So, we’re taking the rest of the week off. Enjoy your, uh, eating and shopping? That’s what people do, right? (I’m half-English, so I’m only half willing to admit that Thanksgiving even exists.) But first, for your holiday browsing pleasure, here are a bunch of stories from this week that I meant to comment on but ran out of time. Let me know if there’s anything in particular that you’d like me to revisit in depth next week.
- “Auteurism had Andrew Sarris. Abstract expressionism had Clement Greenberg. Punk rock had Lester Bangs. Where is the equivalent voice for today’s documentary scene?” So ponders Thom Powers, before offering a number of tips for those of us who might aim to fill the position.
- “Is there room in that diverse [film festival] community for people of faith? For people of more conservative political beliefs? Or are film festivals only for the support and promotion of those who agree with a specific, left-of-center political philosophy? And therefore, must major film festivals — and their primary staff — have a de facto bias toward that philosphy?” AJ Schnack examines the implications of the Prop 8/Rich Raddon situation.
- Eric Kohn visited the Futures of Entertainment conference, sponsored by the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT. “As the conversations progressed, so too did a flurry of typing from numerous laptops throughout the audience: Microblogging and online chatter created a series of miniature conversations that converged into a unified whole.”
- In the second of potentially three posts on Synechdoche, NY, Filmbrain runs Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut through the ringer of the Jungian concept of individuation. “The individuation process is about the uniting of opposites — good and evil, masculine and feminine, matter and spirit, body and psyche. There’s no question that Caden undertakes the journey, but he fails to become an individual, both literally and psychologically. Caden treats his life (both the conscious and unconscious elements) like a stage play, yet his attempt at directing from an omniscient position robs him of (in alchemical terms) the prima materia required for one to be a person.”
News of a number of can’t-miss events has flown into my inbox over the past 24 hours. In chronological order:
- This Saturday, The Pioneer Theater in New York is presenting a six-film, 584 minute werewolf movie marathon. $25 buys tickets to the whole affair, or if you really just want to show up at 4 AM to catch Teen Wolf (and who could resist, after seeing the poster to the right?), individual shows are $5 each. For more information, visit The Pioneer’s website.
- The Denver Film Festival runs November 8-18. There are many reasons to be excited about this festival (and Mark Rabinowitz has and will continue to list many of them on his blog), but here’s a new one: I’m going to be speaking on a panel about film blogging, alongside Mark, James Israel from indieWIRE, and director AJ Schnack. For more info and tickets, go here.
- Alas, because I’ll be in Denver that weekend, I won’t be able to head up to Cambridge for the Futures of Entertainment conference, which is happening November 16-17 at MIT. Organized by the Convergence Culture Consortium of the school’s Comparative Media Studies program, the conference will bring together academics and industry experts to discuss a variety of new frontiers of form and content, from mobile distribution to fan labor and the “architecture of participation.” There are only 200 seats available, so if this sounds good to you, register now.
Blogger, Convergence Culture author and MIT professor Henry Jenkins just gave a talk on Web 2.0 and fan communities at a marketing conference called the Forrester Consumer Forum, and our friend Chris Thilk from Movie Marketing Madness blogged it. There’s a lot of great stuff, including a Four Eyed Monsters a shout-out; check out Chris’ complete notes here. My favorite line? “Any network that can be used to share cat pictures can be used to bring down a government.”
