Skip to main content

Seeing 600 movies, at Wilt Chamberlain expense?

George Clooney's real performance of the year wasn't "Up in the Air." Plus: Jane Campion, "Star Trek" and madness!

A month or so ago, as critics' top-10 lists started trickling onto various Oscar-related blogs, I noticed that one list or another would be branded "idiosyncratic," and I started to wonder exactly what that meant. Is there a hypothetically perfect list, a list that follows some ideal template? Is the ideal list the one that's most in tune with the Zeitgeist? One that doesn't contain any foreign-language or otherwise "weird" films that the majority of the American populace hasn't seen? Considering that 2009 saw the theatrical release of some 600 movies — not that any critic comes close to seeing them all — isn't any list made by any individual human being going to be idiosyncratic in some way? The notion that there's an acceptable critical view, that certain movies must — or must not — appear on a list in order for any given critic to be taken seriously, flies in the face of what criticism is supposed to be. (Stephanie Zacherak, “Stephanie Zacherak’s best movies of 2009,” Salon, 27 Dec. 2009)

These are the voyages . . .

Strange this, teleporting in and out of so many worlds like you're a voyager from Quantum Leap. Don't you ever get the urge to pick one, and stay awhile? It'd be different if they were just different shades of the same fauna, but they are not that, are not they (are not not they?)?

Going zero, in 3D

On the subject of Star Trek and new decades, perhaps we'll allow ourselves a parallel universe this time around. The idea of going 2011, just defeats. Not even Rocky got past 8 or 9. So we'll go zero once again. The past will still be around, but he'll be like old Spock -- nice guy, still there, but not hanging around to be obtrusive. When we get to one, we'll decide if we'll let it roll on like we did last time, or if we'll figure out some other way to imagine life. Might it be zero all the time? Like some accumulating palimpsest? Or some ziggurat (but not the kind legions of virgins were sacrificed to)?

We could still see movies. But maybe this time they wouldn't be like the latest meal, or as near read and toss-away as a postcard (3 reviews a week, as if, in greatest truth, they really did nothing to you compared to the workaday), but experiences we live -- Avatars, even if the prose is sharp, and the acceleration muted. They already are that, but it would be exhilarating and genuinely universe-opening, if we could acknowledge it, and consider the implications.

Link: Stephanie Zacherak’s best movies of 2009

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch out, liberal extremities!

Watch out, liberal extremities! websmith says: “White people and an increasing number of minorities are tired of being called racists by the true racists and more appalled that this loony bleeding has spread from the heart to the brain." This is what many progressives are going to have to get used to hearing -- that THEY are the true racists! I've said this before but '60's liberalism goes down when enough people have decided that, in sum, it was never truly about what minorities, impoverished people wanted/needed, but instead what certain AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE wanted to believe those they ostensibly spoke for wanted/needed. They (progressives) will be made to seem, not the most caring, but the most negligent, most truly self-serving. Of course, most democrats in power will not be too afflicted by this, because they're ready to turn on the ’60s too. Why? Because, sad to say, they're getting in mood to want to see the weak and needy set-up as punishment-worthy a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conversation about Agulis at the Gene Wolfe Facebook Appreciation Club

James Pepe New Member  ·  20 hrs I’ve been rereading BotNS (this is my second read of it) and I just finished the part where Sev fights Agulis with the avern. I’m interested to hear what people think of the accusations Agilus levels agains Sevarian. Agilus says Sev has wronged him three times. Are we meant to take these accusations seriously? They're very strange. Is this just a last ditch attempt by Agilus to get out of being killed, or is Sev actually guilty of something, either legal, moral, or cultural. Are the powers that Agilus refers to simply that the avern didn’t kill Sev when it wounded him? Here the quote, “First by entrapment. You carried an heirloom worth a villa about the city without knowing what it was you had. As owner it was your duty to know, and your ignorance threatens to cost me my life tomorrow unless you free me tonight. Secondly, by refusing to entertain any offer to buy. In our commercial society, one may set...
Post a Comment
Read more

Discussion of Short Sun, at the Facebook Gene Wolfe Appreciation site

Mike Bennewitz January 15 at 5:56 PM Some thoughts on the themes in Book of the Short Sun [Spoilers] I've just finished a re-read of Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun. Short Sun infected my mind more than Long Sun, I guess. I don't have as many questions about LS as I do about SS. Wolfe is very obsessed with doubled identity throughout Short Sun. It's woven into so many aspects of the book that unless there is a transubstantial meaning I'm missing, I'm going to have to take it as a big clue that the narrator's identity is doubled. You could be forgiven for not realizing that the narrator has two mind/spirits inhabiting his body throughout half of the series. While Wolfe obscures this a little bit, he's telling you nearly everywhere that things are doubled. • A Binary System of two planets • Two quills in the pen case • Neighbors are like doubled humans, 4 arms and 4 legs. • Animals of Blue are doubled. 8 legs, 2 trunks, 4 eyes...
Post a Comment
Read more