The Frame

AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies — 2007 Edition

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On June 21, 2007

In Film

The American Film Institute released an updated version of their 100 Years…100 Movies list of greatest American movies. Apparently they’re going to do that every ten years. I only saw the tail end of the special last night–did any one else catch it? I think I saw the top fifteen or twenty.

The new list is here in pdf form; and the 1997 list is here in pdf. The new list helpfully shows what position each film was in ten years ago, and how much it has changed its position. As far as new films on the list, there are 23, mostly in second half of the list. Still, out of 100 films, that’s quite a turnover–and interestingly, most of the new additions are not films made in the last ten years, but older ones. Apparently AFI felt they had almost a quarter of the films wrong last time. ;) Some of the replacements are good, I think, but others not so much. The worst thing is that I was 86% through the first list, and I’m only 82% through the new one. :(

Films added for the 2007 list:

Films removed for the 2007 list:

After the jump, my version of the Top 100 American Films. They’re unranked, though, because I tried to rank them, and I got incredibly frustrated.

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Bradbury and Censorship

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On June 18, 2007

In Books and Reading

In the comments to my post about Bradbury and authorial intent, Evan pointed out that Ray Bradbury wrote an afterword to Fahrenheit 451 against censorship:

The most important reason Bradbury can’t get away with this re-interpretation is that a few years back he wrote a postscript to the novel in which he talked about how bad censorship was. He made some very good points. I don’t know why he would back away from it now.

Curious, I looked back at my copy of the book, and sure enough, it’s in there. Bradbury states clear as day:

Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel with, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony.

And if you wonder how he really feels about it:

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Yet Bradbury is still mostly concerned with his rights as an author, not the right of readers to read the text (either at all, or as written). From the end of the brief essay:

The tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. […] All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.

Here he clearly feels his books are his own territory–which is true as far as the writing goes. Nobody should be editing his books for content. However, the attitude here is strikingly similar to his recent attempts to reclaim power over the interpretation of his novel. Interesting question: If he decided to edit his book now and try to destroy previous editions, would he be a censor? Would such changes be acceptable, after the book as it stands has been available for so long? I tend to think they wouldn’t–certainly literary scholars would do all they could to hang on to the original text. :)

So in this 1979 postscript, Bradbury says the novel is about censorship, at least partially, and decries censorship of his work, but via a claim to authorial superiority–at this point, explicitly only applying it to the text itself, but now he’s applying his superiority to interpretation also, to promote an interpretation which contradicts his apparent 1979 opinion (although perhaps he is only focusing on the censorship angle because that’s what he’s struggling against at that particular moment–even so, that would suggest opportunism). Interesting. Thanks, Evan, for pointing that out. I don’t know if I’d read it before.

So You Think You Can Dance Top 20

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On June 15, 2007

In Television

Whee! I’m so super-excited!! It’s gonna be a good show this year, folks. And I know I said I wasn’t going to blog it, but…I’m super-excited!! Did I mention that already? Whatever. I wrote this all during the show, but was trying to wait until I could include video–unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a digital copy of the show yet in order to extract the video clips I want. This post includes both competition run-down and results after the jump.

edit: Now with different video. :)

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So You Think You Can Dance Top 20 Announcement

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On June 8, 2007

In Television

I’m pretty happy with the top twenty dancers chosen on So You Think You Can Dance last night. My only question is what happened to the girl who was injured during Vegas week last year and was promised that she could re-enter the competition during Vegas week this year? Didn’t see her, no mention of her at all. That was disconcerting.

After the cut, the list of the top twenty and videos of their auditions, if we saw their auditions. Oh, and I put down what each of their specialties is, but I need to mention that I’m not a dancer and am not that familiar with different dance styles…I can’t tell the difference between contemporary and lyrical, for example, and sometimes ballet dancers look an awful lot like contemporary dancers to me on the show. Also, hip-hop dancers throw all sorts of things in there, so I’m not differentiating between b-boying, b-girling, breaking, popping, locking, you name it. Plus, I’m not getting into jazz, pop, etc. So my three specialty categories are ballroom, contemporary, and hip-hop. If you can differentiate them better, let me know, and I’ll update to be more precise. edit – dance styles now more precise, since Fox finally put up contestant pages at the website.

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Fixing ‘On the Lot’

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On June 7, 2007

In Film, Television

Fox’s filmmaking reality competition On the Lot is in trouble. Its ratings haven’t been great, prompting the network to retool the show and knock it down from two nights a week to one. The problem is, the retooling has only made things worse, at least as far as the quality of the show. Now rather than being a task-oriented filmmaking show, it’s an American Idol-style exhibition show. After the first week, we haven’t seen any of the behind the scenes stuff, just the short films with very little introduction or explanation, we hardly know the people we’re asked to vote for or any of the parameters of the films they’re making.

Cinematical has a bunch of really good suggestions on how to fix the problems–go back to the task-oriented style, asking them to do different things and test their versatility and abilities; make us care about the contestants by showing us the obstacles they overcame in shooting their films; get guest judges who care about being there, or are at least less abrasive than Michael Bay was last week (I made the exact same comment Tuesday night that they did regarding Bay’s comment on film length); get a host who isn’t a moron; don’t lie to us like they did last week…those were their submission films, not films they did while on the show! The thing that’s strange to me is that the show was much more like this before they retooled. Does that suggest that nobody cares about seeing a filmmaking show? I find that highly unlikely given the popularity of DVD making-of special features and that sort of thing–but maybe I run in circles especially interested in how films are made. That’s quite possible.

Another frustration I have with the show is partially directed at the voting public, but also at the judges. These filmmakers are trying to be directors, right? I mean, the one that wins gets a deal to direct a movie for DreamWorks. And while I understand that writing and directing are closely linked, it seems that they’re being judged far more on their ability to write than on their ability to direct. The judges are constantly jumping on the writing or the story or the concept of the films, rather than the camerawork, the cinematography, the blocking, the set-up, etc.

The three filmmakers that got sent home two weeks ago certainly had problems with their films. Claudia’s film ended up terribly, with a blind date in a bathroom and fart jokes. But watch it and look at the cinematography and use of color in the first half and tell me she doesn’t have a great eye. I would have kept her around just for that. Similarly, the judges thought Phil’s film was derivative in its plot device, but the framing of the shots and use of contrasting lighting was excellent, as was the sense of comic timing. On the flip side, this film was voted one of the top three of the night, and while I thought it was rather inappropriately funny, there’s not much interesting in the directing, except some of the acting cues. Now, directing actors is important, I’ll give him that, but if you want to go that direction, he should have made a little more clear that his character is a nerd, not mentally handicapped. Here are two of the films I think should have gotten their makers eliminated: To Screw in a Lightbulb and Wack Alley Cab. The first one has basically two or three static camera angles, none of which is terribly interesting, and a bunch of actors cavorting chaotically in front of the camera. There’s no cohesion to either the direction or the scenario. The second one was just whack. Really. I have no idea what anything was or what it was doing there. But both these filmmakers are still here.

So, based on that frustration, I have another suggestion for On the Lot, which goes along with Cinematical’s #2, wherein they suggest showing what the filmmaking terms mean. Use the judging segments you have and the behind-the-scenes segments you’ve apparently given up to teach us what good directing is all about. Don’t conflate directing with writing–they’re related, but they’re not the same thing. Don’t tell me that someone who has written a good scenario with good dialogue is therefore a good director, or that a filmmaker who uses the camera, set, and actors brilliantly but doesn’t have the greatest story idea can’t be a good director. Help us as an audience learn, so we can vote appropriately. Because we can’t do it now, apparently, and some of the most interesting and talented people are going to get left behind because we’d rather vote for crazy people in a cab than good cinematography and mise-en-scene (i.e., the arrangements of actors and set properties within the shot).

Go ahead. Call me a film snob.

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