What Do Critics Think About Watching Film That Is Not What the Makers Intended?

Posted on October 19, 2014 at 8:00 am

Thanks to Indiewire for including me in their survey of critics about how important it is to watch a movie as it was filmed. If it was made on film stock, is it unfair to the artists’ vision to watch a digital version?

Here was my answer:

I remember hearing a Lionsgate executive explaining ruefully that they put so much effort and imagination into every inch of the screen for the “Lord of the Rings” movies only to find that people wanted to be able to watch them on their phones. “We’ll sell it to them, if that’s what they want,” he said, “but we are not happy about it.” If possible, it’s best to see films the way they were shot. But, just as we don’t view paintings in the studios where they were created, we have to recognize that some art will be viewed in a manner other than the way the filmmakers envisioned. And I have wonderful memories of digitally restored films. The first movie I watched on Blu-Ray was “Pinocchio,” which I thought I knew very well. But there were highlights in the Blue Fairy’s hair I had not seen before. I ran to my book of Disney animation art, and it was there. So, unlike watching LoTR on a Smartwatch, I felt I was seeing it the way the artists did.

Five Upcoming Movies Have Real-Life Actors Playing Themselves, Sort Of

Posted on October 12, 2014 at 8:00 am

It’s funny how every so often there are multiple movies about the same subject or idea. I can understand when there were three movies about farm families at the time (“Country,” “The River,” “Places in the Heart”) when small farms were being battered by agribusiness. But why all those body-switching movies in the late 80’s (“Big,” “Vice Versa,” “Like Father Like Son,” “18 Again”), or “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life” ten years later, or the two blow-up-the-White-House movies last year, or two movies this year about one-night stands that turn into awkwardly extended encounters?

Perhaps the most improbable collection of similar films ever are the upcoming FIVE movies with real-life successful actors playing somewhat less successful versions of themselves. A fascinating discussion on Studio 360 explains it all, with descriptions of the films starring Michael Keaton, Al Pacino, Robin Wright, Julianne Moore, and Juliette Binoche.

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Telling Time in “All That Jazz”

Posted on September 29, 2014 at 3:19 pm

One of my favorite writers provides insights into one of my favorite (if flawed) movies — Matt Zoller Seitz created a beautiful video essay about Bob Fosse’s autobiographical “All That Jazz” for the Criterion Edition, and then they were unable to use it due to rights problems with the movie clips he wanted to include. Good news — that means you can read/watch it for free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOS9GwHfHiU

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Second Global Symposium on Gender in Media

Posted on September 24, 2014 at 10:49 am

Yesterday, I was honored to attend the Second Global Symposium on Gender in Media, held a the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. The keynote was delivered by Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. The highlight of the event was the presentation of new research by Dr. Stacy Smith, Ph.D. and her team at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, looking at gender bias in films produced by the 11 countries with the most established film industries. Films jointly produced by the US/UK and those from India had the poorest results in portraying women, whether the issue was number of speaking parts/named characters or number of women in professional roles. Perhaps the most surprising result was that even in crowd scenes, women made up only about 17 percent of the roles. Movies portray a world in which women are outnumbered by men five to one. The study also found that women filmmakers — directors, producers, and writers — usually put more women on screen, except that as the budget increases, the number of female characters goes down. “We are responsible for exporting negative images of women around the world,” Davis said. Female characters are too often one-dimensional, skimpily clothed, sexualized, and portrayed as victims of violence. “The more TV a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has. The more TV a boy watches, the more sexist his views become.” Her approach is “collegial, private” meetings with filmmakers, who all insist that “it’s been fixed,” but are responsive to the data she presents. “Gender inequality is rampant,” concluded Dr. Smith. “Cinema turns a leering lens on females.” One element of her study revealed only three female characters in positions of political power. Two were portrayals of real-life leaders Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel. The third was an animated elephant. On screen, females hold only 22.5% of the jobs, as opposed to 40% in real life. Davis called on filmmakers to go through scripts and assign female names to half of the characters and make sure crowd scenes had gender parity. “I’m not asking them to add a message, just to recognize the message already created. Let’s not embed harmful and disempowering messages in media aimed at kids.”

Christopher Orr on the Coen Brothers’ “Miller’s Crossing”

Posted on September 23, 2014 at 3:53 pm

One of my favorite critics writes about one of his favorite movies in The Atlantic: the highlight of Christopher Orr’s outstanding series on the Coen Brothers‘ films is his essay on Miller’s Crossing. Whether you’re a fan of the Coens or of this film or not, Orr’s essay is a pleasure to read for its deep engagement with the film and lucidity of prose.

Miller’s Crossing is an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order on nearly every level. Begin with its almost intolerably sumptuous cinematography, with reds and greens so deep one is in danger of falling into them. This was the last film that Barry Sonnenfeld shot for the Coens—and one for which he persuaded them to use long lenses instead of the wide-angle variety they had favored—and no one involved has mustered a better-looking work since. The production design by Dennis Gassner is comparably extraordinary: the long, long oak rooms with their endless oriental rugs and all the furniture seemingly tucked into one corner.

And did I mention the score? It is not only the best work Carter Burwell has done for the Coens (or anyone else), it set a model that he would later follow for his almost-as-good scores for Fargo and True Grit: taking a traditional piece of music with some culturally relevant connection and using it as the central motif of the broader arrangement. In this case, it was the Irish ballad “Limerick’s Lamentation.” (It’s usually played on a fiddle, I think, but here’s an interesting version on a hammered dulcimer.) Burwell’s score has lived on since: It was used for the trailer of the (astonishingly bad) Melanie Griffith vehicle Shining Through as well as that of at least one other 1990s movie I can’t quite recall at the moment. It also served, as I recently discovered, in an ad for Caffrey’s Irish Ale. It is one of the truly great film scores of the last 30 years.