Porn Again:
As if we needed proof of the ubiquitous porn culture discussed below, along comes Bill O'Reilly. Yet another confirmation of the old adage that each pompous media moralist gets the scandal he deserves. Bloggers are having a field day, of course, and in terms of poetic justice it beats even the drug-fueled, hearing-impaired travails of Rush Limbaugh. Yes, the concept of fairness (not one of Bill's favorites) reminds us that these are just accusations, and not proof positive that Fox's poster boy is an obnoxious jerk, but when your read the account of loofah-loving Bill's alleged hounding of a co-worker, doesn't it just sound like him? If you haven't already read the suit, it's here. But be warned. It makes the Starr Report seem soooo tame.
And if you're wondering how O'Reilly's media cohorts are reacting, here's a summary of fair and balanced headlines, courtesy of the indispensable Gawker.
(And by the way, if there's ever a list of the ten websites that really changed the world, won't The Smoking Gun have to be on it? How did we get along without this kind of thing in the pre-web past?)
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Thursday, October 14, 2004
America's Greatest Living Director speaks!
The greatest living filmmaker in America (hint: he talks about Tanner on Tanner) is interviewed by The Onion.
What? You were expecting Joel Schumacher?
The greatest living filmmaker in America (hint: he talks about Tanner on Tanner) is interviewed by The Onion.
What? You were expecting Joel Schumacher?
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Special PoMo to Porn edition:
1.)Jacques Derrida
2.)Porn
Learning to enjoy your homework: Ennio Plaise, our Spy in the House of Academia reports on the pleasures of the text...
As the New York Times has noticed on several recent occasions, pornography has crept into the mainstream, or at least become part of the world that is "fit to print". This is not the first time, of course. In the early 70s national magazines announced the age of "porno chic" and reported that sophisticated audiences had replaced the archetypal raincoat brigade at screenings of Deep Throat. Porno may have been chic, but it takes more than a box-office hit to counter a century of censorship and prudishness. By the 1980s. Deep Throat was more likely remembered as a footnote to Watergate, misguided pro-censorship feminists like Andrea Dworkin had hopped into bed with the Meese Commission, and the porno industry, still dreaming of the elusive cross-over into the mainstream, had retreated.
It was a retreat, but not a defeat. In the 80s, porno became less public but got an enormous boost by the fastgrowing technology of home video. No longer chic, it was now accessible at home. The VCR meant that the Times Square fleapit had been replaced by the suburban bedroom. And the introduction of video cameras meant that likes of Marilyn Chambers and Harry Reems were now getting competition from you, your wife, your girlfriend or you neighbor, as the porn film curiously crossed paths with the home movie.
Fast forward to 2004. Britney Spears bumps and grinds on stage for an audience of pre-adolescent girls, many of whom are undoubtedly watching their first lap dance while wearing t-shirts that bear mottos like "Porn Star". Children on sitcoms express disapproval by saying that something "sucks", hardly aware that they're casually referencing the same sexual act whose mention put Lenny Bruce in jail.
Linda Williams, whose book "Hard Core" is the definitive study of pornography from the perspective of film theory, pioneers the study of pornography as culture with her new "Porn Studies", a collection of scholarly essays culled from various seminars she's organized over the last few years. (Though Williams wrote only one of the pieces in the book, her influence on the field is unavoidable; nearly every author in the collection cites "Hard Core" and the definitive introduction to taking porno seriously.) One of Williams' strongest points is that pornography has crossed the line from being "obscene" - literally "out of the scene" - and has become what she calls “on/scene”, an unavoidable part of the culture. It’s not just movies and magazines anymore. Porno is everywhere. The book sections of your most sedate papers offer comments on Jenna Jameson's autobiography and the anal-sex-as-spirituality memoir "The Surrendor". A minor-league celebrity like Paris Hilton can ride to the top of the gossip columns on the strength of an "amateur" sex video. Thanks to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, discussions of blowjobs, thongs and cigar fetishism took place not just in chatrooms but on the nightly news and even in official government publications.
Nearly all of "Porn Studies" is worth reading, but there is still a sense of giggling students passing notes in class, albeit notes that reference Foucault. The material covered ranges from the public ("The Starr Report", World War Two era pin-ups) to the private (if such a word can be applied to the famous Pam and Tommy Lee video), from the low culture world of smokers and beaver loops to the gallery-approved area of video installations and Warhol's "Blow Job", all of which adds to the sense of contradiction that hovers over the book. Even as it appears that we're in what one commentator has called "pornotopia..where it's always bedtime", we continue to cover it up, to deny or condemn our obsession with sexuality. The habits of a culture that has long favored guilt and shame over desire die hard.
1.)Jacques Derrida
2.)Porn
Learning to enjoy your homework: Ennio Plaise, our Spy in the House of Academia reports on the pleasures of the text...
As the New York Times has noticed on several recent occasions, pornography has crept into the mainstream, or at least become part of the world that is "fit to print". This is not the first time, of course. In the early 70s national magazines announced the age of "porno chic" and reported that sophisticated audiences had replaced the archetypal raincoat brigade at screenings of Deep Throat. Porno may have been chic, but it takes more than a box-office hit to counter a century of censorship and prudishness. By the 1980s. Deep Throat was more likely remembered as a footnote to Watergate, misguided pro-censorship feminists like Andrea Dworkin had hopped into bed with the Meese Commission, and the porno industry, still dreaming of the elusive cross-over into the mainstream, had retreated.
It was a retreat, but not a defeat. In the 80s, porno became less public but got an enormous boost by the fastgrowing technology of home video. No longer chic, it was now accessible at home. The VCR meant that the Times Square fleapit had been replaced by the suburban bedroom. And the introduction of video cameras meant that likes of Marilyn Chambers and Harry Reems were now getting competition from you, your wife, your girlfriend or you neighbor, as the porn film curiously crossed paths with the home movie.
Fast forward to 2004. Britney Spears bumps and grinds on stage for an audience of pre-adolescent girls, many of whom are undoubtedly watching their first lap dance while wearing t-shirts that bear mottos like "Porn Star". Children on sitcoms express disapproval by saying that something "sucks", hardly aware that they're casually referencing the same sexual act whose mention put Lenny Bruce in jail.
Linda Williams, whose book "Hard Core" is the definitive study of pornography from the perspective of film theory, pioneers the study of pornography as culture with her new "Porn Studies", a collection of scholarly essays culled from various seminars she's organized over the last few years. (Though Williams wrote only one of the pieces in the book, her influence on the field is unavoidable; nearly every author in the collection cites "Hard Core" and the definitive introduction to taking porno seriously.) One of Williams' strongest points is that pornography has crossed the line from being "obscene" - literally "out of the scene" - and has become what she calls “on/scene”, an unavoidable part of the culture. It’s not just movies and magazines anymore. Porno is everywhere. The book sections of your most sedate papers offer comments on Jenna Jameson's autobiography and the anal-sex-as-spirituality memoir "The Surrendor". A minor-league celebrity like Paris Hilton can ride to the top of the gossip columns on the strength of an "amateur" sex video. Thanks to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, discussions of blowjobs, thongs and cigar fetishism took place not just in chatrooms but on the nightly news and even in official government publications.
Nearly all of "Porn Studies" is worth reading, but there is still a sense of giggling students passing notes in class, albeit notes that reference Foucault. The material covered ranges from the public ("The Starr Report", World War Two era pin-ups) to the private (if such a word can be applied to the famous Pam and Tommy Lee video), from the low culture world of smokers and beaver loops to the gallery-approved area of video installations and Warhol's "Blow Job", all of which adds to the sense of contradiction that hovers over the book. Even as it appears that we're in what one commentator has called "pornotopia..where it's always bedtime", we continue to cover it up, to deny or condemn our obsession with sexuality. The habits of a culture that has long favored guilt and shame over desire die hard.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Watch out for the Michelin man!!!!
William Gibson's last novel Pattern Recognition was about a "coolchaser", a woman whose career was based on her instinctive ability to know what was going to be hip - (just as long as she didn't run across the image of her dreaded enemy, Bibucon the Michelin Man). Turns out that as usual Gibson was reporting from 10 minutes into the future. Apparently scientists can use MRIs to determine what's cool and who catches on to it first. Jennifer Kahn reports the whole story in the current issue of Wired.
William Gibson's last novel Pattern Recognition was about a "coolchaser", a woman whose career was based on her instinctive ability to know what was going to be hip - (just as long as she didn't run across the image of her dreaded enemy, Bibucon the Michelin Man). Turns out that as usual Gibson was reporting from 10 minutes into the future. Apparently scientists can use MRIs to determine what's cool and who catches on to it first. Jennifer Kahn reports the whole story in the current issue of Wired.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Rest in peace, Richard Avedon...
The great photographer Richard Avedon died this week and tributes are appearing all over the web, as they should be. The New Yorker, where Avedon had been staff photographer since 1992, offers theirs, with a gallery of photos.
Nouvelle Godard!
Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique plays at the New York Film Festival on Monday - a US release will follow sometime later next month - and from most reports, it's a major achievement. The New York Times review is here.
Lights! Action! Education!
Our Director of Pedagogery Carmen Zaentz brings the following item to our attention:
If you've ever spent time behind the lectern these days, you know the inescapable feeling that the students are expecting something - a joke, a song, a dance - that will wake them from the ordeal of education, and that you, dear professor, are the star of the show. Some teachers I know take a little too much pleasure in blaming the students. Others see it as the Way of the World, a lost battle. An elementary school teacher once told me "it's all the fault of Sesame Street. Learning isn't supposed to be entertaining", though I like to give equal blame to the Dead Poets Society model of the wacky/inspirational problem. Whatever the cause, Mark Edmundson offers a painfully accurate look at some of the problems of teaching in a world where the classroom bell has come to mean "Showtime!" .
The great photographer Richard Avedon died this week and tributes are appearing all over the web, as they should be. The New Yorker, where Avedon had been staff photographer since 1992, offers theirs, with a gallery of photos.
Nouvelle Godard!
Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique plays at the New York Film Festival on Monday - a US release will follow sometime later next month - and from most reports, it's a major achievement. The New York Times review is here.
Lights! Action! Education!
Our Director of Pedagogery Carmen Zaentz brings the following item to our attention:
If you've ever spent time behind the lectern these days, you know the inescapable feeling that the students are expecting something - a joke, a song, a dance - that will wake them from the ordeal of education, and that you, dear professor, are the star of the show. Some teachers I know take a little too much pleasure in blaming the students. Others see it as the Way of the World, a lost battle. An elementary school teacher once told me "it's all the fault of Sesame Street. Learning isn't supposed to be entertaining", though I like to give equal blame to the Dead Poets Society model of the wacky/inspirational problem. Whatever the cause, Mark Edmundson offers a painfully accurate look at some of the problems of teaching in a world where the classroom bell has come to mean "Showtime!" .
Monday, September 27, 2004
Shark Tale review...
I wasn't particularly eager to see this film, having reached a saturation point for computer animation somewhere around the time of Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie.. and for the first five minutes, it looked like my suspicions were justified as the filmmakers piled on every bad fish pun you can imagine. (Comedian Kip Adotta already exhausted this territory years ago with a novelty record called "Fish Story", and the best joke on that would never get past even the most broad-minded family film....) But after a few moments of aimlessness, Shark Tale turns into a fairly clever and fast-moving comedy, the best moments of which are built around the audience's recognition of the voice talent. Will Smith, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro come off best, allowing the film to shift from "Godfather" riffs to a kind of Daffy Duck heroic lunacy without missing too many beats. It's not a particularly well-crafted story or an distinctively individual work, but the filmmakers have clearly decided that if they keep the gags coming hard and heavy you won't miss any of those other qualities. Other animators have adopted such a plan at their own risk - anybody want to watch Osmosis Jones again? - but Shark Tale manages to pull it off without too many weak jokes lying in its wake.
I wasn't particularly eager to see this film, having reached a saturation point for computer animation somewhere around the time of Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie.. and for the first five minutes, it looked like my suspicions were justified as the filmmakers piled on every bad fish pun you can imagine. (Comedian Kip Adotta already exhausted this territory years ago with a novelty record called "Fish Story", and the best joke on that would never get past even the most broad-minded family film....) But after a few moments of aimlessness, Shark Tale turns into a fairly clever and fast-moving comedy, the best moments of which are built around the audience's recognition of the voice talent. Will Smith, Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro come off best, allowing the film to shift from "Godfather" riffs to a kind of Daffy Duck heroic lunacy without missing too many beats. It's not a particularly well-crafted story or an distinctively individual work, but the filmmakers have clearly decided that if they keep the gags coming hard and heavy you won't miss any of those other qualities. Other animators have adopted such a plan at their own risk - anybody want to watch Osmosis Jones again? - but Shark Tale manages to pull it off without too many weak jokes lying in its wake.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Shedding light on Dark Materials
As an admirer of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, I was a little suspicious when I heard that Chris Weitz had been chosen to direct a film version. Bridge to the Stars, the best of the Dark Materials fan sites, has a lengthy and reassuring interview with Weitz here.
As an admirer of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, I was a little suspicious when I heard that Chris Weitz had been chosen to direct a film version. Bridge to the Stars, the best of the Dark Materials fan sites, has a lengthy and reassuring interview with Weitz here.
Wong Kar Wai and John Cassavetes:
(Now how's that for a set of keywords?)
There's an excellent profile of Wong Kar Wai and his new film 2046 in today's NYT. (Youll have to have a Time login to read it....)
(And speaking of Wong Kar Wai, Kino is releasing a boxed set of five films on Oct. 19. The titles are Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, Days of Being Wild and As Tears Go By, the latter two appearing in the U.S. for the first time. )
Also in the Times, though less impressive, Manohla Dargis on Cassavetes. But am I the only person whose a little put off by the "struggling with critical and popular indifference" take in recent articles about Cassavetes? No, his films aren't a mainstream taste - and that's no insult, given what passes as mainstream these days, - but why would anyone think he was? That's about as likely as selling tickets for a revival of My Night at Maud's at a Star Wars convention...
(Now how's that for a set of keywords?)
There's an excellent profile of Wong Kar Wai and his new film 2046 in today's NYT. (Youll have to have a Time login to read it....)
(And speaking of Wong Kar Wai, Kino is releasing a boxed set of five films on Oct. 19. The titles are Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, Days of Being Wild and As Tears Go By, the latter two appearing in the U.S. for the first time. )
Also in the Times, though less impressive, Manohla Dargis on Cassavetes. But am I the only person whose a little put off by the "struggling with critical and popular indifference" take in recent articles about Cassavetes? No, his films aren't a mainstream taste - and that's no insult, given what passes as mainstream these days, - but why would anyone think he was? That's about as likely as selling tickets for a revival of My Night at Maud's at a Star Wars convention...
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Leonard Cohen! Michael O'Donoghue!
I admit that I spend a lot of time sitting alone being a Gloomy Gus, but there are times when such things are better left to professionals. Leonard Cohen,the poet of inveterate romance, has a new album coming out on October 26th. Order it now! You'll feel better immediately. Well, probably not... but order it anyway!
Meanwhile, a new issue - that is to say an old issue - of "Evergreen Review" is online here. The highlight is Michael O' Donoghue's classic memoir of artistic life, "Paris in the Twenties". Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
(And if you're not familiar with Mr. Mike - a big time Gloomy Gus if there ever was one - you need to read Dennis Perrin's biography..(Yes, I know it came out several years ago..In fact, I didn't expect to find it still in print.
I admit that I spend a lot of time sitting alone being a Gloomy Gus, but there are times when such things are better left to professionals. Leonard Cohen,the poet of inveterate romance, has a new album coming out on October 26th. Order it now! You'll feel better immediately. Well, probably not... but order it anyway!
Meanwhile, a new issue - that is to say an old issue - of "Evergreen Review" is online here. The highlight is Michael O' Donoghue's classic memoir of artistic life, "Paris in the Twenties". Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
(And if you're not familiar with Mr. Mike - a big time Gloomy Gus if there ever was one - you need to read Dennis Perrin's biography..(Yes, I know it came out several years ago..In fact, I didn't expect to find it still in print.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Lemony Fresh
Guest (as in Edgar) literary correspondent Nadja Bartleby checks in on the 11th installment of A Series of Unfortunate Events:
These books are critic-proof. What else is there to say? If you have come to love Klaus, Violet and Sunny (especially Sunny!), the only thing you need to know about The Grim Grotto, the latest in the soon-to-be-ending series, is that our dear Mr. Snicket is clearly heading the story toward some kind of conclusion in which the mysteries that have piled up over the last few years (the sugar bowl, V.F.D., the Snicket family's involvement) will all be resolved, and that the Baudelaire trio are maturing, while their assailants, Olaf and crew, are as horrible as ever. With only two volumes left to go, Snicket has lost none of the wry humor, disassocoiative authorial tactics and highbrow mannerisms that have made A Series of Unfortunate Events the best thing to hit juvenile literature since Roald Dahl made misanthropy seem cute.
Guest (as in Edgar) literary correspondent Nadja Bartleby checks in on the 11th installment of A Series of Unfortunate Events:
These books are critic-proof. What else is there to say? If you have come to love Klaus, Violet and Sunny (especially Sunny!), the only thing you need to know about The Grim Grotto, the latest in the soon-to-be-ending series, is that our dear Mr. Snicket is clearly heading the story toward some kind of conclusion in which the mysteries that have piled up over the last few years (the sugar bowl, V.F.D., the Snicket family's involvement) will all be resolved, and that the Baudelaire trio are maturing, while their assailants, Olaf and crew, are as horrible as ever. With only two volumes left to go, Snicket has lost none of the wry humor, disassocoiative authorial tactics and highbrow mannerisms that have made A Series of Unfortunate Events the best thing to hit juvenile literature since Roald Dahl made misanthropy seem cute.
Because every other movie except Pepe and Fearless Frank has already been remade:
Don't get me wrong: I love Ted Turner and all of his acquisitions. I love Turner Classic Movies, the only station with the guts to do marathons of Edgar Ulmer and Carl Dreyer movies. But TCM's ugly stepsisters WTBS and TNT have been scraping the barrel lately. First comes the long-awaited announcement fromTBS (they prefer to drop the W), which now devotes most of its airtime to censored "Sex and the City" reruns and brainless reality shows, of the "movie star" in their new "Return to Gilligan's Island" (in which a real sailor, millionaire, scientist, etc. live by their wits on an island while recreating zany stunts from the old series) will be...Carmen Electra. That's their idea of a movie star? While they're at it, why not make the millionaire some guy who earns $22,000 a year...
And if that's not enough, their increasingly boring sister station TNT has scraped the very bottom of the remake barrel to give us this .
Don't get me wrong: I love Ted Turner and all of his acquisitions. I love Turner Classic Movies, the only station with the guts to do marathons of Edgar Ulmer and Carl Dreyer movies. But TCM's ugly stepsisters WTBS and TNT have been scraping the barrel lately. First comes the long-awaited announcement fromTBS (they prefer to drop the W), which now devotes most of its airtime to censored "Sex and the City" reruns and brainless reality shows, of the "movie star" in their new "Return to Gilligan's Island" (in which a real sailor, millionaire, scientist, etc. live by their wits on an island while recreating zany stunts from the old series) will be...Carmen Electra. That's their idea of a movie star? While they're at it, why not make the millionaire some guy who earns $22,000 a year...
And if that's not enough, their increasingly boring sister station TNT has scraped the very bottom of the remake barrel to give us this .
From McSweeney's, a far too rational reconsideration of a few classic films as well as some of M. Night Shyamalan's.
Quentin Tarantino has a blog. The strangest thing about it is that it's not a hoax.
Quentin Tarantino has a blog. The strangest thing about it is that it's not a hoax.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
From Russ Meyer (rest in peace) to Wong Kar Wai in one paragraph
Russ Meyer, one of the most eccentrically independent figures of American film, has died. Pull out that worn videotape of Meyer's twisted masterpiece Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Why isn't this on DVD???) and lift a glass in his memory. His occasional collaborator Roger Ebert pays tribute.
Meanwhile, movies go on, and the brilliant Wong Kar Wai, whose last film In the Mood for Love is one of the finest films of the last ten years, is interviewed by the Guardian about his latest work, 2046, a sequel (in a loose sense) to In the Mood. No telling when it will get a U.S. release, though.
Speaking of director interviews, John Waters is all over the place promoting his latest, A Dirty Shame. Look here .
Russ Meyer, one of the most eccentrically independent figures of American film, has died. Pull out that worn videotape of Meyer's twisted masterpiece Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Why isn't this on DVD???) and lift a glass in his memory. His occasional collaborator Roger Ebert pays tribute.
Meanwhile, movies go on, and the brilliant Wong Kar Wai, whose last film In the Mood for Love is one of the finest films of the last ten years, is interviewed by the Guardian about his latest work, 2046, a sequel (in a loose sense) to In the Mood. No telling when it will get a U.S. release, though.
Speaking of director interviews, John Waters is all over the place promoting his latest, A Dirty Shame. Look here .
Ali G. gets his famous guests the old fashioned way.
If you've been wondering how Ali G. gets people like Buzz Aldrin and Sam Donaldson to appear on his show, Slate has a few answers here. In a nutshell, he lies to them. That's a relief.
Of course, it still doesn't entirely explain why so many famous people are so clueless... I mean, I expect Gore Vidal to stay a little out of the pop culture fray, but surely Christine Todd Whitman and Pat Buchanan have HBO, don't they?
Meanwhile, the Cat Stevens revival continues. First stage: kindle nostalgia (See Anne Dante's report of 7/25, below) ; Second stage: generate controversy. (As usual, the Drudge Report gets bonus points for accompanying the headline "Cat Stevens diverts plane" with a nifty little photo of a plane for those confused Drudge readers who don't quite get the whole aviation concept...)
If you've been wondering how Ali G. gets people like Buzz Aldrin and Sam Donaldson to appear on his show, Slate has a few answers here. In a nutshell, he lies to them. That's a relief.
Of course, it still doesn't entirely explain why so many famous people are so clueless... I mean, I expect Gore Vidal to stay a little out of the pop culture fray, but surely Christine Todd Whitman and Pat Buchanan have HBO, don't they?
Meanwhile, the Cat Stevens revival continues. First stage: kindle nostalgia (See Anne Dante's report of 7/25, below) ; Second stage: generate controversy. (As usual, the Drudge Report gets bonus points for accompanying the headline "Cat Stevens diverts plane" with a nifty little photo of a plane for those confused Drudge readers who don't quite get the whole aviation concept...)
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Random bitterness
I know I'm a rapidly aging old crank, but am I the only person who misses the days when theatres were actually relatively peaceful before the curtain opened? There may have been music playing, but it wasn't the relentless slides-and-canned-music combination that you get at most theatres today. Some of you may find it hard to believe that there was a period in the 1970s when theatres began to experiment with running commercials before films - but actually stopped doing it when they found out that patrons didn't like it!!! (When I lived in a small town in Wisconsin for a few months in 1977, one of the two local theatres in town showed Pepsi commercials - but only after the feature when most people had left...)
Today's theatre chains don't care much about what you think once you've shelled out your $7.50, so the slide show, followed by even more commercials, often in grainy video blown up to 35mm, are just part of what you're expected to endure.
And of all the on-screen advertising pushed upon your senses, is there anything more irritating that the current anti-piracy campaign from the MPAA in which a seasoned stuntman named Manny Perry suggests that you're stealing bread from the mouth of his babies every time you download a movie or dub a friend's copy of The Sorrow and the Pity. The always entertaining "Defamer" has been carrying on about this for a few weeks now (see here) so I'll just mention the two things that irritate me the most about the whole campaign.
1) It's safe to assume that Manny Perry gets paid for his work as a stuntman once his job is done. His car crashes may have been as essential part of Enemy of the State, but I doubt that he gets much in the way of profit participation. So after he finishes his work on the next Jerry Bruckheimer epic,if you download a copy, sneak your video camera into a screening and sell low quality bootlegs on the street, steal the negative and dump it into the Hudson or persuade JB to shelf the whole thing so it doesn't distract him from his true purpose in life - Coyote Ugly 2 - it's not going to cost Manny a penny. In this respect, the whole campaign is a guilt-inducing lie.
2) When do you see the MPAAs plea from Manny? Just minutes after you've shelled out a fair amount of cash to see a movie. If the MPAA wants to go after movie pirates, have them run a flash version of Manny's ad on BitTorrent or some other P2P site where the pirates and movie downloaders will see it, not in front of the paying audience who they should be thanking......
Don't Worry; I'm changing the subject
...but while I'm in High Indignation Mode, can't someone come up with a way to convince filmmakers that DVD technology doesn't mean that they need to constantly tinker with and "improve" films? Obviously I'm thinking of the forthcoming Star Wars collection, where, among other revisions to the films (which, if memory serves, were fairly well received in their original versions), the faces of the actors playing the Emperor and the unmasked Darth Vader have been replaced with images of the actors who played those roles in the two most recent installments. George Lucas, if you're out there... I enjoyed the first three Star Wars movies - okay, I didn't exactly build a religion around them like some fans, but I liked them well enough. But they don't need to be repackaged every five years or so just because your CGI team has come up with a way to make lightsabres a little shinier... If you feel the need to tinker with your films, why not work on Howard the Duck or come up with a way of making The Radioland Murders funny?
I know I'm a rapidly aging old crank, but am I the only person who misses the days when theatres were actually relatively peaceful before the curtain opened? There may have been music playing, but it wasn't the relentless slides-and-canned-music combination that you get at most theatres today. Some of you may find it hard to believe that there was a period in the 1970s when theatres began to experiment with running commercials before films - but actually stopped doing it when they found out that patrons didn't like it!!! (When I lived in a small town in Wisconsin for a few months in 1977, one of the two local theatres in town showed Pepsi commercials - but only after the feature when most people had left...)
Today's theatre chains don't care much about what you think once you've shelled out your $7.50, so the slide show, followed by even more commercials, often in grainy video blown up to 35mm, are just part of what you're expected to endure.
And of all the on-screen advertising pushed upon your senses, is there anything more irritating that the current anti-piracy campaign from the MPAA in which a seasoned stuntman named Manny Perry suggests that you're stealing bread from the mouth of his babies every time you download a movie or dub a friend's copy of The Sorrow and the Pity. The always entertaining "Defamer" has been carrying on about this for a few weeks now (see here) so I'll just mention the two things that irritate me the most about the whole campaign.
1) It's safe to assume that Manny Perry gets paid for his work as a stuntman once his job is done. His car crashes may have been as essential part of Enemy of the State, but I doubt that he gets much in the way of profit participation. So after he finishes his work on the next Jerry Bruckheimer epic,if you download a copy, sneak your video camera into a screening and sell low quality bootlegs on the street, steal the negative and dump it into the Hudson or persuade JB to shelf the whole thing so it doesn't distract him from his true purpose in life - Coyote Ugly 2 - it's not going to cost Manny a penny. In this respect, the whole campaign is a guilt-inducing lie.
2) When do you see the MPAAs plea from Manny? Just minutes after you've shelled out a fair amount of cash to see a movie. If the MPAA wants to go after movie pirates, have them run a flash version of Manny's ad on BitTorrent or some other P2P site where the pirates and movie downloaders will see it, not in front of the paying audience who they should be thanking......
Don't Worry; I'm changing the subject
...but while I'm in High Indignation Mode, can't someone come up with a way to convince filmmakers that DVD technology doesn't mean that they need to constantly tinker with and "improve" films? Obviously I'm thinking of the forthcoming Star Wars collection, where, among other revisions to the films (which, if memory serves, were fairly well received in their original versions), the faces of the actors playing the Emperor and the unmasked Darth Vader have been replaced with images of the actors who played those roles in the two most recent installments. George Lucas, if you're out there... I enjoyed the first three Star Wars movies - okay, I didn't exactly build a religion around them like some fans, but I liked them well enough. But they don't need to be repackaged every five years or so just because your CGI team has come up with a way to make lightsabres a little shinier... If you feel the need to tinker with your films, why not work on Howard the Duck or come up with a way of making The Radioland Murders funny?
Friday, September 10, 2004
Okay, I haven't posted in several weeks because I've been busy with other projects and problems. I'll be back into shape soon with a short review of my current obsession, Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi. Meanwhile , I've been indulging myself by taking a second look at Kitano's other films, including my favorite, Kikujuro. If you haven't seen it or if you have fallen for the common misunderstanding that Kitano is just a Japanese John Woo turning out violent cop movies, it's worth a look.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Tom Dowd & The Language of Music ..a new film uncovers an unsung music legend so talented that it will even make you reconsider "Sweet Home Alabama"
There was a time in the history of popular music, about a century ago, when a hit song was measured by the number of copies of sheet music that sold. Pop songs entered the national consciousness not through a particular performance or interpretation but by way of the middle- class parlor room, where a piano was nearly as common an object as a cd player is today.
Tom Edison changed all that with the invention of the phonograph, a discovery that, like many of Edison's most innovative ideas, came to him through studying an unrelated piece of technology when he discovered that he could feel vibrations coming through a telephone receiver. You don't have to be Walter Benjamin to realize that the ability to record and preserve a single performance changed the way music is heard, used and even created. As recordings - a specific, fixed document of a piece of music - replaced sheet music - a blueprint for a potential performance -, the nature of music changed forever. Music and technology were intertwined, evolving together into a new language that most of us have learned to take for granted.
If you've never heard of Tom Dowd - a reasonable assumption - you may find it hard to believe that one person could have had such a long- lasting role not just in the way musical recordings are made but in a wide-ranging field of genres from bebop and soul to "Southern rock". As an engineer and producer, Dowd's had a hand in more great recordings than you could even listen to in a day, but one of the most welcome things about Mark Moormann's film Tom Dowd and the Language of Music is that it keeps its subject off a pedestal, preferring to find him where he's happiest, working the knobs and sliders of a recording studio console.
The film, which opens theatrically in selected cities this week and will be released on video later this month, is a string of talking-head anecdotes, archival footage and musical performances but there's not a dull moment in it, even on a second viewing. (Moormann succumbs to the unfortunate trend of staging some period scenes, but does so sparsely, never pushing the film into the contrived fictional region that marred Standing in the Shadows of Motown.). Dowd, a shaggy man in his seventies (He died at 77 in 2002, the year the film premiered at Sundance) who not only was a living witness to pop culture and history (in addition to his recording career, he worked on the Manhattan Project but gave up a dream of becoming a nuclear physicist when government security prevented him from returning to college), but remained at the end of his life every bit as excited by the memory of a musical performance or a technical detail as he had been when he first faced them.
Dowd started engineering in the late 40s, when the limitations of a typical recording studio made capturing the dynamics of a band an almost insurmountable challenge. Hooking up with a new, fast-rising label, Atlantic, he recorded some of the most prominent jazz and rhythm and blues acts of the 50s, experimenting with multiple tracks before stereo had even been developed. (A few years later, Dowd's tapes allowed Atlantic to reissue their back catalog in authentic stereo, when most labels were stuck creating ineffective simulations of two-track sound.) Taking a cue from guitarist Les Paul's home studio, he began experiment with eight-track recording years before it became an industry standard, and when Atlantic became one of the major labels of the 1960s and moved to new offices, it was Dowd who called the shots and designed the recording studios.
And then there are the records, from classic jazz albums with Monk, Coleman and Mingus to the breakthrough pop hits like "Mack the Knife" and "Stand by Me", from Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin to the quasi-psychedelia of Cream's "Disraeli Gears" (where Dowd is credited for overcoming the suspicions of the musicians by coming up with the syncopated beat for "Sunshine of Your Love"). As he became in demand for sessions at the Stax studio in Memphis as well as in, Macon and Mussel Shoals, the New York born physicist-turned-engineer relocated to Miami, where he became closely associated with the early careers of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. What keeps the film from no more than a parade of guest stars and greatest hits, however, is the sense conveyed by Dowd's recollections and footage of studio sessions that we are watching artists at work, tending less to the illusion of celebrity than to the real labor of laying down tracks and making them work.
As one might expect, the film includes many interviews with Dowd's associates, from industry legends like Ahmet Ertegun and Phil Ramone to artists like Clapton and Charles. The finest moment, and the film's climax, is given to Dowd alone, as he sits at a mixing board listening to the original tracks for "Layla". He works the dials eagerly as he explores the raw materials, excitedly pulling an additional slide guitar part here, a second piano there. This, we finally see, is his instrument, and he moves his fingers over the board with the same skill and passion that others give to their guitars and keyboards. If you think recorded music is just a matter of aiming a microphone in the right direction, or if you're used to thinking of "Layla" as just another piece of "classic rock" background noise, this film is a real ear-opener.
There was a time in the history of popular music, about a century ago, when a hit song was measured by the number of copies of sheet music that sold. Pop songs entered the national consciousness not through a particular performance or interpretation but by way of the middle- class parlor room, where a piano was nearly as common an object as a cd player is today.
Tom Edison changed all that with the invention of the phonograph, a discovery that, like many of Edison's most innovative ideas, came to him through studying an unrelated piece of technology when he discovered that he could feel vibrations coming through a telephone receiver. You don't have to be Walter Benjamin to realize that the ability to record and preserve a single performance changed the way music is heard, used and even created. As recordings - a specific, fixed document of a piece of music - replaced sheet music - a blueprint for a potential performance -, the nature of music changed forever. Music and technology were intertwined, evolving together into a new language that most of us have learned to take for granted.
If you've never heard of Tom Dowd - a reasonable assumption - you may find it hard to believe that one person could have had such a long- lasting role not just in the way musical recordings are made but in a wide-ranging field of genres from bebop and soul to "Southern rock". As an engineer and producer, Dowd's had a hand in more great recordings than you could even listen to in a day, but one of the most welcome things about Mark Moormann's film Tom Dowd and the Language of Music is that it keeps its subject off a pedestal, preferring to find him where he's happiest, working the knobs and sliders of a recording studio console.
The film, which opens theatrically in selected cities this week and will be released on video later this month, is a string of talking-head anecdotes, archival footage and musical performances but there's not a dull moment in it, even on a second viewing. (Moormann succumbs to the unfortunate trend of staging some period scenes, but does so sparsely, never pushing the film into the contrived fictional region that marred Standing in the Shadows of Motown.). Dowd, a shaggy man in his seventies (He died at 77 in 2002, the year the film premiered at Sundance) who not only was a living witness to pop culture and history (in addition to his recording career, he worked on the Manhattan Project but gave up a dream of becoming a nuclear physicist when government security prevented him from returning to college), but remained at the end of his life every bit as excited by the memory of a musical performance or a technical detail as he had been when he first faced them.
Dowd started engineering in the late 40s, when the limitations of a typical recording studio made capturing the dynamics of a band an almost insurmountable challenge. Hooking up with a new, fast-rising label, Atlantic, he recorded some of the most prominent jazz and rhythm and blues acts of the 50s, experimenting with multiple tracks before stereo had even been developed. (A few years later, Dowd's tapes allowed Atlantic to reissue their back catalog in authentic stereo, when most labels were stuck creating ineffective simulations of two-track sound.) Taking a cue from guitarist Les Paul's home studio, he began experiment with eight-track recording years before it became an industry standard, and when Atlantic became one of the major labels of the 1960s and moved to new offices, it was Dowd who called the shots and designed the recording studios.
And then there are the records, from classic jazz albums with Monk, Coleman and Mingus to the breakthrough pop hits like "Mack the Knife" and "Stand by Me", from Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin to the quasi-psychedelia of Cream's "Disraeli Gears" (where Dowd is credited for overcoming the suspicions of the musicians by coming up with the syncopated beat for "Sunshine of Your Love"). As he became in demand for sessions at the Stax studio in Memphis as well as in, Macon and Mussel Shoals, the New York born physicist-turned-engineer relocated to Miami, where he became closely associated with the early careers of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. What keeps the film from no more than a parade of guest stars and greatest hits, however, is the sense conveyed by Dowd's recollections and footage of studio sessions that we are watching artists at work, tending less to the illusion of celebrity than to the real labor of laying down tracks and making them work.
As one might expect, the film includes many interviews with Dowd's associates, from industry legends like Ahmet Ertegun and Phil Ramone to artists like Clapton and Charles. The finest moment, and the film's climax, is given to Dowd alone, as he sits at a mixing board listening to the original tracks for "Layla". He works the dials eagerly as he explores the raw materials, excitedly pulling an additional slide guitar part here, a second piano there. This, we finally see, is his instrument, and he moves his fingers over the board with the same skill and passion that others give to their guitars and keyboards. If you think recorded music is just a matter of aiming a microphone in the right direction, or if you're used to thinking of "Layla" as just another piece of "classic rock" background noise, this film is a real ear-opener.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Lina who? Robert Hunt reaches deep into his files and recalls a mid-Seventies folly...
I was moving files out of a drawer and just reached the last handful: Wajda, Warhol,Welles, Wenders,Wertmuller. The last one took me by surprise. I imagine that many people interested in movies would be surprised to know that there was a time when Lina Wertmuller was a media cause celebre, subject of NYT profiles and cover stories: in fact, it might not be unreasonable to assume that most under the age of thirty will not even recognise the name at all (despite the recent blink-and-you'll-miss-it remake of Swept away...)
But things were quite different for a brief moment in 1976, when Wertmuller's blend of cruel comedy and politics found a home in American art-houses. Art-house taste at that time was set largely by a kind of snobbism (It's not that different now) and while a few of the giants of the Sixties (Truffaut and Bergman, most consistently) still made annual appearances and the occasional light comedy could break through (Anyone remember Cousin, Cousine ?), the audience had splintered. Individual directors had cult followings, but Eric Rohmer's fans generally weren't likely to have much in common with Ken Russell's. The American cinema was generally ignored. The occasional taboo-shattering scandal (Last Tango, The Night Porter, In the Realm of Senses) made for good conversation, but no one wanted to commit too seriously to them.
In this climate, Lina Wertmuller was the perfect director for the movie snob with Marxist and feminist intentions. Her films were political,feminist, serious. Or at least she said they were. And she talked a good game.
Wertmuller first entered the US arthouses with a modest hit called The Seduction of Mimi. Swept Away, with the same stars,Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangelo Melato, did even better. By the time Seven Beauties opened, New York Magazine had placed her on the cover calling her "the important European director since Bergman". Earlier Wertmuller films were given a belated U. S release. Hollywood stars plugged her movies on talk shows.
Talking to Wertmuller's fans could be exhausting, yet somehow you got the feeling that it was like talking to one of the fairy-tale emperor's supporters just after their hero had paraded nude past their block. She was praised as a political satirist, until you pointed out that both the political and comic points came from having her prole Everyman heroes (usually played by Gianini) abused by someone powerful (frequently a woman) and taking revenge by abusing them in turn, hardly a clear feminist statement. If you pointed out that the politics were simplistic and the humor crude at best, usually saved - barely- by Gianini's droopy-eyed appeal, they'd insist that the films you had seen were flawed, but whatever Wertmuller item you had missed was the masterpiece that saved her reputation.
But it must have appeared obvious to even the most devoted that Wertmuller's films didn't quite live up to her lofty claims of political insight, and that her penchant for lengthy titles like was at best pretentious, and worst, nonsensical. And wasn't it odd for an alleged Marxist/feminist that her biggest supporter in the US was the conservative critic John Simon (author of the "most important since Bergman" quote)? .
By the time her 1965 Let's Talk About Men was revived in 1976 (it was, coincidentally, the first film I ever reviewed in print), the game was up. In her interview with Simon, she had described the film as "extremely feminist", evidently confident that her US fan club would never see it: it turned out to be a standard, but minor, Italian farce, the kind of thing that arthouse audiences had given up on by 1965.
Like many European directors who find American success, Wertmuller was able to move up to international co-productions with American stars, but the audience lost interest by the time A Night Full of Rain (or if you prefer, The End of the World in our Usual beds on a Night Full of Rain) appeared, pairing Giannini with Candice Bergen. (European critics, by the way, were puzzled by the whole Wertmuller fad, much as you might be if you heard that a foreign magazine had just described Daniel Petrie or Joel Schumacher "the most important American director since Scorsese" or some such nonsense). By 1980, she was almost forgotten in the US, though a few of the Hollywood deals eventually resulted in The Seduction of Mimi remade as a Richard Pryor vehicle, and Swept Away was reworked, even prior to the recent Madonna interpretation as Overboard.
I didn't open the Wertmuller file. I know what's in it: old production notes and a glossy reproduction of the "New York" cover story, reprinted by one of her US distributors. To re-read them now, nearly 30 years later would simply raise the obvious question: What on earth were they thinking?
I was moving files out of a drawer and just reached the last handful: Wajda, Warhol,Welles, Wenders,Wertmuller. The last one took me by surprise. I imagine that many people interested in movies would be surprised to know that there was a time when Lina Wertmuller was a media cause celebre, subject of NYT profiles and cover stories: in fact, it might not be unreasonable to assume that most under the age of thirty will not even recognise the name at all (despite the recent blink-and-you'll-miss-it remake of Swept away...)
But things were quite different for a brief moment in 1976, when Wertmuller's blend of cruel comedy and politics found a home in American art-houses. Art-house taste at that time was set largely by a kind of snobbism (It's not that different now) and while a few of the giants of the Sixties (Truffaut and Bergman, most consistently) still made annual appearances and the occasional light comedy could break through (Anyone remember Cousin, Cousine ?), the audience had splintered. Individual directors had cult followings, but Eric Rohmer's fans generally weren't likely to have much in common with Ken Russell's. The American cinema was generally ignored. The occasional taboo-shattering scandal (Last Tango, The Night Porter, In the Realm of Senses) made for good conversation, but no one wanted to commit too seriously to them.
In this climate, Lina Wertmuller was the perfect director for the movie snob with Marxist and feminist intentions. Her films were political,feminist, serious. Or at least she said they were. And she talked a good game.
Wertmuller first entered the US arthouses with a modest hit called The Seduction of Mimi. Swept Away, with the same stars,Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangelo Melato, did even better. By the time Seven Beauties opened, New York Magazine had placed her on the cover calling her "the important European director since Bergman". Earlier Wertmuller films were given a belated U. S release. Hollywood stars plugged her movies on talk shows.
Talking to Wertmuller's fans could be exhausting, yet somehow you got the feeling that it was like talking to one of the fairy-tale emperor's supporters just after their hero had paraded nude past their block. She was praised as a political satirist, until you pointed out that both the political and comic points came from having her prole Everyman heroes (usually played by Gianini) abused by someone powerful (frequently a woman) and taking revenge by abusing them in turn, hardly a clear feminist statement. If you pointed out that the politics were simplistic and the humor crude at best, usually saved - barely- by Gianini's droopy-eyed appeal, they'd insist that the films you had seen were flawed, but whatever Wertmuller item you had missed was the masterpiece that saved her reputation.
But it must have appeared obvious to even the most devoted that Wertmuller's films didn't quite live up to her lofty claims of political insight, and that her penchant for lengthy titles like was at best pretentious, and worst, nonsensical. And wasn't it odd for an alleged Marxist/feminist that her biggest supporter in the US was the conservative critic John Simon (author of the "most important since Bergman" quote)? .
By the time her 1965 Let's Talk About Men was revived in 1976 (it was, coincidentally, the first film I ever reviewed in print), the game was up. In her interview with Simon, she had described the film as "extremely feminist", evidently confident that her US fan club would never see it: it turned out to be a standard, but minor, Italian farce, the kind of thing that arthouse audiences had given up on by 1965.
Like many European directors who find American success, Wertmuller was able to move up to international co-productions with American stars, but the audience lost interest by the time A Night Full of Rain (or if you prefer, The End of the World in our Usual beds on a Night Full of Rain) appeared, pairing Giannini with Candice Bergen. (European critics, by the way, were puzzled by the whole Wertmuller fad, much as you might be if you heard that a foreign magazine had just described Daniel Petrie or Joel Schumacher "the most important American director since Scorsese" or some such nonsense). By 1980, she was almost forgotten in the US, though a few of the Hollywood deals eventually resulted in The Seduction of Mimi remade as a Richard Pryor vehicle, and Swept Away was reworked, even prior to the recent Madonna interpretation as Overboard.
I didn't open the Wertmuller file. I know what's in it: old production notes and a glossy reproduction of the "New York" cover story, reprinted by one of her US distributors. To re-read them now, nearly 30 years later would simply raise the obvious question: What on earth were they thinking?
Friday, August 06, 2004
Was it all a dream?
When Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers opened earlier this year, most of the criticism I read reflected disinterested confusion, some of it accusing the director of a simple-minded nostalgia, most of it unable to get past the film's NC-17 rating. Having finally caught up with the film on the recently released DVD, I'm even more disappointed with the lack of insightful criticism than I was earlier.
Is it a success? It's hard to say, though one of the unusual things about Bertolucci's work is that his failures (1900 and Luna, for example) are sometimes more rewarding for the risks they take. There are so many strands running through The Dreamers that it may take a few viewings to sort them all out: cinephilia, sex, May .68, the other cultural detritus of the 60s, and Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles".
I haven't read Gilbert Adair's novel "The Holy Innocents", though the author notes - approvingly - that the film makes many additions to his story (it has even been reported that he rewriting the book to incorporate Bertolucci's changes) but gather from descriptions that it's a revision of Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles" (one English translation of which was titled "The Holy Terrors") in the form of an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a British student in France.
Cocteau's novel (which was filmed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1948) is about a pair of semi-incestuous siblings playing psychological games in a Paris apartment. Though they adopt friends, they also manipulate them in an almost sadistic manner. It's a magical story, but with a cruel streak.
The Dreamers has a similarly incestuous couple living an intensely aestheticized life in an apartment sanctuary, but in this case their self-absorbed idyll is invaded by history and viewed from the perspective of a third party, a young American student who is pulled into the world as much from his own loneliness as by their magnetism.
One of the most curious scenes comes the absent parents return to the apartment, survey the damage, find the naked trio and, leaving a check behind to keep the kids in groceries, run off as if fearing for their lives.The abandonment of parental authority or its' defeat? And why does it this scene drive Isabelle to attempt suicide? Is she associating her death with Mouchette, or is Bertolucci making the connection?
The film offers little in the way of resolution. Do the events of May bring an end to innocence, a commitment to political change, a break between the romantic Matthew and the newly-committed Theo? Perhaps Bertolucci is trying to do too much and can't really answer his own questions. Much of the charm of The Dreamers is in the asking.
Fortunately, this perceptive review in "Bright Lights Film Journal" by A. Zubatov and Yaniv Eyny puts much of the film in perspective.
When Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers opened earlier this year, most of the criticism I read reflected disinterested confusion, some of it accusing the director of a simple-minded nostalgia, most of it unable to get past the film's NC-17 rating. Having finally caught up with the film on the recently released DVD, I'm even more disappointed with the lack of insightful criticism than I was earlier.
Is it a success? It's hard to say, though one of the unusual things about Bertolucci's work is that his failures (1900 and Luna, for example) are sometimes more rewarding for the risks they take. There are so many strands running through The Dreamers that it may take a few viewings to sort them all out: cinephilia, sex, May .68, the other cultural detritus of the 60s, and Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles".
I haven't read Gilbert Adair's novel "The Holy Innocents", though the author notes - approvingly - that the film makes many additions to his story (it has even been reported that he rewriting the book to incorporate Bertolucci's changes) but gather from descriptions that it's a revision of Cocteau's "Les Enfants Terribles" (one English translation of which was titled "The Holy Terrors") in the form of an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a British student in France.
Cocteau's novel (which was filmed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1948) is about a pair of semi-incestuous siblings playing psychological games in a Paris apartment. Though they adopt friends, they also manipulate them in an almost sadistic manner. It's a magical story, but with a cruel streak.
The Dreamers has a similarly incestuous couple living an intensely aestheticized life in an apartment sanctuary, but in this case their self-absorbed idyll is invaded by history and viewed from the perspective of a third party, a young American student who is pulled into the world as much from his own loneliness as by their magnetism.
One of the most curious scenes comes the absent parents return to the apartment, survey the damage, find the naked trio and, leaving a check behind to keep the kids in groceries, run off as if fearing for their lives.The abandonment of parental authority or its' defeat? And why does it this scene drive Isabelle to attempt suicide? Is she associating her death with Mouchette, or is Bertolucci making the connection?
The film offers little in the way of resolution. Do the events of May bring an end to innocence, a commitment to political change, a break between the romantic Matthew and the newly-committed Theo? Perhaps Bertolucci is trying to do too much and can't really answer his own questions. Much of the charm of The Dreamers is in the asking.
Fortunately, this perceptive review in "Bright Lights Film Journal" by A. Zubatov and Yaniv Eyny puts much of the film in perspective.
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