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 September 2004

Rosenbaum on Antonioni's Michelangelo Eye to Eye

These paragraphs are buried in Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of The Five Obstructions:

The most beautiful experimental film I've seen this year — a 17-minute 35-millimeter film by Michelangelo Antonioni called Michelangelo Eye to Eye — doesn't look experimental at all. It wasn't shown to the press or advertised, and it played only twice as a separate attraction at a few theaters in the Landmark chain one weekend in mid-August. I wanted to make it a Critic's Choice the following week, but it got yanked. Apparently the screenings were held so the film would qualify for an Oscar nomination, and we might not see it again if it doesn't get nominated and win.
Antonioni, who's about to turn 92, has been confined to a wheelchair since he had a stroke in 1985. Yet this recent film shows him on his feet, without a cane, entering Saint Peter's in Rome to gaze at and briefly caress the restoration of Michelangelo's Moses, then leaving. An opening title explains that this is possible because of the "magic of movies." This is evidently digital trickery, but it looks seamlessly real. I'd argue that the process whereby the restoration of one Michelangelo is able to interact with the restoration of another is profoundly experimental — much more so than either The Five Obstructions or What the Bleep Do We Know?, both opening this week.

I enjoyed the film, too, and if I hadn't seen it I might have concluded from Eros that Antonioni had quite recently flipped his lid.

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