Odds & Ends
Friday, May 16, 2008
Return of the Spielberg Guy
I really, really, don't want to be typecast as the guy who's always banging on about Spielberg... but it's going to be a difficult couple of weeks on that front. Obviously Indiana Jones is one of those things that I'm just compelled to write about, just as I am always compelled to write about new Star Wars. So obviously there will be material here covering Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the next week or so. However, the Spielberg-centrism increases, as my review of two Spielberg-related books has just gone up at Senses of Cinema; you can read it here. The books they asked me to review were Lester Freidman's Citizen Spielberg and Andrew M. Gordon's Empire of Dreams; I liked Friedman's but thought Gordon's was made somewhat silly by its over-enthusiastic adoption of various dubious theoretical models. The article therefore ended up becoming something of a sequel to my previous complaint about silly theory, Is Film Theory Bullshit? I was glad to be able to discuss the books in some sort of wider context though.
As an aside - and here I am starting to speak mainly to any academic or uni student readers I might have - I used the review as a chance to try out Zotero and its associated Word plugins ahead of hopefully using them in my Masters. Count me as very impressed. Zotero is a plug-in for Firefox; you use it to gather, store and annotate research sources into a reference database, and then use the Word plug-in to have it automatically manage your citations. The beauty of it is that it can automatically capture the details of each source out of online resources such as Amazon or library catalogues. I've never got deeply into EndNote, so I can't do a detailed comparison, but I was very taken by the kinds of things Zotero can do, and the ease with which it did it (I was wary of the learning curve with EndNote). I've been doing some Masters research since writing the review and it has been seamlessly grabbing information from academic search indices; it also has very nifty website capturing, storage and cataloging capabilities. If you regularly do research on the web, or write anything that uses formal referencing, I suggest you have a look at it.  Labels: book reviews, research, spielberg, theory Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 16.5.08 - 0 comments  
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Stills
Apologies for the absence of material for the website lately; apart from the usual non-filmy stuff, I've been working on an article / review for Senses of Cinema which has kept me occupied. Hence the cluster of "Odds and Ends" items today as I post a few tidbits I hadn't had time to address. One thing I wanted to point out, for the academicy / bloggery type people who read this site, is this article by Kristin Thompson that reaffirms her longstanding argument in favour of the legality of using film stills - rather than publicity stills - in support of film criticism. I've relied on her reasoning for a long time, and it still seems sound to me. I just point this out because I still see a lot of books and websites still illustrated primarily with publicity stills (indeed, both the books I talked about in my SOS article rely largely on such stills). I've never had any interest in using such stills: I'd rather rely on images that actually come from the movie itself to illustrate my points. For popular review type websites, use of publicity stills is usually harmless enough, but in the case of academic books, it's another subtle factor that seems to encourage authors not to worry about close analysis of what is actually on screen (the primary factor in this remains laziness). So I just thought that Thompson's article was worth a nod. Vive La Film Still! Labels: close analysis, commentary Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.5.08 - 0 comments
Avery, Jones, Clampett
A really interesting bit of animation history appeared over at Thad Komorowski's blog: the infamous "Jones-Avery letter." It is an open letter written by Chuck Jones (and annotated by Tex Avery) angrily denouncing Clampett's attempts to "claim" the history of Warner Bros. cartoons. Michael Barrier adds his commentary from an old essay on the letter here; the letter also provides interesting backgorund to this essay by Milton Gray here.  It's one of the great stories of animation: the three best directors at Warner Bros., and I think arguably the three greatest figures - outside of Disney - of animation's Golden Age, start as collaborators and finish in their twilight years bickering over their legacy. Jones, in particular, would barely acknowledge Clampett's existence when he talked about the studio. One quibble I have with Barrier's commentary, though, is that he is overly harsh on Jones. While he may well be right that Jones wasn't a nice person in his later years (certainly he is correct that he was a lousy interview subject), and is right to be annoyed that Jones failed to provide Barrier chapter-and-verse rebuttal of Clampett's comments before the letter was published, the basic point is that pretty all of Jones' comments in the letter are spot on. On this point, I agree with Nate Birch's commentary in the comments on Komorowski's blog: Looking at this letter the situation as it went down back then really crystalizes much more clearly and nobody really ends up coming off like a bad guy. Clampett was long removed from Warner's or directing theatrical cartoons and some guy from a small-time publication comes to interview him, so he decides to show off a little. Maybe pass a few drawings that weren't his off as his, fudge a few facts. Clampett wasn't one to take things too seriously and and this was all stuff from a totally different period in his life... I'm sure he thought nobody would really pick up on the interview or care much. Of course he didn't count on Jones, who was still immersed in the world of animation and tended to take the artform more seriously seeing the interview, and he writes a letter trying to put the real history out there even though it probably wasn't really necessary (nobody was going to write history books entirely on the word of Bob Clampett). Still, you can understand where Jones was coming from. Tex was asked to comment and tossed off some notes he probably realized were a bit rash and later apologized. Really, much ado about nothing.I find it pretty easy to understand Jones' anger at works others (including but not limited to himself) labored on being claimed by Clampett, and in that context the tone of his letter is pretty easy to understand. Labels: "chuck jones", animation, clampett Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.5.08 - 0 comments
The Other Jones
Because obviously I'm now officially part of the hype machine, here is the new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. {placeholder text - if you can see this, ignore it!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!! !!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!! !!!!!!! I'm psyched, even if the trailer looks disturbingly CGI-ish. Updated: ... and here's the almost identical third trailer. Labels: indiana jones, spielberg, trailers Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.5.08 - 0 comments
Iron Man 2: Early Review
I saw Iron Man the other day. I enjoyed it, but don't have enough to say about it to warrant a full review. Suffice to say it reminded me a lot of the first Spider-man film; well-written, with good characters and performances and a healthy sense of conviction in the exercise by all involved, but at the same time lacking the really big show-stopping scenes that would have made it more memorable (the climax is really just two guys in metal suits punching each other.) It made me think of these comments by Paul Rameker in an article I've linked to before, over at David Bordwell's page:
I would second all that and also add that these days, the sequel will get more money spent on it than the original; this and the more straightforward stories allowed once the "origin" story is out of the way means the second film in a series can usually be more action-focused. (Yes, this is a good thing.) The old idea that sequels gradually fade away in terms of quality should be considered completely dead, at least as far as first sequels go; third films in series remain much dodgier propositions. Another example: the Bourne series, which - whatever you think of it's hyperkinetic style - really only emerged as the default reference points for action filmmaking when the sequels appeared. Thus I'm excited about Iron Man 2 (Iron Men?), assuming the first film does well enough to warrant a sequel, and that they can keep Robert Downey Jr interested and out of jail. I fully expect to better than Iron Man, just as I'm looking forward to The Dark Knight (despite not being amongst those who consider Batman Begins a gold standard for comic book blockbusters) and Quantum of Solace (which is very much a first sequel in the reborn Bond series that began with Casino Royale). Speaking of which, here's the new trailer for The Dark Knight, featuring lots of the late Heath Ledger. His performance looks incredible, and surely show-offy enough to get a posthumous supporting actor Oscar. Labels: batman, bordwell, commentary, sequels, snobbery, superheroes, trailers Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 7.5.08 - 2 comments
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This page is for assorted musings and editorialising that don't fit elsewhere on Cinephobia. Stan Winston and the Monsters that You Can See Hit and MIFF Because We All Remember How the Last Movie I Poste... Return of the Spielberg Guy Stills Avery, Jones, Clampett The Other Jones Iron Man 2: Early Review Location, Location, Location December 2003 May 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 Want to contact me? |
