Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Defeated by life, once again
By Edward Copeland
I apologize to anyone who looked forward to reading my take on Parts 3 and 4 of HBO's documentary series The Weight of the Nation. Once again, the fates conspired against me as they seemed to do with alarming regularity. I posted what I could. It will be airing for a while, so I hope I can finish it at some point because important things need to be said. Unfortunately, I already know that my Wednesday has been shot to hell by interlopers determined to turn me into a professional patient. I won't be able to write a nice piece about the debut on HBO of the best part of the entire series: The Weight of the Nation for Kids. Geared for families, the first installment called "The Great Cafeteria Takeover" premieres Wednesday on HBO at 7 p.m. Eastern/Pacific and 6 p.m. Central.
Unlike the mammoth project that it's connected to, "The Great Cafeteria Takeover" tells the inspiring tale of students in a New Orleans school district following Katrina who form a group called Rethinkers and fight to change the meals in the schools' cafeterias. No one feels forced to fudge statistics — they just tackle the problem and solve it. I looked forward to adding my personal tales not of school food but hospital food and what these places do to cut costs. If you've been fortunate and avoided hospital stays, you probably don't realize that patient care ranks far from No. 1 on hospital administrators' list of priorities. I wish I had Rethinkeers on my side. It made me miss Treme and reminds me how I won't be able to recap both it and Boardwalk Empire if both series air at the same time and I don't get cooperation from a lot of people.
Today. I tried my best to finish my review of Parts 3 and 4, but about 3:30 this afternoon — following a morning doctor's appointment — I started getting disoriented again and nothing I wrote made sense. I had to lie down. Sunday night, I'd forced myself to stay up until the early hours of the morning and then worked most of Monday and still didn't get the review of Parts 1 and 2 posted until about 20 minutes before Part 1 aired. Tonight, my dad came in and woke me up at 7 p.m. I'd slept all that time — what usually happens when one of these episodes occurs.
I live in a house, bedridden, cared for by aging parents whose own bodies are falling apart. They deny it, but they think what I do online is a joke. They don't understand the process of writing and when I ask to be left alone because I want to make a deadline, one of them inevitably says something along the line "It's not as if you're being paid." Apparently, there would be no other reason to do such a thing. We've also switched aide services tic give me a bath and it comes with a nurse, only scheduling is a bitch and they want to turn you into a professional patient, always trying to find problems where there aren't any.
Some of you who have followed me for a while probably notice how everything I write now seems to get longer. It isn't intentional. I think subconsciously I keep writing out of fear that when I stop, it will be for good. Then I'll really lack a point for perpetuating this farce.
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Labels: Boardwalk Empire, Documentary, HBO, Misc., Treme
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Saturday, May 12, 2012
Happy birthday George — still miss ya
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
The Times They Are a-Changin'
By Edward Copeland
Some changes will be coming to Edward Copeland on Film (you can add the and More if you like, I just added that to reflect that we covered more than motion pictures). Because of restraints on my time and a changing desire in what and how I enjoy to write, this blog shall be undergoing a transformation, one that as of now I don't even know what form it will take.
What I do know for certain is that posts will appear less frequently and, with an exception here or there and perhaps more sometime down the road, all will be written by me. I wanted to take this moment to give a public shout-out to the most recent group of regular contributors, whose names likely will remain in the sidebar if only so they can comment without having to go through the moderation process, and to thank them for all their help in filling these virtual pages. Many have their own blogs where you will be able to find them.
Some other issues sparking this makeover. Blogger has announced some mysterious changes that will occur this month so who knows how easy it will be to adapt, I do not know. The other concerns sewer work which has been making its way through my neighborhood and finally has landed in the backyard to tear it up. Despite markings where they aren't supposed to cut, they've knocked out our cable, phones and Internet several times of late — and that was before they'd move into our yard itself.
Also, having been reviewing new releases more or less continuously for 28 years, I've grown bored with the short assessment of new works even when I've liked them. Part of this probably stems from my inability to see things on a timely basis, but I've just come to enjoy more in-depth discussions of films, topics, TV shows or important artists. I've loved doing recaps, particularly Boardwalk Empire and Treme, but since HBO seems intent on scheduling the shows where at least part of their new seasons overlap, my physical stamina may prevent that from being a possibility this year without giving up one of the shows, which I don't want to do. The people at Treme have been very good to me, so I feel very loyal to them. Maybe David Simon and HBO will do as they did with Season 4 of The Wire and send the complete season out early. Perhaps faithful readers who enjoy my detailed recaps could contact HBO in NY with that suggestion so I still can do both shows. Treme kept the same shooting schedule, so they should be done in plenty of time to send out the complete season well in advance and I could have those down before Boardwalk Empire screeners arrive. You can email HBO by clicking that link or if it goes funky the address is sitefeedbackgeneral@hbo.com; the phone number for HBO is 212-512-1200 and ask for media relations; the snail mail address is 1100 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036. Address it to HBO media relations.
In the meantime, there won't be posts as often but I hope they'll be better when they do appear. You might see something before then, but I know for certain that the next date I plan to post something will be a week from today, April 10. Until then, once again thanks to my contributors and where you can find them out there.
That's the announcement for now. For sure I will be back April 10 unless I should have some sort of unexpected quick post before then — and who knows what these new Blogger changes will mean. Perhaps a new look or revised name could be imminent. Thanks for reading. I'm not leaving for good.
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Labels: Boardwalk Empire, Criticism, David Simon, HBO, Misc., The Wire, Treme
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Saturday, February 11, 2012
What the hell is going on at IMDb?
By Edward Copeland
Back in my mobility days, when I had just started working at a newspaper, the Internet had yet to explode into the great reference source it can be. By the time Google appeared and fact-checking became so easy (albeit with possible land mines of misinformation planted everywhere you typed), it became difficult to remember how we looked things up before the Web. The one exception for me was movie trivia — particularly Oscar trivia — because that sort of thing happens if you get exiled to a small Kansas town during your junior high years. You end up accidentally memorizing Oscar facts because instead of buying a book with all the Oscar nominations in it like a normal person (The late Wiley and Bona's Inside Oscar didn't exist yet), you check one out of the library and painstakingly type your own copy of the nominees and winners, building a visual memory without realizing it. (Yes, on a good-old fashioned typewriter no less — even did it with carbon typing paper so I'd have two copies. It's funny, because if I try to recall nominees for best actor in a certain year and get stuck, I remember the list alphabetically so I can narrow the missing actor to a section of the alphabet between the nominees I do remember.) As a result, Oscar errors leap out at me and when I find errors in the Internet Movie Database (of any kind), I try to inform them so they can make the site a better, more accurate resource. However, recently I've discovered something strange has been transpiring at IMDb and I imagine others have noticed this as well.
One gripe I've always had with IMDb is the way they denote the Oscars. For example, let's take last year. The King's Speech was named best picture for 2010, the year it was released. Now, the Oscars, even as they've moved up the ceremony, always bring up the rear, so it received its statuette for best picture of 2010 in 2011. Many an error has been made by people looking for quick Oscar facts who check IMDb because in the awards section for The King's Speech it denotes all its Oscar wins and nominations as being 2011. If you're an Oscar obsessive such as myself or Sasha Stone at Awards Daily or Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience or our own Josh R. here and countless others, you'll recognize that they refer to the ceremony. If you aren't, such as an older entertainment editor in the Midwest, you might put down that it was named best picture of 2011. It was named best picture in 2011 but of or for 2010. If you scroll lower, you'll see that any of the film critic awards the film took tend to say 2010 because they announced them before the calendar year ended. Of course, since we do have the Internet at our fingerprints, they have no excuse for not checking the real authority and looking up things on the Academy's official database which notes that The King's Speech was named best picture 2010 and best picture 2011 won't be handed out until the end of this month.
One early Oscar winner (and in my opinion, still the best of the best picture choices they made), Casablanca proves really problematic, even for movie buffs. The film deservedly holds its designation as a classic and everyone agrees that the movie was a 1942 release, owing to its premiere followed by public exhibition in New York on Nov. 26, 1942. Well, everyone except the Academy that is, It didn't open in Los Angeles for that requisite one week in a L.A. theater until Jan. 23, 1943. Despite the odds against a film opening that early in the year (and competing against nine other films, many fresher in voters' minds), Casablanca, the 1942 release, won the Oscar for best picture of 1943 at the ceremony held in 1944. On the IMDb Awards page for Casablanca. the only two years mentioned are 1942 (at the top as its year of release) and 1944 (as the year it supposedly won best picture, director and writing, screenplay. Oscar itself can have some strange occurrences such as Chaplin's Limelight, which came out in 1952 in most places, such as New York, but such Chaplin was persona non grata in Hollywood at the time, the movie never managed to open in Los Angeles until 1972, but the Academy ruled it eligible and Chaplin, Ray Rasch and Larry Russell won original dramatic score for the 20-year-old film (listed as 1973 on IMDb) — the same touching night that Chaplin received an honorary Oscar from the Academy for lifetime achievement and apologizing to him for being such an asshole to him for having opinions.
The most recent IMDb incident that prompted this post concerned an error I noted in its listing of awards for the movie Pariah. I had just finished watching the film so I made a point of seeing who had done the cinematography, which I thought was exceptionally well done for a low budget film. The credit clearly said (it was the second credit after written and directed by Dee Rees) Bradford Young. As I went to IMDb to check its awards page, it said that Pariah won the Grand Jury Prize for best cinematography in a dramatic film, only it credited the win to Dee Rees. Never mind that on its full cast and credit list for Pariah it properly names Young as cinematographer as does the movie's Web site in crediting him the Sundance prize.
Always trying to correct errors, I went in to try to edit the awards listing but no matter how I tried, it kept being rejected and referred me to a comment thread. The thread was led with a not by a site administrator explaining why they didn't allow updating of the awards section because of a job opening — dating back to late 2010. Of course, someone is updating them since new awards are going in. Here is the letter's text which leads to its thread. It was posted March 14, 2011.
Hi,
This message is to provide an update on the current status of the Awards List.
As many of you will know, we closed down the Awards submissions pipeline in Spring 2010, to completely overhaul the internal systems that we use for Awards data.
We very gradually started re-opening the Awards pipeline in October/November 2010 - using the new system.
This has proven challenging, and we have attempted to make improvements to our internal tools post-launch.
In addition to this, and perhaps more significantly, the individual previously responsible for for the Awards list left IMDb in mid December. This has resulted in us being understaffed within the Database Content Team.
Those of you who regularly monitor the processing times page http://www.imdb.com/czone/times will have seen that we have been in a backlog for the Awards list for a significant amount of time.
We have been actively recruiting for a Data Manger since that time, as you may have seen from our jobs page http://www.imdb.com/imdbjobs/#129661, and recruitment is going well.
Until we have successfully filled this role, we have reallocated some workload within the team. As a result of this, we now have a team member who has taken ownership of the Awards list, and is actively working through the backlog.
There are a number of open bugs with the current interface, which are being actively worked on currently by our software team. I will post a further update on those when I have one.
I appreciate that this has been a less than satisfactory situation for our contributors, particularly those that have been attempting to submit Awards data - and I apologize for that. With a data manager dedicated to this list from this point forwards, and software developers working with that individual, we are now in a position to make the improvements this unique and important type of content requires/deserves.
Regards,
Rachel
Call me crazy, but I'd think they'd still want to be aware of the errors, even if they didn't want people to use the new system. (Never mind that there hadn't been an update in nearly a year.) Wait — there's more. Recently, when I was working on my Centennial Tribute to José Ferrer, I found a couple of errors in his biography. They also were repeatedly rejected, though I found some other way to contact them and sure enough those mistakes eventually got fixed. Here though comes the most disturbing one of all.
Right after watching the movie Margin Call, I went to read their summary, just to make sure I was getting those tricky financial terms right. While there, I discovered the summary had a big plot point error. The summary's date indicated it had been written a few months prior to the film's opening. I went to try to edit the summary where I encountered what apparently any new users encounter if they try to register, what IMDb refers to higher "identity verification" or some such nonsense. I wrote them a note mincing no words that I'd be damned if I was going to give them that information just to try to correct an error. At least I knew it was wrong. Heaven help the people who didn't. I didn't even tell them what was wrong, but they've since had an updated Margin Call summary and the wrong information has been purged, so someone else got it to them.
That error though isn't as troubling as their reaching out for cell phone and credit card numbers. What that amounts to is they expect newcomers or anyone trying to change a summary to give them their cell phone number (making the assumption that everyone in the world has a cell phone) and, more disturbingly, a credit card number that they "swear they will never use." If they are never going to use it, why do they need it? It reminded me of Kirk's question in the awful Star Trek V: "Why does God need a starship?"
The cell phone scam is easy to understand: It's the same reason that Google and Facebook try to con you into giving them yours in the name of "security" should you lose your account. It's because they figure most people don't know that one of the loopholes in the rules of the Do-Not-Call-List law is that it doesn't apply to any business that you have a relationship with, so once they get your number, let the telemarketers ring your cell off the hook. The credit card bit is more ominous. Old users are grandfathered, but for how long? What are they planning? They can't expect run-of-the-mill users to get a hankering for IMDb Pro. unless they are planning to hide more things there, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay for a reference source that doesn't consider accuracy a priority.
On the last season of Boardwalk Empire, they had the wrong actor listed playing a part. Luckily I got the real cast lists from HBO and recognized that the actor's photo and age didn't match. Their TV credit listings are laughable as some actors and actresses will submit themselves as generic types such as "Townsperson" and claim to appear in every episode, though they add uncredited afterward. On the new series Luck, on individual episodes Kerry Condon's character is identified as Rosie but on the main page for the series they still just call her "exercise girl." They don't know what the hell to do with Nick Nolte. Sometimes he's Walter. Sometimes he's Walter Smith. Sometimes he's The Old Man. All are correct, but it's same character and looks confusing that way.
Be wary, all of you. I fear IMDb could start making Wikipedia look 100% credible.
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Labels: Awards, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Chaplin, Ferrer, Luck, Misc., Nolte, Oscars
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Thursday, June 23, 2011
We need Bob — now more than ever
By Edward Copeland
I miss Robert Altman. The cinematic world became less interesting when he left this universe. Not every film he made was a masterpiece (in fact some bordered on the unwatchable), but you knew that whatever he directed, the end product would not be a something that looked as if he were just going through the motions. I had no plans to write a piece like this but Friday marks the 40th anniversary of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, for which I will have a tribute. After re-watching the film, I listened to the DVD commentary by Altman and the film's co-producer David Foster, and it contained so many goodies, I knew I'd want to include them. Then again, Altman always recorded some of the best DVD commentaries around, this one recorded sometime after the release of Gosford Park. It gave so many great details not just about McCabe but about the business and, from Foster, Altman in general that I felt a separate post was required to prevent the movie tribute from becoming tremendously long. Besides, can there ever be too much written about Robert Altman?
Since this was a commentary on the making of 1971's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, much of what Altman and Foster had to say related to the making of the film and that in itself is fascinating. For Foster, who co-produced the movie with Mitchell Brower, it was the first film he ever produced — quite an auspicious beginning for a first-time producer to work with Altman, hot off the success of MASH on a film starring superstars and then off-screen lovers Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
As for the movie itself, it provides plenty of interesting details for Altman and Foster to discuss. For starters, the Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church that provides the setting of the film seems to grow as the film progresses and there is a very good reason for that: The production company built it from scratch. Under the supervision of production designer Leon Ericksen, who also worked with Altman on Images, Quintet and California Split, the crew built the various buildings of the town — McCabe's House of Fortune, the bathhouse, the ornate whorehouse — as the film was being made. It allowed the movie to be shot almost entirely in sequence. It also meant there were no extras in the film: the production crew (many of whom were Americans who fled to Vancouver to avoid the Vietnam draft) all dressed in period clothing so if any were caught on camera while they were building, they wouldn't look out of place. This black-and-white promotional shot by Warner Bros., of Presbyterian Church after the town was completed said that it stood for seven months during the filming of McCabe & Mrs. Miller but at the end of production, the entire set, which was used as housing for some of the cast and crew during filming, was destroyed. You can see at the center McCabe's gambling hall and in the distance the steeple of the church that gave the town its name.
When people discuss McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the one aspect that comes up most often, whether you love the film, hate it or have feelings that lie somewhere in between, is that magnificent look, conceived by renowned director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond, the great Hungarian-born cinematographer. Foster and Altman both explain in the commentary the process Zsigmond used to achieve the look. The d.p. used a process called "flashing the film." It's a risky procedure that calls for care and precision to pull off, but the results amaze when they work as they did in McCabe. As Foster explains it, Zsigmond would shoot the film and then expose the negative for a few minutes, just long enough for light to hit it. If done wrong, it can ruin the negative. When done right, as it was here, it produces that beautiful "antiquated, turn-of-the-century Daguerreotype look." As Altman elaborated, by doing it to the negative, it also prevented the studio from complaining or firing him since to do so would require re-shooting the whole thing. You gotta love the man. He always was thinking one step ahead of anyone who would try to screw up his vision. As Foster says about Altman:
"He is fun to be around. I just think he's a genius. He works outside the system. He's just too smart. He knows what he wants to do and how he gets them financed.…He's had a really great life doing what he wants to do. Living in London for a year, living in Paris for a year, living wherever he's shooting a movie."
Amazingly, Zsigmond did not receive an Oscar nomination for his cinematography, something Foster blames in the commentary on Zsigmond not being able to join the American Society of Cinematographers union yet. He eventually would get nominated, winning for Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and being nominated for The Deer Hunter, The River and Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, though some of his other best work went unrecognized such as Deliverance, Altman's The Long Goodbye, De Palma's Blow Out and Jack Nicholson's The Two Jakes. Even more astoundingly, the only Oscar nomination McCabe & Mrs. Miller received was for Christie as best actress.
While McCabe ostensibly is a Western, it's not your typical Western by any means and when he was talking with the studio about wardrobe, he told them specifically not to send him any of those big cowboy hats you usually see because they weren't historically accurate. The wardrobe woman argued they were, showing him photographic "proof." He asked her if she knew how much one of those plates cost back then. He told her that they were so expensive they only took photos of the unusual. These people were European immigrants who came here with the clothes off their back. He used that attitude in terms of accents as well.
"These people are all European. They didn't develop a Texas accent. They didn't destroy the English language as much as it is until George Bush came along. It took years for that."
When they did get the wardrobe, he told the cast to pick out what they wanted and how much they could take in terms of shirts, pants, etc. The more experienced actors, he says, jumped on more interesting, character-looking clothes. Of course, those garments usually were torn with holes and rips. Once they were dressed and assembled, Altman pointed out to them that the clothes they had picked out probably meant their character all died of pneumonia or other conditions during rough weathers in the tough climate and then pointed them to where they had put out patches and sewing kits and watched as the actors spent hours repairing the garments they had selected for their characters.
Altman always provides great attitudes and he offers one about another great director who is no longer here to provide us with if not always great at least challenging films that we could really use — Stanley Kubrick. It seems that after McCabe originally opened, Kubrick called Altman up, wondering how Zsigmond got a shot of Beatty lighting his cigar in the rain before he crosses a rope bridge. Altman told him that he actually filmed that shot himself because Zsigmond had to go back to L.A. that day and he only shot it once. Kubrick obsessed over how Altman knew that he had the shot, but Altman told him that he didn't know — he just assumed he did and moved on. The answer didn't really satisfy the meticulous Kubrick, Altman says.
When the movie gets to the part where the representatives for Harrison Shaughnessy, a mining company seeking to buy out McCabe's holdings in the town arrive in the form of Michael Murphy and Anthony Holland, Altman gives a particularly great comment that relates to many ways of life, but he was speaking to the process of filmmaking itself.
"The enemies wear different disguises but they're always the same persons. They're always the accountants and the bankers and the people who do this for money as opposed to…the people who do it because they really want to. The actors, all the artists involved like what they're doing. It's what they decided to do in their lives. It's a shame it's such an expensive process. You see the spirit of all this in theaters around the world."
Altman also expounds on how he always resisted musical scores for his films, preferring to go with indigenous music, and his original plan was just to have no music except for fiddles or other music that might be played in town. At some point though, years before he'd even thought about making McCabe & Mrs. Miller, he'd heard Leonard Cohen's debut album The Songs of Leonard Cohen and subconsciously, some of the songs
became stuck in his head. He was at a party during post-production when someone played the album and it clicked. He phoned his film Lou Lombardo and told him to place these songs in the film. Lombardo expressed skepticism since Cohen's album was released by Columbia and they were working for Warner Bros., that they'd be able to secure the rights. He phoned up Cohen and introduced himself and much to his surprise, Cohen expressed delight that Robert Altman was calling him. Altman assumed it was because of the success of MASH, but Cohen told him he didn't really like MASH but he loved Brewster McCloud. Cohen more than willingly agreed to let Altman use the three songs from the album — and at a reduced rate. As an additional part of the deal, Cohen even threw in that a certain percentage of any royalties from new sales of his album after the film came out would go to the movie. A letdown did come though. When Altman showed Cohen the completed film, Cohen didn't like it, but he kept his bargain, including recording a new guitar riff. Altman says it broke his heart. A couple of years later, he got a call from Cohen telling him that he doesn't know what was wrong with him that day, but he'd just watched McCabe again and he absolutely loved it. Altman counts it as one of his happiest moments.Even though McCabe & Mrs. Miller came early on in the process of the growing Altman legend as a great filmmaker and a critical darling, he already had embraced one of his trademarks: using 8-track recording of sound so you heard everything and dialogue often overlapped though, as Foster points out, he didn't invent overlapping dialogue — directors such as Howard Hawks had been using that since the 1930s and '40s. Altman's technique wasn't quite the same. He didn't just have people talking over one another he had other conversations going on simultaneously and background noises — you had to pay attention. As Foster says, "People perk up and strain to listen to try to hear." The subject gets Altman going passionately, not only for its truthfulness as a technique but about how little studios and exhibitors expect from audiences.
"You don't hear everything everybody says, but that's the way life is. The audiences have been spoiled…by television. A guy can…get up from a murder mystery…and come back (and ask)_'Did he kill her yet?' because he knows he won't miss anything because they are going to show it to him in closeup about three times. He can't miss anything because they just throw it in his face. The thing I like is to put them on warning very early that if you aren't going to pay attention, you're not gonna get it so you may just as well leave. It's like trying to attract the wrong audience. Many times, I go to a great extent to get an R rating that keeps the 14-year-olds out of the film. If the 14-year-olds come in, they don't like it.…It's very hard to get distributors to put their money up because that's their audience and they want the kids in. Well, I don't want the kids in, unless it's for kids."
While it's not uncommon for movies to begin filming without a finished script, with Altman it's because he viewed a screenplay, even if his name is on it, as something similar to a blueprint for a house. It gives you the idea, but the final product doesn't really look like that, Altman says, and that was the case with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which was based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. Its "screenplay" is credited to Altman and Brian McKay. "I really don't care very much about the story," Altman says, admitting that most stories end
up being pretty much the same, so the viewer will know them going in. "I think of it more like a painting, then I can mess around in the corners with the details." Also on the commentary, Foster says about Altman, "He told me something I've never forgotten. He used to say, 'Whatever an audience expects in a scene or the next scene, go in the entire opposite way just to throw them off.'" Years ago, when I was on the film junket circuit, I was lucky enough to meet Altman. It's hard when you are there as a working journalist not to be in awe in the presence of one of your idols (even if the junket was for Ready to Wear). He said something that stuck with me as well. I imagine Altman had that effect on a lot of people. He said he thought it always was better seeing a movie for a second time, because then you relax and stop thinking about what's going to happen next and just concentrate on the details. Hey, seeing McCabe twice worked on Leonard Cohen. Altman summed it up again at another point in the commentary."It's not the words that are important. That's too related to theater where you are trying to advance plot by the words. When you have closeups of people and faces that you can push right up into the audience, it's just better that the word comes from the moment or from the actors themselves."
Foster admits that the lack of box office success for McCabe & Mrs. Miller still puzzles him, despite all its critical acclaim. He does admit that part of him now wonders what would happen if they re-released it today, but he also confesses that he'd take box office over acclaim now, which makes sense when you look at his post-McCabe resume. His next feature after McCabe was Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, but after that: John Carpenter's The Thing, Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2, Running Scared, The Getaway remake, The River Wild, The Fog remake. In the planning stages, Foster plans to produce remakes of Short Circuit and The Thing (a remake of a remake) as well as T.J. Hooker: the Movie (I wish I were kidding).
The only thing Altman ever made that could be called a sequel was his Tanner on Tanner followup to Tanner '88. He never remade anything (and anyone leaping up to say The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, that was the play he filmed for television, not a remake of the movie The Caine Mutiny.) There just aren't enough artists out there anymore who just don't give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks and make the films they want to make. I miss you Bob, I really do. Altman says in the commentary what he would say in almost every commentary or interview in some variation. In my interview, he said, "I find that all of these films are like your children and you tend to love your least successful children the most" and he says something similar on this DVD. He also says, "To me the most successful film isn't any better than the least successful."
At the end of her glowing review of McCabe & Mrs. Miller in the July 3, 1971, issue of The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote:
"Will a large enough American public accept American movies that are delicate and understated and searching — movies that don't resolve all the feelings they touch, that don't aim at leaving us satisfied, the way a three-ring circus satisfies? Or do we accept such movies only from abroad, and then only a small group of us — enough to make a foreign film a hit but not enough to make an American film, which costs more, a hit?…Nobody knows whether this is changing — whether we're doomed to more of those 'hard-hitting, ruthlessly honest' that are themselves illustrations of the crudeness they attack. The question is always asked, 'Why aren't there American Bergmans or Fellinis?' Here is an American artist who has made a beautiful film. The question now is 'Will enough people buy tickets?'"
Where are the new American Altmans? Is it possible to even have another one in this corporate-run and dominated America? Or have all the creative forces migrated to cable television, finding it the last oasis of artistic freedom that remains?
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Labels: Altman, De Palma, Hawks, John Carpenter, Julie Christie, Kael, Kubrick, Misc., Music, Nicholson, Oscars, Peckinpah, Remakes, Sequels, Spielberg, Television, W. Beatty
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Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Fandor announces coordinated theatrical-digital premieres
Fandor, the online service which allows people to watch notable independent films on demand, announced today that it has partnered with distributors Kino Lorber and Microcinema International to begin presenting the first coordinated theatrical and digital release of movies. The first title to get this treatment actually will be a re-release — the 1967 classic David Holzman's Diary.
Directed by Jim McBride, who would later make such films as The Big Easy and Great Balls of Fire, was a mock documentary that starred Kit Carson as the title character, a documentary filmmaker who set out to discover himself by making a film turning the camera on himself. The highly praised satire earned raves and was added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1991.
Under this unique distribution method, David Holzman's Diary will open theatrically only at New York's Museum of Modern Art on June 15 where it will play through June 20. On the same day it opens at the museum, the film will become available for digital streaming on Fandor as part of the site's permanent collection of more than 3,000 titles.
"We see this as a way to provide broad geographic access to a film we're only showing in one location," Kino Lorber co-President Richard Lorber said.
David Holzman's Diary can be viewed for free on Fandor for anyone who signs up for a month's free trial. The service's regular subscription price is $10 a month.
"It's heartening to see Fandor figuring out how to give people access to good films using digital channels," film critic Roger Ebert said.
The second film to premiere this way will be Sleep Furiously, a documentary about a year in the life of a farming community in rural Wales. This film will have a slightly different release pattern. Tentatively scheduled for release July 29, Fandor will show the film for only the 24 hours that coincide with the first day of its New York theatrical release.
Fandor will then take the movie down from its site and add a 50-minute documentary from 2005 that served as the genesis for Sleep Furiously. The short, A Sketchbook for the Library Van, will remain in the Fandor catalog for subscribers who want to know more about Sleep Furiously.
"The reality is that digital distribution is here and now, not a future event," Fandor co-founder Dan Aronson said.
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Saturday, April 16, 2011
Three years, same spot
By Edward Copeland
I debated writing this for quite some time, mainly because I feared it would come off sounding as "woe is me" whining and who the hell wants to read that? However, with the circumstances of the past couple of months healthwise, I felt I might as well jot my thoughts down to explain to readers and virtual friends what has been going on.
As regular readers know, I have primary progressive multiple sclerosis. I also happen to be bedridden, though the M.S. really didn't cause that. A combination of an incompetent and greedy urologist and a hospital that didn't listen to me and begin physical therapy immediately despite my pleas of fear of losing what limited use of my legs I had when I was placed there for treatment of a severe bedsore that developed in a matter of days as a result of the botched surgery by the quack urologist.
Anyway, just wanted the background out of the way. Today is my birthday, the third I'm spending in this bed, in this room, without the use of my legs. The first year happened to be the one when I turned 40. As Eliot said, April is the cruelest month and it has been my personal history (and, to some extent, the history of the world) that many sad and bad things happen in the month of April.
Five years ago today was the last time I spoke to a dear friend of mine who died unexpectedly 11 days later. My beloved corgi Leland died two years ago April 29 and for most of the last year of her life, I wasn't really able to pet her. Going way back, for my 17th birthday my parents gave me one of their cars as a present. That car was soon totaled when someone rear-ended me. April 12, 1994, was the day my grandmother died. Though I was fortunate not to know anyone who perished, I lived in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building. April also was when Columbine happened (and my cousin and his family happened to live in Littleton, Colo., though his kids were little). More from April: Lincoln was assassinated. So was MLK. Hitler was born. Today also marks the fourth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. This week also will denote the first anniversary of the BP oil spill that wrecked the Gulf.
I didn't intend to get carried away and turn this into April's worst hits (on the plus side, I've always liked that I was exactly 80 years younger to the day as Charlie Chaplin). What I originally intended to write about here was to talk about what's going on with me now. One of the general side effects associated with M.S. is fatigue and I've been feeling it more and more, to the point that it's hard for me to stay awake during the day. My doctor prescribed me Adderall, but even with that I find myself nodding off. I can't write as quickly as I used to and, except for a couple of faithful contributors such as VenetianBlond, Squish and, most especially, Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. and J.D. (who have gone above and beyond the call of duty) and guest writers such as Sheila O'Malley, Paul Kraly and Adam Zanzie, I haven't had a lot of help in picking up the slack from my slowed output.
I always like to try to have something new up Monday through Friday, but those days seem long gone. It's taking me too long to get things done. Mildred Pierce took up a lot of my time and let's just say Elizabeth Taylor picked the worst possible time on the worst possible day on the worst possible week to die. It happened to be a day when my caregiver comes in the morning for bathing and other things and, despite my Adderall, I kept dozing until 1 p.m. in the afternoon. By the time I finally was awake enough to start, it took me more than four hours to write her appreciation. The following day, I slept until 11 a.m., got up for about an hour and a half until my parents found me asleep at the computer, and then slept again until 5 p.m. I woke up at 3:30 p.m. the day Sidney Lumet died. At least he only took a little more than an hour and a half to write, but there weren't eight marriages to work in.
With long-term projects and the aforementioned Mildred Pierce and a constant influx of HBO documentaries, my Netflix movies tend to gather dust. Then, if I do get to watch them and even like one (such as Easy A) I'm too wiped to write about it. I just don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep the blog going. I know the days of daily content are over. There are other matters involving a crooked doctor trying to scam me that I won't go into as well as watching the continuing physical deterioration of my aging parents that just adds to my general April ennui and depression over all things, especially the prospect that the blog could be nearing its final moments and my purpose for perpetuation with it. To make matters worse, my laptop keeps acting screwier and screwier and if something happens to it, there won't be money to fix or replace it.
Sorry for such a bummer of a post, but I felt I should vent for myself and should let the blogosphere know in the event ECOF suddenly fell silent. I will keep trying to produce as much as I can (A new post is complete for Monday) and I hope my contributors and guest writers will keep delivering their quality content as well, for which I am very grateful. I hope I will be able to do recaps of the second season of Treme, less haphazardly than I did the first, but I face two challenges: my fatigue and the addition of Jon Seda to the cast. Blech.
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Labels: Chaplin, Jennifer, Liz, Lumet, Misc., Netflix, Treme
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Friday, September 10, 2010
A note of thanks
By Edward Copeland
I felt that I owed all of you out there who sent me your best wishes either through comments on my cry for help post on Aug. 26, e-mail or on Facebook, guided here either by your normal reading of the blog or Roger Ebert's tweet on Twiter and all the various retweets or his post on his Facebook page. I can't say my situation is much different than when I wrote my post, but all the show of support has been a great help in lifting my spirits. Each day still is a struggle and it's easy to figuratively knock me down again: an unreturned message; a broken pledge, etc.
I would name you all, but I'd be afraid I'd leave someone out and some of the comments were anonymous, which under normal circumstances I wouldn't allow, but I made exceptions in this case because of what they said.
Again, thank you all for giving me a boost when I really needed it. It helped me finish two big projects I was afraid I wouldn't complete or that I'd end up doing a piss-poor job on, but your kindness helped me keep going and get a second wind.
Thank you all for indulging my tell all. I hope I can keep this place up and running for as long as I can. I'm always looking to add to my stable of contributors, so if anyone has any experience or interest contact me. It's good to know there's an audience out there who cares so much that I keep trying against all odds.
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Thursday, September 09, 2010
And the Summer MELTS Away Beautifully
By M.A. Peel
I don’t follow the dance world, but I was happy to connect with it recently because Marcy Schlissel who owns and runs the pilates studio I go to, Body in Motion, was performing in Noemie LaFrance’s site-specific dance installation, MELT.
To describe the piece reads like a Salvador Dali painting: the site is the Salt Pile (where the city stores mounds of salt, patiently waiting for snow season), under the Manhattan Bridge. The salt is under an open-sided shed within a large chain-fenced area, the south side of which has a huge concrete wall. On this wall are hanging eight chairs, anchored by hooking onto the top (think of over-the-door hooks for wreaths), of varying heights.
From LaFrance’s Sens Production website:
“Eight dancers perched on a wall and wrapped in sculptural beeswax and lanolin costumes are slowly melting away, progressing in euphoria and exhaustion as if approaching the sun, melting until their souls escape their ephemeral bodies and disintegrate into light.”
The lanolin makes their bodies shine — it’s what is actually melting from them onto the wall.
My first impression of the site was Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days — that stage has piles of sand and Winnie, buried up to her waist. Alastair Macauley of the NY Times had the same thought:
“‘Why then just close the eyes — and wait for the day to come — the happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees,” says Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, up to her waist in earth. Later she mentions “this hellish sun” to whose light she is exposed. It is by no means sure that the day of eventual melting will indeed be happy.’ Winnie’s words come to mind while watching Melt.”
(Ah, memories of Fiona Shaw as Winnie at BAM.)
Macauley likes the picturesque nature of the piece, but doesn’t like the whole. “As theater, however, it’s tedious. . . . There’s no real drama in the changes or contrasts of movement. For more than half an hour, a single idea is on display.”
I agree that there is not a clear narrative idea on display, but it is not tedious at all.
It was a satisfying experience all around: being in that strange, sweet spot under the Manhattan Bridge, hearing the F train loudly rumbling above; the presence of the salt pile itself — every New Yorker knows of its importance after a blizzard. The sky turned from a vibrant cyan when they started to night, complete with the Evening star. The piece had interesting undulations—-the first time the dancers snapped to a complete horizontal pose was alarming. There is a sense of frustration and defiance in the motion: the women's movements are restrained by their circumstances. In the energy in their leg and arm movements you feel that they long to move more freely, but since that's not possible, they do the most with what they can. A perfect haiku for life.
Lighting creates moments of shadow and darkness between the blinding moments, the electronic crickets bring the sense of the country in mid August. There are flashes of synchronized swimming, and solo moments. One thing our experience did not include was personal meltings. It was a coolish 70 degrees when the piece started.
MELT was first conceived and performed for the Black and White gallery in Brooklyn in 2003 for three dancers. From those pictures, it’s easy to see how much it has developed and deepened, and The Salt Pile has to be its prime site. LaFrance is reworking another earlier work, Rapture, that she staged for two aerial dancers on the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center/Annandale-on Hudson. The new piece will be performed on Frank Gehry building around the world. I’m really looking forward to seeing it at the IAC building.
This was cross-posted at M.A. Peel originally on Sept. 5. Photos by Peel except for yellow one which is by Guy LaFrance. Performances have been extended until Sept. 12
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Not my usual kind of post
By Edward Copeland
With some rare exceptions, I try to keep this blog clear of non-entertainment-related posts, mostly because that's not why I think this blog exists but also because I suspect that people don't come here to read about me. I know I wouldn't. I've usually restricted that sort of thing to Facebook notes. There have been exceptions, but today I can't help myself. No reviews, analysis or critiques today, at least in the realm of entertainment, and if this holds no interest for you, I suggest you move along right now.
There have been exceptions, as I mentioned, that deviated from my purely entertainment focus. Early on in this blog's history, I was hit with one of the most painful moments of my life when I lost a dear friend and felt compelled to write about her to explain my sudden absence from the blogosphere.
When medical incompetence placed me in hospitals for four months, mostly without computer access, when I did get a chance to get online I felt compelled to post an explanation for my sudden and unexplained disappearance.
During the 2008 election, I was hurt when I had to break off one of my longest friendships because while I'm perfectly able to have friendships with people who differ with me politically, he'd gone off the deep end in a way that sort of previewed the way some of the scariest and most extreme anti-Obama protesters behave (and this was before the election). I had to vent, out of sadness and fear for what was happening to political discourse in this country.
Finally, when a new turn in my health and its treatment made it appear that typing on the computer and watching TV would be a near impossibility, I wrote a sad farewell, anticipating another blog hiatus. Luckily, that turned out to be a solvable problem that did not last long.
Alas, this post will be my most personal. It will be full of sadness and anger and I feel I must use this forum to scream to the world my frustrations: with the deplorable health care system in our country, the relationship with my father and to beat up on myself for mistakes that I've made. Even if no one at all is out there reading this, I must work my way through this for myself because I'm at a particularly low point in my life and I feel as if I have more virtual friends and allies out there in the blogosphere than I do in real life, not that I have much of a real life anymore.
I've alluded often here to my health, but have never been too explicit, so I thought for purposes of this piece, I would be. In January 2005, I was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis or, as I refer to it now, the good 'ol days. I still was able to work full-time for three years after my diagnosis, though I did have to use a wheelchair, but I could walk short distances, especially with a walker, and could get out of bed on my own, for instance, to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The M.S. actually preceded the start of this blog and I never even alluded to it for a long time because I felt it made no difference. The only reason I finally had to quit work and go on long-term disability was that the fatigue factor got to be too much and I just couldn't last through an eight-hour shift without taking breaks. I also began enduring severe headaches that got in the way of my focus, which didn't go well with my job as a copy editor. I might miss something important or write bad headlines.
The worst part of primary progressive M.S. is that it's one of the rarest forms of M.S. There aren't periods of remission as there are in the more common types. Sometimes the disease's progression will plateau, but it never gets better. It just gets worse and no drugs have been found to successfully treat it. However, it wasn't M.S. that made me bedridden. It was a greedy and incompetent urologist.
All my life I've had bladder problems. Well into my childhood, I was a bedwetter, though that eventually stopped. Unfortunately, I got hooked up with a cut-happy urologist who pawned most of his patients off on his P.A. (Rule of thumb: 9 out of 10 doctors who have PAs are in it for the money.) so he could spend more time on surgery in a center his surgical group owned so he could make even more money. He pressured me into installing a suprapubic cathether, saying my bladder had failed. If I'd been on my game, I should have said, "Wait. I've had these problems all my life. Let's take some tests." However, with additional pressure from my father, we had the surgery. It started going wrong that very first night. (The surgery occurred May 5, 2008. Following, we got a form sheet with no details on how to dress the wound a followup appointment set for JULY 1!) After 8 days of struggle, Dr. Greed finally suggested we go to an ER. When firemen and paramedics lifted me off the bed, we discovered in that short of time I had developed a bedsore on my backside so large you could shove two fists in it.
I'm sparing you all the details of the hospital stays because I have other things I'd rather get to, but needless to say it led to stays at two hospitals for about four months and, despite my pleadings at both places, neither did much to work on my legs to get them going again and if you don't start trying to get therapy started on legs, even if you were a marathon runner, let alone someone such as myself, you lose them forever, which is what has happened to me. Of course, despite all the doctors, nurses and physical therapists who have said as much to my father, he's so nuts he still thinks that if I had therapy that somehow they'd work again and it's all my fault when the fault lies with the understaffed, underpaid, horrible health care system most Americans have to take part in. If you have the money, you can get the best. If you don't, you get what I get. During the whole health care debate, while I think it's better to have health insurance than not, part of me always was thinking: Be careful what you wish for because now people might have insurance, but they'll be subject to an awful system that's as likely to kill them as not having insurance would. Read this horror story that was in The New York Times earlier this week.
One other brief note about Dr. Greed: He decided that I had to have a second surgery to implant a new suprapubic catheter and clear out all the calcium deposits that had wrapped themselves around the first one. After I eventually fired him and got a new urologist, I asked the new guy what to do to stop the calcium deposits, which tended to clog my foley tube and lead to bladder and kidney stones. He just advised drinking lots of water. One day, it finally dawned on me: It's calcium. Cut out milk and as much calcium as possible. I did and it was never a problem again. Of course, the other doctor wouldn't have suggested that because it's not in a doctor's financial interest to get people well: There's no money in that. It makes me wonder that if Dr. Greed had bothered to X-ray my bladder and had seen the calcium before and I'd remembered my lifelong problems and reasoned the calcium out earlier, maybe I'd have deduced the reason my bladder wouldn't empty wasn't that it was failing but that it was blocked by the calcium deposits. I could have avoided the whole mess and I wouldn't be stuck in a bed right now. Instead, my still somewhat active life ceased before I was 40.
What's past is past. Now I must get to the personal stuff going on right now, stuff I wish someone out there could help me with but that I know you can't. My primary caregivers are my aging parents, 73 and 68 respectively. My father just had a hip replacement and my mom suffers from mini-strokes and gets around on a walker. When they are gone, I'm shit out of luck. What little savings I have is fast disappearing as I pay for a caregiver 11 hours a day to help move me around, bathe me, etc. Basically, all nonmedical stuff, which they are not allowed to do. My mom has been doing that since February (with little training, though I'd urged my dad to show her how to do things when I came home also) when my father threw a fit and went insane because I refused to go into a hospital for in-patient physical therapy because he still refuses to accept that a) it does no good at this point b) that it's not like a hotel you just check into and since the doctor refused to sign off on it, the insurance wouldn't have approved it anyway and c) every time I go into a hospital, I get worse because they are essentially germ factories and M.S. gives me a weakened immune system, which makes me more susceptible to infection, which I've always caught some kind of when I've had a hospital stay.
He went off on a trip (this was pre-hip replacement) anyway. Shortly after, we lost our caregiver because he went back to college and his agency dropped us, saying none of their other workers would take our case which we learned was because of the way my father mistreated their staff and the caregiver. When the hip replacement came up, he wanted the in-patient thing, ignoring all that, and I hired a new caregiving agency (which we've learned he already has a bad reputation with as "being mean"). As soon as he was given the go-ahead to drive, he took off again to go to a family reunion to meet people he'd never met in his life and he kept extending his trip until the van needed to cart me around and the only vehicle we had broke down and he finally came back. After my mom, who will remember how he yells at us and mistreats us and then forget it an hour later got mad enough to hang up on him one night, I finally got her to talk to her brother to tell him the truth about our situation here. He got mad and called my dad who said he wouldn't yell anymore.
Unfortunately, I saw through him. He immediately set about doing all sorts of improvements to the house, which I knew he was doing as a pretext to putting it up for sale. Once, during one of our fights a long time ago, he admitted that he and my mom had been having marital problems since he'd had prostate cancer a decade ago — long before I ever got sick or lived with them. I understand his need for a break, but not for delusions or lying to people about my state (one of his friends called and yelled at me under the mistaken impression that I could get myself out of bed but simply chose not to do it). Never mind that one of the very first things we learned about M.S. was that stress exacerbates the symptoms.
Yesterday, he comes into my room and does what I've been waiting for and what I warned my mom would be coming. He asked if I'd be willing to do the in-patient physical therapy thing for two weeks so he and mom could go to his high school reunion. I told him once again it wouldn't be approved that it's not like a hotel and he suggested that we didn't have to tell them that's why. I suggested finding someone else to stay with me here. He said he was going and then was going to look around Indianapolis for places and when he got back, he was putting the house up for sale and we were moving. Never mind that he bought my mom a ticket for this reunion without asking and she didn't want to go because of the long car ride OR that she's told him repeatedly that she had no intention of moving back to Indianapolis because of the winters. There's also the matter that because of my still not fully healed wound, I'm not supposed to be sitting upright for more than two hours at a time, how am I supposed to travel long distances? Then again, he stopped caring a long time ago. My mother and I are nothing but burdens to him. It's terrible to experience the transformation of someone who has done so much for you into some you can't stand the sight of. I don't know if he just has a psychological problem or there is something physiological wrong with his brain.
My mom has even admitted in the past she's not sure she loves him anymore and yesterday that marrying him was a mistake, which I have to agree. It spawned me and outside of my online presence, this is not a life, especially when you add in doctors who don't listen or care when you are pointing things out to them or if you are in pain and ask for convenience sake that a prescription be able to be filled one day earlier to avoid being in pain for hours. Do they fear I'll become a drug addict? It's not like I can drive under the influence. I'm sure there are doctors out there who care about their patients more than their portfolios and do really good jobs. If you find him or her, please send me their name. The moment health care became a for-profit business in this country, it was over for everyone and it will never be fixed and we can't just blame evil health insurance companies for that.
There are the hospitals and doctors that purposely and fraudulently bill people. One nurse who worked on my wound told me of another patient, a 72-year-old woman, who was surprised to find on her hospital bill charges relating to her maternity and labor costs. I paid two bills to a hospital and the checks cleared. Two months later, I got the same two bills again along with a note saying they were being referred to a collection agency for nonpayment. In 2008 and 2009, we caught $24,000 and $22,000 in billing errors respectively. In all the talks of health care reform, no one brought up reforming hospitals in terms of quality or fraud. I'm lucky. I haven't had as many insurance problems as others, but they are far from the only villains. In fact, one case manager came to the rescue when one of the hospitals was trying to lie and kick me out on the streets when my house was unprepared. Unfortunately, like most things in this country, quality health care always will be something only available to the rich and the elected.
At the beginning of this month, I joined the ranks of Medicare. I'd hoped this would help pay for my caregiver, which is not covered by private insurance. Alas, no. Even though they say the cover those sorts of things for the homebound, Medicare goes by visits, not hours, regardless of the fact that my wound doctor wants me to be turned every two hours or so. Doctors' orders don't matter. Should have known. They seldom mattered when I was in the purposely understaffed hospitals either.
Anyway, back to my nonhealth home problems. This blog really is the only semblance of a life I have left and my dad wants to destroy it and remove from the place where I have a few friends who see me and doctors (he still doesn't get that the private insurance won't transfer). I've been lucky to have good contributors to help fill the gaps since I can't post every day myself. I'm sure I annoy them by trying to get them to turn stuff in early, but it's the M.S. that makes it necessary and I can't stay up as late as I used to so I can edit and code things. Some past contributors have just failed to deliver entirely and it just becomes another letdown in a life that now seems to be nothing but letdowns. Depression may make for great art but it's not ideal for criticism and analysis. Without the blog and the setup I have where I am now, I probably will cease to exist, figuratively and perhaps literally. What little modicum of happiness I have be damned.
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Labels: Misc.
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Friday, August 06, 2010
The Gospel According to George Carlin
By Edward Copeland
One of the brilliant George Carlin's final routines contained as much truth as many of his entire sets combined. This clip from the final HBO special keeps being removed, but many are posting it everywhere they can because it speaks more powerfully now more than ever, especially how the rich and powerful despise critical thinking. We miss you, George.
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One of the brilliant George Carlin's final routines contained as much truth as many of his entire sets combined. This clip from the final HBO special keeps being removed, but many are posting it everywhere they can because it speaks more powerfully now more than ever, especially how the rich and powerful despise critical thinking. We miss you, George.
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Monday, June 28, 2010
I'm always honored but...
By Edward Copeland
Leopard13 of Lazy Thoughts From a Boomer has chosen to bestow upon me the Versatile Blogger Award. As always, when I receive one of these honors, I'm most grateful, it just gets harder to complete the requirements that come with the reward. Here are the rules:
•Thank the person who gave you this award (That part is easy enough. Mission accomplished. Thanks again Leopard).
•Share 7 things about yourself (Well, I can come up with those.)
•Pass the award along to 15 who you have recently discovered and who you think fantastic for whatever reason (This is the tricky part for me. With my health the way it is, I don't surf the way I used to, so I'm not always discovering new sites and it always feel fake if I keep rewarding people I already know, but I'll give it a whirl, but 15 is an awfully high number.)
•Contact the blogs you picked and let them know about the award. (If I can get the 15, this is not a problem.)
1. While I'm always grateful for awards, I'd much rather be writing.
2. I still can't believe people liked Avatar.
3. I wish I could still see movies in theaters.
4. However, it sure as hell isn't for the 3D scam.
5. I miss seeing Broadway shows, but boy are they pricing themselves out of existence.
6. For the most part, anyone of either party who has served in either house of Congress for more than two terms needs to go home.
7. It sounds arrogant, but if I could run a lot of things right from my bedroom, I think this country would be much better off, but who listens to me?
So, here is my best shot. I hope I'm not giving people repeat awards, but I'll be lucky if I get to 15 who are new to me in the first place, so I can't take the time to avoid duplication.
The Fine Cut
Flickers
The Frame
Lilok Pelikula Sculpting Cinema
Mind of a Suspicious Kind
Minute A Day About Movies
My Life at 24 Frames Per Second
The Nomadic Chronicles
Not Just Movies
The One-Line Review
Peel Slowly
Ray Sawhill
She Blogged By Night
Tomato Nation
Watching Treme
Labels: Misc.
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Friday, June 18, 2010
The devaluation of history and culture
By Edward Copeland
There's a funny anecdote that I tell frequently about when a friend and I were perusing Blockbuster late one night a long time ago, trying to find some classic we hadn't seen, to rent. This was so long ago, there were no such things as DVDs and I even held my nose and didn't worry about the lack of proper aspect ratio (for a good read on the topic, check out this piece by Glenn Kenny). As we searched, a group of young teens also searched for a rental, dissatisfied with the remnants in the new releases, when one of the young men suggested "the older movie" Apocalypse Now. One of the young women in the group, in complete seriousness, asked, "Is that in color?"
I don't know if the answer had been yes if that would have ruled out Coppola's film right then, but there always has been a tendency among every generation to act as if anything that happened outside of their lifespan didn't really count, but it appears to me to have grown worse, egged on by magazines such as Entertainment Weekly which compiles lists that do their best to avoid including anything that occurred prior to the publication's existence, justifying it by saying they rely on a "new canon" instead of confirming what I suspect is the real reason for the unforgivable omissions: young writers who lack a suitable cultural education to draw from when they compile such lists.
In my freshman year of college, I had an intro to journalism class where the professor on the first day, gave us a quiz with a list of titles and wanted us to fill in the authors. It covered all mediums and wasn't for a grade, he just wanted a sense of what we knew. I tend to write the first thing that comes to my mind so when I got to the title The Stranger, I naturally wrote Orson Welles instead of the Albert Camus he was seeking, though I'd argue that Billy Joel might have been an acceptable response as well.
The U.S. educational system has degenerated enough when it comes to teaching proper knowledge of history, but cultural education isn't even taken seriously as something that needs to be taught, let alone is. It's high time that we not only turn out students who know the basics (and we're not that great at that either) but we have to emphasize cultural literacy as well and it's high time that we recognize that great films should be required learning alongside the classic works of written literature.
Forgive me if this rambles at times and seems to lack cohesion or a sense of direction. I had the idea for a certain piece early in the week, it soon morphed into something else and I had intended to work on it awhile before I posted it, but I lacked any other copy to publish today, so I put it in the best shape I could in a short amount of time. If I'd given myself more time, I probably would be happier with it, but I always tend to be my harshest critic.
It's easy to dismiss the idea of requiring a basic film education, given that it is a popular medium and produces a lot of junk, but the fact that many best sellers aren't worth the paper they are printed on (or the digital reader they scroll on)doesn't diminish the written word as a whole, especially the many centuries of great works that had nothing to do with the Twilight series. I'm still shocked and appalled when I run into people my age or older who haven't seen films such as Casablanca. What have they been doing for their first four decades or more?
Recently, Jim Emerson wrote at his Scanners blog in an entry titled "Who Killed the Movies?" of a certain existential fatigue he was experiencing, one that is not uncommon to movie lovers and especially those who make their living as critics and often have no say in what films they have to take in, from the sublime to the
ridiculous. I've felt that way before at many points in my life, especially when I was younger and for some reason felt it was my duty to try to see EVERYTHING, spurned on by a numbers contest with a high school friend over who could see more movies in one year. It got out of hand when he got a job at a movie theater and started using the perk of being able to get in to free movies even at other theaters and would skip school to attend morning critic screenings. It made me mad because of his unfair advantage, but also because I realized I was sitting through such unbelievable garbage just to boost numbers. The real depressions would come later when I was writing reviews for publications and I wasn't necessarily picking the films I had to review and, being the low man on the totem pole, ended up with a lot of the turkeys. Sure, they were free and I got my revenge in print, but it's a high price to pay for lowering the collective value of a medium I love. Still, once I stumbled upon a good one, it would lift my spirits enough to keep going and would never seriously harm my belief that film is a great artistic medium, even when wasted.It's been decades since I was in high school, but they did make a point of introducing us to a lot of the important works of Western Literature (yes, anything outside of Europe got short shrift, but considering where things have degenerated now, I feel fortunate we got what we did). Three out of four years of high
school we were taught a Shakespeare play (Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar and either MacBeth or Hamlet, depending whether or not you were in the honors English class). We went over the top poems and poets (as well as The Bard's sonnets), Chaucer and we did get some of the top novels such as Twain's Tom Sawyer, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. We even got to read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Unfortunately, we also got some real clunkers such as Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, A Separate Peace by John Knowles and the torturous I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven, the only book I've ever fallen asleep reading while sitting up in a classroom desk. We also struggled through James Fenimore Cooper's The Unvanquished. I wonder what they teach now. I do know that in the case of myself and many of my friends, unless you took courses in college and, even then, if that wasn't your course of study, it was up to you to seek out the classics. It's always been the case that you have to truly educate yourself in film, but sadly that's also true with much of literature because our society places so little value on it.Of course, even history is up for grabs now, when you have politically biased boards of education such as the one in Texas seeking to rewrite history to match their own ideology instead of just teaching children what
really happened. Who was that Thomas Jefferson guy again? What slave trade? Those people abducted from Africa were just part of a trade program involving rum and molasses. Joe McCarthy was vindicated and a hero! The Texas outrage, treating history as something that is subjective instead of objective, reminds me of the quote by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." It also had me thinking back to my pre-college days and the silliness of standardized tests such as the ACT divided into math, science, English and reading. Nowhere is there a section that finds it important that incoming college students have even a rudimentary knowledge of history or literature of any kind. The SAT even blows off science, just concentrating on math, critical reading and writing. To show you how silly the multiple choice ACT was, I scored highest in the science section, which really was my weakest school subject. Of course, if education standards start going the way of Texas, I guess science and facts won't matter much anymore anyway, unless a burst of rationality breaks out somewhere.
Now, I won't even pretend to hold the answers as to how to improve this country's piss-poor knowledge of history. It's hard to get them interested or educated about current events when the so-called cable news networks will drop all coverage of other, important news because Michael Jackson inevitably drops dead about 15 years after most people expected to hear that news at any time. News priorities have gone completely haywire. The newspaper I used to work for actually had a larger Page One spread on the "been waiting for that shoe to drop" death of Anna Nicole Smith than it did on Gerald Ford. When I was in elementary school, we actually had a current events contest provided by a local TV station and most students knew what was going on. In high school, my American history teacher had her students read the local paper and then gave current event quizzes once a month for extra credit. One of the questions would always be the current unemployment rate. Does that happen anywhere now? As newspapers die, could it?
However, as far as trying to seriously create a mass curriculum on the history of the film, on that I do have some ideas. Obviously, all opinions on a movie's worth are subjective, but that applies to literature as well and there is no reason that some titles can't be agreed to and rise above petty critical fights. Besides, encouraging students to think for themselves can never be a bad thing, no matter what Texans and many home-school advocates think. A good place to start might be the Library of
Congress' National Film Registry. Since its authorization in 1988, it has added 525 titles worth preservation by the library to ensure that future generations will have access to important films. There are some unusual choices contained in there, but there also are a lot of movies that most would agree everyone should have some familiarity with: All About Eve, All Quiet on the Western Front, American Graffiti, Annie Hall, The Apartment, Back to the Future, The Bank Dick, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Birth of a Nation, Bonnie and Clyde, Casablanca, Chinatown, Citizen Kane, City Lights, The Crowd, Do the Right Thing, Dog Day Afternoon, Dr. Strangelove, Duck Soup and many, many more with a list that grows longer each year. It also includes important animated works and newsreel footage and other moving images such as the Zapruder film and the Why We Fight series from World War II (I knew I could sneak some history in there). What it does lack is anything that isn't American and that is something that would have to be corrected in any serious curriculum, unless universities get exclusive reign over studies of foreign films.Of course, no curriculum could cover all the films anyway and since they include more recent films as well, you have to assume that the close-minded, busybody parents among us would object to many titles. Hell, if titles such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1984, Call of the Wild, To Kill a Mockingbird and most works of Ernest Hemingway still are routinely challenged as unsuitable reading material for students, you can just imagine the shitstorm some of the titles on the National Film Registry would raise. I mean, some have R ratings. I remember in ninth grade after we read Romeo & Juliet, we watched Franco Zeffirelli's film version and at the crucial point, my teacher had to stand in front of the TV set to spare us the traumatizing sight of Olivia Hussey's bare bosom.
There would be plenty of possibilities for subject synergy: read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and then watch Martin Scorsese's extremely faithful film version and discuss the two mediums. When studying Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan, see how it relates to Welles' Citizen Kane. On the historical side, you could use Kane's fictional take on William Randolph Hearst to lead into a discussion of how the real Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer used their papers to pump up the Spanish-American War. Also for history, use newsreel footage of parts of the Why We Fight series to accompany teaching of World War II. With a kindly "fuck you" to Texas, use real footage of the McCarthy hearings and Edward R. Murrow's dismantling of the disgraced demagogue on the airwaves. Imagine the positive press corporate sponsors could receive by helping to subsidize the material. Believe it or not, television has worthy culture as well.
Now, I do not want to leave the impression that I'm just a cranky middle-age man raging against those young vulgarians who dismiss things that don't relate to them. In many ways, it isn't their fault, because the people
with the money who market to them design it to be that way and the youth certainly can't be blamed for the failures of the education system. Why should new generations seek out films that are 20 or 25 years old when Hollywood produces unnecessary remakes of so many of them that soon after the original? A Nightmare on Elm Street came out all the way in 1984 — did they have color then? (OK, neither film should be part of public education, but you see my point.) Besides, I've run into many a person older than myself who are ignorant of history and culture and have no excuse. Years ago, at a newspaper I used to work for, we were going over the stories at the news meeting and one that was mentioned was that we would be covering a speech that night by Kurt Vonnegut. A senior editor who is about 15 years older than me literally had no idea who Vonnegut was. This was a man who came of age and went to college in the 1960s and the 1970s, yet a literary icon such as Vonnegut drew a blank. I wish I could say that man and that story were isolated incidents, but I've encountered many older than me that didn't know things that they should — and many of these were supposed journalists in the news business who had an appalling lack of information about recent historical events. One thing that drew me to journalism is that I'm a news junkie, but I was amazed how few news junkies existed in the various newsrooms in which I worked. Why did they even choose the career? No wonder news is dying.The biggest problem to the idea of teaching film as literature to public school students really extends beyond the rabblerousing of cranks and the resistance of educators is the state of our nation's economy. Teachers are losing their jobs across the country and school districts are being forced to make budget cuts and, inevitably, among the first things to go are arts programs and there's no doubt in my mind that even if film education was considered part of English education, the requisite costs would doom the idea. Doesn't that make it an excellent opportunity for the movie industry to give something back? If they helped with the study materials and films themselves, what a lucrative marketing tool they could have. Imagine if a teacher assigned a weekend homework assignment of seeing a certain film at a theater and a studio provided vouchers for the students so they didn't have to pay. Granted, one would hope it would be a worthy film and not the latest Transformers, but you get the idea. How about encouraging the industry to do more mass re-releases like they used to do? Remember when Disney used to bring back their classics every seven years or so. Certainly, a plethora of serious writings exist on most important films to help teachers along.
The idea I'm suggesting is not a full-blown film study course of the type you would take in college, but just of integrating the medium into the studies of other literary works you learn (or damn well should be learning) before you graduate high school. The value that seems to have been placed in this country of late on ignorance, spurned on by our political leaders, is truly frightening. It's truly outrageous how freely misinformation is allowed to be spread because it's to the gain of both parties and the news media either is too lazy or ignorant to call them on it. How many times do you hear it repeated that the IRS will fine you if you do not purchase health insurance under the new health care reform when the legislation specifically prohibits any punitive measures. The GOP continues to spread the lie to get people angry and the Democrats let them because they fear if the truth was widely known, the plan falls apart because people won't purchase the insurance. Both parties should be ashamed, but do politicians know what shame is anymore? As columnist Mark Shields once said, "Stupidity is not a victimless crime."
Children need to be taught more than just how to score well on a test on the basics, they need to know where we came from and I'm not talking about evolution. You know the saying: Those who do not learn from history...
While Hollywood certainly churns out a lot of crap, the worldwide film industry throughout its history has produced some exquisite works of art that deserve to stand alongside the greatest works of written literature. A better educated populace, even in areas of culture, can be the first serious step in dealing with the politicians who treat us like morons and the ignorant masses who fear that their children and others might form their own ideas and the ability for critical thought.
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Labels: Books, Coppola, Criticism, Disney, Hemingway, Misc., Scorsese, Shakespeare, Television, Twain, Vonnegut, Welles
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