Between the Pitches: Why Film Critics Love Baseball

            Last night, I attended my first baseball game of the season, which was an excellent night as the Minnesota Twins tore through the New York Yankees for a 7-3 win (as a MN native living in New York, it’s fun to see your team take down a massively overpaid one). The weather was perfect, I had great seats, and the game was well fought by both sides.

            And then I got thinking. Many of my friends hate watching baseball (many of them hate sports in general, but let’s ignore those for now). They prefer football, basketball, and hockey, claiming baseball is slow, boring, and uneventful. Then I was thinking how many film critics I know are also huge baseball fans: Noel Murray (Atlanta Braves), Matt Singer (New York Mets), Louis Godfrey (San Francisco Giants), and Richard Brody (another Mets fan—Richard told me he went to the second game ever at Shea Stadium) to name a few. These guys are also film critics who appreciate what some call “slow cinema.” I’m thinking films out of the Romanian New Wave, or the works of Bela Tarr, or Jeanne Dielman. And to name some of their favorite releases, we’ve loved films like Poetry, The Tree of Life, Meek’s Cutoff, and We Can’t Go Home Again. And this made me realize that many of the pleasures of watching these films are the same to why I love baseball.

Screening Log: Chaos Reign Through Minimalism Edition

         Couple of notes before this week’s screening log. Over at Indiewire’s new blog dedicated to film criticism, I’m participating in Matt Singer’s weekly critic survey. Last week, I waxed on the problems of choosing my most egregious blind spot. Also, some of you may remember my commentary on Grantland’s “Smacketology” tournament regarding The Wire. Following his controversial comments against bloggers this week, Simon did a longer interview with Alan Sepinwall, where he elucidated some of his statements, and the showrunner included a link to my piece as one of the better responses to the Grantland nonsense. Peter Labuza is now David Simon approved folks!

-The Long Day Closes, 1992. Directed by Terrence Davies. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-Girlfriends, 1978. Directed by Claudia Weill. 16mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943. Directed by Maya Deren. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 1975. Directed by Chantal Akerman. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-About Elly, 2009. Directed by Asghar Farhadi. DVD projection at Film Society at Lincoln Center.

-Ruggles of Red Cap, 1935. Directed by Leo McCarey. 35mm projection at Film Forum. 

Interlude: RIP Criticism of Film Criticism

Because the Museum of the Modern Art pushed back its screening of Jeanne Dielman from Wednesday to Thursday, I decided to attend a panel called “Film Criticism Today” by the New School (who last brought us Tarkovsky Interrupts(!), and it was also free). Here were the five most interesting things said:

--Phillip Lopate’s first piece ever as a film critic was covering the first New York Film Festival for the Columbia Daily Spectator, which is where I got my start too.

--According to Paul Brunick, Peter Wollen is unreadable. Huh.

--Apparently when Vincent Canby was writing for the Times, he kept a little film called Chan is Missing in theaters much longer than it would’ve been, since he was a fan.

--The moderator, Noah Isenberg, thinks it’s horrible that film critics or scholars may use IMDB to find info. Lopate responded, “There are so many other horrors.”

--Glenn Kenny (who was not on the panel) joked afterwards that he never had interest in becoming a critic, but Premiere scooted him into the job, and thus ruined his entire life.

I think there was also a debate on film criticism, and points were made about the Internet and what not. Video essays came up, which were praised by Dennis Lim (who started Moving Image Source) for bring the discussion of form back into criticism, and then sort of given the “that’s nice” treatment by everyone else. No podcast talk (despite having a podcaster on the panel), a little talk of critical advocacy (no mention of #teammargaret), and Twitter dismissed casually. That's all folks.