tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post7133401855870337769..comments2023-09-29T02:49:02.989-07:00Comments on An Emphatic Umph: What is Cinema?Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-28170072546260146302011-03-08T09:49:45.107-08:002011-03-08T09:49:45.107-08:00I'm 30 and when I was in high school the most ...I'm 30 and when I was in high school the most popular films for my friends and I to watch were Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Clerks. I'm not ashamed of that list at all, which makes it different than a lot of my other high school tastes. Why was I defending late-era Clapton? Who knows. <br /><br />But when I think about those films, they were playing with possibilities and I think what we were responding to is that we didn't know cinema could go that way. We didn't know who Bunuel was and I had not yet been totally mesmerized by Bergman and early Woody Allen. <br /><br />The problem I see with cinema - well let's not say problem. I don't have a good word yet, but I think this will make sense. Whereas painting (which i really know nothing about) stopped being representational and more or less stayed that way, film and music have stayed conventional in ways that are a bit perplexing to say the least. Or perhaps not, maybe cinema's greatest strength is it's ability to entertain. There is something that is sort of not entertaining about watching Lynch's Inland Empire, for example. so maybe the conventionality allows for the entertainment. I'm really not sure. <br /><br />I've heard people argue that film is not a medium built for dialogue - that "true" cinema would be devoid of dialogue, just images I'm not sold on that idea at all really, though I do love the way it sounds. <br /><br />I think the question is hard because I only recognize limits when they are pushed, tested, broken and so forth. So "What is Cinema," reminds me of how I felt after reading Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves, when I finally asked "what is a novel, anyways," and what the hell was that thing I just read that looked like a novel.drwatsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16184322472302989822noreply@blogger.com