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| Dir: Bennett Miller (2014) |
Trophy collecting,
American male study.
Shift in movie gaze.
The gaze alluded to above is Laura Mulvey's "the male gaze." Channing Tatum carries the flag for this current wave. In Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh (of sex, lies and videotape no less) knowingly objectifies the male body ... I mean, bodies. And there's Magic Mike XXL, for a more protracted gaze. Can't vouch for Fifty Shades of Grey because it's not on cable yet, but it's made half a billion dollars and whose active gaze is responsible for that?
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| Dir: Jean-Luc Godard (1980) |
"Godard" hates women,
More essay than feature film,
Control by slow mo.
Found it hard to like this Godard, mainly because it's like reading a "composed" thesis. I don't see a Godard to get "lost" in it. It's a discussion and he does not make one forget that one's watching a movie. Took me a while to figure out why he employs slow motion in certain frames and not others. Is this what a lingering gaze is to him? Used Amy Taubin as Cliff's Notes to get to an answer that it's how he demonstrates man's control over woman. It's telling that the film has three different titles when it was released. The object's meaning is subject to the gazer.
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| Dir: Dan Gilroy (2014) |
Dark media satire
That would make Chayefsky proud.
That would make Chayefsky proud.
Jake's hungry eyes haunt.
In a different kind of gazing, the viewer becomes complicit to Lou Bloom's crimes in Nightcrawler. I rooted for him to shoot the footage he wants because I am the type of viewer who wants to see those types of images. The viewer sees through different lenses: the camera view, then Bloom's view, and then the footage. By the time the viewer sees the last, s/he ought to question the voyeur in him/her.
All the photographs and negatives Vivian Maier mostly shot in her Rolleiflex cannot solve the mystery of who she was. She was by all accounts a loner and eccentric. Do the works inform us about the artist or the person? A few times the movie felt like an infomercial in its attempt to lobby for her place as a major artist. The movie lacks dissent, which would have made it stronger. This I know: from the headlines she hoarded, she's the type of viewer Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler aims to please.
In a different kind of gazing, the viewer becomes complicit to Lou Bloom's crimes in Nightcrawler. I rooted for him to shoot the footage he wants because I am the type of viewer who wants to see those types of images. The viewer sees through different lenses: the camera view, then Bloom's view, and then the footage. By the time the viewer sees the last, s/he ought to question the voyeur in him/her.
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| Dir: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel (2014) |
Pack rat nanny shoots
Photos found posthumously.
Life lived on one's terms.All the photographs and negatives Vivian Maier mostly shot in her Rolleiflex cannot solve the mystery of who she was. She was by all accounts a loner and eccentric. Do the works inform us about the artist or the person? A few times the movie felt like an infomercial in its attempt to lobby for her place as a major artist. The movie lacks dissent, which would have made it stronger. This I know: from the headlines she hoarded, she's the type of viewer Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler aims to please.
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