Link Round-Up: New Views

I promise to get better at updating this quicker so anyone who wants to know what I'm doing will not be confused. So here we go.

I am now writing for Variety. Yes, *that* Variety. I am honored to join a team that includes Scott Foundas, Peter Debruge, and Justin Chang leading the charge, among many others. I'll have a few reviews in the month of February, but for now my first piece is on Freezer, a not so good movie about Dylan McDermott trapped in a freezer. Gotta start somewhere.

Were you looking for my Top 10 films of 2013? I talked about my choices with Keith Uhlich on The Cinephiliacs, which you can listen to both Part 1 and Part 2. My choices also come in a list-handy form on Letterboxd.

Thief came out on Blu-Ray via The Cirterion Collection, so I wrote about how Thief is still pretty awesome over at The Film Stage. I also edited this fantastic conversation on the film between Jordan Cronk and Nick Usen at To Be Cont'd.

Jean-Claude Van Damme re-teamed with Peter Hyams for Enemies Closer. Could have been better, but not the worst way to spend January at the movies. I reviewed over at In Review Online.

On The Cinephiliacs: Noah Isenberg, the author of the recent biography on Edgar Ulmer, and former Film Society of Lincoln Center slash New York Film Festival programmer Richard Pena. Both are excellent listens.

On Letterboxd...The Wolf of Wall Street, Dangerous Game, Chaplin's A Day's Pleasure, Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, Howard Hawks's Red Line 7000 and The Big Sky, Cukor's The Women, Wellman's Lady of Burlesque, The Freshman starring Harold Lloyd, The Color Wheel, Shanghai Express, Hong Sang-Soo's In Another Country, Arthur Penn's The Chase, The Typhoon with Sessue Hayakawa, Aldrich's Emperor of the North, and Minnelli's Gigi.

I finished my graduate degree. More TK on what follows.

Expressive Esoterica in the 21st Century—Or: What Is Vulgar Auteurism?

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

The following post was originally developed in a graduate seminar I participated in earlier this year on the state of contemporary cinephilia. I originally became interested in exploring Vulgar Auteurism after researching and talking to Ignatiy Vishnevetsky for a podcast. So for a half dozen weeks, I watched  the “canon” of Vulgar Auteurism and read every post, comment, tumblr, and criticism that had been written on the subject. What I have developed below is part of a project that I hope to bring to next year’s conference for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. However, because Vulgar Auteurism has become somewhat of a hot debate after Calum Marsh’s Village Voice piece on the subject, I’ve decided to post a partial part of my work on the subject in order to give a full context and understanding how we can learn about contemporary cinephilia from the movement. As always, all feedback and comments are appreciated.

September 14, 2012 was a day of major anticipation for cinephiles that follow contemporary cinema. It was the official opening of auteur Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012), a historical psychosexual epic shot in 70mm with two larger than life performances. However, there was another group of cinephiles excited for another release by Paul Anderson…Paul W.S. Anderson. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), the fifth film in the zombie franchise starring Milla Jovovich, was released in 3,000 theaters without a single review to its name. For most critics who later watched the film, Retribution was a slog (Rotten Tomatoes describes the consensus: “[the franchise] seems to get more cynical and lazy with each film”).[i] But this set of very special cinephiles saw not just silly entertainment, but one made with as much craft and care as The Master. Ignaity Vishnevetsky, in his review at Mubi, argues, “Anderson is uncynical. His work is eye stuff: entertainment that rewards the viewer for watching rather than for being clever.”[ii] Critics disagree on films all the time, but what is going on with Retribution, and many other disregarded films of its like, is a new trend in cinephilia. Welcome to Vulgar Auteurism.

Since Jonathan Rosenbaum called cinema dead and cinephila the next step, critics and academics have spent countless words trying to define “contemporary cinephilia.” Some of this issue, perhaps, is that defining contemporary cinephilia as a whole is an impossible task—one must encompass bloggers, democratization, torrent cultures, DVDs and Blu-Rays, mashups, podcasts, social media, and the vast amount of stuff. To better understand cinephilia, I propose that instead of making an encompassing vision, we should instead take an in-depth examination of a small sect. Certainly, the cinephiles who laud and champion Vulgar Auteurism fit that definition.