The Mumpsimus

Some good fun for this Saturday: Matt Zoller Seitz trash talks some famous films . Such an exercise is amusing partly because most of the films he includes are solid enough in their "classic" status that saying nasty things about them seems more appropriate and balanced than it would against some poor, inoffensive effort that would otherwise disappear into the oblivion of time. And isn't there something in us that wants some balance against pure reverence? I mean, even the works of art that I absolutely revere, I do so partly with the hope and trust that somewhere somebody exists who detests them. Where's the fun in loving what is incontestably loveable? Or maybe it's just that I pretty much agree completely with Seitz's reservations about these movies, so it makes it easy for me to celebrate his takedowns. If someone were to put 10 movies I love up to such an attack, I'd think the person an ignorant fool, blind to the wonders revealed to such a sen...

The wonderful online film magazine Reverse Shot has just released an entire issue devoted to sound , with essays on the sound of specific and quite varied films: If one shot can contain an entire film in essence, then can a sound? And if the instantaneous break between two images contains shifts in perception that are the exclusive domain of cinema, then what happens when the aural element is added? Since the late twenties, sound has been as essential an ingredient as the shot or the cut in film’s construction, yet more often than not it isn’t discussed in film criticism, with all elements of mise-en-scène making it take a back seat. I'm very sensitive to sound in general, and whenever I used to direct plays I spent nearly as much time on the sound design as anything else.  For the past eight months or so, I've been working as the sound recordist for an independent film some friends of mine are making, and that's made me even more aware of film sound than I was bef...

The ever-wonderful Matt Zoller Seitz has written a great feature for Salon.com -- "Directors of the Decade: The Sensualists" . Actually, this is one of ten features Seitz is writing for Salon about "Directors of the Decade" , but for me this is the group that matters most, because it includes Hou Hsiao-hsien, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann, and Wong Kar-Wai, some of my absolute favorites, though I had never thought of them as a group before.  Or maybe I have -- I've been thinking a lot recently about why Lynch, Malick, and Mann in particular appeal to me so deeply. (I love some of Wong Kar-Wai's films, too -- 2046 , In the Mood for Love , and especially Happy Together , though My Blueberry Nights proved nearly unwatchable and Ashes of Time , in either version , left me cold. Hou Hsiao-hsien I hadn't really thought of in relation to the others, and I'm least familiar with his work, having only seen Flight of the Red Balloon and The P...

Matt Zoller Seitz is one of the few film critics whose reviews I will read regardless of what he is reviewing, because even when my taste is different from his (his love of Brian DePalma perplexes me, for instance), his reviews usually make me think about or notice things I wouldn't otherwise. He's giving up print journalism, though. In a long conversation with Keith Uhlich (who will be taking over command of Seitz's collaborative blog The House Next Door) this passage particularly struck me: There’s more to life than movies, and I don’t think that, ten years ago, I don’t think I would have said that. But I’m saying it now: there is more to life than movies. And I remember a conversation with Sean Burns—I think it might have been in the comments section of the blog—he casually mentioned that Gene Siskel, God rest his soul, was… there was somebody who looked down on Siskel for saying that he skipped some film festival to go to a basketball game. And Burns was completely a...