Evidence of Sanity

Assessing Art is difficult always, but it is particularly hard in the online film world right now. It is seemingly impossible to find your own voice and your own opinion. Everyone is writing about the same thing in the same way. Not to say it is entirely fruitless, right now is none-the-less one of the few times in the year when mainstream critics step back from individual films and look at the big picture. Yet, a consensus is easily formed (this year it's The Social Network) and even though that sort of thing is questioned, its always done in the same way.

Most critics are unwilling to adapt but one who is certainly not is Matt Zoller Seitz. He is one of the founders of the excellent and influential film blog The House Next Door and continues to write for Salon.com and the New York Times, among others. He is perhaps best known as one of the pioneers of new media in film criticism. What he has done with slide shows and short videos to both augment the usual review and create new ways of looking at films is refreshing. In this particular instance though, I was impressed by what he said in plain old print media about how two films changed his perceptions this year. The article stands head and shoulders above all criticism I've read in the past few months. And it can be read HERE.

"Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. "

Inception is easily the most divisive film of the year thus far (and lets face it, that's because its the only film released thus far that has both artistic intentions and box-office returns). I have a strong aversion to writing reviews, particularly in this sort of maelstrom, but I feel that I have to extract some thoughts (Harry Potter style!) and put them in my own personal pensieve. Before I get into the two specific things about the film I want to talk about, I suppose I should give my general thoughts on the film so you at least know where I'm coming from. Basically, I enjoyed it... which can be interpreted as I think it was cool, but not half as smart as it pretended to be.

The Glee Monster Revisisted

Glee is everywhere, its music is among the bestselling anywhere and the show's ratings have never been higher. While I have ranted against it previously (and plan to do some more of it in a bit), I do genuinely respect one aspect of it's conception, and that is the bravery and sheer balls it took to make it a musical. The strength of musicals has always been that they are able to simply and directly convey the inner thoughts of a character, that which is so easy to describe on page but so difficult on stage and on film. Musicals have long been an interest of mine; I count some of them as all-time favorites (Singin' in the Rain, Love Songs, and  Top Hat), and a great many others as disappointments... should have beens.

Some Links to "The Directors of the Decade"

My first post on the past decade on film was something of a cliche. These lists pop up all over the internet and reading them all is as pointless as it is boring. Yet they can sometimes be interesting too. I'll admit that I got a little thrill when A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, Roger Ebert, and Andrew O'Hehir among others posted their lists. They offer a sort of distilled opinion. A way of easily matching yourself up, comparing your taste. Yet the films and lists do not exist in a bubble and a list constrained only by time and medium also has the power to say something more. I touched briefly, in a previous post, on how interesting this last decade has been if you view it almost as an independent chunk of time from the beginning of George Bush's presidency to today, which sees major health care reform becoming a reality and escalating wars in Afghanistan and possibly Yemen. It was a remarkably self contained period of time, defined primarily by 9/11, but not solely. Looking at film in the context of movements, time, remembrance, and history is tricky at best and impossible at worst. One of the best attempts though, and the only one I really admired, about this past decade was by Matt Zoller Seitz writing for Salon. I certainly don't agree with everything but he creates a consistent set of beliefs (both aesthetic and not). Besides, there's just something really ballsy about picking two writers for best director of the decade.