Conference on Movie Criticism at Northwestern

Posted on April 8, 2011 at 8:52 pm

Northwestern University is hosting a three-day conference April 21-23 called Illuminating the Shadows: Film Criticism in Focus, with top critics from around the country discussing the past, present, and future of serious writing about film. All sessions are free and open to the public. The event also features four screenings, including Errol Morris’ new documentary, “Tabloid,” about a former North Carolina beauty queen who, in 1977, kidnapped her Mormon sweetheart and a racy pre-Hayes Code 1933 film from director Raoul Walsh called “Sailor’s Luck.” Through on-stage discussions and introductions to a slate of critically acclaimed contemporary and archival films, Illuminating the Shadows will provide insight into the role film criticism, and film writing more generally, has in our contemporary, media-saturated cultural life and how critics and writers on film view the work they do.

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Ebert: Thumbs Down on 3D, Up on Maxivison48

Posted on January 30, 2011 at 4:21 pm

Roger Ebert says the case is closed on 3D — it can never work. He has some powerful support for his position, a letter from Walter Murch, “the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema.” Murch says that “horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.” He says our brains are not capable of processing 3D movie technology, because “the glasses “gather in” the image — even on a huge Imax screen — and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.”
I’m not sure I agree; I expect a glasses-free 3D technology is possible, for one thing. But I do agree with Ebert that there is a much less gimmicky and much more powerful enhancement — Ebert’s counter-recommendation — called Maxivision48.
Movies “move” because we see a series of still pictures so quickly that it fools our eye through something called “persistence of vision.” It’s the same technology as a flip-book, and it hasn’t changed much since it shifted from 16 frames per second to 24 when movies added sound (this is why silent films often seem jerky). Unlike current digital equipment, which replicates the 24 frames per second standard, Maxivision combines digital and film to eliminate wasted space and project at 48 frames per second to give the audience a fresher, clearer, more distinct image.
I love their tagline: “See What You’ve Been Missing.”

Ebert’s New Show Premieres This Weekend!

Posted on January 21, 2011 at 3:58 pm

Roger Ebert’s new show, Ebert Presents At the Movies, debuts this week on PBS stations across the country. The original show was an inspiration and a guide to me and I am honored beyond words to be invited to contribute to the new one. I’ll be tuning in this weekend, and I’ll let you know when I will be on.

Ebert Presents at the Movies

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Roger Ebert’s List of the Best 2010 Documentaries

Posted on January 14, 2011 at 3:12 pm

For me, the big story of the movie of 2010 was the animated films and the documentaries — we had more great films in both categories than ever before. So I was delighted to see Roger Ebert’s list of the year’s best documentaries. The films he selected demonstrate the astonishing range of modes, moods, topics, and voices working in documentaries today. There is the devastating autopsy of the financial crisis (“Inside Job”) and the mind-bending examination of street art that explores art, commerce, and the gullibility of the celebrity culture in form and content. There is a movie about a serial killer and a movie about a literally colorful guy who waves his jacket at tourists on Chicago’s river boats (I loved that one). And I was delighted to see Roger’s comments on the new film from Errol Morris. It was the review of Errol Morris’ “Gates of Heaven” and “Vernon, Florida” on the Ebert and Siskel show that first got me interested in documentaries, and I have been very grateful to them ever since.

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Slate’s Movie Club

Posted on January 11, 2011 at 3:55 pm

Slate movie critic Dana Stevens brought together an enormously engaging and thoughtful group for the annual “movie club” round-up discussion of the year in film.
Reviewing films is a lot of fun, but one of the drawbacks is that we have to react so quickly and specifically. I like the way Slate goes beyond the top 10 lists and “best actor,” “best screenplay” summaries of the year with a very robust conversation about the patterns discernible with a bit of distance and context and the opportunity to adjust and revise one’s views in light of a second viewing or just more time to think.
Dan Kois responded to a challenge to explain why he was the only participant who included “Black Swan” on his top 10 list, provided a hilarious flow chart with his reaction to the “trashy greatness” of the film. And I was thrilled by his shout-outs to two performances I thought only I cherished this year, Ginnifer Goodwin in “Ramona and Beezus” and Kathryn Hahn in “How Do You Know” — two movies I thought were badly underrated by critics and audiences.
“Inception” is a film that benefited from a some further time to consider it. Matt Zoller Seitz led off by noting that that critics reviewed some of the year’s other mind-bendy movies by saying that they were more effective than the high-profile “Inception.”

Clearly “Inception” is to 2010 what “Avatar” was to 2009 and “Titanic” was to 1997 and what the original “Star Wars” was to 1977–the box-office juggernaut that many critics find lacking, perhaps egregiously shallow and overrated, but that cast such a powerful spell over millions that they keep invoking it over and over to call attention to their own pets.

Stevens responded

“Inception” was more a series of sensations than a movie–the filmic equivalent of an interactive haunted house where you’re blindfolded and someone thrusts your hand into a bowl of peeled-grape “eyeballs.” Six months later, all that remains are the sensations, which is why the Hans Zimmer button brings the entire Inception experience back in a single BrAAAAAHMMMM.

I was most intrigued by the debate about Sofia Coppola’s “Somewhere.” While friends I respect like Dustin Putman loved the movie, a tone poem that follows (I won’t say it’s “about”) a disaffected movie star and his young daughter, I found its neurasthenic preciousness hard to take. So I was very interested to see what members of the Movie Club had to say.
My views are most aligned with Dana Stevens: “‘Somewhere,’ to me, was a lovingly crafted, impeccably acted, but vanishingly slight little movie.” Stephanie Zacharek responded

Coppola has the lightest touch of any American filmmaker working, but she also has very distinct fingerprints. Her sense of humor is oblique, when it’s not downright odd. There’s that sequence in Somewhere where Stephen Dorff’s lost, disaffected movie star has been slathered with a chilly-looking mashed-potato substance as a prelude for some age-makeup that’s being designed for him. And Coppola and her D.P., Harris Savides, train the camera on that droopy white face (we hear Dorff’s noisy breathing on the soundtrack) for an inordinately long time, moving in verrrrry slowly. I don’t know that there’s an earth-shattering statement there demanding to be “gotten.” It’s like a knock-knock joke reinvented as a koan.

As with Dustin Putman’s review, it didn’t deepen my appreciation for the film, but it did support and deepen my appreciation for the critics and for criticism as a calling. Onward to 2011!