The Village Idiots

NPR’s Talk of the Nation did a program on memorable meals in film. What are some of your favorite meals in films, or favorite scenes involving food?

I want to draw the idiots’ attention to one of the best critical reviews I have come across. The review–or, to be more specific, the analysis–is of the Harold Arlen song, “Over the Rainbow,” and it comes from the NPR music series, “What Makes it Great,” a series that explains what makes specific, famous songs so good. (I urge you to check out the review here.) Everyone knows the song, but the commentators, Fred Child and Rob Kapilow, walk the listener through the song–with Kapilow playing the song on the piano while he and Child interject comments. Sometimes Kapilow will repeat a phrase until the point is clear; at other times he will play a phrase in a way one would expect and then quickly play the actual way it was written. The approach is highly effective, and the points made are absolutely clear and compelling–so much so that I want to use the words like “enligtening” and “magical” to describe the review.

Now, how often does that happen with a review of a movie, book, or piece of music? I’d say almost never–certainly not in as vivid and compelling a way as this NPR episode. While I don’t expect reviews to be “magical,” I do expect a better job of helping me appreciate the merits (or lack thereof) of the work in question.

To be fair, I think reviewers have multiple objectives: they want to help viewers determine whether they should see a movie or not (which is not always related to the aesthetic merits of a film) and they want to critically analyze the work (at least some of the reviewers). Complicating matters is the high volume of movies/books/music they must review, as well as the limited words and time to write these reviews. It’s no wonder that reviews don’t leave people with a greater understanding of what makes a work of art great or bad.

Here are some changes I would suggest to deal with the problem:

1. Limit the number of works to review I can hear the critics saying, “How can we do this? We don’t have a choice on the matter?” My response is try a different approach. I believe that the majority of works don’t deserve a lot of time and energy to review. I’m thinking of the mediocre works, the cookie-cutter and copycat type of film. A really short review or even just a rating would be sufficient for these films. These works may not be bad, but they don’t warrant a lot of time and energy. This will allow reviewers to have the time and energy to review the films that deserve it.
2. Select a handful of works that deserve the time. These works would be either really terrific films (certainly those that could be all-time greats) or, perhaps, critically acclaimed films that don’t deserve it.
3. Copy the “What Makes it Great” approach. I’m thinking specifically of the way the NPR commentators use specific examples of the film to make their points. The movie review equivalent would be for reviewers show actual clips of the film and comment on them (similar to what filmmakers did in films like The Celluloid Closet, The Cutting Edge or Visions of Light). Yes, this would take a lot of time, but it could also help people understand what makes a film so great.

Helping the layperson to understand what makes a specific book, movie or piece of music so great is one of the most important roles a critic plays in society. While the suggestions above aren’t easy, I think they would go a long way in making the reviews more valuable.

The discussion boards on mubi.com currently has a film director’s cup challenge that some of you would be interested in. Basically, this a tournament style competition between the film directors. Here’s how it works. Individual users select specific directors to “manage.” The users will then select a film from their director in the first round. These films are then paired up in a “competition.” For example, in the first round, Alfred Hitchcock might go against Steven Spielberg. The users managing the directors might choose Psycho and Jaws as the films to “compete.” The general user group at the site then votes on which film wins. The winning director advances to the next round, until only one director remains. The tricky part is that only films can only be used once, so the managers have to be strategic in their selection. Think of this as a sort of “fantasy football of films.”

What makes this cool is that you can see a lot of good films, films you may not have heard of, and you get to discuss them with other people. Some of the films are hard to get a hold of, but many of the films can be seen on youtube.

So yeah. I’m six months late with this. Based on my list at IMDB, which is based on my ratings on VI, I saw eight films I ranked 8/10 or better (no 10/10s this year). This means that all I had to do was rank the nines in order, then the eights in order. Then I got to choose my two best sevens. Here’s how they came out, in order from best to tenth-best:
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This is the third film by Michael Haneke–and the third film in what I’ve learned is called the “Glaciation Trilogy.” (Is that a word?)

For those of you who would like a plot description, here it is: Read more »

The story is that Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (whose work I am not familiar with) sat down and hashed out a new extreme in film-making as a response to big-budget films. The Dogme 95 Manifesto, which has been violated by its own creators since the first two Dogme films, looks like this, according to Wikipedia:
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Dir. Michael Haneke
70/100

I’d mildly recommend this to Kevin. I think Penny, Grace, Mitchell and Chris would find this an interesting film, even if it’s not something they would love. I wouldn’t recommend this to Marc, Don, Joel, Jill or Larri.

**
This is a film based on an actual event concerning an Austrian middle-class family. The film takes place over a three year period and in that time we see the family in their daily routines: the husband going off to work; the wife going off to work; the daugther going to school. At some point the family decides to make a change in their lives. Read more »

Penny and I are in the process of watching the films of Michael Haneke–one of the darlings of the critical establishment (if not the critics then cinephiles, perhaps). I’ve seen several of his films and at first I thought Penny (and maybe Kevin) would be interested in his films–but I actually think others–Mitchell, Kevin, Chris and maybe even Tony–would be interested in his films.

We’re planning to see the films in chronological order. (There are eleven total.) I recently watched Haneke’s first film, The Seventh Continent, and I’ll be starting a thread on that soon.

For those of you who want some background on Haneke before deciding to see his films, here’s a brief introduction. Read more »

Mitchell made his top ten list, and I hope he posts it. But I also wanted other people to post their choices.

I didn’t watch all of the Academy Awards, but I did see the tribute to John Hughes. Based on the audience’s applause, I thought the response was a bit tepid. In any event, there has been a recent debate about Hughes at the auteurs site, and I was wondering what you all thought about some of the following issues: Read more »

I know that Gregg likes action films, particularly kung-fu films–or at least he used to. I’m too lazy to think of any other qualities Gregg looks for in films. Hopefully, he’ll respond and add what he likes and doesn’t like. I was going to give Gregg some recommendations, but I think I’ll give him a chance to comment before I do.

Any suggestions for films that I should see with my children. I’d like to request some recommendations divided into age categories (eg. films to show five year olds.) To start things off, let’s see some recommendations for the first film they should see and how about a discussion of when do you think seeing a film is appropriate.

There are movie scenes that will unsurprisingly move the audience. In this thread, I’m asking people to share scenes from films that touched them deeply–but one wouldn’t others to be touched by. Indeed, the people sharing may also be surprised by their reaction to these scenes. In Chris’ review of Children of Men, he talked about a particular scene where he lost it (I think he said he was sobbing or something to that effect). I remember the scene, and I wanted to know the reason that scene had that effect.

Another example I recall comes from actor, Delroy Lindo. He describes a scene from Breaker Morant (or was it Gallipoli?) where the two soldiers are walking to their death and the hold each others hands.

I know there have been scenes like this for me, but I’ll have to think about them. Again, these are scenes that others might find touching, but not as much as you did. Read more »

Every once and a while Mitchell and I talk about the characteristics of a great art, and since we–and hopefully others–might attempt to select some of the best films of the 2000s, I thought talking about explicitly about this issue might be appropriate. It’s a difficult and daunting subject to address, but let me suggest a way that might make this easier. Read more »

Movies, dvds, etc. you’ve seen in 2010.

I didn’t see very many movies at all in the second half of the decade because I was working on my M.Ed. Still, I saw enough to compile a respectable list, though I suppose others would disagree. I suppose, too, that as I see more films this list will need to be revisited and revised, but if I delayed making the list until I felt I’d seen the decade’s every notable film, this list would never get made. So with that caution, I present my Twenty Best Films of the Decade, starting with the best of the best and working down to number twenty.
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NPR’s Bob Mondello selects his worst films of the decade. The ground rules are that at least 4 million Americans (approximately $30 million) have seen the film. I’ll have to think about mine. If you don’t want to go to the link, here’s his picks Read more »

Talk about some of your favorite Western–or what I used to call them when I was a kid: “Cowboy movies.” Here are some of mine. Read more »

Everytime I’m eating at Cafe Laufer, I glance over at the old Queen Theater and get wistful over the potential of the place. Here’s my dream of that place: Read more »

I read this, a blog post on Ebert and A.O. Scott’s rant on the dumbing down of movie audiences and then this at the Atlantic website, which lead me to Who Needs Critics.

I think the question is a good one. Do people really value the opinions of movie (or other types) of critics? Would our culture really suffer if there were no professional critics?