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?

23 February 2004

Bertolucci's Dreamers

Bernardo Bertolucci's new movie The Dreamers seems to have personal significance for many film critics. It takes place in Paris in the Spring of 1968 when student protests over the war in Vietnam and the firing of Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française, were blocking streets.

Both Ebert and Rosenbaum were there around that time, and Rosenbaum not only knows the novel on which the movie is based but also knows the novelist who wrote it (and wrote the screenplay).

But even critics who weren't there wax nostalgic. It was a golden era, it seems, not of movies themselves necessarily but of their urgency, and it's hard for people who love movies not to marvel at that climate. Because of that, many reviews are unusually reflective of the period, not just the movie. See A. O. Scott for an example. I also liked David Edelstein's comments, especially his observation that the young American's political speeches sound like "the 60ish filmmakers talking with 20/20 hindsight, not the anti-Vietnam-War American trying to sort it all out in the middle of this tumultuous moment."

More negative than most of the above is J. Hoberman, whose reaction is closer to mine, I think. Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd been there.

Posted by davis | Link

Other Recent Posts

Other Recent Episodes

Favorite Films