If I were a regular reader of this blog rather than its writer, about now I’d be wondering what’s with the infrequent posting, not to mention its author’s sudden disinclination to engage anything beyond his own book and DVD libraries. Well. I’m so glad I asked. First off, there is the matter of my being busy with other stuff. Some of it you can see at new and improved The Auteur’s Notebook right now and later today. But there have been a few sudden deadlines popping up. I just finished a profile of Greg Mottola for the DGA Quarterly—a last-minute assignment that needed a quick turnaround and came out pretty well, I think. I’m working on a holiday movies piece for a Website To Be Named Later. And then there’s a reasonably big writing project of which I can say no more, but will (I hope) prove an item worthy of much mirth early in the new year.
So there’s that, and to be perfectly frank, a bit of season-change funk going on as well. But the main reason I’m more likely, on this page, to juxtapose Hans-Jurgen Syberberg with Philip K. Dick rather than speculate on whether Focus Features is doing sufficient work in marketing Milk is because the latter topic—to name merely one such, as the awards season looms—just bores the living fuck out of me.
I kind of figured that once I no longer had any real professional obligation to care about awards, I would pretty much stop caring about them, at least until someone offered me a fair amount of pirate gold to do so again. But even I’m surprised at just how much I’ve stopped caring since I left Première.com. Awards, awards season, awards movies—mention such things to me and my head echoes with the great Casey Kasem’s immortal adage: “These guys are from England, and who gives a shit?”
Don’t get me wrong: I’m looking forward to seeing Milk. And I’ve already seen one yet-to-be-released picture with considerable awards buzz, which I promised not to write about until it was okay to write about it. (As stuff is leaking about it already, I’m gonna look into the situation later today.) And I’m looking forward to discussing them. As movies. But I’m certainly not gonna waste my beautiful mind sitting around with my thumb up my ass wondering aloud why Movie X was screened for critics in CIty Y but not for critics on the West Coast and why so-and-so isn’t doing more to counter such-and-such’s bad buzz, and so on. It seems to me a more constructive use of my time to burrow into various dark corners of artistic and scientific endeavor…
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to settle in with The Crooked Way, Robert Florey’s 1949 post-noir (complete with pre-Blast of Silence second person narration), shot by John Alton…
Well written… and I’m happy that though your output might be scarce on this site, it seems it is deservedly growing again in the professional realm.
Congratulations.
I’m with you, Glenn. I have “Drunken Angel”, “Le Doulos” and “The Old Dark House” waiting for me, and later today I’m going to dive into “The Collected Stories of Paul Bowles”. To hell with everything I’m not interested in. To hell with it, I say!
Werd. Keep fighting. Fuck Awards. Let’s talk about movies. Maybe books. It’s boring without them. Or, you know, depressing/scary/gross/infuriating–however g‑d educational.
Thus, two links. Neither has much to do with movies, and little to do with books. They’re more about, oh, life, I guess. Life and living.
http://exiledonline.com/daily-inquisition-human-vs-dog-bravery/
and
http://voidmanufacturing.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/intellectuals-power-a-conversation-between-michel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze/
–through the mouth!
One despairs of the obsession with awards. If any of them, even those voted on by critics, were awarded strictly on merit without regard to publicists, politics, prejudices, friendships, animosities, etc., it would be a different matter. If all voters had actually seen all the worthy films, it would be a different matter. Mssers Carr, Poland, and Wells may choose to disagree.
“But I’m certainly not gonna waste my beautiful mind sitting around with my thumb up my ass wondering aloud why Movie X was screened for critics in City Y but not for critics on the West Coast and why so-and-so isn’t doing more to counter such-and-such’s bad buzz, and so on.”
Exactly. And nice to hear a film writer actually come out and say this. Film awards are completely irrelevant.
Talking of writing projects Glenn, any chance of a follow up to A Galaxy Not So Far Away, perhaps covering reaction to the prequels now that we’re a few years down the line? The original book is a great pleasure of mine, and I regularly dip into it.
Once I realized that Oscar-bait is just another Hollywood genre with its own carefully defined tropes and plotlines, I stopped caring. I’ve come across Oscar winners, but on my own time, and I’m happier for it.
I know one guy, he and his wife do what I’ve taken to calling the Oscar Death March, seeing every single nominee in theaters before the awards.
I haven’t seen The Crooked Way, but it is it appropriate to categorize a 1949 film as “post-noir”? 1949 is smack in the middle of the noir cycle, no?
I’m probably splitting hairs, but in my mind the noir cycle starts with 1940’s “Stranger on the Third Floor” and peaks with 1947’s “Out of the Past.” But as I said, I’m probably splitting hairs.
That’s the letter U, and the number 2.
I always heard it defined as “The Maltese Falcon” through “Kiss Me Deadly” (or 1941–1955), but yeah, then you get into those weird exceptions that belong in the movement, like “Stranger on the Third Floor,” but I definitely think 1947’s way too early a cap. Do that, and you discount Dassin’s best known body of work (which I recently saw in a mid-90s issue of Film Comment defined as melodramas; strange how these things develop).
Although I think I’m entirely missing the point of the post in the first place by talking about classification instead of the films themselves. Dammit. Uh…I really need to see “The Crooked Way” now (never mind “Blast of Silence”…I’m so ashamed).
“But the main reason I’m more likely, on this page, to juxtapose Hans-Jurgen Syberberg with Philip K. Dick rather than speculate on whether Focus Features is doing sufficient work in marketing Milk is because the latter topic—to name merely one such, as the awards season looms—just bores the living fuck out of me.”
There seems to be some of this going around – I commented on the matter on Out 1 too. I think it may partly have to do with the fact that something, an unnamed big something, has been distracting us lately. Who can get excited about the latest Oscar-bait when a much more interesting movie is playing out on our TV screens?
Anyway, Hollywood has reached a nadir this past decade. We’ve been in a cultural as well as a political funk and if the majority of people just regarded new releases as fodder for a night’s entertainment, with the advent of DVD, the improvement and expansion of television, and yes finally an uplifting political story, now they’ve got better, more fulfilling (and, well we’re at it, less expensive – an increasingly crucial factor) entertainment at hand.
May Hollywood sink into the depths of the Los Angeles Tar Pits. May the Obama era spur a new epoch of self-made cinema, higher in quality, less self-absorbed, expansive for the art form. Movies are dead, long live the movies!
(By the way, readers of Some Came Running, an aside: I’ve got a review of The Magnificent Ambersons up to kick off my post-political season return to movies – well, movies and Twin Peaks – on my blog. Check it out; let me know what you think.)