sight & sound magazine - C or D

After years of irregularly looking at it, I realised a subscription would be a good thing to ask for as a Christmas present. So I did. I love the articles like the one a few issues about about Hidden, Birth and lots of recent films I'd never heard of that used surrealism and unexplained plot points to unsettle the audience, explore bourgeois complacency la la la. It made me want to seek them all out.

Also, it was nice the other day playing Scrabble online with mark s and then going to bed to read what S&S said about I'm Not There and finding he'd written the review.

damn son, i met the writer who wrote that one about 'hidden', she done a conference wot i spoke at.

their review of the tim burton charlie and the chocolate factory was too kind though. or if not kind, just skirting around getting to why it wasnt actually that good.

haven't read kent jones' article on 'the wire' but really hate the -- usually fine -- frank kermode quote about its greatness being a tribute to the intelligence of its audience. i guess my kinsmen* kermode was saying that it was impressive that 'hamlet' could be done for a mixed audience in late tudor (or was it stuart) london. that is a bit different from bigging up hbo subscribers.

*it's a manx thing

I'm def in the irregular looking at stage w/ S&S. That article on Hidden, etc sounds fantastic! From which issue is it?

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49266

the article on iraq-war films was good.

aw i thought that was gonna be about Kyle MacLachlan hunting down an alien

That's a great article, banriquit -- a very convincing reading of a film where, if I recall correctly, people at the time were far more preoccupied in solving the 'whodunit?'

The review of the Varda's DVD set is upsetting tho', but that's my fault for not having multiple region DVD player

That's not the article on Hidden etc. that I was talking about, though it is perhaps the one referred to here:

damn son, i met the writer who wrote that one about 'hidden', she done a conference wot i spoke at.

The one I had in mind was by Michael Atkinson from last November, and it's not online.

classic. not in response to anything in particular, just i find myself waiting for the next issue. it's so high-density, both the ads for new eureka titles and the rundowns of festivals and dvd releases are really rewarding.

the ads for new eureka titles

best thing in the mag imho

i still love sight and sound and i don't even watch films any more.

http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2055-sight-and-sound.htm

lol

otm!
the last two issues have been awesome in a way that unannotated lists seldom are. the essays on trends last decade - slow cinema &c - were fascinating, and i'm checking out some costa on their recommendation.

i think re: snobbery, sight and sound is the only thing i ever find kinda too comprehensive or thorough; when they're printing the complete credits for some owen wilson film a month later because they weren't available when the last issue went to press it can seem a little OCD.

kinda OT but, did anyone see nowhere boy? it looked terrible but i usually trust their films of the month, it seemed anomalous

it's ok. why d'it look terrible?! better than the last brit-artist-turns-director film, 'hunger'.

they do the credits because 20 years ago S&S absorbed what was its sister publication, monthly film bulletin. they're both publications of what is in a complicated way finally a state body, and listing all the credits was the MFB's role from its inception. i have mixed feelings about it -- makes the mag seem a bit academic. some idiot wrote in this month saying why even review (bad) hollywood films, as if you could guess upfront which films will and won't be worth reviewing. owen's work has gone downhill since the mid-00s, but if they're going to print the credits of manifest frauds like lars von trier, i don't think he should be excluded.

i thought it looked terrible too. plus this whole thing with artists and fashion designers etc suddenly deciding to make films really gets on my tits.

xpost

who is owen?

to be honest i thought it looked terrible because i think that just about every film looks terrible plus i'm just instantly turned off it by the fact that it's made by sam taylor wood and even if it looked like the best thing ever i would never ever see it.

i still like the mag though.

wilson.

the thing with 'nowhere boy' is that STW's involvement is a red herring. it's a relatively anonymous period piece about being young in the 50s. kristen scott-thomas is very good in it. the guy playing lennon looks too old and handsome, but the other kids are very good too.

anonymous seems likely. the lennon guy is currently 19, what age is he supposed to be? he's also the father of sam taylor wood's new baby (she's 43 and they re about to get married). this doesn't have anything to do with me not liking her btw, i only just read about it.

maybe s&s should have a gossip column

i just thought it looked schlocky, weird southern impressions of earthy accented cocky northerness, & also this guy:

http://flavorwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Picture-141.png

who i guess would be expertly cast if i was to bring my hatred of paul mccartney to the silver screen but in this i am guessing is just an irritant.

that's real interesting about the magazine credits history btw

oh & i liked hunger - at least it kind of vaguely constitutes some sort of reflective national filmmaking, an informative period piece like sophie scholl in germany or something.

i'd say 'nowhere boy' does better on that front, really. kind of respectable vs not within the lower-middle-class during the "age of affluence". was 'hunger' that informative? what did bobby sands want?

the lennon guy is currently 19, what age is he supposed to be? he's also the father of sam taylor wood's new baby (she's 43 and they re about to get married).

it covers him from his uncle's death (when he was 14) till 1960. but its main focus is, i'd say, 1957-8. so when he was 17-18. macca was two years younger than lennon, but there's too much of a disparity in the film, and even if the actor was actually 17 when they shot it, he looks more like 21-22 imo. saw it w parents, so from my pov the shot of him expertly fingering his (also highly attractive) schoolgirl girlfriend from behind was a bit unnecessary.

also i don't think schoolgirls gave blowjobs in 1956. or, really, in 1996, iirc.

Never Been Slarved

I approve of Sight and Sound, though I have never bought an issue. I always think of it as being Not For Me.

it's for everyone with vital organs and £3 to spare.

*looks at cover*

£3.95

i bought the latest yesterday. its a good read but i wish the reviewers wrote with more confidence. its hard to get any sort of opinion from it. i mean, they were praising 4321 for being aware of its own farcical nature, which er, it really isnt. but a lot of the writing i find a bit 'damp' or just too reasonable. i prefer cineaste magazine from the states for reviews i think, its less self conscious.

kinda dipped in here while still wondering whether to voice my petty & insubstantial disappointment with the interrupters review in the september issue & then read the above, which kinda at least makes me feel like it would fit into a trend. i think their reviews are v good, though, generally, & often - struggling to think of examples, here, but i think usually with bigger, glitzier, studio/franchise stuff - the kind of idiosyncratic takedowns that it's good to have access to because they're personal enough to give you a counterpoint to your own opinion - like it'll be some particular reading that you're unlikely to have come away with yourself. (also, with this & film comment, the dvd reviews are always the better things to read, i think, i guess for various reasons).

but the interrupters review. it's one of those just-describe-the-film reviews, for the most part, which is p much the norm elsewhere but is frustrating in something as reliably interesting as s&s, particularly when it's their film of the month & not getting a lot of expository coverage elsewhere.

(sorry this is v self indulgent)

the dvd reviews are better as they seem a bit more personal and 'honest' somehow, maybe cos of time that has passed, or maybe just cos theres less pressure on having to present a certain view in a dvd review than a new film one

There still needs to be a film mag on the level of current Cahiers du Cinema in English. The writing is exemplary.

i don't think i've read any cahiers stuff. i was just reading that n+1 takedown of the cahier-centric bio of its 50s and 60s years. have you read it in translation or do you speak french? there are a few things that have been printed that i'm really keen to read, like a claire denis piece on kore-eda.

it maybe depends what you want from your film writing, i think; is cahiers more like, political, or philosophical, or? s & s's auteurist, slightly technical/process-based focus suits me pretty well.

Do you read Cinema Scope, schlump? The writing isn't exactly consistent, but it is probably the best North American film mag and works in a largely auteurist mode. I don't have a particularly sophisticated sense of S&S because I almost never feel that it rewards the $10 it costs in the States.

I read French ok - with a dictionary I do even better. Current Cahiers seems to be less politically/philosophically orientated than I had expected based on the English translations of essays I had read from the 50s-70s. Their current reliance on perceptive and very process-based interviews with filmmakers (directors/cinematographers/editors...) is refreshing. The film reviews are great as well.

That said, I do pick up S+S often but love reading 20-30 back issues even more when I can find them. They used to have folks like Rosenbaum and Penelope Houston writing for them on a seemingly monthly basis in the 70s.

Do you read Cinema Scope, schlump

it's funny, i don't, but someone mentioned it on here maybe yesterday & i found myself on its website trying to get a sense of it, all while wondering whether i haven't read it because it & its website seem like graphic anachronisms, which obviously you shouldn't use to judge (don't judge a magazine by its masthead, etc). a bookstore in town - that i'm headed to in a sec! - carries it, so i'll go leaf through. i like film comment a lot, for the room it affords stuff like its selective dvd reviews (counterbalanced by the info-glut of the sidebars recommending stuff) & for its way-ott but super immersive features, cf the kent jones piece on tree of life. so many loanwords! so if you're recommending CS as > FC then i'm psyched.

yeah cahiers sounds good, jv, just a pity my monolingualism prohibits me from enjoying.

i feel like at this point, following in the example of the old cahiers dudes, i should just start making films rather than exclusively reading/arguing about them, so hopefully that's something that i'll be shifted into sometime.

xp (love rosenbaum)

xp 20-30 year old

Yeah, that last Film Comment on "Tree Of Life" was pretty great. Cahiers in June did a remarkable TOL special.

touché, cahiers. et tu, sight & sound?

^^ my command of french. the s&s stuff was actually good & you might dig if you were interested -- it was a relatively rare interview (understandably) with the TOL cinematographer who previously worked on mexican stuff.

Yeah - I have that issue. Very good. Learn French, Schlump! Those folks can write.

Yeah, schlump, CS is like FC without the bullshit cover stories and sidebar dross. The articles are generally longer and their focus guided by festivals rather than North American distribution. I guess it depends to an extent on what you're interested in (which, lol, there is probably little more effete or rarefied than complaining about FILM COMMENT "cover stores", but I go with what I know).

I did three pieces for Cinema Scope within a couple of years of their launch (John Cazale, pop music in movies, and double-bills). They seemed to be open to that kind of stuff early on, then drifted more and more in the direction of festival coverage. For my own purposes, it stopped being of any use to me at that point, because I don't like reading about films I haven't seen; I would much, much rather read film criticism after I've had a chance to see whatever's being written about. With certain critics I'll make an exception, but even there I'd rather hold off reading them till I've caught up.

i was just reading that n+1 takedown of the cahier-centric bio of its 50s and 60s years.

^^ totally epic, completely recommend this

clemenza, I don't suppose the double-bills piece (or those other two) is online? or you could give me the vol/# and I could likely find it at the NYPL.

I've got them posted on my page--glad to.

Cazale
Pop Music
Double-Bills

Don't forget--as you may have noticed, you and I don't always see eye-to-eye on such matters.

rrreally?

thanks

subscriptions to US are ungodly expensive so I just read the copies in my library a few weeks late. yeah, it's not what it once was, and as a kind of mild anglophobe the coverage of UK cinema is totally superfluous to me.

Looking for a new editor for the first time in 21 years. The chat about the move to 'digital first' doesn't bode well for the print edition:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/editor-chief-film-digital-website-print-magazine-job-search?fbclid=IwAR0Hh6hEy8Wq2nsPz9GcMmBMx-k1dSvyWXFll6LV-9i45SZOW-_QN50uX8k

maybe i shd apply, i'll mock up some ilx polls and hire morbs and fred to debate art-house and gazzara to post marvel memes

"On its twentieth anniversary, Queen of the Dammed tops our poll of the greatest movies ever made"

the only good film

"Search and Destroy: John Ford"

"Satantango: Classic or Dud?"

OPO: OZU

"D.W. Griffith: Why Is He So Bad and Hated?"

where is the love for HUGH HUDSON

"no, that's detrius, stop changing it"

"French films are shit. Pourquoi?"

Be sure to keep before and after copies of the in-house style guide..."ROXOR," "YOU POXY FULE," "KORITFW"...

maybe i shd apply, i'll mock up some ilx polls and hire morbs and fred to debate art-house and gazzara to post marvel memes

no

It was a real "oh, ok!" moment when I moved to London and realised S&S is mostly just a publicity rag for whatever retrospective the BFI have going.

the BFI DC retrospective is off

"i'll mock up some ilx polls and hire morbs and fred"

Bad not good

forget it alph, it's S&Stown

british film institute otm that dc’s best movies are still to come, a retrospective would be premature

They definitely need to improve on that lame dennis the menace movie that didn't even feature gnasher and walter the softy.

beano origin stories

hmmm

We're excited to welcome Mike Williams (@itsmikelike) as Sight & Sound's new Editor-in-chief ☞ https://t.co/7tSRZkz3gh pic.twitter.com/Fg8GFkq8df

— Sight & Sound (@SightSoundmag) July 26, 2019

can't say i was paying attention to nme during this era but does seem odd that none of the film writers i follow have tweeted anything about this

I only took a peak at this guys twitter feed, but doesn't really seem to have that many opinions on film?

Catching up on films I've missed due to there being too many babies in my house for movie watching. Watched What We Do In The Shadows and You Were Never Really Here the last two nights (both 👍👍👍). Gimme recommendations of stuff from 2015-2018 I probs aint seen please, twits 🙏

— Mike Williams ✊ (@itsmikelike) March 5, 2019

to be fair the man staged the brand’s three most successful NME Awards

Lol, presented out of context:

Ah yeah, I put that on my watchlist last night actually. It passed the important test of being under two hours long 👌📽️

— Mike Williams ✊ (@itsmikelike) March 5, 2019

I mean, the editor of the equivalent magazine in Denmark has run it into the ground insisting on turning it into an MRA / semi white supremacist platform, so in my eyes he seems like exactly what a film editor should be.

maybe i'm asking too much but i feel like the editor of a respected film magazine should know more about film than me, a man who knows not very much about film

just 4 editors in 70 years!

gavin lambert: 1949-55 = 6 years
penelope houston: 1956-90 = 31 years
philip dodd: 1991-97 = 6 years
nick james: 1997-2019 = 22 years

There are reviews of some new releases now that are two paragraphs or @200 words.

It was bad not good

In Colour
(1.851)
Subtitles

Distributor
Curzon Artificial Eye

9,151 ft +0frames

Sight & Sound's best films of 2020 list. Perhaps especially useful in a year with so little fanfare and exhibition. Or rather, I've seen almost zero of these.

Thank you for that, I had no idea about most of these and have only seen two.

Seconded, except I've seen none of them. I'm sure I'll get to see the new Andersson at some point, just probably not in a cinema.

They're all-in on the elevated horror this year. Seems like a weak year, understandably. Love their number 1 tho, will quite probably be mine too

Lester's was Lou's Loyal Opposition.

Lester

Ha, sorry, wrong thread.

I really liked Mank, but it's really funny that this $25 million prestige Fincher epic couldn't beat out the Zoom horror movie

The Zoom movie was absolutely unwatchable to me

I thought Rocks (on Netflix) was very good and I recommend it. Lover's Rock I had a lot of problems with but they basically boil down to the fact that I don't think Steve McQueen has any feel for actors, they are just accessories to him. It makes sense to me that the Silly Games acapella scene happened by accident and he just filmed it happening.

correction: I don't think he has any feel for performance in film.

McQueen's great escape from being a ropey Goldsmiths YBA chancer to a critically acclaimed movie director is not something I've ever had much enthusiasm about tbh. Although back in the day he was otm when he described most British artists as "happy amateurs" but to me he's more like a "competent mediocrity" as a director.

a competent mediocrity is exactly what he is.

Thanks for sharing this, TT - could it also be shared to the 2020 End of the Year in Cinema/Detrius thread?

Seen: Mank, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Little Women,, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Added to various 'watchlists': The Vast of Night, The Forty-Year-Old Version, His House, Bacurau, Da 5 Bloods, Rocks, Dick Johnson is Dead, Time

Would also like to see one way or another: The Truth, About Endlessness, Tenet, She Dies Tomorrow, Relic, Limbo, Host, Martin Eden, Undine, Possessor, The Woman Who Ran, Saint Maud and, above all, Days - a national disgrace this hasn't yet got UK distribution!

Everybody seems to love Lovers Rock - and Mangrove - and I expect I will watch these two at least on the Iplayer. Perhaps the mediocrity of McQueen's style works better on smaller screens?

Surprised and pleased that WOLFWALKERS placed so high, even tho it's not quite as good as SECRET OF KELLS or SONG OF THE SEA imo.

Shame by Steve Mcqueen is a Christmas film

— tim macgabhann (@el_fodongo) December 12, 2020

I wouldn't call myself a fan of Steve McQueen either and didn't expect much from Lovers Rock, in fact I only really watched it because it was on. I think the moment I really fell for it was when I realised that nothing was really actually going to happen, it was just this night, this party. There were hints at other narratives that might take off - somebody might pull, something might kick-off, but they don't, it's just a party

Gonna hop in here and say, taken a whole, Small Axe is probably the best thing I watched all year