Yep, there may be two or even three new posts here this year. Why are blogs expected to be daily? Why not weekly or monthly?

General Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait (Barbet Schroeder 1974) - Given the full Criterion DVD treatment and supposedly playing in Paris for a full year, this film only raises the question "why�" Perhaps at the time there was some fascination with watching a dictator discourse on crocodiles or watch soldiers in endless parades and training exercises but, uh, so what? Someday this should be raw material for a Bruce Conner-ish exercise.



The Ring (Hideo Nakata 1998) - I'd avoided the iffy bootleg tapes for a few years and then we got a nice US DVD to cash in on the remake (at least they didn�t try to bury the original). Hard to tell exactly how this got to be so huge since it is intermittently spooky--though the video within the film is easily the best part--but director Nakata seems to stumble way too often with unnecessary shock edits (you get bigger jumps with objects entering the frame than on an edit: see Halloween or Jaws), a few severe pacing lapses and some awkward compositions. It does sort of hold together in a rickety way and the ending is a nice twist but don't ask "why" about anything or the whole structure falls down.

Off to a bad start: Shari Roman's book Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood & Dogme 95 (2001). Looked like an interesting topic (well not Dogme 95) but right at the start is a "highly partisan" list of what's "influenced today's filmmakers." The problem isn't that it's predictable so much as whether any of this is really influential. Singin' in the Rain? The Foreigner? But the descriptions give no faith in Roman's abilities. A big HUH? goes to "Before Blair Witch, there was Robert Mitchum's fanatical preacher with LOVE/HATE tattooed on his knuckles." Did I miss the fanatical preacher in Blair Witch? Or the conceptual element of Night of the Hunter? But then comes "Nashville is the consummate Cinemascope movie." A neat trick since it was filmed in Panavision. Ditto for Shoot the Piano Player which is Dyaliscope not Cinemascope; possibly a minor distinction given that the aspect ratio is the same but even a low-level journalist should get the facts right. Or what about when she claims Robert Rodriguez "picked up a few tips" from Seijun Suzuki when Suzuki was practically unknown in the West at the time of El Mariachi? (Doesn't mean it's not true, just that suppositions are meaningless.) And why introduce Kurosawa by saying "George Lucas thinks the world of this legendary auteur"? Is that supposed to be revolutionary?



The rest of the book shows not only writing that aspires to be even mediocre but an editor that snoozed through the whole process. That's why chunks of text are repeated almost verbatim a few pages later or why entire sentences barely make any sense. Or why she says there are six official Dogme films about 20 pages after a list of 24 official ones. It doesn't help that Roman appears to know little about film. Why else think mentioning Murnau is "a confusing, ironic counterpoint" to name-dropping Cassavetes and the French New Wave? But then this is just a few lines after saying "No one who has a life other than the cinema [...] can even pronounce, Cahiers du Cinema." [sic to that comma.] Well I can and so presumably can millions of people in France. She also fails to point out--probably because she didn't know--Peter Greenaway misattributing a Lautreamont quote to Maupassant.

Here's a real "d'oh" moment: Writer in the Sept 20th Entertainment Weekly calls mini-CDs a "truly original idea" despite the fact that EPs have been around for at least four decades and that the mini-CD name itself at least one decade.



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Retired e-mail sig file:



Violinist Bauer-Lechner on Mahler:

"The first thing he composed on paper at the

age of six was a polka, to which he added a

funeral march as an introduction."

I saw Dracula 2000 some time back but have just now discovered notes for a review (of sorts) that I intended to write. Never did but here are the notes:



Elaborate Abbey vault and defenses but the back wall is a publicly accessible tunnel/sewer that takes only seconds to blow open.



Does London have no building inspectors?



Does Van Helsing have a body disposal service to get rid of the thieves' bodies?



Pilotless plane apparently flies from London over the southeastern US without being disturbed.



All the police and invesigators immediately pack up and leave a crash site with only two local reporters left.



Super hetero vampire who hypnotizes women but not men.



Exactly how did Selena get Van Helsing's retina and handprint?



What was the point of the leeches? How did any get inside a sealed coffin?



Why not just encase the coffin in concrete? Concrete inside steel?



The film is set during mardi gras but there are almost no mardi gras activities. During the final scenes the streets are almost deserted.

You may have already heard of Rich Kowlowski's Three Fingers but thought I'd point it out in case you haven't. It's a graphic novel (published a few weeks ago by the cool people at Top Shelf) that mimics a film documentary about the dark history of toons. It follows the story of filmmaker Dizzy Walters and his discovery of the talented toon Ricky Rat (like Who Censored/Framed Roger Rabbit toons are real creatures) as they become incredibly popular and the rumors and politics that followed. It's a mildly interesting concept that is certainly tightly done and with one part that'll have you watching cartoons differently, at least for a week or two. The whole thing is certainly of more interest to animation buffs than casual viewers.



Still, I don't think it's entirely successful: For one thing that "behind the scenes" genre doesn't translate entirely sucessfully to comics; for another the dark truths are a bit too predictable (base motives are pretty much the only ones displayed and the racism issue was done better in Roger Rabbit, not to mention the X-Men); and finally the close parallels to reality--Warmer Brothers? Buggy Bunny?--are distracting more than revealing, though the identity of one mysterious witness is a laugh-aloud moment. (And the attack on Walt Disney is tame compared to the genuinely disturbing one in Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, a major part of the novel completely omitted from the timid film version; gee wonder why?). The characterizations are also a bit too obvious: Bunny as a Saturday Night Live "thespian," a German-accented cinematographer, etc. If Kowlowski has a good grasp of film and animation history it's not obvious. He confuses the end of WWI with 1921 (though that may just be sloppy writing), doesn't seem to understand what "feature" means, and doesn't really go beyond the Disney/WB continuum.



A mild recommendation with reservations. (For highly recommended "dark" rethinkings of pre-existing fictional characters try T.H. White's Once and Future King, David Thomson's Suspects and Gregory Maguire's Wicked, all first-rate and the White one of the dozen greatest novels I've read.)

Andrew Calcutt & Richard Shephard Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (1998) - Not really much of a guide: It's filled with errors; most moderately well-read people will only find a few authors they haven't known before; and it's almost completely lifeless. Apparently some of the big names (Joyce, Kafka, Stephen King) are included for the sole reason that most browsers will likely have heard about them; you could make a case for cult status of such writers but Calcutt & Shephard don't even try. In fact, their entire idea of "cult" is a little odd. The idea by nature is ambiguous but they seem to go with anything they can claim is edgy (whether true or not is another question; that "edgy" is the status quo yet another). The number of inarguable cult writers in this book is pretty slim. But what dooms the book to irrelevancy is that Calcutt & Shephard are themselves not much in the way of writers. Their descriptions are vague and formless, making most of the authors discussed sound much the same. It seems quite likely that Calcutt & Shephard haven't actually read most of the work under "discussion," especially when they try to balance opinions of critics about the author (C&S always use the word "critic" to indicate somebody with a negative opinion). Even more embarassing, they place inordinate emphasis at times on what novels have been filmed than the actual novel.



Here are some cult writers that would have filled out the book:



RA Lafferty

Harry Stephen Keeler

Count Potocki

James Blaylock

Alan Moore

W. H. Hudson

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Urquhart

Patrick O'Brien

H. Rider Haggard

Raymond Federman

James Branch Cabell

Gerard Nerval

Petrus Borel

JC Powys

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre

Howard Waldrop

Thomas De Quincey

William Hope Hodgson