...The End of the World As We Know It?

I have been so busy it is ridiculous...more soon on what I have been busy doing! But in the meantime...if you watch/listen to these recent recordings of animals I am thinking the Mayans might have been onto something...!

The New Cinematic Language...Maybe?

So, in that last post? The one where I refuse to lament the death of "cinema" because, well, I really don't think it's dead? I have continued to think of what our new idea of cinema should be in our blockbuster digital generation...most film scholars tend to harken back to the French New Wave, the weighty semiotics scholarship, the philosophical angst of Fellini & Allen & Bergman. But, so much has changed! Existentialism, post modernism, Freudianism- are all things that we know and have in our film lexicon, they were the foundation for that cultural era elevating certain films into subjects & objects not just passing, fleeting things... so, what is our new vocabulary then? What is it that defines the new school of cinematic discourse that is yet recognized, amorphously being spoken in classrooms and on blogs and is the thing that will glue together whatever this new era of film thought/speak is? We aren't talking like the old film days because these film days are different! So, I came up with a few ideas...sort of comparisons of new schools and old schools (namely the 60s cinema heyday tears are being shed for!) of filmmaking that maybe we should look into as a new, new wave...a nouvelle, nouvelle vague perhaps! Anyway...what do you guys think? O, and on a side note, Italo Calvino's Six Memos For the Next Millennium really should be the text we are looking towards if everybody wants to get all academic and chatty about stuff...

1. Neuroscience/Science instead of Psychology/Philosophy
Jung, Freud, Lacan, Irigary, Derrida, PostStructualism, Feminism, Marxism- the list of theoretical frameworks goes on & on once academia got it's grubby little hands on the film world and began to comprise the language that people used to discuss the theory of film. And it made sense given the issues and climate of the day as Vertov compared our eyes to the movie camera...but now? The projector is no longer the same as our eye, it is closer to our brain firing light pulses along pixels as information is transmitted in a different, digital way. Also, our issues are different too: climate change, economic meltdowns, instantaneous technological advancement...It only makes sense that the Neuroscience of film, of how our own synapses are reacting to these new formations of images seen before us, is an emerging field... Our internet identity/outer projection of ourselves and the everchanging science swirling around us (not only inside of our heads!) is what makes the new protagonist!

2. Technology Outside the Film instead of Inside the Film
This article over at the Creator's Project (a pretty nice resource by the way!) about the newest forms of filmmaking is really crazy when you look at it in terms of cinematic studies...nearly every innovation described here has nothing to do with the film itself! They are all extrasensory additions that exist outside of the movie screen- the 3d glasses, the smoke machine, the (literally) surround sound speakers. For awhile techonological advancement came primarily in the form of special effects (remember how excited we all once were for real effing looking dinosaurs in Jurassic Park?) but now, the techonology is acting as an external, experiential bridge between film and audience and marking a transformation that, no doubt, should lead to a larger discussion on expanded cinema/sensory overload/the movement of film off of the screen, etc.....

3. Archetypes & Environments instead of Characters & Places or Fake Can Be Just As Good As Real...maybe?
I don't really know how to phrase this one...maybe what I am thinking of is the extreme smoothness of today's actors, gliding through real and green screened worlds with ease as they represents some sort of universality...as opposed to the highly lit eyes of Elizabeth Taylor in overly elaborate sets or the Breathless/cinema verite model with no sets at all with each character's inner life the struggle they must endure...maybe that is it? Maybe all of this technology, globalization, the internets and all have made new cinema a creamy lie of sorts? Everything can be air brushed or constructed, a falseness that the audience either deciphers (like I tend to do- the first time I saw Titanic on the big screen I noticed a little green screened man running down a flight of stairs and the stairs were just a wee bit off in size from the computer rendered scale of the stairs, marking the beginning of my life long attune eye seeking out the cinematic lies...) or get lost in. I guess the increase in comic book movies, and even the increase in magical realism people are all hyped up about lately, are just another layer to the extreme unreality we now have in movies- a far, far cry from the highly realistic, personal stories that lead the 60s film dialogue... which sort of leads me to the last theme of this new cinematic age....

4. Pre/Live Editing instead of Post Editing
...another concept I can't entirely explain but...here we go: The jump cut. We all know about the jump cut. It was a highly controlled, inexplicable, blaring "look at the editing, a person made this" decision that really changed the way people viewed the craft of film. Nowadays expanded cinema (notably the live editing of Sam Green's Utopia project and the over abundance of live music/film projects of late) are kind of commonplace, as is the cell phone camera, the flip camera, and the accessibility of filmmaking in general: the editing of films is tending to happen live! This is so strange! Of course even live performances of films are occurring with a basic outline but, still, the human element involved in film editing has become a more involved thing, a DIY ethos prevailing, oftentimes in camera editing  the elaborate staging that occurs in-camera to achieve special effects done in post mixed with the seeming off the cuff but highly controlled first person camera of many a handheld masterpiece)...a thing that I find strange when thinking of how cut off from others our internet lives have become...? Even though cinema is accessible now, the choices and human made decisions are more prevalent than ever even though they are often providing the vector base for whatever weird false world directors choose to overlay on top of these decisions! The human hand is present but masked, now film community run with that one!

So maybe that's a primer on how I see our new filmspeak shaping up? Or maybe I am way, way off? Either way, I would love to hear what those out there in the film community think...?? Holler over! (Also, I have a feeling I will be editing this when I am less groggy...hehe...nighty-night dear readers! Made a few awake changes!)

How V/H/S Can Resuscitate Cinema

Every so often, maybe out of boredom or maybe out of fear, the current community of film writers/critics like to declare that the "death of cinema" is upon us. Whether it is discussed in terms of digital projection replacing film on film or pop culture Hollywood blockbusters edging out more thought provoking arthouse cinema, it seems cinephiles are always on the lookout to spark this topic/boost readership. I hate feeding this discussion, my initial reaction was to just write a post whose only text was "who cares" but, as someone who loves film, I feel the need to address the issue when so many are often eagerly ready to put the toe tag on what I consider an important part of my life....

I think the main issue that makes this line of questioning happen is the relatively newness of film culture. When critics, like Andrew O'Hehir over at Salon who might be the flint for this most recent spark, nostalgically talk about the 60s film heyday of people talking about French New Wave at parties, the flood of film theory and film journals and film professors, the intelligentsia's preoccupation with this medium as art, the medium was a new thing really! We'd been painting in caves for thousands of years, perfecting the art of painting into increasingly complex forms, but film, this new mode of expression was one whose first onset resulted in people running away from a train out of fear...and them slowly evolved into a control, a craft, an art that created the perfect condition for it to be studied and explored as a complex, flourishing form of expression. In timeline/historical sense alone it makes sense that the 60s were a time when humans began pushing the boundaries of film resulting in a very specific culture of interest....and then there was tv.

One thing that O'Hehir seems skeptical about is the crossover of movie makers to television, a thing that was a topic of discussion at a panel I attended at the last Sundance film fest where producer Christine Vachon imparted that the money available to creatives for television is causing progressive moving image makers to flee for this medium (take her own production of Gus Van Sant's HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce- a work that also moved from the classic big screen of Hollywood!). TV is definitely not film, but it is another relatively young medium that I think maybe we should embrace, especially if there is financial support, as a film culture since sharing the voices & concerns of directors is really the heart of making a films! Or is tv just not serious enough...?

...and then, as Jason Bailey writes for The Atlantic, do we think film culture is dead because it's maybe slightly less intensely serious? Why does entertainment have to be exclusive to thought provoking content? This is not to say that a heft in topics is unwanted....it still boggles my mind the lack of politically, socially, or psychologically engaging works that are being produced in such a turbulent global era....but what is it that we really want out of film talk? In the 60s I think the preoccupation with film studies was to validate something new and to give important issues of the times or subjects of interest a platform but what is it we want a current film culture to do? To say? To think? Entertainment alone doesn't cut it. And neither does an impenetrable heaviness that often results in boredom.

Personally, I think film- and all contemporary media- is meant to be a beautiful expression of how we live now. Film should incapusulate a specific idea that the filmmaker thinks is important enough to embody in the complicated medium of film and, by default, ends up being a relic of a particular time and place- both within the film and of the conditions surrounding the making of the film. I think the question we should be asking is not is film dead but why do should we want to keep it alive? Why do we keep blogging and directing and writing? Which brings me to a recent movie I saw.

After much hype and wait, I finally saw V/H/S a film that I really think is a perfect example of a new cinematic era! Set in a framework about a bunch of exploitation filmmaking nerds (a little Jack Ass -ey perhaps?) who are sent to enter a spooky house, retrieve a videotape, and end up watching a series of tapes they find there before entering their own creepy fate,  each film the characters watched was by a different director and each one had a cutting edge use of technology, an artistry, and an interesting story (however lose or vague!). Some leaned on the side of classic haunted house mixed with eerie I Spit On Your Grave-like actors in the attic, others relied on blood and guts (intestines really gross me out! as does some serious flesh ripping, some sort of alien ghost fetus c-section, throat slitting and so on), others had a psychological creepiness that played with internet trust issues (just who is that person you skype with on occasion?), and many had a white-boy chauvinism that is (unfortunately) indicative of our current days too...whatever the story may be the thing that really made me feel like this film is one for the new cinema culture was the construction.

First off, these were shorts within a feature film- shorts/increasingly short attention spans are oftentimes cited as a wound to the death of cinema...but in the case of V/H/S this problem was easily side stepped by compiling a feature film that still contained the buzz and cuts of our videogame addled brains. Then there was the distinct filmmaking itself. Found footage/POV cameras hinting at the current accessibility of the filmmaking medium, that oftentimes played with the medium itself (gorgeous use of manufactured glitch effects surpassing tons of tech art I have seen and adding a depth & texture that is most definitely of the moment..in addition to videochat POV, hidden camera POV, static-y cuts, tons of seamless computer special effects etc.). V/H/S is a layered masterpiece of a horror movie (dotted with jokes too!) and is most definitely a candidate to be studied as an object in a new era of cinematic culture.


Cinema is not dead and it is films like V/H/S that we must see, contextualize and build a new vocabulary of cinematic studies around in order to keep the discussion alive...a thing I think the blogosphere, and plenty of other resources, are doing and will continue to do no matter who declares film culture dead! Films are going to continue to exist, we get to decide how to approach them and we are in charge of what we want that voice to say and how we want to represent our culture through the lens.

Hal Philip Walker for President

Last night I made phone calls on behalf of a local state rep but, more importantly, when I was making these calls I was encouraging people to just plain vote! I think all Democrats are on edge today ever since that monkey president accidentally got elected a few elections back...I hate telling people what to do, that isn't the point of a Democracy of course and I am also not saying the current presidency has gone along as powerfully as hoped for, but Romney? Romney is a rich white heterosexual male who will continue to look out for fellow rich white heterosexual males and I have zero interest in that prospect! I know most of my readers are probably with me on this so all I can ask is that if you know anyone in a swing state who might potentially need a little shove in the right direction please call them, e-mail them, carrier pigeon them and remind them that Romney really only represents a tiny, tiny, miniscule fraction of our country and that what makes our country beautiful is our ability to choose our future, our leaders, and a global representation of our voices. So, on that note, I leave you with a few politically inspired films in hopes that you will be inspired to cast your vote to continue to live in a free, creative, and interesting America!



Abbie Hoffman on The Yippies
Nearly a decade ago I saw a film short called "Pig for Prez" in which a rag tag group of youth turned political party attempted to infiltrate the system by running a pig (yes, a pig) for President...a scandal that was only rivaled by an election following in which they ran "Nobody" for president. A mix of theater tactics & expose meant to shine a light on the absurdity and closed mindedness of the political system of their time, the Yippies (Youth International Party + hippie) was lead by Abbie Hoffman in the late 60s and staged numerous happenings on behalf of a large group of people who weren't being heard above the bombs and who were looking for a stage for their ideals in the face of a government that they did not feel all to represented by...

 

Wild In The Streets
Inspired by the Y/Hippie movement that took place during a tense political climate (Vietnam) this film is an LSD laced romp through a hazy time surrounding solid issues...a rock band runs for political office, urging the voting age to be lowered in order for teens to have a stronger voice, and what is truly scary is that the pop tactics of political advertising campaigns definitly hint at a reality behind this weird, wacky, neon film. This counter-culture exploitation film, supposedly shot in only 15 days, represents a hyperbole of fear and spirit that, even if it is insanely hilarious, might be a cautionary tale in terms of how we select our leaders.



Nashville
Another film taking on the pop sensibility of political ad campaigns, and probably one of the best films ever made, Robert Altman's political country ensemble musical traces the steps of fanaticism, talent, money and celebrity that lead to all sorts of stages- from the political to the Opry! I love this film. Asassination vs humor, pop culture vs reality, lead singer vs president: one of the most well crafted films ever made (with a hilarious comic country soundtrack, one of the fist uses of 8-track sound recording [each character had their own mic frequency i order for large ensemble cast overlap to be able to be mixed precisely], and impeccable Altman [Renoir?] tracking shots) see this film for the sake of your country



Our Nixon
I've already gushed about our Nixon here before but, just a friendly reminder to keep an eye out for it as it slowly begins to reach out to audiences!

DCTV
A film org that seeks to teach and foster documentary filmmaking across diverse communites while also supporting larger visions telling important, underheard stories, DCTV is a real embodiment of America! Self expression and opinion is a cornerstone of our values as a country- it's the first amendment for goodness sake!- and this org seeks to give voice, resources and a platform for those that tend to go unheard.

Imperfect Storm

Well...I am all for a good Halloween/horror movie but one thing I don't like? A real horrific Halloween! As you probably know the Eastcoast was ravaged by a deadly hurricane this week and, as with all disasters, piecing back together a semblance of pre-storm life is proving difficult. My family is down in New Jersey, as my mom put it they live "Where the weatherman kept drawing red squiggle lines of danger" prior to landfall. Here is a list of things you can do to help out the area which remains powerless, waterless, flooded, boardwalk-less and with an increasing worry about the diminishing gas supply- a necessity in trying to get the hell out of there! Here are also a few pictures from a recent trip to visit my family, a coast that may forever be changed by this "global warming hoax" ahem....

We all know the Red Cross exists but, what you don't know is that they- like a good vampire- need your blood! Apart from the obvious financial donations the Red Cross is fueled by, the increase in the need for blood is a real thing...find a local blood drive or donation center near you!

Do you live near New Jersey? Or do you have a desire to visit the spooky Orange Goblins that reside in this great state? Call the NJ volunteer hotline at 1-800-JERSEY-7 to aid in clean up efforts...just like a good day at the beach: there is sand EVERYWHERE!

Take in a wild sea creature! Seriously. A lot of seashore aquariums have displaced animals! Donate to their efforts or, consider the walrus!

Food not Bombs is an organization that really does make a difference, providing food to those in need and taking on the social importance of community building activities as opposed to community destroying ones! Many of the FNB headquarters were damaged by the flood so, before they can regroup to spread sustenance to those in need, they need your help to repair their own infrastructure! Donate money, or food, to your local chapter today!

Also, and this may seem like a weird one but...Etsy! What is a better thing to do than buy a handmade craft whose profit from your purchase will be donated to hurricane relief efforts? I mean seriously?! Look at this pin! Supporting the arts and supporting the well being of others: perfect together!