Till We Meet Again, in Some Screening Room in the Dark
From: Dana Stevens
To: Roger Ebert, Dan Kois, Wesley Morris, and Stephanie ZacharekPosted Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010, at 5:59 PM ETSee a Magnum Photos gallery celebrating moviegoing.
Dear All,
We could keep this going all year if we were to take things on a movie-by-movie basis. (In re Inglourious Basterds, Wesley is right: The ending sucks enough to throw into shadow much of the incandescence that preceded it. In re Antichrist, Stephanie is wrong; for once, the von Trier-is-a-sick-misogynist line of thinking holds up just fine.) But the bedrock truth of Movie Club is that, to quote Billie Holiday, "Right or wrong don't matter/ When you're with me, sweet." And that's not just some bland, ecumenical way of shrugging off our differences. This huge, rich, buzzing conversation—one that, inevitably, is about more than just movies—is something that energizes me and stays with me all year. I've been watching DVDs like a madman all week, trying to keep pace with you all, and I've still come out of it with a sizable list of to-be-seens: 35 Shots of Rum, Lake Tahoe, The International, and Synecdoche, New York. (That last one I've seen, but I regarded it as a noble folly until Roger named it his No. 1 film of the decade. Now I plan to gird my loins and see it again.)
I keep coming back to Stephanie's story about the critic Robin Wood dictating a list of his all-time favorite movies on his deathbed and the blogger Jeffrey Wells writing up a snarky response to his choices afterward: Apparently the dying man should have chosen not Rio Bravo but High Noon. Wells sounds like a perfect asshole (with, as Roger points out, questionable taste in Westerns), and God knows none of us wants some jerky gossip blogger mocking our last words from beyond the grave. But what I would like is something like what we've got going on here: a postmortem Movie Club, an online Festschrift. When I kick it, everyone please get together and discuss my deathbed list (which I should really get to compiling—you never know). Not in order to pick the list apart and feel clever about it but in order to keep the conversation going. When you fire off a post asserting that I'm an idiot for having loved 2012, say it with the infinite love that, inexplicably, Chiwetel Ejiofor's character in that movie holds for the novel written by John Cusack's.
There was a moment in this year's It Might Get Loud, an at times pedestrian but intermittently inspired documentary about the electric guitar, when Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page put on a Django Reinhardt LP for the filmmaker in his home study, a small room with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with vinyl albums. For close to a full minute of screen time, we got to watch Page just listen to a song—grooving, dancing a little, pointing at the turntable with a delighted chortle when he wanted to indicate some particular detail of Reinhardt's artistry. Page's genuine and complete joy in that moment—a guy who's done little else but play legendarily great guitar for 50-plus years, thrilling to the sound of someone he considered a real guitar player—was a huge inspiration to me. It's a lifelong task for an artist, and for us critics as well, to stay open to the possibility of being moved.
So long, then. I'll be seeing you in all the old, familiar places: in your reviews, on your blogs, on podcasts and Twitter—maybe even, if we're lucky, in some screening room in the dark.
Love,
Dana
Till We Meet Again, in Some Screening Room in the Dark
From: Dana Stevens
To: Roger Ebert, Dan Kois, Wesley Morris, and Stephanie ZacharekPosted Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010, at 5:59 PM ET
Roger Ebert is the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic. Dan Kois is the author of Facing Future and writes regularly for New York, the Washington Post, Slate, the Awl, and Village Voice. Wesley Morris is a film critic for the Boston Globe. Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic. Stephanie Zacharek is a film critic for Salon. Entry 1: Still of Gabourey Sidibe as Claireece "Precious" Jones in Precious by Anne Marie Fox. Movie Poster of Julia © 2009 courtesy Les Productions Bagheera. Still from Watchmen © 2009 courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. Entry 3: Still from Avatar © Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. Entry 4: Still from Precious by Anne Marie Fox. Entry 5: Photograph of Jack Palance by Vince Bucci/Getty Images. Entry 6: Still from Paranormal Activity © 2009 Paramount Pictures Corporation and Oren Peli d.b.a Solana Films. All rights reserved. Entry 7: Still from The Hurt Locker courtesy Summit Entertainment. All rights reserved. Entry 8: Still from Rio Bravo courtesy Warner Bros. All rights reserved. Entry 9: Still from Love Happens by Kimberley French © 2009 Universal Studios. All rights reserved. Entry 11: Still of Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist © 2009 Zentropia Entertainment. All rights reserved. Entry 12: Still of Diane Kruger in Inglourious Basterds © 2009 Universal Pictures. All rights reserved. Entry 13: Still of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist © 2009 Zentropa Entertainments. All rights reserved. Entry 14: Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man © 2009 Mike Zoss Productions. All rights reserved.
Okay, I'm a big nerd for whipping out the Preston Sturges, but I think it has to be said: Jason Reitman's work stinks of The Sullivan's Travels Effect -- he thinks his movies have to Mean Something. Cue the out of work people, cue the downbeat ending.
Never mind the horrifying misstep of putting actual out of work people on screen with George Clooney -- God, what could possibly make him LESS likeable? He's some perfect, glossy god, and these poor schlubs with their milia and eye bags suffer at his hands? Blech. (In fact, Reitman doesn't really let Ryan interact with the common folk -- the longest face to face conversation happens with J.K. Simmons, who has more than enough actorly charisma to not make Ryan look like a monster.)
No, my larger point is that the talking heads, the downbeat ending, it's all meant to say "Whoa, life is *sad*" -- and this after two pointedly joyful hours. But what would be so bad about not harshing our mellow? About letting us go out on a giddy high note? Well, for one thing, it would crush Reitman's Oscar chances. But I suspect the main justification is that life isn't like that.
Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm here, watching the mellowly wry facial planes of an almost unspeakably attractive man as he flirts with an appealing but not too stunning woman of his own age. I want to get away from MY life where things like this never happen.
That's the lesson of Sullivan's Travels -- the futility of making an O! Brother Where Art Thou? -- and it shocks me how many filmmakers working today have yet to learn this lesson.
-- katewrath
(To reply, click here)
John Wesley saw no reason why the devil should have all the good tunes, and Reitman sees no reason why the cool should have all the clever lines. That makes him a sneaky and therefore dangerous defender of old fashioned spiritual values, who is duly denounced as a shepherd in wolf's clothing.
In Thank You For Smoking, Juno, and now Up In The Air, Jason Reitman has revealed himself to be a deeply conservative filmmaker, with a voice as distinctive and sentimental as Frank Capra, though more subtly moralistic. Hip critics dislike him because he uses the oppositional techniques of wit, irony and panache to subvert individualism, cynicism and hedonism in the name of tradition, family and community. His glib tobacco lobbyist is less of a scoundrel than the journalists and politicians who attack him because he is less of a hypocrite, and because he wants to earn his son's love. His wisecracking pregnant teenager is sustained by the loving support of her family, while the one character who aspires to la vie bohème turns out to be weak, selfish and unreliable. The one unredeemed character in Up In The Air is Alex, a successful fraud and adulteress.
Bingham starts out as a man with an almost Buddhist harmony with his environment. Like Thoreau, he has adjusted his wants and needs to fit his surroundings; the backpack lectures are a riff on Thoreau's exhortation to "simplify, simplify." (They also remind me of Christian at the beginning of Pilgrim's Progress, shedding the "great burden on his back" once he hears the message of Evangelist.) And Bingham is damn near as smug about his adjustment as Thoreau at Walden. Reitman duly punishes him for his self-sufficiency with just enough unrequited need for human contact to make him miserably self-aware for the rest of his life.
-- jack_cerf
(To reply, click here)
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Okay, I'm a big nerd for whipping out the Preston Sturges, but I think it has to be said: Jason Reitman's work stinks of The Sullivan's Travels Effect -- he thinks his movies have to Mean Something. Cue the out of work people, cue the downbeat ending.
Never mind the horrifying misstep of putting actual out of work people on screen with George Clooney -- God, what could possibly make him LESS likeable? He's some perfect, glossy god, and these poor schlubs with their milia and eye bags suffer at his hands? Blech. (In fact, Reitman doesn't really let Ryan interact with the common folk -- the longest face to face conversation happens with J.K. Simmons, who has more than enough actorly charisma to not make Ryan look like a monster.)
No, my larger point is that the talking heads, the downbeat ending, it's all meant to say "Whoa, life is *sad*" -- and this after two pointedly joyful hours. But what would be so bad about not harshing our mellow? About letting us go out on a giddy high note? Well, for one thing, it would crush Reitman's Oscar chances. But I suspect the main justification is that life isn't like that.
Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm here, watching the mellowly wry facial planes of an almost unspeakably attractive man as he flirts with an appealing but not too stunning woman of his own age. I want to get away from MY life where things like this never happen.
That's the lesson of Sullivan's Travels -- the futility of making an O! Brother Where Art Thou? -- and it shocks me how many filmmakers working today have yet to learn this lesson.
-- katewrath
(To reply, click here)
John Wesley saw no reason why the devil should have all the good tunes, and Reitman sees no reason why the cool should have all the clever lines. That makes him a sneaky and therefore dangerous defender of old fashioned spiritual values, who is duly denounced as a shepherd in wolf's clothing.
In Thank You For Smoking, Juno, and now Up In The Air, Jason Reitman has revealed himself to be a deeply conservative filmmaker, with a voice as distinctive and sentimental as Frank Capra, though more subtly moralistic. Hip critics dislike him because he uses the oppositional techniques of wit, irony and panache to subvert individualism, cynicism and hedonism in the name of tradition, family and community. His glib tobacco lobbyist is less of a scoundrel than the journalists and politicians who attack him because he is less of a hypocrite, and because he wants to earn his son's love. His wisecracking pregnant teenager is sustained by the loving support of her family, while the one character who aspires to la vie bohème turns out to be weak, selfish and unreliable. The one unredeemed character in Up In The Air is Alex, a successful fraud and adulteress.
Bingham starts out as a man with an almost Buddhist harmony with his environment. Like Thoreau, he has adjusted his wants and needs to fit his surroundings; the backpack lectures are a riff on Thoreau's exhortation to "simplify, simplify." (They also remind me of Christian at the beginning of Pilgrim's Progress, shedding the "great burden on his back" once he hears the message of Evangelist.) And Bingham is damn near as smug about his adjustment as Thoreau at Walden. Reitman duly punishes him for his self-sufficiency with just enough unrequited need for human contact to make him miserably self-aware for the rest of his life.
-- jack_cerf
(To reply, click here)