Come on! You may have never seen his engaging onstage presence, but nobody who's ever read his reviews--love 'em or hate 'em--would ever call Charles boring. Obtuse? Maybe. Pretentious? Sure. But boring? Never. By not mentioning his name, it came across as a mean-spirited swipe at a colleague in the critical community meant only for Charles and those few of us who would notice. Obviously it was a roundabout slam of The Stranger, but it was also the kind of blithe dismissal that epitomizes the worst in contemporary film criticism. I'm not saying The Stranger is free of that sort of thing, but it's been a long time since I've seen it boiled down into such an ugly little nugget. I asked Charles what he did to piss off the Weekly so bad, and he couldn't think of one negative interaction he's had with their critics.
Which brings us to another Terry Gilliam movie. On Friday, March 18, the series is showing 12 Monkeys. When that movie came out I found it to be a mediocre adaptation of the engaging Chris Marker short La Jetée, featuring an overly mannered performance by Brad Pitt. Obviously I need to see it again, and maybe listening to someone champion the movie will help me like it more. But what if the speaker is Seattle Weekly's Tim Appelo? Well, both Charles and I agree that Tim is really a good writer and a fine critic and the event should be well worth the $6 it costs to get in.
For those who like the more pretentious movies, and I mean that in a good way, check out Harun Farocki's War at a Distance on Friday or Saturday, March 18-19, at Consolidated Works. Based mostly off the first Gulf War, it's a video essay about the advances in technology that come from the war machine and the subsequent depersonalization of the enemy. It's playing with Julie Talen's 60 Cameras Against the War, which chronicles the February 2003 protests against the latest Gulf War. Talen is a master of the multichannel format, where she combines multiple images on the same screen to show concurrent and contrasting ideas for well thought out effects.
Filmmakers will want to stop by 911 Media Arts Center on Monday, March 21, at 8:00 p.m. to watch a screening of scenes from David Russo's feature project #2. Mr. Russo is a fantastically talented animator stepping into the world of feature films in a really smart way (further proving his Stranger "Genius" grant was well-deserved). He's been workshopping scenes from the movie on video to make sure he's up to the challenge of narrative filmmaking, and to see if the scenes play like he thought they would. From what I understand, the experiment has been a great success. More filmmakers should work this way. Show up and bring a donation for 911, and David promises to make it worth your while.
