Coraline and animation

Coraline - We had two personal connections to this movie. We just had dinner in Chicago with Neil Gaiman (and 750 other people). He wrote the book "Coraline" and was being honored with the 2009 Newberry Medal for "The Graveyard Book". And Mary went to elementary school in New Jersey with Henry Selick, the director of "Coraline" the movie.

Children's movies cannot be long (this one was 1 hour and 45 minutes) and that's a good thing. And I really liked this one, mostly, for what it was not, which is Shrek - possibly the worst animated film ever made. There were none of those wink-wink adult references to adult things, put in there to keep Mom and Dad from getting bored. There were no stupid movie references that- once again - are designed to make adults feel smug and superior. (Like the references to "The Matrix" in "Shrek") And the artistic references were motivated: the trapeze lady recites Shakespeare (Mike thinks Hamlet) because she's a retired actress/showgirl.



Animated movies are free to use space in ways that are difficult, expensive or just impossible in live-action films, especially those without special effects. There was quite a bit of moving toward and away from the camera in "Coraline" and, now that I think about it, was probably put in there to justify the 3D version (I'm thinking of that trapeze again and any scene involving the acrobatic neighbor).



I'm not sure why, but spatial relationships are just more interesting in live action than in animation, possibly because it's just so easy to do in animation (you start with Wile E. Coyote's eyeball as he falls off the edge of the mesa until he becomes a little puff of smoke as he lands on the desert floor below) and it's so hard to do in live action.



I'm thinking of that opening shot of Touch of Evil. It starts off with what we think of as a traditional close-up: the clock. But it's not a close up at all -and it's not just a clock either. Instead of a cut, the camera pulls away (or, I should say, the clock is pulled away), and we see that the clock is really the timing device for the dynamite, and the space of the whole movie opens up before our eyes. It's a mise en scene tour de force. The camera keeps creating more and more space; more and more of the world; until the things we've been following, the car and the people, are destroyed in the explosion.

(The shot is supposed to be about seven minutes long. And now I'm wondering if the clock/timer is set for 7 minutes... but anyway the whole thing is also an exercise in real time, as opposed to movie time, because there are no cuts.)

I'll have to deal with this animation/space thing again. And I've got to see Touch of Evil again, too.



Historical footnote: that shot was, famously, not done in one take.

Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia: So I want to start on a positive note: It's great to go to the movies with a lot of people who are having a great time. Mary and I saw Julie & Julia last night and it was like a meeting of the Meryl Streep fan club. They laughed and applauded through the whole thing. The movie itself was just a machine for making money: so conventional it made my teeth hurt.

Here's another critical thought: I was thinking that I couldn't describe this movie as plot-driven. It's a "comedy of manners." Which is a theatrical term, which makes me think that if the whole thing would have worked as a play, then what (or where) was the cinema? And the answer is: maybe there's no cinema there.
I know I've seen movies that would have worked better as radio plays, with zero visual coefficient. And this is not a bad place to be: asking what is the (visual) point?

Vermeer alert

At the Met:

Vermeer's Masterpiece: The Milkmaid
September 10, 2009–November 29, 2009

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage to Manhattan from Amsterdam, that city’s Rijksmuseum will send The Milkmaid, perhaps the most admired painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) to the Metropolitan Museum. To celebrate this extraordinary loan, the Metropolitan Museum will present Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid, a special exhibition that will bring together all five paintings by Vermeer from its collection, along with a select group of works by other Delft artists, placing Vermeer’s superb picture in its historical context. Along with The Milkmaid, important works will be on view by Pieter de Hooch, Gabriël Metsu, Nicolaes Maes, Emanuel de Witte, Hendrick van Vliet, and Hendrick Sorgh, all masters who, like Vermeer, were active during the remarkable period of exploration, trade, and artistic flowering that occurred during the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century. Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid will mark the first time that the painting has traveled to the United States since it was exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair 70 years ago.

I know everybody's going back to college before September 10, but look: this exhibit doesn't close until the Monday after Thanksgiving, so mark your calendars. Maybe I can drag Mike and anyone else who's interested on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, that's 11/27 or 11/28, so mark your calendars...

Herzog and Antonioni

"Encounters at the End of the World" - Werner Herzog's Antarctica documentary - I was disappointed. But Herzog sure is honest: he says, he saw some underwater photography of the Ross Sea at the South Pole and was "invited" to go (I think that means that someone gave him the money to make the movie) and then he shows us what, and who, he found there. And the answer is: what he found just wasn't all that compelling. But someone who loved the movie wrote on IMDB that you have to see it on the big screen, and maybe he's right...

What's my favorite movie? (It's a good question because it's revealing.) I have to say L'avventura (1960) by Antonioni. (Which is a real conversation stopper because so few people have seen it.) But I have to warn you, people who see it for the first time usually find it infuriating. When it was first shown (I think at Cannes) people actually yelled at the screen.

It does seem like everyone sees 8-1/2 before they see all those other Italian movies that Fellini makes fun of. That was certainly my experience. It's great to see the really hard core Italian neo-realist films - I'm thinking of "Open City" as a great example - so you can understand where Fellini, Rossellini and Antonioni came from. I think the Italians had a conversation with each other, as opposed to the French New Wave, which seemed to be having a conversation with Hollywood.

I'm going to see Umberto D again, so I can talk about it.

A list: there's so much to say

Here's a list of things I want to talk about, in no particular order. I invite comments, though, if someone wishes to prioritize...

-ontology of film: this is more fun than it sounds, and I think Mike will back me up here

-comedy, with a subset of situation comedy or "Why I hate Seinfeld"

-Italian movies

- intentionality: I must talk about this (pun intended) because, whether you're involved with art criticism or film criticism, it's an incredible time saver

-the one must-see movie by Orson Welles; no, not Citizen Kane, it's Touch of Evil

-mannerist cinema: this will be more relevant after the new Quentin Tarrentino movie comes out

And what's not on the list: semiotics of film. I'm not sure if semiotics is worth it anymore, but I'm thinking about it, and will let you know what I come up with.

Storytelling and film school

I want to circle around the idea of the storyteller again, this time with examples from the NYU film writing department. I learned from three teachers: Jackie Parks, Mardik Martin, and Charlie Russell. Mardik Martin wrote the screenplay to "Raging Bull."

The film school was filled with students who wanted to hold a camera, be on a film shoot, and have their name on the screen. Martin Scorcese had taught there, and his early film "Mean Streets" with Robert Deniro seemed to be the quintessential post-NYU film.

The writing department seemed resigned to the fact that no undergraduate wanted to be a writer. I hope that they at least had graduate students that were more motivated.

The cliche was, "I can write a script, but I can't write dialog." The word "improv" was not commonly used outside of acting classes in the 70's. I think we all felt that improvisation was a way for a director to give up control and we hadn't learned to get control yet.

In retrospect, I realise that Jackie Parks had read theories of semiotics and was kind of testing them out with us -but she never used the word and we weren't even vaguely interested.

Mardik Martin had one big message for anybody who would listen: "Conflict. Every scene has to have conflict." I thought I got it at the time, but I've come to realize that this was the most important critical lesson I learned at film school, and I still use it to think about films. If you ever wonder why a film is so boring, it's usually because someone has written a scene that moves the plot along (at least), but has no conflict.

Now, is conflict the essence of storytelling? I don't know for sure, but you can see how someone could make the case for it. The contrasting viewpoint is: "No. Conflict is great for comic books, but characters make the story." (In fact "Characters Make the Story" is a pretty influential scriptwriting guide.

Let me try to sum up where I'm going with this: film making is not a fine art. That's not news. There are only three fine arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture. And I don't give a damn what anybody in any theatre department says (or, in my experience, hints at): film making is not some modern branch of capital T Theatre. In the past 50 years, film making has become the greatest method of storytelling ever invented.
I know it would be cute to come to the defense of campfires and puppet shows, but nobody serious really would. Someone really serious would come to the defense of Theatre, and that's where a real argument exists. (To use the word "argument" is a real 60's thing, but at least I know when I'm being old-fashioned.)
And, of course, we're in Visual Arts World here. I have no bone to pick with the written word, because words just exist in a different world, and that's just how I see it (pun intended.)
Even Brakhage said, "A picture is worth a thousand words, except when a poet is speaking." (No, that does not sound quite right, but you get the idea. He wrote a lot, but never well.)

This is my prejudice completely: "suspension of disbelief" works much better for me at the movies than at the theatre. And, to be honest, it does not require a complicated philosophy to be truthful about that.

Jan Vermeer: it's all about the light

I want to address a few things, mostly things Sean addressed in his comment.

But first, I want to start naming movies I see as I see them. Not as recommendations, but as opportunities to use them as examples if we wish. And I cannot help myself from saying a few words as I go along:

Doubt: a waste of great acting talent. A movie by John Patrick Shanley who thinks that because he can write a play, that he can direct a movie. He cannot. I cannot think of a single playwright who's adapted his own play for the movies well. (OK - I can think of one: David Mamet) I usually come away with the feeling that they're really telling us - underneath all that money and effort - that you really should have seen the play.

Maya Deren: Stan Brakhage said (in that NYU class) that Maya Deren was the greatest film editor who ever lived. That she had an impeccable command of timing. She was older, and I thing she was something of a mentor to him, as was, I think, Norman McClaren.

I saw that trailer for Eldorado and it looks very funny, so I'm putting it close to the top of my Netflix list, right after Coraline.

I want to use two painters to talk about Storytellers and Impressionists again: Johannes Vermeer and Caravaggio. You can check out the paintings online, although - I'm warning you - you can't make any judgements based on a computer image. Especially about Vermeer.

Caravaggio came first. He's one of the most influential painters of the Western World (although "influence" is not what it used to be). He's a classic storyteller. You stand in front of one of his paintings, and ask, what's going on?, and if you're pretty good with your New Testament you can figure it all out. But one of the ways he told his stories was his use of (what we'd call now) theatrical lighting. It all very dramatic: like spotlights on a dark stage. His light picks out the details and emphasizes what he wants you to see, and at the same time, makes it special.

Vermeer, on the other hand is very Dutch, very Protestant, and very un-dramatic. He shows you people in everyday situations, and you look and you realise that the subject is the light itself(connotation? denotation? I'm sorry, but I think they get in the way) No one had painted light like that before. So, for me, it's a very Brakhage moment: he's saying, look, just look at that light. And everybody who saw those paintings learned from them and it was not until Monet that you got that same obsessiveness with light. (Haystacks in the morning, haystacks at twilight, haystacks in the cold, frosty air.)

Tony the tour guide says: the best Caravaggios in NYC are at the Met and the best Vermeer in NYC is at the Frick. And if you have never been to the Frick, well, you just have to go...