The career trajectory of Philippe Grandrieux has in some respects come full circle in the last ten years. International acclaim came to the director with his signature narrative film Sombre (1998) in part due to its loose association with the so-called French New Extremity movement of the late-1990s and early 2000s, and he has cultivated a devoted following among certain audiences, critics, and critical theorists with the features A New Life (2002), Un Lac (2008), and Despite the Night (2015). His work originates, however, in video installation, photography, and documentaries—media that he has worked in consistently from the mid-1970s through today. While their subject matter is diverse, a “thesis” of sorts running through nearly all of his works can be distilled into a statement by Grandrieux himself: “Le cinéma est l’art de la sensation” (“cinema is the art of sensation”). Grandrieux’s approach to the film subject has been distinguished...
- 9/30/2019
- MUBI
“The finacialization of the capitalist economy implies a growing abstraction of work from its useful function, and of language from its bodily dimension. Desire is diverted from physical contact and invested in the abstract field of simulated seduction, in the infinite space of the image.”
—Franco “Bifo” Berardi in The Uprising, On Poetry and Finance
For those who came of age in the nondescript 2000s, an era characterised by securitarian paranoia and lack of future prospects, Joe Swanberg’s Lol (2006) might as well read as their very own (purposeless) existential manifesto. A generational pamphlet that, in tune with its times, neither affirms nor negates, let alone criticizes, its predicament, but simply registers the vacuum within which it occurs. It is the Western vacuum of the 21st century whose first decade was marked by a tangible curb in the forward surge of pop cultural history. Cinema, but also music and literature,...
—Franco “Bifo” Berardi in The Uprising, On Poetry and Finance
For those who came of age in the nondescript 2000s, an era characterised by securitarian paranoia and lack of future prospects, Joe Swanberg’s Lol (2006) might as well read as their very own (purposeless) existential manifesto. A generational pamphlet that, in tune with its times, neither affirms nor negates, let alone criticizes, its predicament, but simply registers the vacuum within which it occurs. It is the Western vacuum of the 21st century whose first decade was marked by a tangible curb in the forward surge of pop cultural history. Cinema, but also music and literature,...
- 1/21/2013
- by Celluloid Liberation Front
- MUBI
Part of the Tony Scott: A Moving Target critical project. Go here for the project's description, index and links to project's other movement.
This is one "movement" of our exquisite corpse-style critical project, Tony Scott: A Moving Target, which coincidentally begins with a look at Crimson Tide, the same movie that begins the other movement. As outlined in the introduction to the entire project, this project began in my mind, as something fairly simple: a snaking continuum of scene analysis. This is only in part what resulted.
The varied responses I got back from my group—"mine" in the sense that it is the one I participated in, since Gina's contribution closes Movement B—seem to say as much about the participating critics as they do about Tony Scott's films and the overlap between the two: the perception of Scott's films and career. Thus many entries, including my own,...
This is one "movement" of our exquisite corpse-style critical project, Tony Scott: A Moving Target, which coincidentally begins with a look at Crimson Tide, the same movie that begins the other movement. As outlined in the introduction to the entire project, this project began in my mind, as something fairly simple: a snaking continuum of scene analysis. This is only in part what resulted.
The varied responses I got back from my group—"mine" in the sense that it is the one I participated in, since Gina's contribution closes Movement B—seem to say as much about the participating critics as they do about Tony Scott's films and the overlap between the two: the perception of Scott's films and career. Thus many entries, including my own,...
- 11/27/2012
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
This article is part of the critical project Tony Scott: A Moving Target in which an analysis of a scene from a Tony Scott film is passed anonymously to the next participant in the project to respond to with an analysis of his or her own.
<- the previous analysis | movement index | the next analysis ->
"Visually the film is quite impressive, something like a confetti storm in which the spectator never gets to rest."
–Manny Farber, 1968
Participating in this writing game is a little like being crossed between Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956) and Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour (1950). Both prison films, both about Men on Fire. One implicitly gay, the other explicitly so. Alone in my cell, like in Bresson, I am doing my bit to chip my way through to collective freedom and enlightenment. And, meanwhile, I am being presented, like in Genet, with things—all kinds of things—to help me along,...
<- the previous analysis | movement index | the next analysis ->
"Visually the film is quite impressive, something like a confetti storm in which the spectator never gets to rest."
–Manny Farber, 1968
Participating in this writing game is a little like being crossed between Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956) and Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour (1950). Both prison films, both about Men on Fire. One implicitly gay, the other explicitly so. Alone in my cell, like in Bresson, I am doing my bit to chip my way through to collective freedom and enlightenment. And, meanwhile, I am being presented, like in Genet, with things—all kinds of things—to help me along,...
- 11/26/2012
- by Adrian Martin
- MUBI
As a freelance film critic looking to get involved with film festivals, I feared that talks at the International Film Festival Summit might be too specialised for me. True, I was one of only two film critics in a room of about 40 people, many of whom had vast experience in founding, financing, organising and programming film festivals: about half gave keynote addresses or participated in panels to share their knowledge. In-depth knowledge of a subject can make it difficult to talk about it without going into the kind of detail that will bore the uninitiated or blind them with science. Yet most of what these highly knowledgeable speakers had to say was completely accessible to the novice. The name ‘summit’ also evokes a vast, potentially intimidating gathering of people, but this summit was a personal and welcoming affair, hosted in a cosy meeting room at the Hotel du Louvre, right...
- 5/8/2012
- by Alison Frank
- The Moving Arts Journal
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