Jean-Isidore Isou (1925-2007): Venom and Eternity
It is sometimes hard to remember that there was a time when Bosley Crowther routinely used to attack any novel or daring new film release, such as Cassavetes’ Shadows, or that Hilton Kramer had the final say about what passed as art in the New York Times. So it takes a certain cultural adjustment now […]
A Skeptical View of YouTube
Last week a number of folks on the "filmies" listserv tried to goad me into uploading my early films on YouTube as a way of gaining additional visibility. Karina Longworth at SpoutBlog only yesterday wrote: "Right now, YouTube is the closest thing we have to a comprehensive online archive of 20th century culture." Since virtually everyone seems […]
Ingmar Bergman RIP
When I was in college, I was already familiar with the major Bergman films – The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence – through various film society screenings. I spent a good part of one summer attending a retrospective of Bergman’s work at MoMA, which […]
Some Notes on Screenwriting
Before I had my own weblog, Mystery Man on Film commented about the brief excerpt from my book that I posted on my Web site: “Then the chapter went on to talk about how Gus Van Sant threw out the screenplay for Elephant and just improvised and shot it using an outline. I fail to […]
Film and Video at the 52nd Venice Biennale
Jerry Saltz, the New York Magazine art critic, whose columns also appear on artnet, apparently boycotted the openings of Documenta and Venice this year. In his most recent column he suggests that these large international exhibitions are “outmoded," arguing that biennial culture leads to “copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking." […]
Film and Video at Documenta 12
The confluence of the Venice Biennale and Documenta – the two largest and most important international art exhibitions in the world – occurs only every ten years, making it possible to compare the two major simultaneously-held events. Having attended Francesco Bonami’s “Dreams and Conflicts" Venice Biennale four years ago and Documenta 11 five years ago, […]
Sundance 608 Surcharge
I just returned from spending eight days at the two major art exhibitions: the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Germany. While I was away, Isthmus, the alternative weekly paper, did an article about the surcharge at the recently opened Sundance 608 multiplex here in Madison, indicating that it continues to be a major problem with […]
Charles Burnett: To Sleep With Anger
In thinking about a topic for “The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon" on William Speruzzi’s [This Savage Art], I felt somewhat at a loss because I prefer to write about films I really like rather than films that I consider aesthetic failures. As a result, I’ve decided to interpret “ambitious failure" to include a really terrific film that […]