Tony Zhou Is My Hero

You only wish you taught film form and grammar like Tony Zhou.

First, a disclaimer:  I get nothing, no money, not one thin dime for this endorsement.  I don't even know Tony Zhou.  But he rocks as an educator.  Videos from his "Every Frame a Painting" series offer would-be filmmakers 3-8 minute lessons  in film form and grammar.  Whet your appetite with his 3-minute essay on screen direction in Snowpiercer.

The Best Edited Films. Ever.

In the June 2012 issue of CineMontage, members of the Motion Picture Editors Guild ranked the 75 best-edited films of all time.  The top 25 appear below, but a statistical summary the entire list may prove instructive for students and teachers of film:

• Most of the films cited are from the 1970s.  None are from the 1930s (which makes sense, given the difficulties of editing which accompanied the changeover to sound).  
• Five Hitchcock films appear as well as four each directed by Spielberg and Coppola.  
• George Tomasini, Dede Allen, Michael Kahn, and Thelma Schoonmaker, are the list's most frequently-named editors.
• Guild choices also commend work of audio editors, with Walter Murch (6) and Howard Beals (5) cited most often.

1999 - Zach Staenberg

AMPAS: An Irrelevant Legacy

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu accepts the Best Picture trophy for Birdman.

I love the Oscars, America’s night of royal pageantry.  On that night, the Academy reminds us that film occupies a sweet spot at the crossroads of commerce and art.  That the moving image is society’s chief means of ideological exchange.  That the best movies are not merely good and important stories, they are the nexus of every other art form.

But the Oscars suffer a crisis of decreasing relevance.  Yes, the nominees are too white and too male; that’s symptom, not disease.  The New York Times called this year’s show an elitist echo chamber, citing the drop in TV viewership (the lowest-rated Oscarcast since 2009) as well the gap between award-winning but little-seen prestige pictures and box office winners.  Consider American Sniper’s $320 million lifetime gross.  Now total the box office returns for all seven of the remaining best pic nominees: $298 million.  

A Drop in the Bucket

Mary arrives for her October advising appointment.  Transcript and catalog hang limply at her side.  We look over a grid of offered courses.  She chooses a schedule for her final spring semester.  I skim my copy of her record and commend her for coming so close to graduating cum laude.  "Almost made it, didn't you?" I smile

"Um... almost?  No, I am totally graduating with honors.  I'm getting an 'A' in Spanish and Senior Seminar."  Mary speaks with equal parts confidence and condescension.  She is wondering how a man gets to be a college professor with such a poor understanding of mathematics.  Of course a strong eighth semester will boost her average.

Shades of Je Suis Charlie

The outrage du jour in a free, capitalistic, pluralism.

Our Dodge Polara – more tank than station wagon – slowed as it passed the Biltmore Twin Theatres.  Maybe Mom was trying to read the picket signs.  Marchers and their placards asserted hate for Hollywood, love for God and country.  Oddly enough, I don’t remember which movie was on the marquee.  Last Tango in Paris, The Exorcist, Life of Brian, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Last Temptation of Christ – for all I know, the same protest signs were reused from one film to the next.

The objections were always to depictions of blasphemy or (even consensual) sex.  Why never violence?  Why never the unflattering depiction of women or minorities?  Why never the censorious overreach of governments?  Unevenly indignant, I suppose the protesters nevertheless intended to stand for something noble.

Syllabi: Form & Ownership

Purple Syllabi:  confessions of a mimeograph sniffer.

Jurassic Park (the first one) owned the box office.  I was teaching at a poverty row college.  Our staff retreats too frequently concluded with faculty appeals to gods and donors for the wherewithal to make payroll. 

There’s nothing sexy about a college operating budget.  Folks give to buildings and named scholarship funds, but you just can’t mount a commemorative plaque on a light bill.  So the president unveiled a plan whereby we might “cut our way to prosperity.”  In practical terms:  bring your own coffee to the break room, say goodbye to departmental secretaries, and – for goodness sake – make fewer copies.

The End of Bold Critique

A month ago, a friend of mine had a baby.  I'm happily included in a cluster of folk who bring meals and coo at the fresh human.  The women in that circle compare birth narratives ("...well I was in labor for twenty hours...," "...like pushing a watermelon through a straw...," "...one kid right after another, like a Pez dispenser..." and so on).  And many of them — seldom in the new mother's presence, mind you — say some variation of this:  "Wow, she looks good; she's lost nearly all her baby weight."

It's clear that women (yes, even in this enlightened age) value certain standards of weight loss and ideals of figure.  But they dare not encourage it.  They can no longer ask each other "So, when did you think you might lose those last five or six pounds?"  These women are not Philistines.  Many are educated "crunchy moms" who read and share articles about home delivery, organic foods, and gender empowerment.  They envision and work for a world free from privilege and discrimination.