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August 30, 2008

Dispatch from Slow Food Nation: Speaker Panels

From Serious Eats

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From left: Gary Nabhan, Dan Barber, James Oseland, Winona LaDuke, Michael Pollan. Credit: Slow Food Nation

I have been sitting at my keyboard for the last 45 minutes trying to decide how to best describe Slow Food Nation. We San Franciscans have been hearing about the arrival of this massive event for about a year.

The brainchild of Alice Waters, Slow Food Nation is the first event of its kind. It's taking place over this three-day weekend and comprises panels, classes, a large Taste Pavilion, dinners, a farmers' market, two rock concerts, and more.

The event is being attended by about 50,000 food lovers, and has taken over San Francisco's food community. It's also divided the community: Some are thrilled about the event, and some are purposely avoiding it. The reasons for avoiding are many, and I hope to talk about some of them during this series of posts. Me? I wasn't exactly sure how I felt. And after attending a day and a half of events, I am even less sure.

I hope, over a number of posts, to give you all some insight into Slow Food Nation and to share some of my thoughts about the weekend.

Yesterday, I attended three panels out of four that were offered. To people in the sustainable food community, each panel had rockstar-level participants. Within a several hour period, I heard from luminaries such as Marion Nestle, Andrew Kimbrell, AG Kawamura, Michael Pollan, Dan Barber, Gary Nabhan, Winona LaDuke, Eric Schlosser and Jose Padilla.

Highlights of the panels, after the jump:

  • AG Kawamura, Secretary of the Food and Agriculture for California. Honestly, I was impressed that Secretary Kawamura was participating in a conversation about sustainable food. I don't know much about his work, but he seems to be really trying to strategize agriculture production for California. When a protester interrupted his speech (about a state issue regarding aerial spraying for the light apple brown moth), he addressed the protestor's concerns
  • Andrew Kimbrell giving his opinion that the Bush administration is constantly trying to undermine organic labelling, including adding a rider to the first Iraq Appropriations Act which tried to undermine the domestic requirement to feed organic feed to organic animals
  • Dan Barber talking about the new slaughterhouse at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It's more efficient, creates a closed loop, and he thinks the food tastes better
  • The panel's hat tip to big food moving toward buying local food. Michael Pollan mentioned Wal-Mart's efforts, saying that they make economic sense and are an important part of the conversation. Dan Barber gave a plug for Sysco, saying that their new strategies about food are "probably one of the most exciting things in big agriculture"
  • The moderator asked how our presidential candidates stand on food and agriculture. Michael Pollan responded, "they don't stand." He does believe that, in order to execute their energy and health care plans, both candidates will eventually realize that they have to deal with food
  • A discussion among the panel about the cost of local food. They were discussing whether it was possible to buy reasonably priced local food, and everyone on the panel had spoken except Barber. The moderator asked Barber if he had anything to add. Barber replied, "Being the guy who charges $40 for an entrée? No, I'm good"
  • The last panel, which was called "A New, Fair Food System." It was focused on workers' rights and social justice. The panel included several leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who launched a boycott against Taco Bell in order to increase worker wages, and ended up renogtiating terms with Yum Brands, McDonald's, Burger King, and is about to announce a new agreement with Whole Foods. Everyone on this panel does extremely inspiring work dealing with heart-breaking, maddening worker conditions. The panel underlined the fact that those of us who care where our food is coming from really need to pay attention to who is providing our food and how they are being treated

It's interesting that Slow Food Nation was held in between the two national political conventions, as much of the first day had the feeling of a convention. There were lots of cheers and a palpable excitement from the audience. Everyone was on the same side, everyone spoke the same language, and everyone seemed to have a common goal to build a more sustainable food system.

About the author: Jennifer Maiser writes about locally and sustainably grown food. She is the founder and editor of the Eat Local Challenge website and writes at Life Begins at 30, her personal weblog.

Mozilla Labs: Ubiquity

Aza Raskin introducing Ubiquity, a research project from Mozilla Labs to add natural language mashups to the web browser. The simple examples make me think it’s LaunchBar or Quicksilver (or Enso) but only for the web. The more ambitious examples (which don’t work yet), make me think it’s trying to do what AppleScript tried but failed to do. E.g.:

Book a flight to Chicago next Monday to Thursday, no red-eyes, the cheapest. Then email my Chicago friends the itinerary, and add it to my calendar.

That’d be incredible. I’m not holding my breath.

Help the Animals in the Gulf Coast

The Humane Society of Louisiana has been trying to recuperate ever since Hurricane Katrina. They've had to move from New Orleans to an isolated location in Tylertown, Mississippi; many of their donors never returned after Katrina hit; and they're still caring for 100 animal survivors of Katrina. As they put it:

Of course, it was never in our original mission or budget to provide lifelong sanctuary care for these animals... There are many reasons why we still have so many Katrina animals in our care. 45 of our cats, for example, were obviously feral when rescued, although they were too sick at the time for us to know it. As they recovered after proper veterinary care, it became apparent that most could never be adopted as typical family pets. We've built an outdoor addition for them, and you will be hearing over the next several months about our efforts to build a 'Katrina Kitty Village' for these special retirees.

As they prepare to evacuate for Hurricane Gustav, they've sent out an urgent request for financial assistance, particularly from donors who aren't in the area, since those donors will be btoo usy evacuating themselves to concern themselves with the shelter right now.

"We have unanticipated expenses for supplies, provisions, etc.," they write, "and we urgently need a reserve of cash on hand to deal with emergencies and operations after the storm makes landfall."

If you're interested in helping them, click here.

I Have Issues

Well if that didn’t scare you off then perhaps this blog thing may actually work out. First off, I profess to know very little about start-ups, or the latest app, or even the basics behind blogging. I still don’t understand how I am legitimate enough to air my own views through blogging. But I digress. I do understand that tech knowledge will come with time, but I am anxious and excited to get the ball rolling. Whereas I used to gorge myself on gossipy, girly pop culture sites, trust that Sarah now has me on a streamlined diet of tech blogs. In the interim, however, I’ll remain that weird kid at the table typing away at her five-year-old Dell PC and answering her flip phone that beeps like a Tamagotchi. And yes, I can feel your judgment. ;-)

 Being the great reporter that she is, Sarah has it pretty down pat: analyzing the business merit and the industry appeal behind these new ideas while also revealing the humanity in the people that strive to achieve the next big thing. I just observe people and read vibes. Perhaps I’m leery of the tech overhaul- where a person becomes little more than a Twitter handle, and can hide behind a blog instead of speaking and voicing their opinions. I can already see the change in little tweaks and twinges- an example being Facebook’s new UI. I know, I know, groans all around- why are we talking about this again? Well, Facebook is priming itself to be the ultimate social media site, if it isn’t already. And I hate the new version. (This coming from a self-declared Facebook stalker.)

 Sure it may be more efficient, and the design layout is clean and direct, but the new version also represents a fundamental truth- there’s no mystery left, nothing to discover about someone. In the older version, a person’s profile view centered around who they are: likes, interests, movies, music. Now, the first thing I learn when I click on a profile is who a person knows and what he or she does: who writes on their wall, what updates Friendfeed lists, etc. It’s a disconnect, a person’s individuality replaced with their network and a hungry sense of self-promotion. The Wall abides.

I know this doesn’t pervade all aspects of life, since I have met so many interesting and creative people in person. Yes, the control does still lie with the user and promotion is commonplace in our culture. In fact, I just added Friendfeed- although not because I feel I have enough legitimacy to throw my updates out there in bold script, but because I would be out of the loop if I didn't. I’m still not entirely comfortable with that level of promotion. But I will be. I guess I’m just old-school across the board, not only in my outdated gadgets.

 Perhaps, this is why I’m so tickled over Sarah’s posts about Mad Men this week. I’m new to the show this season, right now as it inches towards its apex of exposure. Sounds like a familiar scenario. Nevertheless, I like the show. My nostalgic memaw side is pretty keen on the idea of business conducted through handshakes and handwritten notes. And three-martini lunches. So if Mad Men can get down with Twitter, then I suppose I can embrace my new techie side and get down with Facebook. Eventually.

Apparently, "undistinguished" only matters if you're a Democrat

More fun that comes on the back of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate: getting to hoist Karl Rove on his own petard. (Will that ever get old, though?) When he was on Face the Nation three weeks ago, and the Democratic vice-presidential slot had not yet been filled, Rove was asked whether the chance of Obama picking Virginia governor Tim Kaine would put Virginia into play in the election. Rove's response will now go into the annals of truly awful foresight:

I think he's going to make an intensely political choice, not a governing choice. He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president; that is to say, he's going to pick somebody that he thinks will on the margin help him in a state like Indiana or Missouri or Virginia. He's not going to be thinking big and broad about the responsibilities of president.
 
With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years, he's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town. So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, "You know what? I'm really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States? What I'm concerned about is, can he bring me the electoral votes of the state of Virginia, the 13 electoral votes in Virginia?"

The video of this masterful bit of analysis is here (you can forward to around 6:10 or so for the meat), and the PDF transcript of the Face the Nation interview is here.

(Thanks go out to the Political Animal, Steve Benen, for picking this one up!)

Update: I didn't realize that Rove has already just gone ahead and contradicted himself on this; yesterday, on Fox News, he said that being mayor of "the second largest city in Alaska" was a great qualification for her. (Nevermind that Wasilla actually isn't even in Alaska's top ten list, and if you ranked the entirety of Alaska alongside the nation's most populous cities, the entire state wouldn't be in the top ten.)

How to read a movie

Thumbnail image for notorious.jpg At left: Hitchcock's "Notorious." Bergman on strong axis. Grant at left. Bergman lighter, Grant shadowed. Grant above, Bergman below. Movement toward lower right. The attention and pressure is on her.

I've mentioned from time to time the "shot at a time" sessions I do at film festivals and universities, sifting through a film with the help of the audience. The e-mails I receive indicate this is perceived as some kind of esoteric exercise. Actually, it's something anyone can do, including you, and you don't need to be an expert, because the audience, and the film itself, are your most helpful collaborators. Of course it would be wise to research a film you hope to dismantle in public, and be familiar with its director and context, but I believe the process in its pure form could be applied to a film you've never even heard of. I want to tell you how.

This all began for me in about 1969, when I started teaching a film class in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts program. I knew a Chicago film critic, teacher and booker named John West, who lived in a wondrous apartment filled with film prints, projectors, books, posters and stills. "You know how football coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to study game films?" he asked me. "You can use that approach to study films. Just pause the film and think about what you see. You ought to try it with your film class."

I did. The results were beyond my imagination. I wasn't the teacher and my students weren't the audience, we were all in this together. The ground rules: Anybody could call out "stop!" and discuss what we were looking at, or whatever had just occurred to them. A couple of years later, when I started doing shot-by-shots at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the conference founder, Howard Higman, described this process as "democracy in the dark." Later he gave it a name: Cinema Interruptus. Perhaps it sounds grueling, but in fact it can be exciting and almost hypnotic. At Boulder for more than 30 years, I made my way through a film for two hours every afternoon for a week, and the sessions had to be moved to an auditorium to accommodate attendance that approached a thousand.

One thing I quickly discovered was that even much smaller audiences can contain someone who can answer any question. In "The Third Man," if a character spoke German, there would be a German speaker. If a scene required medical knowledge, there would be a doctor. A Japanese film at Boulder turned up Japanese speakers, experts on the society, students of the director. There would be somebody who could tell you what a Ford truck could and couldn't do. Or a rabbi, a physicist, an artist, a musician. When Criterion asked me to record a commentary track on Ozu's "Floating Weeds," I reflected that I didn't know a fraction of what Donald Richie or David Bordwell knew about Ozu (and Richie was already doing the film's silent version). How to talk for two hours about the visuals of a film where every scene is a single static shot? I took the film to Boulder, and together we discovered there was a rich abundance of things to say.

Of course you don't simply creep along and talk about what you're looking at. It helps to have a grounding in basic visual strategy. When the Sun-Times appointed me film critic, I hadn't taken a single film course (the University of Illinois didn't offer them in those days). One of the reasons I started teaching was to teach myself. Look at a couple dozen New Wave films, you know more about the New Wave. Same with silent films, documentaries, specific directors.

I bought some books that were enormously helpful. The most useful was Understanding Movies, by Louis D. Giannetti, then in its first edition, now in its 11th. He introduced me to the concept that visual compositions have "intrinsic weighting." By that I believe he means that certain areas of the available visual space have tendencies to stir emotional or aesthetic reactions. These are not "laws." To "violate" them can be as meaningful as to "follow" them. I have never heard of a director or cinematographer who ever consciously applied them. I suspect that filmmakers compose shots from images that well up emotionally, instinctively or strategically, just as a good pianist never thinks about the notes. It may be that intrinsic weighting is sort of hard-wired. I am not the expert to say. I can observe that I have been through at least 10 Hitchcock films and not found a single shot that doesn't reflect these notions.

I already knew about the painter's "Golden Mean," or the larger concept of the "golden ratio." For a complete explanation, see Wiki, and also look up the "Rule of Thirds." To reduce the concept to a crude rule of thumb in the composition of a shot in a movie: A person located somewhat to the right of center will seem ideally placed. A person to the right of that position will seem more positive; to the left, more negative. A centered person will seem objectified, like a mug shot. I call that position somewhat to the right of center the "strong axis."

Now what do I mean by "positive" or "negative?" I mean that these are tendencies within the composition. They are not absolutes. But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the right will "seem" dominant over the person on the left. Does this apply even to films from cultures that read right to left or top to bottom? From my treks through many Asian films, yes, it seems to.

There are many other rules of thumb. I will outline some broadly, and if you're interested you can examine them in films, or read about them in books by such as Giannetti or David Bordwell (both often used as textbooks). They will not use the same terms, and by no means do I imply they would agree with me; I am summarizing my own beliefs, based on hundreds of shot-by-shot experiences over the years. But they are scrutinizing films with the same intense curiosity, and that's the real point. Consider Bordwell, whose great book on Ozu uses many panels of individual frames to illuminate a director who virtually never moved his camera, and yet whose compositions are alive with visual strategy.

In simplistic terms: Right is more positive, left more negative. Movement to the right seems more favorable; to the left, less so. The future seems to live on the right, the past on the left. The top is dominant over the bottom. The foreground is stronger than the background. Symmetrical compositions seem at rest. Diagonals in a composition seem to "move" in the direction of the sharpest angle they form, even though of course they may not move at all. Therefore, a composition could lead us into a background that becomes dominant over a foreground. Tilt shots of course put everything on a diagonal, implying the world is out of balance. I have the impression that more tilts are down to the right than to the left, perhaps suggesting the characters are sliding perilously into their futures. Left tilts to me suggest helplessness, sadness, resignation. Few tilts feel positive. Movement is dominant over things that are still. A POV above a character's eyeline reduces him; below the eyeline, enhances him. Extreme high angle shots make characters into pawns; low angles make them into gods. Brighter areas tend to be dominant over darker areas, but far from always: Within the context, you can seek the "dominant contrast," which is the area we are drawn toward. Sometimes it will be darker, further back, lower, and so on. It can be as effective to go against intrinsic weightings as to follow them.

Now let me walk you through a single shot from Hitchcock's "Notorious." The situation: Cary Grant, a U.S. agent, is in love with Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of a Nazi spy. He recruits her to go undercover and seduce a Nazi (Claude Rains) who has fled to Rio and is part of a plot. Consider that he has essentially called upon the woman he loves to live with (i.e., sleep with) another man, as her patriotic duty. He is conflicted about this, resents it, is jealous, begins to think of her as a slut ("notorious").

In the Rio office of U.S. intelligence, Grant's chief is positioned on the strong axis. Grant enters and talks to him, standing on the right (positive). Bergman enters, and begins to discuss her relationship with Rains. As she speaks, Grant walks to the left of the composition. She continues. He turns his back to us. We all instinctively read this as negative/rejecting/angry. Bergman goes into still more detail. Grant walks into the background. Wow. Now the picture has the intelligence chief as the stable presence on the strong axis, Bergman in the positive right foreground, Grant in the negative left background, and the "movement" from right front to left back, underlining the central emotional reality of the film, which will inform all of Grant's behavior.

repo.jpg

Of course I should employ quotation marks every time I write such words as positive, negative, stronger, weaker, stable, past, future, dominant or submissive. All of these are tendencies, not absolutes, and as I said, can work as well by being violated as by being followed. Think of "intrinsic weighting" as a process that gives all areas of the screen complete freedom, but acts like an invisible rubber band to create tension or attention when stretched. Never make the mistake of thinking of these things as absolutes. They exist in the realm of emotional tendencies. Often use the cautionary phrase, "all things being equal" -- which of course they never are.

You and those joining you will also find yourselves discussing color, lighting, shadows, construction, characters, dialogue, acting, history, sources, influences, and messages both obvious and buried. Anything and everything. It truly is a democracy in the dark. Everything worth noticing on the screen will eventually be seen by somebody. For example, I had been through "Citizen Kane" at least 30 times before I took it to the Savannah Film Festival, and someone noticed a detail I had never seen before. I write about it here.

Now you're on your own. DVDs make it so easy. Never be doctrinaire. Depend on the audience. If you want to see the process in action, Jim Emerson, the editor of this site, continues the tradition every April at Boulder. It's free and open the public, like the whole conference, which is like nothing else I've ever experienced. You can Google the Conference on World Affairs to get the times, places and dates..

Photo above: Peter O'Toole after his lifetime achievement award at the Savannah Film Festival, flanked by critic Roger Ebert and actor Jason Patric. (Photo by Mark Von Holden)

"Notorious," "Floating Weeds" and "Citizen Kane" are all in my Great Movies collection.


A few New York City libraries

music stand, jefferson market branch

Hi — I just got back from a short trip to New York City (real short, get in Wednesday and go home Friday) but I did manage to see five libraries. I know it’s been a while since I did a library recap but here’s a few links to photos and stories. NYPL has a lot going on lately in both good and bad ways. I’m always interested in the branch/main division personally and as I was on two long walks around Manhattan [1, 2] I tried to stop into as many libraries as I passed.

The first thing you notice when you’re walking is that the libraries have big blue banners hanging in front of them. This means you can see them from a block or two away and know you’re in the right place. So armed with that information and this library location mashup, I ventured in to the city. Here are the libraries I went to.

  • Jefferson Market Branch - this library is housed in a former women’s detention center and has a rich sense of history as well as an incredible building generally. Like many historic buildings that become libraries, the services are a little… smushed in there. There’s a big reference desk on the main floor that is empty and stacked with boxes and the reference librarian is actually in the basement with the reference collection. He seemed happy there. Outside there is an incredible set of gardens that were a joy to walk through.
  • Muhlenberg Branch - this library had just opened for the day and it was totally full of people. There was some confusion about how much of the library was open [see sign] and I just wanted to sit someplace cool and check my email using my laptop but couldn’t find an easy place to do that.
  • I kept walking and wound up at Bryant Park outside the big main NYPL research library. I ate lunch in the park and went inside to do a little work. The periodicals room has the best wifi, but no outlets, a way to I guess keep people’s visits to a reasonable time limit. I ran afoul of the wifi filters, not on purpose. You can see the page that was blocked. Graphic subject matter, NO graphic imagery.
  • The next day I went to the Tompkins Square Branch which is right near my friend Jenna’s place. It’s a lovely Carnegie building and was busy and full of folks. It had a really large Russian Language collection.
  • Then I wandered on to go by the Braille and Talking Book Library which had been closed the last time I walked by it. I was sort of interested whether there was any public information about the recent decision concerning the class action lawsuit that the National Federation for the Blind brought against Target concerning web site accessibility for businesses that sell things online. I enjoyed my time in the library. It’s brightly lit and has large easy to read signage and finding aids. It drove home the point that I tend to belabor which is that making things more usable really benefits everyone, not just whatever population happens to need accomodation. I liked having a bright library with wide low shelves and simple signage, who wouldn’t?

That wraps up my short tour of some Manhattan libraries in the NYPL system. Next time I’m in town I swear there will be meetups and beer drinking.

Shea Stadium Memories: When The Yankees Called Queens Home

Thumbnail image for Shea Stadium Scoreboard 081008
Surprisingly, he Yankees extended home stand in Shea Stadium during 1974 and 1975 has been rarely mentioned this year.

During those two years when Yankee Stadium was being modernized, the Spanks played in our beloved ballpark. Bill Virdon was manager for the 74 team that went 89-73.  Virdon was replaced by Billy Marin during the 1975 season.

I remember seeing the Yankees twice during those years, against the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals.

Over at a blog called Bronx Banter, they are launching a tribute to all the Yankee players who never played in Yankee Stadium.
The first candidate: Walt "No Neck" Williams. He played two seasons for the Yankees and never got to see the Bronx. He's a better man for the experience.

August 29, 2008

James Powderly's story of his Beijing detention

James Powderly, New Yorker and founder of the Graffiti Research Lab, was one of several Americans detained in China earlier this month for attempting to display protest messages related to Tibet during the Olympics. After 6 days in custody, he was released and sent back to the US. He's given a few interviews about his experience, all really interesting. From The Brooklyn Paper:

After more than a day of continuous questioning, cops drove the artists and activists - who assumed they were headed to the airport for deportation- to a Beijing jail, where they were stripped, photographed, screened, separated from each other, and placed in cells with other prisoners. Powderly joined 11 other prisoners in a cell with only eight beds, no potable water, and bright lights that illuminated the tiny room 24-hours a day to keep the detainees from sleeping.

And from Gothamist:

Would you say the interrogations were torture? Well, I think probably, a lot of people might disagree, even some of my other detainees might feel like what they received wasn't torture. And relative to what someone might receive on a daily basis at a place like Gitmo it certainly is not particularly harsh. It's kind of like being a little bit pregnant, we were a little bit tortured. We were strapped into chairs in uncomfortable positions, we were put into cages with blood on the floor and told we would never live, we were sleep deprived the entire time. There was an interrogation every night and they kept us up all day. They never turned the lights off in the cells. We were fed food that was inedible, we were not given potable water. Any time you threaten and take the numbers of family members and take down home addresses, there's an element of mental torture there. There's physical torture in the form of us having to sit in uncomfortable positions all day long and spending the night strapped to a metal chair inside of a cage. We all have cuts and bruises from that, and some of my peers were beaten up a little bit.

There's also a brief video interview and an article at artnet.

Powderly also stated that before he left, $2000 was extracted from his bank account by the Chinese as a fee for his plane ticket to the US. I know James a bit from Eyebeam, and for whatever stupid reason, when I first read about his detention, it never occurred to me that the detained Americans would be interrogated...I thought the Chinese would just hold them until the Olympics were over and send them home. To be interrogated to the point of mistreatment...well, glad you're home, James.

(link)

MSNBC's hurricane tracker

Here's MSNBC's nifty new hurricane tracker tracking Gustav bearing down on Louisiana like a shotgun full of wind and rain. Built by Stamen. (via jimray)

(link)

How The Obama Camp Should Respond

So, how should the Obama campaign handle the Palin selection, and what is a rather obvious play/pander for suburban women who supported Hillary Clinton?

I think they should go easy on her for the next several days -- give the public some time for this all to sink in. Then really go after her, and do it in style.

It is practically certain that on the night of Palin's speech on Wednesday, we will be treated to her repeating her praise of Hillary Clinton, and the talk about how women still have a chance to break the glass ceiling. This will be accompanied by the bizarre sight of the Republican convention cheering for Hillary Clinton, all in line with the gimmick.

And the Obama campaign should be prepared. Just as John McCain bought his ad time for right after Obama's speech last night, they should get their own for right after Palin.

And here's the ad: A one-minute spot featuring Hillary Clinton herself, talking to the camera and laying into Palin on the issues, her complete lack of qualifications, and the temerity of the McCain campaign to think they could get away with this. Then she urges anyone watching who might have supported her to get out there and support Barack Obama.

Then it closes simply with Obama walking on to the set to shake Hillary's hand: "I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this message."

On The Job Training

McCain advisor Charlie Black on questions about Sarah Palin's foreign policy competence. "She's going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he'll be around at least that long."

I get bravado. But is that a reassuring way to put it?

Three Years On


Happy Katrina Day, if you're reading this. I don't know why you would be, I've neglected it for so long, but it's still here, like a tree just waiting to be watered, and so here I am again today.

So much has happened since Katrina changed everything three years ago. And still so much is the same. I feel like a fraudulent reporter even touching on what's happened. It's ridiculous to come back here once every few months for updates, when the recovery is daily, and I'm so distant.

Every few weeks I resolve to recommit myself to this, and then disappoint myself by not. Sorry to the universe.

Facts: my mom is back on her property in a beautiful little home she's overjoyed to live in, built by successive waves of wonderful volunteers since the storm. She's just received some rebuilding money from the state of Mississippi which she's using to shore up the rough spots left over, and to elevate the house to new FEMA standards (which change frequently since the storm).

She recently received a creepy pre-recorded phone warning from Governor Haley Barbour telling her to evacuate in the path of Gustav, as if she wasn't planning on it already.

That's her on the left in the above picture. Next to her is her childhood friend Russell. Next to him is her sister, my aunt Lorraine, who's self conscious about her down-turned smile since the stroke, but who I think is just as beautiful and beaming as she's always been. The three of them grew up together first on Piety Street, then on McKain Street, in New Orleans.

Their dads worked together in the junkyard, chopping up cars for scrap using big hand axes. Russell had nineteen brothers and sisters, in a family poorer even than mine. Now he lives in a FEMA trailer on an abandoned lot with two dogs, a bunch of Katrina junk, a statue of the Virgin Mary he hand painted, and an old school bus backed up to a canal cruised by alligators, which he fishes out of for meals.

His sister was murdered in New Orleans last week. The New York Times wrote a piece about the crime in New Orleans, the crime that took Russell's sister.

It mentioned Piety Street. I don't know how any of this fits together on this day. But I know that it does.

I'll be back soon.

Right On Time

At TPMMuckraker we've been on the Palin/Trooper-gate story for a while. And we've just reported that the investigation by the state legislature is scheduled to report its findings in the first couple days of November.

This is a perilous story for Palin and McCain. I flagged some of the details earlier in the day. But this is the kind of story, the kind of investigation, where it is highly unlikely that Palin hasn't made public false statements about her involvement in what happened. I think that's generous. As always in cases like this, the question is whether anyone can prove it. There are a couple investigations -- one under the auspices of the state legislature and another of the state Attorney General, which she either supported or 'requested'. That latter investigation already surfaced taped phone calls that forced Palin walk back her original denials and admit that her aides had pressed for the firings, just without her knowledge.

Using the power of the government to settle scores with estranged relatives or associates is far from unprecedented. There are probably several similar investigations going on in other states as we speak. But I doubt very much that they were prepared for the heat of full bore national media scrutiny on this one. And in this case you not only the underlying act, which is sleazy, but the high probability that Palin is lying about her role.


Late Update: And special bonus: after the firing that got her administration into trouble, Palin replaced him with another guy who'd recently been hit with a credible sexual harassment accusation. Palin later admitted that she knew about the complaint in advance but denied that she knew of the letter of reprimand he'd received.

He lasted two weeks on the job.

Bar of the Week Special: The Cocktails of Mad Men!

mad men
It's hard to miss the five-martini lunches and constant scotch drinking on the fantastic AMC drama series Mad Men, but plenty of classic cocktails, from the Old Fashioned to the Brandy Alexander, have also made cameos. To honor these hidden stars, we asked good sports Toby Maloney, noted barman and cocktail consultant, and Alex Kelley, Brandy Library spirit sommelier, to tell us what each character's poison reveals about him or her. Here's a look at a few of these cocktails and the best places to drink like one of Mad Men's irresistibly troubled characters! 

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OLD FASHIONED WHO: Don Draper, creative director and partner at Sterling Cooper ad agency; identity thief; slightly ashamed cheater to the max. WHAT: Rye, bitters, sugar, soda (and, depending on the bartender, an orange or lemon slice and a maraschino cherry) WHEN: At the office, Don takes his his Rye straight, but the Old Fashioned is Double D's drink when he's out and about. IS DON WHAT HE DRINKS? Yep! "Someone who drinks an Old Fashioned is about manipulation," Maloney says. "You know the whole James Bond thing, 'Shaken, not stirred?' That wasn't because [Bond] was suave, it's because he was kind of an asshole and wanted to make the bartender work harder. With an Old Fashioned you are the master of that cocktail. It's a sugar cube and three dashes of bitters, and then you tell them how many ice cubes you want. You tell them if you want a lemon, or an orange. It's all about control." WHERE TO FIND IT IN REAL LIFE: Little Branch and Smith and Mills make excellent classic renditions, but the fresh ginger in the Ginger Old Fashioned at Carroll Gardens' Brooklyn Social nicely complements the depth of the bourbon.
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BRANDY ALEXANDER WHO: Peggy Olson, an innocent Bay Ridge girl who starts at Sterling Cooper as a secretary and quickly gets promoted to copywriter (and knocked up by Pete Campbell). WHAT: Cognac, dark crème de cacao, heavy cream WHEN: In season one, Peggy has a Brandy Alexander on her unsuccessful date with Carl the truck driver. IS PEGGY WHAT SHE DRINKS? Yep! This drink is rich and sweet but, as Kelley says, it means business. "It looks pretty, but it's mostly booze. It's not a girly drink." He also noted that, "the flavor isn't potent, but the effects certainly are" -- an apt description for this once unassuming but increasingly empowered young woman. WHERE TO FIND IT IN REAL LIFE: Brandy Library's Alexanders come with a sugar cookie garnish -- a nice snack for studying up on their comprehensive collection of cognacs and calvados.
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MAI TAI WHO: Rachel Menken. She hires Sterling Cooper to revamp the image of the department store she heads, becomes one of DD's season one ladies, and is perhaps the most grounded character on the show to date. WHAT: White run, dark rum, orgeat (an almond-based syrup), uraçao (orange liqueur), bitters WHEN: On the series premiere, Rachel has a Mai Tai when Don takes her for drinks IS RACHEL WHAT SHE DRINKS? When we asked Toby what's appealing about this drink, he said, "It's a drink you could have sitting on the beach, or you could drink it on a winter day in New York and use it for that escape." Rachel smartly declines Don's ill-conceived plan to escape to California, and, it would seem, is the exact opposite of the Mai Tai drinker. WHERE TO FIND IT IN REAL LIFE: According to Maloney, it's the curacao and orgeat, ingredients originally used by Mai Tai creator Trader Vic, that takes the drink above and beyond. "Unless a bartender really does their research, they're going to put in pineapple and grenadine and turn it into a syrupy mess." The Rusty Knot (where Maloney designed the cocktail list) and Employees Only both stick to the drink's authentic recipe
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CAMPARI AND SAMBUCA CON MOSCA WHO: Salvatore Romano, art director for Sterling Cooper, closeted gay. WHAT: Campari, an herbaceous aperitif, and sambuca, an anise flavored liqueur, are both from Italy. According to Maloney, the three espresso beans in a Sambuca con Mosca ("Sambuca with flies" in Italian), represent "health, wealth, and luck. That's where the idea comes from that there can never be an even number of anything in a cocktail." WHEN: Season one, Sal goes to drinks with Elliot Lawrence, a salesman for Sterling Cooper client Belle Jolie. His night starts with a Campari with a twist and ends it with a Sambuca con Mosca and an invitation to Elliot's hotel room. IS SAL WHAT HE DRINKS? Yep! "Campari is for a sophisticated palate, probably drunk by someone who's spent some time in Europe," Maloney says. Sal's handsome, speaks Italian, and his always-debonair three piece suits make him, by far, the most sophisticated Mad man. WHERE TO FIND IT IN REAL LIFE: Lots of bars carry Sambuca and Campari, but the classic Negroni, equal parts gin, Campari and vermouth, or the Americano, Campari, vermouth, and club soda, are always options, too. Clover Club adds club soda to create their frothy Negroni Swizzle, and The Hideout's Unusual Negroni substitutes the less alcoholic bitter Aperol, for a less medicinal effect.
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TOM COLLINS WHO: Betty Draper, a picture-perfect housewife with an unused diploma from Bryn Mawr and an increasingly evident disdain for her husband and children WHAT: Gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup WHEN: Don and Betty's young daughter, Sally, has been bartending for her parents this season, making her mother a Tom Collins when the neighbors come for bridge night. IS BETTY WHAT SHE DRINKS? Yep! Like her drink, Betty is a polished surface with underlying complications galore. According to Maloney, the Tom Collins is ordered by people who "want clean lines, things kept simple and straight forward, and that complexity from the gin." He also said it's a tough drink to get right: "it's one of the litmus tests of a good bartender, to see how someone can take just a few basic ingredients and use gestalt to make something much better than the sum of its parts." WHERE TO FIND IT IN REAL LIFE: Branch out from Pegu Club's martini! Their extensive collection of gins, with over twenty specialty lables, from California to Holland and France, can instantly punch up a TC.

Gremlins fan film

S.britt tipped me off to this; it’s a shockingly accurate and highly enjoyable fan-created Gremlins sequence designed to replace the scene in Gremlins 2 in which the green guys take over the film medium itself. In the theatrical run of the movie, the critters invaded the projection booth, only to be reprimanded by Hulk Hogan of all people, and in the home video version, they suddenly spliced themselves into a John Wayne movie. Here, French fan Sacha Feiner takes the premise to its logical conclusion: the PVR.

Feiner inserts his puppet creations into a number of popular films, and the results are pretty impressive for a home-grown project. Don’t miss the making-of video, either.

Comcast bandwidth limits vs. online video

So Comcast finally went public with a bandwidth cap: 250 gigabytes / month. That's about 50 DVDs or 100 hours of high def XviD per month. It's no accident that Comcast, a cable company with government-granted monopolies on video distribution, is taking actions that limit the use of the Internet for distributing video.

Mac Excel users rejoice: Solver for Excel 2008 now available!

Many users were left in the lurch when VBA was cut from Mac Office 2008, which also meant that Solver had to be cut as well. But with the release of the AppleScript-based Solver for Excel 2008, you can finally get your work done and do a little cubicle dance before heading out for a three-day weekend.

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By kosem in MeFi

Here's the thing: it's not the inexperience--experience as such is not necessarily dispositive--she's not accomplished. She's not a policy wonk; she does not have academic credentials; she has virtually no legislative experience of any kind; nothing in her resume even remotely suggests that she has a clue about matters of national security or foreign policy. I am not impressed. I want to be impressed. I want somebody smart and accomplished in the White House.

You say the same thing about Obama? I say bullshit. Give them both a fucking quiz. In fact, give all four candidates a quiz. Any issue, any policy, the Bible, the history of the Republican party. Whatever.

How we got to calling a law professor, policy expert with a steel trap memory and a powerful, nuanced intellect a naive, inexperienced and unprepared candidate will never cease to amaze me. How we got to calling yet another son of privilege of below average intelligence "ready to lead" and "strong" on foreign policy amazes me even more.

Palin is not impressive. She just isn't. There are impressive conservatives out there--many of them are women. This particular woman is weak sauce, and while clearly a talented politician and not totally frivolous, not the sort of accomplished person, thinker, or intellect--left or right, that can competently occupy the second seat, and, lest we forget, preside over the fucking Senate.

i recently saw a small ad for a condo development that stood out...



i recently saw a small ad for a condo development that stood out from the rest, though this was the only image. look at this kitchen! it is dark and heavy and moody. this a kitchen to be cooked in, not some whispy, white affair with people hanging out in cocktail party fashions sipping champagne and gazing out at some impossibly unobstructed skyline. walnut herringbone, i love you.

Michelle Obama: Finally a Political Style Icon We Can Rally Behind!

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How gorgeous have Michelle Obama's clothes been this week? (And her speech was amazing too!). As a Democrat, the convention thrilled me and made me energized and ready to take on the Republicans. All my favorite big guns were there and all gave great speeches -- Caroline & Ted Kennedy (with Maria Shriver dabbing tears in the audience), Bill, Hillary and Chlesea and Lily Ledbetter. All were inspiring. As a fashion person, I've never been so excited style-wise about a politician as I have been about Michelle Obama this week. Thakoon for the night of Barack's big speech???? MAGIC!!! She also worked Narciso Rodriguez and Peter Sorenen this week after kicking things off on opening night in a Maria Pinto dress with accessories by Erickson Beamon. This woman is as chic as they come and WHAT an ambassador for American Fashion she'll be once the Obamas are in the White House. When has a First Lady EVER worn clothes by young, American designers? A boost like this for Thakoon is immeasurable! Mr. Mickey thought the Olympics were outrageous but the Democratic Convention was a truly inspiring roller coaster ride!!!!! Michelle seated photo by Dennis Van Tine

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London from above, at night

With the end of the Olympics in Beijing, all eyes turned for a moment to London, site of the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics. While looking for good photographs of London, I was contacted by London photographer Jason Hawkes, who had some wonderful images of London, seen from above at night (from a helicopter, to be exact) - some of which which he's agreed to let me share here. From Jason: "Shooting aerial photography during the daytime had its own difficulties, you are strapped tightly into a harness leaning out of the helicopter, shouting directions through the headsets to the pilot. If shooting in the day can be difficult, night and the lack of light causes its own set of problems, but overcoming them is half the fun and the results can be stunning. I shoot at night using the very latest digital cameras, mounted on either one or two gyro stablazied mounts, depending on the format of the camera and length of lens I'm having to use." (19 photos total)

The city of London, at night, featuring the financial district, NatWest Tower, and the River Thames. (© Jason Hawkes)

Taking all the fun out of the playground

Children's playground equipment has gotten safer but less fun.

When litigation piled up in the early 1980s, the industry responded by raising insurance premiums and adhering closely to safety standards set up by the Consumer Products Safety Commission. Unsurprisingly, few creative ideas made it through these standards, lest any innovations be dangerous and result in more injury. God forbid a child jam his finger or scrape her knee.

But what the new, safe equipment is missing, of course, is the stuff that, according to Moore, makes play fun and crucial to early-childhood development: variety, complexity, challenge, risk, flexibility, and adaptability.

One of the most difficult aspects of Ollie's newfound mobility is balancing his need to explore freely and his safety.

(link)

Lucky ‘13

The Mysterious X (1913).

Each film is interlocked with so many other films. You can’t get away. Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913.  

Martin Scorsese, quoted in Scorsese by Ebert (University of Chicago Press, 2008), 219.

 

DB here:

Most historical events don’t abide by clocks and calendars. Seldom does a trend begin neatly on one date and end, full stop, on another. Changes have vague origins and diffuse destinies. When Kristin and I, along with others, argued for 1917 as the best point to date the consolidation of the Hollywood style of storytelling, we realized that it’s a useful approximation but not as exact as a Tokyo subway timetable.

It’s just as hard to argue that a year constitutes a meaningful unit in itself. Who expects anything but tax laws to change drastically at midnight on 31 December? Yet evidently our minds need benchmarks. Film historians, while being aware that trends are slippery and dating is approximate, have long spotlighted certain years as particularly significant.

Take 1939, which has become a sort of emblem of the peak achievements of Hollywood’s Golden Age. We had Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Only Angels Have Wings, Stagecoach, Gunga Din, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, Young Mr. Lincoln, Beau Geste, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, The Roaring ‘20s, and Destry Rides Again. I’d watch any of those, except Gone with the Wind, right now—something I find it hard to say about most Hollywood movies I’ve seen in 2008.

Another strong year is 1960, with La Dolce Vita, L’Avventura, Rocco and His Brothers, The Apartment, Elmer Gantry, Spartacus, Psycho, Exodus, The Magnificent Seven, Shadows, Late Autumn (Ozu), and The Bad Sleep Well (Kurosawa). Arguably, 1960 was owned by the French, who gave us Breathless, Shoot the Piano Player, Paris nous appartient, Les Bonnes femmes, Le Trou (Becker), Moi un noir (Rouch), and Letter from Siberia (Marker).

Let’s go back still further. Researchers sometimes split the silent-film period in two, with the first stretch, usually called “early cinema,” running up to 1915 or so. (1) The second phase then runs roughly from 1915 to 1928. (2) So for many historians the year 1915 functions as a tacit pivot-point, and it is remembered not only for The Birth of a Nation but also for Regeneration, The Tramp, Kindling, The Cheat, Les Vampires, Daydreams (Yevgenii Bauer), and several William S. Hart films. But another year holds a special place in the minds of silent film aficionados.

Over a decade ago, the annual Days of the Silent Cinema festival (Il Giornate del cinema muto), took 1913 as its focus. (3) It was an extraordinary year. Denmark produced Atlantis (August Blom) and The Mysterious X (Benjamin Christensen). From France we had L’Enfant de Paris (Leonce Perret), Germinal (Alberto Capellani), and Louis Feuillade’s Fantomas series. Germany gave us Urban Gad’s Engelein and Filmprimadonna and Franz Hofer’s obsessively symmetrical The Black Ball. The staggering set of Italy’s Love Everlasting (Ma l’amor mio non muore!, Mario Caserini) was matched by the breadth of Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo vadis? In Russia Bauer released Twilight of a Woman’s Soul. American audiences saw Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker) and Death’s Marathon and The Mothering Heart, from a guy named Griffith. Several historians would argue that 1913 marked the first major achievements of film as an artform.

Two outstanding films of that annus mirabilis have recently been issued on US DVD. One is a striking accomplishment, the other a flat-out masterpiece. Both discs belong in the collections of everyone who’s serious about cinema.

 

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A wife and her baby are alone in an isolated house when a tramp breaks in. As the wife tries to keep the invader at bay, her husband happens to telephone and learn what’s happening. He scrambles to return home. He steals an idle car, and its owner, accompanied by police, race after him. We cut rapidly between the besieged mother and the husband’s frantic drive, as he is in turn pursued. Just as the tramp is about to attack the wife, the husband bursts in, followed by the police. The family is saved.

This is the story of the 1913 one-reel film, Suspense, co-directed by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley. If the plot sounds familiar, it’s probably because you know that one of D. W. Griffith’s most famous films, The Lonely Villa (1909) tells the same basic tale. There are still earlier versions, including one, The Physician of the Castle (Le Médécin du chateau, 1908), which may have inspired Griffith. The ultimate source seems to be a 1902 play by André de Lord, Au téléphone (translated here).

So Weber and Smalley are reviving an old idea. Their task is to make it fresh. How they do so has been studied in depth by Charlie Keil in his book Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style, and Filmmaking, 1907-1913. I can’t match Keil’s subtlety, and it’s better that you see the film first, so I’ll drop only some hints, pointers, and comments.

We’re inclined to say that The Lonely Villa influenced Suspense. But maybe we can capture the situation in a more illuminating way. The art historian E. H. Gombrich has suggested that we can often trace the relationship between artworks in terms of schema and revision. (4) A schema is a pattern that we find in an artwork, one that a later artist can borrow. Most often, later artists copy the schema straightforwardly. This is the usual way we think of influence. But instead of replicating the schema, the next artist can revise it. She can elaborate on it, strip it to its essence, drop parts and add others, whatever—in order to achieve new purposes or evoke fresh responses.

In The Lonely Villa, Griffith uses crosscutting to build suspense. He cuts among the thuggish vagrants trying to break in, the wife and daughters trying to hold them off, and the father learning by phone of the situation and then plunging after them with a policeman. The obvious pattern here is the principle of alternation between different lines of action, all taking place at the same time and converging in a last-minute rescue.

So Smalley and Weber inherit the crosscutting schema, but they go beyond simply copying it. They find ways to revise it, some quite surprising. These revisions aim to create more tension and to dynamize the situation.

The obvious option, at least to us today, would be to use more shots than Griffith does; we think that increasing the cutting pace builds up excitement. Interestingly, however, Suspense uses only a couple of more shots than The Lonely Villa within a comparable running time. (5) We usually expect that American films become more rapidly cut as the 1910s go on, but this isn’t the case here. Shortly, I’ll suggest why.

Smalley and Weber recast Griffith’s parallel editing in several ways. For instance, The Lonely Villa prolongs the phone conversation between husband and wife, building suspense through the husband’s instruction to use his revolver on the thugs. Suspense, by contrast, doesn’t dwell on the telephone conversation but devotes more time (and shots) to the chase along the highway. That’s because Weber and Smalley have complicated the chase by having the husband pursued by the irate motorist and the police, something that doesn’t happen in the Griffith film.

Just as important, Smalley and Weber revise the crosscutting schema through framings that are quite bold for 1913. For example, Griffith’s tramps break into the house in long shot, and they move laterally across the frame.

But Weber and Smalley’s tramp sneaks steadily up the stairs, into a menacing extreme close-up.

Elsewhere, Suspense gives us close views of the wife and of the door as the tramp breaks in. There are oblique angles on the back door of the house, and virtually Hitchcockian point-of-view shots when the wife sees the tramp breaking in and he looks straight up at her.

What struck me most forcibly on watching the film again was the way in which Weber and Smalley’s daring framings serve as equivalents for parallel editing. In effect, they revise the crosscutting schema by putting several actions into a single frame. The most evident, and the most famous, instances are the triangulated split-screen shots. They cram together three lines of action: the wife on the phone, the husband on the phone, and the tramp’s efforts to break into the house (here, finding the key under the mat). (6)

Split-screen effects like this were common enough in early cinema, especially for rendering telephone conversations. Eileen Bowser points out that the three-frame division was one variant, with a landscape separating the two callers. (7) Her example is from College Chums (1907).

But my sense is that in early cinema the split-screen effect was used principally for exposition or comedy, not for suspense. Smalley and Weber have made this framing substitute for crosscutting: instead of giving us three shots, we get one, showing the plot advancing along different lines of action. These splintered frames function much like Brian De Palma’s multiple-frame imagery in Sisters, Blow-Out, and other films. There’s also the nice touch of the conical lampshade over the husband’s head, providing a fulcrum for the composition.

Earlier in the film, instead of crosscutting between the tramp outside and the wife indoors, Suspense gives us both in the same shot, with the tramp peeking in behind her.

A more ingenious revision of the crosscutting schema comes during the shots on the road. Instead of cutting between the father in the stolen car and the police pursuing him, Suspense packs them into the same frame. This is done not only in long shot but also in striking depth compositions.

Flashiest of all are the shots showing the pursuers reflected in the rear-view mirror of the father’s car as he races ahead of them.

Again, a single framing has done duty for two shots, one of the father looking back and another showing the cops coming closer to him. By compressing several lines of action into a single frame, our 1913 film doesn’t need to use significantly more shots than the 1909 one.

These are just a few of the imaginative ways in which Weber and Smalley have recast their standard situation. I could have considered as well the unobtrusive use of the knife as a multi-purpose prop, the echoed shots of mirrors, and the shrewd employment of repetitions in the intertitles.

It would take an early-cinema specialist like Keil to trace out all the connections between Suspense and other films of its era. One among many would be the fact that Griffith wasn’t exactly standing still between 1909, the year of The Lonely Villa, and 1913. For instance, his Battle at Elderbush Gulch, made about the same time as Suspense (though released in 1914), displays far more rapid cutting than Weber and Smalley attempt. Griffith also employed a swelling advance to the foreground, like that of the tramp shot I showed above, in The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912).

Here, Smalley and Weber seem to have replicated a schema that was believed to ratchet up tension, the so-called looming effect.

The very title of the film exhibits self-consciousness about its artistic purpose. By 1913, it seems, American filmmakers were confident enough in their skills to announce their aims. We want, the title seems to say, to arouse you, to make you wait, hanging there, for the resolution. We know how to tell a twelve-minute story cinematically. The film seems uncannily to anticipate all those one-word titles that Hitchcock invoked to unsettle us–Suspicion, Spellbound, Psycho, Frenzy. As in a Hitchcock movie, the fact that we are pretty certain how Suspense will turn out doesn’t seem to dissipate our anxiety. (For more on this paradox of suspense, see this entry.)

Tunnel vision

It was during the Pordenone 1913 season that the full brilliance of Victor Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm hit me. I had seen the film a couple of times before and found it deeply moving in its restrained treatment of a poignant situation. The film traces the dissolution of a family. Sven Holm is doing a brisk retail business, but his health problems, along with a thieving clerk, plunge the family into poverty. When Holm dies, his wife Ingeborg must take the children into the poorhouse, and from there they are boarded out to foster families. Her plight worsens over the years, and its sorrowful depths are revealed when her son, now grown, returns to visit her.

Ingeborg Holm has long been recognized as a milestone in European film, not least for its effect on improving Sweden’s treatment of the poor. (8) The acting style is muted and delicate, with no mugging or arm-waving. For long periods, the main actors turn from the audience. (9) Just as impressive are the poised compositions, sustained in unhurried long takes. These give what is essentially a bourgeois tragedy a kind of majestic relentlessness. Watching, I remembered what Dreyer had admired in Sjöström’s Ingmar’s Sons (1918):

The film people here at home shook their heads because Sjöström had really a boldness to let his farmers walk heavily and soberly as farmers do. Yes, they used up an eternity to come from one end of the room to the other. (10)

But sitting in the Cinema Verdi in 1993, I spotted yet another level of artistry. Knowing the story of Ingeborg Holm, I was able to watch the shots unfold. I could study how Sjöström was unobtrusively moving characters so that they became shifting centers of interest. Although he didn’t cut in to close-ups, he harmonized his actors’ movements so that at one point you noticed Ingeborg, at another her husband. Performers spread themselves across the frame, arrayed themselves in depth, turned from or toward the camera. Most subtly of all, one actor might mask another one, driving our attention to other parts of the frame. Sjöström could sustain this intricate play of blocking and revealing for minutes on end.

My favorite example of this tactic is the three-minute passage showing Ingeborg’s daughter and son taken away by new mothers. You can read the whole discussion on pp. 191-195 in On the History of Film Style (1997), but here is an excerpt, with stills intercalated. (These stills, grabbed from the DVD, lack a little on the left. The film has been printed and reprinted so many times, and now fitted to the TV monitor, that it has lost some information along that edge.)

Ingeborg’s entry with her children from the rear doorway establishes the trajectory that will be followed during the scene, as foster mothers come in and take away the children. (Again, the scene is built around movements toward and away from the camera.) In a brilliant stroke, Sjöström immediately plants the young son in the foreground, back to us. The boy will stand there immobile for this first phase of the scene, occasionally serving to block the superintendent.