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?

11 October 2004

What in Tarnation?

I'm surprised at how many critics are falling over themselves to praise Tarnation. I wonder if some of the sentiment comes from a need to recognize the phenomenon of personal cinema that we all know is brewing even though we don't yet have a standard-bearer to mark the beginning. Until now. I'm not sure if Tarnation has the strength to take much weight, standing as it does on the brittle bones of psychodrama.

David Edelstein even anticipates the souring: "Probably after the 5,000th arty home-movie montage purporting to tell the story of someone's lousy childhood, I'll rue the day I called Tarnation a masterpiece." But he goes ahead, anyway. At least he's honest.

I'd cite Armond White, but his trashing of the movie is no surprise. You can set your watch by him.

Scott Tobias' positive review is measured, which I appreciate (and, hey, is The Onion allowing their critics to write longer reviews, now?), but most of all I was glad to see Anthony Lane end his review in the latest New Yorker like this:

... the picture is preyed upon, as is every memoir, by the threat of the narcissistic, and as the son points the camera at his mother in the New York of 2000, and presses her for details of her marriage, you fear a fresh cycle of harm. ?We can talk, Jon,? she cries, in obvious distress. ?We don?t need it on film.? There is an art, as hard as any other, in knowing when art has to stop.

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