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nice entry.

I appreciate Pat offering a nonauteurist perspective on Jia Zhangke's Still Life for a change, specifically bringing in a few geographical, topographical, and geological considerations. The only reason I didn't devote a long review to this masterpiece before stepping down from my position at the Reader was strictly logistical, occasioned by (1) the Music Box's last-minute decision to book it sooner rather than later, and (2) the film opening at the Music Box the same week as Charlie Bartlett, about which I had already submitted a long review. Since Pat brings up the notion of Still Life as "the future as SF excavation site, some weird archaeological dig, like Blade Runner in reverse," it might be worth mentioning that the film actually features a flying saucer at one point and an excavated structure (if memory serves) taking off like a rocket at another. The absence of any naturalistic explanation for these details--or any explanation at all, for that matter--links them to the animated sequences in Jia's equally spectacular The World. But to do justice to the central role such ravishing interludes play in Jia's poetics, it's worth adding that the merely implausible and uncanny tightrope-walking seen in the background of the film's final shot and the completely naturalistic lighting up of a bridge at night much earlier are every bit as magical. Most art films don't have the blockbuster proportions of Jia's most recent fiction features--proportions that can only be properly appreciated on a big screen. So it's too bad that Jia's fascinating documentary Dong about painter Liu Xiao Dong--much of it shot at the same time as Still Life, and some of it employing even the same camera setups--isn't being made available at the same time. You can probably still track it down without subtitles as a DVD extra on one of the Chinese editions of Still Life, but it was obviously much better to see both films on large screens the same week when they premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

JONATHAN--re that "excavated structure" ("buildings ... shoot off into CGI-confected space" in the post): what it reminds me of most are the honeycomb buildings designed by g. terragni in 30s fascist italy * not that jia or anyone else would have this in mind, but the association does reinforce some of the film's more anxious themes: the free-floating terror, the strange, mutant "sublimity" of it all ...

pat, can you clarify "'blows everything else out of the water'"? is that a quote from somewhere?

your prose style really reminds me of manny farber's. is he an influence on you?

I Love Jia in general, and I felt Still Life was his greatest film when I viewed it for my Chinese Cinema class I took a semester ago. Its interesting you mention "No Country For Old Men", because from my experience, a lot of people's response to it was the same- mystification-"vaguely drained, unsettled" as Pat put it. Are audiences (even students who are being exposed to films like "Actress" and "Yellow Earth"), losing their sense of wonderment about films? More and more I'm noticing an apprehension, or puzzlement at films that end poetically, or that don't point towards its potential meanings obviously (in comparison to "There Will Be Blood", a politically and socially simplistic film that makes its meanings all too obvious, making it a "great" (or dull) passive viewing experience). Too often I find people saying things like "what the hell does that mean?" refusing to think more on a scene for more than a moment. Are audiences in general losing their ability to be challenged? Did they ever want to be challenged?

I'd like to echo the earlier support for "The World". Can't wait to see Still Life...... I first heard about it in an interesting review on a political site, found here - http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/still-life/ Another terrific movie, and though it might be a stretch to call it Coenesque as a way to sell it to American audiences, is Li Yang's Blind Shaft. Thanks for covering this.

VILLAINX--just impersonating adspeak; the quotes provide the distance ... MIKE A--i'm flattered but no, haven't read much farber at all ... KFOUTAH--re audience "challenges": you work at what you're interested in, that seems worth the energy expended, so ultimately the problem solves itself ...

kfoutah, and pat can correct me if i'm wrong, "Audiences exit the theater and everyone seems mystified, vaguely drained or unsettled" was not meant to be an indictment on the audience's un/willingness to be challenged, lost of wonderment and whatnot.

VILLAINX--far from it ... and actually i sympathize: "who was expecting this--i mean, aren't we nice people?" ...

What I find interesting is that from what I observe, people are rarely "mystified, vaguely drained or unsettled" and get anything positive out of it. They don't like feeling uncomfortable at all. The second something goes over their heads they get dismissive as if every movie has to condescend to them.

KIFAH--no one "likes" feeling uncomfortable ... it's what the idea of discomfort necessarily implies

what kind of bullshit is that? plenty of people do.....or have you never been to a horror movie? discomfort can bring you to places that enhance art and many people enjoy it, rather it be at a scary movie, or merely a thoughtful one. Not having a safe place to stand can be invigorating.

so being "comfortable"/complacent in your alleged discomfort isn't oxymoron enough? ... a little parsing out, please not to deny it has its uses though--like shoes that pinch, an inducement to buy new ones ... so you're back to steady-state "comfort" again, the default condition to which all living organisms aspire otherwise: sounds like some kind of sadomasochistic compulsion ... oops, forgot, that's actually pleasure!

pat g. and KIFAH – Maybe the word should be “rewarding;” the question is: “was it – fill in the experience: discomfort, shoe-pinch, laughter, boredom, etc. – worth it?” Derek Jarman’s BLUE sent me to the back of the theater, queasy and hyper-vulnerable (though I remained throughout, listening). David Russell’s THREE KINGS drove me from the theater (never to return), its sanctimony/obviousness too much to take (I have to give it another chance though, I love his other stuff). Brad Bird’s THE INCREDIBLES made me question my own (U.S.) society. All three uncomfortable – and worth it (with the exception of THREE KINGS)! And PAT G., to reduce the value of discomfort purely to utilitarianism is – especially for you! – a bit limiting. And KIFAH, I can’t tell you how often “mystified, vaguely drained or unsettled" has been a thoroughly positive experience for me! I must say, I have yet to find boredom at the movies rewarding…

Thanks for the support Digital. I was trying to imply that while an uncomfortable experience (or jarring, or "puzzling", what have you) is necessarily "comfortable" at the time, but can lead to great results for the psyche........be that as it may, this takes the discussion away from a unifying point of all of our posts, which is assessing the relationship between the audience and the material they derive "comfort" from. One only has to look at this last years crop of "indie" films (Juno being the prime suspect). that patted the audience on the head instead of offering a distinct, lively, or disruptive vision. I constantly hear stories from the 60's about how people used to line up to see L'ecclise and Weekend; is this instinct missing from our film culture? I'm not there, a film that upon further review only half like, was met with hostility and dismissive conclusion. I can respect a thoughtful pan (Armond White's being one of note), but that film (relatively easy to interpret as far as I'm concerned) was met with puzzlement. Any thoughts on this?

This film does not blow "There will be blood" and "No Country" out of the water. "No Country" is rigorously formal, but these days you need storytelling engineers to raise your pulse. A masterpiece of apocalyptic pessimism. The Coen brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel delivers the bad news with magisterial force: Evil walks the earth, dramatic closure is for fools, human life hangs on the flip of a coin, and - the hardest pill to swallow - cowboy heroism is just a bedtime story to soothe grown men. What on paper seems a simple game of cat and mouse and cat - Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones chasing terrifying assassin Javier Bardem chasing average cluck Josh Brolin with his satchel of found drug money - becomes a nearly biblical saga, and not one of the pleasant ones. The usually ironic Coens come through with their weightiest work yet, but for all the formal rigor of the filmmaking, "No Country" is about the chaos we desperately try to pretend isn't there. Vanity, vanity, murmurs this movie in response. "There Will Be Blood" aspires to tell the story of American capitalism and American evangelism by wedding Erich von Stroheim's unforgettable recklessness and Stanley Kubrick's late interest in full-tilt human madness. As any couples counselor could tell you, the marriage, while weird and very funny, is dysfunctional. More than any American movie I saw last year, this "Blood" has guts. "Still Life" has enough ennui and architectural alienation to summon the elegant specter of Antonioni, the work of Jia Zhangke certainly feels like the real deal, but is gutless and Simplistic at heart. You watch his latest fiction feature, and see a woman face off silently with a man at a reserved distance. “I want a divorce,” she says flatly. The dam churns behind them. Listen closely, and you’ll hear the sigh of literally dozens of international critics mourning the countryside’s clash with destructive modernity. Jia has always been this heavy-handed. His previous (and best) film, 2004’s The World, was set at a Chinese theme park where tourists could visit the Pyramids or the still-standing Twin Towers. But with that movie, and his warm cultural-thaw memoir Platform (2000), the director had a redemptive way of leavening his metaphors with youthful brashness, especially from teenage actors. Still Life, conversely, lacks a human pulse. Millions of people are being dislocated by the dam, their homes flooded. But we don’t really get to know a single one of them. Jia has always sought easy answers and he feels less complete as a filmmaker without his desperate strivers; this stately, dull project takes more inspiration from its title than is probably healthy.

I disagree completely, I think that the three characters we follow radiate their emotions physically and I think its easy for us to feel their presence and their emotions. There Will Be Blood on the other hand sells its characters short by keeping its characters and its supposed subtext (what exactly does it say about religion and politics that hasn't been said better exactly?) at a cowardly distance. A true character study is not intended in "Still Life" but the alienation and emotional state of the characters juxtaposed with the landscape is extremely powerful to me, much more powerful than the mannered posturing of "There Will Be Blood" Conversely "Still life" does indeed capture a communal tragedy that infects an entire village and the struggle and feelings of the people by and large are expressed quite well (only through imagery and music and by the characters we meet themselves). This communal dynamic is sorely missing in There Will Be Blood, the true impact of Plainview and the preacher is cut short. We don't get the feel of the entire community, as we did in two of the films Anderson so cowardly tried to put over us- "Days of Heaven" and "Mccabe and Mrs. Miller". The film, like its character is self absorbed. The idea that Plainview lives in a community and that the attitudes and emotions of the characters there matter is completely lost on Anderson

And as for "No Country" being "is rigorously formal"? In a day and age where strong film dynamics is more and more lost, I'll take the incredibly conceived (yet admirably acedemic) technique of the Coen's over the fake and generic stylizations of Paul Thomas "I don't think my audience has seen Greed, Goodfellas,Putney Swope, Repo Man, Short Cuts and Mccabe and Mrs. Miller so I'll copy them and reap the praise " Anderson. Who doesn't have an original cinematic idea in his body, or a real mature political or social consciousness in his brain. Before we go any further on this, id suggest you go over to the Post on "There Will Be Blood" and finish this there, where we've already tackled that film in detail.

KIFAH -- I don’t know if yesterday’s audiences were drastically different than today’s – there’ll always be a small portion who enjoy being challenged, and a larger mob sucking on the teat of the sequel. Hate to part ways with you on JUNO. I laughed throughout, enjoyed its over-clever (that was the criticism, right?) dialogue, didn’t mind the film’s choice of sweetness and humor over gritty realism (as if you even should judge it in the shadow of “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”). And, being patted on the head at the movies is one of those experiences I don’t mind (though, like you, I’m sure there have used that exact same criticism). Watched L’ECCLISE a few months ago – killed me. Tears! during Vitti and Delon’s romance in that apartment. Antonioni slays. I remember standing in line to see THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST in Chicago on opening night. Christian protesters, bomb threats – thrilling! Most “indie” films suck.

I didn't think Juno was "over clever", because I didn't think it was that "clever" at all. People these days seem to confuse "witty" sarcastic dialog as "good" dialog ever since the mid 90's. Juno was a formal rip-off of Rushmore without any of the complexity. The film all but ignores any real class issues, the Juno character is overly precocious, extremely rude and is never quite put in her place or challenged by any of the so called "adults" in the film. Juno sounds more like a cypher for the 26 year old ex-stripper who wrote the screenplay than an actual living being, a lower middle class middle American girl. I'm sorry 16 year olds, in 2008 don't make Soopey Sales references. The real issue in the film is to not deal with the topic or complications of teen pregnancy, its the story about finding a "true love", which Juno eventually does by apologizing to the putz who was in love with her all along (not only does the film steal the fragmentation of the seasons as a narrative device from rushmore, it steals the apologetic ending). How can we not compare this to 4 months 3 weeks and 2 days? that was a film that actually manifested the social and emotional pressure of unwanted pregnancy and an oppressive social system on the screen. Juno is a vein piece of soulless, indie-pop film making. The filmic equivalent of the moldy peaches (which the film treats us to an entire song TWICE......IN A ROW.......BEFORE THE CREDITS EVEN ROLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!). A xeroxed Rushmore. Garden State without half the charm (and I hate Garden State).

trictly speaking, "There Will Be Blood" doesn't come from the Bible. (It's sprung up from an 80-year-old-old Upton Sinclair novel.) But the movie has a stunning biblicality. In the beginning (the turn of the last century) there was a man. The man dug a hole in the earth. The hole went deep. The man plunged a great metal spike into the heart of the earth, and the earth bled a thick brown juice. By the bucket, the man and his crew hauled it up. The juice was called oil. The oil made him wealthy. The wealth made him powerful. The power made him crazy. Amen. The filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson, puts us right up close to this mustached oilman. His name is Daniel Plainview, as played by Daniel Day-Lewis in the kind of performance that makes a term like "acting" seem pedestrian (he floods technique with instinct). Plainview is a gathering storm. This alluring visionary has a seductive authority, scary beady eyes, and John Huston's diabolical diction. He actually starts out evoking Huston in, say, "Chinatown," and gradually - the patience shown for Plainview's trip from driven to psychotic is the key to the performance - concludes with him doing a comic remix of Humphrey Bogart's primal meltdown in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Yet he goes so far beyond homage or mere embodiment. Daniel Day-Lewis is something else here. He's the smoke, the ash, the lava, and the volcano. But as grand and singeing as Day-Lewis is, Anderson doesn't let him vanquish the picture, the way he did in "Gangs of New York." He doesn't need him to. Anderson puts us right up close to everything else in this great big funny, scary, deliriously one-of-a-kind movie. (The flabbergasting photography is by Robert Elswit; and Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, did the movie's churning, horror-film soundscape.) We're down there with Plainview scraping at the bowels of the earth. When a ladder snaps and Plainview crashes to the floor of his dark tiny birth canal of a well, he gasps for air. So do we. (His wheezing accounts for the only lines of dialogue for about the first 15 minutes.) What we're watching, with thrilling rapture, is a director building a movie the old-fashioned way: with his hands. Dirt cakes the fingernails. Oil smears the camera lens. The work we're seeing men do - the heaving, pulling, climbing, pouring, waiting - is exhilarating in part because it's so manual. I marveled at some of the labor being done on-screen and thought of Abel Gance, D.W. Griffith, and King Vidor, how those men built epics out of the cumulative force of real on-screen horsepower. Anderson's movie takes full advantage of its medium to show us the infernal birth of an industry. "There Will Be Blood" is anti-state of the art. It's the work of an analog filmmaker railing against an increasingly digitized world. In that sense, the movie is idiosyncratic, too: vintage visionary stuff. It's physical and tactile (including a "Three Stooges"-load of slapping.) There's an astonishing sequence, in which oil is struck, producing a gushing blowout that sends one character flying backward. The ensuing inferno has to be extinguished manually. The whole movie is full of dust and mud, soaked with earthly and bodily secretions (ponds of oil, ponds of water, a climactic pond of blood). When Daniel Plainview takes off his clothes and soaks in an ocean toward the middle of this movie, it's as if we're rinsing off the days and days of sweat and toil, too. This is a movie we can almost completely feel. But its physicality is only part of Anderson's achievement. It's true that Plainview is as long and imposing as the derricks he's putting up all over California. But both Plainview's seduction of the little towns in the way of his growing pipeline and his eventual mania connect beautifully with the grim tales of moral collapse in "Greed" and "Chinatown." One evening a long-faced young man named Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) arrives and seduces Plainview. Paul says his daddy's land has oil right there just beneath the surface, ready to be had, and for $500 he'll tell the tycoon where it is. A rival company, he says, is buying up all the land in the area, so Plainview had better act quickly. And he does, arriving at the Sundays' arid back lot of a property - in a place called Little Boston - with H.W. (Dillon Freasier), his partner and son. They're almost immediately accosted by Eli Sunday, an aspiring preacher who bears an uncanny resemblance to his brother Paul and is also played by Dano (who, for what it's worth, bears an uncanny resemblance to the surreally serious-looking Freasier). You might say Eli is a piece of work. For the Sundays' land, he wants Plainview to give $10,000 to build a church. As Plainview is publicly promising the townsfolk that the oil will produce infrastructure and an economy (schools, agriculture, roads, jobs), Eli pipes up: "Will the new roads lead to the church?" You can feel Anderson fixing for a duel between the man of God and the man of Mammon. As the movie rings the fight bell, you can also feel "There Will Be Blood" expanding into some kind of battle for the American soul: Big Oil vs. Big Religion. But Anderson doesn't overplay this. For one thing, it's an unfair fight, since Eli hardly seems as devoted to God as Plainview is to oil. And if this is an allegory, it's not straining to be allegorical. Eli's m.o. is mild moralizing, but he's as self-interested and monomaniacal as Daniel, who is so obsessed (with business, with himself) that he lacks an ostensible interest in sex or women. He responds to a lucrative buyout offer by asking, "What else would I do with myself?" Eli's ramshackle chapel eventually becomes a sort of mega-church. And it's not God's house. It's Eli's. The dais is a stage, the congregation an audience. And Dano, who was the speechless son in "Little Miss Sunshine," has a couple of electric Holy Roller-type scenes - impure theater. In one, Eli uproariously whales on Plainview, who looks ashamed more for his showboating assailant than himself. Daniel has a lot to atone for, though, in particular his treatment of H.W., who as a tot was anointed with a dab of crude to the forehead and whose temperament changes as the result of an injury sustained in that flaming blowout. Freasier and Day-Lewis develop a "Paper Moon"-ish physical banter. But the adult curiosity in Freasier's face turns intriguingly mean. That accident and his father's monomania have severely bruised him and altered their bond. The filmmaking in this movie will do that to you - leave you bruised. But for once Anderson, the director of "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," and "Punch Drunk Love," isn't desperate to run us over and knock us out. The cavalcade of characters and the ambulatory heaviness that were his stock in trade - he was Altman on skates with occasionally lead wheels - has thinned out and turned observant. The resulting movie is an achievement of patient art. The novel Anderson took the movie from, Sinclair's "Oil!," is a merry-go-round with too many horses. The director has pared away the dozens of characters (starlets, other oil magnates, more religious folk), talk of strikes, the Bolsheviks, and faraway places (London, Paris, Sao Paulo), and the accompanying tale of how an American city rises and falls. Maybe Anderson thought we don't need a second "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." The first one is great as it is. He also ditches the wishful editorializing that so thrilled Sinclair. Here's the author's closing riff on this title substance: It's "an evil Power, which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor." Finding a relatively simple story to extract from "Oil!" is in itself an act of prospecting. But the book as Sinclair wrote it - vast, highly populated, amusing, wild, weirdly entertaining - probably should have appealed to a filmmaker sometimes referred to as "P.T." The moniker evoked P.T. Barnum, and it invited you to see the circus in Anderson's emotionally volatile kaleidoscopes. Even Jon Brion's music for "Hard Eight," "Magnolia," and "Punch Drunk Love" had a "step right up, folks, step right up" quality. The thrill of a movie like "Boogie Nights" or "Magnolia" was that you were in the hands of a young artist (Anderson is only 37) who wanted to break a lot of rules he never really believed in in the first place. Neither movie was coherent - Anderson didn't seem to believe in coherence either. But he did understand cohesion. The finished films didn't always make sense, yet something - sincerity, ambition, a big sense of humor, pathos, anarchy of a sort - was holding it together. For "Magnolia," add to that list loud Aimee Mann music and frogs. Anderson is more detached in "There Will Be Blood," right up until the gonzo finale, a black-comic epilogue that's at once a savage, sick joke on Americana and a clobbering, snidely blunt impersonation of Stanley Kubrick. It makes good on the film's title, which may be taken from Lord Byron. "The king-times are fast finishing," he said. "There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it." The movie shares some of that prophecy. But it can't find the hope. Anderson's crazy ending is right where the crazy world outside the movie theater picks up. The people's revolt - against something like the tyranny of oil - might have a happy ending down the road. In the meantime, there is blood. And that is Anderson's greatest strength as a filmmaker and why all the complaints about him simply riffing on what’s been done before will never matter: He always makes the old seem new and exciting and he never, ever does exactly what you would expect.

KIFAH -- I doubt that “Juno” was a rip-off of “Rushmore;” yes it was formally similar and had little of “Rushmore”’s complexity, but to accuse theft is to say that Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson own that style and that Diablo Cody was out to deceive. I’d guess not true on both counts. There is no question of its lightness, and its wit (which can equal “good” in my experience) was unrealistic and precocious at best, but I let it be, which is to say I let it not be “Rushmore”, and “The Squid and the Whale”, and “4 Months…” – clearly all better films, I agree, by far. That “Juno” was unrealistic is not a shortcoming. I think it was honest about its tone and depth. I just don’t think it sucked. “Juno is a vain piece of soulless, indie-pop film making.” KIFAH, right on vain (again, not inherently a fault) and pop (as I said, the film, I believe, was honest about this), but soulless? I just didn’t feel that. And “Garden State” I loved (though, not a great film)! I thought Zach Braff stylized a scream, his own scream, in more scenes that worked than didn’t. And Natalie Portman’s performance, especially from her bedroom to cemetery, covered a range that floored me.

How the fuck did we get from a discussion of Still Life to Josh's oil geiser bursting from his pants, overzealous, overwritten money shot on There Will Be Blood? When Jia is "gutless" and PTA is apparantly he who has the balls to speak the truth that no mere mortal can hope to see, well I know where I stand on this argument, and it surely isn't with Josh.

Agreed. Apparently Josh is warming up for a master's thesis, and he expects us to be subjected to his unoriginal and long winded praises of a movie no one needs to sum up positively anymore, given the fact that its one of the most positively wide reviewed film EVER. He also took no effort to confront ANY of the criticisms of the film WHICH WERE ALREADY LAID OUT IN THE OTHER POST DEDICATED TO THE FILM, because that would detract from the love affair he seems to have with his own words.fd Once again, there is A WHOLE OTHER POST DEDICATED TO THIS FILM AND WE'VE ALREADY GONE OVER THIS IN DETAIL. To call Jia "gutless" while standing by the arrogant, empty, style of PTA is rather astounding. There is NOTHING to this film. NOTHING that can be proven. Nothing in the film OF ANY SUSTAINABLE SUBSTANCE. You can describe your emotions to this film all you want, but you can't give a clear definition of this film that fails to live up to the films that he has so shamelessly stolen from. I'm sorry. Josh takes Anderson's style for granted. He never questions the implications of the film, he just assumes its great art for several paragraphs without illustrating why. Jia represents art as a beautiful if often surreal expression of the real world and compared to the juvenile world view of Paul Thomas Anderson he's a moral and artistic giant. In world where there is a "still life", "There Will be Blood" shouldn't merit a moment more of our time. And lacking a human pulse? Always sought easy answers? you seem to have vaguery confused with complexity. As if Paul Thomas Anderson has ever crafted an original or complex character in your life, you want to criticize Jia Jengke? you're mistaking There Will Be Blood's "lack of easy answers" for ambiguity and complexity, for CONTENT without ever truly asking what it is he's saying to begin with. I would love for you to closely watch the end of Platform, The World or Unknown Pleasures and tell me what "answers" Jia is giving.

Digital- Granted, Garden State did have its charms (and its pretentious failings), but it did describe a community that was far more realistic than the fantasy Juno perpetuates. Im not implying that "Pop" is a bad thing at all, but I didn't call it pop, I called it "Indie Pop" referring to the recent fox searchlight pictures that pander to "Hipsters", who shit on real pop like Michael Bay and Speildberg, but don't have the patience or the cinematic intelligence to enjoy (let alone understand) Godard, Denis or Renais. These films pander to Bourgeois who need films to pat them on the head while appealing to their cultural sensibility, one which is looked at as "indie" (implying "smart" and "not mainstream") but makes money hand over fist and offers no real human, cultural or artistic insights(the filmic equivalent of Feist). I'm not saying that Diablo Cody was out to deceive, not in the way that Paul Thomas Anderson undoubtedly does, but that her style is generic and it lacks the depth of her influences (actually, Influence, and that influence is without question Rushmore, from the formal plot to the way it resolves, to the intentional style of music she deliberately wrote into the screenplay, only where Anderson utilizes the mastery and emotional complexity of Cat Stevens, Nick Drake and John Lennon, diablo (and her peers Zack Braff and Jared Hess among others) prefer 5th generation copies like The moldy peaches. Does Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson "own" that style? I actually think that they do. Rushmore, to me, is a classic, and I'm hard pressed to find a film quite like it, but If you can, please let me know (I don't mean to sound snarky, If I can be proven wrong here then please, indulge me). But aesthetic sensibilities aside, Rushmore was a complex film that deals with a lower class adolescents dreams, desires and his struggle to define himself in terms of (or in spite of) his class background. This is a dynamic that makes Max Fischer a decisively more complex (and realistic) character than Juno could ever hope to be. To bring us back to our topic, Anderson (when his style was truly his own) managed to negotiate pop sensibilities but inflect them with intelligent and complex touches which he learned from the masters, he didn't just copy the way Anderson or Reitman does. Jia's struggle to be seen and understood is far more difficult because his heirs (Ozu, Hou, Antonioni, Godard) are treated with ambivalence, apprehension or downright ignorance from American audiences (or more precisely young American audiences).

Sorry, to eat up this thread. when I wrote "quite like it", I actually meant "quite like it-before Rushmore", obviously there are films "like" it, Juno being one of them. Apologies.

KIFAH: Your arguments (Indie Pop machine, Cody’s genericism, “Rushmore”’s qualities) are right-on and persuasive. I ask myself, why am I defending “Juno,” being I only marginally respected it, and just casually enjoyed it. It’s just that – aside from Fox Searchlight’s intentions – Cody’s wordplay, Ellen Page’s performance, and Reitman’s direction all seem so harmless, if not sincere, that I have trouble hating the film. Generic, ultimately yes. Unoriginal (aside from her dialogue – no?) and, even, subconsciously stolen, maybe. Hateful? (I think back to when I did not like “Heathers.” I remember semi-hating it). I agree with you on “Rushmore” (have always been a fan of it, and W. Anderson and Wilson) though hard for me to call it a classic. And I am thinking hard on conjuring a pre-“Rushmore” like-styled film, and coming up empty handed. They could very well own it! Embarrassed to admit it, especially on this post, but I haven’t seen “Still Life,” nor “There Will Be Blood.” As a fan of P.T. Anderson, and after all I’ve skimmed through here and other post (mindful of spoilers), I plan on seeing it this weekend. “Still Life” may be a tougher find.

Kfoutah's argument is stupid and could be made against any filmmaker. Every filmmaker has their influences. You're getting to caught up in PTA's style. The fact of th matter is that There Will Be Blood is a shock to the system, an adaptation that sheds everything I’ve always felt self-infatuated and annoying about Anderson’s films (never-say-when sophomoricism, pointless epic-ness, aimless traveling shots, excessive quirk), and comes at the turn-of-the-century oil-prospecting morality tale with a stunning sense of grandeur (every image has an iconic feel), a bewitching respect for actors and viewers (you’ll find no other recent American film so full of multi-character set-piece shots), a disorienting soundtrack that keeps you on the balls of your feet (by Jonny Greenwood), and Daniel Day-Lewis, making good on the small but entertaining bet he lost, via caricature and cheese, in Gangs of New York. Also, this is a film of uneasy textures and elisions; like Punch-Drunk Love, what we witness sometimes seems to evoke things we didn’t, and the filmmaker has no interest in spelling things out for us, but instead lets us stew and grapple with the mysteries of history. The best American film of last year, and in the nick of time. On the other hand, Still Life offered no surprises: Aptly titled "Still Life" is another slow, contemplative look at spiritual/emotional malaise in modern China. Virtually docu-like look at a town about to be submerged by the Yangtze River Three Gorges dam project has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else. Most of Han's story involves long sequences of him walking around the town or engaging in desultory conversation with other workers. Paragraphed by captions that are more arbitrary than helpful ("Tobacco," "Liquor," "Demolition"), content is observational, recording landscape and atmosphere as a microscopic part of China's history yields to progress. Resolution of both stories is downbeat and emotionally inconclusive. Zhao, a dancer who's been in all three of Jia's previous features, brings some personality to her role, a mixture of tough and tender that rings true; Han, from Jia's "Platform" and "The World," is much more introverted. Both thesps have little material to work with. Still Life was one of the worst films I have ever seen. It's an interesting backdrop for a story - but the acting is so atrocious that I wanted to claw my face off. Is everyone in China mentally retarded? The way they were directed in this film, you would think so. I think someone got a hold of the cast and told them to always count to 3 before saying your line. I know Jia is trying to tell us something, but the way he tells the story is so awkward. He likes to use amateur actors, thinking this is the best way to show what real life is. But I feel so uncomfortable seeing their awkward performance, especially the secene in which the couple danced at the riverside. Also, Mr. Jia thinks the way to show true life is to present you a very slow paced, loosely linked, and inconsistent story. Show me a man who thinks pretentious, subtle, slow movies are art, and I'll show you a man with a little DICK.

Are you for real? Seriously? From what I grasp you seem to offer as insightful and profound the movie that beats you over the head with meaning and "retarded" and , to paraphrase, small dicked the movie that respects its viewer enough not to slam its intent in their face as bombastically as possible, no? If you're going to blame your interlocutor for making vague arguments I would highly advise against writing things like: It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else. Just a hint. Resolution of both stories is downbeat and emotionally inconclusive. God forbid a movie doesn't draw everything in black and white for us to feel pleased with ourselves for understanding exactly what simplistic thoughts we "oughta" feel and think upon leaving the theater. Now if dealing with a movie that exists in the grey areas of "emotional inconclusivness" that, to this viewer seems to be where most of the actual world exists, frustrates you cause you aren't being told exactly how you're supposed to react and think and feel makes you a bit uncomfortable, well, then I understand your diatribes a bit better. As for your final salvo, well, that perhaps proves the level and intellect of discourse you flounder within and the prefabricated battlelines you seem to have drawn and will go to no lengths to foolishly follow. p.s. Am I being the fool and is this just cribbed from Variety reviews? What with the talk of "thesps" and all.

PRETTY TONY--easy way to find out: just google a couple lines and see what shows up ... though i'm pretty much in agreement with you there, about the "thesps" et al

Josh- A little dick? how civilized of you. I'm sure Pat Graham, Rosenbaum and J.R Jones would love to show you theirs if you show yours. What exactly do you get out of posting here? Also I'd say anyone who tries to impress strangers on the internet by posting irrelevant and poorly written film reviews that have NOTHING to do with the conversation we we're having, and didn't address any of the criticism that has already been laid out against it, is the one.... no, I'm not gonna stoop to your level. But my god, are you an ARROGANT ASSHOLE. this fucking asshole actually wrote "The filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson, puts us right up close to this mustached oilman. His name is Daniel Plainview," as if he was writing for the life size cut out for variety. Are you serious? outside of being a corny, corny writer, Josh is just full of himself enough to try to pass off his pathetic film review on a comments section of a blog where we were having a CONVERSATION. AFTER I told him repeatedly that we already went over this. Do you think we don't know who Daniel Plainview is? what a prick. I defy you to tell me what "easy answers" Jia comes up with, and you know what response I get? "Resolution of both stories is downbeat and emotionally inconclusive." You seem to not understand your own arguments, so it makes sense why you would be trying out your Entertainment Weekly rejection piece on us. "Show me a man who thinks pretentious, subtle, slow movies are art, and I'll show you a man with a little DICK. " excuse me for liking slow and subtle movies. Since there is absolutely subtle or nuanced or even remotely interesting in There Will Be Blood it should be no surprise that a vain asshole like yourself would like it. Are you the Plainview of film criticism? A lame imitation of of your fore fathers A.O Scott and David Denby? a little Rex Reed thrown in there? I think all movies are art thank you very much, and you've probably never seen seen Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, Mccabe and Mrs. Miller, or Greed to understand why There Will Be Blood is bad art and no, you can't make that criticism about other filmmakers, because other filmmakers don't steal hand over fist entire plotlines, characters and small details the way Anderson does without admitting it. There is no content in there will be blood, only the pathetic imitations of other great films (even the Johnny Greenwood score is a lame imitation of the more dissonant passages in the 2001 Score. Anderson has nothing but other people's idea's. The main scene in the movie, the oil derrick burning is almost EXACTLY the same as days of heaven..............you know what, im breaking my own rules for even engaging with you, because we've already been over this ON THE DESIGNATED THERE WILL BE BLOOD POST. sell your bullshit, sub Richard Roeper film reviews somewhere else. We dickless slow movie fans like to talk TO each other, as opposed to trying to impress each other with our lame copy writing, you arrogant, vain, asshole.

Also, thanks for the support and for beating me to the punch, pretty tony(big ghostface fan myself). I'm wondering if that is plagiarized after all.

Crap, accidently erased an earlier version but to sum up: TWBB = http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=10610 (Boston Globe, Wesley Morris) + http://zeroforconduct.com/2007/12/16/there-will-be-blood.aspx (Michael Atkinson) Still Life = http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117931509.html?categoryid=31&cs=1 (Variety, Derek Elley) Though I think the last few sentences on TWBB and the last two paragraphs, plus the "little DICK" coments are "Josh"'s. So we got a few foolish reviews plagarized/copied/whatever by one bigger fool. Ah, the internet. Thanks for continuing a responsible, inciteful high-lebvel discourse! I'm sure "Josh" is laughing his ass off somewhere, petty minds enjoy petty tricks.

wow. Well its nice to see an example of PTA's most devoted fan base. Well thats a cheap shot, but goddamn, what a fool. Digital- Still Life is definitely worth tracking down if you can, and while I strongly dislike there will be blood its definitely worth seeing and I'd appreciate your thoughts on it if you get around to seeing it Good Job Tony! way to get down to business, how did you track those down?

As Pat said, just plug 'em into google.

Kfoutah is the reason why everybody hates film critics. You seem to make personal attacks on people to whom you disagree with. A great number of the best American Critics loved TWBB, J Hoberman, Mike Atkinson, Wes Morris, Ty Burr, Amy Taubin, Denis Lim, Manohla Dargis, etc. I think the movie top the Village Voice list of alternative critics and Film Comment's list as well. Sorry it didn't work for you, but you come off as the epitome of a smug film snob. Also, it seems that Josh isn't alone in his opinion.I found this article on Chinese film Chief Zhang Hongsen. Zhang said that Still Life 'is a movie without love and not worth watching." Zhang, deputy director of the film bureau under the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), said Jia's movie is set to be a loser in the box office and it cannot draw eyeballs of Chinese film viewers. "I don't deny that the movie is good. But it lacks love and care to working classes," Zhang said, adding young directors, including Jia, are easy to set their love and the movie apart. "These directors neglect a fact that the movie is histrionic. This raises the likelihood of turning the movie into a kind of absolute realism. Their movies are inanimate and hard to drag views into cinema." Jia Zhangke, is urged by Zhang to learn how to care for others. "I have discussed with Jia. Although their movies depict the struggling working class, they are 'cold' to viewers." Zhang's words raise speculation that 'Still Life' poses a lackluster performance in the box office despite its acknowledgement by the international film community. "Still Life" (Sanxia Haoren) set against China's colossal Three Gorges Dam and was shot in the village of Fengjie, which has made way for the Three Gorges Dam. is a movie without love and not worth watching. Zhang, deputy director of the film bureau under the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), said Jia's movie is set to be a loser in the box office and it cannot draw eyeballs of Chinese film viewers. "I don't deny that the movie is good. But it lacks love and care to working classes," Zhang said, adding young directors, including Jia, are easy to set their love and the movie apart. "These directors neglect a fact that the movie is histrionic. This raises the likelihood of turning the movie into a kind of absolute realism. Their movies are inanimate and hard to drag views into cinema." Jia Zhangke, who is acknowledged for his favor in portraying the struggles of the working class in China amid a rapid social and economic changes, is urged by Zhang to learn how to care for others. "I have discussed with Jia. Although their movies depict the struggling working class, they are 'cold' to viewers."

Not engaging in discussions of why people hate film critics etc. but just because the majority of critics like a film doesn't make it good (this is said in general), but that discussion has occured a million times without a resolution. More to the point of the above, is the " deputy director of the film bureau under the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT)" really the best source for film criticism? PArticularly from a country as open to its own artists being allowed to express themselves as they see fit, and to be alowed criticism of said country, as China?

anyone who thinks No Country was a masterpiece has no idea what the cinema actually is. Someone give me one good example of great mis en scene or montage from that film? Its impossible because there is none!

OH btw Josh is symbolic of the stupidity of most film goers in this country.

Excuse me Jane, but Josh set the rules of engagement when he proclaimed that I (and those who agree with me) are "dickless", I made a personal attack on Josh because he was being rude, and consequentially phony (his comments we're plagarized), not because he liked "There Will Be Blood" and hated "Still Life" (which he probably didn't see) . I never made a personal attack on anyone simply because they didn't agree with me and never would. The fact that this movie was so widely praised AND so widely written about in comparison to other films which I think are much better. Why should I care either way if the Chinese deputy director of the film bureau under the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) has to say about the film? I want to know what you have to say about it? I'm the reason people hate film critics? I'm not a film critic in any capacity, and I don't see why my opinions would make people hate film critics......but anyway, if you have something to add about the film, I'd love to discuss it with you. P Yazdi- If we're going by orthodox definitions of Mise en Scene and Montage ( or defined by either Bresson or Eisenstein), I don't think too many American films of the last 40 years would be considered masterpieces either, but I don't agree that there is a definition of what cinema is, or what it ought not to be, films work by themselves or they don't and its a matter of the pleasure derived from the viewer anyway. No country is filled with nothing but well thought out angles and perfect (yes, forgive me, Im using the word perfect), editing. While the shots themselves may not amount to much in terms of information illuminating the psyche's of the character's etc. the film does this in other ways (lighting, dialog, tone etc.) I don't think that it has to conform to an idea of cinema that was conceived eons ago to be "great" or a "masterpiece".

Correction end of second paragraph add -is why I g0t so pissed off, not because I simply didn't think it was good.- I got too carried away and couldn't finish a sentence, embarrassing.

For me if the film does not follow a classical idea of what cinema is: montage and mis en scene it aint worth the film stock it was shot on. IMHO No Country is nothing more than a script with pretty frames around it. The modern equivalent of the cinema of quality that Cahiers so rihtfully bashed 50 years ago. Whatever the problems with TWBB, and your right about his post modernist appropriation of others films, it still is a much better film than No Country for two reaons. First, it attempts to at least make an attempt at mis en scene. For me there are two primary examples i will cite. The first being the scene where his son comes back to visit him after being sent away. Anderson uses a long take to shot this scene and while his characters are about to have a very important and emotionally filled encounter he keeps his camera away from them. We are not put right into he action. A jackass like Speilberg would have had use right there. He would have blasted the emotional John Williams music and turned on the waterworks for cheap affects. Anderson at the very least has the understanding that this moment is such an emotionally charged one that he is really incapable of showin this to us up close. The Shot hence creates a commentary by Anderson on how he doesnt think we should be right in the middle of such a moment. The second scene that comes to mind is the rig explosion sequence. While the scene is in many ways stolen from previous films, anderson still brings something unique and exciting to the sequence. In his film the shot structure and lighting almost come to symbolize the pivotal moment in the film where we are fully aware of the evil within the plainview character. The darkness of the shots, the muddy filled characters, the long tracking shots back and forth, and the fact that the burning of the oil is the only source of light all are used by anderson as a statement on this film and america. The burning of the oil and the fire become the only source of light while all the characters and the settings are in darkness and not to be seen. While this is a very simple idea and Anderson doesnt make profound statements about america that havent been done numerous times before, he at least attempts to make these statements through what makes cinema unique as an art form: Decapogue, montage and mis en scene. For this i commend him and i thoroughly enjoyed the film. What makes NO Country's editing so perfect? Its ony function is to propogate the story structure, characters, and dialog. It never even attempts to use montage or mis en scene as a way of telling us anything. Furthermore, the coen brothers numerous attempts to make us the viewer laugh at simple folks, murder, and to be in awe of their supposed audacity in the violence makes me want to puke a disgust. They are nothing more than pornographers giving the cinematic equivalents of the cum shot. Furthermore, their entire editing structure is nothing more than a rip off of Polanski. So i dont see why you are giving them a free pass and bashing Anderson for the same use of this disgusting and morally reprehensible use of post modernist appropriation that is so prevalent in american cinema. I apologize in advance for my inability to write better. Nonetheless, I hope that you can at least partially understand my argument against No Country and in favor of TWBB. In the end, though neither film or director is worthy of carrying still life or a director like Godard's jockstrap. American Cinema is dead. Lets bury the sucker and appreciate the masters from other countries. Even the freaking Renessaince only lasted 50 years. You dont see the italiens thinking that they have the market cornered on painting today.

Well, I guess I'm not as cynical as you are, but nonetheless I appreciate your seriousness, although I have some problems with a few of your points as for the scenes you cited 1)"Anderson uses a long take to shot this scene and while his characters are about to have a very important and emotionally filled encounter he keeps his camera away from them." -There is nothing emotional about this scene, even in its subtext. The movie makes very clear, in the very next scene I believe, that the return of the son is purely for personal gain. And even if this wasn't the case, whats wrong with showing an emotional scene if it can amount to something substantial? my problem with the film in general is that I never felt that I was watching something of substance, these scenes show me why. 2) This scene is a dull rehash of the locust attack in "Days of Heaven", and I'm stunned that few have has pointed this out. Right down to the red light on the silhouettes. Only in Days of heaven the scene heightens the emotions of the characters- illuminating them- while dramatically and stunningly foreshadowing the finale of the picture, and simultaneously expanding on Malick's investigation of the relationship between man and the environment. In There Will Be Blood the scene only shows us how little he cares for his son. You could argue that the red explosions represent his greed, but isn't that a bit sophomoric? Secondly, there is nothing "post-modern" about theft. Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't "appropriate" other people's works, he steals things out right, Im not gonna give you the laundry list here as you probably know it, but if you're curious.... The Coen's are genuinely post-modern, as was Godard, Scorsese etc. Anyway there was no point in No Country where the Coen's actually do make you laugh at violence, its all taken very seriously. "What makes NO Country's editing so perfect? Its ony function is to propogate the story structure, characters, and dialog." - don't forget about ACTION, and yes, this to me is exactly what makes it perfect, in the sense that Dial M for murder is perfect. The camera is always in the right place, it cuts at the right time for maximum impact, and the emotions and tensions are heightened when they need to be. I found nothing like a "cum shot" in the film, so maybe you're a bit more skeptical towards violence in movies than I am, which is fine, but I simply don't find anything distasteful. say it is a rip off of Polanski (im not totally convinced of this), its still using the cutting style of a great technician. Sound technique, even as simple and academic as No Country's is a rare, rare, rare, thing these days. Especially in suspense scenes (compare No Country to Disturbia, can you then tell me that you can't appreciate how sound it is, even at a basic level?).And even so taking a sound filmmaker's editing scheme is not that same as lifting entire set pieces (and in some cases, entire story lines) from recent films of the past like PTA does. And when the Coen's do borrow they bring something else to it (hudsucker proxy/metropolis). Anderson usually just waters the things he steals down.So I don't think I'm using a double standard at all. The mise en scene in There Will Blood to me is rather bare. Pierrot Le Fou, now thats a film with a mise en scene', and you know what I'm talking about. Still Life too. Lets not waste anymore time defending this picture (There Will Be Blood). You write just fine. But I don't think American Cinema is "Dead" (Im quite partial to Michael Mann, Scorsese, Van Sant, the Coen's and even.......... Michael Bay and Speildberg! among many others . I do think that Cinema in general may not be what it used to be for a variety of reasons, but I still find exciting things to see that are new, Still Life being a perfect example.

I couldnt disagree with you more on the Coen brothers. To me they are nothing more than just plain garbage at this point. Them and spielberg are the devil incarnate as far as im concerned. As far as im concerned i dont want to waiste any of my time talking about something as horrible as No Country. To me TWBB is far superior picture but neither one is even worth mentioning in the same breath as a Godard film or Still life. as Rosenbaum has so perfectly put it, im paraphrasing here, when godard steals a shot from another film he uses it as point of film criticism. He doesnt simply steal for the sake of stealing something and making it his own. It isnt one of these asanine hommages that scorcese, the coens, pta, or tarantino do. When in Le Mepris he steals the pan shots around the greek statutes from voyage in italy what he is actually doing is using it as a point of criticism about the end of classic art in the modern world. This is in direct contrast to Tarantino ripping off the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction. In which it serves no purpose but to just steal it. I dont see how the Coens are any different. They borrow or steal things from others, and while they change thing slightly, how are they changing our fundamental understanding of the original? Its not. Hence why Rosenmbaum refers to this as post modernist appropriation. I do realize that the rig exploding sequence is very similar to or probably stolen from days of heaven. But i didnt think it was as big a theft as you do apparently. to me it was changed enough that it was just similar and not a straight ripp off. furthermore, besides demonstrating his lack of caring for his so, the scenes imagery is quite powerfull in that the burning of the oil is the only source of light by the end of the scene. everything else including the characters are literally and figuratively covered in darkness. that was different than how malick did it. to me by letting the camera play at a distance from the reunion is the exact reason why you are so convinced that he doesnt care about his son returning. anderson is using cinematic space, or more appropriately attampting to, in order to distance us the viewer from this part of the story. as to why that is left up to the viewer. but this is a type of mis en scene that you simply do not find in most american films. at least anderson is attempting to make a great work of art. The coen brothers, just like spielberg, are great masters at telling their story succinctly and drawing in the viewer for maximum affect. But neither one is an artist of the cinema IMHO. Both also have a propensity for not trully respecting the power behind the cinematic image and cinema in general. Paraphrasing Sarge Daney, he once talked about how he wished some teenager would rebel and be upset over the images in the we are the world music video. the audacity of mixing in images of poor starving african children and rich musicians. I actually share the same sentiment. I am disgusted when Spielberg rebuilds auschwitz and turns the entire holocaust and the life of a great man like schindler into a childlike speech about saving another life just so he can blast the john williams music and turn on the waterworks so that he can give his movie a great ending. I am disgusted when the coens think its funny to life at midwestern (fargo) or now western hicks right before they get brutally murdered. Look at how Hitchcock treated his murderers and how the coens do. Anton's whole existent on the screen seems to be in order to create shock and awe among the audience. He is the bad ass that we all want to be according to the coens. Yes i am disgusted at the herofication of a serial killer. Simply put i have an ethical as well as artistic problem with the coen brothers. PTA while not being that original, at least to me has always been honest with himself and has always tried to make films that attempted to be great and outside the current state of hollywood. To me there are american directors worth watching and great. Among them the most notable today i believe to be jarmusch. Whose Dead Man is probably one of the 2-3 greatest american films of the last 30 years. Eastwood made some good films. I will watch any wes anderson film, but he seems incapable of reduplicating rushmore at this point. Scorcese seems to be getting more childlike and infantile per picture at this point.I still cant believe the same man was capable of making a masterpiece like King of Comedy.

Oh BTW kfoutah beside our obvious differences on No Country and TWBB we are in perfect agreement on your other arguments. Especially your attack on the whole bs indie cinema thing and Juno.

P YAZDI is another pompous film elitist. So you know more about film than every American critic, right? If you know so much, why aren't you making movies and witing reviews? Who do you like besides Godard and Jia an Jim Jarmush. The whole argument about stealing styles is bullshit. Everybody has there influences. You're just a condescending, pretentious asshole. As if Jarmush didn't rip off people in films like Ghost Dog. NCFOM is one of those movies I think provides a critical litmus test. You can quibble about it all you like, but if you don't get the artistry at work then, I submit, you don't get what movies are. Jerkoffs like yourself, can disapprove of the unsettling shifts in tone in the Coens' work, or their presumed attitude toward the characters, or their use of violence and humor -- but those complaints are petty and irrelevant in the context of the movies themselves: the way, for example, an ominous black shadow creeps across a field toward the observer, or a phone call from a hotel room that you can hear ringing in the earpiece and at the front desk, where you're pretty sure something bad has happened but you don't need to see it; or the offhand reveal of one major character's fate from the POV of another just entering the scene; or... I could go on and on. To ignore such things in order to focus on something else says more about your values than it does about the movies. It's like complaining that Bresson's actors don't emote enough, or that Ozu keeps his camera too low.

"Pretentious asshole?" "jerkoff?", why are you guys getting so bent out of shape? P Yazdi's Nightmare: "The whole argument about stealing styles is bullshit. Everybody has there influences." Josh: "Kfoutah's argument is stupid and could be made against any filmmaker. Every filmmaker has their influences." Josh! a pleasure for you to join us again, apparently your arrogance has gotten so intense, that you've actually started plagiarizing yourself now!

This is in response to P Yazdi. Why is Dead Man in the top 3 3 American films of the last 30 years? IMO, the film has has no subtext -- the subtext is the text, and the film's intentionally ludicrous and anachronistic world set my teeth on edge from the get-go. Unless you find the notion of 19th-century characters speaking in modern vernacular inherently funny (I don't), or are amused by the notion of a "stock" American Indian character dispensing absurd homilies and saying things like "What is your name, stupid fucking white man?" (I wasn't), there's little to engage you on a moment-to-moment basis. Your only recourse is to try to determine what everything means -- what genre conventions are being subverted; what aspects of contemporary society Jarmusch is using the Old West to criticize; why the protagonist is named William Blake, and his faithful Indian companion known as Nobody (lots of "Who's on First"-style gags, as you might have guessed); and so forth. Dead Man is a film that cares more about impressing the audience with profound ideas than about its narrative. You can wrestle with semantics all you want but it doesn't make for a very compelling movie.

I am surprised with how many people on this blog who hate "NO Country." While I don't think the film is on the level of Still Life, I still think it's a very good film. Any movie that asks Javier Bardem to wear a Prince Valiant haircut is begging for laughs. But what if he's killing almost every one he meets while he's wearing it? The hair is only a little funny in No Country for Old Men. Gruesome, comic, and awesomely eloquently as it was, nothing about McCarthy's book said "Coen brothers," but the staggering movie they've made is very much the precision thriller of "Blood Simple" and "Fargo"'s comedy of the broken law. But "No Country" contains very little of the regional mockery that characterizes a lot of their recent movies. Even the yokels here have a serious streak. The acting is superb across the board, from Jones and Bardem to the locals in bit parts to Kelly MacDonald as the sort of supportive wife (Brolin's) who would make Tammy Wynette proud. (Beth Grant is a riot as Brolin's nattering mother-in-law.) I love the movie's visual contours, too, the way the photography and editing perfectly dramatize McCarthy's prose and poetically blunt dialogue, a lot of which shows up here. The scale and scope are perfect. And the suspense here surpasses most horror films.

I agree whole heartedly with you Wes, I don't think it laughs at the lesser educated characters as their other films do (but also, remember in Fargo the hero is a local police officer). And the suspense is top notch, especially compared to the recent films that have been coming out that are supposed to be suspenseful or horrific. David-I think there is tons to engage the viewer on a moment to moment basis in Dead Man, a film which I think is a masterpiece, and saying that the the films subtext is the text, isn't a bad thing to me. I think as a western made in the 90's its an original and visionary piece of work, especially on the big screen. I think the narrative of the film is quite strong and the story's emphasis on challenging the existential reality of the character as the story progresses makes for a fascinating, complex and hallucinatory experience.

For the best analysis on Dead Man I would point you to Rosenbaum's wonderful book on the film. As for the douche above, or should i call you josh, a consensus opinion doesnt make it the right one. During the 1950s the majority of film critics thought that Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks were bad directors and laughed at Godard, Rivette, and the rest of the Cahiers gang for being the only ones who gave those directors their due. Well no one is laughing anymore. Also, lets get serious about this. America, minus one or two excepions, doesnt have film critics. THey have film reviewers. A bunch of brainless retards who just regurgitate what he marketing department tells them to. It makes me more than pleased that real american film critics like Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr slammed No Country as much as I did.

America has more than one or two film critics, and one simply has to look a the staff of film comment to see that. Rosenbaum, Hoberman and Armond White also qualify. So would Manhola Dargis, to name a few. Rosenbaum also commented how No Country "is a very well-made genre exercise" then gave it 4 stars in the film comment poll of that month, so no he didn't slam it as hard as you.

Did you read his review from here? That is a pretty hard slam job if you ask me. Wasnt Dargis the same film critic who Godard basically said to her face she wasnt a film critic and only a reviewer? Not trying to be a jerk with that one just curious. I remember reading it and Laughing my ass off. Look. I have read film comment and it doesnt do much for me. I find some blogs with no name cinephiles to be more insightfull than some of those film critics. Honestly, I find you to be more insightful and having a better understanding of the cinema than most of the guys walking around calling themselves film critics. There are really only two current american film critics i greatly admire in Rosenbaum and Kehr. Outside of that the best pieces of current film criticism i can find is by no name cinephiles on the web and certain people who mainly freelance or write books.

P Yazdi do us all a favor and kill yourself. You know-nothing hack.