Category: media

The International Documentary Festival is underway in Amsterdam, and everyone is talking about… Borat. Well, not Borat, actually, but “many of the ethical issues that emerged in the Borat backlash are similar to those being discussed here this week by filmmakers from around the world. Not everyone here has seen Borat, but everyone certainly knows about it. So whether or not Borat will have any lasting effect on real documentary filmmaking is definitely up for unofficial debate.”

“Noir is the indigenous Los Angeles form: It was created here, it grew up here and from here it spread, not only as a genre but as a way of looking at life, character and fate. As a framing lens, it’s now so powerful that it seems not only to be a strategy for telling a story but a way to understand — automatically, unconsciously — how a story works. … Raymond Chandler’s narrow mean streets now encompass Tokyo, Berlin, São Paulo, London — any city that has crime or deceit or cracks in the facade or some event in which fate’s jaws snap shut with cruel or ironic finality.”

“The debate over what should be considered ‘family TV’ is never-ending. We talk ourselves into spirals of contradiction, illogic, and subjectivity when we make big pronouncements about how to control a child’s imagination. Oddly, if you ask the Parents Television Council what kids ought to watch, the answer is reality TV.” Recoiling from that suggestion, Matthew Gilbert says the situation is not so dire. He points to “a number of recent prime time shows that have found a way to appeal to teens and their parents simultaneously, without insulting either group with sap or stupidity.”

“Variety recently published an obituary for the VHS format: ‘VHS, 30, dies of loneliness.’ If there’s a format heaven, you’d expect VHS to be joining audiocassettes there. At age 42, cassettes predate VHS and have been pummeled by CDs and digital downloads. But the cassette just won’t seem to die.” What’s keeping it alive? Audio books.

Mark Olson says that this year’s Sundance lineup reflects a welcome maturity, a sign that the little festival that could has finally grown into its success. “Even as it has enjoyed increased cache and huge success, for years it has been known for self-consciously quirky films that lean heavily on dysfunctional families and relationships. For the 2007 edition, festival programmers say, filmmakers are looking beyond the familiar and the personal to the world at large.”

A bill that would have made it illegal for companies and individuals to use false pretenses to obtain information about consumers was killed this week in the California state legislature. Who could have been against such a measure? The movie industry, apparently: insiders are saying that determined lobbying by the MPAA is entirely responsible for the bill’s defeat.

The Sundance Film Festival is less than two months away, and the lineup is looking more than slightly eclectic. “Five dramas made by American directors were shot with characters speaking mainly in Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Portuguese or Muskogee, an American Indian language… Sexual oddities and sexual abuse, the ravages of war, the challenges of immigration, human disabilities and the writer’s life: all will be recurring themes.”

Some Australian critics are pinching themselves to see if the high quality of the current crop of homegrown films can possibly be real. But even as film buffs celebrate a golden year of Down Under moviemaking, many look at the past as evidence that the good times won’t last. “The one thing the Australian industry has never been very good at – and which drives film critics even nuttier than they usually are – is consistency.”

“While the headlines lately have been about television networks pulling their content or cutting deals with sites such as YouTube, we seem to be missing a bigger phenomenon. Millions of people hoarding vast, arcane and previously useless boxes of VHS (and in some cases, I suspect, Beta) tapes are discovering the Internet and are quietly posting their collections of bizarre minutiae.”

From “The Queen” to “Bobby,” from “Good Night, and Good Luck” to “Flags of Our Fathers,” more and more movies are integrating documentary footage with dramatic footage. The use of old footage is nothing new. “But what’s significant about these movies of late is the way they use archival material. Rather than as gimmickry, or shorthand, filmmakers are choreographing full-on tangos with the past. They’re — almost literally — dancing cheek to cheek with history.”