The serendipity was divine. In a long stretch of overwork, with almost no time for any of my leisure habits, I was in front of a television with a couple of hours to spare at the very moment Beginners was about to air. I’d looked forward to this movie’s release, but it had become another Continue reading →
The best antidote to hecticity is idleness. For complete idleness, mental as well as physical, I suppose one could meditate. But if that is an overdosage for your particular circumstances, you might try being still, staring into the screen, and programming the screen so there is less to process. More than a screensaver, say, which Continue reading →
Given the impact each viewing of Tarkovsky’s work has had on me, I cannot explain why it’s taken me ten years to watch four films. Maybe part of that can be attributed to watching The Sacrifice repeatedly. Maybe not. Anyway, I need to take a little webspace to genuflect right now. Not to prowess, or Continue reading →
Recently at a busy opening, filled with illustrations, installations, and videos, I sat still, under headphones, for 29 minutes, while friends and strangers circled about intermittently, curiously, impatiently. Normally I would have returned at a quieter time to view the whole piece. But I could not interrupt the program, I tell you. I was mesmerized Continue reading →
I had thought that performances by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman automatically created, if not masterworks, then certainly exceptional, outstanding cinema. In retrospect, that’s crazy talk and I don’t know what I was smoking, great though they both are. I came to understand this watching Doubt. His performance seems flat to me, considering the Continue reading →
Hurrah, I have finally seen Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s award-winning 2003 film based on the Columbine school shootup. If I’d written this post last night, it would have been passionate, maybe all caps. I was a little stoned. Today, I am still inclined to post on it, but with the knowledge gained overnight that it Continue reading →
I am a longtime apologist for slow pacing in cinema. There is something about that spacious temporal environment that feels luxurious to me. In the hands of a talented filmmaker, obviously. Abbas Kiarostami is a director whose evangelical fans include Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, and Akira Kurosawa. His work is compared to that of Tarkovsky. Continue reading →
Wanted to give this spot props for its manipulation of our understanding of how to identify whose story it is we are watching. The whole thing turns on that, and I don’t think I’ve seen much exploitation of it before. At least not without dialogue insurance.
I have not seen anything like this, and I would like to see more. I expect a lot of viewers would find the second half too long and slow, but I would like to be able to invent a potion that would enable anyone to quiet down to the place where you can just dream Continue reading →
Wendy and Lucy made me want to dig up all of Kelly Reichardt’s work and study it to see if I could learn how she creates “tension” or at least a sustained engagement out of thin air, seemingly. It is possible, of course, that one could watch Michelle Williams read a book and find it Continue reading →
