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.

Screening Log: Ima Let You Finish Tarkovsky Edition

                This week’s screening log is not only late, but also shorter than ever. It’s been one of those weeks. I was all set to write it yesterday and then I couldn’t get into the headspace cause of some non-film things. I’m not really in the headspace now, but perhaps I can take that as a challenge. Of note, the three repertory films (and two current films) marks the first week in which everything was screening in digital. This is sad. If you haven’t, read my piece on the troubling aspects of the North By Northwest DCP.

-2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968: Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Digital 2K Projection at Film Forum.

-North By Northwest, 1959. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Digital 2K Projection at the Museum of the Moving Image.

-Stalker, 1979. Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky. Projected DVD at the New School.

                This was the third time I had seen Stalker, which was part of an event called Tarkovsky Interrupts, in which the film was intermittently paused for discussion by a series of six panelists, organized around Geoff Dyer, who just wrote a book on the film called Zona. I won’t give a full overview—someone more astute than me already did that much better than I can—but here are a few of the notes I took and my own thoughts on this film, which remains my favorite Tarkovsky. I was actually expecting them to stop the movie a couple more times or at least speak longer, but the screening went over length anyways (four hours were allotted).