gregor

one film section by section in class discussion about what choices are made in each and how they fit together than make them watch a bunch of movies the prof likes to show them the 'good stuff'. It's the process that's important, not the alleged 'right answer' in taste.

which is more likely obscured by making the uninterested watch 'great films' in class, then helped. X amount of film viewing hours = -X amount of teaching, a lure to an undergrad. Sitting someone uninformed in front of a complex work & saying appreciate it! is useless. Better to take them through

If university students don't pay attention, they don't care. That's because they are there for the diploma & job opportunities after, not the supposed education. Film studies, at the initial level, shouldn't be about film appreciation, watching movies, it should be about understanding how they work

I mean I'm in Minneapolis and it's obvious that this isn't about fraud or immigration, Trump doesn't give a shit about that, fraud & immigration violations are old pals to him. ICE is his little army sent to stir things up so people will have something to watch & argue about on their smart phones.

Nothing about this is meant to gain consent. ICE was sent to stir discord, to set people against each other, they attack cities in the 'Blue' states because it fosters disunity. The stupid fuck probably thinks he's doing something important when no one on 'his side' gives a fuck about him at all.

From Kihachi Okamoto's The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (1963) (One of the odd films that's well loved on Letterboxd, but the popular reviews seem to miss the mark entirely. That's not entirely surprising for Okamoto though.)

On a roll with my second movie watch of the year and already the mood has been perfectly captured.

That sure seems like I would more or less have expected given the literary flights within his criticism. I imagine it's part of his structuralist want to tie everything to everything else. That's his strength of course, seeing these deep associations and giving them some sense, at times too much so.

I'll give it a try since it has Gwenyth Paltrow in it. She's so cute as Pepper Potts!

I don't know, I mean I hear a lot of people say he's boring, so I haven't checked him out yet. Which of his movies is the best to start with?

But people love movie buffs. Weird.

25 favorite new views for '25

Honestly, I don't even know how to approach that claim coming from where it does in a disagreement over whether a movie belongs on the best of the year lists for Slate. There's so many layers of interference between "good taste" and any meaningful alternative that the concept is completely occluded.

Sevil (1929) After the play of same name of Jafar Jabbarli. This melodrama is about the woman who had unhappy homelife and tried to free herself from shariat rules.

I saw you said not Russia, so I'm assuming you're including the Soviet states, but I'll add letterboxd.com/film/sevil/d... as one to look at when you do get to the Soviets since it's an Armenian film outside the more familiar Soviet models.

Otherwise, Throw of the Dice is an excellent suggestion.

Yes, that is more what I was thinking. I mean classical music almost requires some formal education, writers & painters likewise, Rousseau aside, usually had some, so different than naive art, but where the systems of categorization haven't been fully laid out. Stein lived it, didn't 'learn' it.

Yeah, better as systemized rather than formalized, as it isn't an issue of being educated but accepting certain systems of knowledge that differentiates modernism from post-modernism. I mean this is all just something that struck me seeing your post, not fully worked out. Heh.

Which is to say it is precisely because Stein doesn't fit into social/political expectation readily that she could write as she did and make the rest of the world be shaped into her process of consideration. The absent contextual awareness replaced by a heightened attention of individual focus.

That's pretty much my feeling on Stein. Since you started reading it, I've seen a number of essays pop up on Stein, all trying to find ways to reconcile her work to her life, but none really noting that Modernism largely relies on the odd autodidact, formalizing modernism produced post-modernism.

Which, incidentally and as much as it bugged me at the time, the book matching her with Kael is kinda perfect since Kael didn't care much at all beyond the feelings of the moment, as filtered through memory. Sontag was invested in the 'why' of it all going forward, Kael more the 'what' right 'now'.

It's an iffy word choice, particularly given Against Interpretation, but seems fairly evident to me that her mode of understanding requires something beyond the moment, a hook of thought that can be taken in, if she misses it, like with Stein, she is at a loss. I have some sympathy with that.

Eh, I don't think so, more that Sontag preferred 'intellectualization' over feeling and was reacting against the tide of certain conventions in popular filmmaking. I question some of her favored choices, but the general drift has some pull still, or maybe has some returning strength in Netflix era.

Heh. An argument of the times against formalist tendencies in criticism, which would be rendered moot at best almost simultaneously with its printing.

Although I will admit I find it funny that Notes on Camp is in the same book as Against Interpretation. (Especially when it's abundantly clear Sontag has absolutely no affinity for camp at all.)

Ouch. Too harsh! Sontag says plenty of things to disagree with, but at least there's an actual argument behind what she says, not just pop culture vibes.

They are definitely not Loachian, nor Loach Dardennesian, nor whatever front back, top bottom, push me pull you combination one could imagine, that's just dopeytalk

For me, it's an irritant that I think keeps people from reflecting on some larger notions of art that are badly needed again. So I guess I end up becoming a bit of an irritant myself in trying to push for different aesthetic considerations. Like going beyond 'great' artists to ideas of art itself.

Yes, there was a useful element in the very basic claims of the politique that was understood as responding to the situation of French cinema, but they aware of the limitations as well, to varying degrees. Bazin never took much to the grander auteur concept & Godard saw it via production practices.

Essentially, once an artist's work is recognizable by name, to whatever group, they are effectively understood as an 'author' of sorts, but in films, people want to have authors and favored authors (auteurs) without added effort in differentiation beyond liked/disliked, so it's mostly a naming game.

It's self evident in the way it is self evident Eggers, say, is clearly seen as the author of his films in a way Chris Columbus is not, yet anyway. Give it time. Popular awareness of a 'signature' is one thing, but for most artists it's still there, just not recognized as such for lack of interest.

I mean, like, c'mon, Cahiers bros picked some of the most famous directors of the time & claimed them as authors. Hawks, Hitch & Ford already had their names above the titles as possessives, Hitchcock had a TV show by name, this was obvious stuff noted for career gains not theory. Sarris f'ed it up