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?

22 October 2003

Cinemania

2002, Germany

directors: Angela Christlieb, Stephen Kijak

Cinemania is a funny but condescending documentary about half a dozen very hardcore film buffs who live in New York, or rather in the theaters of New York, since their days are spent watching 3, 4, or 5 movies a day, every day. For a film fan, part of the fun of watching Cinemania is seeing aspects of yourself in these people, magnified. I too have wanted to take the popcorn from someone's hands and throw it to the ground, or call the projection booth from my seat to demand that a problem be fixed without my having to get up and miss some of the movie, or write a computer program to help manage a film festival schedule. But I haven't needed such a program on a daily basis, which is the point of the movie: you, the viewer, are normal in comparison to these freaks, so sit back and be smug.

We learn next to nothing about these people's histories. The movie consists almost entirely of interviews with the buffs as they wait for movies to start or rummage through stacks of film paraphernalia in their claustrophobic Manhattan flats. But the movie cuts them off in the middle of a thought if the fragment is sufficiently goofy. One guy — whose list of favorite directors in his personal ad is pretty close to my own — reads his business card aloud: "writer and philosopher." Then he says that some people say his card is pretentious, as if he's about to respond to that allegation, but the movie cuts him off there, because the purpose of the movie is to validate our feelings about the guy, to assure us that, yes, he's pretentious. Full stop.

Cinemania includes footage of some of the buffs watching an early cut of the movie in a screening room — a possible allusion to Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin — but if the idea is to be a bit more balanced and give them an overdue chance to respond, the sentiment is undercut by showing us all of their geeky responses to the screening process, cut together with their complaints about video and the nature of art which are meant to seem extreme. Ironically, the movie is a perfect example of one of digital video's problems: the equipment is so small that documentarians forget decades of lessons about where to place a camera, how to hold it still, and how to keep from looking up the subject's nose. The most articulate and introspective of the buffs is Jack, and the movie appears more intelligent than it is simply by allowing him to string together a few unbroken sentences here and there. I'd be lying if I said the movie didn't make me laugh, but it's cheap entertainment that plants nary a thought in my head.

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