Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

1 August 2003

Northfork

2003, U.S.

director: Michael Polish

The first paradox of Northfork is that it's so light and wispy that it hardly registers as anything at all, and yet every scene is so heavy-handed and the metaphors so thick that no sense of the characters can possibly break through. The second paradox is that a movie with such beautiful cinematography gives us so little time to drink in the pictures. Seldom do we get five seconds between edits and almost never more than ten. Furthermore, the story is constructed like a TV show: we see a bit of story #1, then cut to story #2, then #3, then back to #1, and so on, throughout. The odd editing gives this sleepy, slow movie an irritating jumpiness that is probably counter to what was intended.

I can't help but think this movie was lost in the editing room and that a good movie is buried here, somewhere. The story involves the men who are assigned to go to the last of the people living in a valley soon to be flooded by the state and try to move them out of their homes. The men welcome the assignments the way the salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross welcome the stale leads. The story of these men roaming around at the edge of death-and-life is a compelling prospect, if only the movie would pause a moment and just let us watch them moving within this stunning landscape rather than trying to push them on to the next metaphor about children, angels, death, and rebirth, rather than trying to squeeze tears from them that we can't feel or jokes that we can't laugh at.

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