Cinema
A Visit to Turner Classic Movies by Steve Stanchfield at Cartoon Research
Set your DVRs for TCM on October 6th! They don’t often play animation on the channel, but they’re pulling out some real rarities from the 1920s, from studios like Bray and Van Buren who were leaders at the time, as well as animation pioneer Windsor McKay. I’m super-stoked! This is Steve Stanchfield’s short behind-the-scenes take on working with TCM, and here’s Jerry Beck’s more newsy post about what’s going to be included in the segment.
This brings us to what I’ve been up to the last few weeks – working on finishing touches for a block of classic animation on Turner Classic Movies! I was invited to speak about Van Beuren animation and to show some of the films for my section of the animation day. Tom Stathes is presenting a program celebrating 100 years of the Bray Studios, and John Canemaker is presenting some of the great work of Winsor McCay.
Coming Soon, a Century Late: A Black Film Gem by Felicia R. Lee at the New York Times
I love reading about rediscovered classic films, and this sounds like a doozy – possibly the first feature film with a black cast, though it apparently was never completed and released (speculation is that it was too soon after Birth of a Nation, which scared the producers away). If you live in New York, you can see the footage at a MOMA screening in the near future. The rest of us will have to wait.
For decades, the seven reels from 1913 lay unexamined in the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art. Now, after years of research, a historic find has emerged: what MoMA curators say is the earliest surviving footage for a feature film with a black cast. It is a rare visual depiction of middle-class black characters from an era when lynchings and stereotyped black images were commonplace. What’s more, the material features Bert Williams, the first black superstar on Broadway. Williams appears in blackface in the untitled silent film along with a roster of actors from the sparsely documented community of black performers in Harlem on the cusp of the Harlem Renaissance. Remarkably, the reels also capture behind-the-scenes interactions between these performers and the directors.
This is Not a Post About Gone with the Wind by David Kalat at Movie Morlocks
Weird title to this post, Mr. Kalat, but it seems the 75th Anniversary of Gone with the Wind was tough to escape over at Movie Morlocks last week. In any case, this post IS about the film The Strange Woman, a rare big studio film directed by king of the Bs Edgar Ulmer (Detour) and starring Hedy Lamarr. The parts about the film are interesting in and of themselves, but what really got me to sit up and take notice is the section toward the end, where Kalat talks about Lamarr’s engineering prowess. I totally wouldn’t have expected that, but I love it!
In 1940 [Hedy Lamarr] thought seriously about breaking her contract at Metro – not to go to another studio, not to become a free agent, but to quit acting altogether and go to Washington DC to join the newly formed National Inventors Council. She was, you see, an engineer.
As the story goes, she met scientist George Antheil at a dinner party, and allegedly approached him with a question about glandular stimulation. She was looking to increase her bust. Well, whether breast augmentation was the ice breaker between them or not, they quickly formed a working collaboration. Their mutual interest, aside from her chest, was … remote controlled guidance systems.
American Movies Ignore Women; The Rest of the World Isn’t Any Better by Alyssa Rosenberg at the Washington Post
A research institute at USC’s Annenberg School has been doing a bunch of studies on gender in film – I shared one a while back about the number of female speaking parts in American films, accompanied by data on female filmmakers – and here’s the international version of the study. It’s…not a lot better.
So when a new study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, produced by the scholars at the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California Annenberg, rounded up the representation of women in movies from the world’s top-ten markets outside of the United States, I was curious. Are audiences in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Kingdom accustomed to see women on screen in numbers and in ways that might force the heavily-male American movie industry to cater to their preferences?
Destroy All Monsters: Gotham and the Cult of Before by Matt Brown at Twitchfilm
This week Matt Brown takes on the TV show Gotham, and yes, I know, I usually put TV stuff under “Not Cinema,” but this one clearly has a lot to do with film, too, in terms of the problem with prequels. Talking with Matt on Twitter later, we decided that films set in the same world at an earlier time are a slightly different (and less problematic) thing than the straight-up prequel he’s talking about here, and really, that’s about my only caveat to the piece.
It’s been outlined before, yet bears repeating: the problem with any prequel story is that it is, by definition, not the story. [...] Backstory isn’t a narrative in and of itself; or at least, it isn’t the right narrative. It’s the road towards the narrative, towards the crucial moments; no writer ever took the most significant portion of a story’s life and tossed it into the preamble for the other story they then went on to tell. Writers, and storytellers generally, have an unerring skill at locating the actual part of the narrative that needs telling, and telling it – because it tends to be the most interesting part, the part you’d be nuts not to tell.
Hollywood’s Hedgehog Mentality Threatens Its Survival by Kenneth Turan at the LA Times
Articles about the death of cinema or the death of Hollywood or the death of adult films are a dime a dozen, and for some reason I’m always fascinated with them, even though I’m not sure Turan has too much new to say. I have been thinking a lot lately, though, about the way that a lot of responses to this (including my own, at various times in the past) are “adult films are still being made, you just have to look at smaller, independent films.” There is truth to that, but really, that’s not what I want. It may be a pipe dream, but I want wide-release films that have high production values and well-known actors that aren’t sequels, comic book movies, or action films. Back in the ’70s, The Godfather was a literal blockbuster, with lines around the corner for weeks. I want THAT. And even though it may not happen, I don’t think saying we should be content with the microbudget indie dramas and Oscar bait prestige films two months out of the year should fly. If we don’t way we want more, who will?
Today’s Hollywood, by contrast, has transformed itself into the hedgehog. The one big thing it knows how to do is make sequels and superhero movies and sequels to superhero movies, all aimed at a young adult crowd with no end in sight. The race to secure prime spots has become so intense that studios have claimed release dates for as-yet-untitled superhero movies through 2020, which at this point feels a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
This look at Hollywood’s situation, this act of sitting shiva (to borrow a term from the Jewish laws of mourning) for the way it used to be is not something that hasn’t been done before, even by me, but I’ve decided to revisit the situation for several reasons.
A Few More…
Today We Learned: Black Widow Almost Got a Movie Before Iron Man – Huh, imagine that. And it got canceled because Aeon Flux was disappointing. So crazy about all those male-led action films that got canceled when John Carter was disappointing…wait.
You’re Invited: Join the #TCMParty on Twitter – So great to see official recognition of #TCMParty! I’m not as active as I’d like to be, but I love watching people on my Twitter feed watch movies on TCM. :)
Cliff Aliperti’s New Pre-Code Book – I’ve enjoyed Cliff’s reviews online, and now you can get a collection of them in handy-dandy book form, for only $3!
Not Cinema
Saving Paris’s Oldest Bookstore by Victoria Baena at The Atlantic
This is a fascinating overview of some of the cultural differences between France and the US that may save an historical bookstore from rising rents. I like a lot of things about the US over France, but I have to admit, their devotion to the importance of culture and the arts is something I wish we had more of over here.
It’s difficult to imagine the shuttering of a bookstore causing a similar outcry anywhere else—not to mention direct government involvement in the matter of a private lease. This has something to do with what the French call l’exception culturelle. [...]
It is part of a conviction in France—albeit one increasingly debated—that cultural heritage is a good with its own internal logic and value system, one that the government has the duty not only to protect but to actively promote. France even entombs its most celebrated literary and cultural figures, among other “great men” (and now women), in the Panthéon in Paris.
You Want More Diversity in Your Pop Culture? Here’s How to Find It by Lamar Giles at io9
See my mini-rant above on Turan’s piece. I don’t disagree with this piece, and yes, we should support diversity in media wherever it is, and right now it’s coming from small, independent, alternative producers, and that’s great. But I don’t think we should be content with that. Maybe this is a stepping stone, but I don’t like the subtle undercurrent that we should stop bothering with mainstream culture and just focus on our niches. I agree that just because something is mainstream or popular doesn’t mean it’s better – that’s obviously untrue for every way. However, the mainstream is important, simply because it’s what most people are going to see. You can’t just change the fringes and expect real change.
Increasing diversity in media isn’t only about aiming for equal representation. It’s about challenging ingrained mindsets and making sure voices that differ from the dominant paradigm are heard. The first step was voicing the desire for diversity. Now that the world is listening, the next step must be taken. Fans must support the diverse creators and properties they have instead of waiting for some mainstream comic company, publishing house, movie studio, or television network to find them worthy.
Or, they can keep waiting for what’s already arrived.
What Writers Can Learn from Goodnight Moon by Aimee Bender at the New York Times
The two Margaret Wise Brown books we have, Goodnight Moon and The Big Red Barn are my daughter Karina’s favorite nap time books by a wide margin right now, so I have read them. a. lot. It’s fun to see this appreciation for a book that seems so simple and yet has such power not only over an 18-month-old, but over myself as well – no matter how often I read these, I still find them lovely and soothing, and yet, as Aimee Bender says, somehow subtly surprising.
What a surprise, then, to find that there is a blank page with “Goodnight nobody” out of nowhere, sharing a spread with “Goodnight mush.” What a surprise, then, that the story does not end with the old lady whispering “hush” but goes out the window into the night.
Most picture books would close with that old lady — that’s the balanced choice. But we see the stars and feel the air — we’ve been sure we’re staying in but now we’re floating out. Why? And then back in for the ending of “Goodnight noises everywhere.” This, the last page? At first, I looked for another page — why end here? Isn’t it a little abrupt? But (after a few more readings), isn’t it also the way for us to close our eyes metaphorically with the bunny and be in that state right before slipping off to sleep, that magical drifting moment after floating out with the stars and the air, when we only hear noises and next is sleep?
Wander is a Non-Combat MMO by Alexa Ray Corriea at Polygon
I’m quite intrigued by this idea of a non-combat MMO that’s all about exploration, learning about the world around you, and interacting with the other people playing. We need more ways to play games, and more ways to think about games rather than killing and conquering. I’m not sure how this one will turn out, or even when it’s supposed to be coming out, but I’m definitely keeping my eyes on it. Related, this editorial about violence being the unfortunate mechanic in nearly all games.
When players first wake up in Wander, they will find themselves as sentient, mobile trees — an Oren, in the game’s terms. Through exploration players will uncover their shapeshifter nature and the narrative will focus on the cultural norms that form in a population where everyone is a shapeshifter. There will be no shooting and no mission structure to guide players along. Rather, players will listen for soft singing — provided by four real-lofe opera singers – that will lead them to stones and secret areas that will slowly unfurl details about the world.
This lack of direction sounds like there’s no point to Wander, but that’s part of what Davidson is getting at. The “point” is less about completing objectives and earning rewards, and more about taking your time to discover a place that, in knowing it, is its own reward.
Here’s Why the New York Times’ TV Criticism is So Bad by Anne Helen Petersen at Buzzfeed
I don’t read a lot of full-on TV criticism because I don’t watch hardly any shows these days, so I can’t comment much on the recent controversy over a Times piece about Shonda Rimes (except that it did seem remarkably tone-deaf, even to me), but I did appreciate this historical view of how the Times has generally interacted with TV going back to the 1950s.
The culture that has allowed Stanley to flourish goes back to the 1950s, when Times television critic Jack Gould was known as one of the most prominent early champions of television — but of live television, which at the time meant television written by famous playwrights and performed by serious actors, the ’50s version of Masterpiece Theater. The type of television that even Upper East Side intellectuals would like — which made sense, because the vast majority of the (very) early television audience was based in New York and other urban areas.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Doesn’t Worship Tolkein, It Challenges Him by Alexa Ray Corriea
I’ve been waffling on this game for some time, because even though the Nemesis system (where some enemies persist and remember you and interact with you differently based on how you behaved the last time you met them) sounds pretty amazing, it looks relentlessly dark and dreary, and not in the ultimately hopeful way Tolkein is dark. It sounds like I am right about that (although Corriea points out that humor does exist in the game and is well-done), but perhaps it’s approaching its story with a bit more subtlety and intentionality than I was giving it credit for.
This is essentially using the weapon of the enemy against the enemy, which numerous Lord of the Rings characters warn each other about. This is one of the central conceits of the rings themselves: You can use their power to try to do good things, but once you give into that temptation you’re lost.
In the game you’re doing a terrible thing and it’s the very thing Tolkien warned us all about. Monolith upends Middle-earth’s virtues and gives us a look at the dark side, the messy and the crude down in the Orc pits and on the fringes of the less-prettier places. It’s a look at the deep, dark side of Middle-earth, the one no one really wants to talk about and one that modern films and games have labeled only as bad country. Embracing a power this dark and open to abuse shouldn’t feel comfortable, and it doesn’t.
A Few More…
20 Games Your Kids Will Want This Holiday Season – I appreciate the job Pixelkin is doing, targeting articles like this toward non-gamers who still need info about games.
Ubisoft Announces Assassin’s Creed DLC Starring a Woman from 16th Century China – Great! Now can we get a woman-led game in the main series?
The British Museum Wants to Rebuild Itself in Minecraft – This would be awesome! Can we have the Louvre next?
My First Bookstore – The first bookstores I remember were also mall bookstores, and I miss them every time I take Karina to the mall and there’s no bookstores at all.
“We Screwed Up”: Maker of DC Board Game Apologizes to Parents and Young Girl – Follow-up to an article I shared last week, about a father/daughter disappointed that a Justice League game didn’t have any playable female characters.
The Creation Myth of Chocolate Chip Cookies – Never thought about where chocolate chip cookies came from before? Neither had I!
Image of the Week
Adorable Drawings of Dog Breeds Grouped by Their Place of Origin. There are a TON of these, and they’re all adorbs.
Why Readers Still Prefer Paper. I go back and forth – the convenience of electronic is a big selling point, but gotta say, when I want to curl up and read at home, it’s paper all the way.
Video of the Week
Assassin’s Kittens Unity. Because what’s more awesome than assassins? Kitten assassins.