(some writing about) writing about film

So after I saw Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (Film Club XXVII), I went and got a book of her writing out of the library (Essential Deren: Collected Writing on Film). It's pretty interesting, and it sheds some light on exactly what it is that she's attempting to do in her films.

I tend to read with a package of book darts nearby, and eventually (because I'm a huge geek) I take the passages of a text that I marked with the darts and transcribe them into the computer so that I can easily access, search, or share them later.

It occurred to me that people reading this blog might be interested in the notes on the Deren book, so I whipped them up into a webpage, viewable here. I'm still reading the book, so the notes aren't quite complete, but there's more than enough there for interested parties to sink their teeth into. (The page will dynamically update with new notes once I return to reading the book, which might not be for a few weeks: I'm travelling.)

Just in case Deren isn't your thing, here are a few other exports of notes on film books I've read in the recent past:

Virginia Wright Wexman's A History of Film

Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

Stan Brakhage's Brakhage Scrapbook: Collected Writings 1964-1980

Martha Nochimson's The Passion of David Lynch

Eric Lichtenfeld's Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie

Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movies as Politics

Hopefully you can find something in there to enjoy. Oh, btw, these exports aren't hand-coded; they're all made possible by Dabble DB, a great (but not free) service used to generate online databases: that's the same service I use to maintain the 20 Most Recent Films and Favorite Films pages.

Last but not least is a reminder that the Production Design Blog-A-Thon begins Monday...

a query

So I've been giving some thought, over the last week or so, to next semester's syllabus. It will be a reprise of last spring's "Researching and Writing About Film" course, although I'm giving thought to integrating more group readings into the course. As a result, I started thinking about the BFI Modern Classics series of "succinct and beautifully illustrated paperbacks," in which "distinguished film critics, scholars, and novelists explore the production and reception of their chosen films in the context of an argument about the film's importance." I've read two of the books in this series (Ryan Gilbey's Groundhog Day and S. S. Prawer's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht) and enjoyed both of them: they each were smart and substantial, and (more importantly for classroom use) they each seemed accessible to a audience of (relatively bright) general readers. They might need to work a little bit, but they wouldn't need to learn a whole body of esoteric film theory (or any other critical theory) in order to get the main points.

With that in mind, I've decided to choose two films for next semester that have BFI volumes written about them: it's a good way for me to narrow down the otherwise bewilderingly-large field of potential movies. I put a few other restrictions in place: nothing too violent or disturbing (so Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom is out, although I'm sure Gary Indiana's book on it is worth a read), nothing too sexually explicit (ruling out Eyes Wide Shut), and nothing that's just plain weird or esoteric (bye-bye WR - Mysteries of the Organism).

That still leaves a good list of films. Here are the ones I'm leaning towards most heavily...

Unforgiven, by Clint Eastwood (a finalist held over from last time)
Do the Right Thing, by Spike Lee
Amores Perros, by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarantino
and The Terminator, by James Cameron

What would you pick? I should make a decision by week's end so as to order the books and start doing the secondary research.