Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog
A film blog under the influence
Woody Allen, for my money, has failed once again to "come back" in any meaningful way, but that doesn't mean that I can't take a stab at my own career resurgence. Remember when I used to write full reviews? Taste this and tell me if I'm ready.Labels: Movies 2008, Woody Allen
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 3:26 PM
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The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema ($30/pbk). By Nick Davis. Oxford University Press, 2013.
The book that earned me tenure at Northwestern. Offers a new theoretical model of queer film, born from Gilles Deleuze's rarely-integrated notions of cinema and desire. Chapter-length readings of
Dead Ringers,
Naked Lunch, Shortbus, The Watermelon Woman, Brother to Brother, Beau travail, and
Velvet Goldmine, plus other films along the way! Written for a scholarly audience but hopefully interesting to anyone curious about recent cinema, ideas about desire, or LGBT aesthetics and politics. "Important and needed work...Deeply original." —D.N. Rodowick, "Seductive in its intellect and humbling in its prose." —Michele Aaron
Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television ($32/pbk). Ed. Michael DeAngelis. Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Academic pieces that dig into recent portraits in popular media, comic and dramatic, of intimacies between straight(ish) men. Includes the essay
"'I Love You, Hombre': Y tu mamá también as Border-Crossing Bromance" by Nick Davis, as well as chapters on Superbad, Humpday, Jackass, The Wire, and other texts. Written for a mixed audience of scholars, students, and non-campus readers. Forthcoming in June 2014. "Remarkably sophisticated essays." —Janet Staiger, "Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary models of gender and sexuality." —Harry Benshoff
Fifty Key American Films ($31/pbk). Ed. Sabine Haenni, John White. Routledge, 2009. Includes my essays on
The Wild Party,
The Incredibles, and
Brokeback Mountain. Intended as both a newcomer's guide to the terrain
and a series of short, exploratory essays about such influential works as The Birth of a Nation, His Girl Friday, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,
Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Daughters of the Dust, and Se7en.
The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven
Allows ($25/pbk). Ed. James Morrison. Wallflower Press, via Columbia University Press, 2007. Includes the essay
"'The Invention of a People': Velvet Goldmine and the Unburying of Queer Desire" by Nick Davis, later expanded and revised in The Desiring-Image.
More, too, on Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven, and Haynes's other films by Alexandra Juhasz, Marcia Landy,
Todd McGowan, James Morrison, Anat Pick, and other scholars. "A collection as intellectually and emotionally
generous as Haynes' films" —Patricia White, Swarthmore College
Film Studies:
The Basics ($23/pbk). By Amy Villarejo. Routledge, 2006, 2013. Award-winning
film scholar and teacher Amy Villarejo finally gives us the quick, smart, reader-friendly guide to film vocabulary that every
teacher, student, and movie enthusiast has been waiting for, as well as a one-stop primer in the past, present, and future of film production, exhibition,
circulation, and theory. Great glossary, wide-ranging examples, and utterly unpretentious prose that remains rigorous in its analysis;
the book commits itself at every turn to the artistry, politics, and accessibility of cinema.
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Chicagoans! This site doesn't even accept advertising, but I'm making an unsolicited exception for the best, freshest, most affordable meal you can enjoy in the Loop, at any time of the day, whether you're on the go or eager to sit. Cuban and Latin American sandwiches, coffees, pastries, salads, shakes, and other treats. Hand-picked, natural, and slow-cooked ingredients. My friendly neighborhood place, a jewel in my life even before the Reader and Time Out figured it out. Visit!
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Watch this space! Chicago has a new, exciting, important, and totally accessible cadre of queer film critics who are joining forces to bring screenings, special events, and good, queer-focused movie chats to our fair city. Read our mission! Stay tuned for events! Cruise the website, and help get this great new group off the ground by enrolling as a friend (it's free!) and by asking how you can help.
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since 5.27.05 |
7 Comments:
Well, I now have VCB to thank for something -- delish read as ever, and that's me convinced.
Great review!
But do you think Cruz is good enough to warrant that already buzzed Oscar nomination?
@Tim: I feel much the same way. Not only is it the first review I've written in forever, but it's the first movie I've seen close enough to its release that anyone would still (hopefully) care what I had to say.
@Brooke: In short, no. She's very confident and she's funny, and I like her reactions at a key moment when she feels disappointed in Scarlett. A very proficient performance, serves the movie well... but there's not much to dig into here.
awwww. i'm disappointed --Not in your writing which is always convincing but in your reaction.
nobody seems to be able to have any fun with Woody anymore. (sigh) it's vaguely like the Scorsese/Departed thing in that the naysayers always seem to be measuring up good work to previous masterpieces and of course they're going to come up short.
I liked it MUCH more than you though I'm fully aware it's slighter than it needed to be... and i'm disappointed that Scarlett has yet to figure out what she's there for in a movie. If she could she'd be unstoppable since she's got such a great movie face, body, voice. Now if only she would USE them.
Calling the dark room scene "an eleventh-grader's book report on The Unbearable Lightness of Being..." is brutally accurate, not to mention funnier than anything in the movie.
VCB isn't bad for late Woody, and there is some fine acting from Cruz, Clarkson and Hall. At this point, it's hard not to grade his new work on a sliding scale; you'd lose your mind if you didn't. But Johansson needs to get away from Allen...she's the new Kim Novak, not the new Diane Keaton or Dianne Wiest.
@N: Well, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm only comparing the film to earlier, better Allen. I tried to get that conversation out of the way early. By any standard, well outside the narrow range of Allen's own career, I just don't see how this is "good" work, or even that much fun, though it was hardly a chore.
@Dan: Thanks! And I agree with you (and Nathaniel) about Scarlett, though I really don't know where to push her at this point. She's not fatally uninteresting here as she was in Black Dahlia and The Prestige, but I think Someone needs to go live some more life that she can bring into her acting.
I wonder if this comment is too late to warrant any reply, but here goes: I respectfully disagree about Penelope Cruz, at least to the extent that she doesn't deserve an Oscar nom. For me, she cemented the deal in that "key moment when she feels disappointed in Scarlett" you mentioned. How many other actresses would have taken this simple dramatic beat (averting Scarlett's gaze) and layered it with a comic one (glancing around the kitchen countertop) -- especially one that only works in the context of the movie's unseen backstory? You know the context I mean.
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