“The cinema is always as perfect as it can be”

If I spent the next two weeks carefully shaping my thoughts about instant messaging into an article, it would look an awful lot like the one someone named Joe Kissell wrote for the web publication TidBITS called “Instant Messaging for Introverts.” Therefore, instead of writing said article, I’ll point you to M. Kissell’s. Here’s the opening paragraph:

From time to time, someone I know asks me an ordinary and reasonable question: “What’s your iChat (or Skype) ID?” My usual reply is to give them the information along with a big disclaimer: I’m almost never logged in. In fact, let me be completely honest and say I thoroughly dislike instant messaging (IM) except in a few specific situations. For months, I’ve been thinking about why this is - both the technological and psychological aspects - along with whether it somehow exposes a fundamental character flaw, and whether it’s something I should attempt to change. Having experimented with a variety of approaches to instant messaging (as well as its close relative Twitter) and having done a considerable amount of introspection, I’m inclined to think that my personality type is fundamentally ill-suited to instant messaging. Specifically, I’d like to advance the thesis that - for some people at least - an aversion to instant messaging is a natural consequence of one’s temperament, and that this is neither good nor bad in and of itself, though it does of course have consequences.

We introverts are a frequently misunderstood people. . . .

Via the latest “Film Notes” column in the Post-Gazette:

The Metropolitan Opera is expanding its high-definition opera transmissions to 11 this season, beginning with a live presentation of its gala (at 6 p.m. on Sept. 22) celebrating its 125th anniversary and starring soprano Renee Fleming.

During the season, live operatic performances will occur at 1 p.m. on Saturdays, with a repeat presentation at 7 p.m. the second Wednesday after. Locally, the operas can be viewed at the Cinemark at Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer and Showcase Cinemas West in Robinson. Visit www.FathomEvents.com for times and ticket information.

Goals for the fall:

1. Make it to at least one of these opera screenings
2. Make it to at least one of the Bollywood films that sporadically appear at the AMC Loews Waterfront only to vanish after just a few days
3. Make it to at least one of the monthly screening/film discussion events at Filmmakers sponsored by groups like the Pittsburgh Film Society and the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership

Posting may continue to be light for awhile, what with the beginning of the fall term and football season and autumn weather and all, but the Pittsburgh Film Calendar at the top of the sidebar is as up-to-date as I know how to make it. Among the events I recently added are the screening dates for the “Pittsburgh Neighborhood Narratives” films that were commissioned as part of the city’s 250th birthday celebration, the weekly screenings in the Amigos del Cine Latinoamericano Latin American film series, a “Japanese Film Festival” sponsored by Pitt’s Asian Studies Center, and screenings included on Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ September calendar.

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While poking around the blog Quiet Bubble earlier today I rediscovered a website where some industrious soul has made 2,846 short reviews by Pauline Kael available online. I’ve added this site to my Film Blogs, Etc. custom search engine. Huzzah!

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I would be remiss were I not to mention the passing of the film critic Manny Farber on this blog. To read more about the man and his work, see David Hudson’s GreenCine Daily post “Manny Farber, 1917 - 2008.” I am in the process of extensively reevaluating my beliefs about film criticism; if I am careful, and honest, and thorough, then one day I’ll have something meaningful to say about Farber. In the meantime I hope it is enough to note that he left us plenty to think about.

Jonathan Rosenbaum may have retired, but “The Chicago Reader on film” website remains one of my favorite newspaper movie sections. The reviews Rosenbaum wrote during his tenure at the paper are still there, as are the invaluable capsule reviews that Dave Kehr, Fred Camper, and others penned during their stays. The On Film blog is still a good read, too, thanks in large part to Pat Graham. His prose is dense, and often dense with links, but never impenetrable — it always makes sense when you take the time to read carefully and think about what he’s saying. I invariably end up considering his opinion at length, even when I’m pretty sure I disagree with it.

He made a pretty good case for Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) earlier this week in a post called “What the Hell … “. It’s worth reading slowly and following all the links, especially the ones to Andrew Tracy’s considerably less enthusiastic review of the film for Reverse Shot, a post at Jim Emerson’s scanners blog called “‘Talking faux-seriously about juvenilia…’” where that review is discussed, and an earlier On Film post by Graham called “In praise of Hellboy.” Be sure to check out the comments section of that last one: a regular dream team of film writers weighs in with their thoughts.

I remain on the fence about Guillermo del Toro. I’ve yet to love any one of his films, but he’s clearly worth taking seriously. I jotted down some thoughts on Hellboy II here.

A good movie podcast will, if nothing else, teach you how to properly pronounce the names of all those foreign film directors you like so much. I’m regularly listening to three these days:

1. “Lichman & Rizov ‘Live’ at Grassroots Tavern” via The House Next Door

This podcast features John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, and Keith Uhlich, two contributors to and the editor of the blog The House Next Door, probably the most important outlet for young film writers right now, and various special guests (past episodes have featured S.T. VanAirsdale, Grady Hendrix, Glenn Kenny, and Karina Longworth) ruminating on a wide range of films and film-related topics. “‘Live’ at Grassroots Tavern” really is recorded in a bar, so lips tend to be loose, which encourages a free-flowing conversation but also makes it easier for people to stick their feet in their mouths (did I say that right?).

This podcast sounds a lot like a night out after a movie would if you were friends with some of the brighter observers of the New York film scene. I listen to it at work where I can drift in and out.

2. “The Errata Movie Podcast”

This podcast features Rob Davis, who reviews movies for Paste and is the proprietor of Errata, one of my favorite movie blogs (it’s updated less frequently than most blogs, but every post is quality), and J. Robert Parks, who writes about film for a variety of outlets. The bulk of this podcast, which is considerably more . . . let’s say “polished” than “‘Live’ at Grassroots Tavern,” consists of the thoughtful and articulate hosts’ takes on mostly new movies, but it also occasionally includes interviews with filmmakers (past subjects include Errol Morris, David Gordon Green, and Marjane Satrapi.

“The Errata Movie Podcast” basically sounds like a very good NPR program about movies would minus the listener call-ins. I like listening to it on walks to and from work when I can pay attention.

3. “Rated PG” via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This podcast features Barry Paris and Barbara Vancheri, the two film critics for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I listen to this because it’s local and I honestly can’t recommend it to out-of-towners — like the Post-Gazette’s movie section as a whole, it’s competent but unremarkable. For Pittsburghers: hang on until the end, which is when they usually talk about smaller movies and special screenings.

I really like this Thanks for the Use of the Hall blog post by Dan Sallitt called “Nakahira vs. Vadim, and a Bit About Composition in General.” Sallitt uses a carefully selected series of still images to discuss the films Crazed Fruit (1956) (an example of a Nikkatsu “Sun Tribe” film for those who saw the Nikkatsu Action films the Warhol showed last month) and Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959) and, as the post’s title suggests, “composition in general.” At one point he says this:

When I watch a movie and think, “These images are intrinsically beautiful – this director really knows how to compose,” and then try to analyze the visual style, I often conclude that the compositions are balanced between two functions: showing the figure in the foreground, and showing the world. The balance is always managed in such a way that the shot can still function in the mind of the viewer as a depiction of the foreground figure; and yet the room or landscape is presented with some spatial integrity.

Like a good composition, this post is “balanced between two functions”: it analyzes the two films in question, while teaching us about the more general subjects of film appreciation and film analysis in the process. It shows us both the films in the foreground and the world of movies, if you will.

It can be hard to find the time for formalist film analysis–it feels like I’ve been trying for months! When you can, though, it’s almost always rewarding for both you and your readers.

The best thing about the world’s best film blog, GreenCine Daily, is its film festival coverage: editor David Hudson doesn’t miss much, so his “Cannes 08.Index.” post is arguably the only link you need to follow all the latest news from “the Croisette” (which is how they refer to Cannes at the cool table).

If you’d prefer to let one or two correspondents guide you through the fest, though, I recommend Glenn Kenny, who’s covering it for his blog Some Came Running, Andrew O’Hehir, who’s filing dispatches for Salon.com’s “Movies” page, and Alison Willmore, who’s there for The Independent Film Channel’s Indie Eye blog. All three provide a good mix of travel writing and film criticism, giving readers a sense of what it’s like over there while keeping the spotlight on the films where it belongs.

I also like Karina Longworth’s “Cannes Diary” at SpoutBlog, which so far is a bit more about what she’s doing than what she’s seeing, and, at the other end of the spectrum, Daniel Kasman’s Cannes dispatches for The Auteurs’ Notebook, which dispenses with all that foofy stuff entirely and focuses on just the films.

From “In critical condition” by David Bordwell at Observations on film art and Film Art:

This isn’t to discourage people from jotting down ideas about movies and triggering a conversation with readers. The review, professional or amateur, shouldn’t go extinct. But we also benefit from ambitious critical essays, pieces that illuminate movies through analysis and interpretation. Web critics could write less often, but longer. In an era of slow food, let’s try slow film blogging. It might encourage slow reading.

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, here’s a link to a blog post by Clay Shirky (who I know from his work with tags and folksonomies, for instance here, here, and here) called “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.” A vicious case of jet lag and a presumably related illness are preventing me from doing anything with this now (or doing much of anything at all, actually), but I wanted to put throw a link up because this is a good read for anyone interested in new media, web 2.0, and all that jazz. I don’t often encounter seemingly new ways of looking at these phenomena.

A terrific article by Michael Machosky called “City isn’t movie-lover’s paradise, but it could be” ran in Sunday’s Tribune-Review. Machosky’s right: Pittsburgh is a great place to be a movie buff, especially for its size. I’d add two items to his list of things to love: 1) A major university (Pitt) with an impressive film studies program that sponsors all sorts of interesting free events and screenings (to name just three from the last year: “After the Avant-Garde: European Experiments with the Moving Image,” “The Ideological Occult: Russian Cinema Under the Putin,” and “Romanian Cinema on the Edge”), and 2) A respectable number of regular and semi-regular local, experimental, and documentary film events held in a variety of venues other than commercial movie theaters (again, to name just three: Jefferson Presents, Pittsburgh Documentary Salon, and Viewer Discretion).

Machosky is also right about where there’s room for improvement. First, local projectionists adhere to an abysmally low standard–I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie at either of Squirrel Hill’s two CineMagic theaters that didn’t have something wrong with it. They do a brilliant job of programming those theaters, so it’s a shame they don’t do a better job of presenting the films they bring in. Second, somehow, some way, we have to convince the Carnegie Museum to bring back their film department. Of course, I no more know how to do that than Machosky knows how to convince people to fund a neighborhood theater preservation program. I guess we’re more idea people, he and I. . . .