Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

Hook  (1991)

Nikki Finke says her sources tell her that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC have worked out a compromise to be able to produce a Golden Globes telecast that the WGA can’t picket. Nikki’s using the word “scraped” in her headline, but that doesn’t really sound accurate at all; it seems that the show will go on, just without the montage bloat.

The plan is to apparently throw “a news event??where the actors can still get all glammed up”??????basically, a glorified press conference, with most of the “content” stemming from the winners’ ostensibly improvised acceptence speeches.?? Presumably, such a set up would allow NBC to keep their ad revenue whilst the HFPA gets to keep both their licensing fees and a teeny-tiny shred of dignity. Even better for us the viewers, Steven Spielberg will get to accept his Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, whilst we’ll be spared the clip reel attempt to legitimize Hook.

Under discussion:

Reality Bites  (1993)

Todd at South Dakota Dark introduces the Superficial Blogathon, to take place February 1-8:

…sometimes, you just want to look at attractive people doing witty things. I mean, we’re all human!

You could write an extended treatise on a work where the superficial pleasures led you to a deeper understanding of the piece as a whole. Or you could make a list of people you find attractive. Or you could just post pretty pictures. So long as it has to do with something in the arts or pop culture and it’s something you enjoy on some sort of shallow level, it’s fair game.

Karina’s note to self: this is probably the perfect place for that piece you’ve been thinking about writing about the time you went to see Janeane Garofalo at Comix, and she solicited the audience for painkillers and eventually traded a girl sitting up front some kind of hand-beaded bracelet for a handful of Vicodin, which in turn prompted to you to ponder the allure of Reality Bites. Which, you should probably admit right now, you saw four times in the theater when you were 13, and which today, though totally cognizant of its faults, you still can’t really help but like a lot.

[Via GreenCine Daily]

Under discussion:

Inland Empire  (2006)

You might have seen the above video by now??????it’s been making the rounds all weekend. Someone took a couple of clips from the Inland Empire DVD, of David Lynch railing against the watching of films on cell phones, and set it to the familiar music from Apple commercials. “It’s such a sadness, that you think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone!” he cries. “Get real!” Cue the iPhone logo. The End. Cute, right? Harmless.

Not exactly. Kent Nichols, co-creator of the mega-popular web series Ask a Ninja, has written a blog post in response to the clip, titled “David Lynch is a tool.” “Look David Lynch,” Nichols writes. “I respect that you???ve made a career by confusing people and by pretending to be smarter than them.” But…

…you???re getting to be a cranky old man. If someone wants to pay you to watch your weird little films on a cell phone or a DVD or a flipbook, just smile and take the money. Short of inviting every potential viewer to sit and watch it in your personal viewing chamber, there is no ???ideal??? viewing experience.

There???s just content and people. People want the content, we give it to them.

Though Nichols goes on to concede that “some stuff works better in the cinematic environment,” he concludes by saying that if a filmmaker wants to reach the masses, “You just need to create visuals that will play well on a 320??240 window. If you???re doing anything else, you???re being a cranky old artist.”

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