The Emperor's New Clothes

While many critics have been hailing Paul Thomas Anderson's latest picture, The Master, not everyone is joining the chorus. That includes Shlomo Schwartzberg in his review last fall in Critics at Large.

Definitely an Oxymoron: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master

Joaquin Phoenix & Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master

I’m not really surprised that Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie The Master is as atrocious as it is. This is, after all, the filmmaker who’s inflicted Magnolia (1999), Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and There Will be Blood (2007) upon us. But I do marvel anew at the superlatives and fulsome praise being lavished on Anderson by the majority of film critics, even though the over-praising of this director, who actually has little of value to offer, is also par for the course. The Master is being festooned with adjectives – audacious, brilliant, masterful – that are more rightly applied to genuine filmmakers, talents such as Robert Altman, Orson Welles, Jean Renoir and Steven Spielberg, directors who've actually made movies that last and have impacted on the cinematic medium in new and unique ways. In fact, The Master, which Anderson wrote as well, isn't deserving of any commendations at all. It’s a film that is rife with idiotic, pulpy dialogue, mannered, artificial acting, sloppy plotting and a storyline that, despite its obvious pretensions to the contrary, doesn't add up to anything memorable at all.

Doppleganger

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper heralded in the Summer of Love in 1967, but when that season started to turn darker, Frank Zappa responded with We're Only in it for the Money. Kevin Courrier compared the records recently in Critics at Large.

In the Shadow of Sgt. Pepper: We're Only in it for the Money

Last summer, I wrote in Critics at Large about how The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, a lovely, masterful avant-garde pop confection, also represented a magical retreat from a counter-culture that was on the verge of turning dark and violent. Before that darkness fully overshadowed the utopian spirit of that record, though, many of The Beatles' contemporaries made valiant attempts to duplicate the wizardry of Sgt. Pepper, as if they were trying to decode a secret language. In 1968, for instance, The Zombies ("Time of the Season") matched some of Pepper's technical innovations while adding some rich textures of their own on the exquisite Odyssey and Oracle (which was also recorded, like Pepper, at Abbey Road Studios). The Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed (1967) developed precisely in the spirit of Sgt. Pepper. The album, which yielded two hit songs, "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin," was conceived as a song cycle that spanned an entire day – from sunrise to evening – where every song provided a unique perspective from each member of the group. Days of Future Passed was an evocation of a pastoral mystical innocence worthy of poet William Wordsworth in the age of psychedelia.

The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request

The Rolling Stones, a mere six months after Pepper, would concoct their own psychedelic conceit, Their Satanic Majesties Request, where they abandoned their R&B roots for exotic Indian rhythms, sound collages, and music hall pastiches. But because of their bad boy image, the record felt fake (despite its devious title) with its half-hearted flower power sentiments. There were many other lesser, now forgotten groups, who attempted to capture Sgt. Pepper's lightning in a bottle. One American artist who did respond to the seismic impact of Pepper, but didn't buy into the hippie ethos that blossomed out of The Beatles' landmark recording was Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. This Los Angeles band, who coined themselves "the ugly reminder," may have had long hair but they didn't even come close to resembling the pretty groups sprouting up like flowers in a magical garden.

Tower of Incomprehension

The future of the publically funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is forever part of a long debate which continued last summer with the publication of former vice-President of English Services Richard Stursberg's book The Tower of Babble. Having worked there for nine years (and still counting), John Corcelli delved into the many paradoxes of the CBC in this review from Critics at Large.

The Bull in the China Shop: Richard Stursberg's The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes Inside the CBC

I’ve had the privilege of working at the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, for over nine years. Richard Stursberg’s tenure was much shorter and in his book, The Tower of Babble (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012), he takes it upon himself to explain his six years as the Vice President of English Services. Throughout the memoir, he takes pride in the decisions he made during his tenure (the Globe & Mail’s John Doyle describes it as a time when he “took the CBC kicking and screaming into the 21st Century”) and it’s an appropriate description. But after reading Stursberg’s personal account in The Tower of Babble, one is left cold.  Stursberg is a man who may present himself as the media equivalent of Henry V, but he comes across as Richard III in this lengthy diatribe. 

Stursberg is a fascinating person to watch, where his rough personality is often matched by his remarkable knowledge of the media landscape and his intelligence. It’s quite the mix of qualifications that has landed him in a number of powerful Canadian arts organizations, such as Telefilm and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. But because he’s a sharp, contemporary thinker whose drug of choice is ratings (what he considers the only measure of the success of any Canadian film or radio or television show), he also became the bull in the china-shop of Canadian Culture. Countless stories reveal his forthright attitude that any art form is a waste of time if the mass audience doesn't embrace it (which was his mantra from the get-go).Whether you disagree with this notion or not, it doesn't matter to Stursberg who, for hundreds of pages in his memoir, cites a rating share, or the cost of producing a program, on virtually every page to defend his argument. This becomes rather tiresome to the reader because even though he makes the point and does so in a sensible, well-argued way, his argument wears thin for the most obvious reason. It signifies a bottom line approach to broadcasting with no room for negotiation.

Doomsday

Doomsday stories were big subjects in movie theatres especially during the early Cold War years in the Fifties. They've made a comeback on television - big time - according to Susan Green in Critics at Large.  

It Can Happen Here: The Cosmology of Falling Skies

The end of the world apparently can’t come soon enough for Hollywood. While doomsday movies have been a staple for decades, the recent plethora of apocalypse fare hints at some sort of self-loathing in an industry known for boundless self-admiration. Or is it merely tapping into the collective consciousness of a populace that’s “facing a dying nation,” to borrow a poignant lyric from Hair’s “Let the Sunshine In”? Make that “facing a dying planet” and you have the current state of despair among those alarmed about the deteriorating environment and the ever-present peril of nuclear annihilation.

Now halfway through its ten-episode summer debut on TNT and already renewed for another season, Falling Skies substitutes an alien invasion for endangered polar bears and Pakistan’s arsenal. The somewhat derivative series begins six months after 90 percent of humanity has perished in the initial conflagration. Ragtag survivors in and around Boston band together to fight the “Skitters,” enormous spider-like sentient beings, and their even more gigantic metallic robots, dubbed “Mechs.” The chief writer and creator, Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan – 1998, and The Patriot – 2000) is a Harvard grad who reportedly still lives in Cambridge. Although ostensibly set in the Bay State, the series is shot in Toronto – the hometown of Graham Yost, who shares executive producer chores with Steven Spielberg. 

Geekland

It's always important to acknowledge the importance of fannish behaviour as a means to cultivate a true love of the arts. (If it ain't fun, why would you care?) Mark Clamen, in Critics at Large, examines one show that delves into the necessity of fannish love.

Comic Book Men: AMC’s Kinder, Gentler Reality Show

Kevin Smith (centre) and the rest of the Comic Book Men

AMC has come a long way since the premiere of Mad Men in 2007. Firmly establishing itself as a destination for original programming, the channel has had its ups (Breaking Bad) and downs (Hell on Wheels). But last Sunday, it stepped decisively into television’s 21st century with Comic Book Men, its first unscripted series. Yes, AMC now has a reality show.

For all the television that I regularly watch, I have to admit that reality shows rarely make the cut. I’ll watch (and enjoy) the odd episode of Amazing Race, but most of the unscripted shows currently on the air are often just too plain loud for me. The shows are too often populated by poorly drawn, unrealistic characters whose problems are usually the result of their own narcissistic reality distortions – quite simply not people I want to welcome into my home, at least not voluntarily. Nevertheless, the best of those shows can often be genuinely entertaining, and, like good film documentaries, can provide insight into people, worlds, and situations beyond the average viewer’s everyday experience. With Comic Book Men, AMC opens the door to the slightly mysterious kingdom of the comic book store. And now that it’s here, it feel almost like an inevitably. The world of comic book and sci-fi nerds is much more fashionable now than it ever has been. After all, the boys of The Big Bang Theory have been making comedic fodder of it for five successful seasons.

Carny Time

Christopher Nolan's last film in the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, was released this past week on DVD. Steve Vineberg weighed in on the picture (as well as the whole franchise) last summer with unsparing insight in Critics at Large. 

Bad Faith: The Dark Knight Rises

As fans of superhero pictures (and that’s most of the world, evidently) know, the Batman series divides into three categories. There are the Tim Burtons, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), with their magnificent, High Romantic Anton Furst designs and Michael Keaton as a brooding, mysterious Bruce Wayne – a portrayal that, in a better world, would have made him an actor to be cherished forever. Burton put a premium on character and let the stories unravel like fairy tales. The Joel Schumacher entries, Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997), were extravagantly (but not wittily) overdesigned; they were like arcades, or gay roller discos, and they underused their stars, Val Kilmer and George Clooney respectively, so that afterwards you couldn't remember anything they’d done.

Sex and Dance

Our dance critic at Critics at Large, Deirdre Kelly, published her latest book this past fall and David Churchill spoke to her about its genesis.

Deirdre Kelly Discusses Her New Book: Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection

Deirdre Kelly (Photo: John Cullen)

Deirdre Kelly has been obsessed with dance and the ballerina since she was three years old. Much of her professional writing life has been devoted to looking at ballet and dance. Now, in her new book, Ballerina: Sex, Scandal, and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection (Greystone Books: an imprint of D&M Publishers), she pulls back the curtain and gives us a rare peak behind the scenes at what it means in the past and the present to be a ballerina. She sat down with David Churchill recently to discuss her book and the history of the ballerina. Tomorrow, we will run an excerpt from her new book.