Speaking of the recently and sadly deceased, filmmaker Jacob Rosenberg has forwarded a link to a short film he made called Bleach that co-starred Charles Rocket, who killed himself in Connecticut earlier this month. A very good guy who ran into a bad patch.

In the mid ’50s, before CinemaScope lenses were perfected, everything and everyone looked horizontally distorted. The joke was that actors had the “CinemaScope mumps.” But on widescreen TVs today — in bars, people’s living rooms, electronic media showrooms — the distortion is easily double what the CinemaScope mumps syndrome delivered, and nobody blinks an eye. Across- the-board high-def widescreen TV is being promised by Direct TV and Comcast, etc., but the vast majority of broadcast images are still standard-sized (aspect ratio of 4 x 3, meant to fit your mom and pop’s TV)…and yet!…the idiots who own widescreen TVs are showing everything at the 16 x 9 ratio because they want to get their money’s worth — i.e., I bought a widescreen TV, I want to see widescreen TV! Filling up your 16 x 9 TV screen (like what…a gas tank?) is the single most cretinous visual vogue afoot in today’s digital-entertainment universe, and there are hundreds of millions of widescreen TVs that are beaming this idiocy right now…horizontally bloated newscasters on ESPN, vaguely egg-shaped basketballs…the proportion of every last object pulled sideways like Turkish taffy. I’m saying this not because it’s new, but because widescreen TV bloat has become the dominant visual mode by which tens of millions absorb TV images, and I resent this moronic aesthetic being so ubiquitous in our culture.

Claire Simpson’s editing of The Constant Gardener is a kind of rhapsodic visual dance, and obviously fully deserving of an Oscar nom. It’s hard to define the difference between oppressively heebie-jeebie, ants-in-your-pants film editing..the kind that makes you grit your teeth and makes you feel like you’re swatting invisible flies (like the cutting of the action sequences in Paul Greengraass’s The Bourne Supremacy), and what Simpson and director Fernando Meirelles achieve in Gardener. But one sings and the other doesn’t, and, according to this piece by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Sheigh Crabtree, admiration for Simpson’s editing has been voiced repeatedly by her peers.

Responses to The Producers (Universal, 12.15) from a couple of readers who’ve gotten in touch have been underwhelming, but reaction among regular folks at research screenings, I’m told, has been fairly ecstatic. The guys who didn’t like it told me the same thing…people were clapping at the end of each song and having a blast. It’s okay to have a good time with broad, brassy obvious entertainments. I guess the only ones who are likely to have problems with this film are…let’s fill in the blank later.

The IFP is getting an early start on things by announcing its nominations for the 15th Annual Gotham Awards, which will be handed out on 11.30 in New York City. It’s a nice inclusionary gesture to nominate Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane and Miranda July’s You and Me and Everyone We Know as competitors with Brokeback Mountain, Capote and A History of Violence for Best Feature. Ditto Michael Almereyda’s William Eggleston in the Real World against Ballet Russes, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man and Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s Murderball.

Snob Aesthetics

My favorite flip-through book last summer was David Kamp and Steven Daly’s “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary” (Broadway Books), an incisive and tidy sum-up guide about the who, what and wherefores of elitist rock-music savoring.
And now I’m into “The Film Snob’s Dictionary,” which I scored an advance copy of last week. It’s less of an education than “Rock Snobs” — I’m obviously much more familiar with the turf — but I’m having just as good a time with the knowingness and wit and concise prose style.

“The Film Snob’s Dictionary” won’t be out until February ’06 (to tie in with seasonal Oscar frenzy), but I don’t think I’m blurbing it too early. You’ll be reading advance items and friendly mentions come November-December, and…I don’t know…time seems to whiz by faster and faster these days…torrents of information surging at hurricane-speed.
The authors are the Manhattan-based Kamp, a longtime Vanity Fair writer and sometime contributor to GQ, and another New York journo named Lawrence Levi, who first met Kamp when they worked together at Spy in…I think it was the late ’80s or early ’90s, when Graydon Carter was the editor.
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Snobs are always hovering around any field of creative endeavor, and most of them are usually fringe wannabe types (i.e., producers, financial patrons, hangers-on) covering some insecurity.
Film Snobs are mostly fringe types also, but a certain number can be found among journalists and critics. Naturally, I exclude myself. I have this delusional idea that I’m an anti-snob, man-of-the-people type. The truth is that I know my stuff and feel no empathy for lowbrow ignorance, and I always go into fits when people refuse to support a film I know is intelligent, well-honed and suffused with honest emotion.
So maybe I’m a bit snobby, although for the sake of balance I try to ground myself in my middle-class, rubbing-shoulders-with-prole-types background. And I think Bollywood films are for the birds.

And yet I couldn’t help laughing when I read this line from the opening graph of “An Introductory Note by the Authors”:
“The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent Film Buff — the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell-Pressburger films.”
I know film-snob attitudes quite well, or at least what it is to feel grossly insecure about not knowing enough about movies and therefore lacking the chops to qualify as a snob.
I felt this way when I first came to New York in the late ’70s to try and make it as a film journalist. I was acutely aware that I didn’t have the seasoning and the film knowledge to even stand in the same vicinity as the big New York guns of the time (Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stuart Byron, etc.), and it caused me no shortage of anguish.
This was compounded by the fact that writing articles at the time was doubly difficult because I couldn’t relax and just write what I knew and felt on my own terms.

Pauline Kael

I finally got past all this, partly out of a realization that certain elite critics lived on the planet Neptune. I came to realize that although they knew what they knew and had a brilliant way of saying it, their views weren’t any better than mine…although my respect for the elites and worshipping their prose all those years (as well as boning up on venerated critics like Andre Bazin, Otis Ferguson, Manny Farber, Dwight McDonald, James Agee, et. al.) had a cumulative effect.
I wrote last summer that I especially enjoyed “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary” because “it’s so exquisitely written. Every sentence is a Hope diamond, chiseled and honed and phrased to perfection with just the right seasoning of know-it-all attitude…aimed, naturally, at the snobs who initially created it.” The same goes with the new volume. It’s an immaculate, whip-smart read.
One difference is that “The Film Snob’s Dictionary” runs 114 pages, or 36 pages shorter than “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary.” I would have preferred a few more snob obsessions being thrown in (film snobbery encompasses a vast universe and at least 85 years of film history) …but since it’s aimed at people who don’t know this world at all, I guess the idea was to avoid getting too anal-particular.
Another difference is that knowing the film world as I do, a lot of what’s in the book is back-of-the-hand familiar. But I’m sure rock aficionados felt the same way last summer.

New York Press critic Armond White

The intro piece is pretty good…
“The Film Snob’s stance is one of proprietary knowingness — the pleasure he takes in movies derives not only from the sensory experience of watching them, but also from knowing more about them than you do, and from zealously guarding this knowledge from the cheesy, Julia Roberts-loving masses, who have no right whatsoever to be fluent in the works of Samuel (White Dog) Fuller and Andrei (the original Solaris) Tarkovsky.”
The graph about the public being Stupid and Ineducable follows, and then…
“The Film Snob’s Dictionary seeks to redress the knowledge gap between Snobs and non-Snobs, so that normal, nonsociopathic, movie-loving people may (a) become privy to some of the good stuff that Film Snobs zealously hoard for themselves; and (b) avoid or approach cautiously the vast quantities of iffy or downright crappy material that Snobs embrace in the name of Snobbery.
“This second service is especially valuable, because the Film Snob’s taste is willfully perverse, glorifying drecky Hong Kong martial-arts flicks and such misunderstood works of genius as Mike Judge’s Office Space and Michael Mann’s Heat for no rational reason whatsoever.”
(I read the preceding graph Sunday night to L.A. City Beat film critic Andy Klein, who isn’t a snob but surely knows his stuff as well as Jim Hoberman or Armond White. Klein laughed and said, “Obviously they’re trying to get a rise out of critics,” etc. He also declared that Heat, Office Space and, one inferred, a selection of his favorite Hong Kong chop-socky flicks “are all great.”)

“The authors of this book, in compiling its entries, have sought to strike the right balance between intellectual curiosity and Snob madness, so that the reader will feel less intimidated about renting a genuinely entertaining film such as Fritz Lang’s M just because it is ‘German Expressionist,’ but liberated from the burden of ever having to watch a Peter Greenaway film.”
The intro also says that “readers knowledgable about film will notice the conspicuous absence from The Film Snob’s Dictionary, apart from passing references, of such titans of foreign cinema as Federico Fellini (8 1/2), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai), and Satyajit Ray (the “Apu” trilogy).
“The Film Snob may indeed know a fair amount about these filmmakers (Fellini in particular, given that his movies’ soundtracks were often composed by Snob cause celebre Nino Rota), but he generally scoffs at them, deeming them to be mere name-drops for bourgeois losers wishing to seem cultured. Watching a Bergman film is so PBS tote-bag, so Mom-and-Dad-on-a-date-in-college, so baguettes-and- Chardonnay.
“The Snob prides himself on his populist, un-arty taste, favoring, for example, the soapy, over-emotive schlock of India’s Bombay-based `Bollywood’ film industry over the artful, nuanced films of the Calcutta-born Ray, and the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and Corbucci over anything Fellini ever made. It’s a reverse Snobbery more powerful than the Snobbery it’s rebelling against.”

New York Observer critic Andrew Sarris

There are something like 250 capsule mentions. As noted earlier, there could probably be another 100 or so more if Kamp and Levi wanted to bulk up. Some of these have appeared in two past issues of Vanity Fair, and there’s a site that quoted a few of them in ’04, so it doesn’t seem like much of a spoiler to excerpt a few more.
The eight entries I’m running deal solely with critics and film magazines/sites. If it were my book I would have mentioned other Neptuners (B. Ruby Rich, Jim Hoberman, Ray Pride, Armond White, Robert Koehler, Emanuel Levy) — each of whom, it could be argued, are fascinating in their authority-exuding quirkiness.
There’s certainly no slight in saying these people should have been included. Film Snobbery is an excusable neurotic outgrowth of being an extra-passionate Film Buff, and every Neptuner I’ve mentioned in this graph is a fine writer and respected scholar, so let’s not have any arched backs.
Anyway…
Farber, Manny: Beloved alter kocker film critic emeritus, now working as a a painter in Southern California. Preceding his friend Pauline Kael by more than a decade as a nonconformist thinker about movies, Farber got his start writing reviews for The New Republic in the 1940s and proved as comfortable decon- structing Tex Avery cartoons and Don Siegel genre exercises as he was evaluating the French New Wave and Rainer Werner Fassbinder — in effect, inventing the prevailing critic vogue for high thought on low entertainment. A big influence of Snob-revered Jonathan Rosenbaum, Farber, more than Kael or Andrew Sarris, is the name to drop for instant Crit Snob credibility.

Retired film critic Manny Farber

Film Comment. Smug, aggressively elitist bimonthly magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Where Snobs go to read (or write) dithery articles about Bollywood and despairing critiques of popular cinema.
Film Threat. Surprisingly buoyant, unsmug Web ‘zine devoed to independent film. Where Snobs go to read fulsome appreciations of Sam Raimi and interviews with such Queens of the B’s as Debbie Rochon and Tina Krause.
Katz, Ephraim. Industrious Israeli-born film nerd who, in the 1970s, single- handedly undertook the task of compiling an encyclopedia of film. Published in 1979, after years of work, Katz’s The Film Encyclopedia quickly established itself as the definitive film reference for both Snobs who need to know what a “friction head” is (it’s a kind of tripod head that ensures smooth camera movement) and laypersons who can’t keep Linda Darnell straight from Joan Blondell. Katz died in 1992, and successive, expanded editions of the Film Encyclopedia have been produced by his proteges, though hard-core Snobs take issue with some of the cuts that were made from Katz’s original, and keep the ’79 edition around.
Kael, Pauline. Revered film critic (1919-2001) whose work, most of which appeared in The New Yorker, stood out for its bracing, provocative prose and its author’s loony, nonsensical taste; no one was smarter and more cogent about Cary Grant’s career and Steve Spielberg’s early films, yet no one was more reckless in overpraising grim 1970s murk and unbearably blowsy female performances (e.g., Elizabeth Taylor in X, Y & Zee; Karen Black in Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Bette Midler in Big Business). A tiny woman, Kael nevertheless inspired fear in her legions of movie-critic acolytes (known as “Paulettes”), full-grown men and women who tremulously sought her unforthcoming approval and pilgrimaged to her home in the Berkshires in the vain hope of being anointed her heir apparent.

Kehr, Dave. Third- or possibly fourth-string New York Times movie critic. Though often relegated to reviewing DVD releases, he is preferred by Snobs over A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis and Stephen Holden.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Industrious but mirthless film critic for the Chicago Reader; one of the few important film writers of the post-Kael era. Given to chiding fellow Snobs about their ignorance of the Iranian New Wave.
Sarris, Andrew. Brooklyn-born film critic and theorist known for popularizing the Auteur Theory, and for arousing the ire of Pauline Kael with his totemic 1968 book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929 — 1968, in which he categorized directors by preference, prompting Kael to deride him, to his face, as a “list queen.” His gentlemanly, hypeless prose has remained consistent since 1960, when he began writing for the Village Voice. Married to the fellow film-critster Molly Haskell, Sarris now plies his trade for the New York Observer and as a trainee Snob-admired lecturer at Columbia University.
Reminder to Kamp and Levi: Montgomery Clift got drunk and slammed his car into that telephone pole in May, 1956. And the cool thing about Todd A-O in the 1950s wasn’t just the 70mm format — it was mainly the 30-frame-per-second rate of photography and projection (even though it was viewable in the big-city roadshow engagements of only two films — Oklahoma! and Around the World in 80 Days).
“The Film Snob’s Dictonary” is an essential, highly educational read for non- snobs, and snobs will have to buy a copy just to keep it on their bookshelves… something to leaf through and reflect upon as a kind of cautionary text.

Montgomery Clift

Grabs

Lounge area on main floor of Algonquin Hotel — Monday, 10.24.05, 10:30 pm.

Looking south on 7th Avenue from 57th Street — Friday, 10.21.05, 1:10 pm.

57th Street and 7th Avenue, looking east — Friday, 10.21.05, 1:07 pm.

Marilyn Monroe photo shoot, sometime around ’59 or ’60. (I think.)

Just to be clear, I don’t hate March of the Penguins. It’s a fairly soulful and well-made film. What I don’t like…what I couldn’t stand as I saw the French-language version..was the tediousness of all that trekking across the frozen wastelands, and all the sitting around. If I were a penguin I would end it all. I would jump into the water in hopes of being eaten by a killer whale. George Clooney knows what I’m talking about.

Variety‘s Justin Chang is calling Gore Verbinksi’s The Weather Man (Paramount, 10.28) “one of the biggest downers to emerge from a major studio in recent memory…an overbearingly glum look at a Chicago celebrity combing through the emotional wreckage of his life.” This view has been understood by Paramount for some time, and is one reason why they put off opening it earlier this year. (The theory apparently being that gloomy films play better in the fall.) “Aiming for an Alexander Payne-style synthesis of wry comedy and unflinching character study,” Chang continues, “pic has been made with the utmost sincerity, but the frankly lugubrious material and barely compensating spasms of humor are all but impossible to warm to, spelling an uncertain B.O. forecast for Paramount.” I saw The Weather Man several months ago and I’m afraid I agree. It’s one of the most grossly depressing films I’ve ever endured. It’s right up there (or down there) with Peter Brook’s black-and-white King Lear (’71) with Paul Scofield. And Nic Cage’s sad-sack weather man is one of the most intensely dislikable characters I’ve ever reluctantly spent time with in a screening room. His hair style alone is enough to ruin your evening.

Funny The Legend of Zorro review by Variety‘s Brian Lowry…but how is it that I knew this period actioner would be “bigger, louder and considerably less charming than its predecessor” before reading Lowry or anyone else? I must be gifted with a sixth sense. The Martin Campbell-directed sequel (Columbia, 10.28) “gets by mostly on dazzling stunt work and the pleasure of seeing its dashing and glamorous leads back in cape and gown,” says Lowry. “But the firm hand [Campbell] exhibited on the first go-round is shakier here, as the opening hour flits all over and hits some curiously flat patches. Only in the second half does the movie settle in a bit. A quartet of writers contributed to the script, and it certainly has the feel of work by committee. And while there are again welcome moments of humor, some are pitched so broadly it’s easy to wonder if this is supposed to be a sequel to Zorro or Blazing Saddles.”

What a bummer year for George Clooney…seriously. I was thinking about this from time to time last weekend. Head pain, thoughts of suicide, short-term memory loss, and then his dog was killed by a rattlesnake…Jesus. It started with Clooney filming a scene in Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23) in which he “was taped to a chair and getting beaten up and we did quite a few takes. The chair was kicked over and I hit my head. I tore my dura, which is the wrap around my spine which holds in spinal fluid. But it’s not my back, it’s my brain. I basically bruised my brain. It’s bouncing around my head because it’s not supported by the spinal fluid.” The scene in which Clooney’s chair is kicked over will presumably be in Stephen Gaghan’s film. (Jeffrey Hunter’s eye was damaged from flying sand during the filming of an Omaha Beach combat scene in The Longest Day, and the moment of injury stayed in the film.) Hey, shouldn’t WB be showing Syriana now? It’s less than four weeks away.

Performances that stay with you. Cinematography (by Roger Deakins) to die for. Waiting for Godot in the sand. All geared up and cranked up and no one to shoot. The hip journos — the ones I’ve spoken to who are sharp and fair-minded enough to get the unique character of it, not to mention the sublime quality of presentation — are liking and admiring Sam Mendes’ Jarhead (Universal, 11.4).

I’ve somehow missed what Jack Malvern of the London Times Online is reporting in advance of the London Film Festival debut of March of the Penguins, which is that U.S. conservative commentators have embraced the Warner Independent release as a monogamy and right-to-life metaphor. Rightie film critic Michael Medved says it √¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√ɬ∫most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.” Uhm, okay. Sacrifice and child-rearing, fine…but forget monogamy. Penguins creator Luc Jacquet says that penguins are far less monogamous than people. “If you want an example of monogamy, penguins are not a good choice,” Jacquet told Malvern. “The divorce rate in emperor penguins is 80 to 90 per cent each year. After they see the chick is okay, most of them divorce. They change every year.”