Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2009 > July > 15 > Entry
What I’m watching
Wherein our movie critic periodically shares what DVDs he’s been viewing in his spare time …
- “Near Dark” (1987; Kathryn Bigelow): Bigelow’s Texas vampire road movie holds up well, with its wily humor and sun-baked vampire lore forging a tangy twist on a hoary genre. Bill Paxton has particular joy eating up flesh — and the desert and roadhouse scenery. Bloody fun.
- “The Tin Drum” (1979; Volker Schlondorff): A visually sumptuous and thrillingly imaginative adaptation of the famous Gunter Grass novel set in Nazi Germany. To protest the cruel absurdities of humankind — including Nazism — a 3-year-old boy decides to stop growing. A political fable told in broad but colorful and damning strokes.
- “A Song is Born” (Howard Hawks; 1948): Hawks remade his superb comedy “Ball of Fire” into a so-so musical, with the bendy Danny Kaye assuming the stuffy Gary Cooper role. Perky Virginia Mayo fills the firecracker Barbara Stanwyck part, but it’s hardly the same. Still, some crack jazz, with Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong et al, and puff-pastry enjoyments.
- “Zabriskie Point” (Michelangelo Antonioni; 1970): A woolly examination of late-’60s youth culture in America, with languorous hippie interludes, through the eye of the ever-arty Antonioni. Has aged poorly — its points are made in shrieking italics — and, for such a straight-forward message movie, it’s narratively baggy when it really shouldn’t be.
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By Greg O'Neal
July 15, 2009 11:54 PM | Link to this
Sir, your “opinion” on “Zabriskie Point” is the only thing truly pathetic about the film. Why did you even watch this movie? Please, stay away from Antonioni. Forever. I don’t mean to insult you, but stay away, please. Not made for your type. That you think Antonioni was saying, simply: “America bad” only underscores how sorely your type is suited to his style.
The socio-political elements in the film may be old, but the film itself is fresh, modern, vibrant. Only when feelings (go ahead, laugh) and thoughts become “dated” will Antonioni’s films rot too. Perhaps, in this postmodern era, emotions and ideas are passe. When the film came out they-even then-said, “so 1969!” It’s not politcal—it’s poetical!
There’s a poetic film here—not a “literary one.” I’ve loved this film for a long time. It rejects the nineteenth-century-novel-style narrative (the last images seen blowing up—in the explosion scene—are books). It’s both abstract (in formal design) and documentary (in approach, narratively).
Read Antonioni’s interviews! He NEVER outright attacks America in this film. He simply, “objectively,” films the story of two young people. Even the ending is narrative, not didactic. After you used the phrase “arty”-as if “art” was a profane thing-I wished he did make an outright anti-American film! I don’t mean to insult you, but stay away from his movies, please. Watch something else.