Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog
A film blog under the influence
Labels: Favorites, Kate Winslet, Masterpieces, Movies 2000-04
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 1:30 AM
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MY PROFILE THE LATEST THE BEST THE FAVORITES THE WOMEN THE REST |
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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 |
18 Comments:
To say that I love this movie is kind of redundant, like you said, everybody loves this movie.
But I will say that I love that shot and it's making me want to go out and get that hair colour right at this very moment.
This movie barreled straight into my heart when I first watched it at age fifteen, especially that ending scene which utterly shocked me -- I couldn't believe that a movie was ending on a conversation in a hallway, and I couldn't believe how perfect that decision was, and I choked up at the complete sense that those repeated "okays" made.
It was my first revelation into the possibility that untrammeled genius wasn't simply a thing of black-and-white histories, and I'm glad that your thoughtful entry has brought attention to the entirely human processes of collaboration that served to form this beautiful masterpiece.
I love that in this scene she loves the dress she's happened into. (As well she should!) But that's only the smallest thing to love about a great scene in a great film.
@Brooke and @Colin: Yep, it really does hit you all at once the first time, doesn't it? I can't remember if I saw it twice or three times that first week.
@Dr. S: Totally. Winslet's reaction is priceless.
By the way, I neglected to mention that if I owned that dress, I would totally wear it in the classroom. Though the way I'm rolling this semester, I'd probably be wearing it with my wool-lined winter boots, since I seem to be working the hard-line refusal to screw up any good shoes (or my joints and toes) by wearing anything fancy in the mud and crap we have around here.
Somehow I think I could still bring the fancy.
Love, love, love. I saw Kate in the flesh the other night. She looked fantastic and seemed slightly drunk, which endeared her to me even more. She's quite good in The Reader, you know, or at least the early scenes -- worth pointing out that her pegging for a supporting nomination is the biggest category fraud of this year, much worse than than the Heath thing. Anyway, I liked her more in that than in Revolutionary Road, that's for sure.
@Dr. S: I don't every worry about you bringing the fancy. We grew up, as it were, in snow and slush, on the side of a mountain. You were styling then, and I'm sure you are now.
@Tim: Your reaction to Rev. Road augurs very poorly indeed; the phrase "white elephant" leaps to mind every time I see the trailer. But I'm glad to have reason to be at least moderately hopeful about The Reader. But we can all agree, right, that '04 should have been Kate's year? Even allowing for her sterling competition?
There are bits of The Reader I like a lot: David Kross is simply terrific, and all his scenes with Kate are pretty electric. And then there's... a growing disconnect. Ralph at too much of a remove. Kate in the ageing fattening make-up. It dissipates. For reasons of time-frame I think that book might be technically unfilmable, and it's a slightly wispy thing anyway, but Daldry does a good job with about half of it, and I really wish he'd pulled the rest off. A challenge for you: try and guess the scenes respectively shot by Chris Menges and Roger Deakins. I didn't know they were co-credited going in...
PS. I agree Kate should have got the Oscar, but I like Kidman in Birth even more, I have to admit.
@Dr. S and @Nick: Even more than that, I love that in this scene, Kate's readily locating that meld of Joel's half-misremembered perceptions of both the babysitter('s legs and voice) and Clementine (who's already gotten more kooky and short-attention-spanned as the erasing process dials back through Joel's memories of her).
I had the frankly bizarre experience recently of showing this film to a good friend who had never seen it before. When it ended, I was in my usual floods of tears and she was silent. I asked her for her reaction.
"It was fine I guess. Nothing to get worked up about. I mean, what was the point?"
!?!
I saw it twice on opening weekend which i have only done a few times though it was certainly a worthier target than the other films that lured me back the very next day... Beastmaster (hey i was a kid), Ladyhawke, Queen Margot, Spider-Man 2
catherine isn't it horrible when that happens? For this reason i almost never show my very favorites to friends who haven't seen them. I just ask gingerly if they've followed the suggestion but watching with them? Too scary if I'm too attached.
@Catherine: That does remind me of a conjecture someone once made, though I forget the source -- that Eternal Sunshine hits closer to home for those who have experienced a break-up. I wonder if there's any merit to that?
@Colin: That couldn't possibly be true. I haven't gone on more than a couple of unsuccessful dates and that's the closest I've gotten to a relationship, and I'm 20 years old, but Eternal Sunshine still punches me in the face with its greatness every single time. I just think it requires a certain sensitivity, and at least the hope of a relationship.
I love this movie. And I love this shot from the film. Did I tell you that I screened it this semester?
*Sigh* Kate, in mod clothes...
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT!
Holy cow, did I inadvertently steal this picture from your entry? I found it on a Google search... I SUCK. AGAIN.
There is a question I want to pose, though: did anyone else see the opening flash-forward morning scenes as a plot twist when they are referenced late in the film? Inattentive and art-drunk as I was in my first viewing, I didn't notice the references to the beach party being Joel and Clem's first meeting, and seeing the repeated shot of Joel waking up (and other shots from the opening edited into the "next morning" montage) delivered a jolt to my young mind.
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