Two interesting posts went live as I was headed to bed tonight. The first (that I noticed) was from Matt Singer at Criticwire, following up on his aforelinked “Critic of Everything” post. Tonight’s post was a response to my “Criticizing Everything” piece from yesterday. Here’s what he says:

Maybe it is my wishy-washiness coming out, but I kind of want to have it both ways on this issue. I want to be able to exalt “The Raid: Redemption” on the relative merits of its meticulously choreographed fight scenes, breathtaking long takes, and inventive use of camera placement; as an exemplar of technique in the world of modern action, the film is certainly without recent equal. But I also want to remind the people who have proclaimed “The Raid” the greatest action film in decades (like the unnamed critic who did so on the film’s poster that action films are more than savvy technique. Plot, characters, and dialogue matter too.

As Singer rightly points out, this is a never-ending discussion. The question of how we quantify a film’s “goodness” is something all reviewers struggle with. Which brings me to the other piece that went live tonight.

In my post yesterday, I wrote about how I agreed with most of Roger Ebert’s review of The Raid: Redemption. Tonight, Ebert posted a solemn reflection on why his review puts him “way out of step with other critics.” Essentially, he enters the same conversation from another angle:

When I began, I found the star rating system to be absurd. I still do. But I thought I’d found a way to work with it. I’d take a “generic approach.” Instead of pretending a star rating reflected some kind of absolute truth, I’d give stars based on how well I thought a movie worked within its genre and for its intended audience. A four-star rating might indicate the movie transcended generic boundaries. For example, what genre does “The Tree of Life” or “Synecdoche, NY” belong to?

Later:

So what am I saying? “The Raid: Redemption” failed as a generic success because it simplified its plot too much? Not really. It is a generic success. And yet my heart sank and I asked myself: Is this all they want? Are audiences satisfied with ceaseless violence, just so long as they can praise it for being “well choreographed?” Is there no appreciation for human dimension, meaning, and morality?

Ebert is someone whose writing never fails to amaze me. He is a prolific critic, a paragon of a tweeter and an incredibly generous linker. This piece, titled “Hollywood’s highway to Hell,” is just plain stunning. He at once regrets his decision to pan the film but admits it would go against his taste to praise it. He pats other critics on the back and agrees with their laudatory quotes, but still admits that the film delivers little. Ebert, it seems, is still working out how to be a critic of everything.

I don’t think there’s any shame in being the odd man out for panning The Raid. It does, however, hearten me to know that Ebert is still toiling with the demons of movie reviewing. You’d think he’d have had these battles long ago and figured them out. The truth is, though, that criticism will never be the same as long as the movies keep changing. From Ebert, to wit:

When I began as a film critic, the word “genre” suggested a type of film that had highly developed traditions, possibilities and richness. Now it suggests a marketing decision.

These days, audiences enter a film like this with tunnel vision. They know what they want, and they’d better find it.

I like to think that cinema is much richer than what audiences expect to find at the multiplex, but it feels like that’s exactly what we see week in and week out. It feels like we are getting what we pay for and nothing more. That’s how I felt about The Raid: Redemption; it delivered a wet dream of a slug-fest but was otherwise thin. I think we can do better.

Here’s Matt Singer over at Criticwire last week, in an article titled “The Pros and Cons of the Critic of Everything:”

…In an ideal situation, an outlet would employ several film critics, each with their own beats and areas of expertise; you might have one critic who focuses on mainstream American films, another with a background in Asian cinema, a third who can recite every film by Jean-Luc Godard. But, as we all know, these are not ideal times for professional film criticism, or for the journalism industry in general.

Publications that employ large fleets of freelancers (like, say, The Village Voice) might be able to keep specialists on hand, but for the most part, any working critic today is pretty much expected to be a critic of everything.

His piece, a reaction to Glenn Kenny’s post on his relief of not having to have an opinion on The Hunger Games, came across my web-trolling shortly after I had a related Twitter conversation with Scott Weinberg about Roger Ebert’s panning of The Raid: Redemption. You can read the whole thread, but here’s the money-tweet:

@poritsky I think one should judge an action film as an action film.

— Scott Weinberg (@scottEweinberg) March 22, 2012

The Raid: Redemption is a film that has received gushing praise from a number of voices in the online film community, but overall I found it to be weak sauce. I agree with Ebert’s take that it is “essentially a visualized video game that spares the audience the inconvenience of playing it.” The director made almost no effort to build a narrative or take advantage of the vertical and horizontal playground that is the building at the film’s center. But hey, it has cool fight scenes!

How dare I, and Ebert for that matter, judge the film on a most basic cinematic rubric. We should have, as Weinberg, says, judged it as an action film, not merely as a film.¹ When one takes on the task of reviewing movies, there is always a question of how democratic one’s viewing schedule should be. Is the form itself comprehensive enough that we can ignore monikers such as horror, documentary and experimental; that we can be objective(ish) regardless of label? Or must we brace ourselves differently for each screening? Is it foolish to expect something more from an “action” film?

In cinematic terms, I believe genre is a misnomer, a classification that often holds people back from taking work seriously. I hate when people tell me that a film is good, stupid fun and that I shouldn’t try to watch it critically. This tends to come up in conversation with friends about a new Transformers or otherwise bombastic franchise film. Whenever I hate some boffo² punch-fest, or try to make my argument that our collective cinematic bars have been lowered to the point that some of this stuff is considered not just decent but high art (see Christopher Nolan’s career), my opinion tends to get sloughed off by friends who ask it. Such films deliver perennially on low expectations to the point that most would see them as being above criticism, by which I mean desperately far below it.

All of this brings me back to the issue of whether or not we should aspire to be critics of everything. When I say The Raid: Redemption isn’t a very good film it’s because I’m judging it the same way I would any other film (a Spielberg, a Malick, a Brakhage, etc.), based on my own knowledge of the cinema. If your experience is different, then great! This is why there is no shortage of critics and viewpoints.

While at SXSW, I struck up a conversation with a woman standing next to me in line for some film. The usual questions came up: where are you from and what do you do? “I’m a film critic,” I said. “Oh, you’re the bad guy,” she responded. Next she dove into an explanation about how awful film critics are (“Most, at least,” was the olive branch she offered to let me know that we were cool); how they never know how hard production actually is and tend to be overly academic when they write about films. She didn’t explain whose “bad guy” I was, but I didn’t take the time to find out.

Her stance is probably the one most film-goers have.³ I can’t help but wonder whether or not it’s not tied up in this same conversation. Is this “over-academic” stance not just my taking the medium and its makers to task? Isn’t it only fair that, when a filmmaker puts something out into the world, anyone and everyone can pass judgement on it?

I get that The Raid: Redemption is better than a lot of the other crappy action films of the last few years, so people are jumping to laud it in hopes of seeing more like it. But this is how the bar gets lowered; this is how we end up with multiplexes full of varying levels of crap. So no, I don’t think it’s a good movie, and I think it’s preposterous to tell me I’m judging it wrong. I’ll be as good a critic of everything as I can be.

Griffin McElroy reporting for The Verge from GameFest, where Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima spoke:

Though he’s made a name for himself in the gaming industry, Kojima explained that he hadn’t completely abandoned his dreams of being a film director.

“Honestly, I’m a big movie fan, it’s very special to me and, honestly, I would love to make a movie some day,” Kojima said. “But that said, I think it has to be a certain, special game that has to provide the right setting.

“But I don’t think that game will be Metal Gear Solid,” he added, “and the reason why is that Metal Gear Solid was developed specifically to become a game. It has a world and story that’s well suited and optimized for a game. In my mind, Metal Gear Solid is a game and nothing else. So, I think if I were to create something that would become a movie, I would have to come up with a new story, new characters, something that’s suited to the medium of movies.”

Apparently, the audience didn’t like that. I for one am glad to hear Kojima assert that gaming and film require different kinds of plots. Just because Metal Gear Solid is very “cinematic” doesn’t necessarily mean it would make a great film.

I wrote a little wrap-up of SXSW for Turnstyle News:

Many cities have a film fest, and some have many, but there is something quite singular about the show they put on Austin for SXSW. It has a little bit of everything for everyone.

Ben Howdle has a blog called “Movies {as code}.” Here’s the gist¹ of it:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33

boolean foundLove = false;
Man phil = new Man();
Woman rita = new Woman();

while (!foundLove)
{
    Day today = new Day();
    new Song("I Got You Babe").play();
    today.wakeTheGroundhog();
    switch (phil.getMood(today))
    {
        case "love" :
            foundLove = phil.triesToGet(rita);
            break;

        case "joyful" :
            phil.helpsPeople();
            break;

        case "sexual" :
            phil.tricksAWomanToSleepWithHer();
            break;

        case "thirstForKnowledge" :
            phil.learnsSomeStuff();
            break;

        case "suicidal" :
            phil.killsHimself();
            continue;
    }
    phil.goesToBed();
}

Many of the snippets of “movie code” are overly simplistic², but some, like this one, use basic coding concepts to break down a film from a particular angle, offering a sort of exploded view of the plot. Neat.

Added to the RSS routine.

Rob Reid gives a TEDTalk:

Math can be very, very funny.

I was late, which in SXSW parlance means only 45 minutes early, to the first screening here of Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me. After barely making it into the screening, I searched for a seat at the Alamo Ritz as the “no talking or texting” PSA played on screen. An usher sat me down in the section reserved for filmmakers and their friends. I quickly dropped my things between a young woman and a gentleman in a zip-up sweathshirt, scrawled out a dinner order on a slip of paper (Alamo theaters are also full-service restaurants and I was starving) and turned to head to the bathroom. The be-sweatshirted gent seemed confused that I wanted to leave the theater even though the film was unspooling, but he pulled his knees back anyway. After expelling fluids in record time, I settled back into my seat and began watching all but the first minute of this deft comedy.

Sleepwalk With Me is the story of aspiring stand-up comedian Matt Pandamiglio, played by first-time director Birbiglia. He tends bar at a comedy club, taking the rare opportuities he gets to do sets when comics bail on their time slots. He has been with his girlfriend, Abby, played by Lauren Ambrose, since college and both she and Matt’s family are starting to wonder when things will move to the next, nuptial level. As his career slowly revs up, their relationship becomes strained. Oh, and Matt has a particularly rough disorder in which he sleepwalks and acts out the things he is dreaming about, often to violent effect.

The whole film is told in flashback from present-day Matt. This narrative conceit is lifted straight out of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. The two films feel almost intertwined, as if Birbiglia wants to make his own version of it. Surpsingly, this doesn’t get in the way of the film’s own originality.

The director brings to the table an unfettered honesty. Pandamiglio’s comedy becomes funnier as he shares embarrassing tid bits about his personal life. The more he divulges, the more gigs he is able to book. This is a theme in films about any kind of artistic, especially comic, refinement. At some point, a comedian learns to stop being a spectator and become a raw nerve, an open book that invites his audience into his private, perhaps demented world. Sleepwalk With Me focuses on Matt’s move from the outside in, moving from a pew to the pulpit, as it were.

Much like a young(er) Woody Allen, Birbiglia is learning the tools he has at hand, sometimes with a foolhardy ambition. He executes a ridiculous long take that feels out of place when compared to the film’s otherwise straightforward form. There is an argument for its narrative necessity as it does precede a major plot point that requires spatial understanding, but it still smacks of, “Hey, what if we just did an insanely difficult shot here?” That isn’t necessarily a bad attitude to have. After all, Allen played fast and loose with cinematic conventions with Annie Hall.

I don’t want to mislead you into believing that Mike Birbiglia is the next Woody Allen. Sleepwalk With Me feels like the product of a student of Allen’s, one who took away the specifics of his style but not the knowledge that led him to become a modern master. There is a lot to love in this film, but it would be nothing without the filmmaker’s willingness to share a very personal story. Will Birbiglia be able to tackle someone else’s tale? We’ll see.

Oh, and about my missing the first few minutes of the film. When the lights came up, someone from the festival went up on stage to announce Mike Birbiglia for a Q & A. The man to my right hopped out of his seat and sauntered down the aisle, walked on stage and took the mic. I sat next to Mike Birbiglia the whole time and had no idea. I was wondering why he wasn’t laughing at any of the jokes as I chuckled my head off. Sorry about running out, Mike, I really had to pee. Great work, though.

Most teachers are familiar with Criterion and its high-end series of DVD and Blu-ray releases of classic and important contemporary films. In 1984, Criterion pioneered the genre of supplements, working at the time with laserdiscs. The team are 100% cinephiles, and they continue to set the standard for a rich array of bonus materials, all the making-of films, interviews, and documents that are of such interest to fans, scholars, students, and aspiring filmmakers. Now, with Criterion’s kind cooperation, we have produced a series of online examples tied to Film Art that will use scenes from several of their classics.

I’ll admit that in college I had a chip on my shoulder about the film text books by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. This had little to do with the books themselves and everything to do with my being a cocky teenager unconvinced that book-smarts were in any way a vital part of my film education. Watching and doing would be enough for me.

Of course, I’ve grown up since then and have since come to find their texts indispensable. One thing that has surprised me (and I’m guessing a few others) since school is how well the duo has adapted to blogging with their prolific site, “Observations on film art.” Without giving up their scholarship, which traditionally is reserved for prestigious (and paid) publications, they have found a way to stay on the cutting edge of modern cinema studies. David’s “Pandora’s digital box” series, for example, is perhaps the best writing available anywhere on the international transition from film to digital, simultaneously an act of journalism and a critical rumination on what cinema history will remember as a vital moment.

So I was pleased this morning when I read that Bordwell and Thompson (as collegians affectionately refer to their tomes) have updated their textbook, Film Art, to include content from the Criterion Collection. This is a milestone for film education and one that will be an incredible boon for students and teachers alike. I wrote a bit about modernizing textbooks back when iBooks Author was announced. While Film Art doesn’t go quite as far as I had envisioned in terms of integrating film clips and exercises into an ebook, it essentially provides the easy access to specific film illustrations that I wished I could have had in school. Here is a sample video, titled “Elliptical Editing in Vagabond”:

When I was in school, one of my professors relied on an ages-old VHS tape with clips roughly edited in the order of his lecture notes. Static would roll by between clips, that is if the VCR would even track well enough to make the thing watchable. Of course, I still was capable of learning the basics of film language, but better availability of high quality clips would have been preferable. Bordwell and Thompson and the Criterion Collection have done a great thing here.

One last thing. I think my favorite part of Kristin’s announcement of the new edition of Film Art is this part:

Central as the Criterion extracts are, we’ve made other changes. We’ve done a top-to-bottom rewrite of the text, trying to make it more conversational, more like our blogging.

A thousand times yes please. Their blogging voices are the ones I wish I could have read in school. Students, rejoice.

I interviewed Gayby writer and director Jonathan Lisecki for Turnstyle News.

Lisecki, who also has a supporting role in the film, is, himself, quite a character. When I sat with him to discuss the film, he had an ear to ear grin most of the time and would cut off into fits of laughter whenever he knew he had a good quip for me. He talks a mile a minute and, as he told me, has an answer for everything. You can instantly tell he loves what he does as a filmmaker; he is having the time of his life here.

This was one of my favorite screenings of SXSW, and talking to Jonathan was great fun. Hopefully Gayby will make the rounds. It has a lot of good laughs and is worth checking out.

Me, over at Heeb:

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller smoothly enter the world of live-action filmmaking (their last film was Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs). It’s perhaps no surprise that the guys who violently rained oversized steak dinners on unsuspecting Atlantic islanders would make a film filled to the brim with excess. It is, in a word, ridiculous. There are out of place explosions, talking ice-cream cones, and deaths and dismemberments that will have you rolling in the aisles, and you’ll quickly lose count of the expletives.