DVDHousekeeping

Pass the dust, I think I'm a DVD extra...

By March 5, 2009No Comments

Cattle 1

So now I know what I look like on Blu-ray. Coulda been worse. 

Beating Girlfriend Experience to mar­ket is “Infectious Diseases In Cattle: Blogger’s Roundtable,” an extra on the DVD and Blu-ray disc of Synecdoche New York, which streets next Tuesday. Therein, a few bloggers—handpicked, appar­ently, by Synecdoche writer/director Charlie Kaufman and pro­du­cer Anthony Bregman—sit in a cozy Manhattan apart­ment and get all high­brow about the film. My cohorts in this effort:

Cattle #2
…Andrew “Filmbrain” Grant, Karina Longworth of Spout, Chris Beaubien of Screenhead

Cattle #3
…and Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central

We yam­mer on for, like, 40 minutes, and I refer to someone as a “fuck­ing hip­pie.” Good times. Enjoy. 

No Comments

  • The Chevalier says:

    Are you and Grant wear­ing the same clothes?…

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Pretty much. We were going for that “twin sons of dif­fer­ent moth­ers” vibe.
    Actually, it was a coincidence.

  • bill says:

    Oh good, because I hate fuck­ing hip­pies. But then you prob­ably knew that.
    I genu­inely want to see “Synecdoche, New York”, and I think I could have worked up the nerve to deal with the sub­ject mat­ter under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, but I’m read­ing a LOT of Philip Roth lately, and adding “Synecdoche” to the mor­tal des­pair of so much of his work might just spell curains for me.

  • wow: good job mar­keters: way to rope a suck­er like me in… (where’s the hook up?)

  • nick says:

    Synecdoche is a mas­ter­piece. I’d love to watch this extra fea­ture but I pretty much detest Karina. So…

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Karina has always spoken very highly of YOU, Nick.

  • Tim Lucas says:

    I thought this was one of the most enga­ging and intel­lec­tu­ally stim­u­lat­ing DVD sup­ple­ments I’d seen in quite awhile, con­grat­u­la­tions. All of the par­ti­cipants did very well. Have giv­en the whole disc a rave in the next VW, but this fea­tur­ette made we wish I could have been a fly on the wall after the film­ing ended. Interesting space they provided for your pow-wow, too: the increased abil­ity to scan the titles of books on the shelves and the intric­ate design of Karina’s stock­ings make it worth splur­ging on the Blu-ray edition!

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Thanks, Tim. That means a lot.
    Alas, not much happened after the shoot­ing, which was in Tribeca; every­body had to pretty much go their sep­ar­ate ways, except Andrew and I, who repaired to a loc­al bar and traded ward­robe tips.

  • S.F. Hunger says:

    Why do people hate Karina? I don’t get it. It’s not like she courts con­tro­versy or writes any­thing par­tic­u­larly objec­tion­able. It must be the glasses. People, don’t con­fuse the fash­ion with the film crit­ic, hmm?

  • don r. lewis says:

    Seriously, what’s to “hate” about Karina. Unless you don’t like reasoned, smart women who love films and write really well. Ughhh…they’re everywhere.…

  • Filmbrain says:

    My reac­tion to see­ing these pho­tos (espe­cially #2) was exactly the same as George C. Scott’s in Hardcore (and in the same voice) – “Turn it off! Turn it off!”

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Filmbrain, I can only respond by para­phras­ing “Casablanca:” “If I can stand it, you can stand it.”

  • Erin says:

    Dang, I saw Synecdoche twice in the theat­er and will now appar­ently be rent­ing the dvd. This looks very cool! Congratulations, Glenn!

  • Who's Got the Spaghetti? says:

    People “hate” Karina because (to state the unspoken obvi­ous) she’s an ugly hag who mis­takenly believes she’s “cool.” She wears those out­ré glasses to de-emphasize her hideous face.
    I’m sure the roundtable was a massive ego-rub to all the no-talents involved. If “Filmbrain” had any integ­rity at all, he’d call him­self Nobrain.
    Did the beer help you to stand one another?

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Can the snark, Denby. That ali­as fools no one. You’re just jeal­ous, anyway.
    For the record, I drank water.

  • Filmbrain says:

    Wow…good thing I lack integrity!

  • nick says:

    Karina has always spoken very highly of YOU, Nick.”
    Spoken like my fath­er, Glenn.
    I don’t hate Karina as a per­son (how could I? I don’t know her). It’s just that I hate her snarky, know-it-all writ­ing tone and the gen­er­al air of “I’m bet­ter than you” that comes with every single piece of writ­ing that spews from her laptop. That’s all.

  • MovieMan0283 says:

    hand­picked, appar­ently, by Synecdoche writer/director Charlie Kaufman and pro­du­cer Anthony Bregman”
    What’s with the “appar­ently” – why the big mystery?
    For some reas­on this makes me think of Mulholland Drive, with Kaufman as LaRocque enclosed in his dark little room while Bregman, chan­nel­ing Angelo Badalemnti, hunches over pho­tos of Glenn and Karina mum­bling, “This is the blogger…”

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    MovieMan: Don’t read too much into my “appar­ently.” That’s my old school print journ­al­ist talk­ing. That is, I was told that we were hand­picked by Kaufman and Bregman, and that I nev­er bothered to inde­pend­ently con­firm that fact. No big­gie, and sorry to have stirred you up.
    SInce I’m here, let me state unequi­voc­ally that I am not down with the Karina Longworth haters. I like her just fine per­son­ally, and while I might take issue with a lot of what she writes, and while she might take some of my objec­tions in that area more, well, per­son­ally than I mean them, I don’t stand by the ad hom­inem attacks on her, and I don’t think they add much to any con­struct­ive dia­logue. Just to be clear.

  • MovieMan0283 says:

    No prob­lem – I’m still rel­ish­ing the idea of blog­ger­’s head­shots being passed around a Hollywood stu­dio for approval.
    Karina’s likable enough, to quote Obama. Seriously, though, I think why she’s being singled out is that, unlike you and Filmbrain (I’m not famil­i­ar with the oth­er guy) her focus is more “trendy,” plus she kind of has a hip­ster image. Probably not much to do with her actu­al writ­ing, except inas­much as it reflects those qual­it­ies (which maybe people are read­ing into it anyway).

  • salmonarm says:

    I’m dis­trac­ted by try­ing to read the titles on the books behind your heads. And totally crush­ing on Walter Chaw! Glen Kenny, I miss Première – glad I found this blog.

  • Farid Mashhadi says:

    I quite enjoyed the round table dis­cus­sion – par­tic­u­larly com­ments made by Andrew and Walter; very intel­lec­tu­ally stimulating.
    To the post who above who has ques­tioned Andrew’s integ­rity: do you ever read Andrews blog? IMHO, his writ­ing is hon­est and inform­at­ive. Andrew is quite obvi­ously very enthu­si­ast­ic about films without being presumptuous.
    Let’s keep the con­ver­sa­tion civil shall we?

  • I am very happy with your inform­a­tion it is excellent.

  • Fitness says:

    Interesting, I will buy the DVD, thanks!!

  • Sunless Tan says:

    What an incred­ible HDTV is the best way to pass a good week­end alone.

  • These are good blog mar­keters, but def­in­itely they can always rely also on oth­er strategies