Viewing Log #56: October highlights so far

by Ryland Walker Knight

• Jackass 3D [Jeff Tremaine, 2010] Despite more full cock shots, less queer than the other 2, and especially the better parts of 2, which is my favorite of the trilogy. The most curious thing in the flick is just how little they seem to enjoy the process besides Knoxville and WeeMan. Steve-O, in particular, looks to be only going through the motions. But, still, I laughed so hard my nose began to run.
  
• Eastbound & Down [Jody Hill et al, 2010] Just waiting on the finale now. It got darker, that's for sure, and easily a lot meaner. Not sure these are good things. It's really weird just how much this crew, despite making a comedy series, is really interested in making Real Art that does a lot to Say Something under the guise of foul language and attitudes. I'm curious (1) if they'll be around in 20 years and (2) what in the hell they could be mad about then.
  
• Boardwalk Empire [Terrence Winter, 2010] That is, so far. And so far so-so. Plenty of stuff to like, plenty of stuff I could plain do without, like those opening titles.
  
• Blazing Saddles [Mel Brooks, 1974] # Gene Wilder is the best person in the world with Harvey Korman and Slim Pickens running a close tie behind him.
  
• High Anxiety [Mel Brooks, 1977] # A lesser effort, to be sure, but some timing gags work perfectly; and some of the spoof elements are pretty great. Mostly, I enjoyed how much my sister enjoyed it.
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # A joy.
  
• The jerk [Carl Reiner, 1979] # Still my favorite Steve Martin movie. A fine reminder of what once amounted to a particular kind of comedic genius.
  
• Plenty of 30 Rock's latest season, which I'm enjoying.
  
• Code Unknown [Michael Haneke, 2000] Not really a highlight, but it's made very well. Once again I'm left thinking: sure, but you can also go to hell, Herr H.
  
• The Loved One [Evelyn Waugh, 1948] Narrow in the right ways, this may be a perfect novel, though sometimes the wit gets just a tad cute.
  
• Louis C.K.: Chewed Up [2008] Dude's on fire.
  
• Freedom [Jonathan Franzen, 2010] I'm fine with it! In fact, I find it really entertaining in good ways, though I also find a lot of the writing clumsy in that the on-purpose-clumsiness just feels clumsy sometimes. Still, I'm happy I read it, and read it then (this year, this moment). Doubt I'll ever pick it up again.
  
• Henry IV: Part One in Ashland, Oregon at the Shakespeare Festival with my dad. My legs got pretty cold, but that was alright. What truly fascinated me was just how much more interesting an actor the guy who played Hal was than the guy who played Falstaff. Not typical.

Convergence for your cover fool (4/1/10)

by Ryland Walker Knight

An adventure to any extent

Don't get too greedy

by Ryland Walker Knight

I did my best to resist the evaluative while comparing how Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr. Fox address their audiences. I don't know how well I succeeded on either of those fronts. I know I let my distaste for the Jonze picture creep in as much as my enthusiasm for the Anderson picture shines through what little I had to say. It's a pretty simple argument, really, that I might be able to boil down to: if you're going to go the sadness route, you ought to make me feel something besides annoyance at the tedium of hurt. I know that part of life all too well already. I enjoy Fox and other Wes Anderson pictures precisely because they're adventures, and comedies, and about exploring the world with some imagination and wit. But I'll have more to say about that at a not-much-later date for a different outlet. So, until then, read this and that and the other thing I threw together (threw up?) in The Notebook. If you want to read something smarter, and more cohesive, and maybe even more honest, read Sicinski's piece in Cinema-Scope. If I'd had the gumption, I'd've talked in public about how much of me I saw or didn't see and how that swayed me. But I'll save that for my face-to-face friends.

Viewing Log #34: Lateral Collateral [2/15/10 - 2/21/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

This past week I watched a bit of all of Wes Anderson's movies here and there*, I looked at A Serious Man and The Informant! again, and a whole bunch of basketball games, as well as a basketball movie on hulu. I also wrote a bunch about Wes Anderson, and then rewrote it a lot, and need to give my text one final pass right now. (More on this soon.) I read some Philip Larkin and some Cavell and even wrote some poems of my own. I worked a lot and my brain got tired in a different way. I plan to work out more in the coming months by swimming laps because running only hurts my knees ever since I fell. I still walked the dog in the sun and in the rain. I drank a fair number of beers on a few different nights. I danced at Soul Night and Barry introduced me to those DJs and they seem like swell dudes. Pretty packed. Still plenty left on the dining room table.

—Here's another goodrn, Tom
*Since people like lists, here's how I'd rank the Wes films in preferential order, which, of course, doesn't mean it's anything but my taste, which I think should be shown to favor the formal and the hilarious first. Do you remember just how funny these movies are? I'll expand on this more later, but, the gist is this: making comedy makes sense (in nonsense) as much as light of the world and its problems, is hard, should be a bigger part of so-called serious art and, for that matter, a bigger part of so-called serious people's canon.

• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004
  
• Rushmore, 1998
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox, 2009
  
• Bottle Rocket, 1996
  
• The Darjeeling Limited, 2007
  
• The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001

This coming week I have some sure-fire movie-going bets, though, including the Dorsky night at PFA, which means Lost will get pushed back a bit, and I want to see Shutter Island three days ago, and I may even brave My Son, My Son if I have the time. What's more, there's a ton of SFIAAFF screeners to get to, like the new Hong, which I plan to write about in the near future. Anyways, back to editing before bedtime, before another week of madness. Here's hoping that, with the right attention and application and sleep schedule, everything heals.

Make tomorrow yesterday, love ice and sun

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Click for treats
Sunday afternoon I learned about The Field. First thought: How could this dude elude me for so long? Mostly my fault, if we want to say fault, since I don't exactly go looking for music the same way I used to at the start of our last decade (ie, read Pfork). However, how come it took somebody new to hip me to this? Turns out my friends all already thought I was hip to it. They just figured I wouldn't need a nudge in this direction because it suits my musical temperament so well. That is, it has its pop roots—it's dance music after all, there's a cover of "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" on the newer record—but it's weird and illegible enough to intrigue other parts of my brain. Dance music, and minimal dance music at that, gets a bad rap for being "repetitive" but that's precisely where the fun lies. Not just because it builds a beat to vibe with and dance to but also because repetition is an order to play with just like anything else: the differences, exciting and terrible and awesome and so many things, emerge over time. Put otherwise: these two albums have been on repeat a lot because they tickle my brain as much as my sides; they stimulate concepts up top and feelings below in the body. (This was also my so-called "over-intellectualized" argument in favor of Midtown 120 Blues last fall, too.)

Also, for all my love of Cut Copy and Pavement and Prince and any other wacky pop, I'm pretty into minimal-architectural sounds that arrange a space (a field!) of play. For a long time all I did was listen to Fennesz. That was like living in a cave, however, and putting The Field on repeat is like living a perpetual drive across the Golden Gate bridge with the sunroof open and not minding the fog's chill because you know there's sunshine ahead.

—Suits living West of it all, too
This also gave me good reason to update the widget after a long time off that tip. I've added the two albums that headline this post, the Cavell book we should all be reading together, and two of the best American films last year (The Informant! and Fantastic Mr. Fox), about which I'll have more to say in the not-too-distant future in other outlets. As ever, thanks for reading, and for any Amazon purchases you make (I know there are some of you out there indulging/helping me! and that's great!), and, duh, stay tuned for more. Heaven knows that I'll be around, maxin' with or without socks, dreaming about words and sequenced spaces.

Viewing Log #32: Dancin on our tongues [2/1/10 - 2/7/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # For a refresher/clarifier before the super sunday daze of dips and bottled beers. Again, as ever: every single shot brims with pretty, with information, with affect. If only the bad guys weren't so simple...
  
  
• The Sopranos "Johnny Cakes" [Tim Van Patten, 2006] # Weird to see 2006 so clearly as they show it here: greedy, duplicitous, blind and hypocritical. Or that's the image I like to rear-project. But there's also Vito's final admission, his true desires coming to the fore, and that dawning's nice to see.
  
• The Sopranos "Luxury Lounge" [Danny Leiner, 2006] # SO funny, but good grief some ugly things, like Artie's bullshit, are just so ugly. In any case, Kingsley and Bacall are fucking great, of course, but the fish-out-of-water jokes with Carmine and Chris are the best. Also, robbing Bacall? Priceless. Oh, and, for what it's worth, that rabbit that Artie cooks looks amazing. Even at 10pm.
  
• Playtime [Jacques Tati, 1967] # Only a few scenes on Blu Ray at my dad's. The palate on this edition is so subtle! All the pale folders and cubicle walls don't zing; they're almost like a clouded neon, like "maybe look at me." Also, duh, this is probably what I'm going to start answering when people ask me what my favorite movie is. I know, I know, Malick means a lot to me, but, hell, this is what I'm talking about.
  
  
• The Philadelphia Story [George Cukor, 1940] # Pure pleasure from start to finish. Cary's a little heavier here, somehow, than in His Girl Friday (same year) and, lemme tell ya, it works. Though that could be attributable to Jimmy Stringbean Stewart and lil Kate standing next to him. More here.
  
  
• Lost "LA X" (Parts 1+2) [Jack Bender + Paul A. Edwards, 2010] Dug it, a lot. More here.
  
  
• Casa De Lava [Pedro Costa, 1994] # Finished it up a day later. Sometimes I miss this style from him, because he's so good at it, but as Edwin has said, I appreciate Costa's vision of cinema almost as much as some of his films. And it's funny to see this earlier vision, so realized already, so jettisoned after Ossos. More coming.

Viewing Log #29: Spots like Fort Knox [1/11/10 - 1/17/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Sixteen minimeters between me and you

• Jour de fête [Jacques Tati, 1949] # Straight from my notebook: J. Tati just gets it. Life's cycles, all circles, a merry-go-round of comedy. And why not have a laugh? The body's the best joke machine—it's your number one interface with the world. Life, for Tati, is bounded by one's capacities to move through this obstacle course; all we can do is hurdle and parry and jump; all we do is dance with things. Tati's definitely an artist of things. Things: a bike, a pole, a tent, animals, hills, fences, night vision (of a lack of it), booze, a piano. And everything circles back in the end. The world's too fast, too, it seems, for things to elude you forever. (Also worth noting: so much more dialogue than the others.)
  
• L'École des facteurs [Jacques Tati, 1947] A perfect little sketch for the bigger feature to follow.
  
  
• La Captive [Chantal Akerman, 2000] # Lots here, including Vertigo right off the bat and a lot of Levinas-like investigations of "the other" and how confrontation takes different forms. My second Akerman, believe it or not, and easily a right angle away from that linoleum-bound block of process that made her name. Still, makes me want, even more than normal, to see more movies made by women about women. There's a reason Bigelow gets a lot of pub: she's into boys in the way a lot of male filmmakers are into girls. But this one—this lady and her film (her films)—is all about how the differences in sex (during cinema, embodied in gender, across a windowpane) make a difference in how we act. Wild but true: this is Proust! Phew! Makes me want to know those books (that book?) all the more! I think I'll have more to say soon. (Also, I'll have more on Akerman when I finally get around to Icarus Films' recent release of D'est, which everybody assures me is an odd blood beauty.)
  
  
• The Sopranos "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh" (S6,E4) [Alan Taylor, 2006] Really great movement between threads in this one; written very well. And there's even a quick fade to black punctuation at one point, not to mention the treelines of the final moments moving from Tony's respite by the pool to Paulie's beat down of the Barone heir and then back again (twice!) to show what's in the background of all this big life of grab-all.
  
• The Sopranos "Mayham" (S6,E3) [Jack Bender, 2006] An underrated episode, no doubt, even though one might call the coma-world a bit of a reach; I, for one, totally dig all the cross-consciousness interaction because there are jokes, as ever, to go with the scares. Also, Paulie is amazing.
  
  
• Gone To Earth [Powell and Pressburger, 1950] Fucking fell asleep. Twice. I felt like an idiot. Still do. However, what I did see was pretty amazing, though Brian tells me I missed a lot of contextual "a-ha"s as the film closed.
  
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # For a memory jog over breakfast I watched a few moments, got some laughs and a few notes.
  
  
• La Captive [Chantal Akerman, 2000] Amazing first eight minutes. Then an amazing cut to a title card, which prompted me to shut it off. I tried again the next night, but other things and people got in the way.

Viewing Log #27: Here we go again [12/28/09 - 1/3/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Get your atlas

• Les dames du Bois du Bologne [Robert Bresson, 1945] Somehow had never seen this one yet. Definitely stands out from the others with its professional actors, but the timing and the cynicism are the same. Sure, we reach a moment of grace, too, however you can't say Bresson exactly trusts people. Some beautiful mise-en-scène, as ever, as well, like the moment I tried to replicate below (gifs don't always work...) and every scene with a car. The start-stop will-he-go post-nuptial back-and-forth breakdown is about as perfect a visual representation of Jean's idiocy as imaginable.
  
  
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans [Werner Herzog, 2009] This isn't a conversion, nor a remake. But boy is it good and fun. Cage is beyond "good" here (on the good-to-bad scale), and I'd like to think it's something about the hairdo, first, that gets it going. More surprising, though, is what Steve already alluded to: at bottom this is a love story. Just makes me wish Eva Mendes was a better actress; Werner can only do so much. In any case, I really wish it had a different title if only becuse then we wouldn't be forced to compare it to Abel's movie. That said, what else are you gonna call it? —Iguana cam is the best joke of the year?
  
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou [Wes Anderson, 2004] # So special. Made me feel lonely, but also whole, which is nice; I think that's the goal with these fableish jamborees Wes makes. Such a true image movie, too, with all that (pace DC) unmoored madness. Easily Wes' freest film. And just about every line of dialogue is a zinger, a knee-slapper. [BTW: I put it on my list of Five Favorite Comedies of the 00s, hosted by my buds Mike and Sean at the Metro Classics blog.]
  
  
• Star Trek [J.J. Abrams, 2009] So much lens flare it's hilarious. And so much bathos lit like that that it almost becomes real pathos. I won't lie: it was really easy to get wrapped up in, and buy into, because the cast is good and the storytelling damned efficient and the "cool factor" is pretty spot on. The coolest thing, though, is the conceit of "alternate realities" as a way to address the new cast reboot ballyhoo. This Abrams guy may not know how to shoot anything, but he sure does know about structure, and myths.

—The light that failed

Get your verdant going electric.

by Ryland Walker Knight

—When I click this...
Like Broken Embraces, you know exactly what you're getting from Avatar. Yet, with Pedro Almodovar, you only get about five great images and one classic finale sight-meld that changes perception. With Cameron's film, a visionary chunk of neon folly if ever there was one, almost every second behind those 3-D goggles got my eyeballs going gaga and groggy with gorgeous goof city grand larceny light shows of gigantic gestures all swooped and folded and lit up beyond pure spectacle into something truly immersive. I was wiped, wiping my eyes walking out of that early-AM, first-possible IMAX showing Friday morning. It's about as tiring an epic as has come out since that other great film of the decade about embodiment, Pirates 2 (and, yes, No. 3, which is more tiring but not quite as good).

By now you probably know what Cameron's movie is about (bad military, good natives; yawn), so I don't need to waste your time with the waste of time story highlights. Rather, we ought to focus on the real excuse for this behemoth: to light your eyeballs full of a frenzy. Because, it goes without saying, though everybody will/has, James Cameron cannot write for shit, has no political sensibility other than guilt, and wouldn't know how to differentiate between myth and cliché if asked in the right (pointed) way. What he can do is make a few images, and build a movie, however silly, with all kinds of cool tools. He's also been pointed in the right direction of a few bits of theory, it seems, and knows a few things not just about feminism but also about game design and, um, phenomenology. At heart, his story is about seeing as a physical action, a full-bodied embrace of the material world. Again: embodiment. I have to admit that, despite what (little) I knew about the whole "stereoscopic" mumbo jumbo Cameron supposedly invented (and the title, duh), I didn't see that one coming. Or, at least I did not expect it to be that explicit—nor for it to work.

You expect Pedro Almodovar, in a movie about a now-blind filmmaker, to make the phenomenological film that moves you, not James Cameron. But, save that final image, and Penelope Cruz's force-of-nature performance, nothing really moved me, though a few things tickled me, as much as any number of sights in Avatar. Physically moved, too: I found myself fudging the 3-D by having to shift my body and cock my head from side to side from time to time just to cope with all that gooey phosphorescence on screen. WIth Pedro's film, I just kept wanting more screen time for that goddess, no matter the narrative cost. See, Pedro's still hung up on plot. But he's only got a few of them to rely on, and the record-skip repeat of this movie is nearly tiring; or, it is whenever Penelope isn't dazzling the frame. All Cameron has to do is push a few motes forward in the "frame" (space? his term, "volume"?) and I get a thrill. That said, only a few of the compositions from the full film linger in my head. It's more about the fluidity of the space, and the visceral invitation it offers, than it is strictly about pictures. In that, I think Sicinski's onto something with that three-tweet rave (starts here) about "making plot just what it should be: an excuse to go nuts on viewers' skulls."

—From here!
Last year I had a similar positive reaction to Speed Racer, but I know that movie, though maybe more adventurous, is nowhere near as successful. It's a little too cut-out cartoony, and its timing is all off. Say what you will, and I know it's long (and there's no getting around that, of course), but Avatar never drags. It just weighs a ton for a fleet film. And that's because it expects your eyes to do things they're not used to doing. —Least of all in a multiplex! In any event, this rapture, though felt, is still nothing compared to the sheer joy of Fantastic Mr. Fox. There's a film jam-packed with detail to keep you pinballing around the frame for daze on end, every frame a treat—and all in under 90 minutes. But that's another story for another time. (Maybe later in the week.) For now, I'm just adding my ramble to the ruckus out there, getting giddy at the thought of fluorescent aerial jellyfish and all kinds of eco-electrical networks of lights to make me and you and everyone dizzy with dumb grins. What a gift!


[Broken Embraces opened on one screen, at the Clay, last Friday here in the Bay Area and will roll out to more screens on Christmas. Avatar's everywhere. Neither needs my endorsement to make oodles of cash. Though, of course, one will make yet more oodles than the other.]

Viewing Log #23: Hit by a truck [11/30/09 - 12/6/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Spent a lot of last week running around town, and working on a non-cinematic (ahem, paid) writing project, so movies took a necessary back seat. I read instead. And, yeah, with this work and the basketball options in high definition (not to mention a visit to Oracle Saturday night), I just couldn't bring myself to watch any number of films.]

• Va Savoir [Jacques Rivette, 2001] # Started over a little late. Too late, as it happens, to finish before my lids got too heavy. But this time I got a good hour into the picture, and find a developing idea: as much as I love La Belle Noiseuse, Rivette's '00s work is way more interesting, to say more mysterious, than his '90s work. Any takers?
  
  
• Mélo [Alain Resnais, 1986] Everything's a front, and a bad one. These idiots just can't get anything right, except for a somersault. More in another recherche shortly. [link]
  
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] # Still delightful, ebullient. A true celebration of difference and singularity set to a great score, at a great pace, and overflowing with detail. Not sure if it rivals Playtime, as Brody writes, but that artistic generosity Wes brings his pictures constantly yields affective registers—both subtle and bombastic, always joyful—rarely paralleled in current cinema. No other film this year had my eyes ricocheting across the frame as much or as often. More in The Notebook, shortly.
  
  
• A Christmas Tale [Arnaud Desplechin, 2008] # For my piece in The Notebook, coming shortly.

Viewing Log #22: Everybody in the world [11/23/09 - 11/29/09]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—No exit

• Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip [Joe Layton, 1982] # So dark, so perfect, so hilarious. So hard to be good at standup. You can watch it online over here, but we watched it on cable. We all fell over a lot.
  
  
• Mon oncle d'Amérique [Alain Resnais, 1980] Didactic, sure, but most of it's a joke. Resnais lets Henri Laborit play "sage" but the score, and the choral arrangement of images—talk about convergences—undercut even that know-it-all stance. More to come, I promise, on this one.
  
• Stromboli [Roberto Rossellini, 1950] Ingrid shines alone, victim of her ego, and that house is a kind of brain, but the fascinating thing—right off the bat—is just how jagged the film unfolds. It resists any structure, though there is a rhythm, and themes emerge. But, at bottom, it's a basic story made more basic, nigh elemental, with its refusal of systems. Everything's aimed at "natural" even though these humans keep forcing things to disastrous effect.
  
  
• L'aimée [Arnaud Desplechin, 2007] Not quite a scrapbook, but surely a collage. That is, the aim is expressive-affective, not documentary, despite the overflow of facts and, say, reportage. Above all Arnaud marvels at his history, at the luck to have such a history (to have a history) to recount. That's his gift: to enrich the world about him, to swirl stories full of color, of warmth; to say, render a wide world full of life. After all, ghost stories should brim, or point you all over the place.
  
  
• In Bruges [Martin McDonagh, 2008] Fell asleep about an hour in, then finished the next morning. McDonagh sure isn't much of a filmmaker, and I'm not entirely sold on his brand of violence as a story backbone, but I laughed enough, and that girl from Harry Potter 4 is delicious.
  
• Fantastic Mr. Fox [Wes Anderson, 2009] Perhaps the most pleasurable film in, like, forever. I know I loved The Informant! a whole bunch, but, well, this one's even more fun, and touching (though maybe not as "smart"?). In any case, I plan on seeing it as often as possible on a big screen.
  
  
• Where The Wild Things Are [Spike Jonze, 2009] No fun. Wasn't a big part of the book that that recklessness is fun? Isn't that the fun of being a kid? If all we're doing here is heralding youthful verve, how come all the movie's a dreadful downer? I, for one, did not have any fun. So there. I can get petulant, too.

—Well, don't fuck up the suit...

Convergence for your Thanksgivings [i] (11/26/09)

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Dance a dazzle, lady light, around our retinae

10 Personal Touchstones in American Cinema

by Ryland Walker Knight

[Originally posted at the curator corner, where you can read the full post.]

Catching up with 2007.

by Ryland Walker Knight

It is a characteristic criticism of Emerson to say that he lacks a sense of tragedy; for otherwise how can he seem so persistently to preach cheerfulness? But suppose that what Emerson perceives, when he speaks of his fellow citizens as existing in a state of secret melancholy, is that in a democracy, which depends upon a state of willingness to act for the common good, despair is a political emotion, discouraging both participation and patience. So when Emerson asks of the American Scholar that he and she raise and cheer us, he is asking for a step of political encouragement, one that assures us that we are not alone in our sense of compromise with justice, that our sense of an unattained self is not an escape from, it is rather an index of, our commitment to the unattained city, one within the one we sustain, one we know there is no good reason we perpetually fail to attain.
-- Stanley Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of the Moral Life

Go to The House to read a kinda-lengthy wrap up of what tickled me in 2007. While it's got pretty much the same format as what I used last year, this time I actually made a list at the end. Still can't rank anything, though, so it's an alphabetical list. I figure that most of the year-end lists and awards are redundant and silly to start with so why not throw my lot in with them? I guess the impetus to not make a list is because it's the same tired grammar most of film criticism continues to use. Not that I think a Better-Than List is worth much; it's still a posture. Not that my awards aren't a posture; my argument is with overbearing seriousness. (For example: I think it's awesome that my buddy Keith lists the Aqua Teen movie-film alongside The Horse.) Not that I'm not serious, but I like some levity; I like to laugh. Every film on my list, even the Reygadas, gave me a chuckle. But there's more of this over there so click this link if you didn't click that link at the beginning.

Also worth reading is Brian Darr's terrific Bay Area rep round up at Hell On Frisco Bay. It helps me to realize that as cool as New York City is (and it's definitely cool), San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have a lot to brag about. It helps to have a blogging buddy like Brian, too, with his calendar-scouring acumen pointing at things I don't always think to check up on. However, during this, my final, semester, I will probably only find time to attend screenings at the PFA. Thankfully, though, their newest calendar is pure dope: on Friday I got to go see Andrei Rublev on a big screen for the first time and during the afternoon of February the 17th I will see Out 1: Spectre, the shorter version (240 minutes) of the best film I saw and hardly wrote a thing about in 2007, Out 1: Noli me tangre (773 minutes). Plus: La Chinoise on my mom's birthday and a mini Terrence Davies retrospective (with the auteur in person at almost every screening, including a shot-by-shot discussion of Distant Voices, Still Lives). On to more merry movie watching and illuminating film writing in 2008.

Steve's Armond White Conversation: easy links.

Steven Boone just posted his third and final installment in a lengthy but oh-so-fun conversation with Armond White. The first installment: "In a world that has The Darjeeling Limited, Sidney Lumet should be imprisoned!". The second installment: Phonies, Cronies, American Ironies, American Gangsters. The third installment: Sweet Lime and "Sour Grapes". I finally commented on the last one. It's in line with all the usual obsessions, plus with some notes on my own take on Margot at the Wedding. So, please read their conversation if you have yet to: it's worth it. And the installments make it easier to get through in pieces. As much as White rankles, he comes off as a congenial fellow who loves movies, and loves the world, despite all the deficiencies apparent in both. There's also Steve's Ten favorite AW quotes. Once again, I'm sure you've seen all this before, since you are so cool, but Steve is my buddy and I thought I'd throw him yet more eyes, even the same ones a second time. --RWK