News Rick on 06 Jan 2008 01:07 am
Up on Coosa Creek, 01-06-08
David Bordwell likes the National Treasure franchise. No . . . really! And he thinks their producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, is “the most astute producer now working in Hollywood.” Why? You can (and should) go to his blog to read his full argument, but it has to do with his ability to recognize a market niche and exploit it. As Bordwell says,
“Secret codes, knights, lost treasure, rich sinister Brits, really deep holes filled with cobwebs, and a cipher on the back of the Declaration of Independence—what’s not to like?”
I agree. And in my not-so-humble opinion, Dr. Bordwell’s blog and website is one of the best film sites on the net. You can learn more about film making–especially of the Hollywood variety–than almost any other place on the Web.
On another front, contrarian and New York Press film critic Armond White has written his 2007 Better Than list, in which he picks films “better than” the ones he considers herd-mentality choices. He writes
“End of the year movie polls used to offer consensus; now they preserve film culture’s herd-mentality. But anyone who responds to movies for what they mean—instead of the way they are sold—must depart the herd. That’s how to find good, unheralded (often derided) films that don’t insult the intelligence. These better-than movies offer subtle, witty art with themes mangled in junk that’s praised by the critical confederacy of shills.”
Mr. White needs to say what he means, and not beat around the bush. At any rate, one of his “better than” comparisons is that The Djarling Limited is better than Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead because “Wes Anderson discards the baggage of the dysfunctional family that Sidney Lumet drags across the screen as dead weight.” Uh, ok . . . you can read the rest of the “Better Than” list here. In addition, you can get a better idea of what he means by what films mean by reading his decidedly minority opinion on There Will Be Blood.
And speaking of There Will Be Blood, Matt Zoller Seitz has a nice piece in the New York Times on the films of P.T. Anderson in which he writes
“The films of the writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson are obsessed with the destruction and reinvention of families, particularly the anxiety of influence felt so keenly in the relationship between distant, absent or controlling fathers and their grievously wounded sons.”
There’s a link to the Times article here, at his blog The House Next Door.
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