More of a mixed bag, this time, but there is sort of an underlying theme: many of these articles and blog-posts aren’t about movies, but about how we interact with cinema (and television). What it does to us, and what we do to it. Take this piece, for example, by Germaine Greer about Jules et Jim. She describes how she saw the movie, and especially central protagonist Catherine, when she was in college. And she describes how her view has changed in the meantime. I’m still with young Germaine on this film, but who knows, as I grow older I might come to see the film in a different light as well.
In a somewhat similar piece, Noah Forrest describes following Sex and the City between the ages of 15 and 21, and how his love/hate relationship with the show developed over that time. I agree with almost all of what he says (I, also, love Miranda and think Carrie is fairly annoying), and as someone who watched Sex and the City in a similar period of my life, I can vouch for the fact that it does, in fact, affect you. Of course, most men don’t have a love/hate relationship, they just have a hate/hate relationship with it. According to Variety, most guys would rather kill themselves than watch it. Rather than just pointing at this and laughing, the lovely people over at the Vulture blog decided, instead, to investigate exactly what men would do to get out of watching SatC: the movie.
Because yes, not liking something is part of the movie experience as well. The question is how you deal with it. You can write a vitriolic review… but you can also do something creative. Like, oh, I don’t know, write a post than combines Cameron Diaz and Wittgenstein (something I’ll wager has never happened before).
Meanwhile, there’s a new quiz up at SLIFR: Prof. Brian O’Blivion’s all-new flesh for memorial day film (and TV) quiz. Like always, I told myself this time I’d participate…and like always, there were simply too many questions that had me stumped. For me, these quizzes are mostly a) a reminder that my cinematic education is a work in progress, and I’m still at the elementary school level, and b) an opportunity to read many of my fellow blogger’s thoughts on assorted topics, such as Coffy or Foxy Brown? What is an “important” film comedy? Victor Mature or Tyrone power? One of the questions I can answer inequivocally: Rio Bravo or Red River? Gorgeous as Monty Clift is, it’s gotta be Rio Bravo.
I’m sure if you’d ask Dan Callahan to choose between Gloria Grahame and just about anyone else, he’d choose Gloria. He wrote a great piece about both her work and her life over at the Bright Lights Film Journal. I saw The Big Heat again last night, and she is simply amazing. Expect more about that movie in a post tomorrow or Tuesday.
Finally, for the viewing tip of the week, I strongly urge you to go over to Cinema Styles and take 7 minutes to be amazed by Jonathan Lapper’s love of cinema. Good clip-montages can be watched over and over, with one evocative juxtaposition after the next and a hypnotic rythm and flow, and Frames of Reference is a great one. He pulls fragments from movies as diverse as Gun Crazy, the Passion of Joan of Ark, No Country for Old Men and Jaws, and they work together beautifully. It opens and closes with a camera in the frame, and it’s a perfect ending to an afternoon reading about all the ways cinema can affect us.
