” “The Long Goodbye,” [your choices here].

And where did “Fargo” go?

Also very much missed (i.e., dropped off): “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “A Place in the Sun,” “The Third Man” (but isn’t that a British film?), “”Stagecoach,” “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Not much missed: “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “Patton,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “Fantasia,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “My Fair Lady,” “An American in Paris.”

Still unaccountably on the list: “The Sound of Music,” “Tootsie,” “Ben-Hur”… (And, really, “Star Wars” is lots of kiddie fun — but one of the best American movies? Hardly. Alhough I could say that about “The Wizard of Oz,” too. Both “Oz” and “Star Wars” are movies people love because they loved them as kids — and that’s wonderful. Technically, they’re also quite delightful. But as artistic achievements they’re pretty thin. This isn’t a popularity contest. Oh, actually it is. Still, I’ll take “Pinocchio” or “Babe: Pig in the City.”) And, one day, “Schindler’s List” will be put into perspective, ranking slightly above “1941” (and below “Always” and “Amistad”) in Steven Spielberg’s body of work. For that matter, “Raging Bull” belongs above “The Departed” but below “After Hours” and way below “New York, New York” in Martin Scorsese’s oeuvre.

Reuters notes that D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” “fell off the list entirely because of its now unpopular ideology, despite its history of technical innovations.” Well, maybe. But has anybody watched it recently? Anybody even felt like it? And did “The Jazz Singer” drop off for the same reason?

What great injustices (and justices) do you see? Take a look at the list and let me know what you think.

P.S. That reminds me: My own Top 100+list is here.

UPDATED (06/21/07): Films are nominated by the pollees and then the top 100 are selected by ballot. According to the AFI, 43 new films (released between 1996 and 2006) were eligible this time that weren’t eligible in 1998.

Opening Shots Project: Pop Quiz

Jim Emerson

It feels like an unbroken stream (of consciousness)…

We’ve received some terrific contributions to the Open Shot Project. Thank you so very much. And please keep ’em coming in. (And tell your cinemaniacal friends.) I’m going to start posting them next week. But remember: We’re talking about single opening takes, not entire sequences or montages. Doesn’t matter if the image comes before, during, or after the titles — just as long as it’s the first image. (Of course, the first shot of a montage could be significant and wonderful and worth considering on its own, especially when you consider how the succeeding images build upon what it establishes.) I’d even include this shot from David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” because, although it is really a combination of layered opticals, it gives the illusion of being a single, unbroken take — no clear cuts, just a lot of overlapping fade-ins, fade-outs and dissolves.

Today, I’ve decided to offer a little pop quiz. What follows after the jump are single frame-grabs from some of my favorite opening shots in some of my favorite movies from the ’20s to the ’00s — some famous, some fairly obscure. I don’t necessarily expect anybody to get them all (unless they know me personally!), but see what you can do. In most cases, the frames are taken from the first second or two of the shot. Some shots last only a few seconds, others a minute or more, and some begin as dissolves out of the opening titles. Keep in mind that filmmakers often like to hit you with a distorted image you can’t quite make out — an extreme close-up, or a reflection, or a shot from a peculiar angle — just to grab your attention and pull you in. Ready? Begin…

Dark Knight Quiz #1: What’s wrong with this picture?

Jim Emerson

NOTE: Reader Cameron Smith has noticed that this shot has been cropped for the DVD version of the film. See his explanation here.

Although I enjoyed certain aspects of “The Dark Knight” (especially the gorgeously real Chicago cityscapes, which I thought stole the movie out from under even Heath Ledger), I have confessed I couldn’t tell what was supposed to be going on from one moment — often one shot, or one line — to the next, and, for that very reason, soon stopped caring. Now that I’ve been able to go through it several more times since its release on DVD and Blu-ray last month, and have cross-checked the movie itself with the screenplay for clarification (it’s available as a .pdf here, For Your Consideration), I’m able to better understand exactly why. And it’s not just me. Now, at last, we have the means to really look past the phenomenon directly at the picture, and to understand how it works. Or doesn’t.

Let me start by asking you to examine one simple, minor early example that has to do with narrative logic and, perhaps, setting up the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief in a comic book universe rendered with hyper-realistic visuals (even, occasionally, in IMAX): Please watch the shot above, the final piece in the opening sequence, showing the Joker’s escape from the “mob bank” robbery and giving us our first “overview,” if you will, of the scene. The Joker has backed a school bus into the lobby of a bank, filled it with mob cash, and then makes his exit.

After the jump is the script’s description of the shot. But before you read it, please leave a comment with your account of the shot AND your assessment of how the Joker planned this getaway. Pay special attention to the timing (dust/debris, busses, traffic signal, arriving cop cars). Ready? Begin.

Vegas, baby, yeah!

Jim Emerson

View image De Niro in “Casino.” Las Vegas is a Hollywood movie.

From my piece on Sin City in the Movies at MSN Movies:

The world has other gambling meccas — Monte Carlo, Atlantic City, Reno — but none as storied or mythologized as Las Vegas, an American dream-zone strategically located in the arid wasteland between Hoover Dam and Hollywood. The neon oasis is a concrete mirage: The closer you get, the more real the place becomes, but when you reach out to grab it, it slips through your fingers anyway. A surreal amalgamation of landmarks historical and imagined (Egypt, New York, Camelot), it rises out of shimmering heat and dust, a dazzling C.B. DeMille monument to profligate waste and the proposition that anything can be purchased or accomplished for a price.

Vegas is a Hollywood movie made corporeal, a surreal experience built on sand, powered by electricity, riches and promises of desires fulfilled. The electricity comes from the dam, the money comes from the odds that always favor the house, the desires come from the human heart (as well as a bit lower and to the right). But how sinful can sin be in a place called Sin City, where everything sinful in the outside world is overtly or tacitly permitted?

Joe Lieberman on a Plane: Another dumb story about blogs

Jim Emerson

Oh, just pretend there’s a Joe Lieberman head Photoshopped onto the snake or something. Or let the MSM do it for you…

When the conversation turns, as it so often does these days, to blogs (or “the Internets” as Stephen Colbert is fond of calling the online realm), you’ll find an astonishing number of people who, even in 2006, have absolutely no idea of what they’re talking about. Like Bruce Kluger in USA Today, who writes: “If ever America needed a wake-up call about the mythology of blogging, we got it this month…. “

Kluger, who also contributes to Parenting magazine and Huffington Post (god help ’em), proceeds to destroy the “mythology” that, well, didn’t exist until it was created by the mainstream media (like USA Today)… because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Kluger cites the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary (then increasing Joementum in recent polls) and the disappointing box office receipts for “Snakes on a Plane” as evidence of “the capriciousness of the blog culture”:

Lieberman’s boomerang reminds us that voters represent a meager percentage of the total populace — and that bloggers are an even tinier subset of that group. Consequently, what appears to be a coast-to-coast juggernaut on a 17-inch monitor is, in the real world, simply an elaborate PC-to-PC chain letter — enthusiastic, but not necessarily the national mindset.O, capricious bloggers! How dare you fool the MSM into thinking you were all-knowing and all-powerful! Shame upon thee! This is a great example of what I was writing about the other day — another Straw Man piece that sets out to strike down its own assumptions, none of which apply to the exterior universe. It’s the JonBenet Ramsay “murder suspect” hysteria/drivel all over again.

Beep-beep-m beep-beep, yeah

Jim Emerson

Over Memorial Day weekend I attended a high school graduation in Albuquerque. One of the graduating senior boys gave a speech in which he used car parts as a metaphor for the components of one’s personality or identity. It was a clever piece he’d co-written with a friend, delivered with wry humor. Afterwards, the head of the school — a man I’d estimate was in his 60s — took the stage and thanked the student, quipping: “Baby, you can drive my car anytime.”

Thud. Thunderous silence mixed with scattered, bewildered titters.

Off to Ebertfest

Jim Emerson

I’ll be blogging and reporting from Ebertfest in Champaign-Urbana this week. The fest runs Wednesday through Sunday and the schedule can be found here. Panels, film introductions and post-film discussions will be live-streamed here. And it’s an all-star line-up: Eberts! Bordwell! Cohl! Seitz! Arikan! Morgan! Odienator! Phillips! Britt! Kohn! Barker! Pierson! Rosman! Poland! Voynar! And those are just some of the organizers and attendees. The roster of films and filmmakers is impressive, too. Give it a look.

“What’s bad for GM is good for America!”

Jim Emerson

That’s what I wrote, semi-earnestly, in a June 2006 post about the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” I led up to it with this:

Had GM committed to the electric car, it might be on top of the world today. Instead, GM’s boneheaded short-term business decisions have nearly bankrupted the company. And now, why in the world would anyone want to buy an GM vehicle, when you know they’re passing off inferior, antiquated merchandise? Unless it can compete, and catch up technologically to where it already was ten years ago, GM deserves a quick and merciless death.

Two and a half years later, my feelings are a lot more ambivalent — mainly because I don’t want to see more people out of work in this freezing economic climate, unless they’re the CEOs who steadily ran the American automobile industry into the ground over the last, oh, thirty years. (They learned nothing from the 1970s, when they found themselves making cars Americans didn’t want and handed the market to Toyota, Honda, Mazda…?) As Thomas Friedman put it:

With mustard

Jim Emerson

I was just reading David Thomson’s intriguing/perplexing entry on Paul Thomas Anderson in the new edition of his “Biographical Dictionary of Film” (more about that later) and he begins with reports that Anderson had at one point been unhappy with New Line’s print campaign for “Magnolia”:

Yet, truly, how would you do a poster for “Magnolia”? How would you begin to convey the feeling and form of the picture? Would you bother to ask the question why it is called “Magnolia”? Would you let yourself ask, are posters the proper way to offer great movies?

Such awkward questions could accumulate in Hollywood marketing offices, which have so little time or practice with the crosscutting ironies and countervailing doubts that obsess Anderson and are the energy of his films.

Yes, the job of marketing and advertising is to present the movie to the public and (if it’s an honest campaign) entice them with a taste of what they can expect from it. And we all know that sometimes the efforts are woefully inadequate: “It’s Terrific!” (“Citizen Kane”); “The Damndest Thing You Ever Saw!” (“Nashville”). I think the original paintings and drawings done for the Polish movie market — most of which use no images from the movies themselves — often do a stronger job of suggesting the feel of the films, like my favorite posters for “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Phantom of Liberty.”

This explains everything

Jim Emerson

The dialog that sets it up and spells it out for you. An inspired expository montage by Matt Zoller Seitz. What can I say?

Borat: Cultural Learnings of Anti-Semitism for Make Benefit Stupid Bigots?

Jim Emerson

View image Borat for USA.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued the following statement about “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” which opens in the US November 3:

When approaching this film, one has to understand that there is absolutely no intent on the part of the filmmakers to offend, and no malevolence on the part of Sacha Baron Cohen, who is himself proudly Jewish. We hope that everyone who chooses to see the film understands Mr. Cohen’s comedic technique, which is to use humor to unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear.

We are concerned, however, that one serious pitfall is that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.

While Mr. Cohen’s brand of humor may be tasteless and even offensive to some, we understand that the intent is to dash stereotypes, not to perpetuate them. It is our hope that everyone in the audience will come away with an understanding that some types of comedy that work well on screen do not necessarily translate well in the real world — especially when attempted on others through retelling or mimicry.

My response: If anybody is stupid enough to think that “Borat” reinforces their own bigotry, then they can find reinforcement just about anywhere — including the ADL’s statement, which will probably do more to unintentionally inflame anti-Semitism than anything in “Borat.”

Tell me a story, Act II: Acts

Jim Emerson

View image Story diagram stolen — er, borrowed — from “Observations on film art and Film Art.”

Kristin Thompson, author of “Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique,” a book I can’t believe I haven’t read and have therefore just ordered, explores her observations and theory of story structure in a blog entry called “Times go by turns,” which gets to the heart of how movie storytelling works by showing how familiar structures involve the use of more than the “three acts” we’re accustomed to thinking about. She was inspired by the Society for the Cognitive Study of the Moving Image conference in June at the University of Wisconsin in Madison — and, boy, does that ever sound like something that would be up my street. (Also: See my post “Tell me a story… or don’t.”)

Kristin writes:

TIFF: What’s missing here?

Jim Emerson

View image The ManuLife Center (glowing beacon in the middle of the shot), where most of the Toronto Film Festival press and industry screenings are held.

The hallway of the Varsity Cinemas, with theaters on both sides.

What’s missing from these pictures? I’l tell you what: Roger Ebert! Many festival regulars have been saying it feels weird not seeing Roger around town this time of year. And in that respect, we’re already anticipating Toronto 2007. David Poland at The Hot Blog expresses the sentiments of no small number of us on this morning:

Roger’s name comes up often as many of us gather in this annual reunion tour, as it is rather sad to have a festival without him. He missed his first George Christy luncheon in 22 years this year. But his gathered friends all applauded his improving health and look forward to seeing him next year.Hear, hear!

TIFF 2007: Girl of Iran

Jim Emerson

View image They could be nuns. Those could be habits. But they’re burkas.

What is that supposedly ancient Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times”? The proverb may be of dubious origin, but it captures the fate of Marjane, the heroine of “Persepolis,” in a Persian nutshell. The precocious Iranian girl is born during the reign of the Shah (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi), witnesses his overthrow during the Islamic Revolution, becomes enamored of pop music and punk rock (and Bruce Lee) as powerfully disruptive and liberating political forces, and experiences a new world of sexuality and materialism in Europe. “Persepolis,” based on the autobio-graphic novels by Maryjane Satrapi and co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, is absolutely enchanting — a history lesson, a fairy tale, and a girl’s-eye-view of growing up. It’s a movie that makes you feel glad to be alive.

I wasn’t familiar with Satrapi’s work, but from what I’ve seen since, the (mostly black-and-white animation renders her style beautifully: a mix of charming, early Hanna-Barbera coloring-book simplicity, and more atmospheric watercolors or charcoals that suggest a ’60s and ’70s European sensibility. The delicately modulated tones of “Persepolis” are similarly sophisticated. It veers from hilarious to poignant, sweet to terrifying, abstract to concrete, personal to political, cynical to rhapsodic… and back again.

Our guide is the stubborn, courageous, effervescent Marjane herself, a smart and instinctively rebellious girl who (like most young Westerners) instinctively cobbles together her identity through pop culture and politics. Or make that pop culture as politics. The privately and publicly expressed preference of ABBA over the Bee Gees (or Iron Maiden over both) is just as important — and in many respects equivalent — to favoring the Revolution over the Shah. Marjane isn’t always admirable (who is?), but we unfailingly empathize with her emotional, philosophical and ideological struggles. (And she has the wisest grandma in the world — who also disapproves of her granddaughter’s actions at times, but never offers anything less than unconditional love.)

“Persepolis” streams by in no time, yet manages to convey the sense of an entire childhood into early adulthood. Upon getting back to my room I immediately ordered the books, “Persepolis” and “Persepolis 2.”

(Thanks to Ken Lowery for recommending this movie. It was just the nudge I needed to reshuffle my screening schedule.)

“Trapped in the Closet” screened in UK

Jim Emerson

Ani-Tom throws his hands up in the air.

The infamous, mysteriously suppressed “South Park” episode that poked fun at Scientology and Tom Cruise (sacrilege!) still hasn’t been shown on TV in the UK — but the prestigious National Film Theatre in London hosted a free, big-screen presentation of “Trapped in the Closet” Monday. The screening was in connection with a Stanley Kubrick Masterclass conducted by “South Park” auteurs Trey Parker and Matt Stone. According to a wire service item that ran in the New York Post and in many other outlets:

Tom Cruise has lost his fight to stop an episode of South Park mocking his Scientology beliefs being shown in the UK….

Organizers were thrilled the actor failed in his attempts to stop the free screening, which accompanied a talk given by creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, insisting it was a display of free speech.

A spokesman said, “If we were charging there may have been legal problems, but it was a free event, so it should be fine.”

Free DVDs of the episode were given out after the screening. (BTW, this is Day 65 of “South Park” Held Hostage in America, for those of you who, like me, are keeping a Freedom Vigil. Keep that Mr. Hankey burning in the window… for Freedom.) I wonder: If Oliver Stone can get away with showing a 20-minute promo reel for his “World Trade Center” at the Cannes Film Festival this year, why didn’t the festival offer the 20-something-minute “Trapped in the Closet” to those poor Europeans who haven’t been able to see it? Bet that high-definition cut paper animation would look great at the Lumiere…. (tip: Andrew Sullivan)