From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V6 #49 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Sunday, February 26 2006 Volume 06 : Number 049 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Hamlin and Sallitt On Film (Agee, Ferguson, and Kael watch disapprovingly from on high) [Dan Sa] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:41:10 -0500 From: Dan Sallitt Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hamlin and Sallitt On Film (Agee, Ferguson, and Kael watch disapprovingly from on high) Just hit Delete if this gets too boring.... >> I dunno, Kore-Eda eludes me sometimes: he seems ambitious and >> offbeat at first, and then I start feeling as if he's going after >> simple goals. > > So you feel as if the director vacillates between these two from film > to film, or slips from one to the other within a single film? Within the same film, definitely. It's not really an oscillation: I get a general feeling of ambition/offbeatness, but then the film doesn't seem so offbeat when I stand back and think about it. > Do we ascribe unique traits to the several cyclopses among the > world's leading directors? > > Well, Ray and de Toth, anyway And Raoul Walsh. >> After seeing THE HOLY GIRL, I wrote in my diary: "She has a talent >> for crowding her films with seeming irrelevancies, but she's into >> malevolence, stupidity, malfunction, discomfort, disgust for their >> own sake. > > Thought: when we say "for their own sake" do we inevitably mean a > derogative, as "for their own sake" translates as "unable/unwilling > to transmute the initial phenomena, presumably improving it by such > transmutation no matter which direction it takes"? Yeah, I see what you mean. I do think that all artists are into some stuff "for its own sake" - i.e., their reasons for treating that subject matter are pre-artistic, deep in their personality. And then maybe they turn it into art, though they were motivated to go there in the first place by something more childish/primal/atavistic. But when one notices the phenomenon, and uses the phrase "for its own sake," one is usually saying, "And I have to stop right there, because I have some kind of difficulty with the choice of material, and I never get to find out whether or not he or she transmuted it into art." > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn I wonder where those "Fuhgeddaboudit" and "Oy Vey" signs are. I never see them. > How do you compare/contrast (Solondz) with Neil LaBute, who seems, to > me, comfortable as long as he's got one character (unrealistically, > but possibly symbolically) manifesting Satan, but loses himself > otherwise (the misleadingly-titled POSSESSION, say)? I feel confused about LaBute: I really liked his first film, started having problems with him after that, and now feel a bit hostile to him. But, taking LaBute at his best (which might be in my own mind, once upon a time), I'd say he's one of those directors who walks the line between being cruel and talking about cruelty. Whereas Solondz is giving us more of a test: "It's hard to watch? I know it is. But I think we ought to." The stand-ins for the director's sadism are pretty central in LaBute, mostly peripheral in Solondz, who's more absorbed with the losers, really. > Lopate, writing in Agee's old stomping ground "The Nation" opines, "I > consider Agee one of the five major American film critics, the others > being Otis Ferguson, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael." > Your thoughts on the above? These are the people usually cited as the "big five" American critics. Sarris: was crucially important to me, and I will always admire him, though I think he started growing away from me sometime around 1976, and by 1981 I found I didn't need to read him regularly. But he's a good, balanced person and a very insightful writer. I think there's always been a war within him between his art side and his silver-screen side, and to my mind he stopped being able to tell the difference at some point. Farber: the Lester Bangs/Richard Meltzer figure of film criticism, iconoclastic, dense, a remarkable stylist, and way ahead of his time in taking American entertainment films seriously. Some, including me, are not so sure that he's always saying something coherent. He's not important to me personally, but he's an axiom. Ferguson: a cool guy who died young. I don't know if he was radical enough to really change many people's ideas, but I really enjoy reading him. Another wise-guy stylist, but with a good heart. Agee: I find him a little elusive. He's smart and interesting. Maybe I don't relate so well to his ideas of what movies should be. Kael: I have the greatest difficulty with Kael. Perhaps you've experienced this too: every single old Hollywood film I love gets described by Kael as "enjoyable trash" or "amusing nonsense" or some other superior phrase. I think of her as the archetype of the critic who needs to stand above movies judging them, and her virtues as a writer don't count for much with me because of this. - - Dan ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V6 #49 ******************************