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?

19 November 2003

International Feedback Loop

Last month when I saw Dog Days, Ulrich Seidl's disgusting but, on some level, accomplished feature (and winner of the grand jury prize in Venice), I immediately flashed back to Stanley Kubrick and Todd Haynes. But Seidl's suburban compositions — those rows of houses and splashes of color on the arid outskirts of a city — are also reminiscent of some of Yasujiro Ozu's later color features, particularly Good Morning. Ozu's housewives trot across the lane to peek in on their neighbors, a forced intimacy that prompts one couple to move and another to consider it. But, someone counters, "You'll have neighbors everywhere, except the mountains."

Although I'm largely ignorant of Ozu's life, I've been intrigued to hear that he may have been influenced by American movies. Circles, circles.

Think of Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars. It's widely known that Leone borrowed heavily from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo for his tale of a lone gunslinger/samurai who plays a local town's powers against each other. But Dave Kehr has pointed out that Kurosawa seems to have lifted the character and plot from Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, an American novel about a nameless detective, referred to as the Continental Op, who pits a corrupt town's bigwigs against each other. And Hammett may have been inspired by a real labor dispute in Butte, Montana.

And so it goes.

Film is truly an international medium, but the industry heavyweights have it in their best interests to erect borders, with their DVD region codes and xenophobic multiplexes. How else would Hollywood be able to repackage Ringu as The Ring and Open Your Eyes as Vanilla Sky? In other circles it's called protectionism.

But, you know, you've got neighbors wherever you go, except the mountains. Enjoy the view.

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