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July 23, 2006
Some Maitenance Items
Comment approval has been a real pain. I found two or three of my own comments that haven't gotten through. The present system allows for no filter whereby a previously approved address might continue to be approved.
That said, please let me know if you don't see your comment after a day or so. There are very few legitimate comments that I do not approve. In the entire time I've run the blog I can think of three that I have had to delete for unsuitable content that were really comments on the material at hand. So, I'm not trying to prevent anyone from having their say. In fact, my theory of blogging (and perhaps one of the reasons this blog is so sloppy at times) is that the blog is an invitation to conversation. If your comment doesn't make it, there can be no meaningful communication.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ushpizin
Because Linda is away for the summer, I have the opportunity to view films with which she would have very little patience (i.e. Horror films and films you have to read) and I am amply rewarded in this delightful film.
Set in Jerusalem during the feast of Succoth (The Feast of Booths), Ushpizin is the story of Moshe and Mali, two impoverished Chassid who are casting about for a way to properly celebrate Succoth. During the feast it is required that the people of Israel live is succah, or booths, to recall the Exodus from Egypt. Moshe and Mali are too poor to have a succah (or booth). In fact, they are too poor to pay their ordinary rent.
Moshe and Mali pray, and a miracle occurs. A succah becomes available and Moshe is given a gift of $1,000. There are elements of the prayer scenes and the reception of the news scenes that bring to mind Fiddler on the Roof, but they are delightful.
Add to this mix two escaped convicts, one a former friend of Moshe, who arrive as Ushpizin for Succoth. Ushpizin means visitor or "holy visitor." The havoc begins.
Moshe spends part of the money he receives on a citron that is considered the most beautiful ever seen in the city. It cost 1,000 shekels and Moshe buys it as a blessing for his marriage to Mali that it might bring them children.
To cut to the chase, the film is a serious and yet light-hearted look at what it means to be a person of faith and what the trials of a person of faith are all about. While the subject matter is a youngish Jewish couple, the theme is universal and beautifully played out. If you are interested in films that treat the life of faith seriously and present it with respect and you are tolerant of having to read your way through a film, you might find Ushpizin to your liking.
Highly recommended for all viewers.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Integrity in the Triune
According to Plato the integrity of any given thing is made up of three separate but overlapping properties--truth, beauty, and goodness. Lacking one of these three, an object cannot have integrity in an objective sense. But one of these three overrides the other two--if a beautiful and truthful seeming object lacks goodness, then it is neither beautiful nor truthful. However, an object can lack perceptible beauty and still be good and truthful and hold its integrity. Likewise an object or idea can lack seeming truth (at least truth as we're inclined to recognize it) and still be good and beautiful (and these might be clues to its truth.)
This idea, as poorly articulated as it is here, is important in dealing with "important" works of literature and film that lack one of these dimensions. During our book-group meeting yesterday, we discussed Reading Lolita in Tehran as something worth our attention. And I asked the question, "Why Lolita?"
The problem with Lolita is central and not avoidable. Nabokov writes a well-constructed even beautiful story around an essentially immoral, sinful center. The point is not to condemn Humbert Humbert for his depredations--and, given modern parlance, there is even some implication that Lolita is responsible in some way for her own despoiling. This is repugnant to the sensibilities and renders the novel an aesthetic nightmare, being beautiful and true (within itself) but lacking any core of objective goodness outside of the writing itself.
It is possible to construct good and worthy fiction around essential immoral acts, but it is always necessary to emphasize the objective immorality of the central act for the work to have integrity. I think here of both Anna Karenina and The Scarlet Letter. In Anna Karenina there is the struggle with Anna's adultery and love of Vronsky which ultimately results in tragedy. So, too, with Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter the essential message is not that Hester Prynne's adultery is excusable but that Dimmsdale should have suffered similarly. It is only Hester's nobility of spirit and independence that protects him from being ousted from the community.
But Lolita and works like it--we would do well to warn the world that no matter how lovely the surface, the core is corrupt. We would do well to remember ourselves that Satan may often appear as an Angel of light. But we must balance that impulse with the impulse that judges all things by their appearances, condemning The Scarlet Letter for the same reasons as one might condemn Lolita. The aesthetic and moral impulses that drive the two are completely different.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:33 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Strait is the Gate and Narrow is the Way
Jesus rarely speaks to a crowd as a crowd. Rather, when He makes His statements, it seems that they are made to the group at large to be applied by each person individually. For example, the header to the post above makes no sense whatsoever viewed in the context of the Saints of God. How many ways, how many paths, how many different means of being did they find all within this supposedly straight gate and narrow way.
But the gate IS strait and the way IS narrow for each person. For the gate is knowing and loving Jesus Christ and the way is the particular path designed by God for the individual. There is no deviation from this path which is the Way of Jesus Christ. There are an infinite number of decisions to make as one walks it. However, these decisions are guided by the strict laws of the Decalogue and the words of Jesus Himself. Because the entry is tight and the way is narrow, it is hard to get lost on it.
Many worry themselves over minor decisions in their lives. "What is God's will for me?" They look for some oracle or sign, they play Bible Roulette, anything that will reveal the particular way. But when both choices or all of the choices are licit, it is by no means certain that they aren't all available unless God decides otherwise. There are many ways to serve Him and many, many ways of being ourselves in Christ.
Once again, the paradox of Christianity. The entry is tight, the way is narrow, but the way is Jesus Christ Himself, infinite and complete. It is a narrow way of following Him in all of His broadness. We are not cramped by this narrow way because compared to the way of the world, the avenuse along which the trees of life grow are as broad as the sea itself.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lady in the Water
It is easy to see why critics deplore the film, the one person harmed in the course of its filming is a critic. And the important point here is not so much that he is a critic as that he is a hubristic know-it-all. Hubris and humanity, the themes of the film.
There's no need to try to outline the plot--it makes no sense outside of the film. And I won't claim that this was the very finest film M. Night Shyamalan has made--although it may be close.
It is a film with a tremendous philosophical appeal, and that may be the flaw that makes it, perhaps a lesser film. Sometimes, the veil is torn away and one gets the "lecture" that has been hiding in some of Shyamalan's other films. This may be what bothers critics, but if so, it seems a case of intellectual laziness.
I will have to watch this film five or six more times before I begin to understand all of the things that I might want to take away from it. But once again Shyamalan introduces his ideas of faith, hope, love, humanity, meaning, fallenness, and a host of others. If you've seen Signs you know the drill--much of it is repeated here. But the oeuvre as a whole is not repetitious.
Recommended for smart teens to adults. Younger children will likely be alternately bored and frightened if the sounds I heard in the theatre are indicative.
In our ongoing debate about censoring and changing films, this is an example of a filmmaker we should support and for whom we should show out in great numbers even when the work may not be the very finest (although, as I said, I found this one quite fine). If we want quality cinema that takes our concerns seriously, then it is high time to shell out the money at the Box Office to light Shyamalan and directors like him have a fair chance at future films.
Go and enjoy.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
The whole reason for the speculations encapsulated in the Triune integrity post were the problems presented by the end of this book by Dai Sijie.
The novel is about two young men who are sent away for reeducation at the height of the Cultural Revolution in China. The crimes of their parents--one boy's father was Mao's Dentist, the other boy had two doctors--"intellectuals"--as parents. These young men are sent away to a remote village where there is not even electricity.
From time to time the village master sends the men into a nearby town where they view films and retell the story for the amusement of the village. There is an itinerant tailor whose daughter is the seamstress of the title and with whom one of the young men falls in love.
To say more would be to give away many of the interesting plot twists and turns. I don't know if this should be read as symbolic tale, allegory, satire, or simply a short tale well-told. However, the ending is problematic to me. And, at first, I was angry at the book and ready to reject it because of the end. However, thinking about it more, it seems that the chronicler merely made clear the horns of the dilemma posed by the law in China.
A short, quick read--fascinating and far more readable than Ha Jin's interminable Waiting or some other recent works out of China. The author himself underwent "reeducation" during the cultural revolution, so he knows whereof he speaks.
Recommended, with some reservations, for those with interest in the modern history of China.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Three Extremes
Let's start with a hearty NOT recommended for the weak of stomach or heart, nor for those not into Asian cinema and fairly graphic and gritty horror. The second segment of this three segment film (one each by a Chinese, a Korean, and a Japanese director) is by far the weakest and oddest. The third segment, directed by Takashi Miike (of The Happiness of the Katikuris and Audition fame) is remarkably understated for one of Miike's work. Subtle and twisting, it is a full movie in a short space and might be unpacked in many interesting way. Miike is one of those to watch to get a sense of the new Japanese cinema and the new Japanese aesthetic.
The segment most worthy of mention, however, is the one directed by Fruit Chan, called "Dumplings." Problem is, that it can't really be discussed without giving away everything and so I'll have to stick to a couple of generalities.
Upon first watching, once again, as with the book discussed previously, I had no idea what to make of it. But I've come to the conclusion that like F. Paul Wilson the road Chan is leading us down here is remarkably pro-life given its Asian origin (not generally a pro-life group of societies--never have been). When I thought about it at length, I decided that "Dumplings" was a modern-day "Modest Proposal" combined with an atomic blast indictment of the society and the people we have become.
Problem is, is what I'm seeing in the film, or am I reading it into the film? Did the author mean for me to come out with this idea, or was he simply playing with an idea and I've made of it something that was the farthest thing from his mind.
I'm not certain it matters ultimately. If some good may be derived from it, then I will take the good. But will I claim that it is good--there's the problem.
Anyway, I don't expect very many of you will see this any how and so my question will probably never be addressed.
And now I'm off to read my way through a Chinese Ghost movie that sounds rather like Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. Title--My Left Eye Sees Ghosts. I can't wait for Linda to Get home so I can stop reading my movies.
Coming up Krzysztof Kieslowski's White, Blue and Red along with The Decalogue, The Gospel According to Matthew and a few others that have been on my list for a while.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 25, 2006
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts
Incorrectly described by Netflix as a "horror-film," My Left Eye Sees Ghosts is more along the lines of a light romantic comedy with ghosts.
After a car accident, May suffers from a blood clot that allows her to see ghosts--out of her left eye only. Once the ghostly realm is aware of her she is barraged by a panoply of ghosts who simply want to be seen, or who want something. For example the ghost of an overweight woman wants to know what it is like to be thin if only for a moment.
The only ghost she cannot see is the ghost she most wants to--her husband.
If you want an idea of what this film is like, think 30s screwball comedy (á la Topper) made in 1990s Hong Kong. The film production value is high and I'm beginning to see that Hollywood may be losing its monopolistic grip on the film media. I'm seeing more and more films from Asia that have themes and presentations that make them not only palatable but popular among western Audiences. Witness the success of Ringu and Gu-On not to mention works like Bollywood Hollywood and Bride and Prejudice. This is a welcome relief as an industry without any competition tends to stagnate, and we've been mired in the entrenched mindset of Hollywood far too long. It's about time that the doors opened up and allowed in a breath of sweet fresh air.
And that is exactly what My Left Eye Sees Ghosts is--sweet and while not absolutely fresh (we must remember that "there is nothing new under the sun") certainly with a fresh presentation.
I don't recall anything that would preclude teens to adults from enjoying this film. Younger children may be put off by having to read it and by some of the conventions of Chinese film.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:46 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
"New Again"
I have not read about this song at TSO's and, darn it, I should have. Shame on you TSO for not talking about it! (Or shame on me for not noticing it when you did.)
The above-titled song is a collaborative effort between Brad Paisley and Sara Evans, two of my very favorite country music stars. It occurs on the CD The Passion of the Christ: Song. It takes the form of a dialogue between Jesus (sung by Brad) and Mary (Sara). And it is, simply splendid and beautiful.
"Whatever happens,
Whatever you see,
Whatever your eyes tell you has become of me,
This is not
not the end,
I am making all things new again."
Go to your library and get a copy of this CD (if that is possible in your local library) if only for this song.
"Behold, I make all things new!"
(Hope you know it was just a ribbing TSO, haven't written to/about you in a while.)
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 26, 2006
Make Your Own!
There seems to be a divide between some philosophers of Art and those who argue from the point of view of the artist. The philosophers see absolutely nothing at all wrong with altering a work to make it aesthetically better; the artists (or those who argue from that point of view) disagree. And this may come down what precisely we mean by "altering a work of art."
There are two species of alterations: one of which is always objectionable, the other of which is the traditional way in which art grows--the way which present copyright law is trying to squeeze off entirely.
One form of alteration is to take an extant work and make a change to it. This is objectionable on a number of grounds:
(1) It misrepresents the view and the work of the original.
(2) It argues that alteration to make a bad work mediocre is a laudable act--thus propagating the endless galleries of Thomas Kinkade art with which every mall seems to be burdened.
(3) It is hubristic--pretending to know with some certain what objective artistic merit is. I've seen Zippy throw the term around and then actively support the burning of all Picassos; I've come to suspect that he has no better idea than I do of what this objectivity looks like.
(4) It is lazy.
Which leads to the second form of alteration--derivation, parody, and satire, [added later] or attributed alteration of a copy of the work--most traditional means of altering extant works. When one thinks one can do better, this is the path to take. One doesn't tinker with the poems of Robert Frost seeking to improve them, one writes ones own poems in the same vein, on the same theme, or even in parody of or homage to Frost.
This is the means by which art progresses. Most of our modern works are derived in some way. They are written as a response to, from the wealth of, or as adaptations of great works of the past. I think of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres which can be seen as an adaptation of Lear. I think of G.B. Shaw's Dark Lady of Sonnets in which he fights his lifelong battle with Shakespeare with some considerable venom. How many Romeo and Juliets have there been (itself a derivative work from Arthur Brooke's 1562 The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, which in turn derives from earlier sources, and ultimately from Greek Mythology--Pyramus and Thisbe.
The right and proper work of the artist is this continual modification of tradition and addition to it. Hemingway is quoted as saying that "Mediocre artists borrow; great artists steal." Which is to mean that they take the work entire and make it their own. In this sense, the greater crime might be borrowing, in which we change this word, or that line, or this little scene and then pass on silently, having altered the work to our satisfaction.
At Disputations, Tom brings up the notorious "sash-painting" across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, only recently restored to the right and proper vision of Michelangelo. This form of debasement of art is what one supports when one says that arbitrary changes may be made to improve the aesthetics of the piece.
The reality is that there are vanishingly few people who have the standing to make judgments about the aesthetic value or objective artistic merit of any given piece, and most of those are who they think they are. It's a catch 22 in my experience, if you believe you are qualified then you are most certainly not--a point M. Night Shaymalin makes along the way in Lady in the Water. If you think you have the right to change a work that will be presented to the public, you should rethink--you don't.
I stand opposed to the alteration in any way of a received work. If you don't like it the way it stands, don't participate in it. If you think you could do the same better--do so. Just don't alter what has become public property. And public property is not individual property but the right and due of all the people. No one person has the right to change this heritage in the first way. Every person has the right, and if endowed with the skill, the responsibility to change or contribute to this heritage in the second way.
If you can make a more moral, upright, or proper film do so. Don't change the one I'm watching. If you can make a poem better, then do so--set yours alongside the original and show me the improvement. I have yet to read an altered, bowdlerized, or expurgated version of any work that made a substantial improvement to the aesthetics whatever it may have done to the morality.
If you feel the urge to change someone's work, cowboy up and make your own. Don't tinker. Don't play at artist--you demean art and the artist with such playacting. And don't be tiresome and pretend you have some bead on the truth that will vastly improve a given work. Prove it to me--write your own. Jane Austen took on the melodramatic and overwrought Gothic genre to produce the magisterial Northanger Abbey and made a contribution far more profound than legions of gothic novelists. (However, she did not surpass Anne Radcliffe whose work she sought to parody. Ms. Radcliffe's work stands and beside it the parody that is almost a tribute. In a sense we have Ms. Radcliffe to thank for one of the finest novels in English--if only indirectly.)
So, hands off. Let what enters the public square live or die on its own.
And now the second part of part II. Copyright law. Our present copyright law seeks to keep everything out of public domain for approximately 150 years, at this point. With the next renewal that time will extend. Applying that to the past, we would not have been able to make films or derivative works of things like A Christmas Carol or Tess of the D'urbervilles until a few years ago. Yes, there's always the possibility of licensing the work, but what is the writing struggling with keeping food on the table to do when the very clay with which he or she works is locked up, just within sight. The modern copyright law is a travesty--a mockery of law, and a mockery of the purpose for which copyright became the rule. The most recent Supreme Court ruling on it, in every way a deliberate and conscious misreading of the intent and purpose as outlined in the Constitution itself. It is clear from precedent up until the 20th century that there was absolutely no intention of an artist holding copyright for 90 years after his or her death. And, as I said, with the lobbies and the free grant of the Courts, this is only like to be extended. This does wholesale damage to the common good, removing from the sphere of play thousands and thousands of works. I think of what might have happened had Jane Eyre not entered the public domain--we might never have seen Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. The examples are countless. Congress has, for the interests of megaconglomerate businesses removed the right and proper heritage of art from the people, and we stand by and let it happen--unconcerned because so erudite a matter has no real meaning for us. (Okay, end this month's diatribe on copyright law--sorry).
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:59 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
A Continuing Cultural Conversation
Tom likens Art to a cultural conversation, or rather someone has slipped that metaphor in along in the discussion. And that seems quite reasonable. Tom goes on to ask the question, "Is it reasonable in the course of any conversation to assume that every person engaged has the right not only to be heard, but in a sense to dominate the conversation as the only one whose word not only must be heard, but must be held sacrosanct and inviolable?" I paraphrase, but I hope I caught the essence of it.
Because Tom's definition of Art starts off much broader than my own, that question is reasonable as well. But where the difficulty comes in is that the cultural conversation takes not merely minutes, hours, days, months, years, or decades; it can, and often does take centuries and millennia.
While it is unreasonable to hold one person's view as more valuable or more sacrosanct than another's, when I argue for the preservation of the original, I am not saying that there cannot be other contributors, but rather, because the conversation takes so long, it is only right to hear the conversants in their own voices--as unmediated by another as is possible.
I make an inference here that Tom may be describing art as a kind of dialectic a kind of theme, introduced by the initial artist and modified through the years by responding artists in harmony or dissonance. And that may be a reasonable view of the process over all.
It is not the production of new works that bothers me. But let me try to explain just why I hold the view I do. St. Thomas Aquinas produced a large compendium of theology and philosphy, and I suppose natural science, and many other things related to theology and understanding God. This is the remarkable Summa Theologiae. Through time, many, many people have responded to this work, both positively or negatively. However, if I only read Farrell's study of the work, have I really come to terms with what St. Thomas Aquinas said? If I read only the two abridgments prepared by Peter Kreeft, do I have a clear idea of what Aquinas taught. Perhaps, perhaps not. But if I don't have the work of Aquinas to refer to, how can I know. If we allow the original to be so truncated to to be compiled in Kreeft's Summa of the Summa how will I understand the conversation?
Now the creation of the Summa of the Summa MIGHT be what Tom would refer to as a modification of the Summa Theologiae, if so, we have a different terminology for recognizing the validity of the same thing, because I would argue that Kreeft used his skills as writer and editor to produce from Aquinas not just a modification of Aquinas, but what is, in essence, an entirely new work. Yes, the bulk of it is Aquinas (there are notes and comments by Kreeft) but the process of editing picks highlights and reshapes the corpus of the work in such a way that it no longer fully represents the original. With this type of continuing conversation, I have no problem. Part of my ease comes from the fact that if I wished to know what Aquinas really said, I need only pick up one of several critical editions and learn Latin and read it. (Well, perhaps only wasn't a particularly good modifier in that sentence.) But the reality is that I have the original contribution to the conversation to play off of all the others and to hear the overtones and undertones.
But let's assume for a moment that an evil band of Kreeftian adherents stole all extant copies of the Summa and destroyed them. Then those initial remarks--the conversation starter is completely lost to me--and the conversation starter is indeed the seed of all that followed.
This is where we may part company, because I sincerely believe that it is good to know the full nature of that seed and even of the subsequent branches when we begin to engage in the conversation.
Now I've been queried about whether I would confer the same protections on Cheaper by the Dozen as I would on the Hagia Sophia. And the answer is an unqualified yes, with a codicil. I think it good to preserve as intact as possible all of the works of art so that future art has it as the "conversation starter." Ideally, that Art should be the authentic expression of the artist who produced it--complete and unchanged--but ready now to be modified by the future artist who encounters it. The codicil is, do I think Cheaper by the Dozen is as important as the Hagia Sophia. No! Rather I confer on Cheaper by the Dozen the protection I would like to offer the Hagia Sophia, not because CBD is necessarily worthy of that protection, but because if I have to choose between releasing all and keeping all, I choose keeping all. CBD is the side beneficiary of the protection I would like to see conferred on all great works of art.
A great work of art is a conversation starter--it is interesting to see the conversation develop, but I often lament things like Fragments from Paphias that give us enticing snippets of what could have been a most interesting whole. I regret the loss of many of the Pindaric Odes, though they may not have been worthy of a second thought. Who would have thought a minor comedy of an ancient Roman would have been worth recreating as a musical. And yet, it works.
So, if I am a protectionist, it is both for the good of Art as a whole, and I believe, the good of humanity. Some conversations are finished, have long since been but to rest and now are nothing more than footnotes in long abstruse studies of ancient Hungarian fragments or lesser Scholastics of the 14th century. There is a natural lull in the conversation. But the texts are there, ready for a resurgent interest that may uncover in these "lesser" scholastics insights that were far ahead of their time. If these works are redacted into nonexistence, this fertile field is destroyed, and part of the ability of Art is destroyed with it. I think of art as akin to John Donne's paean to everyman, "No man is an island, but all be part of the whole. If a clod be washes from Europe, Europe is the less." The loss of an original artwork is a great shame and a great loss. The centuries-long conversation that occurs around this artwork enriches Art, and if done properly, all of humanity.
That is why I suppose I impose my two categorical statements--(1)The willful misattribution of a work of art that has been changed to the original artist is sinful; and (2)The redaction of any original, no matter how seemingly trivial, out of existence is a great loss.
That said, I now need to come to terms with the very real part of me that says, "Some works don't deserve to exist at all. Would the loss of all of the pornography of the 20th century really be a bad thing." And perhaps it is in the distinction between Great Art, Good Art, Mediocre Art, and Bad Art, that I could find some answers to that question. (Bad art here meaning art that is both seriously, grievously mortally flawed, and art that while unflawed morally is so completely flawed technically as to be worthless.)
And perhaps my answer would be that Art in the first three categories deserves to have the original preserved, and that in the last, particularly if morally reprehensible should be consigned to the dust head of history. But then my statement wouldn't be categorical. And perhaps, with further reflection that's just fine.
All I really want is to be able to see what was originally there if I have cause to. As I once commented to TSO, reading a book by John Cornwell was a waste of time because I felt I had to go back and try to find all of the originals to see, what if anything, was true about it. But stop and consider. If we redacted everything out of existence and all that remained to say of Pius XII were the half-truths and less of Cornwell's book, then we would have done a great injustice--and I believe the nature of that injustice is related to Art itself.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:40 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Habemus Canem and The Eye
My Latin is dreadful; however, my new dog is wonderful. A stray found by another, named Lucky (Sam has decided to keep the name), a delightful and sweet companion. A bit of a shock going from alone to caring for a baby. But that's okay. Linda and Sam back soon.
later this evening: The Eye another Korean suspense film. Heard it was licensed by Tom Cruise and associates to be made into another dreadful American rehash. Let's see what they're hashing up.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Eye
Subtle shades of the Cassandra theme played out twice in the course of this low key suspense/supernatural thriller. I hesitate to call it a horror movie, because it most certainly is not. More the atmosphere of The Forgotten
A young woman, blind since the age of two, undergoes a corneal transplant that restores her vision. Along with the restored vision comes the ability to see the forthcoming death of those near her.
Very nicely played, and very coherent. I can't imagine what the American studios will make of it. The woman who was the star of My Left Eye Sees Ghosts played the sister of the heroine in this film.
Recommended for adult audiences looking for style and fun with a very tiny dollop of substance thrown in.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 27, 2006
CleanFlicks and Copyright
I've given the matter yet more thought and have concluded that part of the anger at the result of the CleanFlicks lawsuit stems from the fact that film is presently under a perpetual copyright. Supposedly the copyright last the life of the author plus 90 years, but I don't know the rules when the copyrighted work is owned by a "legal" person such as a corporation.
If things progressed as the Founding Fathers originally saw fit, films would enter the public domain at a steady pace. But the reality is no film is likely ever to enter the public domain (there are a few silent films, but that's it). So, there is never the opportunity to "edit for suitability" because copyright is eternal. And it is here that I balk at the judgment against CleanFlicks. The Courts have given both monopolistic and eternal rights to the companies that produce a work. It would seem to me that if they are forever, they should not be all-inclusive. A previous commenter pointed out that copyright was a trade-off allowing the owner a short period of exclusive use in exchange for the work entering the public forum.
I'm thinking that the only way this will cease is by concerted civil disobedience--but I can't think what form that might take. Anyway, the anger seems justified because many are left powerless in the face of this all devouring perpetual seizure of intellectual property.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Art as Children
Many artists often compared their works to children. When asked what their favorite novel or painting is, they would respond with something like, "How do you pick a favorite child?"
But to my mind, what makes art difficult is that the products are closer to a person than children. When someone asks me "What poem is your favorite?" it strikes me as asking, "Which toe do you like best?"
This sounds dramatic, and I don't mean it to be so. One of the things that makes publication very hard for many, myself included is that it is akin to standing naked on a soapbox at the corner of the village green and shouting, "I have something important to say." You are completely exposed to the world. Every work I have produced still feels as though it is a part of me. And reading the older works, I become for a moment the person I was when I wrote them, and the person that I still am as a result of writing them.
So, I probably overstate, but for me, the metaphor of children fails, because as much as I love my son, I feel somewhat differently--not love precisely--about my big toe.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 28, 2006
Speaking of Cultural Conversations
TSO links to Ulysses meets Fred Flinstone, a prime example of how art advances by the interactions of one artist with another. A modification to which no exception should be taken, and extremely amusing.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Aesthetic Tyrants
Zippy and Rob will be happy to know that other than this there is nary a mention or an intention toward them. I'm sure Tom, shaking in his boots, will breathe a sigh of relief when I say the same is true of him. In fact, this is not directed at anyone in particular, but toward and peculiar attitude that crops up every now and then, which I consider to be worse than many of the aesthetic foibles we have paraded across the floor in the past few days.
Some people, usually a small group, feel it incumbent upon themselves to infringe upon the small joy others take in any given work of art. They take it upon themselves to be the gatekeepers of the objective artistic merit, and those with the checklist of what qualifies and what does not. Frankly, this attitude sickens me. They usually proclaim years of experience in the field or a string of letters behind their names that give them some oracular ability to pronounce whether or not a work is "good" or not.
I hate to tell them this, but they aren't the gatekeepers. No experience and no string of letters gives them the right to rob anyone of the pleasure they experience from licit entertainments. They have the right to their opinion and to substantiation of that opinion on the basis of their understanding, but they are not allowed the codicil, "And anyone who does like it doesn't know what they're talking about and suffers from a terminal case of bad taste." What presumption--of course I know what I'm talking about when I say I enjoyed a book, film, or piece of art--and it may be that what I enjoy about it is precisely what brings these aesthetic mavens to the verge of apoplexy. Too bad. I'm sorry to make them distraught, but whatever they say, I'm going to like the work anyway.
I read J.D. Robb and Georgette Heyer with nearly the same enthusiasm and enjoyment as I read James Joyce. I can name a myriad of reasons why the latter is more important, more literary, and better taste than the latter. So what? I can enumerate countless reasons why Agatha Christie is a lesser writer than James Gould Cozzens. However, at the present time, it appears that Ms. Christie will be a writer for the ages whereas Mr. Cozzens has practically disappeared.
I went through college courses that enunciated to me why I must despise Charles Dickens and love Thomas Hardy. Sorry to say, I must not have been listening too well. I love Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy.
The reality of the matter is that every person is entitled to his or her own opinion and enjoyment or lack thereof in a work. For example, while I can train my eye to understand and even appreciate some of the works of Picasso, there are very few I can truly be said to enjoy. There's absolutely nothing of the work of Robert Motherwell that means a thing to me, and a Jackson Pollack--in my estimation, mind you--is a massive waste of time. Now, that doesn't mean that there is something deficient in my critical faculties nor in my taste. It means that I find the aesthetic appeal of these artists harder to grasp and not so accessible as say Magritte, Gaugin, Rousseau, Corot, and Courbet.
Personally, I would class most of Thomas Kinkade in with those for whom I have little appreciation. But what would I waste anyone else's time outlining the deficiencies of style, subject matter, depth of light, etc. (Well, only so Linda won't put them up on the walls, but that's a different issue.)
People are entitled to their enjoyment of licit pleasures. The critics are entitled to their opinion of what makes good art. Personally, I am more interested in a critique of the moral appropriateness of the art. Is the pleasure truly licit--or is the subject matter essentially immoral?
Critics and scholars are entitled to their appreciation or lack thereof of works of literature. Harold Bloom, whom I consider to be brilliant in other ways, shows an unaccountable lack of access to the work of E.A. Poe. He tries to convince everyone these works are somehow inferior to other works that are a great deal more tedious and deadly to read. Just stop it!
When I critique a book, I try to give some sense of why I did or did not like it and what I found problematic about it, if anything. I often include a recommendation. I expect those who have read enough of my writing to know what I like and dislike will weigh that evaluation and say, "Well, HE didn't like it, so I will." I would not presume to judge the person who found something to enjoy where I did not. In fact, that is the person from whom I wish to learn.
A few years back Jonathan Franzen, author of an enjoyably mediocre tale of family angst The Corrections bemoaned the fact that Oprah had picked him up for her book club. "It's so middlebrow." Frankly, if Oprah had breathed a word of my novel or short story to the world, let along made it her book club selection, I'd build her a statue from the money I'd be rolling in as a result.
Watch for words like, "middlebrow," "bad taste," "I have twenty years experience," "I know what constitutes good painting," "I have a Ph.D. in semiotics and symbology. . ." what follows is sure to be a tedious, uncharitable tirade and detraction of another person's opinion.
If you (the general and vague "you", not YOU gentle reader) don't like what I like--you're entitled. Tell me about it. Let me learn from you, or talk to you and tell you what I saw. Don't tell me how you have twenty-two years experience teaching English and can recite "My Last Duchess" backwards and forwards, and you have a Ph.D. in "Post Modern autodeconstructive hegemonic theory." I don't care. Don't waste my time. Tell me what you want to say and give good, solid reasons. Or refer me to where you have provided good, solid reasons. And be charitable enough to recognize that you are not the center of the universe, nor are you the last word on theory and practice of aesthetics. In short, don't be a boor. Here, at least, you'll wind up being ignored or summarily deleted. I haven't the time nor the patience, and I don't wish to subject my readers to a diatribe about why some obscure homosexual feminist transvestite from Akikasho Japan is the only filmmaker who even makes a real movie any more. It's unbearably pretentious, precious, and more than a little bit sad.
So do yourself and everyone else a favor, lighten up--stop taking yourself so seriously and chill. (Advice I could do with following myself.)
[End spate of vituperation and frustration]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:50 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Lest We Forget
the sheer marvels and prodigies of grace:
Xyloplax turnerae and X. medusaformis
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Daddy of The Matrix
Dark City 1998--take a dollop of The Matrix mix thoroughly with about a half gallon of The Forgotten and a small dose of The Truman Show and you have the daddy of them all.
Dark City is an odd little film--Australian/United States Production with the talents of Rufus Sewell, Keifer Sutherland, William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly.
Man wakes without memories in a hotel room wherein there is a murdered prostitute. And he travels about in a city where it is always night and where no one is the same from day to day.
Innovative, interesting, and surprising even after you've seen all that derives from it. One of those obscure films that help you to trace the origins of dozens of others. And perhaps rather than influencing The Matrix it shared the same Zeitgeist--but its motifs show up again and again in other films.
Adult subject matter, recommended for adults only, and only for those with a penchant for quirky SF.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 29, 2006
The Fog
No, not either one of the two versions John Carpenter made, this is rather a wierd little ditty from Bollywood--kind of a corss between a 1950s-1970s Spanish/Italian Horror movie complete with ketchupy blood flowing at all the wrong times, and a chaste Madonna video (talk about oxymoron).
That is one thing that truly impresses me with Bollywood films, and perhaps it speaks to their audiences. The embraces, the close encounters, the amount of skin shown is about what one could have seen in the U.S. pre-1965. And that's refreshing. Another refreshing point is that these films are so darn sincere. When everyone gets up and dances, you want to dance with them. It's hard not to like Bollywood.
Now I have a question for those who know more about Indian film--what language are most of these films in? Half of the time I'm hearing English words, phrases, and sentences that need no subtitles. The other half there is some other language. Is this a creole or a patois that would make the film more comprehensible in a nation that has more languages and dialects than all the erst of the world combined? (Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but not by much.) I haven't figured it out and its a bit disconcerting because I find myself half understanding and half in the dark and by the time I realize they've trailed off English, I've missed the subtitles.
Well, for films that explore the challenging territory of the bare midriff AND disappearing and reappearing corspes and monsters, this film must be one of the very finest. Nevertheless, it is lengthy and I can give it only a half-hearted recommendation as an odd blend with some great Bollywood musical numbers and some really bad horror cinema story and acting. But, it makes for a unique and interesting blend.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 5:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
What I Remember Most About the Hare Krishna
My friend told me that in their town they would bring an elephant with a golden headdress and seat that was empty.
But what I remember most about the Hare Krishnas, more even than the saffron robes, more even than the dancing and the odd Indian drums they would play, more even than the bald heads with one knotted tress, more even than the chant-chant-chanting, the chant and be happy cycle, more even than the prayer wheels and the images of Ganesha and others, more even than the curious resemblance of their Lord's name and my Own--what I remember most is breaded cauliflower fried in ghee.
From talking to them I learned that ghee is a type of clarified butter. From my own palate I learned that ghee is a type of tangible sunshine, a taste unlike any other. Cauliflower, meek mild, inoffensive, mostly tasteless cauliflower in ghee became the mightiest of vegetables, indeed, perhaps the mightiest of foods excepting only double chocolate chocolate chip cake. Ghee had a way of turning everything that was wrong right and making all things come into harmony. I looked deeply into the mysteries of the east and for a moment understood them as I rolled the ghee-imbued cauliflower around in my mouth.
What I remember most about the Hare Krishnas is the promise of endless meals of ghee cooked marvels--and for a while that was a temptation. But not enough. Nevertheless, I've been granted a taste of heaven here on Earth and it was amazingly simple.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
What I Remember Most about Pleasant Hill, Kentucky
What I remember most about Pleasant Hill was not the two stark building, one for women, one for men; nor the building where trays of mulberry leaves were spread as far as the eye could see and women wearing delicate face-framing bonnets picked at cocoons that had been boiled and slowly unwound their slender threads into large spools; nor the meeting house where they demonstrated the dance and the song and thinking about how this society had dwindled to a mere seven in Sabbathday Lake, Maine; nor the administration and guest house where the prefect spiral staircase rose in the atrium, seeming floating without support; nor the green pumpkins the size of small carriages still clinging the the vine thought now rimed at times with frost; nor the chill of the wind or the color of the trees as we rode the riverboat up the Kentucky river to see the wonders of autumnal nature spread before us; nor the bee-hazed cider press that buzzed louder than any modern machinery as a man in round black hat turned the wheel to crush the leavings of the apples; nor the straight ladder-back chairs that so many others oohed and ahed over.
No, what I remember best was a small obscure awninged shade where a single woman sat with what looked like a completely wooden paper cutter and golden straw. And when her visitors would approach she would rise and take some of the straw and lay it across the ridges and valleys of this not-paper-cutter and swiftly chop down on it as if to slice it in two. And the outer peel of the golden straw would break and with some deft movements of her fingers, she would peel it away to reveal the golden threads that lay within. She'd take carding tools, like those for working wool and pull the threads between them over and over and over again. And when she had a puffy ball of the stuff, she'd grab a wooden top she had sitting to one side and pull the fluffy cloud into fine white threads, pausing every now and then to wrap the threads around the spindle.
And when she was done, she would take them to the woman at the loom, who would wind the threads onto her bobbin and race them through the warp and weft of the fabric she was making.
And all around was the clamor of no-noise at all--no radio, no television, no tractors, nothing--the thundering roar of sitting before God in a simple task, and perhaps humming under one's breath:
'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.Refrain:
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack