Movies as Politics

FIlm: Tati / Narrative

Tue, 25 Sep 07 09:46:53 -0500

Keywords: FIlm: Tati / Narrative
Text: Rosenbaum on Tati's "Playtime" and its composition for the frame:
"[I]f we let our eyes roam, wander and gambol about the screen, scanning the totality of the action ... we'll discover multiple relationships between people, people and objects, live moments and dead moments, real gags and potential gags that are hystercally funy: a geometric vaudeville. Viewed individually, details might be dull or interesting; seen together, they become cosmically funny -- comic in a philosophical sense."
also, similarly:
"In the restaurant [sequence], the apparent conflicts between separate points of interest become resolved when we realize that all the wandering strands are bound up in the same fabric, and *every* detail on the screen is privileged in relation to the whole"
Date: 09/25/07
ID: 12199

Film / Narrative

Tue, 25 Sep 07 09:49:25 -0500

Keywords: Film / Narrative
Text: critic Robert Warshow, in 1948 [!] pinpoints that there is a tension that art-film directors face: "the conflict between a love for the purely visual and the tendencies of a medium that is not only visual but also dramatic"
Date: 09/25/07
ID: 12256

Film: Akerman / Narrative / To See

Tue, 25 Sep 07 09:55:41 -0500

Keywords: Film: Akerman / Narrative / To See
Text: Rosenbaum identifies Chantal Akerman as a filmmaker attempting to reconcile love for the purely visual (as in her nonnarrative feature "Hotel Monterey," 1972) with the "narrative and relatively unpainterly" (as in "Je, Tu. Il, Elle," 1974)
many of her features, beginning with 1975's "masterpiece" "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai De Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" are "different attempts at synthesis" of these two poles
"News From Home" (1977) "a nonnarrative study of Manhattan exteriors accompanied by Akerman reading letters she received from her mother ... material that inevitably introduces narrative elements"
"Golden Eighties" "defines narrative as an interlocking series of mini-plots"
"Toute Une Nuit" (1982) "is also made up of multiple mini-plots, but other than occurring over a single night most of them don't interlock"
Date: 09/25/07
ID: 12268

To See / Performance / Representation / Film

Tue, 25 Sep 07 10:00:27 -0500

Keywords: To See / Performance / Representation / Film
Text: Rob Tregenza's "Talking to Strangers"
"The movie consists of nine ten-minute takes ... and though all of these sequences were carefully rehearsed, Tregenza insisted on shooting each of them only once. His basic rule was that each sequence would consist of ten minutes of uncut fim (all that would fit in the camera)"
"This adoption of a virtual one-to-one shooting ratio ... aims to maximize a sense of performance and presence and involve us fully in the contours of an *event* rather than oblige us to regard its idealized representation as we would in a Hollywood movie"
Not at Netflix, sadly
Date: 09/25/07
ID: 12280

Film / To Read

Tue, 25 Sep 07 14:38:53 -0500

Keywords: Film / To Read
Text: Susan Sontag - "Against Interpretation"
Rosenbaum: "Sontag made popular art, movies in particular, a suitable subject in serious discussions of art, literature, and philosophy"
Date: 09/25/07
ID: 12314