may 30 pick-up
to start the week, i direct you to a couple interviews with the engaging and inventive cinematographer christopher doyle. doyle bitches and complains about american filmmakers, hollywood and the shallowness of u.s. cinema, but wasn't he the d.p. for the latest m. night shyamalan picture? gimme a break.
his observation that Asian cinema is "like the australian new wave, the cinema novo in brazil, [and] the french new wave" is interesting, and he notes a "confluence of intent and economics" that is totally absent in hollywood, but is what forced godard to quit making studio films and unleash the more guerilla elements of his moviemaking (see weekend for example). doyle also has some harsh words for martin scorsese, basically calling him a spineless industry whore. hey barnesyard, is it time to bump or dump scorsese?
along the lines of brazil, have you checked out the re-release of the 1974 paulo bagunca e a tropa maldita funk/folk masterpiece? It's the perfect remedy for those portugese-language music fans that are burnt out on getz/gilberto or other nylon string/sax crooners.
ken loach—yawn—won cannes. turan was there and at least he's bothered to employ some facet of journalism in his coverage. all we get from ebert are glam shots of cate blanchett and the dinner-table back-and-forth on palme d'or odds and croisette gossip.
a anonymous crew member on miami vice tells me that he actually likes the jay-z/linkin park track on the new trailer. so far, the film reeks of jock porn, but you always have to dig through the layers of testosterone with mann films, so i'm not giving up hope yet.
kabinet should be releasing their june schedule any day now. make the effort to go to at least one screening this month; i know i will.
an inconvenient truth, fucking al gore's power-point documentary, opens friday at tower. read this book or check out some articles here first so you won't be a sucker for the rhetoric.
6 comments:
Scorsese is bumped, bumped, bumped. My vote counts for a million billion ka-jillion on this one, so it will be tough to mount a decent voting bloc against the Bump.
yeah i figured that's where you stood.
What are your feelings about Scorsese?
well, he's one of my all-time favourite filmmakers, and one of the few whose entire canon of films i have seen. but his past three features have been underwhelming to say the least. and i'm not all that hyped about his remake of INFERNAL AFFAIRS. and Doyle's remarks in the above stories are a concern. scorsese makes such an effort to portray himself as a cinema enthusiast, but he doesn't care when a dp of doyle's stature calls to talk lenses. of course, doyle might be an egomaniac, so you have to take that into the equation.
i can watch GOODFELLAS at a moments notice. i was being sarcastic when i wrote that you should bump or dump scorsese; he's a no-brainer bump.
Howdy,
Thanks for the hat tip to Kabinet; I truly appreciate it.
But jeez Louise...an Alexander Cockburn article from 2000, and a book by the same, to take down Al Gore's recent film?!!
For the record, I'm no rabid Gore partisan. But if there's one aspect about the guy's credentials worth noting, it's the fact that he was sounding the alarm about global warming WAY before any other major American politician. In fact, to this day there's no one else making the case the way he does. It drives me nuts that there were "Greens" in 2000 who bought into the Nader meme that "there's no difference between Gore and Bush." This from the GREEN party, slamming the guy who Bush, Sr. dubbed "Ozone Man" in 1992. The guy wrote "Earth in the Blance," for crying out loud...
No offence, but I don't really have a lot of patience for the "fucking al gore's power-point documentary" type of snark when he's the only prominent politician out there making the case for global warming -- and doing a kick-ass job at convincing people of how serious the situation is.
Sorry, I'm not trying to beat up on you. I just don't really get your beef here. I get the sense that you understand global warming is a serious issue...so it seems bizarre that you're taking Gore to task for bringing it up. My bad? My misunderstanding? Maybe...I don't know. But I'm a little perplexed by the last paragraph of your post. Sucker for what rhetoric...?
Take care,
J.
i'm not convinced gore really cares about doing anything about global warming. i deduce this by looking at his track record as vp during the clinton administration: zero regulation of mpg, retroactive tax breaks to the world's biggest polluters, year after year cuts to the epa budget ... is this really any different than bush?
and while gore will star in the film, will he actually use his clout to push the dnc to adopt a pro-environment agenda? i have my doubts; the dnc would lose millions in electioneering cash were they to, say, endorse kyoto.
i wasn't beings snarky, i seriously hold gore in contempt. a lot of people bitch about cheney and halliburton, but were it not for gore overseeing the restructuring of no-bid contracts during the war in the former yugoslavia, then there wouldn't be defense-contract abuses by halliburton and bechtel in iraq. two sides, same coin.
it's a politicians duty to enact policy and legislation to solve problems; we have fucking rock stars (thom yorke) and fucking scientists (uc irvine chancellor cicerone) creating awareness already.
yes, gore has pro-enviro credentials, but does he back it up. or is he just a sophist, cutting rhetoric to one ear and spewing spin alternatlively to another?
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