James Franco + Hart Crane
Two posts in one day after not posting for a century, but then I saw this:
James Franco, Hart Crane, discuss.
How Many Movies Are There?
A Shanghai DVD shop.
First, it depends on what you consider a movie. If you define “cinema” as broadly as I do, then the answer is probably “countless.” So let’s pick something more discrete: feature films (which is what most people mean, anyway, when they say “movie”).
There’s no hard and fast rule as to what constitutes a feature. The term itself is a relic of theater-going: the feature film was the featured film—it was what the theater advertised outside, and presumably what compelled you to purchase a ticket and enter—as opposed to the various newsreels, cartoons, and serial installments that also ran (and then, eventually, stopped running). Theater-going in 2012 seems an increasingly old-fashioned hobby (see Roger Ebert’s recent article on declining ticket sales), but we still use the word to mean “a long film.”
But how long? The Wikipedia informs us:
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,[1] the American Film Institute,[2] and the British Film Institute[3] all define a feature as a film with a running time of 40 minutes or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than 1,600 metres, which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films, and the Screen Actors Guild gives a minimum running time of at least 80 minutes.[4] Today, a feature film is usually between 80 and 210 minutes[citation needed]; a children’s film is usually between 60 and 120 minutes[citation needed]. An anthology film is a fixed sequence of short subjects with a common theme, combined into a feature film.
Let’s go with that 40-minute cutoff. Are we ready to start counting?
Twilight Reimagined
This site lists how Twilight might go if written by a list of other novelists…noteworthy remix styles include Murakami:
“Bella has sex with Edward, who is half a ghost. Jacob is a talking cat. Most of the prose is given over to descriptions of Bella making pasta.”
and Cormac McCarthy:
“In the opening scene, Edward dashes Bella’s head against a rock and rapes her corpse. Then he and Jacob take off on an unexplained rampage through the West.”
My Favorite New Movies of 2011
Happy New Year, HTMLnets. I watched fewer new films in 2011 than usual, but that won’t stop me from opining on what I saw. Although I should clarify that the following list isn’t limited to 2011, but covers “the thirty newish films I saw this past year.” And here are my lists from 2009 and 2010, for comparison’s sake.
We’ll start with the best…
I Hate Reality
Here is the outline for my novel: there is a complication! but it’s okay because there is a nonsensical invention to solve it! but it breaks! but it’s okay because there was no complication in the first place! I’m a writer!
I hated Mission Impossible: 4 but Chris Toll told me I was wrong but I’m not wrong and here is why.
Take a look at the scene where the mask-making doohickey malfunctions when they are at the hotel to make the deal with the French assassin and the henchman. Here we have some technology that is ridiculously advanced, capable of laser etching into some polymer substance, and also portable and also capable of paint mixing and spraying the paint (albeit not flawlessly, as the machine breaks down). OK, no problem; I don’t care about the probability of that. I’m happy to accept that they have such a device. READ MORE >
SLEEPING BEAUTY: A FEW WORDS ON MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF 2011
Dave Bowman as naked girl?
Sleeping Beauty, the mesmerizing, disquieting first film directed by Australian novelist Julia Leigh, was the most psychologically penetrating work in any medium that I encountered this year. It’s weird how the most impenetrable works can also be the most penetrating.
Leigh seems to get that paradox. “My vagina is not a temple,” says Lucy, assuring her prospective employer that she has no problem with taking sleeping pills and allowing wealthy men access to her nude, unconscious body. “Nevertheless, you will not be penetrated,” the madame promises. READ MORE >
Towards a Middle of Nowhere
Texas
In 2006, six years after Cast Away was released, a man named Doug Mathieson drove his Hyundai to N 35° 38.036 W 100° 27.076 — an intersection approximately 15 miles south of Canadian, Texas, by the Oklahoma border — and got outside, rested Wilson (a volleyball adorned with a red hand implicating the events of said film) on the hood of his car, and took a photo of it with the intent of commemorating both the film and his commemoration of it. Having not been anywhere near where he’s talking about, your contributor has Google maps displayed on another tab, the flat beige America honoring the endless wheat, the little orange man severely sun burnt from the forever high noon sun. In a description from which said photo was culled, Doug endearingly says, “Cast Away has one of my favorite Movie endings where Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is at the ‘crossroads’ of his life deciding what he will do now with the rest of his life.” I imagine Doug in his early forties, probably married and with an o.k. life, with maybe a little too much time on his hands.