Archive for the “Film” category
Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean
by Travis Jeppesen on December 12, 2012
“Joshua Tree gives us an account of the process by which Hollywood molds an individual into its systemic image of a star. That it accomplishes this through a formal subversion of Hollywood’s stylistic code—with its deliberately slow rhythm and acute attention (…)
Willard (1971): Two Takes
by Travis Jeppesen on November 22, 2012
The Deleuzo-Guattarian Take (Translation by Brian Massumi) I recall the fine film Willard (1972, Daniel Mann). A “B” movie perhaps, but a fine unpopular film: unpopular because the heroes are rats. My memory of it is not necessarily (…)
Le Notti Bianche
by Travis Jeppesen on October 18, 2012
He walks through the streets of the city, having just arrived, lost, a stranger. Walks across a bridge grayishly illumined, staring up at a lonely lit window. Dog’s nose in the garbage. His wanderings appear aimless in the nameless night, (…)
Tarr Black: Understanding Finality in The Turin Horse
by Travis Jeppesen on August 18, 2012
The adjective “apocalyptic” – and, even worse, “post-apocalyptic” – tends to suffer overuse from lazy journalists and deadline critics whose surface-glazing is rarely burdened with the task of accurately translating what’s happening before them into the medium to which (…)
Exploding the Frame: Ryan Trecartin’s Bad Language
by Travis Jeppesen on August 3, 2012
The Reality TV script is, by now, formulaic, easy enough to decode by nearly anyone. It’s been around for a generation, the youngest among us has known no other function of television other than constructing and presenting a (…)
Open: A film by Jake Yuzna
by Travis Jeppesen on August 2, 2012
Two for the ride, sometimes it’s sad to transform. Clouds in the sky’re orange, two wives exchange smiles after surgery. Lady puts a bathrobe on falls fat in the tub. Wives who wanna look alike cut each other’s (…)
James Benning’s 13 Lakes: a novel
by Travis Jeppesen on November 24, 2011
1. Jackson Lake Dawn had me looking. I think the indifference well suited. Not too many tropes, though, it is true. More a type of sizzling, that ripple. Pink light on the mountains over yonder. Daddy tells us it’s (…)
The Art of Deception: Lazlo Pearlman & Fake Orgasm
by Travis Jeppesen on October 30, 2011
It’s like Deleuze and Guattari put it in the opening pages of Anti-Oedipus – it eats, it shits, it fucks, it’s everywhere – you can’t avoid it, and yet you’re taught to both embrace and avoid it. They were talking (…)
Abendland: A film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
by Travis Jeppesen on October 27, 2011
The visibility is good today but there’s no one out there. Security camera is like a video game. He manipulates his own footage within the frame of the film, Security Man in a Van. In a vacant field. Europa, (…)
Lucrecia Martel’s La mujer sin cabeza
by Travis Jeppesen on October 18, 2011
A woman driving down a dirt road runs over something. At first, she thinks it is “only” a dog (this only is always negligible; one of the points of the film), but later, after the fact, she decides in (…)
