Alternate Reality: Blogging in the Seventies

10 >> Hi everyone, no time for a full post today as I have a
20 >> hot tub party to get to and I can't be late again.
30 >> Just wanted to throw some links out there for all
40 >> of you who couldn't access the comp lab last week.
50 >> First off, Rick at Junction817332alt/loc.glc/systems has
60 >> a great post up on George Segal where he wonders if
70 >> any other actor will ever be as big a star. The title
80 >> of his post is "Golden Boy."
90 >> Next up Marilyn at glob/sys/344/msmovie has a great
100>> write up of last year's SILVER STREAK. She swoons
110>> over Gene Wilder and says, "Jill (Clayburgh), you are
120>> one lucky lady!"
130>> Jim Emerson uses a projector and film reel at the AV
140>> center on the north side of campus to explain why
150>> LOGAN'S RUN is a bad film based on a three second
160>> clip he has obtained and dissected frame by frame.
170>> That anonymous merry prankster Arbogast has
180>> another post up about Dolly Parton and Uschi Digard
190>> and wonders who would win in a "Boob-Off" contest.
200>> Dennis Cozzalio is going to be an extra in a college
210>> based comedy next year called, get this, ANIMAL
220>> HOUSE. Could that title be worse? Take a picture
230>> Dennis because this one's going to come and go if
240>> you know what I mean.
250>> And of course there's me. Don't forget to check out
260>> my seventeenth post on STAR WARS, the most awe-
270>> inspiring masterwork the cinema has yet produced.
280>> I uploaded it to the main-frame at the computer lab
290>> yesterday. In it I discuss how Luke Skywalker
300>> played by Mark Hamill (God what a performance!)
310>> could be taken as a stand-in for Bob Woodward and
320>> Carl Bernstein and Darth Vader as Nixon. You
330>> probably don't see how that could possibly work
340>> but it does! Really! Anyway, I've got to go.
350>> MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU - ALWAYS!

The Dead Walk Amongst Us

That would be all we bloggers who have been working hard to post every day and keep the fires of October burning brightly, or darkly as it were. It's been a hell of a Kill Fest here and there's only one day to go. Posting this much and this often isn't my normal style and an unusually heavy workload at my real job and computer problems at home made for an even tougher go of it. And with one day left I would be remiss if I didn't mention Arbogast and his 31 Screams, Bill and his daily horror book review plus Rick keeping the vampire myth perpetuating, Pat (Evil Clown) going nuts for a month and even Bob getting down and dirty for the month. I would also be remiss if I didn't apologize to my many favorite bloggers who may not have seen much of me this month. With work and then especially with the home computer problems I had to use my time at work, uh, working and quickly checking in here when I could.

My post tomorrow will be the month end movie. It's a little different than what you're used to seeing here at Cinema Styles. It's 2 minutes and 45 seconds but only a little over a minute of that is the actual montage. And in that minute I cram in over 50 clips so it moves fast, very fast. As such, I highly recommend opening it, pausing it and letting it load up fully before starting. The rest is the "program" that surrounds it. Just imagine it's 1958 and you're at a drive-in and everything should work out fine. There's even a logo for Cinema Styles in there, made to look how it might have were it a super low budget film company operating in the late fifties rather than a movie blog operating today.

And finally, starting November (if I can get to a computer that works on Saturday) the blog will have a new design with a few new features. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Now for some more coffee and, ugh, back to work.

The One You Might Have Killed

Several months ago Arbogast on Film began the series The One You Might Have Saved, which was picked up by several blogs and became kind of an unplanned, ongoing blogathon. In salute to both the series and October Kill Fest Month here at Cinema Styles I'd like to turn it around and do a post on The One You Might Have Killed. This idea was already hinted at early on by The Dreaded Rhubarb in his response to Arbo in which he saved one and killed one. I'd like to start this one the same way before freefalling into a well of killing mania.

In honor of Arbo, I'd definitely save Private Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) and kill Sam Loomis (John Gavin). See, I'd have Detective Arbogast poke around the Bates Motel and then head out. As far as the audience knows, he gave up. Then Lila Crane (Vera Miles) and Sam show up and do their snooping. Lila snoops around the house, finds nothing, and heads back to the motel. There she finds Sam has been knocked out by Norman and revives him. Sam tells her to stay put while he checks out the house. He soon arrives at the house and makes his way up the stairs, just like our disappearing detective did in a former life. When Sam gets to the top - BAM! Mama Bates comes out and slashes Sam down the stairs where he tumbles to the floor, prostrate as Mama kneels over him and finishes the job.

Lila's getting worried. What's taking Sam so long? She goes to the house but no one's there. Mama Bates has already moved the body. Lila now goes to the basement, the one place she hadn't gone before. She sees Mama Bates in the rocking chair. She approaches, spins it around only to reveal - Ahhhhhhh!!!!! It's a withered corpse!!!!!! And now through the door comes Mama Bates, only it's Norman Bates in women's clothes. Oh no!!! She's surely dead now ...

until...

Arbogast runs through the door (God bless him, he didn't give up after all!), grabs Norman and wrestles him to the ground. Psychiatrist mumbo jumbo, blah, blah, blah, the end.

So there's my One I Would Have Saved and One I Would Have Killed. Now let's get into the meat of the post: The One You Might Have Killed.

*Wargames, Malvin (Eddie Deezen). Nothing against the actor personally, but in the movie, the second he starts going on about how much he knows about computers - BOOM! - I'd have a mainframe fall on his head. Sure it'd be a little jarring to the plot momentarily but I assure you, the story would recover in seconds.

*Gone With The Wind, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). Just 'cause.

*Deathtrap, Helga Ten Dorp (Irene Worth). One of the most annoying characters in movie history. Shortly after she's shows up and starts blathering on about the bad omens she's getting, I'd have Michael Caine grab the chopping block and crush her skull. Throw the whole plot out of whack you say? Trust me, losing her character could only make it better.

*The Goodbye Girl, Entire Lead Cast. I don't know, just feels right.

*West Side Story, Maria (Natalie Wood). Hey, Juliet dies. Why's Maria get to live?

*Dances With Wolves, John Dunbar (Kevin Costner). I'd have him killed in that opening Civil War scene. But then there wouldn't be a movie you say. Exactly.

*Any movie that has ever starred Danny Kaye, Danny Kaye's character. His character dies in the first scene, every time.

*The Lion King, Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick). Can't we just make the movie about Scar?

*My Dinner with Andre, Andre Gregory. If only to make him shut up.

*Rocky, the annoying guy who drives Gazzo around that's always giving Rocky a hard time. Screw you pal, you're gone! I'd have Rocky go all berserker on him, mash his face into pulp and dump his body off the pier. Gazzo's like, "Hey where's my driver?" and Rocky's all like, "I don't know. I think he went for a drink."

So there are my top ten choices. I left some off for one reason or another (Jar Jar Binks - Too easy) and some I wanted you to come up with. I don't want to steal them all. So let me know - Who are the Ones You Might Have Killed?

Hey, I Said Get Your Kill Face On...

... not take if off!

*****This has been a tribute post to "The Kill Face Chronicles" of Arbogast on Film. They're kind of like the Chronicles of Narnia, only there's no Jesus/Lion figure and everyone pictured has murder on their mind. So, yeah, I guess it's not like Narnia at all. Anyway...*****

The Answer was under Your Nose, but the Question Never Arose

I had this friend in college, Andy, who possessed a unique gift for clarity. He did this thing, you see, that consistently amazed friends and classmates alike. An example of what would happen time and time again is this: I'd be arguing with someone on a given topic, any topic, it didn't matter. We could be arguing for or against a particular movie, a politician, a foreign policy stance or some matter of historical minutiae. The argument would get heated, we'd dig in our heels and any possibility of a middle ground would grow more and more remote. Then Andy would show up.

"What are you guys talking about?" he'd ask. We'd tell him. Then he'd say, "The way I see it, ..." and proceed to deliver three or four sentences, at most, that would completely, totally, utterly, and absolutely end the argument. There would be silence, my friend and I would stare at each other, and stumble through sentences like, "Well... yeah... uh... I mean... yeah... that... I guess that pretty much settles it." He did it enough that fellow classmates joked about it, made reference to it and said in the midst of heated arguments, "If only Andy was here."

I lost touch with Andy years ago but had an Andy-like moment on the Scanners blog the other day. After Jim stated he wasn't the person to review Sex and the City commenters went back and forth about it. How could he say that? How could someone be the person to review Se7en? Isn't that a cop out? And so on. Then Andy, oops, I mean, Larry Aydlette showed up and wrote,

"How many times do critics feel that way about lots of movies and yet they never let the reader know? And do they owe them an explanation? All criticism is
subjective in the end, of course, but does this make a valid argument for movie critics to have specialties? Book critics who like mysteries tend to focus exclusively on their preferred genre. As do many art critics. And music critics, obviously. Movie critics, however, are expected to be great generalists,appreciative of every type of film. Why?"

Thanks Andy, er, Larry. In studying art criticism in college, where I was introduced to the criticisms of Roger Fry among others, it was made clear that there were experts in separate fields. Painting, sculpture, architecture and literature all had critics who were well versed in one style or period and that's what they wrote about. I knew that but never applied it to film criticism because no one ever asked (hence the title of the post).

To answer Larry's question of "why" I would say it's because the cinema is still so very new. It's periods are defined by decades, not centuries, and the definitions themselves are fuzzy. As for style, cinephiles are still arguing over what a genre even is. What makes a movie a Noir? Does it have to have a femme fatale? What makes a Screwball Comedy? How about Horror? There's monster horror (vampires, werewolves), slasher horror, ghost horror, serial killer horror - wait a minute - some are serial killer horror but some movies about serial killers are Police Procedurals. By the way, what makes a Police Procedural? Is it just an updated version of the Mystery genre? My guess is that a thousand years from now people won't care, or even see the difference. There will be 19th century film (the earliest and shortest period), 20th century, 21st century and so on. Perhaps they will have names. The 20th Century period might be the "Montage" period of film, in reference to the editing techniques that began to define the form in the teens, expand it in the twenties with filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein and now has reached saturation point with rapid fire, quick-cut mini-montages accounting for 90 percent of the content of most action films (although to be a stickler, they are not really using disconnected images to create a coherent new text so maybe pure montage is already dead).

But hey, that's a thousand years from now. What about the present? In the present, I see the change already taking place. As bloggers and online critics continue to write without editorial control they naturally take themselves in one direction or another. They self-specialize. For now, it's those short ten year periods or those fuzzy genres. In the future, it will be whole centuries of cinema styles that will be their specialty at which point no one will feign shock over a critic saying, "I'm not the person to review this movie." It will be expected.

Which brings me back to the idea of who reviews what. I started thinking about what movies I am the reviewer for and which movies I am not. As far as specialized genre is concerned my favorites are science fiction, adventure and horror, though oddly many of my favorite films are low key dramas and always have been, but I guess I don't think of "low-key drama" as much of a definable genre. As far as period goes, my favorites are the thirties, especially the early thirties when the industry was re-learning the craft after the introduction of sound, and the late sixites to the mid-seventies.

Now I don't know nearly as much about horror as do notable bloggers like Kimberly Lindbergs, Stacie Ponder or Arbogast Von Gingersnap (I'm just assuming that's his full name). I'd call myself a fan but not an expert.

Then there's adventure. I love adventure movies, especially those in the mold of Gunga Din or The Man Who Would Be King but again I'm more of a fan than an expert.

But Sci-Fi. Yeah, I could review Sci-Fi. I've loved Sci-Fi since I was but a tot and have seen voluminous amounts of it. Now I'm not into Sci-Fi literature, at all, but I love Sci-Fi movies and television. I love them to the point where I'm one of those people you run into from time to time who gets visibly annoyed when someone thinks Star Wars is science fiction. It never turns out good. I try and explain that it's an adventure story, a fantasy story, a story steeped in the traditions of mythic heroes only to get, "Yeah but they got ray guns and fly around in space." That's usually when the twitch sets in and I start making audible verbal ticks.

So I'd have to say if I were part of a staff that reviewed movies or wrote about them historically, and all according to preference, I'd be the sci-fi reviewer and the thirties Hollywood historian. Those would be my gigs. We'd all share Drama I suppose.

I even started thinking about where I would place my fellow bloggers and commenters but came up empty most of the time. Larry for instance. I have no idea. Tough guy movies? You know Burt Reynolds stuff,or hard boiled detectives or streetwise dames. I'd definitely trust my instincts with putting him in charge of concert movies. But for the most part I don't know. I do know that while people naturally specialize their interests they hate being pigeon-holed and I understand. As much as I love Sci-Fi I wouldn't want to be thought of as "that Sci-Fi guy." I want people to know that I am well-rounded and have varied interests. I want people to know that I am not beholden to one particular genre or period for all of my entertainment. Maybe that's why film critics attempt to be generalists in this most popular of art forms. With only a little over a century of product available, no one wants to be limited to only a few years or a few movies.

So it will be quite a while before film criticism starts fully specializing itself into large century long periods. Until then, if you don't mind pigeon-holing yourself in public (as long as it's legal in your state) please do so. I'd love to know your position on the staff.

He's a Serious Mister, Shake His Hand and He'll Twist Your Arm

I'm referring to Arbogast, of course. We all know Arbogast (real name: Jed Leland). Well he tagged me and since I've been busy and running kind of dry with blogging I agreed to participate. So here's the meme thingy:

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

So here goes.

"Balderdash," said Smethels as he furiously inhaled the green essence emanating from the discarded pantaloons he had discovered in the alley, "We cannot go back in time and successfully mate a pterodactyl with Cheops."

"Ha!" snorted Phineas as he bounced about on one elbow in a futile effort to keep his shoes dry, "We shall do just that and can do that as long as we have just these three items: the bark of a twelve-year-old Cyprus tree, a cylinder of Caruso performing 'Rigoletto' and a medium sized horn filled with sweet cream unsalted butter churned from the milk of a nursing jackal."

Hortense leapt to her feet: "The butter is vital!"

Nah, that book sucks. Okay, one more try.

"Oh I know I oughtn't to be taking it like this, but... Honestly, Jim, it does get you down, the whole thing. I feel so fed-up with it all. I don't even want to bash his brains out any more."

There, that's better. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Oh yeah, and I cheated. I started after the sixth sentence instead of the fifth because the sixth was a long-ass run-on and I didn't feel like typing it and I wanted to actually go with the first book I grabbed. And now for the tag.

I tag you. And you.

And YOU!

UPDATE: What a stroke of luck that I posted from two books, the first of course being The Amazing Fantabulous Adventures of the Crazy Upside Down Dr Phineas' Travels Through Time! because I just discovered that the incomparable Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats tagged me for this as well. And she's a serious sister. That means I must tag more people. This time I shall tag YOU.

Yes,YOU!

Can Anyone Make Sense of This?

So there I am checking in with old Arbogast when I see his newest post giving the what-for to Armond White, someone whose job title, film critic, desperately begs for quotation marks. After seeing a quoted excerpt on Arbo's immensely entertaining blog from the White-penned piece in question I figured I'd read the whole thing. The quote Arbo provides has White basically calling film bloggers a chattering gaggle of dimwits. See, we're all solipsistic. First a Google search took me here, to Glen Kenny writing about it as well, which piqued even more interest. Apparently White also went off about print critics. Finally I got to the White piece itself here and read it. And... well... um, here's the thing. I was all set to go off on White myself but after reading it I really only have one question: Was White drunk when he wrote this?

Jesus, what a mess! How messy? Here's a sentence I have written as a sample: "Let cigar discombobulate wallet the cd in coffee your speakers."

There. That sentence is clearer than most of what White wrote. He does have a few salient points but as soon as they're made he... um... this is kind of weird... he tears them down himself. It's kind of confusing. Let's see, best I can tell, bloggers bring down the conversation. They're too conversational. And you don't want conversational in a conversation. Or something like that. Print critics have responded by dumbing themselves down too. Ebert's too conversational for instance. Except, "today’s criticism isn’t real conversation; on the Internet it’s too solipsistic and autodidactic to be called a heart-to-heart. (Viral criticism isn’t real; it’s mostly half-baked, overlong term-paper essays by fans who like to think they think.)" So... it's good to be conversational? Or bad? Maybe bad because bloggers spend too much time "intellectualizing" that which is merely a hobby. And then there's... ah, to hell with it, just read it for yourself and when you figure out where he stands let me know.

*****

Ed. note: Of course, in all seriousness I know where he stands. His overriding point seems to be, "I am right, you are wrong. Only my opinions are of value." It reminds me of a definition I've read before that goes something like this: "a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing; also : extreme egocentrism" What's that definition for? Oh yeah, solipsism.