by DAVID KERN
by DAVID KERN
WHEN: Friday Nights, 9 pm ET.
WHERE: NBC
OUR RATING: 10.5
“…Life is so very fragile. We are all vulnerable. Will will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts. That what we have is special. That it can be taken from us, and when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls. We will all now be tested. It is these times, it this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.”
- Eric Taylor
Friday Night Lights
Season One, Pilot
Read the rest of this entry »
by DAVID KERN
Thanksgiving is over so, naturally, it’s time to pull out the wreaths and stockings and mistletoe, to head to the store and by eggnog in bulk (rum not included), candy canes, and the advent calenders with a chocolate for each day. And, of course, to fire up the trusty ole’ DVD player (Blue-Ray anyone?) and enjoy some fantastic holiday fare. 
You remember those December nights when mom and dad would make you sit in the blasted living room and “enjoy” (or else….) those painful old black and white films with the grainy footage and annoying song and dance numbers you couldn’t stand? Yeah, well you’re over that now. These days, you’re older, wiser and much more hip and so you realize the value of those Christmas traditions. Right?
These days, you enjoy those old musicals with the songs that can only be taken seriously when there is a plastic reindeer covered with faux-snow in your front yard and a pine tree in your living room. You enjoy the almost silly but mostly heartwarming stories you couldn’t stand back when you were cool.
But. If you’re anything like me, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t mind experiencing something new, even something of lasting artistic and aesthetic quality, when it comes to Christmas flicks. Well, it turns out that there are plenty of quality Christmas films that are quality films even were you to subtract the Christmas trimmings and trappings. Some of these films are indies, some are foreign, some are true classics you’ve doubtless already seen many-a-time but are worth watching with a more critical eye, others are films that were the original inspiration for the holiday “classics” you’ve been watching on cable for years with mom and dad.
Even Christmas movies should be viewed with discretion and as there so many to choose from it can be hard to sift through all the garbage to find the gems. In fact, there are so many versions of single stories that it can even hard to find the best version of a single traditional tale: Dicken’s A Christmas Carol seems to be newly adapted just about every other year and Miracle on 34th Street also has numerous versions, to mention just a few.
So, hopefully you will find a gem on this list, or at least be reminded why certain films are so precious.
Enjoy! And be sure to share your favorite Christmas films with us, whether they’re classics you’ve grown to love or newbies everyone should see asap. Happy holiday viewing! Read the rest of this entry »
by BRETT MCCRACKEN
The long take is, in my opinion, the most cinematic of all cinematic devices. It gets to the heart of what cinema is: a series of moving images that captures time as it happens. It has recently been used in gimmicky and show-offy ways (Children of Men, Atonement, etc), albeit to spectacular effect. But the long take is far more than just a tactic for the skillful filmmaker to use and exploit to wow his or her audience. No, the long take is the heart of cinema. Or, at least, it is the heart of cinema’s potential for the transcendent.
Cinema as a medium is unique in its relationship to time, and thus its potential for transcendence has a lot to do with its temporal nature. Of course, this all has roots in photography—itself an art of temporal orientation. Susan Sontag, in her influential book On Photography, spoke of photography as “an elegiac art, a twilight art,” suggesting that “to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
Russian filmmaker/theorist Andrei Tarkovsky believed cinema went even further than the still photograph, and was the first medium to allow man to take an impression of time as it unfolds. He wrote about this in Sculpting in Time:
“I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience—and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer … As he buys his ticket, it’s as if the cinema-goer were seeking to make up for the gaps in his own experience, throwing himself into a search for ‘lost time.’” (Sculpting in Time, 63, 82). Read the rest of this entry »
I read recently how the great 20th century Southern writer Eudora Welty joked that the first questions a southerner asks upon meeting a newcomer are “who are your people?” and “where are you from?”. In the consciousnesses of the vast majority of southerners - even to this day - clan, family, and community are the windows through which all of life is primarily viewed. The few southerners who do not view the world accordingly are more than likely transplants from the North, migrants and misfits in the southern world of SEC football, sweet tea, and deep fried vegetables. Southerners are defined by their family names, their hometowns, and their work. That is why old southern families give their children christian names based after familial last names, why entire towns root so entirely and so passionately for local football teams - on the high school and college levels - and why many farmers and small businessman strive tirelessly in their cotton and tobacco fields, in their shops and store rooms, as big business scythes and corporate plows destroy a way of life so intimately a part of southern history and life.
For many years, this community-centric view of life was the inspiration for some of the greatest artists and works of art American culture has ever known, especially in the world of fiction. Joining Miss Welty in the canon of classic southern literature are notables like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Walker Percy, even Harper Lee, and more recently Wendell Berry. Indeed, at the very heart of the stories these authors wrote was (or is) a firm belief in the power of community as redemptive force and place as a source of hope, themes without which their work would be radically and indistinguishably different. Welty grew up in, and was highly influenced by, the Mississippi back country, whose distinguishing habits and personalities her job as a journalistic photographer allowed her to observe closely. Faulkner too was shaped by his life in rural Mississippi. Read the rest of this entry »
Since I’m a movie buff, the summer movie season has always been my favorite time of year. Sure, it usually doesn’t yield Oscar-fare like the fall does but it’s jam-packed with so many big budget extravaganzas bent on melting my brains that I can’t help but get excited. The 2008 summer movie season kicks off with a very special movie, for which I have been waiting nearly 20 years to be released - the 4th installment in the INDIANA JONES saga, INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Read the rest of this entry »
