David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

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colinr0380
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#51 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:18 am

On turning points in films. Looking at the blackboard picture I was reminded of Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel painting a timeline for their film on their wall in Epidemic!

Perhaps there are not many films where a main character is not aware of there being a turning point in the plot but what about films where the main character misinterprets what the turning point of the plot means to them and we watch them making bad decisions based on their wrong judgement? Would that be considered structurally different from 'classical' narratives or would that just be classified as a slight tweaking of the plot mechanics?
The examples also confirm that character goals seldom endure unchanged across the length of a film. Revelations, decisions, disasters, supernatural events, and presumably others kinds of causes frequently cause major shifts in characters’ goals or at least in the tactics they employ in pursuing them. Even in what seems like a fairly straightforward thriller like Alien, the crew’s assumptions that they must loyally protect their spaceship are completely reversed at the end of the development, and the narrative turns into an attack on corporate greed and ruthlessness. Whatever one thinks of classical Hollywood films, they are usually more complex than the three-act model allows for.
This would seem to be important in making the audience feel as if they have received a different or new experience, something more than just what has been advertised. I usually consider the first couple of acts the 'TV listing' acts, as they are usually the set ups that are described in trailers and listings to entice people to watch the film. Just taking a couple of TV listings descriptions from the Radio Times for this week:
Separate Lies - Upper middle class couple James and Anne have the perfect marriage. But when a hit-and-run incident occurs near their country retreat, a very different truth is revealed.

Hollow Man - When top research scientist Jericho Cane decides to sample his own radical disappearing drug, he is blissfully unaware that his newly acquired invisibility will bring his most violent tendencies to the surface.
Both the listings, like trailers, describe the initial plot and hint at the way things are going to develop later in the film. I think many commercial films present themselves as straightforward, simplistic tales and usually then use that licence to go off into the areas they really want to deal with in the final act, by which time they should have created their hold over their audience to be able to take them along with the story.

That initial, simple 'trailer' story being complicated in the film itself in later acts would seem to be codified into films and can sometimes be the reason why an audience might find some films disappointing - because either everything has been given away in the trailer so there isn't any twist left to reveal or because the plot develops in too much of an different direction from what the initial acts (and therefore trailers) led an audience to expect.

An interesting example could be that of Takashi Miike's One Missed Call, which has an initial couple of acts so like Ring (including a couple of almost identical scenes, such as the one where the main characters find out about the curse through a group of schoolgirls grieving for one of their lost friends) that it made me wonder whether Miike was doing an elaborate parody of the whole cursed-whatever genre!

Then the pivotal scene of the film, the TV exorcism of the latest girl to get the mobile phone call, arrives and suddenly the film seems to build up some power of its own with an underlying anger at the exploitation of an impending "live on TV" death with a countdown clock, a bickering panel of 'experts' and a showbiz exorcist condemning the shallowness of the media. From the look of the scene and the use of it in advertising materials on the DVD, this would also seem to have been the big scene used in the selling of the film to entice audiences. However in working so effectively it would seem to work against the film being thought of as a parody of the genre, so it completely subverts the film again and leaves the film open to go in many interesting directions for its final section.

Unfortunately though this for me is where the film falls down - it does not become structurally unsound, the opposite in fact, as the film concerns itself with explaining the cause of the curse but with little sense of being a straight-faced Ring parody of the first section or of the satire of the TV studio section. The film ends up becoming the bland J-horror clone it was very close to commenting on in its initial acts and for anyone who had seen the advertising materials that build the plot to the studio exorcism it might seem like you are being driven at speed until that section finishes and then left to freewheel into a brick wall with the rest of the film!

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#52 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:24 pm

Jericho Cane is the name of Schwarzenegger's character in End of Days

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#53 Post by jguitar » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:37 pm

I meant to post this before, but I attended the Society for the Cognitive Study of the Moving Image conference that Kristin Thompson references. It was a fascinating conference: a mix of film studies people and cognitive psychologists. As much as I enjoyed presentations by Paisley Livingston and others in the film world, it was the work of the psychologists that stole the show. Tim Smith, whom Bordwell has written about before (particularly his blog) uses eye tracking software to pinpoint where people are focusing on the screen. Not surprisingly, people are mostly looking at the faces of the speakers. But the thing that blew everyone away was when he showed his test subjects clips from Citizen Kane, which we've all been taught through Bazin to see as this space where the eye can roam freely--and, at least for first-time viewers, they were just focusing on the faces of the speakers like with any other film (it would be interesting to see what people would do on multiple viewings).

Other highlights: Dan Levin who does research on change blindness and a team of researchers from Tübingen, Germany, researching things like comprehending action across changes of angles in cuts, and how well people who have never seen films or TV comprehend basic continuity storytelling. There's much more that could be said, and I'd be happy to share thoughts on the sessions I attended if anyone is interested. One of the really great things was seeing the psychologists in particular making comments on each other's work and suggestions for further research.

Additionally, it was great meeting Bordwell, Thompson, Noël Carroll, and others. They were just simply pleasant and engaging people to talk to. The excitement of Bordwell in particular at this research was palpable: after the presentation of one of the Tübingen researchers, Bordwell stood up and said "That is crisp work." It was an excitement shared by many--and I have to say that the move towards greater objectivity in film studies and the humanities in general is extraordinarily welcome. The next SCSMI conference is in Copenhagen, in case you might want to check it out.

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colinr0380
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#54 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:40 pm

domino harvey wrote:Jericho Cane is the name of Schwarzenegger's character in End of Days
:D I must have gotten it mixed up with the End Of Days review in the same listings guide!

I would certainly like to hear more jguitar!

On the different edits of Days Of Being Wild.

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#55 Post by Haggai » Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:51 am

Interesting stuff about Days of Being Wild. The bit about the guy with the snake sounds like something out of Blade Runner, as does the entire business about an early version of the film that wasn't widely seen.

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#56 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:47 am

David Bordwell reports on this year's Cinema ritrovato (in Bologna)

Favorable comments on a number of films including Aoyama's Sad Vacation, Yoshida Daihachi’s Funuke, Show Some Love, You Losers! (which I am expecting to see on DVD at some point in the not too distant future), Manijeh Hekmat's Three Women, Alberto Serra's The Song of the Birds.

The only film I've seen is the Aoyama one -- but I expect that film is best discussed in the official Aoyama thread.

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#57 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Jul 21, 2008 10:52 am

I saw Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers! (should be "The Funu Family" -- which is what "Funuke" means). FWIW, I concur on David Bordwell's praise for this one.

The Funu Family is, I assume, the name the manga-creating high school-aged daughter has given to the (ostensibly fictional) dysfunctional family she depicts in her work. The family's real name is "Waga". I find it hard to pin down just why this film worked so well -- I can easily imagine this film spinning out of control (into stupidity -- like another recent film I just saw -- Funky Forest).

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#58 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:05 am

Fantastic article by David Bordwell that sums up a lot of recent discussion we've been having about superhero films: the use of superhero properties as source material that contains both recognisable characters and yet has little mainstream audience familiarity with comic plotlines whether they really have a political message or are strategically ambiguous, the rise and fall of genres and the "Heath Ledger for Oscar" issue by looking at the change from actors being recognisable but still creating different characters for their film to 'impersonation' which in some ways makes the artifice in a performance even more obvious.

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#59 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Sep 12, 2008 4:20 pm

A look at film titles.

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Fletch F. Fletch
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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#60 Post by Fletch F. Fletch » Fri Nov 21, 2008 4:34 pm

An excellent look at cinema in the 1980s.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#61 Post by yoshimori » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:11 pm

Yah. Thanks to Professor B for reminding us how great Ron Howard was. 'scuse me while I go queue up a Splash, Cocoon, Willow triple-feature. Timeless.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#62 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:17 pm

David Bordwell wrote:I never met anybody who didn’t like Tootsie.
David Bordwell has not met so many people
David Bordwell wrote:When was the last time Woody Allen made a really good movie? Hard to say
Ugh.

This article as a whole has made me lose a lot of respect for Bordwell

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Matt
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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#63 Post by Matt » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:21 pm

domino harvey wrote:
David Bordwell wrote:I never met anybody who didn’t like Tootsie.
David Bordwell has not met so many people
He's met me, and I don't like Tootsie. Then again, it's not really something that comes up in conversation, is it?

I can't believe he just put D.C. Cab on the same level as Koyaanisqatsi, The Thin Blue Line, and This Is Spinal Tap.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#64 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:28 pm

Anyone interested in a more thorough dressing-down of Tootise by me can read the 80s List Thread, but I will just say that singling Tootsie out as some great shared pleasure for moviegoers is really the crown jewel of bizarre statements in an essay filled with many similar "riches"

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#65 Post by GaryC » Fri Nov 21, 2008 7:43 pm

I haven't seen DC Cab, but I'd say the same about Purple Rain personally. (Okay, I'll grant you the music, admittedly a huge part of the film.)

That article reminds me just how many films I must have in the 1980s, the decade during which I went to University and its film society. There are about six or seven titles from the decade mentioned in that piece that I haven't seen. A misspent youth indeed.

I'd do far worse with a list of notable US films from the 2000s.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#66 Post by foggy eyes » Sat Nov 22, 2008 7:40 am

Yeah, this entry is pretty excruciating. Spaceballs? Earth Girls Are Easy? Give me a break...

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#67 Post by Svevan » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:27 am

I think the Bordwell/Thompson blog posts have been posted in the other dedicated threads for a while, but I've got something to say specific to the man himself so I'm posting it here.

So there's a new blog from Bordwell on Scorsese in general, with some emphasis on Shutter Island. He repeats a phrase I heard earlier (I think) in the Shutter Island thread, that Scorsese's seemingly trademark discontinuity is, in this film, the result of
SpoilerShow
Dicaprio's failing mental state.
Having previously criticized The Departed for its poor continuity, this new laudation feels weird. I haven't seen Shutter Island more than once, and I didn't notice the continuity "errors" very much, but isn't the plot twist of this film an easy way to explain any of its stylistic conceits? Does something like discontinuity in shot/reverse shots, or in any part of a film, demand an absolute reason for existing? How is this any different than Ozu's mismatched eyelines? I haven't pored over every word of Bordwell's Ozu book, but in my skimmings the best I've found for an explanation of Ozu's eyelines is "visual play." (Someone more knowledgeable correct me on this). If that's it (and if it is, it's pulled out of nowhere), surely Bordwell can come up with a reason for Scorsese's jumping forks and misplaced beer cans. (I'm reading a bit of Robin Wood lately, and he admits that mismatched eyelines are a part of Ozu's style, but he considers it an adjunct or side-effect of the main elements of his style and not a primary element, as it only has a subconscious effect, if any, on Wood). I don't see anything special about the discontinuity in Shutter Island as compared to The Departed, or any Scorsese film where I notice it. I think I've just come to expect it as part of his style. I find it endearing and idiosyncratic. Bordwell, in the earlier blog, makes some comments about "craftsmanship" that really rub me the wrong way. It seems so arbitrary. How is Ozu still considered a craftsman even though he's not playing by Hollywood's rules either? Peter Greenaway dispenses with continuity in Cook, Thief, et al, and I suppose because that film is so unrealistic and has a unique, very un-Hollywood formal structure, no one cared.

I read a quick little comment from the thread on The Departed about how Bordwell's approach appears to be more objective, but often is not. I think this is a prime example: when finding an excuse for Scorsese's discontinuity, as in Shutter Island, Bordwell will promote it. NOT finding an excuse (even while noting discontinuity in MANY of his films) Bordwell rejects auteurism and instead just claims that Scorsese is lazy. I think that's intellectual laziness.

This is a rant. Normally I love Bordwell. I want to have his babies. I even appreciated other parts of Bordwell's blog today; I didn't need a literal reading of the crazy shots of the ambulance in Bringing Out The Dead, but using silent film techniques as a framework for analyzing Scorsese is fun and interesting. This guy's writing is very important to me, so just like everyone else, he's gonna have to let me down once or twice.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#68 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:22 pm

Bordwell gives a really nice defence of 'slow cinema' in response to the Dan Kois "cultural vegetable" article that has been going around all of the blogs like a virus recently. I think Bordwell really nails the argument in this passage:
The process is like taking in an opera on two levels: following the stage action but also registering the patterns, the emotional highs and lows, of the music that accompanies–and sometimes overwhelms–it. Let Papagena and Papageno stammer each one’s name again and again. The repetition isn’t needed for the drama, but it’s thrilling on sheerly musical grounds.

Now imagine that sort of development transposed to cinema, in which we can appreciate, at one and the same time, not only the story’s unfolding but the patterns that present it. The supreme master of this possibility, I think, is Ozu, perhaps cinema’s Mozart. But you can find the same qualities in more somber key elsewhere. For example, in watching Angelpoulos’ Voyage to Cythera, I think that you have to be prepared to see the arrival of track workers in yellow slickers, visible through the speckled window pane in the shot above, as a kind of visual epiphany, the quiet equivalent of a stunt in a summer tentpole picture...

...In an Ozu film, even though he cuts rather fast, we’re given time to see everything. But this isn’t random rummaging. It’s visual exploration guided by Ozu’s decisions about composition, lighting, and color. Something similar, I think, is going on with Tarr, although there it’s more a matter of texture and tactile qualities. His people shamble through mud, oily puddles, dusty corners, and tearing winds. In one shot of Damnation, a rain-soaked wall shrivels to match a wrinkled topcoat.

The story is still going forward, but by turning his protagonist from us and aligning him with the wall, Tarr has given his shot an extra layer of sensuous appeal. Try to remember the way any wall looked in Transformers 3, before it got blasted to rubble.

Slow movies let us look around, and good slow-movie makers give us something to see when we do. But what do we do when these accessory appeals don’t just accompany the narrative but swamp it? What if we lose track of the characters? The film may steer us to pictorial or auditory qualities that take over our perception.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#69 Post by lubitsch » Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:33 pm

I remember a short article comparing Transformers 3 and an arthouse film in the described vein. It pointed out that both tendencies have quite a lot in common, less reliance on acting, characters, dialogue and story and a foregrounding of direct sensory experience - though obviously of a very different kind. I essentially agree, both trends are quite similar to each other representing - sometimes in a questionable way - extreme tendencies of filmmaking trying to grab the attention of their target audiences at any cost.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#70 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Jul 10, 2011 7:15 pm

But what do we do when these accessory appeals don’t just accompany the narrative but swamp it? What if we lose track of the characters? The film may steer us to pictorial or auditory qualities that take over our perception.
I actually don't have a problem with this kind of thing. There are more pleasures in film than just the dramatic ones. I can think of plenty of poems, novels, and operas where the patterning, textures, and assorted other aesthetic qualities are more interesting and pleasurable than the characters and story. I don't see them as accessories.

I just rewatched The Thin Red Line and realized that the war story, as good as it is--and it is very well done--is less interesting than the textures, movements, moods, and atmospheres of the movie (both this and the New World have convinced me that Malick understands the texture of water better than anyone else in modern film). I'm very happy considering James Jones' story as an accessory to the movie's formal features. The wordless flashes of Pvt. Bell and his wife enjoying tender caresses are much more powerful than the more conventionally dramatic moment where Bell reads the divorce letter, as well filmed as that moment is. The later dramatic beat comes across as less central and necessary; the earlier flashes stand on their own, they don't seem completed by the latter development as you might expect.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#71 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 13, 2011 6:17 am

Mr Sausage wrote:I actually don't have a problem with this kind of thing. There are more pleasures in film than just the dramatic ones. I can think of plenty of poems, novels, and operas where the patterning, textures, and assorted other aesthetic qualities are more interesting and pleasurable than the characters and story. I don't see them as accessories.
I've been watching a lot of films by Zoltán Huszárik lately, and I suspect he'd absolutely have agreed with this. He seems almost entirely uninterested in dramatic content, and instead prefers to work directly on our senses, even to the extent of synaesthetically stimulating those not normally catered for by an audiovisual medium such as film.

His short films like Elégia, Capriccio and Homage to Old Ladies have no spoken content at all (the links are to online videos, though Capriccio is sadly only an excerpt), and even a feature like Szindbád is pretty much impossible to synopsise coherently, as it's so non-linear that any attempt at tracing a viable narrative thread is doomed to failure. But the film's other virtues are so overwhelming that few seem to mind - for an avowedly experimental film, it seems to be remarkably and genuinely popular in its native Hungary.

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Re: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

#72 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jul 13, 2011 1:45 pm

Thanks for the links. Those films look really intriguing.

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