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?

12 April 2005

Choosing Between Writing About Them And ...

So did I really take cheap shots at James Dean, George Kennedy, and Henry Jaglom? Do I really feel superior to Hollywood movies, as A. O. Scott claimed in the New York Times? I would say that I take them more seriously than someone who has to write about them twice a week can afford to.

Indeed he does. That's Thom Andersen writing in Cinema Scope about the reaction to his film Los Angeles Plays Itself, which I'm about to reveal was my favorite film of 2004. In a year when people were split over the passion and the fahrenheit, two movies that each said very little that was surprising — and what they did say was drowned out by the bombast that they themselves fueled — the movie that surprised me the most was Andersen's little assembly of clips of movies that take place in and around Los Angeles.

But more on that later when we get to the 2004 recap. Let's not rush things!

I have been writing, by the way. Just not here, and not about movies, except in that publication that comes out every couple of months to which I'm grateful for the continued interest in my out-of-band take on things filmic. Oh, I was doing a lot of programming, or else those pathways might go cold. That takes an extraordinary amount of time, or maybe I just work slowly. Blah blah. Blogs that explain themselves or their forthcoming or recent absences, what a bore.

I've got more to tell you. I saw a bunch of movies that I forgot to mention. I was thinking about this thing, about this movie, and this book. Have a seat. Let me get my notes.

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Reader Comments

April 13, 2005, 01:01 AM

Matt

Back, and how.

April 14, 2005, 01:18 PM

David Hudson

Amen.

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