Nick's Flick Picks: The Blog
A film blog under the influence
Again, this idea belongs to Nathaniel, but Clint Eastwood is nothing if not famously efficient, right? I can hardly avoid this format. So, here goes:Labels: Clint Eastwood, Movies 2008, Stinkers
posted by NicksFlickPicks at 1:13 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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8 Comments:
Hahaha! How is the man himself?
Not as absolutely awful as he seems in the trailer, but it's a false part in a false story, and I don't think the Academy will go for it. It really would feel like "just giving it to Clint," with no plausible excuse for rewarding this performance: it's not even showboaty like Pacino was in Scent of a Woman. It's just pretty thin gruel. He'd be totally out of the running if there were a single clear front-runner we could count on to rally the troops. I suspect he's out of the running anyway.
Oh. Holy. Jesus.
I didn't see Kolya, but I did see Crash, and anything crossed with Crash is something I'm probably not going to cross.
Oh my God, that makes it sound even worse than I thought. I'm really scared now -- I'm definitely not facing this sober.
Please tell me there was ironic cheering in the theatre for the "Get off my lawn" line. Actually, non-ironic cheering would be even funnier.
i wish you wrote for the New York Times.
Nick, actually, Nathaniel's comment makes me think that you should do a set of seven-word reviews and send them to The New Yorker.
xoxo
As a hardcore Eastwood auteurist, I'm finding myself encouraged by the mixed response to this. This film intrigues me much more than Changeling in much the same way that Flags of Our Fathers, in my opinion, is far superior to Mystic River, and in the same way that DePalma auteurists (which I've become recently) prefer things like Mission to Mars and The Black Dahlia to things like The Untouchables.
@DWS: Well, you'll certainly get lots of Eastwood trademarks, including the insolent relationship to organized religion and the blatant Christ imagery, the blunt shadows, etc., etc. Whether they really serve this screenplay (or whether this screenplay even exists to be served) is, to me, the question that sinks the project. One filmmaker's clichés and characteristically under-directed performances by non-stars (another autuerist signature of sorts) mapped onto a flailing writer's script. And I say this as someone who agrees that The Black Dahlia is much preferable to The Untouchables! But if you wind up sparking to Gran Torino, I hope you'll help me see the pluses. I will give you some expressive camera movement and his customarily evocative representation of a down-at-the-heels social milieu that most filmmakers wouldn't even touch.
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