Late thoughts about a failed movie

Good heavens, no posts or comments on Retinal Damage in two weeks!

I suppose the following has some spoilers, so be forewarned.

As has been speculated would happen since Grindhouse's underwhelming box office performance here in the States, The Weinstein Company has split the film in two and added footage to Tarantino's segment for overseas markets. Kurt Russell has gone on record saying he disapproves, but everyone else seems to think Death Proof is better for the split and addition. However, some reports indicated that audiences didn't realize that they would get to see two films for one admission price and left after the Rodriguez movie.

Are people really that stupid? The film had been heavily marketed as a double feature by Rodriguez and Tarantino, and the lights never went up after Planet Terror ended -- it was immediately followed by more faux trailers. I think that a more likely reason for the film's failure was that it had no audience. Grindhouses were marginal theatres playing marginal movies; they weren't movies that mass audiences wanted to see (at least in public). Tarantino and Rodriguez have made their careers on recasting exploitation films in big(ger) budget contexts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a mass audience wants to see these kind of genre films in a quasi-grindhouse format.

Furthermore, only Rodriguez really went after the feel of a cheap exploitation film (though his use of expensive prosthetics and digital effects limited the ultimate effect). The narrative leaps of logic, the fascination with carnality and horror -- these Planet Terror has in spades. Death Proof on the other hand is nothing other than a typical Tarantino film, in which characters spout "perfect" dialog referencing obscure movies, television shows and musical acts while committing or otherwise experiencing acts of violence. Aside from its deliberately anticlimactic ending -- or rather, its structure that ends at the climax with no denouement -- Death Proof is generic in the wrong sense: It references the tropes of a particular "kind" of film (here, the Tarantino movie, itself already almost fatally self-referential and fatally referenced by hundreds of other "independent" directors like Guy Ritchie) without embracing or building on them. Tarantino's films have always struck me as nothing more than a tissue of other film references held together by his admittedly funny dialog. Beyond the fact that a group of women exact diegetically deserved revenge on Stuntman Mike (a fact somewhat hamstrung by the enjoyment Tarantino wrings in building up to and then graphically showing Mike's murder of the first quartet of women), Death Proof isn't about much more than being a Tarantino film. One doesn't need to have a hard-on for Vanishing Point to follow the narrative. As such, it's a rather flat film, even if it is probably the better made and in some ways more exciting of the two -- Mike's failed attempt to kill Zoe is gripping action. But once Tarantino has had his fun, the movie ends with no payoff. I've always felt that his films were rather masturbatory, and this is perhaps the best example yet of that feeling.

I'd pay top dollar to see Machete, though.

Some have speculated that Grindhouse's length -- 190 minutes -- deterred viewers, that they didn't want to sit through three hours of action and exploitation. Perhaps -- although viewers have not let length keep them from turning out in droves for the Pirates of the Carribbean or Spider-Man sequels, or any of the Lord of the Rings films. In fact, three of the top-ten grossing films of all time are about three hours long. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is the top-grossing film in history, and it's four hours long.

Last thought, largely unexplored: I am kind of depressed that one of the more interesting things to talk about in cinema these days is the failure of Grindhouse. A marketing ploy masquerading as a coherent film is a fitting but sad testament to the current state of American film as an industry and art form.

Long Take List

Here's an interesting film blog (conceptually at least i haven't really read through it yet) that recently posted a list of famous long take shots. It's a pretty long list with clips.

Long takes are always fascinating for what they can reveal about the relationship between story and style. There's always that moment after the start of the shot when one suddenly becomes aware that the shot is, indeed, a long take. This moment of recognition that draws us out of the narrative to focus on the bravura technique unfolding before us ... but then, if the take goes on long enough, we always succumb again to the pull of the story, slipping back into the narrative and the flow of the scene which is typically the point when we must recall the beginning of the shot to remember how we got where we are ... long takes activate spectator memory like few other devices .. flashbacks don't activate memory so much as represent it, showing us what we're supposed to remember but long takes actually activate spectator memory of what just came before .. i think all this back and forth is why long takes so often feel "edited" even while we in the midst of experiencing them ...

The Future of Film Critics Take II

These are the bastards that let me go at the Weekly for the same reason:

Consolidation trend is sweeping the realm of alt weeklies, with the New Times chain’s pooling of reviewers and its syndication of their reviews. Freelance reviewers whose bylines have been regularly seen in film sections and are expected and respected by local readers, are receiving few or no assignments from New York-based New Times management.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

(Also, I did not know this org existed)

Analyze This!

So here's a new feature for all us RDers if anyone's interested. I've posted a clip from Sam Fuller's Forty Guns that I found on You Tube for your analytic pleasure, a little sharpening of the skills, a chance to display your critical footwork. Dig in and share your thoughts on the clip and what's at work in the shot/scene. When we've exhausted it (as if that's possible -- it's Sam Effing Fuller for goddsakes) someone find another clip and post it and we'll do it all again! Okay. Who's game?

Are Film Critics Really Needed Anymore?

Variety asks the question. Four people answer it. What d'ya think?

As a recovering film critic myself I'd have to say that I often avoid reading reviews by other critics, especially the ones I respect, until after I've seen a film. Which is why, ultimately, I read very few critics these days because only a handful of them -- Dargis, Hoberman, Rosenbaum et al -- are every really worth reading after one has already seen the film. Most people who write about film for the major dailies and an increasing number of weeklies aren't critics with a serious knowledge of film history or aeshtetics. They're just journalists on the film review beat. They could be reassigned to writing about power tools without missing a beat. And why would I want to read a plot synopsis, dully written at that, after I've seen the film?

I tend to agree, then, that the kind of journalist who's cranking out quickie, yay or nay, write ups week-in-week out is a dying breed what with so many other ways for people to get the word on this or that film from their actual peers. That said, two minutes browsing You Tube or any of the movie download sites, always leaves me longing for the return of the cultural Gatekeeper who sifts through all the dross and applies a discerning, historically informed sense of taste to what's out there.

All of which leads me to ask you guys who your favorite critics going (or not going) are. Of critics past, no one beats Manny Farber in my opinion. Does anyone read Andrew Sarris anymore?

An Important Message

I haven't had as much time to post of late, either. But I did want to inform you that this movie is hella funny. I am probably 150,000 brain cells lighter for the experience, but the Mooninites made me laugh as hard as they scared the poo out of Boston.

Critical Media Film Festival This Thursday!

Okay, okay. After not posting anything in a while, the first thing I do is plug myslef. Bad blogger, bad blogger.

Anyway, some of you probably got this in your inboxes but a short critical video essay I made about Citizen Kane, inspired by Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space, will be playing at a student run film festival in the Bridges Theater this Thursday night. Here's a trailer for the event showing snippets from mine and the other films that will be screening. It should be interesting and maybe we can all go out for drinks or whatever afterward. The fun starts at 7:30 at Bridges with some kind of reception proceeding.

(I promise to return to regular posting/commenting this week -- I know you missed me -- although you guys have been totally rocking it. Lot's of great stuff below!)