Today was all Michael Jackson, all the time. Nothing more to add, but it was annoying, since the news in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in Asia, was minimized at a time when there was so much going on. And in terms of death: Robert McNamara's death was dealt with in a very cursory fashion. Yet in terms of actual world events, McNamara remains one of the most significant figures of the 20th Century, as his doctrine of the preemptive strike as a weapon of anti-Communism became the touchstone of the Vietnam War, one of the most wrenching episodes in American history. He and Henry Kissinger were the architects of the Vietnam War, but McNamara had the decency (as documented in Errol Morris's "The Fog of War") to admit the horrors that the country was plunged in because of the war, and to question whether the war was "right".

Of course, Kissinger remains, not so much unrepentant, but utterly convinced of his correctness in all matters. There was a documentary which opened the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, "The Reckoning", which detailed the working of the World Court in Amsterdam, and how the US has tried to block the court, and (in fact) have tried to undermine and destroy the court. And the reason is that, according to international law (which the US had signed during the 1990s), Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are all war criminals. And so the US is trying to undermine international law because our leaders are war criminals.

And the Sarah Palin saga just gets more insane: turns out that she is trying to evade all the cases that have been filed against her for various ethical infractions during her term as governor of Alaska. Her understanding of the law is so hilariously limited that she thinks that if she stops being governor, that all the lawsuits will just have to go away.

(That's as hilarious as Peggy Noonan's declaration that Ronald Reagan was a great intellect; i wonder what would happen to Peggy Noonan if she had ever met Ludwig Wittgenstein, or Claude Levi-Strauss, or Simone de Beauvoir; i know in De Beauvoir's case, she'd sniff and declare De Beauvoir a Communist.)

There's been so many movies over the past few weeks (months, even), but it's hard to know what to think. The reason? The insistence on pop above all else. The way that Michael Jackson has dominated the news in the last week.

I'm reminded of Susan Sontag's essay "The Pornographic Imagination", in which she argues that some works which can be considered "pornographic" need to be acknowledged as works of literary merit. 'Not only do Pierre Louys' "Trois Filles de leur Mere," George Bataille's "Histoire de l'Oeil" and "Madame Edwarda," the pseudonymous "Story of O" and "The Image" belong to literature, but it can be made clear why these books, all five of them, occupy a much higher rank as literature than "Candy" or Oscar Wilde's "Teleny" or the Earl of Rochester's "Sodom" or Appolinaire's "The Debauched Hospodar" or Cleland's "Fanny Hill." The avalanche of pornographic potboilers marketed for two centuries under and, now, increasingly, over the counter no more impugns the status of literature of the first group of pornographic books than the proliferation of books of the caliber of "The Carpetbaggers" and "Valley of the Dolls" throws into question the credentials of "Anna Karenina" and "The Great Gatsby" and "The Man Who Loved Children."' But just as the last two decades have seen the change in values in terms of literary precepts, so critical debates have been superceded by an acceptance which has undermined all values. Sontag: "Only when English and American critics evolve a more sophisticated view of literature will an interesting debate get underway. (In the end, this debate would not only be about pornography but about the whole body of contemporary literature insistently focused on extreme situation and behavior.)" And (of course) this has happened, so that there is a whole school of thought which only seems to value abjection, degradation and extremism.

One Andy Warhol who upends all values is fine, but when the field is crowded with too many wannabe Andy Warhols (Jeff Koons, Mark Kostabi, etc.), then the field is nullified.

Pop culture is quite ephemeral: Farrah Fawcett died around noon in LA, and three hours later, Michael Jackson died. But the hyperbole is a little much.

The interesting thing is that, right now, there's an emphasis on how Michael Jackson was the most famous entertainer of the 20th Century. I hate this kind of hyperbole: if the worldwide saturation of attention is an indication, then the most famous entertainer of the 20th Century remains Charlie Chaplin. And (yes) there is an analogy: Chaplin was also noted for rather unsavory relations with minors. (Paulette Goddard was actually not an anomaly. The other day, i was researching her life, and came across the fact - which i had known but had forgotten - that she had been a Ziegfeld Follies chorine at the age of 15, when she married a millionaire; three years later, when she was 18, she divorced her first husband and received a million dollar settlement, whereupon she and her mother went to L.A. where they invested in real estate. Goddard met Chaplin shortly after, and they claimed to have married in China or Vietnam or somewhere but no marriage license was ever found. Chaplin then starred Goddard in "Modern Times" in 1936, when she was already 23 or 24, but he'd already been with her since she was a teenager.)

The problem is that there is too much deification going on in the way people regard the arts. A lot of it has to do with the need people have for spirituality, but there's an insistence on creating an image of the artist as hero, and there's no middle ground.

But certainly an odd day. In addition: Hanne Hiob died; she was Bertolt Brecht's daughter, a few months ago, Stefan Brecht died. Ed McMahon also died. Ed McMahon's death was very sad: he left a lot of debts, and his wife had to move out of the house as soon as he died. Very sad.

There was an article about a week ago, about how more than 80% of blogs have slowed down. A lot of people just aren't posting anymore. It's like hula-hoops or pet rocks: a fad.

But the reason i haven't blogged recently is that i'm stumped. I've been going to press screenings, but since the Tribeca Film Festival, it's been a tough slog. Also: i must be on another schedule, because i'm not running into people. And the feeling of isolation is starting to get to me. There's so much that's now causing the theatrical experience to disintegrate, but going to the movies was always some sort of communal experience: it wasn't just sitting in a theater as part of an audience, it was going to the movies with people. When i was a child, my grandmother took me to the movies, along with my sister. And even watching movies on TV, i always did that with my sister. (One big memory was watching "The Third Man" on TV with my father and sister, and my father was explaining about post-WWII Europe - he was stationed in Berlin in 1947, so he was part of the Occupation forces - and he talked about the bombed-out buildings, and the rubble. We must have been about six or seven at the time. I'll always love "The Third Man" for that reason; also "The Fallen Idol" because my father loved that movie: he thought Ralph Richardson was the greatest actor he'd ever seen.)

A note about the weather: this is one of the soggiest Junes on record in New York City. Average rainfall for June is about two inches; we're already past six inches, and there's no (real) end in sight. It's just rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. And when it gets really bad, it's impossible to get around. For some reason, subway service slows down (if not outright stops) in the outer boroughs, and since i'm now in Brooklyn, this is a real problem. On Tuesday, June 9, there was a press screening of "Brighton Rock"; the screening was at Film Forum. Well: it should take me about 45-50 minutes to get there from my house. There was a deluge that morning, and when i got to the subway station, it was obvious there was a delay. So i just went home. Today (Thursday, June 18), there was a press screening of "Les Plages d'Agnes", also at Film Forum. Also a deluge this morning, but i went anyway... but i waited for the D Express at 36th Street Brooklyn; three N Expresses went by, and by that time, it was 10:40 AM; there was no way that i would get to the West 4th Street Manhattan station by 11, so i would be late to the screening, so i just turned around and came home. Of course, it was lucky: i'd seen both "Brighton Rock" and "Les Plages d'Agnes" before, but still, i feel like i'm cursed never to be able to get to Film Forum!

(If i were going to The Museum of Modern Art or the Walter Reade Theater, i could take either the D or the N train, but with Film Forum, it's the D train to West 4th.)

Oh, well, and it's still raining.

Yesterday it was a clear (thought cloudy) day, and i had to wait in the morning for the National Grid person to come and do the annual boiler check. And on Turner Classic Movies (this month is dedicated to "Great Directors") it was Tony Richardson day. Started with "The Charge of the Light Brigade", then "The Sailor From Gibraltar". I really wanted to see that again, because... my question is: why is it a bad movie? Why is it that "The Sailor From Gibraltar" and Jules Dassin's "10:30 PM Summer" don't work as movies, yet Duras's own writing for the movies (the screenplays for "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Une Aussi Longue Absence") and her novels and her own movies ("La Musica", "Destroy, She Said", "Nathalie Granger", "India Song" and "Le Camion") are quite remarkable. What is wrong with "The Sailor From Gibraltar" and "10:30 PM Summer"?

I also watched Richardson's 1969 version of "Hamlet" (boy, that Nicol Williamson sure does talk fast!).

Then i went to the press screening of the documentary "Afghan Star". This movie played at the recent Human Rights Watch Film Festival, but i missed it then. Jeff Lunger joined me for the press screening, and after we went to a coffee shop and discussed the movie. The movie was one of those barely functional digital works, but the subject was fascinating: it was about how a fractured, war-torn culture (Afghanistan) can be united by... pop (in this case, a version of "Pop/American Idol"). One of the things Jeff and i talked about was the idea of the "hook", that angle of the documentary which enticed people to fund it. (In this case, it was obvious that the British Channel 4 funders were interested in the conjunction of the exotic nature of an alien "pop" culture, and the political implications. For instance, of the four final contestants, two were women, even though the Taliban has made it explicit that women are not allowed to sing or dance in public. One of the women gets carried away in her song, and she lets her head scarf fall and she dances at the end of her song... and of course, there's death threats and denunciations and hysteria. But "Afghan Idol" is defying the Taliban.) But Jeff and i also discussed the fact that there are so many documentaries being made, but there seems to be a lack of passion about most of them.

I missed the Great Performances broadcast of the concert version of "Chess". I remember when "Chess" was first done in London, and that was one of the two musicals that Mary Lucier became obsessed with (the other was "Cats"). I saw some version of "Chess" (was it on Broadway?) and a few years later, i remember going to an off-off-Broadway production of "Chess". But i'll have to catch "Chess" when it's rebroadcast.

Well, i didn't get to "Les Plages d'Agnes" but it's Jules Dassin day on TCM, and i'm watching "Topkapi" (which i had seen as a child). Too bad TCM didn't show "10:30 PM Summer" but i have that on DVD. This evening, TCM will be doing Francois Truffaut.

This week, i also saw two films by Sissako, the director from Mali; his films also raise some interesting questions, because the dramatic structure is flat, and his films seem to dribble away (his films don't really have endings, they just stop) yet what are the compensations? And there are compensations. I'd already seen "Waiting for Happiness" (and i was surprised at how much i remember of that film; i have to admit that the images are quite haunting) but not "Life on Earth" and what was illuminating was that the same situation (the one-thing-follows-another style, without any dramatic conclusion) which i had found in "Waiting for Happiness" was also in "Life on Earth". Anyway, there's going to be a retrospective of his work at MoMA.

In terms of Agnes Varda: it seems that she and Chris Marker (who has been a close friend of hers since the 1950s) have reached the point where they can simply record their feelings and thoughts with unsurpassed ease. But it's like Chris Marker is viewed as such an intellectual, while Agnes Varda is not (yet her work, such as "La Pointe Courte" or "Sans Toit ni Loi", is certainly as rigorous and as intellectual as anything by her compatriots Alain Resnais or Marker). Yet it reminds me of the situation when Claude Simon won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Mary Mccarthy remarked, "What? Not Nathalie Sarraute?" And this takes me back to Margeurite Duras...

Last night, it was: "American Idol", "Dancing With the Stars" and Joseph Losey's "The Lawless" on Turner Classic Movies. Oh, and the premiere of "Glee". TV doesn't get more exciting than that. ("Glee" reminded me of nothing as much as Ryan Murphy's initial foray into TVland, the WB series "Popular", only with musical numbers. Have to admit the glee club rendition of "Rehab" was certainly unusual.)

Larry made the observation that "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" shouldn't really be listed as "reality shows" in so far as they are talent competitions, of which there is a huge history, all the way back to Major Bowes and Ted Mack. ("Sing out, Louise!")

It's been more than three weeks since i've even attempted to write anything on this blog. And a lot has happened.

One thing that happened was the Tribeca Film Festival. This year, it was streamlined, less films (not over 100) and there was a feeling of concentration. And it seems as if each year, the festival gets better and better. One reason is that the options for distribution and exhibition are in such flux, and people are looking for alternatives, and because it's relatively new, Tribeca is the alternative.

And the flux of the current situation cannot be overestimated. The economic downturn actually hit many nonprofits before the fall of 2008; there were difficulties with even many established organizations in terms of fundraising, and that has only intensified. And so (taking as two examples) the once Rockfeller Intercultural Film/Video program (which went through several name changes) is now part of the Tribeca All-Access program. And the part of the Tribeca All-Access which has a script development program (for "minorities") is now working in conjunction with the IFP. (And the other part of the script development program at the IFP is now part of the Sundance Institute.)

The continual changes in the field are sometimes bewildering, because it's not as if there aren't filmmakers out there who need help. The other day, Reid Rosefeld (on his new blog - http://speedcine.com/blog) wondered about the whole process of online marketing, and how in the history of film, there's always those filmmakers who never knew how to market themselves, but does that mean their work should just be ignored? Even someone like Robert Bresson was very canny about marketing himself. But Marcel Hanoun (for example) was a disaster at it. Last year, most people were impressed by "Frozen River", and that's an independent film which went through the whole process of development through various organizations (like the IFP) in order to go from a short film to a feature. And Courtney Hunt needed that kind of help. And now that most of those programs have been shuttered, what can people do?

And yet people continue to make films. And one of the things is that people are no longer looking to Hollywood. Movies like "Treeless Mountain" and "The Exploding Girl" (as well as Soderberg's "The Girlfriend Experience") are trying to find new ways of finding an audience.

But there's a lot: Tribeca and New Directors/New Films (also very good this year). A lot of people i know (those that still have jobs as film critics or curators) are now in Cannes, and there's been a lot of speculation about this year's festival. Will it confirm the downward trend of the cinema? Or will it reveal new modes of distribution and exhibition?

It's hard to tell, but i'm feeling optimistic, after seeing movies that i actually liked. But then i looked at various blogs and online film reviews, and i was flummoxed: what the hell are these people thinking about? It's like so much online is simply an assertion of taste: "i like"; "i don't like". But there's little reasoning why. And not only that, but there's no sense of a system of values which inform the particular taste. Why is this film "good"? What aesthetic criteria do these people apply?

In the past, film critics applied criteria which derived from more traditional artforms: theater, literature, the visual arts, music. And there was a whole history of those artforms. But now, we are confronted with people who are barbarians, who seem never to have read a book (one film critic, who has been employed by an entertainment magazine for more than a decade, has stated that he never reads a book if a movie is based on it; he admitted he rarely reads books at all!), who've never gone to the theater, whose taste in music starts at Elvia Presley (if that), and who know all about "graphic novels" but have no knowledge of painting. And then they say, oh, this movie is good. But why is it good? What are you comparing it to? How is the experience of this film unique?

And it finally gets depressing. For example: i remember that the reviews for "My Fair Lady" were mostly laudatory in the daily newspapers, but the more serious critics mostly panned it. And the pans for the movie were based, not on a platonic ideal, but on an actual film which was as much a Shavian ideal as possible. And Audrey Hepburn's performance was all wrong: she couldn't help it, but Audrey Hepburn was a lady (in actuality, she was a noble, since her mother was a baroness) and she couldn't shake that. But you can't explain this to people now, because all those distinctions are now (seemingly) moot.

But they're not, and that's why Larry and i are finding the BBC series "Any Dream Will Do" so fascinating. It's seeing these kids who are desperate for a show business career, and when most of them speak, their accents are so... uncultivated, to say the least.

But this year, "American Idol" has been fascinating, because there's such a back story. The Christian right seized on "American Idol" as if it were a referendum (they want to turn everything into a referendum) on gay rights. Danny Gokey was chosen by the Christian right as the hardworking straight man with the tragic past (his wife died last year), and Adam Lambert was the devil, because he was gay. Well: this past week, there was a vote for the final two, and it turned out to be Kris Allen and Adam Lambert. The Christian right could not mobilize enough votes for Danny Gokey.

Oh, well, it's true, the US is going to hell.

Over the winter, i started growing two avocados (sticking the pits halfway in a cup of water), and both grew very nicely. One grew to over two feet tall! So at the end of March, Larry decided to plant it: he got a pot, he got some potting soil, and he planted the tall avocado. And then he decided to put it outside. Well: since January, New York City has had one of the worst winters on record. January almost set some sort of record: there wasn't a single day when the temperature went above freezing. And February continued the cold. And then it went into March! Well, the avocado spent a few days outside when one night the temperature went below freezing (again) and the plant immediately died.

Well, i'm like that avocado. The last month, my body has revolted against the cold and... i haven't been able to go out. All sorts of problems. It's just horrible. Finally, the last few days have been seasonable (not freezing) and today i actually started feeling much better.

Be that as it may, i did see a bunch of movies, i've also watched TV. Over the weekend, a friend asked me about art criticism on the web, and i mentioned Walter Robinson (ArtNet) and John Perrault and Jeff Weinstein (the ArtsJournal weblog). And it was funny because it made me look at the stuff on ArtNet and on Artopia (Perreault) and Out There (Weinstein). I was glad to see that Jeff Weinstein has been enjoying "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" as much as i have.

But it's like usually i follow various film blogs, such as Flickgrrl (Carrie Rickey), Thompson on Hollywood (Anne Thompson), Film Journey (Doug Cummings), The Passionate Moviegoer (Joe Baltake), Cine-Journal (George Robinson), Popsurfing (Michael Giltz), and Dave Kehr. And (of course) there's Facebook, which is like a world unto itself!

When i was watching the HBO movie "Grey Gardens", i was struck by the problem of tone: so much of the social scene that was depicted in the 1950s just seemed off. (The film was better when it concentrated on the pair alone in the house; the airlessness, the lack of social perspective and the enclosed timelessness seemed appropriate, but when other people were around, it was hard to tell exactly what they were supposed to be. That is: they didn't seem to be New Yorkers of the 1950s. In fact, it wrecked havoc on my memory, because it didn't resemble anything like New York in the 1950s, and i grew up there.) And it reminded me of the problems i had when i was watching Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence": it was the kind of movie where every superficial detail was just-about-perfect, yet every nuance, every social/cultural/political context just seemed ever-so-slightly off. Just as an example: Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder just sounded wrong. Their accents were not upper-class New York. Yet no one seems to notice these things. And Joanne Woodward was exactly the wrong person to get as the narrator: though she has a trained actor's voice, she's Southern, and that keeps slipping through.

And i've been reading so much online film criticism (or what passes for film criticism) and i'm just appalled. These people seem to have no knowledge of... anything! Except movies. And somehow, movies aren't enough.

But i'm hoping i start feeling better and i really want to start going out again!

Avocados are the most difficult plants to try to maintain. We had three that we put in our room for the winter: two of them are fine, one of them suddenly started to shrivel up. And there's no difference in temperature, we water them all the same. And there are two new ones which we had in water... we planted one and put it outside last week. Well, the minute the weather went below 40 degrees, that plant's leaves turned all brown and it seems to be dying.

Today there was the second press screening of "Leon Morin, Pretre" and i planned to go, but when i woke up i had... it almost felt like a cramp in my stomach. However, i shall proceed.

From my memory: the reason i wanted to see "Leon Morin, Pretre" again was that it seemed to me that in his early films (from "Le Silence de la Mer" to "Leon Morin, Pretre", and that includes the two "thrillers" "Bob le Flambeur" and "Deux Hommes dans Manhattan"), Jean-Pierre Melville is always dealing with displacement, and that displacement has to do with the overwhelming emotion of something "forbidden" contrasted with the surface of activity. In "Le Silence de la Mer", the girl and her grandfather refuse to change their routines, as a way of silently protesting the presence of the Nazi officer. And the commentary reveals those emotions which cannot be stated.

And in "Leon Morin, Pretre", the ambivalence which is at the center of Melville's work runs riot: there is Barny's attraction to the priest, but also Barny's interest in other women which is enforced because of the absence of a lot of the men in the town. The Occupation creates an enclosed, claustrophobic atmosphere (rather like the various underworlds in Melville's thrillers, with their codes of honor and their rigid rules). Another thing in Melville: his enclosed worlds have their own rules (like the games that the twins play in their room in "Les Enfants Terribles"), and these rules are often a subversion of the traditional rules that exist outside (thus, the gangsters and thieves have their own protocols, just as the police do, and these rules often mimic each other, as in "Le Cercle Rouge").

But i've been thinking about Melville... and also about Harry Smith because i went to the screening of "Film #23" which turned out to be an incredible work. And what was so fascinating about "Film #23" was that the information about how the film came to be (it was supposed to be a singular work, one copy only which was then to be sold as a "unique" art object, but Harry didn't then destroy the materials he used... he just didn't label them, but left them among his effects). And what Harry used was: footage of couples which he shot (some of which was used in "Mahagonny"), what seems to be discarded footage from the period of "Early Abstractions", discarded footage from the period of "Late Superimpositions", etc. You'd think, from the way this sounds, this would have been a mish-mash, but it wasn't! The absolute care with which the various layers are played off against each other, the rhythms of the editing which match the rhythms of the music Harry chose to accompany the film (the late 1930s Kurt Weill score "Little Johnny Johnston" which began as a New Federal Theater project: very a propos in this economic climate), all of these are just so perfectly combined.

Some other things i've seen recently: the premiere episode (a 2-hour movie) of "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (the last work directed by Anthony Minghella, and very charming; it's one of Minghella's better works, and it's good that it's based on material which isn't so fancy and pretentious, because Minghella was able to use his visual skills - the film was shot in Botswana, and it's a beautiful country - and his skill with actors on "light" material, and the results show what a fine crafstman he could be when he wasn't trying for poetic profundity, which weighed down and ultimately sank "Cold Mountain"); the Basil Dearden thriller "All Night Long" (especially noteworthy because of the appearance of so many wonderful jazz musicians, including Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus and John Dankworth); the Jamie Kennedy documenatry "Heckler" (which turned into a screed, not about heckling, but about critics).

Wouter Barendrecht died on Sunday: a real shock! Since we haven't been going to any international festivals in at least four years (at least since we've moved), we haven't really had a chance to run into Wouter. But during those crazy days of the IFP Market (especially the late 1980s), Wouter was working for the Berlin Film Festival, and he was also trying to get Fortissimo off the ground. The idea of Fortissimo Films was very ambitious (certainly, at that time): he would help to finance, produce and distribute films by artists from around the world. The model was sort of the Hubert Bals Fund, but Wouter really felt that there had to be a way to get the films (once completed) to festivals, and into distribution around the world.

But his death was very sudden. When he was starting Fortissimo, he worked very closely with Norman Wang and Sophie Gluck, because Norman and Sophie were the people who handled a lot of the cinema coming out of Asia (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan), and Wouter felt that this was an area where exciting cinema was developing. But Wouter's sudden death was very shocking, and very sad. He was only 45. But he did make Fortissimo into a real force in world cinema. And there's a staff, and the work he started will continue, but it's still sad, because he was the person who had the vision. And that's something that's hard to replace.