Bylines Essays: Title/Subject/Author
NEW ESSAYS!
891) If..../DVD Review/Dan Schneider If...., the 1968 black and white and color film by British director Lindsay Anderson, is a good and interesting film, and one that certainly has moments of candor and depth. But it’s simply not a great film. It lacks daring and innovative technical aspects, even as it does very daring things with its screenplay and the often random back and forth switching between color and black and white film, which, according to the DVD features, came about due to the technical limitations of lighting a shot in a cathedral. Anderson so liked the look that he reputedly told his cinematographer that he’d use black and white hell mell, whenever he felt the desire. The net result is that the random switching implies a meaning....
Good film.
892) The Woman In The Dunes/Book Review/Jessica Schneider What greater metaphor for the existential crisis than Kobo Abe’s novel The Woman in the Dunes? After having watched a number of films by Hiroshi Teshigahara (of which were adopted from Abe’s novels—the most recent one The Face of Another) I sought out a number of Abe’s books. I thought that the film The Face of Another was better than the book, though The Woman in the Dunes is not only an excellent film, but it happens to be an excellent novel as well. In fact, one of the best I’ve read....
Great.
893) Idiot's Guide/Workshopping/Debra Orton Like dumping a chamber pot out of a second story window in medieval times, a favorable outcome at a writer’s workshop requires sure hands, quick reflexes, and a certain talent for ignoring undesired consequences—and that’s just the reviewing part. Writers, like hapless pedestrians on the cobblestone street, appreciate second-story prudence, as well as a little warning shout before the effluence gets dumped. So, before taking up—or walking under—any potentially malodorous material, it behooves the aspiring writer-reviewer to become familiar with the proper terminology, trope, and technique in the hopes of avoiding covering one’s self (or one’s peers) in caca. Those who wish to be Masters of the Mechanics of Metaphorical Manure, read on....
The tools needed.
894) Mongol/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Oftentimes critics use words as shorthand to convey one thing when they really mean another. The term epic, as example, is often used to describe films that are merely long. This is an incorrect usage, for epic also implies bigness in other areas- the film may be on a grand subject- a war, the conquest of space, the life of a very important and influential leader in human affairs, etc. But, merely long films, like Bela Tarr’s Satantango, do not qualify. On another level, terms like epic are also wielded to imply not only hugeness of theme, but also to imply that the film or art or thing is also good, in terms of its quality....
Mediocre.
895) The Face Of Another/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Kobo Abe is a writer I came to learn of after having watched a trilogy of films by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara, all of which were adaptations of Kobo Abe’s works. The first film I watched was The Face of Another, based on Abe’s novel with the same title. And because the film is both excellent and philosophical (putting both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni stylistically in mind) I immediately sought out a number of Abe’s works....
Terrific.
751) Rescue Dawn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre’s worst banalities....
Herzog in fine form.
752) All Aunt Hagar's Children/Book Review/Dan Schneider Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a profound disappointment because, unlike bad writers like Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, newcomers like Donald Ray Pollock, or literary leeches like Thomas Steinbeck, Jones actually has (or had) writing talent. His 1991 book of short stories, Lost In The City, actually was a great piece of literature, with an astounding nine of its fourteen stories reaching greatness (utterly unheard of for published manuscripts). However, The Known World, his 2003 novel that actually won him the Pulitzer, was merely a mediocrity- very overwritten and dull....
Disgraceful.
753) The Rules Of The Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s 1939 black and white classic, The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu), routinely shows up on Top Five lists for best films ever, along with classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. But, it’s not in a league with any of that tercet. In fact, while it’s a good film, and a quite enjoyable one, it’s not even close to being a great film. There are two basic reasons why: first is that, despite some kudos given by technical experts, the film is not nearly as visually compelling nor stunning as the Welles film, and its oft-claimed camera innovations and cinematography are not anything that wows a viewer. Of course, there are some interesting moments, and some of the nature photography is first rate, but anyone expecting to see the 1930s equivalent of The Matrix....
Good, not great.
754) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’....
OK.
755) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate. This film was the first sound film released by the Danish filmmaker, and perhaps the last film in the vein of silent German Expressionism. That stated, it is a very different form of vampire film from the then contemporaneous Dracula, made by Tod Browning, for Universal Studios in America, as well the earlier explicitly Expressionistic take on the film, 1922’s Nosferatu, by F.W. Murnau....
Excellent.
756) High And Low/DVD Review/Dan Schneider While most well known for his classic Japanese period dramas, such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne Of Blood, the fact is that director Akira Kurosawa’s lasting legacy will be sustained by his towering achievements in then contemporary Japanese drama; films such as Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and 1963’s black and white crime drama High And Low. Words like masterpiece simply do not do justice to such wholly and uniquely great cinema. And it’s not the fact that Kurosawa was able to blend action, social and other genre pieces- long associated with melodrama, with high and deep pure drama, but the fact that his ability to use radical means, quickly establish characterization and suspense, and add in true ethos and philosophy is nonpareil....
Great.
757) Pather Panchali/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica film lies the world of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray’s is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm’s employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation....
Great.
758) Au Hasard Balthazar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The greatness of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, it is one of the most poorly understood films I’ve ever read the criticism of. This is because so many aspects of the film are based upon its most superficial qualities, rather than those deeper and more essential, even as the film achieves this depth in only 95 minutes. This economy occurs because the film focuses not on the superfluities of living, but only those things with resonance and meaning, the important and poetic moments that distill all else. And, oftentimes, those things with meaning are not the expected architectures of the human face, but those of other parts of the human body, like hands, backs, and human postures; all of which evoke connections and depths that would likely be unthinkable to cogitate on in films by other directors....
Titanically great.
759) Borat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider A couple of years ago, in 2006, the biggest comedy hit was a film called Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. The film grew out of a recurring character on a British television show, Da Ali G. Show, created by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I mention the man’s religion because the film attacks Anti-Semitism in a brutally funny way, even as many dull-witted critics accuse the film of that bias. If so, then Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was also Anti-Semitic, and his Monsieur Verdoux was a defense of mass murder. Cohen plays a Kazakh television reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, sent to America to make a documentary on American living for the benefit of his home nation. That’s the setup, which starts in Borat’s native village, and depicts his family and villagers as a bunch of creepy, incestuous morons who have an annual ‘Running Of The Jew’ festival....
Funny.
760) Aparajito/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The first film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali, was such a great film that, naturally, the second film in the series was bound to suffer a bit of a let down. Thus, Aparajito (The Unvanquished)- based on the novel Aparajita, by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee, is not the unadulterated great piece of art that Pather Panchali is. Like many middle films of a series, it suffers from the infamous middle filmitis; when films that are not first in a series rely too heavily upon an audience’s memories of earlier films to inform them of the traits of characters, the chronology of prior events, and a general knowledge of the world the film series is set in....
Great.
761) The Gulag Archipelago/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is a great historical first hand account of the Russian Gulags, written by someone who not only lived it but can also write well. Never turgid, the narrative does not suffer the outcome of many historical texts where readers are bogged down with dates and irrelevant detail. Rather, The Gulag Archipelago is presented in a series of vignettes, all of which discuss different elements on this topic. Because this work is so large, it is impossible to cover all of them in a single review. But I will say that for anyone ever curious about reading this, the Abridged is suitable. The book was originally written in a three-volume form, but then the author released an Abridged version as a means for satisfying those Westerners who need not learn the intimate detail (he mentions this in his Introduction) regarding the all of Russian history....
History, writ large.
762) Say It Like Obama/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Even the deepest McCain supporters cannot deny the talent that Barack Obama has for oration. His articulation, mannerisms, and wording all play a role in a delivery that has placed him beside the likes of Martin Luther King and JFK. His speeches have been quoted all around the globe, even published in their very own book. He is so good, in fact, that his opposition has seized on this and tried to turn his skill into a negative. “They’re just words,” some have said. “He’s only a celebrity,” others have claimed. But there is no denying Barack Obama’s ability to captivate an audience, and in Shel Leanne’s book, titled Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking With Purpose and Vision, readers are given insights into just how to use these techniques for themselves....
Good stuff.
763) Obama/Centrist Presidency/Dan Schneider Given Senator Barack Obama’s victory over Senator John McCain, last night, now is the time to dispel a few myths about what it all means. But first, let me toot my own horn a bit, for way back in early June I predicted here that the man would win with between 300 and 320 electoral votes; months before others came to a similar feeling. Most pundits foresaw another squeaker, ala 2000 or 2004. I did not; and it seems I was even too cautious. As of this morning, Obama holds a 349-163 electoral vote lead, with only North Carolina’s 15 and Missouri’s 11 outstanding. It looks like North Carolina will fall into Obama’s camp later today, with Missouri too close to call. McCain has a slight lead, but thousands of provisional ballots from urban areas could swing it to Obama, in a week or so. The final tally will likely be 364-174 or 375-163 Obama....
It's coming.
764) The Christmas Season/Essay/Barry Pomeroy The broad narrative terms of how we view Christmas changes slightly just before the season arrives. Christmas is generally accepted as a materialistic festival, with Santa in his Coca-Cola suit hanging, with the presents, under the tree with joy. Jesus hovers in the background hoping to be invited to the real party, instead of sitting in the cold crèche beside the highway....
That time of the year....
765) Red Clay, Blue Cadillac/Book Review/Dan Schneider Michael Malone is most well known for being the lead writer on the American soap opera One Life To Live. As someone who has watched soap operas and other serial fictions for years, I do not hold this against him. However, having read his collection of twelve stories centered on Southern belles, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac, I can say that he certainly doesn’t hide the fact of his past employment. Overall, it’s a solid book- with some bad stories and a few good ones; although nothing great. Malone, in a sense, is a very generic Southern writer. All the standbys are in his work- murder, lust, drinking, red necks, etc. And, good or bad, his tales are loaded with melodrama of the sort that soap operas purvey....
Pretty good.
766) The Wink Of The Zenith/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Few writers have lived exciting lives with Jack London-type adventures. Yet in Floyd Skloot’s latest memoir, The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life, one is given a quiet slice of Americana that is neither extraordinary nor shaped with lyrical passion, but is much more solidly written than most memoirs published on similar topics. And by “similar topics,” I mean the standard “writer’s life” written by yet another upper middle class suburbanite complaining about the woes of suburbia. Instead, I found it a relief to read about a real person with real life issues, rather than the clichéd hyperbole found from most writers (alcoholism, self-indulgence, drug use, etc.) brought on themselves....
Solid.
767) Traveling With Mom/Memoir/Rick Stiegelman I might’ve guessed what I was getting myself into. The offer of a major expenses paid trip to London, England had, after all, come courtesy of a woman whose unrelenting protest had once transformed a three-week family camping trip out west into a three-week roadside motel trip out west. The trailer that we lugged behind us went largely for show, its main function quickly relegated to blowing the cap off the car's radiator every now and then....
Boy alone?
768) Sister Carrie/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Sister Carrie is the first novel I’ve read by Theodore Dreiser. Previously, I’d read some of his short stories, which were excellent. I am pleased to say that Sister Carrie does not disappoint, though there are a few things about the book that intrigued me, as well as Dreiser himself as a writer. First, his prose is quite fresh. Sister Carrie, published in 1900, had little done in way of publicity, largely due to the controversial subject matter for the time. And although certain references evoke that period, the work, both in subject and form, is timeless. Because Dreiser is more concerned with the “working man” over someone like Henry James for example, there isn’t this aloofness present that often accompanies James’ novels. Dreiser, an American from Indiana, is more concerned with poverty and class struggles—some of the very themes present in Sister Carrie....
Great book.
769) Adoring Gay Men/Informal Social Research/Francis DiClemente This admission would no doubt generate smirks, chuckles and potential dirty looks if overheard or uttered aloud in any public place in America. In particular, I would not want to say it in the Deep South or in our nation’s Heartland. Here it is: I simply adore gay men....
Say what?
770) Casablanca/DVD Review/Dan Schneider About three years ago I finally gave in to watch It’s A Wonderful Life for the first time. I had hesitated because of the five and ten minute snippets of the film I had seen, and for its reputation as a hokey Christmas story ‘chestnut.’ Well, was I wrong, for that film is a truly great film, and arguably the best Frank Capra ever made. It also is a good example of the auteur theory of filmmaking, in that the film fits very well within the Capra canon. From the first five minutes the viewer knows that no one but Frank Capra could have directed that film. With that in mind, I decide to finally give in and watch Casablanca from start to finish. Like It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s a film, from the 1940s (1942 vs. Capra’s film’s being from 1946), that has a hold on audiences that has not abated. However, unlike It’s A Wonderful Life, Casablanca often turns up in the Top Ten of Greatest Films Of All Time lists, and this is wrong, for, while Casablanca is, overall, a good film (I’d give it a 75-80 out of a 100), it is nowhere near greatness, for reasons technical, aesthetic, and artistic. I will detail these reasons in this essay, and demonstrate that, while the film is eminently likeable, likeability and greatness are wholly different qualities that a thing possesses- be that thing a work of art, an idea, or just the execution of a plan....
Ok, but overrated.
771) The Conscience Of A Liberal/Book Review/Dan Schneider In reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book, The Conscience Of A Liberal, I wanted to be able to speak of his writing style, as much as of his opinions, politically and economically. This is because I simply get tired of books being criticized simply for their arguments and not how they are presented. In the last year or so, as example, I got two books that exemplified this approach. The first was psychologist Steven Pinker’s The Stuff Of Thought. It’s a book suffused in science, but as I detailed in this review, it also showed off Pinker’s chops as a great prose stylist, regardless of what one thought of his theories. On the other hand, I also reviewed Michael Shermer’s The Mind Of The Market, a well written book (although Shermer is not the wordsmith Pinker is) but one’s whose Libertarian beliefs so clouded his judgment as to make the book almost laughable in its assertions....
Good.
772) John Arthur Martinez/Music Review/Dan Schneider Recently, my wife and I spent a night at a local resort called the Canyon Of The Eagles, northwest of Burnet, Texas. As it was a week before Halloween, things were decked out in orange and black, and faux spider webs abounded. On out first evening there, after we returned from eating in Burnet, at about 7:45 pm, we saw that there was to be a small concert in front of the resort’s restaurant area. About 25 people were gathered about, the stars were out on a clear night, and a musical trio prepared to play. At the time, we did not even know the name of the group that was to play. It was obvious, however, that the music was to be country. Having grown up on Motown, then hard rock and heavy metal, I’ve never been partial to country nor classical....
Good stuff.
773) W./Film Review/Dan Schneider Oliver Stone’s latest film, W., a seeming semi-satire on only the first term of President George W. Bush (no Hurricane Katrina, no BS on ‘the Surge has worked,’ no economic disaster), is a hit and miss affair which, given Stone’s track record in film this decade, is possibly a slight improvement on those earlier films. Recall the deadening mediocrity of U-Turn and utter pointlessness of Any Given Sunday, or the not quite campy enough schlock of Alexander? If you don’t, consider yourself lucky. That said, W. promised a hoped for return to the great films of Stone’s earlier days: Nixon, JFK, The Doors, or at least the gleeful camp of Wall Street. Unfortunately, Stone forgot the advice that Richard Nixon gave General Eisenhower, during the 1952 campaign, after Nixon’s slush fund was found out: shit or get off the pot. The fact is that Stone simply cannot decide whether or not to make his latest film a straight history or a satire. Thus, it fails on both counts....
Yawn.
774) Flash Of Genius/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The new film, Flash Of Genius, by first time director Marc Abraham, is one of those films that is well made, well acted, well shot, and technically, there is little to argue with. But, it’s still utterly predictable; as predictable as the sports film that features an underdog you just know will win in the end. As with most films that ultimately fail, this film fails for its screenplay. No film can succeed without a good screenplay- one with good dialogue, good characterization, and a good tale. The plot, also, has to come alive, and distinguish itself. Given that this film was based on reality, this constricts, a bit....
Solid.
775) Fame/Book Review/Jessica Schneider There are some who need no last names. Paris. Lindsay. Britney. Sadly, just read those three words in context and you likely know the individuals I am speaking about. Why do we know about them, or more importantly, why do we care? Philosopher Mark Rowlands provides readers with an insightful look into what fame is, what motivates it, and how it has, in recent years, evolved. Fame is part of a series called The Art of Living put out by Acumen, and in it Rowlands argues that part of the problem is the culture’s “inability to distinguish quality from bullshit,” hence bringing about the rise of people who are merely famous for being famous....
Good.
776) McTeague/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Readers might not know a whole lot about Frank Norris due to his short life (1870-1902), but he is part of that school of modern style writers that include Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. Annoying purple prose still lingering from the days of the Victorian Era? You will not find that here. Unfortunately, Norris died at the age of 32 due to a ruptured appendix. McTeague is probably the most well known of his works (published in 1899), even though a number of additional titles were published after his death. Now after having read McTeague, I can say that his loss is a greater tragedy for literature—for who knows what additional masterpieces might have awaited him?....
Good stuff.
777) Fire/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I watched the 1996 Canadian film Fire, by Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta for the first time, after having long heard of its taboo nature, based mainly on its depiction of lesbianism. And while not a silly film, like the softcore lesbian Canadian film When Night Is Falling, nor the horrid Hollywood ‘Hook’em’ gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain, it is nowhere near a great film, either. As for the lesbianism, there is very little skin and the ‘love story’ is rather demure. That said, there is far too much radical Westernized capital F Feminist ideology that lowers the intellectual argument of this film. The most manifest being that, basically, the film follows the trite radical line that all men are scum who use, abuse, neglect, or degrade women....
Solid.
778) Good Faith, Stupidity, And The Internet 2/Dean Esmay/Dan Schneider In the first installment of this series of essays, I demolished the poor dialectic that two not too bright poets were having over things that neither had any real grasp of, and posited that, unfortunately, this sickly inability to even be able to argue correctly, was a mere symptom of a larger ill- not only of the Internet, but of the larger society; online or off. I detailed how diehard Communist poet Lyle Daggett still had no fundamental understanding of the fact that art, especially great art, needs no overt didactical tones, for that is redundant, as great art enlightens by the sheer quality of its structure and the ability to leave something memorable and potent in one’s mind. Whether or not its position (or that of its artist) is pro or con any given point is irrelevant. Any true lover of art would rather experience a piece of great art written by someone they find personally or ethically repugnant than a piece of artistic tripe composed by a person they care much of. If they do not, simply put, they are not true art lovers....
Guzzling to hell.
779) Wayfaring At Waverly In Silver Lake/Book Review/Dan Schneider James McCourt is one of those writers who seems to have gotten in print via connections, and the fact that he is a ‘gay writer’. I say this because it is the only discernible reason available given his actual writing ability. That said, I had to Google him to find out that he is a ‘gay writer’, for, thankfully, although he has many ills as a writer, a predilection for masturbation, fellatio, and 69ing, does not infect every tale in this book, as it too often does the work of gay writers like David Leavitt. Yet, he is not a good writer, but a bad one, regardless of his sexual predilection. Is he the worst writer who’s ever been published? Certainly not, and with bottom feeders like a Nikki Giovanni, Dave Eggers, and a host of other Chick Literatistas around, he’s probably not even near the Bottom 100....
Ugh.
780) Man Bites Dog/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1992 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog (C'est Arrivé Près De Chez Vous or It Happened Close To Your House) is one of those films that is not bad nor good, and not really its own ‘thing.’ By that I mean that it is manifestly influenced by films that came before it, so it is nothing original, and it also displays techniques that other films have expanded upon. Yet, since most of these techniques and themes were not originally created within this film, it cannot be said to be ‘influential in its own right, more that it was a conduit between other, often better films....
Killer.
781) La Jetee & Sans Soleil/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Over the years, I had heard of the name Chris Marker, as an avante-garde filmmaker, but having sat through many lost hours, in my early twenties, watching Warhol Factory films, and their dread knockoffs, one can understand why I was never particularly moved to engage the films of this man; especially considering that he was French, from that nation that launched the careers of such notable filmic failures as Jean Cocteau and Jean-Luc Godard. But, then I did something amazing. I actually dropped my biases, and watched and engaged the work of art before me (or, technically, the two works of art), and let it, not the opinions of others, dictate my reaction....
Innovatively great.
782) Missing/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1982 political film, Missing, by Costa-Gavras (his first American production), is soon to be released on DVD by The Criterion Collection. It’s a good film, but not a great one. This is mostly because it lacks any real poetry, the way Ingmar Bergman’s anti-war film, Shame, has. Yes, it’s well plotted, well acted, well directed, and scrupulously avoids sentimentality. But, it also avoids any real higher purpose. Yes, Costa-Gavras is perhaps the foremost political filmmaker of our time, but that does not absolve an artist for striving to dig deeper, core into something more essential, or give a perspective on a known event in a different way that allows for a newer understanding. Of course, these things are not requirements, but they are the hallmarks of greatness....
Good.
783) Lolita/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Lolita. It’s been on my to read pile for a while now. It is a novel that, with reputation and all, stands as one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. Not that I appeal to authority, but given the book’s literary presence, in no way do I think Lolita qualifies as one of 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century. It’s a good book certainly, but much of its reputation, I have to believe, is due to the controversial subject matter for its day, as well as critics cribbing from one another their overpraise for the book....
Good, not great.
784) The Spy Who Came In From The Cold/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The Criterion Collection’s latest release is the 1965 black and white spy classic, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, directed by Martin Ritt, whose best known films include the Woody Allen Blacklist film, The Front, and the Sally Field union drama Norma Rae. Like those, this is a very well directed and taut film. And, like those later films, this one also misses out on greatness. For those expecting a James Bondian sort of thriller, forget it. This film is an espionage character study, loaded with monologues, dialogues, and philosophic introspection. As such, I can say that there really is not a single genuine action sequence in the film....
Underrated classic.
785) Destroying David Orr/New York Times Poetry Hack/Dan Schneider A few days ago my wife forwarded me on this link to an essay that appeared in the February 19th, 2009 New York Times edition. It was written by mediocre poetry critic David Orr, who, five years ago, in a piece about the best websites online, delivered this snarky assessment of Cosmoetica; obviously forced to include it by his editors....
Out with the garbage.
786) The Devil In The White City/Book Review/Jessica Schneider The Devil in the White City is a book that my stepfather recommended to me, and my stepfather is someone who reads Jimmy Buffett books, so I did not have high hopes. Yet The Devil in the White City is more a disappointment than it is a bad book, because it clearly is not a bad book. It actually had the potential to be an excellent one, but falls short. In fact, I have no choice but to give it an A plus when it comes to thoroughness and meticulous detail. Ever want to know every little thing that went into the construction of the 1893 World’s Fair? If so, this is the book for you. But I also must note that it is this very quality—that is, excessive detail, that makes this book such a drag to read. Allow me to explain....
Ok.
787) Damnation/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos’s films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s....
Tarr in command.
788) The Philosopher And The Wolf/Book Review/Dan Schneider Philosopher Mark Rowlands is not what one would classically think of as a great writer, in that his prose is not supernally poetic like Loren Eiseley’s, he does not use easily understood but well-targeted metaphors like Stephen Jay Gould, nor does he have the raw power that Friedrich Nietszche did. But he manages to convey highly nuanced and deep concepts in remarkably simple sentences and constructs as he grounds each seemingly pedestrian sentence with its neighbor in ways that crescendo. Such was my conclusion in reading his latest book, The Philosopher And The Wolf, put out by Granta books....
Great book.
789) Mysterious Skin/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In watching the 2004 drama, Mysterious Skin, by filmmaker Gregg Araki, I was reminded of the old gilding the lily nostrum, in that a little bit less would have been a whole lot more, qualitatively, for this film. This is a very good film, that certainly had the potential to be great, but whose excesses knock it a notch or two below, just enough that it barely makes the argument for near greatness. On the surface, it may be said to be much like a 1970s ABC Afterschool Special of a film, admixed with a sometimes gratuitous penchant for over the top sexuality. Despite that, however, it does succeed as a teen-based drama in ways that another teen drama, like Mean Creek, did not, but also in ways that a similarly themed, and also excellent, film like L.I.E. did not....
Good stuff.
790) Blade Runner/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci fi dystopian film Blade Runner is one of those Hollywood films whose initial mixed reviews, like those for Casablanca, were actually closer to the mark than the subsequent decades of hagiography that followed. That’s not to say that Blade Runner is a bad film, only a much ballyhooed mediocrity rather than a great, or even classic film; due mostly to its poor and sluggish screenplay. Adapted from a mediocre novel, called Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick- a writer whose initial ideas for stories always outstripped his creative ability to narratively render them into good prose, the film pales in comparison to Paul Verhoeven’s later filmic Dick adaptation, 1990’s Total Recall, as well as to Scott’s prior sci fi classic, Alien....
Overrated pap.
791) The Easter Parade/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Something happens with every Richard Yates book I read. I sit down to read it, and I find myself unable to be pulled away. This first occurred when I read his 1961 gem of a novel Revolutionary Road, and now the same has occurred for his 1976 novel Easter Parade. It is known now that for a number of years, Yates’ novels went out of print. They did not sell well upon their initial publication, and Revolutionary Road even lost the National Book Award. This does not surprise me, only shows that the public rarely appreciates quality when it is in front of them, and it is only upon the passage of years when people can finally take notice of how great and talented someone was in their day....
Good stuff.
792) The Mammy/Book Review/Jessica Schneider The Mammy is the first book in the Agnes Browne Trilogy, which deals with a working class Irish family during the 1960s. The book is slim, finishing with large sized font, just under 175 pages. Agnes Browne is the Mammy the book speaks of—she’s the mother of seven who has found herself recently widowed. Forced to find a way to care for her family, the opening scene involves her going down to the Department of Social Welfare to pick up her check, yet the office has yet to receive her husband’s death certificate (he dies only hours before the book begins). Agnes wastes no time....
Solid.
793) The Financier/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Greed. Money. Power. Given our current financial times, I am surprised more are not speaking about Theodore Dreiser. The Financier is Dreiser’s 1912 novel following his most well known work, Sister Carrie. The Financier is set during the 1860s and 70s, though little dates the work as a whole, for the lead character, Frank Cowperwood, could be any corrupt CEO living on Wall Street today....
Good.
794) A Good School/Book Review/Jessica Schneider A Good School is a good, solid novel, but that is about it. While many writers would be so lucky to able to actually have a good novel worthy of publication, A Good School is a bit of a let down, when compared to other works by Yates, but it is still something worth the read....
Good.
795) Jeff Buckley/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Rare is it to have two artists, one a father and the other a son, both who have talent in the same field. Think about it: while there are many offspring who try to follow in their parent’s footsteps, what usually happens is that the child is nothing but a distant drop of what the parent was, and that is putting it kindly. Examples would be Sylvia Plath and Frieda Hughes, John and Thomas Steinbeck, Anne and Linda Sexton. Even more odd is it to have a parent artist die at the age of 28, only then to have his son die at the age of 30....
Ok.
796) First Men In The Moon/DVD Review/Dan Schneider The 1964 film version of H.G. Wells’ First Men In The Moon is a film I was never really fond of. Yes, it was directed by the estimable B film legend Nathan Juran, who brought the world such great B film classics as The Brain From Planet Arous, 20 Million Miles To Earth, and The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, but it lacked the great special effects, hamminess, and babeoliciousness of those three films. On top of all that, it lacked the really horrid technical schlockery to propel it to the ‘so bad it’s good’ category either that films like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Robot Monster occupy....
Ok.
797) Hobson's Choice/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Having grown up on the more well known films of David Lean, from his 1940s period pieces, like Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, to his famed epics, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Lawrence Of Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago, I was surprised to learn that he even made comedies. In fact, he only made two, 1945’s Blithe Spirit, based on a Noel Coward play, and the film under review, 1954’s Hobson’s Choice (Lean’s last black and white film), also based upon a play- a 1916 play of the same title by Harold Brighouse....
Good.
798) Spoor Of Desire/Book Review/Kirpal Gordon Lovers of poetry have come to William Seaton’s work in a variety of ways over the last forty years: with the Cloud House poets in San Francisco in the ‘70s; with his radio series, Poetry for the People, & his television show, Words in the Air, in the ‘80s; or with his long-running Poetry on the Loose that he produces in the mid-Hudson Valley, now in its sixteenth year. Others have found him through his translations of Greek, Latin & German poets, as ancient as Sappho & as contemporary as Dada. Others know him as an inspired teacher of the craft or as a captivating performer....
Good book.
799) Interview/William Seaton/Kirpal Gordon After receiving my review copy of Spoor of Desire: Selected Poems from Foothills Publishing up in Katona, NY, I dutifully googled you only to discover that you were presently on the road giving a reading in Nepal. Above a photograph of you reading from your new book the Kathmandu Post of 9 Feb 09 called you “a poet of music” & quoted you as saying: “Poetry is a craft. It takes care, polishing & rewriting. Many poets believe that first idea is the best idea which I don’t believe completely. My poetic moment begins with an impression rather than an idea."....
Talkin' verse.
800) Lonely Planets/Book Review/Dan Schneider Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy Of Alien Life, a 2004 book by astrobiologist David Grinspoon, is a terrific science book because it is informative, solidly written, and gives insights into not only history but its writer’s life and philosophy (natural and otherwise). It’s only flaw is that it shows some signs of being dated, even just five years on. As example, Grinspoon declares Mars is likely a dead world, for its lack of water. But, last year, water was indeed, discovered on Mars, and far more of it than thought just five years ago....
Good read.
801) Robinson Crusoe On Mars/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It was over 30 years since I last saw the 1964 sci fi film Robinson Crusoe On Mars, before I popped in The Criterion Collection’s DVD of it. I’d only seen it in black and white, and then in a truncated version that cut the brief nude scene. Anyway, what stuck with me, and struck me again on rewatch, was just how good and emotionally realistic this film was. Yes, the special effects are dated, and the reuse of the flying saucers from The War Of The Worlds (another film by this film’s director, Byron Haskin) is cheaply done, and there are some clunkier moments....
Underrated.
802) Hearts Of Darkness/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Sometimes a film can get a reputation way beyond its worth, yet still be a good film. In watching the DVD release of Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Eleanor Coppola’s documentary on the making of the war epic Apocalypse Now, by her husband Francis Ford Coppola, this struck me as true. The title of this hour and a half long film, of course, comes from the source material for Apocalypse Now, Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart Of Darkness. While there is no doubt that Apocalypse Now is a great film, the documentary about it is not. Yes, it is a useful and instructive document, but, in many ways, it reminded me of the documentary about the making of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny And Alexander, which had almost no commentary....
Ok.
803) The Samurai Trilogy/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1954-1956 three part color film, The Samurai Trilogy, is unlike many filmic trilogies for the very fact that it is, indeed, one exactly five hour long film, and not three separate linked films, for the first two films have no real endings. In this way it has much in common with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. However, whereas those three are separate films, more or less, their source work is not. Yes, J.R.R. Tolkien’s book is often printed in three separate volumes, but it is one work.....
Solid.
804) Thames/Biography/Jessica Schneider/Book Review “Water is permanent; water is destructive; everything returns to its depths.” Such is probably the simplest way to sum up Peter Ackroyd’s non-fiction title: Thames: A Biography. In his new book, readers are given the opportunity to not just imagine a river, but also the idea of one. With his richly organized chapters rife with detail, Ackroyd provides insight on all things Thames: history, geology, mythology, hydrology and how this all pertains to the larger aspects of culture....
Solid.
805) Cold Spring Harbor/Jessica Schneider/Book Review Little gets past the eyes of Richard Yates. He is a writer who can take a dismal, ordinary set of characters and make them into real, flesh and bone beings, simply by the way he describes their patterns of behavior, their mannerisms, their dialogue. Cold Spring Harbor is his last novel, published in 1986, and it carries with it all the benefits of being a Yates novel: spare yet descriptive, insightful dialogue about seemingly “simple things,” peppered with his acute observational skills for human behavior....
Good.
806) A Tragic Honesty/Book Review/Jessica Schneider To say that Richard Yates lived a troubled life would be an understatement. In fact, after learning of his life, it is easy to see just where he got all his material, and why he writes so well about alcoholics. In many ways his troubles were not only cliché (the tortured, depressed, lonely, mentally unstable, financially struggling artist that no one appreciates or understands) they were also self-induced....
Solid.
807) The Limey/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Director Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 so-called crime-action film, The Limey, is easily the best film of Soderbergh’s that I’ve ever seen. Part of this is due to the innovative narrative structure that makes all but the most of the last few minutes of this great film a flashback, and the rest is due to an excellent script by screenwriter Lem Dobbs, whose other great success came a year earlier, in Alex Proyas’s sci fi film Dark City. Both films, despite their seeming divergence, are acutely focused on human memory, and both deal with the fragility of such in novel ways....
Great.
808) Fiction/Book Review/Jessica Schneider In reading the sophomore novel by Ara 13, my reaction was (while reading it) that I’d not ever read anything quite like it before. Fiction is actually a work of metafiction, and while I have read other metafictional books in the past, Fiction is unusual in its narrative approach and style—and I mean that as a good thing. Although it is difficult to pinpoint any particular writer 13’s novel reminds me of, I would have to say the closest thing might be Nathanael West, albeit 13 tends to veer off into more philosophical elements than West does, though both writers share a certain element of humor....
Solid.
809) Evil Brain From Outer Space/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In all my years watching Gamera and Godzilla films, I thought I had seen all the possible Japanese monster movie variants, but, somehow, this little film slid by my attention. First, while this is technically a review of a DVD, the fact is that I watched this 1956 black and white film on one of those cheapo 50 pack cases from Mill Creek Entertainment, so there was absolutely nothing in terms of extra features. Yet, so what? If one were to expect features for a film that was clearly made for a 1950 television Captain Video And His Video Rangers knockoff for Japan, well, one would be silly....
What?
810) Days Of '36/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos’s 1972 film, Days Of ’36 (Μερες του ’36, or Meres Tou ‘36), is the least of the several films of his that I’ve seen. It is also, by over a decade and a half, the earliest of the films of his I’ve so far seen, and, at an hour and 45 minutes, by a good margin, the shortest as well. It clearly comes across as an ‘early’ work in the artists’ canon, because, especially when comparing it to later works, one can clearly see the artist making decisions here and being unsure of their potential success. In many ways, the film most reminds me of the first film of Werner Herzog, Signs Of Life (save the Angelopoulos film is in color, not black and white). That film was set in the Greek Islands, and was also not dependent upon a talky screenplay. There are large portions of this often wordless film that could have worked quite well in the silent era. And when the mostly anonymous characters do speak, they speak in the way that the satiric characters from the best plays of Samuel Beckett do- in riddles and whispered asides that mean little at the moment of their utterance, but which may have great meaning in retrospect....
Theo still rocks.
811) Il Generale Della Rovere/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Il Generale Della Rovere was one of Roberto Rossellini’s most successful films (winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), commercially, and there is a simple reason why. It’s not that good a film. It’s a rather formulaic film, slathered with faux patriotic sloganeering, whitewashed politics, and a rather banal cinematic approach. Rossellini was, along with the film’s star, Vittorio De Sica, one of the two big name directors of what was known as Italian Neo-Realism. But, while 1945’s Rome: Open City was also a financial success for Rossellini, he went almost fifteen years between that success and this one, in 1959. De Sica, however, had more commercial and critical success in the interim....
Good.
812) David Leavitt/Book Review/Dan Schneider If I told you that a writer was best known for a) having the first published ‘gay’ story in The New Yorker, and b) getting sued by poet Stephen Spender, the most famous poet that no one can remember a line he’s written, for allegedly plagiarizing parts of Spender’s autobiography World Within World for a novel of his called While England Sleeps, what odds would you lay on that writer being any good? If you said slim and none you would be correct. Well, the writer is David Leavitt, and the book is his Collected Stories, published in 2003 by Bloomsbury, which consists of the three prior published collections of short stories that Leavitt wrote over the last quarter century....
Ugh.
813) Henry Grimes/Poetry Review/David Francis Musician Henry Grimes came out with a volume of poetry in 2006 published by Buddy’s
Read on.
814) Dark City/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Australian filmmaker Alex Proyas’s 1998 film Dark City has been compared to many prior science fiction films, from Metropolis to Blade Runner, but, simply put, it’s better than those films. The comparison to Blade Runner, especially, is inapt, because that film is all style and little substance- a claim made of Dark City, but, in truth, the film is mostly substance, with style about the edges. Yet, the style is so memorable that viewers and critics have had a hard time realizing it is a film that is original fiction, and not based upon a comic strip, as the urban legend goes. I first saw the film in theaters, over a decade ago, and watched the theatrical version on DVD a couple of times since. But, having heard that there was a new Director’s Cut coming to DVD....
Great.
815) Satantango/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In 1994, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr released a seven hour black and white film called Satantango (Satan’s Tango in English) that presented a conundrum for both the purveyors of plot-driven, character-empty Lowest Common Denominator blockbuster action summer movies and those who favor the cerebral, pretentious, film school fawning indulgences of Eurotrash (aka World Cinema) filmmaking. The conundrum was how can time be manipulated by the artist (filmmaker) so that the viewer (percipient) is removed from its passage? No, that theme is never directly stated nor implied in the film’s frames, but it is there, and Satantango is a film that, like Chris Marker’s La Jetee, will stand as a milestone in cinema history. Like Marker’s film, Satantango is a great film, and I will detail and argue such in this essay. But, I believe that it could well be the sort of film that, decades hence, serves as the template for what remains of modern cinema culture....
Bottleneck art at its best.
816) The Dark Knight/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Yawn. A few years ago, despite repeated critical praise and entreaties from friends and colleagues, I gave up on ever wasting my precious time on earth watching another Steven Spielberg film. Time and again I was told, by others, ‘No, this time I really mean it, it’s a GREAT film,’ and time and again I would leave the theater angry or nauseous. But, now I am at the point where I feel the same way about ALL Hollywood tripe. As with the Spielberg crapfests, I was told how wonderful excrement like Brokeback Mountain and Crash were. They weren’t. Similarly, almost all the reviews of The Dark Knight were glowing; especially praising the performance of Heath Ledger (the cock-mumbling hero of Brokeback Mountain) as the Joker. And with his demise shortly before last year’s premiere of the film, the inevitable chorus of Oscar buzz for his performance rose, with him, indeed, snagging a posthumous Best Supporting Actor nomination and win....
Overrated.
817) Spider-Man 3/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There are times when I enjoy being wrong. Not that failure in any field is energizing, but when one is wrong about a presupposition, based upon an especially large body of evidence that seems to support your bias, it is a positive, especially when that bias was toward the negative. Having recently watched The Dark Knight, and seen that it is a poor followup to Batman Begins, and having seen how well made and written the first two Spider-Man films were (even if the second was not as good as the first), my expectation was that Spider-Man 3 would continue the line of declension downward toward the Hollywood Lowest Common Denominator followed by even the few promising film franchises out there, like The Chronicles Of Narnia films....
Good stuff.
818) The Maytrees/Annie Dillard/Jessica Schneider When I first heard about Annie Dillard’s latest novel The Maytrees, I was inclined to read it because the reviews had spoken of Dillard’s nature bent in her work, as well as leaning to the likes of Thoreau and Emerson. Being that I have been a long time devoted reader of nature writing and nature literature, from Thoreau and Emerson to Loren Eiseley to Barry Lopez to Jack London to even some of the mountaineering adventure writers like Jon Krakauer and Joe Simpson, I was eager to hear what all the praise had been about....
Ok.
819) American Hunger/Richard Wright/Jessica Schneider Imagine reading a great classic novel like Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and then reading “a follow up story” about Francie Nolan in later years. How can a writer expect to have a successful follow up of what already is a great work, and expect it to match that of the original? Such is the case with Richard Wright’s American Hunger, a slim, 146-page continuation of his great classic memoir, Black Boy....
Solid.
820) Uncommon Arrangements/Book Review/Jessica Schneider In the postscript of her latest non-fiction book, Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles (1910-1939) Katie Roiphe comments on the ideas of these marriages having been, “These hours lived, painful, messy, exhilarating, richly chaotic, are another kind of art.” It is the belief in this very sentiment why books like Uncommon Arrangements are written. That, amid the creativity of the artists’ work, lives the ‘art’ of the everyday, and likewise, the artists’ way of coping with it....
Solid.
821) My Kid Could Paint That/DVD Review/Dan Schneider In a real sense, the 83 minute long documentary film My Kid Could Paint That is one of the most disgusting films of all time. It disgusts because a) it so vividly displays the utter nonsense and stupidity of the modern art scamming that has gone on for the last half century or more (especially in Abstract Expressionism)- and that’s a good thing; and b) it so vividly displays the exploitation of an innocent child, Marla Olmstead, to meet the personal and psychological demands and needs of its two emotionally and intellectually challenged parents, Mark and Laura- and that’s a bad thing....
So-so.
822) Help/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Let me state, up front, that I have never been a huge The Beatles fan. I acknowledge them as a fine pop quartet, along the lines of The Dave Clark 5 or the musically much better The Zombies or The Yardbirds, but I have never swooned over them as the greatest rock band of all time- despite sales records, because, they were pop, not rock. Rock was The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Ten Years After, The Doors, Black Sabbath, or Deep Purple. But, even were one to accept them as the greatest pop group of all time, their film work has to be considered distinct....
Bad.
823) A Walk For Sunshine/DVD Review/Jessica Schneider 2,160 miles in 147 days. Could you hike such a distance? In Jeff Alt’s A Walk For Sunshine he describes his adventure hiking the Appalachian Trail from March 1, 1998 to July 25th....
Hiking fever.
824) Disturbing The Peace/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is the fifth novel from Richard Yates I’ve read, and although I still have two more to go, I am wondering if Yates is merely a “Two Hit Novel Novelist,” with his greatest homeruns being Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade. Granted, anyone will tell you that two hits is better than one, (or like many fiction writers today: none) but Yates, along with Kazuo Ishiguro and Milan Kundera, all seem to have so far achieved two great novels a piece, while the rest of the books by those writers remain near misses....
Ok.
825) Auspicious Words/Chinese Novelry/Su Zi When motivational speakers were in vogue, and employees required en masse to attend such assemblies, one such speaker pontificated this query upon a couple thousand teachers: Why are children not being taught Chinese? Despite the appalled silence that followed—reflective of more than that community, no doubt—listeners were exhorted into consideration of the influence of China upon American culture. Indeed, one cannot be an American consumer and effectively demonstrate xenophobia toward China; nor can one be a snob, because China produces goods across the economic spectrum....
On the influence they have with us.
826) Revolutionary Road/Book Review/Dan Schneider I finally got around to reading Richard Yates’ much lauded first novel, Revolutionary Road, and, despite all the hype and blurbery, it was a huge disappointment. No, it was not the sort of patent PoMo garbage that is pushed by the David Foster Wallace or Dave Eggers sort, nor is it the deliterate crap foisted upon readers by T.C. Boyle nor Joyce Carol Oates. In fact, despite stylistic differences and thematic concerns that do not mix, the writer Yates’ book most brought to my mind was the vastly overrated Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison- specifically her unfortunately overpraised novel Beloved. Like that book, Revolutionary Road could have used a good editor to weed through the structural flaws and the melodramatic characters. Perhaps the biggest connection that hit me with both books is that the main characters and story that both novels focused on were not the best characters and stories in either book....
Overrated.
827) Suite Francais/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is difficult to review a work that one not only knows is unfinished, but also one that reads that way. Such has never been a stronger case than with Irene Nemirovsky’s ‘novel’ Suite Française. The book has been marketed as a novel when really it is two unfinished novellas, and according to the appendix in the back of the book, Nemirovsky was intending to make the final book contain five parts but unfortunately she was sent to die in the Auschwitz death camp in 1942 before she was able to finish it. Her daughter, Denise Epstein, then kept the manuscript for 64 years, not really reading it and assuming the notebook was only scribblings of everyday observations. When she finally opened it, however, she found it was something of a narrative structure, albeit one that was in desperate need of revision and never got it....
Ok.
828) Werckmeister Harmonies/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Oftentimes, when bad critics run out of clever things to say about a film or director that they like, but know few others will appreciate, they will trot out the old, ‘he’s an acquired taste,’ gambit. Well, this is not true of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr. One simply appreciates a master craftsman at the top of his game, or not. It is one of the rarest things in art, to be able to ‘turn on’ someone to appreciate greatness. In fact, putting art aside, greatness is one of the things most difficult to comprehend; and this is, ironically, the very thing that Tarr’s 2000 film, Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister Harmóniák), is about. Yes, there are issues of loneliness, mob psychology, human inanity and violence, and many critics, from the bad to the mediocre to the good, have taken shots at cracking this film’s so-called meaning; yet, in the end, human difficulty in the face of greatness is what the film really is about....
Great.
829) By Brakhage/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the best things about the DVD revolution is that it allows potential viewers of marginalized cinema and television access to relatively cheap versions of the art forms they enjoy. And, unlike visual art, they do not have to spend great sums of money to own ‘originals’ of the thing because, is there really an ‘original’ version of a film? Does one really want to own the actual first full film strip that made up the final version of a film? After all, there is enough foment over films that have multiple ends and/or edits: Director’s Cuts, Final Cuts, Theatrical Cuts, Unrated Cuts, Original Cuts, etc. Yet, like other art forms, the visual arts- even cinema, has been subjected to the works of cinematic poseurs and frauds. These frauds can be intentional or not....
Debunking fraud.
830) Carson McCullers/Stories/Dan Schneider In reading The Collected Stories Of Carson McCullers I was expecting good, and possibly great, things. After all, her first published novel, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is a near great novel. However, this collection of twenty-one pieces proves that McCullers was better in the longer forms of fiction, and, at best, mediocre in the short story form. This is in keeping with the fact that few artists can excel to the point of greatness, in more than one art, or even in more than one genre in the art....
Ok.
831) Seductive Poison/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Jonestown. Most of us who were alive during that time, remember something. I was only two and a half in November of 1978, though that did not stop me from having nightmares involving “the scary dark haired man in sunglasses.” Deborah Layton’s book, published over a decade ago, gives a first hand account of what The Peoples Temple, Jim Jones and the nightmarish Jonestown were like, followed with her means for escape, and her eventual reporting of Jones....
So-so.
832) Death Becomes Them/Book Review/Jessica Schneider If you were a filmmaker, and had the opportunity to make a film about a supposed great artist or “legend,” would you focus on that person’s last dying moments, when he or she is in a drugged out daze, or rather on what made that person noteworthy to begin with? I choose the latter, but after reading Death Becomes Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious by Alix Strauss, the book references a film made by Gus Van Sant, chronicling the “Last Days” of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain (actually, the character has a different name but anyone can see this is based on Cobain). In the trailer, the Cobain character wanders around, doped up, slurring and drooling in a dress, falling over in his depressed stupor. Ironically, the film is titled “Last Days” for this very reason....
Ugh.
833) The Orgiast/William Matthews/Dan Schneider I am going to open this essay by doing something remarkable, and that is admitting to the relationship I had with this essay’s subject. I do so because one of the worst things that occurs in literary criticism is the pretense of objectivity. This is especially so since easily over 95% of published pieces of criticism on literature, and especially the recessive demesne of poetry criticism, are merely acts of cronyism, intellectual incest, or blatant whoring of talentless individuals by ex-teachers, ex-lovers, and often a combination of ex-teachers who were ex-lovers. Such is the state of Academia today, and I will, later in this essay, detail the worst of this sort of criticism....
Yuck!
834) Climates/DVD Review/Dan Schneider 2006’s Climates (Iklimler, literally Weather Conditions) is the third film of Turkish director and screenwriter Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s that I’ve seen, and it is the first one in which he has starred in as an actor. Each of the films has gotten better than its predecessor, and, since his previous film, Distant, touched greatness, Climates had its work cut out for it; but it succeeded. That stated, many critics who compare the film’s style and characterizations to those of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, at his height, are only seeing superficial resemblances....
Great.
835) Texas Parks/Book Review/ Jessica Schneider Official Guide To Texas State Parks And Historic Sites is a must have for anyone with an interest in the history of Texas geography. The book is an excellent source to not only what the State Parks are, their location, as well as what they offer, but Official Guide To Texas State Parks And Historic Sites also provides readers with the brief history behind each park....
Ok.
836) Texas Hill Country/Book Review/Dan Schneider Texas Hill Country is a pleasant looking coffee-table book put out by the University of Texas Press that revisits the beauty and essence of the Texas Hill Country via way of John Graves’ essay within, as well as the numerous photographs by Wyman Meinzer. Both the essay and photos run nicely along side one another, but the book is what it is essentially for the photos....
Good.
837) The Cyclist/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 1987 film The Cyclist (Bicycleran) is one of those odd little films (a mere 78 minutes in length) that, technically, is not that impressive, but whose narrative makes it worth watching. Makhmalbaf wrote and directed the film, and also may have edited it. Its technical merits are few, save for the spare screenplay....
Good.
838) Crown Of The Continent/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There are a variety of ways one can approach a nature documentary. There are those that serve to be more informative and functionary in their relaying of information, as they document the differences and similarities among our planet in a learned and insightful way, and then there are the more artful documentaries that serve to transport one to a specific place to witness a time that everyday eyes would not otherwise earn the chance to witness....
Great doc.
839) A Drinking Life/Book Review/Jessica Schneider There is a funny story that accompanies the review of this book. As I recently went to get a pedicure, the man (yes man) who was rubbing my feet asked me, “Do you like to drink?” I paused from my book and thought how the night before I had had a glass of red wine. Was it obvious? Then the man pointed to the book I was reading: A Drinking Life, by Pete Hamill. “Oh,” I said, feeling relief. “No, this is not that kind of book,” I said. “I mean, it’s about the author growing up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and World War II, and like, how he started drinking, sort of…” I prattled. Then I finally added the point about it not being a self-help book....
Good stuff.
840) Texas Stories/Nelson Algren/Dan Schneider Reading The Texas Stories Of Nelson Algren, a 1995 book from The University Of Texas Press, and edited and introduced by Bettina Drew, was an odd experience because a) the quality of the tales was very hit and miss and b) the book was not really a book, at all, just a collection of random stories that Algren wrote over the course of several decades, and gathered together by Drew and other editors from the University, long after his death, fourteen years prior, to try and capitalize on his name; and a good portion of the eleven tales within are not truly short stories; merely chapters taken from a first novel called Somebody In Boots; and it shows....
Good.
841) The Whore's Child/Book Review/Dan Schneider Perhaps the best way to judge a short story writer is to look at how he ends his tales. If the stories end on a high note, or end well, and leave the reader wanting more, then there’s a good chance the whole tale was pretty good. This serves as a good shorthand way for telling if a book of short fiction you are browsing through is worth buying. Just go to the end of the stories and if most are well written, buy the book. With that in mind, I state to you, if you come across Richard Russo’s The Whore’s Child And Other Stories in a mark down bin, please, just burn the book....
Horrible.
842) Wildman Blues/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Barbara Kopple’s 1998 documentary on filmmaker Woody Allen’s 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band (reputedly eighteen concerts, and seven countries, in twenty-three days), Wild Man Blues, is one of the most pointless, dull, and utterly inert documentaries I’ve ever seen. I’ve long been a fan of Allen’s films, and even his worst films (see The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion) are a cut or three above their typical Hollywood counterparts....
Yawn.
843) GFSI 3/Idiocy/Dan Schneider As I begin this third exploration of Internet stupidity, in a continuing series, I reflect on some of the emails I’ve gotten in the many months since I posted the first two; one on the failure of dialectic online and the other on sociopathy online. The first piece saw me dissect general online failings, while the second piece had me revisit right wing blogger Dean Esmay, whose idiocy I have tackled, like that of Wikipedia, several times before in essays. Why? Well, I do it for a simple reason, and one that will manifest itself as this essay unfolds. The Internet is in many ways, an ephemeral place. There are websites that simply fold up and go away, as well as those which alter information posted on them, and sometimes websites that do both; as I will demonstrate. Thus, I do these essays for future generations of online readers, on the Internet, or whatever medium eventually subsumes and displaces it. This is because too many online denizens try to hide their identities and mask the real vulgarity and baseness of their opinions....
Detailing the drudgery
844) It Came From Beneath The Sea/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I looked through one of my DVD sets, The Fantastic Films Of Ray Harryhausen, Legendary Science Fiction Series, put out by Columbia Pictures, and plucked an old fave of mine to rewatch. The film was the 78 minute long black and white classic from 1955, called It Came From Beneath The Sea. While not one of the more hyped Harryhausen classics, it still is a good sci fi film, and a cut above the usual drive-in fare of that era. Plus, drum roll, it’s a film whose female star is Faith Domergue- goddess of Cold War sci fi flicks (This Island Earth, Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet)....
Good fun.
845) Three Monkeys/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the current Big Three film giants of Europe, in that he is a throwback to the days of visionary directors like Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Andrei Tarkovskiy. Along with Greece’s Theo Angelopoulos and Hungary’s Bela Tarr, Ceylan has grown into a rarefied stratosphere....
Disappointing.
846)
The Man From London/DVD Review/Dan
Schneider Style over
substance.
Strike.
847) Big Bend/Homesteader's Story/Jessica Schneider Following a recent visit to Big Bend National Park, I located a number of books in the Visitor’s Center on Big Bend, one of which was Big Bend: A Homesteader's Story (University of Texas Press) by J.O. Langford and Fred Gipson. The book offers a historical perspective about the park, detailing the lives of J.O. Langford and his family in 1909 as they search for a new home near the Rio Grande....
Solid.
848) Raven/Jim Jones/Jessica Schneider This is one of those books where you know the ending to the story: Pastor Jim Jones transports 1,200 of his Peoples Temple followers into the jungles of Guyana, only to then force them to drink grape flavor-aid laced with potassium cyanide. The rest becomes history: Congressman Leo Ryan becomes the only Congress member to die on the job, a number of NBC reporters are shot down in Port Kaituma, and back at Jonestown, over 900 of Jones’ followers drink the poisoned flavor-aid, while Jones himself is shot. The names Jim Jones and Jonestown have since become synonymous with brainwashing and cult following, for the Jonestown Massacre is the largest mass-suicide of Americans to date. Not to mention the event has since become an incredible embarrassment to the Guyanese government....
Cruel.
849) Whatever Works/DVD Review/Dan Schneider I have often said that great art is hermetic, meaning that it is often at such a level of conception and execution that most people simply cannot even comprehend how the great art was conceived and wrought. But, lesser art that still has moments of greatness, opens up the art to be accessed and then studied and possibly replicated. Such was rarely as obviously displayed as in Woody Allen’s latest film, the comedy Whatever Works. I have seen every Woody Allen film, save the film just prior to this, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and- unless that film defies all expectations set by Allen’s post-Golden Age films (1993-present; the Golden Age was 1977-1992)- I can confidently say that the film world will never see another Woody Allen masterpiece....
Solid Woody.
850) The Story Of Big Bend/Book Review/Jessica Schneider A recent visit to Big Bend National Park prompted my interest in this book, which can be found in any souvenir shop within range of the park. Published by University of Texas Press, John Jameson’s book offers a detailed and comprehensive look into the history behind the park, as well as much of the minutiae that went into its establishment. “Minutiae” is not to imply these details are unimportant or should go overlooked, but rather, the book offers glimpses into the drone like mentality that many citizens had before Big Bend became a National Park....
Good.
851) Days Of Heaven/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Days Of Heaven is a 1978 film by director Terrence Malick that, in a way, typifies his small oeuvre (which also includes Badlands, The Thin Red Line, and The New World) even as it stands alone and apart (and many critics would add above) from the others. There is no doubt that the film is great. Period. The only real question is just how great a film is it? Merely great, or one of those works for the pantheon? Is it a work of the cinematic art form that transcends that art form and becomes one of the great works of art, period? Is it one of those works that becomes one of the great achievements of the species? I say yes to both of the last two questions, even though I will state that it is not Malick’s greatest film; The Thin Red Line is....
Great.
852) Art, Life And UFOs/Book Review/Dan Schneider I recently received a copy of painter and UFOlogist Budd Hopkins’ memoir Art, Life And UFOs to review. I was of a mixed opinion as to whether to review it. The reason is a possible conflict of interest. More than 20 years ago I wrote a lengthy letter, replete with illustrations, of some of the more mystic/supernatural/paranormal/weird events that had taken place in my life until that point because many of my experiences were reminiscent of those described in Hopkins’ two best-selling 1980s books. Missing Time and Intruders -- both of which helped popularize the whole claimed UFO abduction phenomenon which, along with the Satanic Cult craze, swept the country at the time....
Mediocre memoir.
853) Fires On The Plain/DVD Review/Dan Schneider For the Japanese film fan used to the complex films of Akira Kurosawa, the family depths of Yasujiro Ozu, or the mystical wonders of Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa’s 104 minute long, 1959 black and white war film Fires On The Plain (Nobi) is as jarring as its indelible opening scene, in which a tubercular Japanese soldier gets slapped in the face, then mercilessly berated, by his commanding officer for stupidity. The film is thoroughly modern, from its opening scene, followed by credits, to its harrowing denouement, and might as well have been titled Declension, for none of the film’s main characters makes it to the end alive....
Good film.
854) Bergman Island/DVD Review/Dan Schneider An odd thing occurred to me while watching The Criterion Collection’s new release, Bergman Island. It was a feeling that this documentary was really a DVD extra rather than a feature. Then, lo and behold, whilst researching the disk online I found out that I was correct- that this film was indeed an Extra Feature on the company’s latest re-release of another Bergman film, The Seventh Seal. And that includes its own extra feature- a half hour video essay on Bergman’s filmic canon by film historian Peter Cowie. Having said that, Bergman Island is not a bad documentary....
So-so.
855) The Sweet Hereafter/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Some films are well crafted but lifeless. Others err by believing they can too readily make an audience care for a character just by having a traumatic situation beset him early on. The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 film by Canadian director and screenwriter Atom Egoyan, suffers from both maladies. It’s not a bad film, but it certainly is not a great film, much less ‘the best film of the year,’ as its DVD cover proclaims Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan claimed, for it suffers from some other minor flaws, as well; primarily an anomic screenplay by Egoyan, who adapted the novel of the same name by Russell Banks....
Solid.
856) The Ebert Episode/Commentary/Dan Schneider Earlier this month, Cosmoetica and I got a big boost when famed film critic Roger Ebert praised my abilities as a writer and a critic after a former cyberstalker of mine-cum-fan emailed him a query to settle a bet he had over whether or not I was a good critic of Ebert’s own work. The former stalker, one Peter Svensland (although known to me by that and several other aliases over the years), emailed Ebert a long query. A month or so earlier, before Ebert’s blog post- http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/12/who_do_you_read.html- this character had emailed me that he was going to do so. I was dubious....
Good plug.
857) The World Of Apu/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Like many trilogies, Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy follows a familiar pattern: a first film that is an undeniably great achievement, a second film that is the worst (albeit in this case, still a good film), and a final film that is (almost?) as great as the original, and a big improvement over the second entry, Aparajito. 1959’s black and white, 105 minute long Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) is a great film, and unlike the second film in the trilogy, Aparajito, it stands totally on its own....
Great ending.
858) J.F. Powers/Book Review/Dan Schneider Every so often there is an artist that has a great reputation, yet a small cult following, that turns out to truly be a great artist. Then, there are all the other times that one recognizes that the repute for greatness is merely the mistaken dementia of the cultic ideologues. Think of Henry Darger, in the most extreme. No, The Stories Of J.F. Powers does not reveal that much of a schism between the reality and the beliefs of the deluded, but when the book comes with such blurbs as this....
Not good.
859) Gayl Jones/Book Review/Alex Sheremet In brief, The Healing is not a book of many faults. Rather, it’s a book of a few monstrous faults repeated ad nauseum on almost every page. I haven’t read Jones’s other novels such as the lauded Corregidora and Eva’s Man, so, to be fair, I won’t comment on her talent as a whole, but stick to the clichés, ill-wrought dialogue, bloated, pointless description, and intellectual dearth specific to the novel at hand....
Bad.
860) The Human Condition/DVD Review/Dan Schneider One of the most overused terms in art is the word epic. Perhaps only the term surreal (and its variants) has been more abused. Generally, the term epic should only be applied to works of art that are large, in some manner, and have a wide field of inquiry. Simply being long does not qualify. Think of some of the first works to be granted the appellation: the Greek poems of Homer and Virgil. They were, despite their vast overrating as works of art, truly epic. Hence they were called epopee. A long novel like Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is epic, both for its length and plunge into human existence. A far longer work like Marcel Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past, however, is not epic, for despite its length, it really only skims the surface of cosmic depths. An even more obvious example is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. Yes, it is about the American Civil War, in a broad sense, but its soap operatic melodrama and characterizations prevents it from even going as deeply as Proust’s work....
Near great.
861) Cassandra's Dream/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Most published critics are idiots. Yet again this verity was reinforced to me whilst popping in and watching one of the latest films by Woody Allen to hit DVD. Cassandra’s Dream was almost wholly ignored in this country, lasting only a couple of weeks in the theaters. Yet, it is one of the two best films that Allen has made this decade, along with his other, earlier British murder drama, Match Point. While that film was lauded by critics as a return to top form by Allen, this film has been derided as a mere copycat of that film, which was, in many ways, a reworking of the serious half of Allen’s monumental 1989 film Crimes And Misdemeanors. Both claims are, essentially, true, but Cassandra’s Dream takes elements from both Match Point and Crimes And Misdemeanors and reworks them in novel ways. While it is not an indisputably great film like the first film in this ‘murder trilogy,’ it is, in a different way, a film that hits near greatness, like Match Point....
Better than credited for.
862) Brazil/DVD Review/Dan Schneider When I set out to review The Criterion Collection’s 3 disk version of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil, I decided to watch the bowdlerized 94 minute studio cut of the film- the Love Conquers All version- first; then watch the longer 142 minute Director’s Cut by Gilliam. I did so that I would have a base to evaluate the ‘additions’ to the film, rather than watch the pair of films in reverse, then have to evaluate the impact of the losses. And I’m glad I did because, while the bowdlerized version was good (in fact, much better than Gilliam or its detractors claim), the Final Cut by Gilliam is definitively superior....
Great.
863) Ribbon Of Sand/DVD Review/Jessica Schneider Look no further to find the story of the earth than in John Grabowska’s twenty-five minute documentary Ribbon Sand, which is about Cape Lookout—one of the few natural barrier islands still remaining on earth. Located off the shores of North Carolina, the sixty miles of terrain consists of sand uninhabited by humans, but lush with life. Following his earlier work, Crown of the Continent, Grabowska once again teams up with photographer Steve Ruth and composer Todd Boekelheide to deliver another poetic experience and offer up the earth’s ecosystem as examples of our planet’s larger canvas....
Good.
864) High Noon/DVD Review/Dan Schneider High Noon is not a great film, although one could argue it’s a great Western, therefore great in some aspects. It is a good example of what might be called Stylized Realism, of the sort that, over a decade later, would lead to the rise of the Spaghetti Western subgenre. Directed by Fred Zinneman, then most notable as a director of artsy films, High Noon resurrected the career of an aging Gary Cooper (who won a Best Actor Oscar as a small town marshal, the second of his career; the first being for Sergeant York), introduced the world to Grace Kelly- in a dowdy role as a Quaker (therefore making her lack of emoting less about her inexperience and more about her character), and also featured notable roles by aging and rising stars (Harry Morgan- who played Col. Potter on the tv version of M*A*S*H, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Lee Van Cleef- future Spaghetti Western superstar, among many others)....
Good stuff.
865) Cruising Paradise/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Few writers only ever stick within the genre they excel. Many, in other words, will test out another form, either for practice or just to try on. But even fewer are those writers who excel in more than one form equally. Eugene O’Neill offers far more music and poetry within the lines of his plays than in his actual poetry itself. The same can be said for Tennessee Williams....
Mediocre.
866) Up Shit Creek/Book Review/Jessica Schneider With a title like that, how can anyone pass over this book, authored by river guide Joe Lindsay? I spotted this little gem while shopping in Gruene, Texas, and despite being a slim volume, Up Shit Creek is an equally humorous and disgusting collection of toilet troubles. Just to give a bit of background, the book details some of the messes that have occurred when dealing with “groovers,” while on backpack adventures. A groover is nothing more than a portable toilet—there are different types, and the book offers illustrations of each kind. As for why it is called a groover—the name specifically refers to the lines, or “grooves” one gets after sitting/shitting upon the seat (though now many come with toilet seats, so that is comforting to know)....
Solid.
867) Silence/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is my first experience reading Shusaku Endo, and given his lofty reputation and the fact that he is non-American and thus has not had his mind chiseled by cookie-cutter MFA programs, I was expecting much. Unfortunately, Silence didn’t deliver like I had hoped. Many compare Endo with the British writer Graham Greene, notably because of their similar subject matter involving religious themes and the conversion of cultures to Christian religion. But really the two writers aren’t anything alike. At all. Similar subject matter in and of itself does not equal two artists in quality or even in kind. Because if it were, then one could lump Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey with any lesser sci-fi genre film simply because they have astronauts in them....
Mediocre.
868) Unit 731 Testimony/Book Review/Jessica Schneider One has to wonder why so many are unaware of what went on in Unit 731, much less what, exactly, it was. The reason for this, as explained in Hal Gold’s Unit 731 Testimony, is due to the extensive covering up by the Japanese government, for unlike the stupid Nazis who filmed most of their crimes, the Imperial Japanese Army was much better at hiding it. Another reason many do not know could be due to the pardoning of punishment by the U.S. government in exchange for Japanese medical information. Unit 731 was nothing more than a medical unit run by the Imperial Japanese Army designed to perform the most horrific experiments on people, including the Chinese, Korean, Russian, British and American....
Horrors.
869) One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Just reading about the Soviet Gulags will make anyone feel relieved not to have lived in Russia during the early to mid part of the Twentieth Century, where individuals would be imprisoned, punished, and then penalized with an extra ten years for doing hardly anything at all. Alexander Solzhenitsyn discusses in detail the Soviet Gulag system, the politics behind it, as well as the philosophical complexities involved when one loses freedom in his great and masterful work for which he is most well known: The Gulag Archipelago. A thick and thorough work, I recommend it highly. Yet One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a bit different—in some sense, it is a light work in comparison to The Gulag Archipelago, if such a thing is possible....
Solid.
870) Remembered Earth/DVD Review/Jessica Schneider It is here on this cold December day just a little less than three weeks shy of Christmas that I felt the warmth of New Mexico’s High Desert in my living room, after having watched John Grabowska’s documentary film, Remembered Earth: New Mexico’s High Desert. This half hour feature will allow one to witness the American West against time and timelessness and marvel at the beauty one sees, but also to feel a part of it in knowing that having lived it, one ultimately becomes it....
Good.
871) Ran/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Critical cribbing is a term I coined re: the tendency of critics, in all fields, to not engage a work of art directly, but rather fall back on lazily repeating claims about the thing they are reviewing, that have been made by others. Sometimes these are positive blurbs, and other times these are bits of misinformation repeated endlessly- such as the claim of character name in films like Last Year In Marienbad or Blowup. A typical example of critical cribbing comes in reviews of Akira Kurosawa’s 27th (of 30) films, 1985’s Ran. The 160 minute long, color film is certainly a very good one, possibly rising to near greatness. Its major flaws are that its characters are never fully developed, and it is laced with some mediocre acting of the sort not found in earlier great films (see, most notably, the actors in all three sons’ roles). That said, arguments can and have been made for its greatness, and I will address those later on....
Good.
872) Growth Of The Soil/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is not uncommon for a writer to become more known for his reputation than actual work. Not that the work isn’t of quality, just that it is easier for the public to cling to one’s outrageous political beliefs or one’s tragic life than for the very work that writer should be known. Sylvia Plath is a perfect example, since many non-readers of poetry are aware of her having suicided herself in the oven, yet are unfamiliar with her great poetry—the very thing for which she is deservedly famous....
Solid.
873) The War Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider For anyone who thinks that those 50 pack mega DVD sets of public domain films put out by several different video companies are worthless, I would argue 1) the amount of films you get for the money is worth it, even if all were mediocre, but 2) the truth is that each DVD package will come with at least 8-10 enjoyable films, a few true classics, like Carnival Of Souls or Night Of The Living Dead, and every so often a great little film will pop up, along the way, that makes the package a total steal....
Great doc.
874) Best Sitcoms/Television/Dan Schneider Recently, I got to thinking about television sitcoms. This was mostly prompted by my decision to buy a bootleg version of the complete The Odd Couple tv series from an Oriental company for a third the price I would have had to pay if I had bought the ‘official’ Universal DVD releases for all five seasons and 114 episodes. I did so due to the infamous butchering of the episodes by Paramount Studios; which consisted of them snipping out moments when the cast members sing songs that the studio did not want to buy the rights to. Apparently the rights are only for broadcast, not private commercial (home video) consumption. But, if the company does not even care about the artistic integrity of its show, why should any fan pay them for the product? Thus, I got a more complete version of the 114 episodes....
Tracking the genre over the decades.
875) The Sea And Poison/Book Review/Jessica Schneider I open this review on a pleasant note, in that, after having recently read one of Endo’s well known and acclaimed works that proved to be quite mediocre, I am happy to say that The Sea and Poison is an excellent book. After having previously read Silence, and losing count of the number of clichés throughout the text, I was reluctant to believe this poor wording could be due to Endo, rather than the work of the mediocre translator, William Johnston. The Sea and Poison is translated by Michael Gallagher, and Gallagher reveals Endo’s prose to be something fresh and void of clichés throughout. This says that Gallagher’s translation likely bears a closer resemblance to how Endo’s prose is in his native language....
Good stuff.
876) Vicky Cristina Barcelona/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Woody Allen’s 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a film with a moral: people do not change. No, let me rephrase that: people cannot change. Films of great depth have been made with premises as simple as that. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is not a film of great depth. Great style? Yes. But not depth. Not that it’s a bad film, but especially compared to some of the masterworks on the human condition that Allen crafted in his 1977-1992 Golden Age (Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Another Woman, Crimes And Misdemeanors, to name a few) this film simply is out of its depths....
Solid.
877) Shakespeare Behind Bars/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There are documentaries that gain their stature not in their innovatory nor revelatory power, but simply in the fact that they tell important things in a straightforward manner. Such is the case with the 2006 BBC documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, written and directed by Hank Rogerson, and produced by Jilann Spitzmiller, a married documentary team. Unlike such documentaries like Scared Straight, this one does not so obviously buy into its subjects’ mission. One of the major flaws of Scared Straight, as much of a landmark documentary as it was, was that the film overstated the case for the program which showed lifers at Rahway State Prison....
Good.
878) Pioneers In Ingolstadt/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Prior to watching German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 87 minute long 1970 film, Pioneers In Ingolstadt, I’d only been subjected to one of his films, the execrable Whity. Ok, at least Whity had some outrageous unintended perverse sexual humor going for it. Pioneers In Ingolstadt lacks even that. In fact, it’s really not so much a film as a series of extended blackout sketches. Given the period it was made, and given that many of the scenes take place in a Munich public park, at a bench, at night, in ridiculously poorly lit (or overlit) scenes, that cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann should have been shot for committing to celluloid, my mind immediately flashed back to the ABC television sitcom....
Ugh!
879) Kindred/Book Review/Alex Sheremet Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading a bunch of young adult literature. No, it’s not really art, but in most cases, that’s acceptable, as it has no pretense to anything higher than functional and didactic storytelling for kids. The plots are simple, the symbolism obvious, the moralizing heavy-handed, and the purpose, clear. Students learn something (although it has little to do with English) and, in the hands of a creative instructor, can be forced to think about it in radical ways, beyond the scope of the typically insipid ‘lessons’ such books offer. All of this makes me wonder about the intrinsic value of books like Kindred, which is essentially a kid’s book disguised as a serious work of art. In brief, it’s not a good novel, but it at least ensures good criticism, for it attempts many things and does them badly -- a hallmark, I suspect, of teen books in general....
Take a pass.
880) The Easter Parade/Book Review/Dan Schneider The critical consensus among the so-called literati is that Richard Yates’ best novel, by far, was his first book, Revolutionary Road; but this is pure bunkum, and an example of the worst sort of critical cribbing, wherein a meme about the quality of a work of art takes hold and then, despite obvious debunkings of it, remains entrenched. The result is that subsequent critics fail to form their own opinions, instead relying on information that is demonstrably wrong, but which will get them acceptance as a critic in the eyes of others. A decade and a half after that book’s debut, in 1976, Yates wrote a significantly better book, The Easter Parade. No, that novel is not a masterpiece either- and has significant flaws, but it does represent a major improvement in terms of wordsmithing, maturity, and consistency in narrative, over the earlier book....
Ok.
881) Deep River/Book Review/Jessica Schneider This is now the third book by Shusaku Endo I’ve read. Of my selections, one was mediocre (likely due to poor translation) and one was excellent (The Sea and Poison). Yet Deep River ranks somewhat in the middle—that is, falling closer the very good mark, and maybe only a notch below The Sea and Poison. Why his novel The Silence is regarded as his “masterpiece” I haven’t a clue, but again, now after reading Deep River, I am even more convinced the version of The Silence I read had a terrible translator. Deep River, translated by Van C. Gessel, is written in a spare, quiet and poetic style of writing that, while not intensely lyrical, contains poetic moments that are notable once the reader pulls back to view the larger canvas....
Solid.
882) Middle Passage/Book Review/Alex Sheremet Although Middle Passage is one of the greatest novels ever written, it really wasn’t supposed to be, as Charles Johnson has the perfect set-up for dull PC bathos. The plot, the characters, and many of its ideas all imply cliché and utter failure in imitation of other failures. Just consider the synopsis and you’ll see what I mean. Rutherford Calhoun, a black New Orleans rascal and ex-slave, spends his days gambling, drinking, and accumulating debt. To avoid trouble and cut ties with his fat, religious, and pristine girlfriend, Isadora, he becomes a stowaway on what turns out to be a slave ship, the Republic....
Great read.
883) Enchanted Rock/Book Review/Jessica Schneider Most natives to Central Texas have at one time visited Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. The park offers a great place to climb, hike, camp, and plenty of scenery to soak in. Located just past Llano and on one’s way to Fredericksburg, Enchanted Rock is not only a must stop, but it is also a place larded in geographical and historical significance....
Good.
884) A Plague Upon Humanity/Book Review/Jessica Schneider My husband Dan has a fantastic imagination. He always likes to tell stories, especially those involving his days growing up in New York City. One of the people he’s told me about is a Chinese woman he calls “Grandma Chin.” He’s even written a poem about her, and one of the main points he relayed was that Grandma Chin always used to speak of how much she hated the Japanese. It seemed that even to her grandson and his friend, that youth was no boundary when it came to telling how much she despised “the damn Japs,” as she called them....
Yucky.
885) Nocturnes/Book Review/Jessica Schneider It is always depressing to see a great writer coast on his fame, whether it be from lack of trying, or just having lost it. Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of two great novels: The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World. Some of his earlier and later works show some potential, and contain some great moments in them, but he has not quite captured the consistent greatness of those two works in any of his other books. And that goes for this collection of stories....
Solid.
886) Beneath The Wheel/Book Review/Jessica Schneider To this day I have yet to read a bad novel by Hermann Hesse. His works range from if not great, then to merely excellent, very good to good-solid. Beneath the Wheel falls into the good-solid category, for while the book is blessed with Hesse’s impeccable prose style, Beneath the Wheel is comparatively a minor work. Part of the reason for this is due to one of his later and greater works....
Good.
887) Why Evolution Is True/Book Review/Dan Schneider A parable, I think….I have a friend. A good friend. I love him like a brother; but sometimes I just do not understand what motivates him- at least I cannot connect with it on an emotional level. Intellectually, I get it. That’s because it bears out his weakness re: needing to have his intellectual ego stroked. Like me, he is not religious, and does not believe in God (the Christian God nor any others). But, while I am content to let others flail about and try to prove to me that there is such a thing as an all powerful deity, my friend is not so secure in his reality. Every time I talk with him on the phone, and ask him what he’s reading, inevitably he will tell me about some new book he’s reading that debunks the notion that Jesus Christ existed or was a divine entity....
Yawn.
888) El Cid/DVD Review/Dan Schneider El Cid is one of those Hollywood-European mega co-productions of the 1950s and 1960s that were crafted to combat the growing influence of television. The film industry wanted sheer size and spectacle to be able to battle the threat it sensed from the little screen. Westerns, Sword and Sandal epics, and historical films of all stripes were in vogue. Most were overblown fare like Cleopatra, while very few were intelligent films, like Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, or Anthony Mann’s El Cid. Mann, in fact, was the original director of Spartacus, whom star and producer Kirk Douglas replaced with Kubrick. He was also an accomplished director of standards in the Western genre....
Good fluff.
889) The Suspended Step Of The Stork/DVD Review/Dan Schneider Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos is so great an artist that he can achieve a high level in his art through many assorted means. Having just watched his great 1991 film, The Suspended Step Of The Stork (To Μετέωρο βήμα του πελαργού), I am still amazed. He has hit greatness in other films, but this film reaches it by taking ordinary life moments, slightly displacing them from the norm, then stepping back to take in how it all unfolds to build narrative and character in a film almost entirely devoid of facial close-ups. It’s a remarkable achievement, on par with the use of still images in Chris Marker’s La Jetee, and the use of ultra-extended takes....
Great.
890) The Burmese Harp/DVD Review/Dan Schneider There are many paths to greatness, for a film, and Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 black and white The Burmese Harp (aka Harp Of Burma, and Biruma No Tategoto), which runs just under two hours long, chooses the simplest path. It is not a film that is a dazzling cinematic experience, nor is it suffused with symbolism (although great shots and symbolism can be found within); it is a film that takes a great and unique story idea and eloquently lets it play out. It also makes an interesting choice in its mix of oddly unreal situations (the breaking out into song by assorted armies in the midst of war) and scorchingly real images of death. The screenplay, by Ichikawa’s wife Natto Wada, wisely remakes the children’s novel, by Takeyama Michio, as a more realistic take on the lead characters of the novel....
Cool.
